When you reinvent the wheel, you learn not only how to make wheels, but also get a deeper understanding of why we have wheels

i like how prime thinks regardless if its big or small or fail or succeed learning is never time wasted

i was part of a gamedev startup as one of their core programmers until we failed after a few years. i built out so much tech and learned so much, that i turned it into a senior position with ease afterwards

Writing my own engine opened countless doors for me. If you learn the fundamentals you’ll inevitably become the person that can do everything.

I was once ridiculed for never finishing the game I worked on, completely ignoring the fact it took me from being a customer support drone to a highly sought-after engineer. I just smiled and laughed. Felt good.

10:53 as a senior engineer, the only way to impress us is to have the ability to solve new problems. Memorizing one framework is great, but can you pivot that knowledge into something brand new, or solve a novel problem? That’s what companies need, not the chatgpt solutions

One of the hardest classes I took was a speech anatomy class. The instructor never told us the specific actions or functions of muscles but instead had us study the anatomy diagrams and describe what’s connected where and what a contraction would do. I could have easily found some flash cards or whatever but that intense discovery-based way of learning means that I will probably never forget any of it or that I can use reasoning to figure out anything I might forget. Big fan of learning the hard way when I have the enthusiasm for it.

I can support what you’re saying in this video, but with the emphasis that you need to accept learning as a valuable outcome. Before I got a job as a game developer, I spent a year building my own engine. It skyrocketed not only my c++ ability, but also my understanding of low level graphics apis and different engine architectures, animation systems, etc. By the end of that year, I got a job at one of the most prestigious studios in the industry. A year after that, I was promoted to senior. Eventually, I looked for jobs elsewhere. They offered me a $50k raise trying to get me to stay. If you have a low level understanding of how things work in your field and the ability/drive to tackle those problems, you are incredibly valuable. However, I never finished that engine, and I ended up dealing with a difficult bout of depression. I’d configured my expectations incorrectly. Just a word of caution, set your expectations correctly.

"Wasting time" is part of the learning process. Foundation is incredibly important.

10:40 That sounds exactly like my last job interview. I had built a large-scale game and learned so much beyond my formal degree level. Though I never "finished" it, I found a company that was willing to interview me on the merits of that game. I'm still with the company 12 years later.

I am a professional game developer who chose to learn programming the hard way. I always believed that I learn more by building things myself. If I had chosen to start with a game engine, I would be great at X engine but I'd much rather have skills that enable to work in any engine I want. It took me nearly 10 years to land my first job in the industry and some people might argue that I could have moved faster but I still believe I made the best choice for my career. My coworkers were very surprised to learn that I was a self-taught programmer because I don't approach problems from a high level mindset. Many of the challenges I face at work, I'm able to overcome by working from first principles. My bosses took notice when they could throw random work at me and I would make it happen, regardless of the specific knowledge domain. Everything @ThePrimeTime says about the rewards for deep learning in this video is correct.

In the university I went to, we started with C with the first lecture being selection statements, functions, and loops, and the second memory management… In the first semester we had to build a 16bit microprocessors by hand on a breadboard, too. Later on, we had to write our own drivers, our own virtual microprocessor, our own neural network, and write our own compile, etc. We were never allowed to use anything that we didn’t write ourselves. We even had to make our own game engine when we made a game. It was hell, most often than not, but you learned a lot.

Love that you looked at this :-) Also lovely that I'm watching this just after coming off of anesthesia from an echocardiogram.

