Move Fast and Abandon Things

John Calhoun, a former indie Mac game developer and Apple employee, reflects on his early game development process from the late 1980s and early 1990s. He recently recovered and shared disk images of his old shareware games and unfinished projects on GitHub. Out of 27 game ideas he prototyped in an 18-month period, only 5 were released. Calhoun emphasizes the importance of quickly prototyping ideas to determine their potential, and the value of revisiting or reusing code from shelved projects. He describes his rapid, iterative programming style, which he continued to use at Apple, contrasting it with more methodical approaches of his colleagues.