Exactly! This is what we do, and that's the trend that game development has been following for 10 years. If many tasks are dependent on a coder it indicates your engine is more of a programmer's SDK rather than a modern game developer's toolbox.
We build the kind of stuff shown in these experiments every day - this is what game engines have become, so the examples in the video should not be surprising or "impossible/impractical" at all!
Where is my
time traveling debugger then? Just like the guy moves forward and backward, where's a tool for that? Because that idea didn't exist until a few years ago, whether in games or elsewhere and has since been patented into oblivion.
Of course purpose-specific tools have been built since day 1. Presentation is more about further reaching ideas, about concepts that really are not available today.
And considering I do have all the latest tools, I don't see anything that has moved even an inch beyond the Turbo Pascal era of tooling. But apparently, VS 2011 will be gray instead of purple?
Obviously, I can built something myself, from scratch, specifically tailored to specific problem being solved. There is definitely an incredibly advanced tree editor. But it was and always will be nothing but a tree editor. Very useful, proven in day-to-day, but still just a tree editor.
Nobody is denying that increased hardware power made dynamic programming more accessible or that specific domains have state-of-the-art tools. Ironically, programming has always been about dynamic and interpreted languages, there was just a brief phase where compiled languages offer sufficient performance edge to dominate.
Experiments like these are more about thought process that long transcends the notion of tool itself. Just like there is a universal compiler instead of one being forced to build one specifically for each individual project, or one focused on tiny subsections of problems.
Whether they're useful or not will more depend on individual project. True creativity is in very short demand these days.
The circuit editor is the most impressive thing.[/quote]
Tons of other examples, including further reasoning behind experiments.
Based on those, the guy started thinking about these concepts while working for Apple, where he realized designers were constrained by tools and still depended on programmers. I'd doubt that Apple of all things has problems keeping up with latest and greatest when it comes to design, prototyping or production. Thought it doesn't necessarily mean those experiences transfer to every other domain.