Do they define "Handmade"? I couldn't find a definition.

Yokohiii 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I assume you have absolutely no clue what it refers to.

Handmade Hero is a long running yt series by Casey Muratori. He builds a game engine from scratch, no cheats, no shortcuts, straight to the metal (from C-ish perspective). So you learn how to deal with computers to achieve things, fast and efficient, by understanding computers.

At some point Casey thought it was a failure and a waste of time. But to his surprise quite a fanbase evolved around it and it turned that it really helped people to go from zero to "hero". The handmade "movement" relates to this timeline and the aftermath of people thriving from it. My rough definition of "Handmade" dev mentality would be: Ignore the things that seem to make things "easy" (high level software) and learn the actual thing. So you learn what a framebuffer is instead of looking for a drawing api, applicable to different contexts.

That being said is that this foundation doesn't seem to be endorsed by Casey. Their mission goals seem quite shallow, if at all.

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mft_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My immediate assumption was that this was a reaction against LLM–assisted or –written software, but I couldn’t see any mention of this in the front page.

So maybe ‘handmade’ refers to artisanal, high quality, made with care, etc.

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moogly 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

https://handmade.network/manifesto

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gilgoomesh 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I read that but it doesn't define handmade. It gripes about large frameworks and rewriting in different languages but doesn't say what handmade is or how it addresses anything.

	▲	moogly 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I agree it's vague.

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verdverm 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That page seems like it's trying to define what Handmade is through a bunch of complaints and what it is not

Still no idea what they actually do, other than maybe this is just some random site about building a community to "make better software".

Software isn't bad because engineers don't care. It's bad because eventually people need to eat food, so they need to get paid, which means you have to build something people will pay for, this involves tradeoffs and deadlines, so we take shortcuts and software is imperfect.

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elktown 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Software isn't bad because engineers don't care.

Caring is certainly a wide spectrum. I see the Handmade stuff being proudly on far end of it.

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verdverm 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't disagree, the field has become lucrative enough it has attracted people who are interested in the money and not the craft

I'd use unrealistic to describe Handmade, proud is also accurate and works too

	▲	elktown 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> the field has become lucrative enough it has attracted people who are interested in the money and not the craft Yup, exactly. > I'd use unrealistic to describe Handmade, proud is also accurate and works too In certain settings definitely. But even in those corporate settings where it's unrealistic I'd rather work with one than not. If not applied dogmatically, that corner of the corp has a good chance of being an oasis. But a fleeting one perhaps.