trykondev

After I graduated with a computer science degree, I spent a year playing competitive chess. I had already dedicated a lot of my free time in the last two years of my degree to chess and I couldn't wait to be done with school so that I could go all-in on chess.

I learned a lot of valuable life lessons during that year and I am glad I took that time before diving right into my career in tech. At the time, I was nervous that I was ruining my life by not getting started right away at a "real job", but things turned out completely fine -- in fact, I think my manager at my first big tech job was more intrigued by my chess skills than my coding skills :)

I haven't really organized anything, and I appreciate this post as a wake-up call to start putting a solution in place.

I worked at a big tech company for a couple of years and I was really unhappy, even though it was supposedly the type of job many people in the industry would have been excited to have. I feel like I can empathize with the problem of being involved in the tech world, but feeling disillusioned with many of the career options available.

I eventually found clarity by focusing on what I'd want to do if money was not an option & it helped me identify where my true passions were -- some were within tech & some were outside of tech, and it helped me make good choices about how to try and spend my time. Unfortunately there will not necessarily be a perfect way to make money at these things, but it can at least inform the direction you should work toward long-term. You've listed a couple of areas of interest, and so if you'd like to pursue those, try to make space in your life to always be working on problems in those spaces at least part of the time. But if your real interests are all outside of tech -- it's okay to leave tech. You ultimately don't want to be stuck in an industry that you don't really care about.

One other area that might be something to consider, which is something I got involved with after I left my job: conducting technical interviews. It's a great mix of getting to interact with real people, while still leveraging your technical skills (and usually remote, which is a big perk). The kinds of questions involved in the classical technical interview usually cater to people with strong algorithm & data structures knowledge, but are super learnable for anyone with not a lot of experience with those particular topics as long as you've got solid coding skills.

If you (or anyone else reading this) would be interested in chatting a bit more about that space in particular, I'm always excited to share more details about it -- it was a really positive experience for me to discover that world. My contact info is in my profile.

I think this is exactly correct, and I hate that this behavior of offloading testing onto users seems more and more to just be the expectation rather than the exception.

Coinbase had a number of issues when cryptocurrencies really exploded in 2017, and at that time I felt more willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because the landscape of cryptocurrencies had shifted so dramatically and I could empathize with their struggles to keep up. Two years later, there aren't any excuses anymore in my mind. As the parent comment says -- it's just not a priority.

I've happily moved off the platform to other options which have given me no trouble whatsoever.

This is a really cool idea! I love that there's an option to train on git commands. Git has always been the kind of thing where I only learn as much as I need in order to do the task immediately in front of me, so this kind of thing might be a useful way to level up my skills in that area.

I also really love that in the "about" section, you include lots of details about the architecture of the project. I was only expecting a summary of how to use the project, but all these additional details were really nice to see.

As time goes on and more people enter the industry, I wonder if tech as a whole will come to mirror the video game industry more closely. In video games, it does seem like the oversupply of programmers & their desire to work in the industry no matter what causes lower wages and longer hours for employees relative to the rest of the tech world. And in the independent video game development scene (which might be more analogous to startups), the number of financially unsuccessful games is growing massively as more and more people try to get involved. It seems to be at the point where you need to go into that space assuming it will be unprofitable.

I guess it depends on the talent distribution of the influx of new aspiring engineers -- after all, in some contexts it doesn't matter if 2-3x more people are lining up to willingly do your job if they don't have the skillset to actually replace you. But it could be unfortunate for the jobs that don't have the luxury of being protected by high barriers to entry.

Thank you so much for such a detailed reply -- I would definitely be interested in reading your article! My email is in my bio.

I definitely agree with the insight that having options can reduce the feeling of stress, and that's a great way to articulate that point -- a hobby project with options to take a break and do something else versus a work scenario where you have no choice but to push forward and often times money or reputation is on the line.

The analogy with physical exercise is a great point and hopefully a helpful way to think about mental exertion as well. In the context of avoiding chronic stress, I wonder how an average 9-5 software job compares to the physical equivalent. For example, if you have a job where you are on your feet all day but mostly just walking around (maybe like a park ranger), resting that night & resuming the job the next day is usually enough. But you probably couldn't play in the NFL 5 days a week & would need more rest in between than just a good night's sleep.

So if we look at a software engineer's week, is it more like the park ranger or the NFL player? I assume most knowledge workers don't exert 100% of their mental energy all day long, so maybe it's somewhere in between a park ranger and an NFL player. Perhaps after a particular taxing day, knowledge workers should think about that exertion more like an NFL game and might need a full day or two to recuperate. I guess work schedules sometimes make this kind of rest schedule tough to do in practice.

It could be worth trying to monitor exertion levels so that it stays in the zone of temporary stress and doesn't become chronic stress, which is when it becomes really harmful as you've pointed out.

I appreciate all of your insight & I plan to do a bit more research on some of the topics you've mentioned here.

I've been thinking lately about the line between feeling "stimulated" and feeling "stressed" by intellectual work. I certainly crave challenging problems but I feel sometimes like that inherently brushes up against stress -- thinking hard about a problem and hitting frustrating roadblocks along the way is more stressful than laying on the beach, but also to me feels much more meaningful.