I think that one thing that is missed is that you get incredibly good at understanding when the tools you use just break, and you can adequately fix that in your own way. The truth is that all those tools are not foolproof, there will always be assumptions that break and bugs. I have found myself repairing library code or entirely rewriting parts of libraries because they just don't work for our use case. (I am currently working with Python, but have experience in Frontend, and low level code,). Doing it from the ground up forces you to think about things that a normal dev will not ever think about unless he is very experienced in the tool he is using. You get a general kind of knowledge that is very hard to get otherwise.

building low level stuff manually has taught me more than playing lego with libraries and engines has. Most of the time the stuff i make at home never gets finished because it was never the point, but sometimes a project I finish IS the point. A mix of the two - build-it-yourself and finish something with normal tools - is what worked for me

I will say one of the proudest program projects that I have completed was a hobby project that I created in Assembly. It was just a simple text editor and I have built far more complex applications since using other languages, but the month or so that I spent making the DOS text editor in Assembly allowed me to learn the CPU and I/O buses on a 386.

It's so hard to explain to people, why they have to learn things the hard way. Building basic things the hard way is particularly useful if you want to build a career out of it. You gain expertise which you wouldn't get following tutorials. Making mistakes is good for knowledge. Having the ability to resolve issues is what makes you a productive and fast developer. It sets you apart from others. Skills that you gain debugging issues translate to so many advantages in many other fields and technology. You become the guy who gets stuff done. It's worth it.

I watched their video a few months ago but I am grateful for your input. Thank you for kubernetes part at the beginning. Made me feel better about not having completed projects on my resume. My goal when doing projects is to learn a specific framework/concept/tool and completing them is a nice bonus. Eventually I will finish them but I prioritize learning first.

I did learn more on projects that I not finished than project that I have finish! Like Steve Jobs said: "You can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future!!"... So each project or something new that you seek to understand is a dot that will connect in the future!

This is one reason that I am so glad I started working in IT in the early days. I had no choice but to use C, Pascal, ASM and later C++ to do coding, with no frameworks available. It thought me so much about how the computer hardware, firmware and the OS worked together. And I also had to dig deep into how low level protocols and device drivers worked.

This reminds me of this concept in psychology called "over-learning": You're more likely to be proficient at a skill if you learn something relevant to it but a few skill levels higher. For example, it's been demonstrated that if the last math class you took was Algebra 2, you're not as likely to remember it throughout your life due to fade out. But you're more likely to remember Algebra 2 concepts if you left off with an advanced math course since the former is a required foundation for understanding the latter. So implementing things at a lower level may be a well-spent form of over-learning.

This is amazing. I'm currently in the situation where I want to learn the fundamentals, but at times have been dissuaded thinking that it's going to get me nowhere. This commentary and video has ultimately reignited that! Thank you!

"Wow you built a complete Twitter clone! How did you implement authentication and authorization?" Well uh akshually, I just paid $99 for Clerk. "Alriight, how did you configure the database to scale for the traffic?" Wellllllll, I just paid Planetscale $99 because nobody needs to manage databases themselves nowadays. "Let's move to more frontend questions. This droodown modal looks pretty cool. How did you make it?" I used these 50 react libraries and combined them in this helper hook. "Sir, you're out of the startup. Good luck with your next interview." High key dogging on Theo tbh

I hire game developers in the games industry. This guys advice is pretty good - but I'd say it's not a hard and fast rule. If you're ONLY goal is to release a game (and particularly if this is your first game) - don't start by writing an engine - you will be disappointed.If you go in knowing the additional risk - then yeah, go for it. But the problem with writing an engine before having written a game is that you don't necessarily know what a game engine requires. Here's the thing though - we do need people that re-invent the wheel to simply learn. If you want a high probability of getting a job in the games industry, having those skills is pretty beneficial. The harder it is to acquire the skills you have, the less competition you will face.

definitely true. i spent like a month or so learning OpenGL just because i wanted to understand how the heck 3d images are actually rendered. all i ended up building was a bunch of cubes that spin around with a moveable camera. i did have an end goal of a 3d simulation thing. i didnt quite reach that goal. but, i finally learned what the computer is actually doing under the hood when rendering objects on the screen. none of it was directly applicable to my day to day job. but going through the process helped me understand programming on another level which definitely helped me be more productive at my real job. things at my job seemed a lot simpler after. thinking about bits and bytes of memory on a lower level translates to all programming is some way shape or form. now im learning elixir. why? because ive never done functional programming and i want to understand it.

