10 ms·

Sometimes I feel like i'm an untalented, unproductive waste of oxygen. Then I see a post like this and know for sure that I am.

p1esk 6y ago
I blame Netflix instead
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  Blaming is easy. Start doing things is easy, too. Finishing stuff, is hard. The trick is to gradually work your way up from small, completed projects. If you start big, you probably fail big.
  - deckard1 6y ago
    Yep. All big projects started as small projects. The hard part is justifying the time spent on a project. You often start a project and feel like it's not the best use of your time. That you may be the only one to use the project or find value in the project and that's enough to kill motivation. Why start a business if the vast majority of businesses fail? Why start a business when there is already so much competition? Why write a novel when there is no hope of selling it? Then there are the "I'm too old for..." thoughts. These thoughts eat away at people. If someone pointed me to my purpose project and told me if I were to keep at it that I would find guaranteed success, then I would have an infinite well of energy at my disposal. But of course, no one is there to tell you that.
    - markus_zhang 6y ago
      I think the pbjective of a project is to...be a time filler, like I can definitely watch Netflix and then Netflix does not satisfy my creative mind so programming something would be a better exercise.
  - tomcam 6y ago
    Parent poster might have been committing a wee joke there
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      A joke yes, but probably one with too much bitter truth in it.
christiansakai 6y ago
You can still be a consumer/buyer, like me. Together we make the world go round and around.
Hydraulix9899 6y ago
The power is within you to change that, you know?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
e_tm_ 6y ago
Came here to say this. Kudos to the author.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Eh, yeah, it can feel like that, but the probably reality is that you just have different priorities in life. Especially as you get older and it starts to sink in how finite your time is, you can't let yourself be fooled into thinking you have to accomplish certain things to be worthy. I program, rock climb, ride bikes, and write. For any given one of those I can easily find 10,000 people who are more accomplished than I am and often at a younger age. I accept that I will never be that good at any of them, not because I can't be, but because I don't want to invest that much of myself into one of them. There's nothing wrong with that.
- weerd 6y ago
  Don't discount the creativity, intelligence, and dedication it takes to create something like this. Chances are you actually can't, even if you did make it a priority.
  - ironmagma 6y ago
    Nonsense. Sure, they wouldn’t make this exact game, but neither would the entire rest of the population who is capable of making a project like this. Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability, and if you need to convince yourself of that, think about how fast a computer can do an arbitrary thing versus how fast a human can, or how different a mouse’s musical intellect is from a human’s.
    - oogabooga123 6y ago
      > Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability This is a story we stop telling kids around the end of high school. We tell this story because, as a child, being told you’re dumb can stunt intellectual growth, or being told you’re not physically capable can stop kids from forming a habit of exercising.
      - ironmagma 6y ago
        I don’t mean it in the way it’s sometimes expressed as, “you can train anyone to do anything,” I mean it in the sense that the 50%ile capable person is really all things considered, not that different from the 95%ile capable person. The range is just not that high. A person can only accomplish so much in the day and with the animal body we are given. Compare that to a computer, which for many tasks, can accomplish things at a rate 10,000,000 times faster than a human.
ysavir 6y ago
It's easy to feel discouraged, but keep in mind: 1. The author didn't write this overnight. The oldest commits go back to Oct. 2017, three and a half years ago. Imagine what you could accomplish if you worked on something for three and a half years. 2. There are many things we can do with our time, and ultimately we do them all to be happy. Don't measure your own worth by how much product you leave behind. Measure it instead by how happy you are today. Most likely the OP wrote this code because working on it made them happy, and that's great. For many of us, though, the activities that make us happy don't have biproducts. But that doesn't detract from how happy those activities make us. Value the things that you do because they make you happy, not because they appear impressive when held against some external grading scheme. Edit: list formatting
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  I wish more people like the author of the OP would feel free to admit things like they were compelled to finish the project because they couldn't see anything else they felt like doing with their time, so that's simply where all the time went. That would make perfect sense in my mind, and restore a notion of calm. One problem is making assumptions that the author is trying to prove something by a clear display of superiority. The code itself is of a high quality, from what other people are saying. But it's probably only because so much effort was put in for three years on it. Also, I have to wonder how many other doors the author left closed because he spent so much time on this project. Was there anything else of a similar impact that he contributed to for all those years? And what of the other things he may have passed up? Some projects will consume you. They will be the tantalizing activity pulling you away from Friday night dinner parties with people you don't understand and other miscellaneous outings that are comparatively less interesting. You constantly think you're leaving something unsaid or undone away from a keyboard. In some cases you feel obligated to continue for no reason other than having already come so close to accomplishing the thing, sunk costs and all. With some projects, hypothetically, if someone is to see me in a cafe with nothing better to do, I'm almost certainly going to wrap up my current conversation after a point and take out my laptop to continue working. That is how my life is structured with those projects. That is how they affect my actions day after day. It isn't necessarily a life of glory. Working on projects and having the finished product in my hands is not what brings me happiness; it merely staves off misery. It fills a void in my life that was agonizing up to that point. My theory is that if your goal is to avoid misery and despair at any cost, and have the means to do so, you can be driven out of desperation to accomplish substantial things. Other people could see what I did and make their own guesses as to what it took. But really I was only trying to prevent myself from becoming undone. It was simply too irritating of a problem for me to leave alone. I'll probably never be able to fully explain why. It certainly wasn't because I was trying to prove something to other people. But I'm only speaking from my personal experience. It's not like I actually understand why the author did what he did. People just don't seem to know at the moment, and maybe that's where the air of sadness over suddenly seeing this accomplishment come out of nowhere originates. There's nothing to counterbalance the impact of learning of its existence within a split second with what actually went on behind the scenes for many orders of magnitude longer.
einpoklum 6y ago
1. Fight try to measure yourself up against the most talented person you can think of. Can you code? Well, then, there are plenty of FOSS projects in the languages you know which could use your help. Can't code? Not a problem, do QA work then, that's important and very useful and not enough people do it seriously. 2. Seek self-fulfillment and purpose in other aspects of your life. I am 100% sure the people around you - family, community, neighborhood, etc. - could use someone who devotes some time for doing good. Sure, it might not be what you had assumed you would gain fame and glory doing, but so what? I'd be more specific but obviously I don't know anything about you or where you live or what you do.
markus_zhang 6y ago
How about we setup a plan to develop something similar and stick to it for a few months and see what happens? I mean this is definitely a piece of gem, but nothing is exactly high tech or hugely difficult. And if you don't think you can make it, you can lower the target and create a, say, a 2d rpg engine that emulates Ultima IV or Pool of Radiance, those pioneers of modern RPG. For art assets you can use free resources or purchase inexpensive ones. I really think that's achievable for pretty much every programmer. After all in some universities they give you a similar task as a project for advanced game programming classes. And then you go from there, polish the game and make it fun to play.
- markus_zhang 6y ago
  To clarify, I'm not saying that the RTS of OP is similar to a university project. I'm speaking about the watered down 2D RPG engine.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
It is extremely impressive but judging from commit history it took over 4 years to build this. My takeaway is that the most difficult part of building something like this isn't the code, it's the life skill of sticking with it. I think that's both a more valuable and difficult skill to acquire.

