Shigeru Miyamoto has probably never compiled a line of code in his life and is still a better coder than most of you
11 points by cryptix
11 points by cryptix
Ironically, I think this article is partly LLM-written and is worse off for it? Like I could feel my eyes glazing over as I went from one bloated paragraph, to the next, to the next... Also frankly I don't get the core point:
The Level 1 coder arguing that "real engineers write hand-crafted assembly" right now is the 1989 Sega engineer arguing that "real handhelds have color screens." In both cases, they're not wrong about the craft. But they're probably wrong about what the craft is for.
You could—somewhat inaccurately, but close conceptually—distill this to "the person arguing the newer thing is bad is the same as the person who argued the newer thing is good". What?? Modern LLMs are still really new! This is absolutely not the "withered technology" in the sense that Yokoi was talking about.
There are so many other weird bits in here too. The other one that really stood out to me is:
Miyamoto walked into Nintendo in 1977 with a pencil and a guitar. That is the origin story that gets told, and it gets told because the industry knows what to do with it. Pencil-and-guitar is the artist-auteur container. [...] Yokoi walked into Nintendo in 1965 as a maintenance technician. That is also the origin story that gets told, and the industry's filing cabinet for it is much smaller and much worse.
I don't think this is a case of origin stories quite as much as that Miyamoto directed multiple of the most influential console games...ever? and in much more recent memory than Yokoi's accomplishments. Being alive also helps a lot!
Yokoi walked into Nintendo in 1965 as a maintenance technician. That is also the origin story that gets told, and the industry's filing cabinet for it is much smaller and much worse.
This might also be more convincing if Good Will Hunting wasn't such a massive cultural touchstone for an entire generation...
I read it and found it pretty engaging. The part about Yokoi is probably more important than Miyamoto precisely because he isn't as known.
can’t say that line drawn between Yokoi’s “withered technology” and LLMs seems convincing to me…
certainly i can see how under certain circumstances, replacing human written code (so-called Level 1) with LLM written code might free up the former L1 coder to focus on L2 or L3… but what if their L2 or L3 decisions are nonsensical?
Yokoi and Miyamoto had human beings in their development loops. if they suggested a direction that didn’t make sense, someone more grounded in the L1-L2 technicals was able to push back, and they probably would have listened! i’m not convinced a putative Yokoi with an army of LLM agents would have stuck with the black and white screen…
The idea of "withered technology" is about lateral thinking. The line drawn is with LLMs is incredibly convincing because if you think about it, LLMs don't have a point of view. And if they do have a point of view it's the consensus point of view. They work better when you inject your point of view, especially when it's out there like Yokoi's and Miyamoto's. Outlook is what Level 3 really means here.
I wouldn't mind reading annoying Claude prose if it made sense, but ...
Can we just see the prompts, man? The author -> decompression scheme. drip style. -> reader pipeline does not spark joy
I worked at Nintendo for a brief period. It's a company where both a pencil-and-guitar and lucky janitor were able to thrive.
I've not been there for almost twenty years; but, from what I hear, I strongly suspect it's still that company. IMHO that's the real story.
I think the prompts would've been a better read than the article.
Don't get me wrong; the article was OK, and I certainly appreciated the angle.
But the "Claude"-ness of the voice detracted from it, and I bet the prompts were interesting.
*I don't know if it was actually claude or some other LLM.
Why do people keep reaching for LLMs to make their points for them? I stopped reading because of it.
I like the idea, but it's kind of a meandering post.
And the world is rife with people that would call themselves "level 3" simply because they can make Claude spit out a bunch of code.
just like the people who figured out grayscale-plus-battery ate Sega's lunch in 1989.
As SEGA person that has been wondering why it failed, failed, failed again despite having "better" hardware and games. That is an enlightening article.
I like how the article is tricky, and a journey by itself, with a roundabout to then lead to the concluding analysis, and thesis.
I hope to meet more yokois.