Love your videos, Prime. Just got a new software job after about 6 weeks of very intense study and learning, which was powered in great part by your infectious love of programming. Thank you. Also, I’m now neovim btw (and loving it!)

I agree, its all about your personal goals. If your goal is to get a product out, then absolutely learning the latest techniques, utilizing the applicable algorithms, understanding the libraries relevant to your project all makes sense and is of course the sensible thing to do. But if your goal is, for example, to learn HOW a game engine, or a renderer, works, then it shouldnt matter to anyone what you're doing because your GOAL here has no deadline, no dependencies, all you care about is learning about that thing.

When I was 16, I developed my own game engine fully on OpenGL. About half a year later, I did an interview for a game company, they wanted me to build something with Unity. I didn't know heck shit about unity, and just found a way to input code into unity cause I didn't have time to learn all the features. I completed the task with mostly code based on mathematical concepts. The CEO of the company was so impressed that he invited me to meet him, only for him to discover I was only 16 years old. He told me I'm overqualified, and that at my age I'm better than almost all of the contestants. So yeah, doing things the hard way definitely helps.

This is the story of my life. Build something from scratch then become over qualified for every job interview. Repeat every 3-5 years and your resume will be stellar. Why? Because you become the person who can make anything.

can agree. starting with C, espec. in the harvard cs50 course, is THE BEST could happen to me. I knew some php / html & css before, but learning all the basics of a detailed language with examples is the best foundation you can have.

Ugh this is great, 1000% agree with this man, I and currently working as a DevOps engineer, making my way into software looking back ever since I started learning things that we were "out side of my wheel house" things have became easier from some view points.

100% agree - last contract I got was because I blogged down speeding up Linux AMD kernel driver. Job was only using threejs - I did not know threejs AT ALL, and made many useful things to them, including some stuff they just never properly solved before / fast enough.

I love reinventing the wheel. I remember when I was working for a large corp and our team was being replaced. The new guys were like "why the hell did you build all those widgets instead of using libraries ?" They spent literal months replacing all of it by "industry standards" despite my warnings. Performance went to shit, but most of all when QA came back at them they had to fork every single library they used to either fix obscure iOS Safari bugs they hadn't spotted or add the functionnality required for the use cases we had to deal with. It was a long game but the "I told you so" was sweet given their takeover had been so toxic. Spend enough time reinventing the wheel and you will be faster at coding something new than at integrating a library reading through their shitty docs and breaking changes. You will learn how things work and it will also make you much better at picking libraries.

One could say I'm doing things the hard way by learning C with the goal of making simple 2d games, but I found with unity and godot that I had no idea what the engine was doing, leaving me confused as to what I needed to do to make a functional game. So I decided to learn how to make a game from the ground up so I could have a sort of game design foundation going forward. and besides knowing C is a bit more useful than knowing GDScript. That's my reasoning at least

20:27 I damn near fell out my chair when he said confidence. I need to have a deep understanding of what I am discussing/working on else I feel vulnerable. You are right Sir!

Those high level abstractions are great, but you have nothing to lose by getting to know how they work, and it makes the difference when you need something outside the mainstream. See JWT for example, everyone uses it everyday, but a few people knows how it's implemented and how to use it properly outside of the existing frameworks and libraries.

Had seen this one before and it's a great take. You obviously don't reinvent the wheel everyday, but it's good to "invent" it once, even if at a very basic level, so you can get the feel on how it rolls and why it rolls better than a square. If you ever rawdogged graphics into a memory buffer you'll be at ease whether you're doing it in canvas or CoreGraphics or GDI+ or whatever where the same fundamental CONCEPT applies. Rawdogging UIKit isn't so daunting if you're used to do it in WinForm too. And if for some reason you have to do it in the DOM.... what's new? Sintax/properties/etc change, CONCEPT stays the same.

