Plante (with a Justin assist) might have just pulled me out of my fear of learning a new skill at 33. There have plenty of people telling me it's never too late to start something, but apparently that combination of words you guys used has unlocked something iny brain. Thanks for that, boys!
A question at the least relevant time to ask: Game of the Year conversations tend to actually be Video Game of the Year conversations. Do you think there's space for board games, card games, and traditional role playing games in GOTY conversations? (my GOTY Top Ten last year had 3 video games on it).
Hope one of the besties checked out the Haste:Broken Worlds demo for next fest. Super cool 3d parkour game that feels very "sonic like" in that you are moving very fast and trying to hit terrain at the right speed and timing to maintain momentum. I had a blast. "Smoothing around" as the resties would say. It feels very good to play. The demo was very story-lite but the gist is that worlds are being destroyed, and your character has to outrun the destruction while trying to find a way to stop it.
Visually beautiful, the rng elements are a neat way to keep runs fresh- but just moving around is enough to leave me satisfied
Justin's venture into linux and raspberry pis has been so fun to listen to. I'm a user experience researcher for developer experience, so it's like hearing the origin story of one of my users. Appreciate y'all!
I think you guys are focusing to much on the wrong aspect.
Yes the writing suck and the story is meh.
But that’s not why we are here. Me and my girlfriend (we both play videogames a lot btw) and are having a blast.
It’s just fun the see what kind if new mechanics happen next. There are constantly new stimuli.
It’s funny you mention brothers, a tale of two sons.
We played a few hours of the remake expecting things like in “it takes two”, but we quit because we found the gameplay very lacking. It’s boring compared to the other hazelight games.
Conclusion. We are just along for the ride and that is of fun for us.
I wanted to join in the parade celebrating Justin's explosive interests, share some personal anecdotes, and provide some recommendations for anyone else looking to get into the field of computing.
I'm a long-time game player, and when I was eleven I wrote a (truly terrible) post on my ideal video game, how I'd design it and how it'd work. Always had this love of gaming and creating, but I didn't dip into it until I was 22 and playing a video game (Total War: Warhammer II), used some mods, and had some requests for the mod author. They suggested I make the changes myself, and I learned this entire new skill over the course of a few years.
Now, my day job is in R&D for a fun technical company, focusing on computing solutions. Completely self-taught. And in recent months, as I've learned more for this job, I've been digging into very similar avenues as Juice. I got my first Pi back in December, I've been working out Home Assistant and have been leaning towards making my own smart home solutions instead of their AIO package. I'm so far down the rabbithole that I'm trying to persuade my all-Microsoft (by convenience) work center to take the Linux pill and see how things could be.
It is NOT an easy world to get into. A lot of technical computing is filled with people who have lost the ability to speak to non-technical people, and the barrier to entry is quite pronounced due to that. A lot of answers to questions online will be along the lines of "well, just double-encrypt the nth kajibble and desaturize the diaphragm and it should elocute."
The greatest entry avenues are the HIGHLY SPECIFIC ones, in my opinion. I learned so much of my programming skills from modding a single video game using a single programming language, but all of that knowledge can be applied horizontally (to other programming languages) or vertically (to how lower-level things work in computing, or how higher-level things may interact). Having a specific and targeted goal for a bite-sized project will really get you so far.
"How Computers Really Work" by Matthew Justice, a former Microsoft engineer, is maybe the greatest introduction to every level of computing I've ever read. It gives you enough breadth to know how things interact, and just enough detail to grab onto and apply your limited knowledge. It also has some incredible learning projects, most centering on the Raspberry Pi. And it's fun to read.
"Turing Complete" on Steam, by developer Stuffe, is a wonderfully interesting game that starts you off with making simple circuits using AND/OR logic gates, and takes you through a journey to making your own computer out of these discrete circuits. It abstracts much of the annoying stuff, but it does also suffer from poorly explaining specifics. I'd supplement it with other learning, such as...
"Building an 8-bit breadboard computer" by Ben Eater, a Youtube Series where someone (self-taught) goes through the steps of building a functional computer using simple logic chips and wires on a breadboard, so you can visually see every step. I've used these videos, and the book it references (Digital Computer Electronics, an old college textbook from the 80's, books-level boring) , to build out a similar design in Turing Complete, and it's been a wonderful challenge.
There are many other video games out there with similar themes, such as "The Farmer Was Replaced", "Human Resource Machine", "ShenzhenIO". Many of them require you to have a bit of a handle on some ideas, so following Juice's advice to learn through multiple streams is a great idea here.
