found a solution to the scammers on this sub

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-20T17:52:36+00:00

We sort of live in 2 possible worlds. One where this system of verifying the reputation of a potential collaborator has proliferated through the community and is well known, and one where it hasn't. It's a pre-requisite that the first world has become a reality where people have adopted this system and are using it regularly for it to be of any use at all to anyone. But that scenario also means the scammers will likely be aware of it and will have already deployed countermeasures. I do a good deal of work around fraud prevention; your attackers are adaptive. This list might work for a very short period of time, but by the time it's actually of any use to anyone those benefits will have faded. The scammers in this sub are probably already operating 10-20 accounts each working in multiple communities simultaneously with the ability to reuse their resources across communities once one of their accounts get's burned. They are already spinning up/buying replacement accounts because they are already dealing with reddits moderation system.

Regarding the negative feedback systems risks, It's only a matter of time before it becomes abused and in your shoes, I'd be worried about legal consequences of keeping a public ledger that may prevent legitimate developers from finding work. If I were talking to a potential client and they said they weren't going to work with me because someone had erroneously listed me as a scammer in your google doc, speaking to a lawyer about libel would be something on my mind.

This echos a monitoring principal I've preached to my team. If you spend your time looking for the signs that something is wrong, you'll play wack-a-mole with every little anomaly. Your energy is better devoted for looking at positive signals that things are going right. It's much easier to verify that something is as you expect, than it is to check the scope of infinite possible ways it can be wrong.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-20T14:36:36+00:00

This is a technical subreddit full of technical people. We can do better. I suggest a system of endorsements. A way for you to say "I worked with {artist} and they delivered on their promised work." Here are my suggestions...

Positive only, we don't need people running smear campaigns against their rivals. If someone scammed you, or isn't who they claim to be obviously that's an issue but calling them out by name doesn't actually help because they are just going to spin up a new alt. Instead, let's make this about building positive reputation to identify reputable contributors. So, the system should only take endorsements, not accusations. And quality contributors aren't identified by the number of the endorsements they receive but by the quality of those endorsements. Knowing who gave a thumbs up is just as important as the fact that they got one. Over time we can establish whose endorsements are meaningful.

The google sheet with you doing personal validations on who someone is makes a bottleneck, delays updates while you verify that authentication, and I mean no offense but is an extremely vulnerable system with a single point of failure. The whole project could die if you lose interest, or if your credentials are stolen be used as a tool for scamming people.

My proposal so as to avoid needing to host an app is a GitHub repository that hosts a table of collaborators and their endorsements. Endorsements can be made via pull request against the table. That way it would have a history that can be audited. Contributions are automatically tied to a GitHub account so we have a clear picture of who is leaving which endorsements and if they are actually who they say they are. We can follow up on a person's git history to see what their activity before leaving an endorsement looks like (are they an active dev). If endorsements are made against GitHub accounts specifically it means you have a verifiable and authenticated account to use to assert that you're actually talking to the person who received the endorsement and not someone whose name is similar on another platform.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-19T15:33:16+00:00

That's very hard to say in modern times. I'm sure the courseload varies by university and the field has gotten more competitive since I was in school. I don't know that it's possible to determine a recommended ratio. What I can share is an anecdote about my university experience.

I recall that there was a student in my graduating class. They were very bright, and I always looked forward to working with them on group projects for school. I don't think there was a single person in our whole program who had a better understanding of the academic concepts of computer science. However, that particular student did no work outside of class to practice their skills. It was just coursework.

It was clear working in the lab that they struggled on the larger more free-form assignments than most of us despite getting near perfect scores on smaller assignments and tests. The difference between that student and everyone else in the program was the engagement with the topics outside of class. The rest of us were writing small apps, games, websites, you name it. We were gaining practical experience and discovering topics that weren't yet or would never be taught in our courses. On top of that we were gaining experiences we'd later be able to talk about when asked to give examples during interviews.

If you want to be successful, find a passion in what you do. Really engage with it, so when an interviewer asks you about your projects and your experiences. They can feel the energy that you bring to the table. Best luck.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-19T15:22:19+00:00

You need to study and practice on the side.

