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I’m currently reading Coders at Work by Peter Seibel. The book is a collection of interviews with respected and knowledgeable programmers. While the interview format can be somewhat difficult to read at times, the book is excellent. Seibel is himself an experienced programmer, and asks the sort of insightful questions no ordinary interviewer could, making for fascinating discussions. One could mine the book for weeks for interesting quotes. I’m going to try to resist that temptation, but because it relates to the topic at hand, I will permit myself to share with you one statement made by Joe Armstrong:

Being a young programmer today must be awful—you can choose 20 different programming languages, dozens of framework[s] and operating systems and you’re paralysed by choice.

I think Armstrong is mistaken; it’s anything but awful to be a young programmer today. However, it’s certainly true that the number of choices one must make in starting a project can be daunting. The choices you make at the start of a project can have far-reaching implications. Choose wisely and your endeavour might be easy and successful, but choose poorly and you’ll almost certainly regret it later.  For iPhone game developers, perhaps the most important choice that must be made early on in a project is which graphics libraries to use. (more…)