I once built a 4-bit calculator out of pure mechanical relays. My CS friend wasn’t fond of “re-inventing the wheel”. But I learned so much about circuit design, power distribution and propagation, optimization, converters, etc. That wouldn’t have been possible if I had only fiddled with simple logic gate simulators. Besides, it was so much fun!

Am I really the only person that looks at programming and my brain instantly goes to "I WANT TO LEARN ALL THIS CRAZY $#!T?"

Thank you for this. Your mindset is very refreshing! I been learning python on udemy (100 days of code) and so far I'm really enjoying it but getting discouraged when I think about how low the job prospects are for entry level no degree/experience python dev. Doesn't help that my parents get really upset that I'm "wasting my time" learning programming so I have to limit my practice time 😭

Logic and computation theory, multivibrators/memory cells, Assembly and setting things up, then C is the way my school took, and it secured the basics, discipline, and respect for bloat, and being naturally in charge/opposed to the "void" of "thingshappening".

Just a little bit of vector math and python, plus building a project with them in 3D got me sponsored to move to the UK and work for a high ranking company in the animation industry. I was clueless about so many of the pipeline stuff initially. But found it truely fascinating how they had solved so many of the boring problems with automation. To this day I find 3D animation pipeline management one of the most interesting topics. Python might not be the greatest language, but man, that combined with math that can build systems to solve daily problems is where money is at for me and some others alike. Great video as always 🙏🏽

Watched this when it came out, every point could have been spoken from my own mouth. Often someone will ask a question and can be given the exact answer but they just aren't ready for it because they don't have the fundamentals to interpret or implement it (have been on both sides of that). What's worse is that in most cases development only gets harder from there and it is in building that foundation that will enable them to overcome the next question that will inevitably arise.

When I was learning code, pre computer science degree, I tried to make 2D isometric engine using windows GDC (no not DDraw lol). It was insane….ly slow but I learned a lot. Then I created language that compiled into my own byte code. It took 15 seconds to compile 3 lines! All worth it cuz when I finally decided to get a degree it was a breeze and now I can pick up any programming language in a couple minutes.

as someone who's just been home taking care of family and doing a bunch of failed side projects for 2 years. i totally agree that the amount of learning and growth happening is insane, even though i've not had a real job for the past 2 years, i still feel like im atleast way better of a developer now than i was before, with a ton of breadth in my skillset. purely because i have made things the hard way. ( i even attempted to make a game in asm which i gave up on after a few weeks ) or like creating a full stack application with just rust and htmx. sure i might not be the best at react or go, but i do have a ton of random ( and sometimes useful ) knowledge of how things work

thank you for existing man. it really feels good to get perspectives from you.

I've dabbled in loads of frameworks, libraries, game engines, etc. and very few ended up with me having a finished project. Not because I was unable to, but because in my head, I was already done. I only needed a project, an excuse to use whatever I was interested in at the time. The goal was never to finish the projects. Finished projects are for work. Projects at home are for playing around. Some of them I do finish, but then the scope is usually small enough that it's something I'll finish just by working a little bit at a time.

This video is validating my thoughts on letting JS go for a while and getting to know PHP and Wordpress. All I want to do is provide small businesses with an online presence and the opportunity to grow their business and help their costumers. Learning data structures, js, react, some backend language wasn’t the way to do it, because no business is going to have enough money to pay for a fully custom website, and more importantly, they don’t need that. That’s not to say I didn’t have fun learning, though, and since I have learned semantic HTML, best HTML practices and CSS makes WordPress look like a toy box, and I’m extremely happy about that because everything I’ve been learning the past year can be applied to this. Great video!

