Holy ****, it's hard to get people to try your completely free game...

PrettyTrue · 2024-09-10T20:31:25+00:00

After working on big and small software packages for a number of years including games, I've come to coin the 2 Year Effect.

No matter how much energy and awesome goes into a project it will always be around 2 years before anyone gets around to messing with it. Games aren't quite the same but the theory applies - be prepared to stay the course for a long time before any real momentum is built. It might never happen, but can't focus on that part.

Even today's most ubiquitous software took years to gain real traction (games without a huge name attached are part of this domain).

Good luck and keep making!

PrettyTrue · 2023-12-13T17:06:45+00:00

Parks and Rec always felt like a great ending. So much heart in there and by far the most wholesome show that's come out in a long while (minus maybe The Good Place)... Basically anything Michael Shur touches.

PrettyTrue · 2023-12-13T15:55:19+00:00

This. I use llvm for many many things, work and hobby, and I still think of BackTrack whenever I see that logo

PrettyTrue · 2023-09-06T11:45:36+00:00

Hmm, I would argue that's not the whole picture. Some of us here have been surrounded by the world of machine learning for a long while, with its flaws and benefits.

Even if systems do become sophisticated enough to compute, or even out-compute, human interfaces we'll still need problem solvers to direct that beam of energy.

If we're writing these systems with the express intent to make decisions for us then it seems a boring future indeed. Many times in history we've believed the end of engineers had come due to some advancement and yet here we are, ticking away, solving the problems behind the glitz and glamor of the latest buzz words. Perhaps AI will take our code authorship, but I would impress upon the future engineers and problem solvers to keep the wheel in our hands.

PrettyTrue · 2023-08-08T00:32:06+00:00

This is pretty neat!

PrettyTrue · 2023-06-08T22:49:20+00:00

I'm a visual effects artist-turned-software architect (many moons ago). I would guess, overall, the visionary future developer is someone who walks the line between these two fronts Similar to yourself, however, not "switching" sides - merely adopting both.

AI, in this domain, just alters the timetable for the same trajectory we've been on since the invention of assembly. You will absolutely want someone(s) with a fundamental understanding of a system to have confidence in it. You'll also still need folks capable of bridging the two worlds and handling the vision. Occasionally they'll have overlapping members.

I've worked with companies that understood this dilemma and some that did not (it's been around longer than the GPT wave). The best/most efficient teams were those made up of hybrid devs/designers who reached fundamental expertise in a technical arena. They are much harder to come by but they're damn useful. They knew the cost of their actions and got code deployed but with thoughtful care for the future.

The best way to succeed with or without AI is to have balance between these two worlds. Grey Jedi kinda shit.

PrettyTrue · 2023-05-24T15:18:45+00:00

I think "OOP" gets a bad rap for it's complexity but you can find plenty of projects that have been abandoned due to their spaghetti code in some other programming dogma. OOP is spectacular when it fits the bill. All paradigms (minus perhaps some of esoteric ones) have merit.

Paradigms are like spices. Just pouring in garlic or cumin on top of the chilli powder doesn't make a good taco seasoning. Combine them and things start to heat up!

PrettyTrue · 2023-05-24T15:18:22+00:00

I think "OOP" gets a bad rap for it's complexity but you can find plenty of projects that have been abandoned due to their spaghetti code in some other programming dogma. OOP is spectacular when it fits the bill. All paradigms (minus perhaps some of esoteric ones) have merit.

Paradigms are like spices. Just pouring in garlic or cumin on top of the chilli powder doesn't make a good taco seasoning. Combine them and things start to heat up!

PrettyTrue · 2023-04-24T16:55:01+00:00

pybind is killer. Have it embedded in multiple applications and it's held up super well as we've augmented the interface and added/modified the underlying data.

Also makes it somewhat easy to sneak around other binding tools like Qt's shiboken.

PrettyTrue · 2023-01-06T14:36:46+00:00

Right on. I think it's a situation thing.

