Craft
Articles on the craft of a game programmer: what people in gamedev actually do, whether a studio needs its own engine, and what's worth reading to step on fewer rakes.
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On the "random" people in IT
A reply to the claim that "without a relevant degree, don't even bother trying to get into IT": the history of the game industry as a history of lawyers, homemakers, pilots, ushers, and canned-bean exporters — from Gary Gygax and D&D to Miyamoto, Iwatani, Roberta Williams, Will Wright, Kojima, Molyneux, Miyazaki, Notch, Eric Barone, and Davey Wreden.
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Why Soviet programmers didn't make GTA
Why the country that designed the Buran, the Tu-160, and nuclear icebreakers never made a Western-level mass-market game: a game as a large engineering task, where talented developers come from, back-of-the-envelope arithmetic for the socialist bloc, Silicon Valley's global "talent vacuum cleaner", a tour of post-Soviet gamedev from Tetris to S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Atomic Heart, and War Thunder — and why a "Russian Unreal" can't be conjured up on command.
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On the joy of programming and the weightlessness of achievement
Reflections from a developer who caught the era when code was written by hand without AI assistants: why an achievement earned too easily feels weightless, how AI removes the "useful friction" and the flow state, and where a programmer's new mastery may lie — in architecture and depth of decisions rather than typing speed.
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Writing code is easier than writing a book about writing code
How the Game++ series on Habr grew into a book about pragmatic C++ and engine development: what "good" C++ is, the people who helped make the book happen, editing as a craft of its own, and a big block of answers to the frequent questions about writing and publishing it.
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Why university doesn't train programmers
Why classic university education doesn't turn students into programmers: teachers with no real-world experience, a vicious salary circle, programming as a hands-on skill like playing the guitar, studio mentorship and why programmers are made through self-teaching.
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Don't panic, you've just landed in AA+ gamedev
How not to panic when you land in a big AA+ studio with a multi-million-line codebase: navigating someone else's legacy, build systems, why seniors don't remember the code by heart, searching by user-visible strings, git history, code style and why the source is the ultimate truth.
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Just write code
A manifesto in the spirit of "just write code": while everyone else argues at the meeting about which board to move the ticket to, no Jira will ever write the bugfix. On working crap code, devalued titles, leetcode interviews, and the idea that if there are no bugs — you just didn't write any code.
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A couple of things a game programmer should know
A collection of sarcastic "laws" of game development: about std::move, undefined behavior, GameObject and ECS, cert submission and TRC, Heisenbugs, tech debt, // TODO and //TMP, managers, artists and Friday patches — the bitter truth of gamedev in one-liners.
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Game++. Building arcs
Game engine architectures and Conway's Law: the unitary (Big Ball of Mud) approach in Unity, layered in Unreal Engine, microkernel in CryEngine and O3DE, data-driven in Dagor, monolithic in X-Ray and micro-modular in Godot.
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Game++. Juggling STL algorithms
Why STL algorithms are "conversational" C++: they show What you do, not How; they remove bounds, empty-collection and "smeared perf" bugs and give you compiler-grade code. The history of EASTL, iterators and a big algorithm cheat sheet.
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In Spain, all programmers are seniors
How working in Western gamedev studios differs from post-Soviet teams: "snitching," not touching others' tasks, communication through the PM, excessive politeness, respect earned through solved tasks, context-based vs. detailed communication, and anchor phrases.
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Good books for a gamedev AI programmer
A reading list for a game-AI programmer with personal takes: AI for Game Developers, Game AI Pro, Game Engine Gems, The Pyramid of Game Design, Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI, and AI Game Programming Wisdom.
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What is C++ in gamedev?
Why gamedev is locked into C++ and how the language lives inside an engine on three levels: hardcore number-crunching, "ordinary" C++ with scripts and hot-reload, and a meta level with reflection and code generation.
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What else should a game programmer read?
A follow-up list: Joel on Software, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, the Doom 3 source code, MISRA C++, EASTL, daScript, GDC talks and blogs worth reading.
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What should a game programmer read?
A reading list of books, blogs and repos for a game programmer: from Code Complete and Effective C++ to Game Engine Architecture, Game AI Pro, GDC and awesome-lists on GitHub.
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Why you [don't] need your own game engine
Why studios and indies build their own engine instead of Unreal/Unity: is it expensive, is it hard, hands-on experience with Frostbite, Unity and Dagor — and why bespoke tech moves the industry forward.
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Are you sure you want to become a programmer in gamedev?
An honest look from the inside: what programmers actually do in gamedev, interviews, overtime, engines and their schools, studio traditions, designers — and why it's still worth it.