When I was young there were a few luminaries in the software world who talked about how there is a steady if small flow of ideas from video game design into conventional software.

But I haven't heard anyone talk like that in quite sometime (unless it's me parroting them). Which is quite unfortunate.

I think for example if someone from the old guard of Blizzard were to write a book or at least a novella that described how the plugin system for World of Warcraft functioned, particularly during the first ten years, where it broke, how they hardened it over time, and how the process worked of backporting features from plugins into the core library...

I think that would be a substantial net benefit to the greater software community.

Far too many ecosystems make ham-fisted, half-assed, hair-brained plugin systems. And the vast majority can be consistently described by at least two of the three.

I came to learn that even though in process plugins are easier to implement, and less resource demanding, anyone serious about host stability and security can only allow for plugins based on OS IPC.

And in general, it will take less hardware resources that the usual Electron stuff.

I’ve been of the opinion that every hard problem in CS shows up somewhere in gamedev. It’s a great space for inspo.

Kernel design is (to me) another one where ideas have flowed into other software fields - there were monolithic kernels, micro kernels, and hybrid kernels, and they all need to work with third party modules (drivers)

The lessons from all fields seem to be relearnt again and again in new fields :-)