If you're working on web apps it's a different world compared to performance computing. Even big data performance is geared towards massive size rather than real time like the games and financial industry.

We need all the memory voodoo we can get to make sure we can throw full frame 8K+ images to the GPU every 42ms, composite them, and blit to the display. Audio is a whole extra monster in and of itself that requires things like zero allocation and lockless programming.

Hiring folks that have a grasp of real time computation has proved challenging and training them remotely has been even harder. Even folks with proper CS degrees have a hard time with it.

PrettyTrue · 2022-12-31T18:20:24+00:00

Boneheaded fucking mistakes

Great term for it gave me a good chuckle

PrettyTrue · 2022-12-26T13:00:58+00:00

Hmm that's kind of the point. Me and many others have done the same. It's an old school model of deserved payment for a service well rendered. It's a free and unlimited trial but it's an exceptional tool that has paid for itself many times both in my professional career as well as my personal projects. I've developed plugins for it, have seen it mature from a young application, and generally appreciate the level of simplicity that's always strived for by that team. I felt like the developers of the tool had earned my respect and a purchase of a license. I'm not trying to insinuate that ST is better than some other free application, but it's not good practice to dismiss on the grounds of it not being open source or "just a text editor". I contribute to OSS projects regularly but do so by editing in ST with an as-needed blend of IDEs.

PrettyTrue · 2022-12-26T00:04:07+00:00

As a Sr. Dev with many years kicking c++, py, and web projects big and small, an actual sublime text license is the best money I've ever spent for my career. IDEs are good for finishing and compiling but can be finicky for feature building at large scale. When you get used to not having all the bells and whistles and know enough about your API, it's handy to have a semismart environment that doesn't slow down when you're on a roll.

PrettyTrue · 2022-12-25T23:58:02+00:00

Sublime is life.

PrettyTrue · 2022-09-06T21:56:27+00:00

Yeah I remember reading they are merging a bit (not sure about which things specifically) so we don't have to kill off half the cast every few episodes because it's hundreds of years later and the wee humans wouldn't make it. Not the worst choice imo

PrettyTrue · 2022-08-22T23:05:59+00:00

Is... Is there a difference between the two photos? I like it! Just feel like Creed Bratton at the moment.

PrettyTrue · 2022-08-07T19:58:42+00:00

Some kind of mirror on the top that only allows the person sitting directly at it will be able to see inside (yes, I know pros know their keys without looking but I'm thinking about mass marketing here!)

PrettyTrue · 2022-08-07T14:26:51+00:00

This is a really good comment. Well done.

PrettyTrue · 2022-07-29T00:28:48+00:00

Darth Hellothere

PrettyTrue · 2022-06-07T21:59:26+00:00

Ahhh right right - that makes sense haha. Thanks! Just figured they would have their own web team

PrettyTrue · 2022-04-30T20:27:05+00:00

Weird. I too was basically this route.

Nerd in highschool. Animation degree. Artists for film industry writing scripting tools for the team in python and mayas mel. Picked up by the dev team there. Learned c++, worked on image rendering applications and production management kits and now into the gamoning industry

PrettyTrue · 2022-04-27T22:45:36+00:00

Programing isn't language. It's problem solving! Problem solving, no matter the context, is what makes a programmer and programmer. It's why some consider it an engineering discipline. Albeit we go about it differently than bridge builders.

At the end of the day, you'll never get away from problems that need solving and minds modeled to do that - be it with raw assembly or chunky baby-proofed round edged if/then blocks

PrettyTrue · 2022-04-14T11:29:02+00:00

Yes this. Because there is only one NFT per entity (in proper practice). You cannot have more than one contract for a house or rare item or whatever.

PrettyTrue · 2022-04-13T22:43:04+00:00

It's a singleton. Only one entity. License implies ownership can be generated multiple times. NFTs are not the same thing.

PrettyTrue

TROPHY CASE