Theory vs practice

In theory I was supposed to spend two or three weeks on building a pong clone. Everybody knows pong, it’s such a simple game, surely two weeks would suffice. And indeed they did. The classic version was up and running without too much pain in just a few days.

However, since I felt no challenge I really wanted to bring my own spin on things and try to add another layer on top of the classic pong - I called it Pong WARS, and this game mode would bring powerups and projectiles and a more dynamic experience.

And as I began things seemed to advance rather smoothly. The only problem was that while working on it I took a small detour. So instead of Idea -> Execution -> Pong Classic -> Pong WARS I went something like this: Idea -> Execution -> Pong Classic -> Testing -> Unit testing -> HTML + CSS -> Hugo -> Build this website -> Start two big courses on game programming -> Participate in a game jam -> Finish Pong WARS.

None of those are things that I regret and all will end up helping me through my journey. However, instead of taking me three weeks, it took five months… Hopefully from now on I will just be able to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).