I worry if the type of person who seeks out stimulating work and having that become a source of stress is risking damaging their health in the longer term -- I always vaguely assumed thinking hard about problems was a net positive for my brain & would keep me mentally active, but perhaps it's worth thinking about finding ways to keep doing this kind of work and at the same time minimizing the impact of the stress it causes.

Maybe aiming to work only when feeling well-rested, or working without deadlines could be things to consider along these lines -- I don't really have a central thesis or solution to stress-free & stimulating work, but these kinds of ideas have been on my mind.

I've been using Unity for more than half a decade at this point. Some of their choices along the way have been really frustrating to deal with, but on the whole, they've empowered me and plenty of colleagues to create things we might not have been able to otherwise. (Or at least, certainly not as easily).

I know it's popular to hate on Unity for some of the bad games produced using the engine, but I don't really think that's fair -- to me, that's a failure of the storefronts that host subpar games. Creating a tool that makes it easier for people to make games is awesome.

Unity has given me a lot, and I root for the company's success.

I love that you admitted to the movie part! I think there is a lot of personal satisfaction to be gained from using financial freedom to create art, even if it's not quite as easy to articulate to other people compared to the benefits of the other projects you mention. Certainly, it's my primary motivator. No need to be embarrassed!

You might have more success if you had a way to demo the project here -- speaking for myself, I'm always intrigued by these kinds of posts but I would never follow up on something without either existing revenue or some way to judge the upside for myself.

1. Working 100% remotely has led to a massive increase in my quality of life.

2. Make the time for exercise, no matter what.

I had a similar experience -- I found my current job on the "Who's Hiring" and it's by far the best job I've ever had.

Thank you! One of the great joys of doing One Game a Week this time around has been making a more deliberate effort to share my work. I appreciate the kind words :)

Thanks very much! I'm really happy to hear you've found some of the blogs helpful. I've been trying to find my voice from a technical perspective in these blogs -- I want my articles to be helpful for people who have some game development experience, but I also want them to be accessible to a broader audience. So I really appreciate the feedback!

Thanks also for playing some of my games -- to be perfectly honest, I think Curious Castle might be my personal favorite so far as well :)

I released a puzzle game on the Microsoft Store last year. I have to admit I had fairly modest expectations from this platform -- I was also releasing my game on a couple of other platforms and I did not expect many sales from the Microsoft Store in particular. It turned out to be a great choice -- they briefly featured our game, but even if you ignore the sales from that period, the Microsoft store has accounted for about 70% of our sales overall. I've also found their payout system to be really straightforward and easy to work with compared to some other large platforms.

The whole process was reasonably straightforward. It was a bit of a pain getting the build properly set up, removing certain incompatible API calls and getting all the icon files and all the other little settings and details in the exact configuration that the system expected so the store would accept the product. But it's probably about as much of a pain as building something through XCode and uploading to Apple's store.

The game I made is called Omnicube, link here for anyone who'd like to check it out: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/omnicube/9njcwkrx4mmh

Creator here -- this is the third game I've made for One Game a Week 2019. This is the battle system from a game my brother and I originally devised almost twenty years ago, except in those days we played it on a piece of paper with colored markers.

Read more about The Marker Game here: https://www.trykonstudios.com/post/the-marker-game-recap

This one always breaks my heart: https://xkcd.com/695/

(It's about Spirit, not Opportunity, but still).

When I was first starting my game development career back in 2014, I read a very impactful article by Rami Ismail about the value of creating one game a week -- the idea being that by finishing a large number of small projects, you gain valuable experience that you might not get by working for a year on a single larger game and potentially never finishing it.

I started building one game a week in April 2014 and did this for about 6-8 weeks. It was the most enjoyable, creatively satisfying project I've ever worked on -- brainstorming a new idea each week and witnessing very tangible progress from an essentially blank project on Monday to an actual playable game on the following Sunday was a magical feeling.

So after releasing my first commercial game this past summer, I decided that as soon as I could fit it into my schedule I was going to spend some time working on a new one game a week project.

I'm going to be starting it in February and I'm so incredibly beyond excited!! I will be posting about it closer to the start date, but if this kind of thing interests you, please feel free to reach out -- I'm hoping some other people might join in and make games during the same time period. I'll be starting work on my week 1 game on Monday, Feb. 11th.

Link to Rami's original article: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RamiIsmail/20140226/211807/G...

HN has completely changed my life for the better. Reading about people working at big tech companies really opened my eyes and inspired me to move to the North American west coast and start seeking out more opportunities. That directly led to getting a job at Microsoft which was something I'd only ever fantasized about.

After leaving Microsoft, I also found my current job through HN, in a "Who's Hiring" thread. It's a super flexible job that allows me to work remotely and have enough time to focus on my game development career on the side.

These things don't even take into account my enjoyment of the informed, high-quality comments and overall high level of discourse I find on HN, as well as all of the awesome, informative articles people post on here.

I wish more of the internet was like HN. I owe this site so much. Thank you, HN!

