@icculus If it helps, you're certainly not the only one feeling that way. I've spent the last few weeks hand-writing a lightmapper while all this has been going on and wondering if there's even a point

@icculus I will not predict any specific outcome with regard to AI capabilities. clearly they can produce words, images, math, sounds, videos, code, music, and various other kinds of Content, to some degree of efficacy.

however I do have both a logical and an empirical coda to this uncertainty.

@icculus 1) gah, I could feel my brain rot as I read that
2) where’s the code? (or it running even) I suspect it’s assembly cosplaying as rust.
3) What’s the point? We learned nothing from this (like, was it compiled in debug? like Mario 64) or some neat idea from the source? And I can already run it where I want, why run in a browser? - I’m not sure you could claim it as a learning experience, the bar is so low now.
4) SDL brings so much more to the world than this

@icculus Mate, the *only* thing I have interest in valuing or celebrating is labour and the enrichment people get from the effort they put into their creations and the world around them.

When I see a chair someone's built from scraps, that's got different meaning to a chair made by someone who milled their own lumber, and getting a mass produced machine-assembled chair means something different again. If seating were scarce, the calculus might be different, but I have more chairs than backsides

@icculus for me, the most beautiful thing about software are the moments when by reading code I learn something about the author.

Whether it's a beautifully simple solution to a complex problem, a very wise handling of a hard-to-anticipate edge case, an ugly hack, or a frustrating compromise - it tells a story of a human who cared.

And IMO that's worth more than a mountain of code nobody has looked at.

@icculus was reverse engineering a game on and off for the past few years. Not sure I’ll keep going, since there’s already a (slop, depending on your definition) port. Was thinking I’d still do it for fun, but feel kind of ambivalent about that now.

@icculus You made SDL.
And so many games and other applications make use of it because it is so genuinely powerful. To me, that is much, much more impressive. And I am not ready to believe that I am the only one who thinks that way.

@icculus Deus Ex has been done before though and Unreal Engine 1 has been decompiled/reverse engineered since long before, it is just recycling that. Not to mention that Unreal Engine 1's source has been leaked so many times.

@icculus If a reply is welcome

What I honestly think has changed

Is that doing things "because it's impressive" is over. "I got X technology working on Y old system!" and everyone's impressed by your programming chops. No longer a point. Impressing people can be automated.

So what matters to me now

Is making things, that the people I care about, will benefit from, and enjoy

And the people I care about most

Are the people who don't want to use software/play games written by LLMs

@icculus
I doubt that the code the LLM threw up is as maintainable as yours.