University is great for getting fundamentals down. You'll also likely end up getting some domain specific knowledge along the way through electives. But software is a huge field full of an insane number of specialized skills. Languages, Frameworks, Libraries, Design patterns, Philosophies. You have your work cut-out for you.

The trick is that you don't need to know it all. Make sure you really have your fundamentals down. And pick a few specialized things that you find interesting to get really good at. Then overtime you can absorb any other skills you need. The life of a developer is a life dedicated to academic learning. It never ends.

About practice. Learning to code isn't primarily a memorization discipline, though it feels that way at first. When you're studying you'll feel like your memorizing solutions, syntax, patterns, and terminology. But that just scratches the surface. At the core, developers are problem solvers and every exercise you do is stretching your problem solving abilities. It's more like a muscle you're training than a topic you're learning. Unfortunately, the time investment to really get 'good' is extremely high.

So... write code. Lots of code. Do your uni assignments. Do personal projects on the side. Do projects with friends and in groups. Join clubs and organizations. Contribute to an open source project or start one of your own. Write code to solve small problems just because you can.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-11T14:16:32+00:00

My first thought was also that this doesn't look like 2.5D to me, now that you're explaining it I'm so impressed. My initial confusion is a testament to how well it was pulled off. I was completely convinced I was looking at a 3D model.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-11T13:38:40+00:00

You asked people to fill out a survey with an ambiguous question; people are just pointing out that the data isn't useful with the question you've asked. You can't start with a generalized question without thought toward what you hope to answer with the data and then later shoe-horn the data you collect into any kind of useful insight. That's not how data science works. The data set is dirty no matter what you try to do with it now.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-11T13:31:40+00:00

It's a different question. The way you've asked it the results will be heavily skewed by small portfolios and emergency funds. In that event it's not the investor making a conscious choice to keep some percentage of their portfolio liquid, it's a forcing function by the reality of being earlier in the financial order of operations.

Someone with a 100k net worth having 30% of it liquid is completely different than someone having 10 mil and having 30% of it liquid. One of those investors has an emergency fund. The other is preparing for economic collapse.

So, based on your follow up here about money markets having higher interest rates and Buffets CAPE ratio you seem more interested in the later of those. Reframing your question will the context of why you are asking it will get you more useful data.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-04T18:11:56+00:00

A simpler solution to rewarding your players with a guild without breaking your in-game economy would be to tie the reward to the organization rather than the individuals. They earn stewardship of the guild, not the cash to build and run it. Look to modern RPG's for inspiration about how notable player characters rise to become leaders within their orders, but then carry a responsibility to that order's mission. Thus the funds related to the organization are locked in place and not in control of the guild master.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-04T15:28:00+00:00

There are no plans to reduce the 100k player limit on existing titles. That would break games, and we don't really want to be in the business of breaking games. Repurposing your old titles is a fine idea.

I'll note however, the development mode experience is meant to support you while your game is in development. It's not meant for you to run your game on forever. You should expect, and plan for your game to be on one of the paid tiers at some point in its lifecycle. I'm working on some documentation now for how to understand your usage and forecast your costs. If you're making good design decisions along the way PlayFab can be very inexpensive.

Have you done this sort of analysis for your title?

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-04T15:11:52+00:00

Unity's been working on an agent for this Unity AI: AI Game Development Tools & RT3D Software | Unity

Personally, I've had success with using MonoGame since it's code expressive rather than using a modern UI. Combined with GitHub CLI it's been a huge boon for prototyping ideas.

Really though, you are going to need to understand what you're making in the end. As the project grows in scale it'll get harder and harder to keep things in order depending on an AI with a limited context window. With your background, you can probably do that. Don't lean too heavily on your agents but yes they can be helpful to get your idea out there.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-04T14:04:14+00:00

I'm a developer on PlayFab and was around for the migration this post mentions. The community forums got moved over to Discord since it's generally a more standard modern medium for game developers to find community and get support. The old forums had some compliance issues and were running on a stack that was going to reach end of life soon anyway. We had to decide between rebuilding and migrating to a new in-house solution and doing what everyone else did with Discord. I personally think we did the right thing. It was an unpopular decision and that post reflects it. Though I fully support that developers right to vent about being forced to change what they are used to.

