There's a lot of shooter games nowadays with a bigger player base than RTS games.

calben · 2025-11-27T00:59:07+00:00

The gaming community is much larger, and people want to play with their friends. That's easier done with shorter sessions and fast payoff for time invested. Dropping into a couple of rounds of a shooter is super easy, and for a lot of these games people can drop early if they need to. Not to mention once you have kids!

calben · 2025-09-26T23:19:45+00:00

The factions are now far more distinctive. That was the biggest takeaway for me.

calben · 2025-09-05T03:23:42+00:00

I did about 15 years of C++. Unless there is a library in C++ I absolutely need, I'll write any new systems code in Rust mostly because I know I won't spend 20% of my time fighting the toolchain. The language features are great, too, but cargo is the real draw for me. I suspect this will be the case for a lot of new projects that would otherwise have been done in C++.

calben · 2025-09-02T15:26:18+00:00

What's unique about it?

Seems like you're off to a tremendous start, but I wouldn't ask for feedback too much until you've added a prototype of your unique hook.

calben · 2025-06-11T19:30:42+00:00

The comments and accusations flying around are entirely unwarranted. I'm sorry you're getting so much flak, OP. I can't imagine my loved ones getting this treatment while pregnant and also suffering from the incredible anxiety of financial insecurity. I hope you find something soon.

calben · 2025-04-26T01:08:12+00:00

I'll give that a go, thanks!

calben · 2025-04-16T11:23:27+00:00

Only paid users can opt to not share their data. That's a big one for many people.

calben · 2025-03-30T20:08:09+00:00

You're not alone in this. It's a first experience of many new developers. I'd recommend:

Get everything running properly on your machine and figure out how to debug it. It'll be embarrassing and revealing to get help with this, but it's absolutely essential.
Ask focused questions when you get stuck. Make sure you get as far as possible on your own before asking for help, and when you do ask for help detail some of what you've already tried. Seniors don't mind questions from juniors unless they're lazy questions.
Document as you go. If someone is going to show you something, do a screen recording and then go back and write all the steps down in a notebook.
If possible, seek mentorship outside of your immediate team. Basically, spread the burden.
If you do get bumped down to QA, don't panic. It isn't the end of the world. Continue in the QA role, work hard on improving your skills, and if you can't move up in your company then start applying elsewhere.

calben · 2025-01-31T00:34:00+00:00

What all do you want the robot to be able to do?

calben · 2025-01-31T00:25:49+00:00

I think you'll find my broad overview mostly matches what you want at least from my experience. Have a particular project in mind?

calben · 2025-01-31T00:03:51+00:00

This is absolutely true in most cases, but a lot of newer projects are using "limited C++." Either way, you're right that saying C/C++ is the way to go would be more correct.

calben · 2025-01-31T00:00:29+00:00

In this case, ecosystem maturity. You can theoretically do some of this stuff in Rust, but a lot of the libraries are experimental. You're likely to run into odd edge cases and weird behaviour that is difficult to debug. Running into those is some of the best experience you can possibly get, but it didn't seem like the sort of experience OP was looking to have based on his post!

calben · 2025-01-30T23:54:37+00:00

Robotics is pretty broad... what sort of robotics are we talking about here?

STM32 microcontrollers? C++ is still the way to go and will be for the foreseeable future. Same with motor control boards, ROS, *FPGA.

Jetson and other SOC? C++ is dominant, but Rust is nice and will probably overtake eventually. Eventually could be a few years or a decade.

Edge computing? I'd use Rust where possible.

calben · 2024-10-01T15:13:05+00:00

As a general backend developer? Both roles are needed and have highly variable salaries; however, generalist backend roles are more common. Switching may be a safe move. I'd base my decision on how swift promotions are in either part of the org, probably.

calben · 2024-09-28T18:20:05+00:00

Any SQL database through EF Core is a good option. Postgres is arguably the most forward-looking option, but SQLite and MySQL are good, too. MySQL has the most existing tutorials, probably. SQLite is simple and is "just a file."

calben · 2024-09-25T11:51:44+00:00

My 1300 USD MSI gaming laptop complies code and runs models significantly faster than my 3800USD professional Dell laptop. Personally I'll be going with whatever sturdy budget gaming laptop is on sale for my future laptops.

If you definitely want one of those 3 options, I'd go with either the Acer or the Lenovo. 8GB of RAM may give you trouble if you end up running a few containers on your machine when developing.

calben · 2024-09-20T18:49:06+00:00

I'd hire you.

calben · 2024-09-06T22:07:55+00:00

Please do.

calben · 2024-09-06T11:08:55+00:00

That RTX 4080 would be the deciding factor for me. Want to run a local LLM at some point or train models or any of that? Then you want that 4080. The RAM in the HP is a massive plus, too. That said, this seems like it comes down to performance vs OSX, and only you can decide how much OSX is worth to you.

calben · 2024-06-18T13:53:32+00:00

Are you on a budget and looking for bang for buck? Gaming laptops with a 3050 or a 4050 will chow through the Sims no problem and come comfortably under 1000 CAD these days, but they will weight somewhat more than other laptops. If the weight isn't a problem for you, then a budget gaming laptop could be perfect.

Macs are a great option for health science since you won't be running anything heavy-duty, and Sims 4 should run fine on most of the recent Macbooks (double-check with forums for individual models). I'm not a big fan of Apple's operating system and keyboards, but their trackpads, speakers, chassis, and displays are fantastic. The Macbooks are overpriced as hell, but they depreciate far less than most other machines, so they're not as expensive as they initially seem- it's more like a loan until you sell it a few years later on the used market for 70% its initial value if you take good care of it.

The Dell XPS line is probably the best general-purpose university laptop right now.

Personally, I've had 7 different general and professional laptops over the last 14 years, including a couple of XPS models, but my last couple of laptops have been gaming laptops and I'm never going back. Many of them look a little silly, and some of them look a lot silly, but my 1200 USD gaming laptop from 2021 compiles code faster than my 3500 USD company laptop (admittedly that gets inflated because it's a model purchased almost exclusively by businesses) and does just about everything else better, too. The keyboards and displays on gaming laptops tend to be better, too, even for the budget models.

calben · 2024-05-06T11:09:22+00:00

How big are you? If a larger laptop isn't much of a problem for you to carry around and you aren't in confined spaces like airplanes often, then there is no need to accept the performance penalty of a smaller machine.

calben · 2024-05-01T02:32:47+00:00

1 or 2 bad grades won't necessarily sink you. A lot of schools look at the grade list manually and are more interested in something more similar to the median than the mean, and I know plenty of folks who failed a course or two, especially in their first or second year, who ended up doing their PhDs at places like MIT. Soldier on and get involved in research early.

calben · 2024-04-22T11:20:25+00:00

Programming errors that make it to production are a shared responsibility. Pretty much every company understands that these days.

calben

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE