About me and why I care about Unity – The Deaf Duck Podcast EP01

4 Comments

1. 

   GB October 3, 2015 at 6:34 pm

   Hey Caleb, I found your podcast from the Udemy course page. I don’t usually listen to podcasts but I appreciated your thoughts on your experience, probably because it mirrors mine in some aspects. I’m also in my 30s, full-time professional, work with numbers in Excel a lot (though I wouldn’t say I enjoy working with numbers, I do enjoy being organized, categorizing things, and thinking of ways to streamline processes). I am also verbally, visually and musically-oriented, though I wouldn’t call myself artistically-talented. I like to think I have a good eye, and a good ear for aesthetics, even if I don’t have the formal background to necessary articulate certain concepts using the right jargon. I have also been toying with an idea for a novel which I still have not written (much like many people who are ” working on a novel”).

   Point is, I can definitely relate to some of your thoughts about being a certain age, and completely new to a medium where it’s very easy to get lost. I am on Lecture 70-something and have definitely enjoyed a mix of excitement at the tantalizing wonders of this brand-new-world coupled with moments of despair at what I think can sometimes be very obtuse explanations which, to my ears, are really lacking in context.

   I think this may be because people who have been into programming since they were very young are probably more numerical and less verbal. I know that’s a stereotype (the old right/left-brain divide), but it does seem to often be true. And when I speak to people in this world I find they often were ‘math’-people who hate to write, and are not good at explaining things ‘properly’. That is, when they don’t just shrug and say ‘figure it out by yourself, that’s what I did’.

   The course has been pretty good but the farther I go into the course, and the more materials I see online from other sources, the more I think that what I really would have loved to have just does not exist. Meaning, all programming education seems to either assume you understand basic concepts already, or they blaze through it and move on to other things before you’ve had a chance to really grok the foundations. No one seems to have a complete beginner’s mind about it.

   I would have liked to have seen a course that spends a couple of weeks on syntax alone, understanding relationships the spacing, punctuation and, most importantly, how variables, classes, instances are different, and how they are linked (yeah, I have a vague ides, but it’s right on the edge of my grasp and I feel like if I had to write code from scratch I wouldn’t be able to do it yet). I feel like that’s the part of me that learns by categorizing things and defining what they are, and what they are not.

   With Unity, you have the added complication of needing to understand how the scripts tie in to the ‘things’ that you see visually in Unity; not just game objects, but components, etc. I’m still wrapping my brain around how when you create a script it seems to create a class with the name of that script, which is not too bad but it soon devolves into all kinds of connections between objects and variables and classes, which then have visual correlates in the Unity inspector, which gets really confusing. It also gets confusing because they use similar names for the class, the object, and the function that are all attached to the same object. I’ve had to rename things on purpose just to get a visual sense of what is happening with what.

   And, I get it, it’s very rewarding to rack your brain for hours and then get an insight. But I actually love to teach and explain things and when I have had to train someone at work I have always defended the notion of transferring as much knowledge as possible, in the clearest way possible, so as to get someone up and running and confident so that they can then move on to the higher-level problem solving. Having someone struggle with something for days when I can just make them understand something by taking an hour with them will be beneficial for both of us in the long run.

   I guess my point is that technical education is sorely lacking in the context and background department, and it may be simply because people who are naturally attracted to programming are not usually good communicators/explainers… Anyway, that’s my theory and I’m basing this on the fact that when I have understood something for the first time, usually after a long struggle, I think to myself ‘god-D*&*$#mmit!’, why did they gloss over this one crucial point which is key to understanding this?’

   Anyway, to wrap up, just wanted to say, it was good to hear from someone also brand new and, by the way, none of what I said above is a knock on the course. I think they really try to do a great job and I am learning a lot for sure, but the subject matter is just hard, and I feel that no one is that good at explaining these things out in the interwebs and there’s often a subtle aura (not with this course necessarily) of superiority around this stuff, as if you have to struggle mightily to be worthy of entering the hallowed ground of being a programmer. You can’t just be let in through the front door and have a nice tea and scone.

   (It’s crossed my mind more than once that there’s still room in the online tutorial market for ever-clearer, non-intimidating explanations of things; maybe if I ever master this stuff I can create my own series and tap into that market.)

   Good luck with the course and would be interested to hear future podcasts on the continuation of your journey.

   Cheers!

2. 

   Caleb J. Ross October 3, 2015 at 6:58 pm

   This is an awesome response!

   Firstly, I love the affirmation that I’m not alone in the 30-something/no coding history/office job/creative minded camp. Finding other members of this camp is one of the main reasons I started the podcast.

   Re: “I think this may be because people who have been into programming since they were very young are probably more numerical and less verbal. I know that’s a stereotype (the old right/left-brain divide), but it does seem to often be true. And when I speak to people in this world I find they often were ‘math’-people who hate to write, and are not good at explaining things ‘properly’. That is, when they don’t just shrug and say ‘figure it out by yourself, that’s what I did’.”