Lastly, there are a lot of video games wherein you can program. Minecraft has a mod called "ComputerCraft" which uses my favorite programming language, Lua. Satisfactory, a game already inherently about optimization and discrete logic, has a mod that adds in logic gates, so you can build a macro-computer around your factories. Many games written in Unity or MonoGame are highly moddable (thanks to C# being an easy language to reverse-engineer) - specifically, RimWorld and Bannerlord have some well-written code, and using Harmony (a third party library), mods can "hook" into the game's code to trigger things before, after, during, or overwrite, the game's base behavior. And there's a pretty solid community of Unreal Engine reverse engineering being built up, with many tools to create your own mod for UE5 games.
If you feel that itch even remotely, give it a shot and have some fun! Worse to worst, you realize you don't like it or don't want to get that deep, but you can still get some fun facts to pull out at a party, or with a half-finished smart home that turns on the lights whenever you sneeze.
Some great suggestions here. Might be worth mentioning that Turing Complete is still marked Early Access but no longer updated.
If you haven't, you should definitely try out https://nandgame.com/ , which is based on a book I believe was called "NAND To Tetris" (which does what it says on the tin).
Oh! Can't remember if the guys covered Quadrilateral Cowboy back in the day, but that definitely does a good job of recreating the feel of learning a command line...
Sorry, never saw the notification here. The dev for Turing Complete does a pretty... I'll politely say "middling" job at communication. They've been working on a pretty big update for a couple years, so there's a beta branch with the new changes that's updated ~1 time a week. I've been using the new version for a little while
Absolutely keep the Pi talk coming. Sidenote: Last week Chris Mentioned EEPHUS, which I found out this week was produced by Chapo Trap House. An interesting merger of my parasocial Casted Pods.
Another game that works well as a single-player to co-op with a younger kid is New Pokemon Snap -- one person controls the view, other is in charge of shutter, apples, scans, etc.
I love Justin's Linux journey as a software engineer who did a lot of Linux work in college and stare at a terminal a lot of the day. Keep it up, Hoops!
Justin I am a Patreon follower I would literally pay to listen to you talk about your computer adventures
Plante (with a Justin assist) might have just pulled me out of my fear of learning a new skill at 33. There have plenty of people telling me it's never too late to start something, but apparently that combination of words you guys used has unlocked something iny brain. Thanks for that, boys!
Go for it!! You can do it!!
Learn to make Kombucha. I'm glad I did.
A question at the least relevant time to ask: Game of the Year conversations tend to actually be Video Game of the Year conversations. Do you think there's space for board games, card games, and traditional role playing games in GOTY conversations? (my GOTY Top Ten last year had 3 video games on it).
Hope one of the besties checked out the Haste:Broken Worlds demo for next fest. Super cool 3d parkour game that feels very "sonic like" in that you are moving very fast and trying to hit terrain at the right speed and timing to maintain momentum. I had a blast. "Smoothing around" as the resties would say. It feels very good to play. The demo was very story-lite but the gist is that worlds are being destroyed, and your character has to outrun the destruction while trying to find a way to stop it.
Visually beautiful, the rng elements are a neat way to keep runs fresh- but just moving around is enough to leave me satisfied
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2940200/Haste_Broken_Worlds_Demo/
Justin's venture into linux and raspberry pis has been so fun to listen to. I'm a user experience researcher for developer experience, so it's like hearing the origin story of one of my users. Appreciate y'all!
I think you guys are focusing to much on the wrong aspect.
Yes the writing suck and the story is meh.
But that’s not why we are here. Me and my girlfriend (we both play videogames a lot btw) and are having a blast.
It’s just fun the see what kind if new mechanics happen next. There are constantly new stimuli.
It’s funny you mention brothers, a tale of two sons.
We played a few hours of the remake expecting things like in “it takes two”, but we quit because we found the gameplay very lacking. It’s boring compared to the other hazelight games.
Conclusion. We are just along for the ride and that is of fun for us.
I wanted to join in the parade celebrating Justin's explosive interests, share some personal anecdotes, and provide some recommendations for anyone else looking to get into the field of computing.
I'm a long-time game player, and when I was eleven I wrote a (truly terrible) post on my ideal video game, how I'd design it and how it'd work. Always had this love of gaming and creating, but I didn't dip into it until I was 22 and playing a video game (Total War: Warhammer II), used some mods, and had some requests for the mod author. They suggested I make the changes myself, and I learned this entire new skill over the course of a few years.
Now, my day job is in R&D for a fun technical company, focusing on computing solutions. Completely self-taught. And in recent months, as I've learned more for this job, I've been digging into very similar avenues as Juice. I got my first Pi back in December, I've been working out Home Assistant and have been leaning towards making my own smart home solutions instead of their AIO package. I'm so far down the rabbithole that I'm trying to persuade my all-Microsoft (by convenience) work center to take the Linux pill and see how things could be.
