scallywag802

I failed high-school math, and couldn't even spell linear algebra two years ago. I'd never done any game programming to speak of, and had never written any C code before starting Handmade Hero.

After watching through most of the series, and writing a 3d engine (HH style, no libraries), I have internalized an amazing amount; the vast majority of what Casey's gone over. I agree that often times he goes into more detail than necessary - even for me, who started knowing literally nothing about what he was talking about, but I would attribute the amount of learning I've gotten out of the series to exactly that. For someone that doesn't understand the difference between an Object Transform and a Camera Transform, the only way for them to actually learn what they are is to hammer it home again and again - through examples and practice. I think I am exactly his target audience - young programmers who want to learn how to make video games.

Just my 2c

I'm not sure what your definition of gimmick is, but 600+ hours and several years (so far!) of content sounds more like a labour of love. If you'd watched the series you'd realize this man loves, and is highly proficient at, programming.

> Doesn't seem healthy imo to stick just one project for so long without significant ROI.

I don't think he's in it for the money. I think that he, and many game developers of a similar vintage, are frustrated with the direction that modern software has taken. It's slow, getting slower, and often doesn't work correctly. I think this is his way of expressing that frustration, by teaching how the machine you're programming ACTUALLY WORKS. I for one have gotten more out of Handmade Hero than any other single source of learning in my life.

I've watched roughly 90% of the series to date and I'm happy to report that this "jumping around in a bunch of files trying to figure out what memory write caused an issue at run-time" is infrequent, at best. Occasionally there's a gnarly wild-ponter-esque bug that takes an hour, and very occasionally two, to debug, but the vast majority of the time on the series is spent writing new code and refactoring old systems that need to use some new feature.

I actually find it amazing that sometimes 400 hours of programming and 2 years later he goes back to code written in the first few weeks and is fairly easily able to modify it to work with a new system that's just been implemented.

EDIT: Formatting