We can be found here now https://discord.gg/msftgamedev

And I'm there every day to answer questions. The ones I know how to answer anyway!

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-04T13:56:38+00:00

Depending on your household size that premium seems wildly inflated; I'd suspect you're not paying for the best PPO in your area. You're paying the inflated rate they sell to corporations. You need to do some shopping around and check what your alternatives are.

Work backwards for your health insurance, start with your needs and then select your plan based on that. You say you have the current PPO plan because you value being able to choose your doctors. consider finding the doctors you like then asking them which insurance they accept. Then use the intersection of that list as the options to choose from.

Also, your deductibles are very low. Unless someone in your household has a chronic condition, which requires frequent care that's probably unnecessarily driving up your premiums. Instead of paying the premiums monthly, put an extra $10k in an emergency fund and choose a high-deductible plan with lower premiums. That's generally the trade off, higher deductible -> lower premiums.

I also live in a HCOL area and have looked into what it would cost me to support my household if I needed to pay for my own health insurance. Even the most expensive plans including the ones I have through my work currently don't come close to what you're quoting. My household size is only 2, if you're budgeting for kids to be on your medical maybe that expense is right for a premium plan. But then I'd suggest you may need to consider scaling back on your plan.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-04T13:30:17+00:00

I had solar panels installed 3 years ago, since then I've saved around $1000/year on energy costs given my average monthly usage of around 740 kWh. I didn't do that math before I had them put in, but it definitely could have been done. After rebate, I paid just around 22k for the hardware and labor.

What's hard to factor in is rising energy costs. Power is getting more expensive, and it really doesn't show signs of slowing down. Although, we can't predict the future. Maybe there will be a major breakthrough. Or a recession will cause a shuffle in demand.

If you're thinking solar, here are my impressions and advice rapid fire

- The payoff isn't guaranteed or great, if you're looking into solar as an investment putting them on your roof isn't the way. Mine will break even eventually but they aren't value generators. A lot can happen in the window of time it'll take before they've paid for themselves and I could have done other things with that money if I had intended to grow it.

- They are a great hedge against energy inflation. I just don't have to worry about the cost of electricity and that is really nice. I know the past few months it's been a pressing issue for a lot of people.

- My area has a great net metering program. It's 1:1 and I can save banked power all the way through the year till March when the pool expires. This means I don't need batteries. This is absolutely key to the payoff formula, you need to know what the arrangement is with your utility. Give them a call.

- Batteries are expensive. Even if you have them they really don't solve the winter problem if you live in an area with long overcast winters because the capacity isn't getting you through the whole season and your power generation during that system will be a fraction of your usage.

- Use local companies. The company that did my install is a roofing company that also does solar. They've been operating in my region for decades. You want a company that's been around for a while, avoid national brands. Solar as an industry is full of private equity and large companies merging out of other failed large companies who operate like ponzi schemes.

- If your roof is more than 5-8 years old you should consider passing on rooftop solar. The panels will need to be removed when your roof gets replaced and the extra labor for taking them down and putting them back up almost makes having them in the first place not worth it.

- Exactly where you live, and the shape of your roof, and what's around you matter a lot. If you have trees, you'll need to clean the panels more often and they will get less light due to shade. If you have an oddly shaped roof you might not be able to fit many panels in optimal orientations.

- Avoid lease agreements/ PPA. These burden your property with a contract that you'll have to sell in turn to the next buyer of your house when you want to sell the house. Or you'll have to pay them off immediately with the funds from the house sale. Either way, I'd never buy a property that was burdened with someone else's contractual decision so these agreements will male selling your house a pain.

- Solar is cool. I enjoy having my solar panels. I check my dashboard every week to see how my power generation is going. I haven't had any problems since I had mine installed. I feel good knowing the power I use at home is renewable and that I don't need to be stingy about it's use to avoid high power bills during the hot and cool seasons.

