Dev debate: game code is 'a tangled slinky of globals' — go ahead and decompile it
banteg · x · 2026-10-05
banteg and Alexintosh spar over the quality of game code. Alexintosh argues game code is usually the worst spaghetti monolith you'll see — not built for engineering soundness, just stitching together whatever works, which he calls 'remarkably courageous.'
banteg doubles down: people protective of game code have likely never seen it — 'a tangled slinky of mutable state held together by globals.' Game devs don't write tests, they playtest, which is why bugs persist 20 years later. His conclusion: 'please, decompile it.'
The exchange lands amid ongoing debates about decompiling and remaking classic games in the AI era.
Related event: Developers Clash Over Game Code Quality and Decompilation(2 posts)→
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