Re: Noob learns to code in 3 months
Posted: June 16th, 2017, 2:59 pm
Definitely watch Redpill Stack first. And don't worry about it if shit goes over your head, absorb what you can and ignore the rest for now, it's not super important
Now the thing about the recursion and Fibonacci, of course it is fine to use iteration (looping) instead of recursion, but the fact that you tried recursion and were not able to make it work should not be ignored. This is a red flag that must be paid attention to. You might think "Who cares, why would I ever need Fibonacci anyways?", but that's not the point. The actual algorithms and examples shown in my videos are seldom the point, the point is the higher levels skills and concepts being demonstrated and exercised. In this case, the skill of thinking in terms of recursion and using that to break a problem down.
Now remember, I already covered recursive Fibonacci back in Beginner 24. I selected it as the first example of recursion because it is fairly straightforward. If you had problems recalling that and recreating it, it say that you need to work on recursion. To be honest, recursion isn't used super often in making games, and it can often be replaced with a less elegant loop solution even in cases where it would be used, but there are some situation where you really need to understand it. One such situation is the depth first search algorithms such as Minimax. And these algorithms are used all over the place for game AI, so you really want to be able to understand them.
The other red flag is the fact that you could not make the int2str function. This kind of ability to take a goal, analyse it can figure out a simple math solution, and then implement it with an algorithm is very important stuff to be able to do. I noticed that this sort of thing is not one of your strongpoints from the time when you tried to get alpha blending to work.
When you run into situation like this, it is very important in this point in your growth that you do not ignore the issue. It can be easy to say 'why would I need fibonacci?' or 'why would I write int2str when there are perfectly good functions in the std lib i can use already?', but that is missing the point. The point is the skills needed to solve these problems are also the skills needed to solve other problems that you will not be able to ignore. So you got to face this stuff head on.
What I recommend is, when you run into something like this in the tutorials, after you give up and look at the solution, take a day or two, and then go back to it and see if you can do it yourself now without peeking, and if not go back and study it again, until you understand it like the back of your hand. And also, seek out similar problems and try and solve them. Seek out other algorithms for recursion (simple ones at first) and try and solve them or study them until you know them inside and out. The same goes for the int2str stuff. I recommend doing simple algorithm challenges to boost these skill.
Don't take this as a roast bro, just some advice that I hope you take to heart. Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. I think you have a lot of strengths that will serve you well in game dev, but you need to work on these weaknesses as well.
Also, good idea to steal the simon says idea. Wasting time spinning your wheels cuz you can't think of a project is silly. Just do the first thing that comes to mind and don't be picky. Anything is better than nothing. If you come up with a killer idea, you can always transfer over, but in the meantime just pick something--anything and run with it.
Now the thing about the recursion and Fibonacci, of course it is fine to use iteration (looping) instead of recursion, but the fact that you tried recursion and were not able to make it work should not be ignored. This is a red flag that must be paid attention to. You might think "Who cares, why would I ever need Fibonacci anyways?", but that's not the point. The actual algorithms and examples shown in my videos are seldom the point, the point is the higher levels skills and concepts being demonstrated and exercised. In this case, the skill of thinking in terms of recursion and using that to break a problem down.
Now remember, I already covered recursive Fibonacci back in Beginner 24. I selected it as the first example of recursion because it is fairly straightforward. If you had problems recalling that and recreating it, it say that you need to work on recursion. To be honest, recursion isn't used super often in making games, and it can often be replaced with a less elegant loop solution even in cases where it would be used, but there are some situation where you really need to understand it. One such situation is the depth first search algorithms such as Minimax. And these algorithms are used all over the place for game AI, so you really want to be able to understand them.
The other red flag is the fact that you could not make the int2str function. This kind of ability to take a goal, analyse it can figure out a simple math solution, and then implement it with an algorithm is very important stuff to be able to do. I noticed that this sort of thing is not one of your strongpoints from the time when you tried to get alpha blending to work.
When you run into situation like this, it is very important in this point in your growth that you do not ignore the issue. It can be easy to say 'why would I need fibonacci?' or 'why would I write int2str when there are perfectly good functions in the std lib i can use already?', but that is missing the point. The point is the skills needed to solve these problems are also the skills needed to solve other problems that you will not be able to ignore. So you got to face this stuff head on.
What I recommend is, when you run into something like this in the tutorials, after you give up and look at the solution, take a day or two, and then go back to it and see if you can do it yourself now without peeking, and if not go back and study it again, until you understand it like the back of your hand. And also, seek out similar problems and try and solve them. Seek out other algorithms for recursion (simple ones at first) and try and solve them or study them until you know them inside and out. The same goes for the int2str stuff. I recommend doing simple algorithm challenges to boost these skill.
Don't take this as a roast bro, just some advice that I hope you take to heart. Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. I think you have a lot of strengths that will serve you well in game dev, but you need to work on these weaknesses as well.
Also, good idea to steal the simon says idea. Wasting time spinning your wheels cuz you can't think of a project is silly. Just do the first thing that comes to mind and don't be picky. Anything is better than nothing. If you come up with a killer idea, you can always transfer over, but in the meantime just pick something--anything and run with it.