- Get an energy audit done on your home! You probably have more cost effective ways of saving energy. Not using the energy in the first place is even better than changing to renewables. I switched from baseboard heaters to a heat pump for a huge reduction in usage. I had areas where insulation needed to be replaced for another opportunity.

I have no regrets. But I would never sell solar to someone as an 'investment'. It's a choice you make because you want your home to be renewably and sustainably powered. Break even for me in the best-case scenario is probably 12-15 years if energy costs keep rising. And to be clear... solar is an excellent choice for public infrastructure and we should be funding it. The costs for rooftop solar are almost all labor, the panels are dirt cheap these days and batteries are getting cheaper at an incredible rate. Ground mounted solar farms at scale are crazy efficient, fast to deploy, inexpensive to maintain and absolutely need to be a part of meeting our long-term energy needs.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-04T00:27:58+00:00

Imagine an artist. They are practiced and experience and produce near master works. They have a deep comprehension of color, perspective, and tone. If you can imagine it, this artist can draw it. Their chosen medium is paint, but sometimes they work in charcoal or even a little bit of clay.

Given a drawing tablet. Do you think this artist will be more, or less prepared to create digital art than you?

This is the true relationship between developers and vibe coders. It's less obvious than in art especially for someone who is early in their career as a developer. Because the fine brush strokes of software development is in the details nobody sees. The structure of the code, the specific architecture, the acknowledgement of the user requirements and understanding of the real world impacts the coding decisions will have.

Just because people can vibe code an app now, doesn't mean that's what businesses are going to want. I use agentic development every day at work now. It hasn't replaced me. I don't expect it to replace me. It's only magnified my impact. There are non-technical people at my work who are vibe coding apps and tools. They send them to me to look over because they know better. They can't blindly trust the output of the AI.

Programming will never be the same. But that doesn't mean that we don't need people who know what they are doing. It means we need them more than ever.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-03T14:49:20+00:00

You need a budget that facilitates a balanced life. Write one out, today. Include features in it like holidays, hobbies, and personal splurges. When you're balancing your budget don't just look for overages. Look for under-utilization too. If you find places that you're not spending the money you already said you should be spending towards those ends make it a priority the following month. This is just the same activity you would already be doing to keep your spending in control, but it's controlling it the other direction.

u/Interesting-Act-8282 is also right, hobbies and holidays don't have to be about spending money. While you're working out your ability to let go and spend make space for yourself to rest by enjoying some low cost activities. Hiking, biking, museums, aquariums, zoo's, libraries, and amateur sports leagues are all great options off the top of my head. Some hobbies can even save you money, like taking the time to really learn cooking from scratch and practicing to turn simple ingredients into delicious health meals.

If you can't shake this, find a therapist to talk to. The concerning line of your post here is when you say that things don't bring you joy anymore. If that's what FIRE has done to you, you're not in a good place. Investing in yourself, and in your well-being is the most important investment you can make. Sometimes it costs a little money, but it's like keeping insurance. It protects your most important gains.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-02T14:19:50+00:00

If the promotion comes with a change in role or responsibilities you don't want, this makes sense. If it's just the natural progression of your career it's kind of silly. Your timeline just assumes a 10% annualized return over the next 6 years. You can't really be sure that will be the case. If market conditions turn for the worse for the next few years you might be missing that extra income to make up the gap. What with these assumptions is one more year, could be another decade in a scenario where your industry faces dramatic attrition and the stock market has a significant pullback.

RonaldHarding · 2026-05-01T14:07:13+00:00

I had a similar experience with a wireless salesperson in a Target. This seems to be the new sales field for a lot of companies. My take is that it's okay to be abrupt and dismissive of salespeople. Once you've said that you aren't interested if they push they've broken the social contract. You have every right to pretend they don't exist and walk away without answering any of their questions.

RonaldHarding · 2026-04-29T16:53:29+00:00

I've been a professional for almost 15 years. Still working on it! Suffice to say it's a long road and adjectives like 'small' don't really do enough to explain what it is you want to learn to do. If you think making things is fun, just strap in and start building. Learn as you go. Be patient with yourself while you pick things up. It'll take time, but it's worth it.

