I'm in the UK and have now gone completely electric - motorbike (Zero SRF), car (wife's Model 3) and van (ID Buzz). To be honest though, that was mostly because I like EVs - yes, even the motorbike. The fuel costs are just a bonus.
98 karma · joined August 7, 2018
I'm in the UK and have now gone completely electric - motorbike (Zero SRF), car (wife's Model 3) and van (ID Buzz). To be honest though, that was mostly because I like EVs - yes, even the motorbike. The fuel costs are just a bonus.
The article boils down to "could AI be a good compiler" and I'd say that consistency and repeatability are far more important than a one-off optimisation of a particular section of code. If you've got to the point where a section of code is worth writing some hand-crafted assembly then it's probably worth your time to really understand what's happening with it. Having it "vibe compiled" for you would be a bad idea.
Having said that getting the code working properly with a nice 3D UI is my priority, not having a slick game with some code doing some mundane stuff in the background.
One thing that brought it home to me was recently re-watching 28 Days Later. As the main character comes out of hospital and walks over a Zombie-apocalyse London Bridge, I thought "Wow. That looks nice." London in 2026 is worse that Zombie-apocalyse London from 2002.
I've had a brief test ride on a pre-production version of the Verge TS. All seemed OK but I thought the handling seemed weird - maybe due to the rear tyre size and geometry.
I also find that the actual coding is important. The typing may not be the most ineresting bit, but it's one of the steps that helps refine the architecture I had in my head.
I took a job doing an interesting C# project where the front-end was being developed by another company (that mostly does cinematic work) using Unreal. It turns out that most Unreal developers love the shiny side of things but rapidly get lost once it comes to needing C++ - or even Blueprints in some cases. I took on the responsibility for the bit where our code meets.
When this project ended, I moved to a different part of the same international company where Unreal was being used for virtual studios. It was a bit of a leap as despite not having much C++ experience, my first proper C++ job was now working on a fork of Unreal's C++ source. That's one huge, unwieldy, undocumented chunk of C++! I sometimes work alongside some very talent Technical Artists who do stuff I couldn't possibly manage in Unreal, but can get stuck when it get down into code. It is more interesting that "standard" dev, but believe it when people say graphics development is harder. In my experience, the only thing that's harder is FPGAs.
Here are some thoughts / tips that might help:
- Get proficient where most game developers aren't - C++. There is some Python used, but good Unreal devs can manage this.
- Use Epic's online learning. Their documentation is awful but their training is good.
- Look at non-game use of Unreal as a stepping stone to game work - virtual studios, architectural visualization, etc.
- This non-game work seems to pay OK. I hear game work doesn't so much. Maybe stay here.
- From my experience, Unity just doesn't seem to have as much traction outside games. Could just be what I've seen though.
I hope these rambling thoughts have been some help.
I work 100% remote so I also went for another Elgato product - a ring light - so my work video calls look a bit better. If all of your interaction at work is via video it seemed worth doing it well. My desk now looks more like a YouTuber's but it's all for coding.
I work with software for virtual studios. It's very similar to gaming in a lot of ways (even using Unreal Engine) and we really push GPUs to the limits. I'd still count this in the "for gaming" category as we;re still rendering 3D scene within a strict time limit.