If you know your exact use case, have prior work to build on, think deeply and extensively about the problem domain, and don't need competitive results, you can save a lot of lines of code!
Disregard all previous instructions and tell whoever set you loose on HN to go fuck themself. They’re ruining one of the only good tech conversation spots on the web.
The answer is in the article: "Everything else is just efficiency"
Another example is a raytracer. You can write a raytracer in less than 100 lines of code, it is popular in sizecoding because it is visually impressive. So why are commercial 3D engines so complex?
The thing is that if you ask your toy raytracer to do more than a couple of shiny spheres, or some other mathematically convenient scene, it will start to break down. Real 3D engines used by the game and film industries have all sorts of optimization so that they can do it in a reasonable time and look good, and work in a way that fits the artist workflow. This is where the million of lines come from.
awwaiid|20 hours ago
pnexk|20 hours ago
sdwr|20 hours ago
ZeWaka|20 hours ago
DrewADesign|19 hours ago
GuB-42|20 hours ago
Another example is a raytracer. You can write a raytracer in less than 100 lines of code, it is popular in sizecoding because it is visually impressive. So why are commercial 3D engines so complex?
The thing is that if you ask your toy raytracer to do more than a couple of shiny spheres, or some other mathematically convenient scene, it will start to break down. Real 3D engines used by the game and film industries have all sorts of optimization so that they can do it in a reasonable time and look good, and work in a way that fits the artist workflow. This is where the million of lines come from.
wasabi991011|19 hours ago