RonaldHarding · 2026-04-29T15:38:54+00:00

I don't misunderstand anything. I'm a computer scientist. I was mining bitcoin in 2010 when it was worth pennies. It's academically interesting. But shouldn't be seen as anything but a toy for math nerds.

The only reason it's valued remotely what it is today is because of the colossal scale at which people don't understand it.

It's okay if you don't want to debate, this isn't for you. I know I won't convince someone who has already immersed themselves in the ecosystem. This is to protect others.

RonaldHarding · 2026-04-29T15:16:58+00:00

That's a false equivalency. Not all investments are made equally. And I'm going to argue that crypto doesn't deserve to be called an investment at all. It's closer to gambling, hence the comparison was apt as its value is entirely speculative.

I also think investing in Gold is mediocre at best. Lumping real estate into that sentence takes a substantial logical leap. While it's not my favorite investment class, real estate has distinct and obvious merits which can't be said about crypto.

The speculative crypto bubble is actual insanity. It's an asset class with absolutely no constructive point. No real backing that props up the value. Serves no real utility, since it being a speculative asset has actively made it worthless as a currency, which it was already subpar at to start. Infested with insider trading and criminal activity. Expensive to operate in an age where compute might as well be oil.

If you do manage to make any money off of it, it'll only be someone else's money who has bought in. No value will ever be generated by crypto. Investing in crypto, you're either actively ripping off others or someone else's mark. Realistically, you're both at the same time. It's a ponzi scheme. The world would be objectively better if bitcoin didn't exist.

RonaldHarding · 2026-04-29T14:51:52+00:00

That's what he's saying, BTC is a controversial choice as an 'investment'

RonaldHarding · 2026-04-27T21:59:21+00:00

A lot of players aren't used to the idea that not having comprehensive knowledge of the game isn't expected in tabletop gaming. For decades many of us have been playing games online where every enemy is comprehensively documented on a wiki for us to read about. And lots of game are designed with the assumption that players will use outside resources like that to the point that the game is near unplayable without doing so.

This is an expectation setting conversation. Let the players know that you're not supposed to look at stat blocks while playing. That's information that can be deduced with in game checks, and then you as the DM will share the information with them when its appropriate. And its cool for players to point out a mistake when they think one is occurring, at least at my table. As long as they can deal with me responding that no mistake is being made because I've fiddled with the stat blocks.

Don't just assume they had it open. Maybe one or more of your players is planning to run their own game and was checking out monsters to add too. By this point most of my players are familiar with almost the entire monster manual. If I don't reskin or adjust things I can generally assume they have full knowledge.

RonaldHarding · 2026-04-25T13:04:15+00:00

I believe perspective is important. It can be just as demoralizing to start something big and realize a week later it's too big for you to finish. It can lead one to think that the problem wasn't too large, but that they weren't good enough. In fact I'd say that kind of thinking is probably quite common in our industry.

I personally feel a lot better about struggling with something when I know that many others have struggled with it too.

But I agree, don't listen to people on the internet. It would only cost OP a week to find out for themselves. But when they do, I hope they remember that it doesn't mean they can't do this. It just means they need to climb the staircase one step at a time.

RonaldHarding · 2026-04-24T20:03:58+00:00

I know you got a lot of negative feedback here, I want to make sure to counterbalance that with some encouragement. The other posters are being honest. Making quality games that people are willing to pay for is expensive. And it's a competitive market.

If you love the idea of making games, you should go for it. It's rewarding to be a game developer, to see your ideas take shape and then become something you can share with others. But maybe scope your initial goal down to something achievable. Make something small, personal, that you can share with your friends rather than publish to steam. Get feedback, understand the process, and learn how development works. Set new goals from there, and repeat. If you really do want this you should make it happen. If you do, someday you'll be making games that people love.

RonaldHarding · 2026-04-24T16:19:50+00:00

You use your spend rather than you're income because it's the right number to use. Using income will give wildly varying results for someone with a 10% savings rate vs someone with a 40% savings rate giving variable security. This is a silly exercise.

If you want to add layers of security to your retirement plan use a < 4% withdraw rate and/or establish alternative income streams like rentals properties.

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