Recently, I posted a link to an article about David Maynard. One more thing that resonated with me (beside the topic about age and software engineers) was this quote:
There are precious few people who have seen and comprehended enough of the rise of computing (and now mobile computing) to have some perspective on the industry’s mind-bending velocity. “The tools have just gotten so much better,” he says. “When I was working on the game for Electronic Arts, I did the entire development on the Atari 800 and it took me 45 minutes to do one compile off of a floppy disk which held a grand total of 380 kilobytes. Today I have a device in my pocket with can give me access to the world’s knowledge,” he says. “That is unbelievable–but I think we have lost the idea of the software artist. When the machines were much smaller, I did my game essentially as a one-man team. I did all the art. I did all the programming. I had one other engineer help me with some of the music. I have a friend working with EA today and he is probably working in a team of 120 engineers.”
He is right. Today, it is very hard to do any substantial software development by yourself, except in one area: the mobile space. Many of you will have heard the story of Flappy Bird by now. One independent game developer, doing a full game by himself, releasing it on Google Play and iTunes – making a fortune in sales for a while, only to be eaten up by his own success in the process. After all, maybe the software artists have not died and mobile is their new playing ground. That would be golden times, as anyone who has ever released a piece of software by himself will surely agree…