Probably the best year of my life so far. I moved in with my long-term, long-distance partner, and I achieved a major career milestone of releasing my first commercial independent game. I also have been working on a memoir of my experiences as a competitive chess player, and I finished the first draft of my manuscript over the summer.

These are all things that I had been looking forward to for a long time, and they've brought me immense joy in 2018. I've definitely had end-of-year blues in the past, but this year I'm feeling really happy and satisfied!

This is a fun question -- I think my zone outs work as memory processing time. I often find myself replaying certain memories, particularly recent interactions I've had with people, and just re-watching the events that transpired in my mind. I sometimes will smile or cringe as I recall these events but rarely do I think about them "critically" (oh, Bob probably asked me that question for such and such a reason!) or have any kind of internal monologue doing commentary over these memories -- I just sort of passively remember them.

It is interesting to think about how this kind of blank thinking time could be used better -- like a rehearsal, as you experience, or thinking in a more directed way. I wonder how automatic this process is -- in my case, will I always by default just re-remembering events? Anyway, thanks for a neat question!

Yeah, agreed -- I think ads would be insufficient. Right now we're planning to have a paid monthly subscription model. We'll probably scale it based on how many pictures actually get ordered through your account each month, up to some pre-defined maximum monthly quota.

My mother has expressed to me several times her disappointment at not having any printed pictures since she got her iPhone. I usually remind her that she can get her pictures printed if she really wanted to -- but after several years of this, I realized that the hassle of getting them printed is enough of a barrier that it's never going to happen.

So I'm working on an app that will allow for automatic printing and delivery of pictures from mobile devices:

http://www.printstream.net/

You can add pictures to your PrintStream account and it will choose a certain number each month to print and deliver to you. We also are thinking about an even more automatic method, where the app will algorithmically choose from all of your photos each month without having to explicitly add them to your PrintStream account. This is definitely a feature my mother would want, but we want this to be opt-in to protect the privacy of the users.

I'm still prototyping the app using React Native but I'm excited to get it up and running.

I worked for a large tech company in Seattle and the actual living in Seattle part of it was tremendous (I didn't really enjoy the work, but that's a whole other story). I really loved living in Bellevue in particular -- it's very clean and beautiful.

You'll save a lot more money living in Seattle compared to SF. The weather is a bit dreary sometimes, but I didn't find it to be much of a problem.

If you're participating as a player, good luck! What openings are you playing?

Also...go Mickey Adams!

I'm working on the mobile version of Omnicube, which is a really hard puzzle game set on a talking cube in space.

I released the game a couple of months ago for Windows and Mac. I've had lots of requests to bring the game to mobile -- the mechanics are a great fit for touch devices, but it's hard to fit the entire interface onto a smaller screen. I'm working on some tricks and optimizations to improve the experience on mobile devices.

You can check out the desktop version of the game on Steam, itch.io, or the Windows Store. I also keep a development log on TIGSource.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/800860/Omnicube

itch.io: https://trykon.itch.io/omnicube

Windows Store: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/omnicube/9njcwkrx4mm...

TIGSource devlog: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=63388.0

Yes -- it's one of my most prized possessions. I have been keeping a daily diary for the past five years in a text editor, recording thoughts, events, and useful links.

I find it very helpful to have a place to vent or just elaborate on my thoughts. I rarely go back and read previous entries, aside from reflective times like New Year's. I love its existence as something akin to an art piece. It provides a candid snapshot into the daily train of thought of a twentysomething developer and writer.

It's deeply personal, but I do hope someday to make it available for people to read in some context -- it's the most real and honest thing I've ever created.

Thank you! I appreciate the kind words :)

A lot of people have mentioned wanting to see the game on mobile, and I do plan to port it later on this year. You are very much correct in assessing the main issue, which is the fact that it's hard to fit a 14x14 grid (plus the surrounding art) onto a small screen. We're considering things like zooming the camera all the way in on the grid itself, and then re-arranging the buttons to the top and bottom of the screen, or maybe giving the user a control to zoom in and out, but we haven't committed to a solution quite yet.

As far as distribution of effort, I certainly thought the same when I started the game -- I thought I'd just write the code for the mechanics in a few weeks and then spend most of the time refining the puzzles and level balance. To be honest, though, I found the exact opposite to be true -- I spent probably 3-4 weeks designing and perfecting the puzzles, but all the implementation of the mechanics/UI tweaks/transitions took several months. This was probably partly due to the visual style we decided on, though.

The project I'm working on now is much, much simpler visually. Since Omnicube was our first commercial game, we felt a lot of pressure to make it "look like a real game". My thinking now is more biased toward focusing on the content quality and worrying less about what people will think about the professional-ness of the visuals.

A few months ago I launched my first commercial video game, Omnicube. It's a really hard puzzle game set on a talking cube in space.

After the initial launch sales bump, we've been earning about $400/month.

We launched the game on Steam, Windows Store, and itch.io.

I'd be happy to discuss any aspect of the project in more detail. Here are the links to the store pages for anyone who is interested:

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/800860/Omnicube/

Windows Store: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/omnicube/9njcwkrx4mm...

Itch.io: https://trykon.itch.io/omnicube