This is so true, i am only working 1 1/2 year full time, but in my my study time i worked as a student worker and i challenged myself in so many different topics. Writing WebServices, Frontends, GameEngine ... and also tried different Architecture Styles, Deployment Methods, Infrastructure Styles. I am maybe not the best in my team knowing all Frameworks we use, but i can definitely say i am the best understanding technical concepts and the actual code. They had a problem with a legacy software running on Tomcat (JVM), where the Sessions Objects were not released, so the Server crashed every 2-4 Weeks. This issue was already one year old, guess who figured it out. This was not even a hard bug to understand, you just had to look on the heap dump. Learn the stuff the hard way, it only benefits you!

I needed to hear this. I've always been attracted to these more low level concepts. And I think I got into the habits of only training for my job. But for years I have always wanted to created my own database or key value store. And I think I'm going to attempt this.

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🎮 *Learning Programming the Hard Way* - Embracing challenges in programming. - Importance of choosing between using existing tools or building from scratch. - The misconception about the sole goal of completing a project. 02:05 💡 *Goals Beyond Completion* - Distinguishing between creating a game for release versus learning the underlying mechanisms. - Understanding the purpose of a project and aligning goals accordingly. - Valuing learning over solely achieving a completed project. 05:13 🚀 *Benefits of the Hard Way* - Advantages of tackling challenges in programming for personal growth and career advancement. - Exploring the significance of difficulty in software development. - The rewarding aspects of facing complex tasks and their long-term benefits. 08:20 💰 *Money, Goals, and Fulfillment* - Balancing the pursuit of monetary success with personal fulfillment. - The downside of solely chasing financial gains in a career. - Finding purpose and satisfaction beyond financial achievements. 14:02 🎯 *Assumed Goals in Software Development* - Questioning assumed objectives in programming, focusing on time-saving versus personal growth. - The importance of challenges in enriching the learning process. - Realigning goals beyond short-term achievements. 17:21 🧠 *Learning Through Challenges* - The value of programming the hard way in acquiring deeper understanding and skills. - Overcoming obstacles and their role in skill development. - Gaining competitive advantages through profound knowledge of the inner workings of projects. 20:08 🌊 *Gaining Confidence through Challenges* - Challenging oneself now leads to future rewards. - Personal confidence grows significantly after facing difficult tasks. - Analogies drawn between snowboarding challenges and programming difficulties highlight the transformative effect of overcoming challenges on confidence. 22:02 💬 *The Inner Circle Effect* - Engaging in challenging tasks sets you apart in conversations. - Demonstrating personal experiences in discussions creates a sense of belonging to an "Inner Circle." - Actively involving yourself in challenging work creates opportunities and influence within your domain. 23:11 💰 *Confidence and Financial Success* - Confidence in expertise positively correlates with financial success. - Demonstrating confidence in your field can lead to better job prospects and higher earnings. - Overcoming challenging tasks can directly impact long-term financial gains. 25:02 🚀 *Starting Your Own Challenges* - Encouragement to explore deeper understanding within familiar domains. - Suggestions to embark on projects that delve into concepts without relying heavily on libraries. - Starting small, like learning command-line Git, to gain deeper knowledge and confidence. 26:13 🎯 *Personalized Challenges for Growth* - Emphasizing the importance of aligning curiosity with learning new skills. - Highlighting the significance of finishing projects that expand knowledge. - Advancing in your domain by solving problems uniquely and creatively. 27:24 💡 *Long-term Benefits of Hard Work* - Programming challenges not only shape skills but also maintain mental agility. - The lasting benefits of overcoming difficult tasks and how they positively affect career growth. - Investing time in challenging programming methods yields substantial career advancements. Made with HARPA AI

@ThePrimeTime I have a friend who was just like the kid in this video. He wanted to make games so he learned how to do them from scratch. He now works at Larian Studios and worked on Baldur’s Gate 3. All because he learned a TON on his own over like 2 years of game programming from scratch on the side of his full time job. It definitely pays off.

This in conjunction with my custom string library helped me get a bit more confident

this video REALLY makes me feel SOOO MUCH better about my ADD hopping between personal "projects", Im trying to learn C-lang rn and I want to hardcore continue to do so!