It is NOT an easy world to get into. A lot of technical computing is filled with people who have lost the ability to speak to non-technical people, and the barrier to entry is quite pronounced due to that. A lot of answers to questions online will be along the lines of "well, just double-encrypt the nth kajibble and desaturize the diaphragm and it should elocute."
The greatest entry avenues are the HIGHLY SPECIFIC ones, in my opinion. I learned so much of my programming skills from modding a single video game using a single programming language, but all of that knowledge can be applied horizontally (to other programming languages) or vertically (to how lower-level things work in computing, or how higher-level things may interact). Having a specific and targeted goal for a bite-sized project will really get you so far.
"How Computers Really Work" by Matthew Justice, a former Microsoft engineer, is maybe the greatest introduction to every level of computing I've ever read. It gives you enough breadth to know how things interact, and just enough detail to grab onto and apply your limited knowledge. It also has some incredible learning projects, most centering on the Raspberry Pi. And it's fun to read.
"Turing Complete" on Steam, by developer Stuffe, is a wonderfully interesting game that starts you off with making simple circuits using AND/OR logic gates, and takes you through a journey to making your own computer out of these discrete circuits. It abstracts much of the annoying stuff, but it does also suffer from poorly explaining specifics. I'd supplement it with other learning, such as...
"Building an 8-bit breadboard computer" by Ben Eater, a Youtube Series where someone (self-taught) goes through the steps of building a functional computer using simple logic chips and wires on a breadboard, so you can visually see every step. I've used these videos, and the book it references (Digital Computer Electronics, an old college textbook from the 80's, books-level boring) , to build out a similar design in Turing Complete, and it's been a wonderful challenge.
There are many other video games out there with similar themes, such as "The Farmer Was Replaced", "Human Resource Machine", "ShenzhenIO". Many of them require you to have a bit of a handle on some ideas, so following Juice's advice to learn through multiple streams is a great idea here.
Lastly, there are a lot of video games wherein you can program. Minecraft has a mod called "ComputerCraft" which uses my favorite programming language, Lua. Satisfactory, a game already inherently about optimization and discrete logic, has a mod that adds in logic gates, so you can build a macro-computer around your factories. Many games written in Unity or MonoGame are highly moddable (thanks to C# being an easy language to reverse-engineer) - specifically, RimWorld and Bannerlord have some well-written code, and using Harmony (a third party library), mods can "hook" into the game's code to trigger things before, after, during, or overwrite, the game's base behavior. And there's a pretty solid community of Unreal Engine reverse engineering being built up, with many tools to create your own mod for UE5 games.
If you feel that itch even remotely, give it a shot and have some fun! Worse to worst, you realize you don't like it or don't want to get that deep, but you can still get some fun facts to pull out at a party, or with a half-finished smart home that turns on the lights whenever you sneeze.
Some great suggestions here. Might be worth mentioning that Turing Complete is still marked Early Access but no longer updated.
If you haven't, you should definitely try out https://nandgame.com/ , which is based on a book I believe was called "NAND To Tetris" (which does what it says on the tin).
Oh! Can't remember if the guys covered Quadrilateral Cowboy back in the day, but that definitely does a good job of recreating the feel of learning a command line...
Sorry, never saw the notification here. The dev for Turing Complete does a pretty... I'll politely say "middling" job at communication. They've been working on a pretty big update for a couple years, so there's a beta branch with the new changes that's updated ~1 time a week. I've been using the new version for a little while
recommending a single player one person watches game: viewfinder. witness-like but there’s a cat you can pet.
Absolutely keep the Pi talk coming. Sidenote: Last week Chris Mentioned EEPHUS, which I found out this week was produced by Chapo Trap House. An interesting merger of my parasocial Casted Pods.
Another Mike chiming in to share the love over the Pi and Linux talk. Keep it coming!
Also, love the pure guy friendship moments of digging into Russ over his guides in the last few episodes
The tech bros I know say Justin needs the Linux penguin and his sticker collection will be complete.
Another game that works well as a single-player to co-op with a younger kid is New Pokemon Snap -- one person controls the view, other is in charge of shutter, apples, scans, etc.
For a shared puzzle game, https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/ was fun at the start but boy did it surpass my wife and I in short order.
Justin, keep it comin with the Raspberry Pi updates! Don't get me wrong, I'll never EVER try it myself, but it's fun to hear about
I love Justin's Linux journey as a software engineer who did a lot of Linux work in college and stare at a terminal a lot of the day. Keep it up, Hoops!
I feel like the brief David Cage cameo in this episode was the closest we’ll ever get to the return of Jean Baptiste
And here I was expecting that Jean Baptiste had gotten into television and was producing The Big Brain Theory.
Apologies but I have got to ask the inevitable shallow question: Justin, where is that sweater from? It looks fantastic