p1esk 6y ago

I blame Netflix instead

hutzlibu 6y ago
Blaming is easy. Start doing things is easy, too. Finishing stuff, is hard. The trick is to gradually work your way up from small, completed projects. If you start big, you probably fail big.
- deckard1 6y ago
  Yep. All big projects started as small projects. The hard part is justifying the time spent on a project. You often start a project and feel like it's not the best use of your time. That you may be the only one to use the project or find value in the project and that's enough to kill motivation. Why start a business if the vast majority of businesses fail? Why start a business when there is already so much competition? Why write a novel when there is no hope of selling it? Then there are the "I'm too old for..." thoughts. These thoughts eat away at people. If someone pointed me to my purpose project and told me if I were to keep at it that I would find guaranteed success, then I would have an infinite well of energy at my disposal. But of course, no one is there to tell you that.
  - markus_zhang 6y ago
    I think the pbjective of a project is to...be a time filler, like I can definitely watch Netflix and then Netflix does not satisfy my creative mind so programming something would be a better exercise.
- tomcam 6y ago
  Parent poster might have been committing a wee joke there
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    A joke yes, but probably one with too much bitter truth in it.

christiansakai 6y ago

You can still be a consumer/buyer, like me. Together we make the world go round and around.

Hydraulix9899 6y ago

The power is within you to change that, you know?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

e_tm_ 6y ago

Came here to say this. Kudos to the author.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

Eh, yeah, it can feel like that, but the probably reality is that you just have different priorities in life. Especially as you get older and it starts to sink in how finite your time is, you can't let yourself be fooled into thinking you have to accomplish certain things to be worthy. I program, rock climb, ride bikes, and write. For any given one of those I can easily find 10,000 people who are more accomplished than I am and often at a younger age. I accept that I will never be that good at any of them, not because I can't be, but because I don't want to invest that much of myself into one of them. There's nothing wrong with that.