Watching Prime make a game would be AWESOME. Because as someone who primarily programs games, and has dabbled in web dev too. The two have COMPLETELY different skill sets, beyond raw coding skill. When I tried web dev I had to learn a ton of new technologies I had never touched before. It would be really fun to watch Prime touch graphics for the first time.

I would argue that it is not just a matter of a mindset. It is about human nature. We simply do not learn by struggling to get something done. People who constantly try to get something done are close-minded. It is how the brain works. The mindset part comes in where we need to understand that nature. By stopping the struggle to get it done, we invite curiosity, experimentation, and PLAY, which makes our mind open and ready for learning and it will be remembered better. It's neurology. To put it rather simply, when we rush the synapses in our brain are oscillating fast and do not allow for new connections, hen the brain synapses slow down and oscillate less frequently our brain is more capable of creating new neural pathways, which is learning, self developing, as opposed to strengthening the already learned knowledge/behaviour.

all progress that i have, all knowledge that has helped me to outstand other developers - is what i learned on my personal failed projects in my spare time. never stop learning, failing and experimenting.

It's fun doing doing your own routines and seeing them work and you learn a lot more. Might not be as quick as using an engine

That video is one of my all-time favourite cs video. Learning the Hard way is surely the only way.

I recently started working on stuff from scratch for the GBA with Assembly. Putting the final goal as the obvious "maybe eventually a game", but really focusing on just learning each step. For me the main reason kinda is that I just wouldn't even start if I don't do it the dumb way. In the end, if I just learned enough about ARM assembly to go back to a project I started and left in a just barely good enough state to be released as an april fools joke, I'm happy. Still wanting to actually finish it everytime someone stumbles on it, but I just know that focusing on it is not the way to finish it.

as a developer you are ALWAYS improving your portifolio regardless of what you are doing, as long you are doing something

He does give amazing advice in this video and that game looks super intricate yet simple at the same time if it does ever come out will most likely check it out

This is not only good teaching advice, it's good life advice.

Sometimes you're forced to build your own engine given the scope of a project. Currently I'm building a falling sand engine (like Noita) but with online multiplayer. I've learnt quite a bit so far and have genuinely enjoyed building something from scratch.

I LOVE your Videos so much. TY

This is the same argument why some people insist that abstraction in modern languages. Having a deep-level understanding of how things work requires to do things from scratch. My first language was 6502 Assembler so learning from scratch is natural to me but I see both sides.

I've also spent a few years of my life working on a startup... and it failed, but it helped land my first job as a software engineer.

I've admittedly had the patronising thought like "just use... etc". But it's usually when someone has promised to deliver something and has me excited about the end result, the "Last night" game being an example. I love messing around with stuff that I'll never finish just to understand how stuff works. It makes me better at using existing tools because I understand the problems they are trying to solve and how to better utilise them.

Experience counts for a lot, and unique experience gives you perspectives that are valuable to a team.

Funny enough, this applies to essentially ALL fields. I'm now a woodworker, and can say that almost all the skill I have is thanks to using hand tools. Sure it's slower at first, and requires a significant amount of learning, but what you get out of it is unparalleled.

I did a lot of my learning with projects that I knew I never would finish. I spent a lot of time for example trying to port popular libraries to whatever programming language I was learning at the time. I learned a lot about dealing with code I was unfamiliar with from that. I use my "get shit done" attitude enough at work. My personal projects are for me.

This video has been very teaching and insightful.

9:05 the guy who says can't get a job as a game developer, you are correct but at that point you are eligible to get a job as a game engine developer, and trust me if you are a part of the team that figures out some of the cool things i see Unreal Engine 5 recently coming up with, that will create a higher sense of happiness than any single game story you can come up with, because any game made under that engine you can claim being a part of for yourself. 'I made that possible'. Just imagine being part of the team that came up with Nanite at Unreal and when they see a movie studio use Terabytes worth of models in a scene and Nanite rendering perfectly the right amount of detail based on the simulated camera focus. That seems like an incredible feeling to make something like that possible.

