Performance-Aware Programming Series | Hacker News Reader

Performance-Aware Programming Series

computerenhance.com

122 pointsibobev17 comments

A couple of months ago I saw this on HN and subscribed (it was $10 per month). It is endorsed a lot but my experience was not that good. To me it seems like he keeps explaining himself instead of explaining the topic (10 minutes of a 20 minute video might just be about why he chose a specific example). I think he is simply too defensive about what people might talk about him so he tries to find what people might criticize and prepares answers for them. Don't get me wrong, I've got more than my money's worth for one month subscription and if you are interested in the topic and you can afford it, there is some good stuff in there but I just couldn't continue because those explanations became too distracting for me.

This course is fantastic. For anyone that wants a campanion book to go along with it, Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective is a great book to go alongside it. (Just don't get the international edition per the author's recommendation).

This course is excellent. I personally prefer Caseys communication style as he pre-empts any ifs and buts to the point be is making. This may lead to longer videos but the actual ideas are explained thoroughly and stick. Every section I have completed has led to decent insights for me, personally.

I can see some comments saying hes long winded, but he also provides written transcripts with diagrams too if you prefer to speed read through.

Hope he continues rolling out high quality videos going deeper into the subject matter. Overall an excellent course imho.

Caseys communication style as he pre-empts any ifs and buts to the point be is making

Usually this is someone taking detours due to insecurity and needing to cover every base so no one can contradict any small detail. For people new to a subject it is much better to over simplify, even if there are technically caveats to what a presenter is saying.

> For people new to a subject it is much better to over simplify, even if there are technically caveats to what a presenter is saying.

To be fair, this isn't beginner content. This is the closest we have to master classes in game programming. I very much have met and can imagine the kinds of people in the field who would scrutinize every sentence and claim Casey makes. Hell Casey himself is the kind of person that would scrutinize every sentence and claim made.

I don't know what that says about the field and that subset of developers, but I get the angle Casey is going for.

While I see what you are saying, I didn’t get the impression that he is insecure.

Imho, I felt he was just passionate about the subject and went on potential “tangents” for the extra context. For example, he would sometimes go into some extraneous historical anecdote, but personally I enjoyed these.

But yes, perhaps the format is not for everyone thats for sure.

Subscribed immediately. I love Casey's work.

Me too but this is so far from what I could possibly work in the next years, I prefer to invest any extra time on AI/ML related stuff...

That depends on what level of the AI/ML stack you want to work at.

>this is so far from what I could possibly work in the next years

okay? This stuff is unabashedly a niche of a niche to go into (as well as most of Casey's other gamedev content). Unlike 20 years ago you can easily have a successful Game SWE career without ever looking at a line of disassemby.

if being an engine programmer or an indie developer making/highly modifying your engine of choice isn't an attractive prospect, you don't necessarily need to know such content in this course.

This says parts are only available to paid subscribers, but when you click subscribe there is no price only an email sign-up form. What does this cost?

$10 a month

I much preferred the articles Casey wrote some years ago.

His oral communication style is quite messy/noisy for my taste, his writing style is also not super terse but I can parse it more easily and get to the good stuff.

Overall the handmade gang is doing a good job, even if they are often quite defensive and sometimes obnoxious.

I am sure some of the subscribers have already downloaded all the videos, so please share ;)

what languages are used in those series

is it mainly c/c++

You can use any language to follow and solve the exercises; Casey presents his own solutions in C/C++.

I wouldn’t go that far. The first portion (the assembly interpreter) looks doable in something like Python. But I’m unsure how you’re going to manage the other topics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com