The Player controller from the game Celeste is a single 5600 line file that includes things like systems only used in the tutorial. I honestly don't think it's as bad as some of the criticism it got when the code was released makes it seem, but it certainly could be better looking code.
But ultimately, Maddy Thorson isn't selling a block of code. They're selling a game and it has extremely satisfying control of the character. And that's all that really matters for a player controller.
Maybe better organization and design patterns could have made it faster to develop? But I don't believe it would.
But also the type of product does matter for this. Celeste had 2 programmers so a lot of the things necessary for a team of 100 devs would just be harmful. If you're making a library/framework to be used and modded by others, architecture matters a lot more. If you're designing an enterprise application that you know will need business logic customizations for 25 business customers it matters more. It's all about knowing the scope of your project. But also until you start getting that many customers, maybe the unsustainable method is what will allow you to reach those first few sales more quickly to be able to stay in business long enough to be bit by the technical debt.
I remember sharing that Player.cs code from Celeste in the gamedev subreddit, and getting all kinds of weird novice comments about how the code doesn't adhere to 'OOP Principles' or 'there isn't any unit tests' or 'you should split it into multiple files with 100 lines each' or 'you should use an ECS to make a real game'.
Laster on Noel Berry did give a response explaining the various design choices behind their code:
But ultimately, Maddy Thorson isn't selling a block of code. They're selling a game and it has extremely satisfying control of the character. And that's all that really matters for a player controller.
Maybe better organization and design patterns could have made it faster to develop? But I don't believe it would.
But also the type of product does matter for this. Celeste had 2 programmers so a lot of the things necessary for a team of 100 devs would just be harmful. If you're making a library/framework to be used and modded by others, architecture matters a lot more. If you're designing an enterprise application that you know will need business logic customizations for 25 business customers it matters more. It's all about knowing the scope of your project. But also until you start getting that many customers, maybe the unsustainable method is what will allow you to reach those first few sales more quickly to be able to stay in business long enough to be bit by the technical debt.