This video literally gave me flashbacks on how i went from school drop out to CEO of a Supercomputing company. Honestly i wouldnt trade the hardship i went through even for billions. When you see people who run operative systems they have written from scratch as a daily driver and you sit with barely functioning, bloated and slow systems. There are so talented people out there. Reinventing the wheel means to me that we have a good future in technology. While people say "Do not reinvent the wheel", are you afraid of the unknown? Why wouldn't you be the one to dictate the future?

Bruv the learned helplessness is crippling, at least for me. And the worst part is that the bits where learned helplessness bites your ass the worst are the bits where you can't even _see_ the learned helplessness, because it's subtle or it doesn't happen often. Things like (for me) trying to learn Assembly, because I tried for literal years to simply get "hello world" to print to the terminal. I'd always get a linker error, and whatever tool I was using would silently exit without telling me _anything_ about why that was (nasm BTW). I tried, and I failed. I still try to learn Assembly, but it's off and on and never with the same smash-your-head-against-the-wall-for-literal-days-on-end dedication like I do all the time for other tools like LaTeX, vim, or C.

@ThePrimeTime have you ever heard of the open course "The Elements of Computing Systems" also called "From NAND to Tetris" ? Over a decade ago I took it as a class at a community college and it is a primary reason I decided to persue software as a career. There's a video that outlines the course that if you haven't heard of it would be worth while to react to IMO. It's relevant to these interests.

See the problem with your thesis that you’ll be able to talk to the sr devs at your job; is that the recruiters don’t care you made an engine, they say “well you don’t have an office you worked at that can give references so i’m not going to schedule something with the programmers.” I made my own engine and i’ve been applying for jobs for over a year, every single screening call ends that way.

I think one thing this is getting at is how money shouldn’t always be the number one motivation behind what you do with your time. The money will eventually come once you obtain the knowledge. And the knowledge of someone that programmed their own physics engine is far more valuable than someone who only understands a single language or engine, and nothing about how it works under the hood.

11:00 there is a lot to be said, but I'll be brief and say this: don't do it for the money, you will rarely be promoted or better paid, you should strive to get better, and if you want, search for a new job and negotiate your salary. Thats not necesserally a rule, but it works like this most of the time.

completely agree with this, here's why I am trying to build my own Tensorflow-like library in the spare time

That is my situation. I was making a massive game for 3 years. Never finished it, Had burnout, but learned a lot.

I am also someone who just wants to try something out and then move on. I created a simple game where you shoot 2D "balls" and have them expand until they touch something (wall, other balls, or baseline) then you have to shoot the expanded balls with another ball and hit it 3 times until it bursts and you get that space back for other balls to expand into. I wanted to make it a mobile app and write in in C++. I did a bunch of math stuff like calculating collisions, reflections, expansions by hand and once it was done it was amazing. I just had to put some kind of scoring mechanism and a home screen with a start button and I would have a game. But I didn't because I satisfied my need to try it out. I then moved to another game where you were swapping letters in a 10x10 grid of letters and try to make words. I got really good at finding all substrings in all directions on the grid and making sure to find all possible words from a dictionary and award points for each of them. All this came in handy later when I talked and showed of what I created on subsequent interviews. And I am still building things and running a startup just so I can try things out and see where they will lead me.

I would like to add that finishing a game and putting it out there gives a massive boost to motivation. So making smaller games that do well is a better option. However, this dev is the rare exception where he doesn’t need the boost in motivation. He’s already popping off. All the power to him.

I totally agree on this take. I've long said that every game programmer should make their own game engine. Not to use it, necessarily, but just to understand how they work and what kinds of trade offs there are. After that you are more competent on choosing and/or using any game engine there are.

get your repitions in. You need to try, you need to fail, you need to throw a few tables. Thats the answer.

