If you are at all interested in getting into game development in Unity (so C#) then this is a great course - and free.
Make a full game over a 10 hour youtube video (obviously not in one sitting!).
I've been doing it and am at 5 hours 31 minutes and I think it's absolutely brilliant. I've been a developer for about 10 years and am confident with C# but had never used Unity or made a game outside of little prototypes in eg javascript that would just work in the browser.
Ah ok. I'm an interested in this as a topic and would like to take a stab at this as I think it's an almost impossible project. I would like to caveat any opinion first by saying these: I have a great deal of experience customizing and creating little bits of bespoke functionality for various ERP systems (SAP obviously but also some of the smaller ones aimed at niche markets eg construction). I also have similar experience with similarly complicated and sprawling PLM systems. I've spent basically my entire software career around ERP and PLM systems and systems that break out pieces of ERP functionality and try to often do it elsewhere (usually badly), and then usually have to somehow bring everything back into an ERP system anyway, either manually or with at least some level of (but rarely complete) automation.
I am a CS graduate from a 'famous' UK university (UCL). I'm also a qualified CAD engineer, project manager within agile (DSDM agile etc)...ITIL qualified etc. i.e I've spent a lot of time across these kinds of many tentacled systems that really do reach across the entirety of any large business. I've worked with these systems from FTSE 50 businesses to small 50 person manufacturing startups.
I've also been involved in the migration between PLM systems (horrible from a data perspective - all those CAD files etc) and also ERP systems (horrible but largely just the mapping between two different Entity Relationship Diagrams almost incomprehensible to any living human in terms of complexity).
It would be an incredibly ambitious undertaking to compete with one of the major players in either of these spaces. It is not something you could really even do at the scale of a start-up the likes of which YC and the media understand as 'start-up'. You would need so many not just 'early stage' founders with wildly different skillsets, you would need effectively an entire large manufacturing business, from end to end, in terms of personnel because your 'domain expert' essentially includes 'every business function you can imagine'. That's before you could even begin to think about software. It's a fascinating idea but think about it - procurement/purchasing, warehousing and logistics, engineering and design, sales and marketing, finance (very important here), HR, operations, R&D, Q&A...and these are just the ones I can think of that I have come across in my dealings with these systems. They really do touch every department.
The length of time to market would also be such that this kind of project would not really be appropriate to describe as a 'start up'. You'd essentially be creating a 'Unicorn Killer' and that unicorn killer would need insane resources to even have a chance at market success. The number and requirement for specialist migration tools into your new system from existing clients would be a 'massive' undertaking also.
It's such a bold idea but I think to describe an undertaking of that size 'start-up' would be to completely stretch the meaning of the term 'start-up' so far beyond its usage that the term would lose all meaning.
Interesting. For me as a complete outsider (Italy here) California and the Bay Area specifically is seen as THE place for IT startups. Is that not the case? Or maybe was it just like that in the past but not anymore?
The truth of the matter is the Bay Area is a great place for tech companies because of the sheer volume of engineers. The reason so many engineers live in the Bay Area (and a handful of other cities) is (and I say this from experience) it's terrifying being an engineer in a city with only one or two tech companies.
I moved from SF to a smallish city in my late 20's, and I was only able to find one tech job to apply to, and it wasn't even for a technology I already knew. I was offered the position, and spent the next 6 years treading water at a mediocre job because there just weren't any other options: I could either stay at that job, or leave a town I loved.
When my wife and I decided it was time to move (she had just completed her Master's), job opportunity weighed heavily in our decision making process. We had a lot of other considerations (we wouldn't live someplace we didn't like just because it was good for our careers), but we wanted to make sure we at least had multiple options when it came to work, and that is absolutely something the Bay Area provides.
This topic (whiteboarding in tech) is so common and SO boring!
I work in an engineering org with ‘real’ engineers (mech eng, electrical, chemical eng etc) and I’m on a multidisciplinary team. No one tested my code on a whiteboard on the way in. They trusted the fact I have a CS degree from an elite U.K. university and numerous other software qualifications.
Whiteboarding is just a bizarre fetish for people who want to felate Silicon Valley wankers. Screw this sh1t
I studied computer science at one of the best U.K. universities but I currently work at a multinational engineering group in a team of chemical, mechanical and electrical engineers and I much prefer this kind of thing to the ‘tech’ industry.
The wanky recruitment processes with all the crap that goes on are actively insulting. Where I work it’s more like ‘this is what I’ve done before. This is what I’m going to do for you. Watch this!’ And then you get on with it.
My dad was chairman of the Royal Navy surf association so basically surfed since I could walk and used to go to all the RN surf comps with the marines and all the navy guys and fleet air arm and stuff and thought I was so cool.
Surfing has kept me fit and kept me WANTING to stay fit throughout my whole life - I’ve swum and done weights when living in cities to stay on point for getting in the water ‘when it’s necessary’ (Big Wednesday quote).
I’ve also made a lot of friends and travelled a lot with it. Don’t know what I’d be like without it ….
This rings true for me too (Also UK dev). I once worked for half a year at a company that was this bizarre. For example, we had several people come in - and leave - within a day. As soon as they saw how we were working they just left. I kind of found it funny only because the lead developer (now a very close friend) basically onboarded me with the company ethos after I'd been looking through my desk drawer and noticed a brown bag....
'What's in the bag mate?'
'I don't know...?'
'Have a look'
'....er, it seems to be....some receipts....a cafetiere.......and a what looks like a really really old banana'
'Welcome to [name of that company]!'
If he hadn't have been able to make a joke of it too I'd also have walked.
Our managing director was an utter nutjob...
Highlights include:
He once called us from a major UK motorway and asked us where he was meant to be driving (we'd not seen him in days, and said we assumed he must be on a sales visit).
He would almost weekly lose the keycard to our building...which was required to get to the office...to the point where we suspected he'd 'developed a taste for them' and was secretly snacking on these keycards.
He told us once that 'NASA can put people on the moon! We can do this!' After us telling him that what he wanted to do was completely impossible. Like literally not possible. He was getting hassled by a finance company who we'd built an app for, and ironically they were saying that 'the percentages don't all add up to 100% exactly'.
I am really surprised this isn't already more of a 'thing'.
When I did my postgrad research project, back in 2016, I was using LoRaWAN and thought it was so obviously going to be huge in e.g. AgriTech. Surprised not that much has happened with it tbh.
Cheap LoRa chips are finally hitting the market for long enough that ecosystems can grow around them. As an example, for Radio Control vehicles (planes, drones, cars) there have been 3 different systems released over the past year or so, and now an open source system called ExpressLRS which is gaining traction.
1. Almost all property in every major city owned by Chinese funds.
2. Student loan bomb explodes and universities close.
3. Renewable energy generation becomes the new 'Software Development' for people trying to get rich out of innovation.
Make a full game over a 10 hour youtube video (obviously not in one sitting!).
I've been doing it and am at 5 hours 31 minutes and I think it's absolutely brilliant. I've been a developer for about 10 years and am confident with C# but had never used Unity or made a game outside of little prototypes in eg javascript that would just work in the browser.