   I can definitely see this. Part of me, though, wonders how math and verbal skills seem so dissimilar (not just per your comments, but per the stereotype at large). Verbal articulation requires knowing grammar and spelling and how to express ideas effectively, which is basically what math requires as well. Maybe, to carry on the early development angle, some people grasp the grammar of math easier than the grammar of English (or any other spoken language). You know, it would be cool to see a diagram of the similarities of sentence structure and programming structure, maybe a way to carry on the Lego comparison that Ben and Brice make in Lecture 43. Maybe I’ll put that into my queue for a future episode/blog post.

   “I would have liked to have seen a course that spends a couple of weeks on syntax alone, understanding relationships the spacing, punctuation and, most importantly, how variables, classes, instances are different, and how they are linked (yeah, I have a vague ides, but it’s right on the edge of my grasp and I feel like if I had to write code from scratch I wouldn’t be able to do it yet). I feel like that’s the part of me that learns by categorizing things and defining what they are, and what they are not.”

   That would be amazing, right? I’ve been digging into some C# resources lately, reading the C# for Dummies right now. This seems to get a bit at what you want, considering it’s specifically about C# and not about the C# aspect of Unity. I think that’s probably where most Unity courses fail is that they utilize C# code but they aren’t C# courses, per se. (And here’s one more “C#” just to make this the most obnoxious paragraph ever).

   “I guess my point is that technical education is sorely lacking in the context and background department, and it may be simply because people who are naturally attracted to programming are not usually good communicators/explainers… Anyway, that’s my theory and I’m basing this on the fact that when I have understood something for the first time, usually after a long struggle, I think to myself ‘god-D*&*$#mmit!’, why did they gloss over this one crucial point which is key to understanding this?’”

   Consider me a follower of this theory 🙂

   Thanks for listening to the podcast! I really, truly appreciate it. I’m hoping that someday, if I continue on with the podcast for a while, I’ll start to bring in other newbies as guests to discuss basic concepts. I hope I don’t get advanced enough that I forget what it’s like to not know. I suppose that’s a benefit about archiving my journey; I’ll always be able to return to a more ignorant time in my life.

3. 

   Leo Hartas August 18, 2016 at 7:51 am

   Hi Caleb,

   I am so delighted to have just found your podcast. I have experienced everything you mention, from how difficult it is to find a likeminded community to figuring out what is the best resource roadmap to take to learn Unity. I work as an illustrator and for all my life have tried various game making programs, right back to Blitz Basic on the Amiga, (I am that old!) and have always come against the same problem that I get stuck quite soon in the learning process. I also feel I have a big chunk of puzzle already in the ability to make the visual game assets. Like you I don’t know anyone who is a programmer, or rather I don’t know any programmers that have the patience to understand that I need to approach it from a super basic level.

   By chance I had also been following the same Udemy course you are on, which is very good. The problem was that I was attracted away from C# by Playmaker, a visual flowchart plugin and an excellent and entertaining course on Udemy by Michael.Dot.Strange. Although I got through a good chunk of the course, as what always happens, I suddenly got lost, I think down to a mis-match with the version of Unity I had and the video. Yesterday, in a fit of dispondancy, I was about to give up, again, when I thought I’d see if I could find personal tuition. A few searches later I found a young fella in Luton that would teach me over Skype and we just had our first lesson on the same day. I realised that it was going to cost, but I feel at my stage of life (51) I should make a concerted effort to crack it. It turned out he is an excellent tutor, and we both laughed as we realised just how much of a noob I was. The lesson was a revelation. Having the ability to constantly ask questions and get concepts rooted in my mind immediately was brilliant. At last I feel that I have a route to making solid progress. It’s worth a thought to hire a tutor, even for 2-3 lessons to help get over that initial unterstanding hump.

   I’m of a mind to make drawing of how a short script is working, perhaps with the analogy of little characters in a factory or similar. I once had a children’s book by Usbourne that did just this.. I should dig it out some time!

   I shall join with your community on Reddit and have already subscribed to your excellent podcast. I think you have a great voice, and delivery for broadcast and I love the relaxed conversational style. Keep recording, and keep on coding!

4. 

   Caleb J. Ross August 18, 2016 at 8:47 pm

   That’s a fantastic idea! I honestly never thought of having a 1-on-1 tutor. I looked in my local area for coding classes, and when I discovered that all of them are either during the day (can’t do that; I work) or part of full time student curriculum, I stopped looking. I never thought at all about a freelance tutor. I may just take a look into that. Thanks!

   Thanks for subscribing! I haven’t made an episode in a while. I’m still learning, but just in shorter bursts. Lately I’ve been focusing on my youtube channel. What usually happens is that I’ll get burnt out after a few months, so when that inevitably happens, I’ll probably get back into Unity and C#.

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