He's right guys. Being a full stack guy is really the best one. I'm not that much yet, but before uni, I was working on a business where I managed everything. It taught me how to write emails, how to communicate effectively(hardcore introvert) and many more. I'm using all those skills now to join various clubs here now. I got better at writing and now I'm a hobby writer

in my current web dev job, I had this project where I had to create an entire lobby system that was used to play really simple party games with your phone. I've also made the 'framework' to code new games. I also created 4 games using my own tool. In my job interview, I mentioned that I toyed a lot with unity3d and I tried to make my own networking solution. I really doubt that another software dev at the company would accomplish this in 2 months. The company only hires junior web devs.

3:00 That's how i learn framework api's and other languages beside js. By building a lot of small projects I learnt a lot of php, c#, laravel , and a really long list of js frameworks.

i have a similar experience with trying to make my own MMORPG, people always ask "why don't you start with something simple?", when i have done several small game jams, prototypes, and the sort. Now im 1.5 years into making my dream game :D

"Use someone else's tools and you'll be constrained to someone else's limits" is my main takeaway from that video, and I think is true even for opensource since the main team more often than not Will prioritize other features and bugfixes than whatever your specific project needs, or worse, work in a totally different way incompatible with your project. Also the bloat that some game engines or frameworks in general have because they try to do too much at the same time is distracting.

Okay maybe I kinda get it. Recently I’ve working on a discord game along the way I found out I was making a MUD type game, which made me curious on other projects and ended up with a template for a game. But it totally killed my motivation couple days into it. I’m going to go back to my old starter project and take the challenge head on instead since I was enjoying it up until I got a hold of “commercial solution”. Thanks for the video!

the journey and process is what I love about programming.

my gamedev goal is just to make something for fun that is fun to play, and learning how stuff works while doing it. (also I want to have a finnished project that I can use to show off my skills if I want to get hired as a gamedev) So I'll stick to doing gamedev from scratch. (I don't even plan on selling the games I want to make, I just want to make them for fun, though I might release it to the public so people can play it)

This is only the second video I've watched of yours, I like you perspectives

Thank you for the comment about not finishing. I have spent months doing things the slow, hard way (python, front-end stuff, various small pieces along the way such as understanding images and so forth). Yes, I'm the slowest person in my class by far, and in the end I know my understanding will be deep, rich, and allow my creative thinking to flourish. I can always use shortcuts thoughtfully and strategically in the future. :)

I feel like I would have had a different life if I had heard this positive outlook back when I was first learning about programming and I was spurned from learning low level concepts at every turn and told to just use the abstractions below your level and move on.

The amount of time I've wasted trying to fix some framework or tool and not understanding how I fixed it was a big part of why I got disengaged with programming. Casey Muratori revived my passion again.

I've only been working in IT for like 10 months, but i've worked on linux servers and command line stuff for 4 years for fun. Im just a tech, but that learning experience I get respect even if im the newest guy there. I had a plan to use python + Django for back end web dev, but I might just try to do stuff from scratch and look up making a webserver from scratch.

well sometimes is about the opportunity, I have studied at Digipen Insitute of Technology CS bach degree. In Digipen, you will need at least to create one 2D and one 3D game engine with a team of about 4 to 5 programmers. The students only allow the use of limited libraries like OpenGL/Vulkan for graphics and Imgui for UI. The game physics system is very hard to make and the skeleton for the 3D game. But in the end, most of us can't find a job in the video game industry and right now I studying master's in AI, hoping to create more AI automation tools for game developing

I like that lifting weights analogy. There is a difference between "working out" and "training". Training for strength is a superior objective (similar to knowledge acquisition) as strength carries over to multiple activities and is generally preserved over time. But training for strength is boring as it involves small set of lifts (squats, deadlifts, etc) and the variation is just more weights. Most people won't be able to stick with it long enough to see non-trivial benefits.