I always hear about how Minecraft is not coded very well, but no one ever really explains why that is. What did he do poorly from a coding perspective? And did poor coding have an impact on the performance of the game that the average person would notice? I’ve never really played the game before, maybe only about 20 minutes in my life, but since it’s in java I have an interest in the development.
Mostly jealous programmers trying to figure out why they, with their perfectly designed cathedrals of worship to the alter of OOP, have not themselves made $2.5bn. When of course what it looks like under the hood is neither here nor there, it’s the end result that’s the important bit.
Cas 
Isn’t everything “coded badly”? OpenGL is bad, LibGDX is bad, LWGL is bad, jME is bad, Swing is bad, J2EE is bad, Java is bad…
Given a sufficiently large code base, you will be able to find a ridiculously large number of things that are either appallingly bad by any reasonable standard or are perfectly good but still unacceptable to a large number of people for various reasons.
From a strictly coding perspective, I can’t really think of anything. The game uses about as much memory as I’d expect, and runs about as well as I would imagine it would considering it’s written on an OpenGL 1.X version. I think it’s a technical feat if anything.
I think that end-users don’t understand why Minecraft requires so much memory and is demanding on graphics hardware, and so say it was “coded badly.”
I agree with princec. I also think that because minecraft was developed by such a small group, I’m pretty sure it’s actually written better than most large projects because something I’ve seen many times is the “too many cooks” effect… things become a giant ball of string pretty quickly when a project changes hands a lot …(regardless of how many software architects you throw at the project)
Overall… Minecraft is still great imo, I still play it with my daughters. Its a fun game which I still enjoy playing over many AAA titles. I still remember when n0tch started posting WIP pictures of it here, I remember all the bricks were white and thinking to myself “what the hell am I looking at???” haha
FabulousFellini:
Did the java-hate-machine, at least follow through with their all-time classic “…because java is slow” comment ?
I think it’s much better now.
I used to think it was bad because I barely got 60 fps on a very good computer. Though, the game has had a lot of rendering improvements over the years. Shit code or not, it runs well now!
I dont think they said because “java is slow”. I think most just say that its not coded very well but give no explanation as to why. Keep in mind these are just internet randoms that I dont trust and probably just trolls, which is why I brought the question here, and all your responses are pretty much what I was expecting. Basically, its not bad, people are jealous, and it’s a very large program so there are going to be some parts that are “badly coded”. I’m gonna have to go back and look at the WIP thread for it!
Yeah, I also forget that the game isn’t that new, and lots of this talk might be coming from straight after it was released.
You’re missing one, jgo :persecutioncomplex:
EDIT: I should add a bit. Think what you want about “modern art”, but one of the fundamental analogies for automatic art is that if you spend too much time staring at a blank canvas planning where everything’s supposed to go, you’ll never make a single stroke. Although, to me automatic art looks like an arbitrary mess, it looks great on a wall. So can computer code! It still serves a function!
The code was pretty hacky for a long time. Markus just bashed it together to make it work and then kept on kludging bits onto it. It all worked out nicely in the end for him though, no?
Cas
Thats, like, proper coding
He did a lot of 48-hour style competitions, which probably contributed to his bashing ability. I guess that’s the best way to get people out of the OOP-Shrine mindset.
I wouldn’t blame him, I’d sell my own mother for $2bn.
Classic 
I cant wait to sell my game for 2 billion dollars. If that ever happens I will give everyone who commented on this thread $50,000. Fingers crossed lol.
In the end? No… not really, you know that D:
You are probably more happy than he is and you have a family.
Success is not measured in money~
Which is not me bashing him, I love him.
Yeah, I think I am waaaay more happy than Markus, probably
Cas
Im commenting on this thread for two reasons:
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To give my opinion: Markus had a great idea and some talent with programming. Not everyone who is a programming god has great ideas and not everyone who has a good idea is good at programming. It’s a trade off and he had just enough of both sides.
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To potentially get $50,000 from FabulousFellini
Should have asked for medals :persecutioncomplex:
All I have to do is make the next bigger than life game, then we’re all set. But I do have confidence that if anyone ever saw my code, they would definitely say it was bad, so at least there’s that 8)