Hacking the Grepson

Matt and Mike are out this week traveling. Just wanted to say hello, anyway.

Mike brings an anecdote from his life that caused him to spiral a bit about the future of art, creation, ownership, and society, leaving him peering over the precipice of some dystopian future. Matt talks him off the proverbial ledge.

A continuation of discussion about the laws of nature, vis a vis software development, are bandied about by Matt and Mike in this episode. Some of them include Linus's Law, the Pareto Principle, and even the Ninety-Nine Rule.

* Famous Laws of Software Development

There are some truisms in the world of software development that have been codified into laws, adages, and principles. Matt and Mike discuss some of them in this episode, including ones named after people like Murphy, Hofstadter, and Conway.

Matt and Mike discuss the issues that arise when you try to be everything to everybody for every time, thanks to an insightful blog post about the ever-increasing size of programming language dependencies.

* The Three Pillars of JavaScript Bloat

Anthropic created a new Claude model called Mythos, and it's apparently super-duper good at detecting software vulnerabilities. It's so good, in fact, that it can't be released publicly without basically giving the Internet as we know it a death warrant. Matt fills us in and Mike responds with a mixture of awe and fascination.

Where outside do you want to go today?

Matt has created a 2D overhead sandbox project in Godot with the help of Claude Code. Mike looks at it and thinks it is pretty neat. Then both Matt and Mike talk about it. Gamedev continues apace!

Last time on the podcast we talked about a game in development called Rorasuketo. This time we talk about it again, but with one small change: the creator is with us! Matt and Mike and Cam chat about game development in RPGMaker, roller derby, and creative constraints, among other things.

* Rorasuketo Soundtrack

* Rorasuketo Dev Blog

* Rorasuketo on Steam

Roller derby, JRPGs, blogging, existential panic...Matt and Mike cover it all by introducing a long-running game project by a fellow developer nearly done with their own game, Rorasuketo.

* Rorasuketo

* Rorasuketo Dev Blog

* Rorasuketo on Steam

In order to expand their gamedev sensibilities a bit more, Matt and Mike talk about their decision to give Godot a try in helping them create a game.

* Godot

It's been a while since we talked about game development and, more specifically, Let's Make a Game!, our project to actually make a video game together. Holidays and Advent of Code happened, which means momentum was lost and interest waned a bit. Matt and Mike talk about games they've been playing, their effects on our game development, and how to get the ball rolling again.

Happy New Year, as it is officially 2026, according to when this was recorded. Matt is out for this episode, so Mike shares some silly HtG songs he's made with source material from the first 100 episodes.

Matt and Mike wrap up the 2025 edition of Advent of Code by going through days 7 through 12.

* https://adventofcode.com/2025

Matt and Mike take a look at Advent of Code 2025, Day 7 live on the episode! We try to make heads or tails of it in half an hour. Will we solve it? Clickbait description demands you listen and find out.

* https://adventofcode.com

It's December, which means it's Advent of Code time! Taking a break from our "Let's Make a Game!" project to instead help elves figure out programming problems is what this episode is all about. Matt and Mike go over the first 6 days of logic conundrums.

* https://adventofcode.com

More words and thoughts and ideas and progress on our combined efforts at figured out both Defold and Love2D to make a game. Matt talks about playing around with his slingshot prototype and Mike talks about rejiggering his entire Astronaut tutorial so he can load a different level.

Mike shares some updates on the game-making progress achieved recently (still no finished game to share with each other yet, but working on it!).

Matt and Mike continue their Let's Make a Game experiment, spending time going over the progress made so far in their Love2D and Defold prototypes. Matt also shows how Claude works on the command line and Mike is entranced.