weerd 6y ago
Don't discount the creativity, intelligence, and dedication it takes to create something like this. Chances are you actually can't, even if you did make it a priority.
- ironmagma 6y ago
  Nonsense. Sure, they wouldn’t make this exact game, but neither would the entire rest of the population who is capable of making a project like this. Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability, and if you need to convince yourself of that, think about how fast a computer can do an arbitrary thing versus how fast a human can, or how different a mouse’s musical intellect is from a human’s.
  - oogabooga123 6y ago
    > Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability This is a story we stop telling kids around the end of high school. We tell this story because, as a child, being told you’re dumb can stunt intellectual growth, or being told you’re not physically capable can stop kids from forming a habit of exercising.
    - ironmagma 6y ago
      I don’t mean it in the way it’s sometimes expressed as, “you can train anyone to do anything,” I mean it in the sense that the 50%ile capable person is really all things considered, not that different from the 95%ile capable person. The range is just not that high. A person can only accomplish so much in the day and with the animal body we are given. Compare that to a computer, which for many tasks, can accomplish things at a rate 10,000,000 times faster than a human.

ysavir 6y ago

It's easy to feel discouraged, but keep in mind: 1. The author didn't write this overnight. The oldest commits go back to Oct. 2017, three and a half years ago. Imagine what you could accomplish if you worked on something for three and a half years. 2. There are many things we can do with our time, and ultimately we do them all to be happy. Don't measure your own worth by how much product you leave behind. Measure it instead by how happy you are today. Most likely the OP wrote this code because working on it made them happy, and that's great. For many of us, though, the activities that make us happy don't have biproducts. But that doesn't detract from how happy those activities make us. Value the things that you do because they make you happy, not because they appear impressive when held against some external grading scheme. Edit: list formatting

nonbirithm 6y ago
I wish more people like the author of the OP would feel free to admit things like they were compelled to finish the project because they couldn't see anything else they felt like doing with their time, so that's simply where all the time went. That would make perfect sense in my mind, and restore a notion of calm. One problem is making assumptions that the author is trying to prove something by a clear display of superiority. The code itself is of a high quality, from what other people are saying. But it's probably only because so much effort was put in for three years on it. Also, I have to wonder how many other doors the author left closed because he spent so much time on this project. Was there anything else of a similar impact that he contributed to for all those years? And what of the other things he may have passed up? Some projects will consume you. They will be the tantalizing activity pulling you away from Friday night dinner parties with people you don't understand and other miscellaneous outings that are comparatively less interesting. You constantly think you're leaving something unsaid or undone away from a keyboard. In some cases you feel obligated to continue for no reason other than having already come so close to accomplishing the thing, sunk costs and all. With some projects, hypothetically, if someone is to see me in a cafe with nothing better to do, I'm almost certainly going to wrap up my current conversation after a point and take out my laptop to continue working. That is how my life is structured with those projects. That is how they affect my actions day after day. It isn't necessarily a life of glory. Working on projects and having the finished product in my hands is not what brings me happiness; it merely staves off misery. It fills a void in my life that was agonizing up to that point. My theory is that if your goal is to avoid misery and despair at any cost, and have the means to do so, you can be driven out of desperation to accomplish substantial things. Other people could see what I did and make their own guesses as to what it took. But really I was only trying to prevent myself from becoming undone. It was simply too irritating of a problem for me to leave alone. I'll probably never be able to fully explain why. It certainly wasn't because I was trying to prove something to other people. But I'm only speaking from my personal experience. It's not like I actually understand why the author did what he did. People just don't seem to know at the moment, and maybe that's where the air of sadness over suddenly seeing this accomplishment come out of nowhere originates. There's nothing to counterbalance the impact of learning of its existence within a split second with what actually went on behind the scenes for many orders of magnitude longer.

einpoklum 6y ago

1. Fight try to measure yourself up against the most talented person you can think of. Can you code? Well, then, there are plenty of FOSS projects in the languages you know which could use your help. Can't code? Not a problem, do QA work then, that's important and very useful and not enough people do it seriously. 2. Seek self-fulfillment and purpose in other aspects of your life. I am 100% sure the people around you - family, community, neighborhood, etc. - could use someone who devotes some time for doing good. Sure, it might not be what you had assumed you would gain fame and glory doing, but so what? I'd be more specific but obviously I don't know anything about you or where you live or what you do.

markus_zhang 6y ago

How about we setup a plan to develop something similar and stick to it for a few months and see what happens? I mean this is definitely a piece of gem, but nothing is exactly high tech or hugely difficult. And if you don't think you can make it, you can lower the target and create a, say, a 2d rpg engine that emulates Ultima IV or Pool of Radiance, those pioneers of modern RPG. For art assets you can use free resources or purchase inexpensive ones. I really think that's achievable for pretty much every programmer. After all in some universities they give you a similar task as a project for advanced game programming classes. And then you go from there, polish the game and make it fun to play.

markus_zhang 6y ago
To clarify, I'm not saying that the RTS of OP is similar to a university project. I'm speaking about the watered down 2D RPG engine.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

It is extremely impressive but judging from commit history it took over 4 years to build this. My takeaway is that the most difficult part of building something like this isn't the code, it's the life skill of sticking with it. I think that's both a more valuable and difficult skill to acquire.