Can you build successfully without knowing LSL?

Wow that's ancient stuff. Somewhere in the 1990's the 16 bit hardware got cheap enough, and what I found was that compiled C with modest optimisation would generally compile even smaller than a lot of handcoded assembly language, once code got around the 32k ~ 64k mark.

Which only proves that people either get inefficient, or that the optimiser can sometimes rigorously check *everything* including some stuff that maybe someone writing in machine code would miss. "Forest for the trees" stuff.

By the late 90's most of the stuff I worked on was C or C++ compiler only. Though you could still poke at things if you felt like it, or drop to machine code for a stretch if you wanted to force how something went down. Generally that was only to dodge bugs though; most of the errata notes for even the 'good' compilers were over an inch thick of horror story.

I haven't touched code professionally, even as a consultant since about 2004, and it's been great ever since. Small business has been a wonderful refuge. As a profession it's not bad, but engineers are abused professionally in ways that just don't happen in many other fields. I think anyone setting out to become a doctor/lawyer/engineer/finance guy got really burned in the post WWII era. HMO's, lawyer factory firms, cheap coders that don't 'get' electronics, and casino style finance rules just trashed the fundamentals.

Yeh, once you start writing a LOT of assembly you end up having to use copypasta programming, and the compiler's WAY better at that than you are. Having all those kilobytes to run around in really saps the soul of a true code warrior.

i found out it was me lol

i had my prims spaced too far apart

Most of what you guys are talking about makes me go, "Wut?" But this part I understand, and I think I agree with you.

All of the really successful engineers I can think of had one, maybe two brilliant ideas and then quit engineering and became entrepreneurs. Like Bill Gates, for example.

I'd say it depends how the question is meant. For making and selling things, not really - there are a lot of things you can make and sell with only a basic scripting knowledge, if that. And for some things, luckily for us dummies, there are scripters around who are generous with help or a nudge in the right direction.

But for conceptual ideas? Yes, without doubt. There are so many ideas I have, that I have no clue how to make or even if they can be made. And some that I think probably can be made, but would require someone else to script, and frankly, I can't afford the rates, since the things I have in mind would not be for profit.

What I like best is having things for everyone to enjoy and escape reality a while, that do not cost them a cent to enjoy. To me that is what SL ideally is.