I was once accused of over-engineering a web banner. At the time, I was rather offended. Then, last week, I was looking at some truly inspiring work another developer did, and I caught myself thinking that he was over-engineering.

I think I was wrong.

If you create systems that make your day to day tasks easier or faster, surely that’s time well spent? If you write a piece of code that’s overly complex for the sake of being reusable, you haven’t really wasted your time, you just invested a lot of time now, in order to save time later.

The bottom line is this: I believe that over-engineering is perfectly fine if it’s justifiable. How you choose to justify it, is up to you.

I often find that I get into a nice tempo while playing a game, keyboard-based skill games especially. So when I crash/die/complete the level, it’s frustrating to have to take my hand off the keyboard, grab the mouse, click the button, and then start playing again. It breaks the flow. So here is a short tip for game developers and designers everywhere: If your game is controlled via the keyboard, make sure that your user can press a key for the “next level” or “retry” button – don’t force them to use the mouse. (more…)

It took much longer than planned, but my new website is finally up.

While I am a firm believer in not fixing what isn’t broken, it was time for a change. My old site, while still slick and good-looking (in my opinion, of course), just had to be replaced. (more…)