d-Fect Inc.

Blog

  • Beginning C++, section 1-3

    I chose to do these three sections in one blog post since they don’t really contain much specific C++ teaching. When I get to more specific lectures I’ll make more in depth posts about what I’ve learned from those lectures.

    CodeLite

    Section 1 – Introduction

    This section goes into why you should learn C++ and a little bit about the history of the language.

    The simple reasons the teacher gives for why is two; salary and popularity.

    At least in the States it seems like C++ developers can earn good money. How it is over here I don’t know, but I see that there are several open positions for people knowing the language.

    The course points to several websites that make different indexes about the popularity of different programming languages. The most interesting link might be a ZDNet-article called Which programming languages are most popular (and what does that even mean)? It is sort of a rundown of all of the other pages linked in the course and it has some discussions about which way to go. You’ll see that C++ is ranked as one of the top 6 popular languages used now and it recommends you choose either C++ or Java as your first language to learn.

    Section 2 – Installation and Setup

    In this section the course just goes through some of the tools you can use to program C++. The teacher has gone for something that is cross-platform and has low requirements and has ended up with CodeLite as the IDE and they are going to use GNU compilers.

    Since I’m using Windows I ended up with using MinGW and CodeLite, but the course also goes through setting up systems for Mac OSX and Ubuntu Linux.

    It also links to some websites you can use if you quickly want to test some stuff and don’t have access to your IDE in the moment.

    Section 3 – Curriculum Overview

    As the title of the section explains pretty good, this is just an overview of what the course will be about and also how the course is built up with lectures and challenges.

     

  • Unreal Engine Developer Course, section 1-2

    This course is made by Ben Tristem and he has gathered a team of very good people around him and they are making some of the best online courses I’ve experienced. In addition to the Udemy site and it’s tools you will also get access to a website called GameDev.tv when taking this course.  I’ll go deeper into this in another blog post later.

    I’ll quickly go through the first couple of sections in this course since I did them some time ago and don’t think I can manage to do a detailed description of each lecture now.

    UnrealEngine

    Section 1 – Introduction and Setup

    This section gives a introduction to the course, what you get and the tools you will be using. Really nothing special, but you’ll learn to set up your system on Windows and Mac and getting ready to continue through the rest of the course.

    Section 2 – Bulls & Cows Word Console Game – Your First C++

    This section is an introduction into C++. The course itself requires no previous C++ knowledge, so here they introduce basic C++ to make a simple console game. They introduce you to the different concepts in C++, it’s syntax, functions, includes and namespaces, constants, variables, loops, comparisons, classes etc. This section is more or less the short version of the other programming course I’m taking, Beginning C++.

    Unreal is not touched at all in this section, but they do some things to get you ready for programming C++ with some specialised Unreal syntax.

    In the end you  end up with a nice little guessing game that they encourage you to change up and build on to make your own version.

    So yeah, that was the quick run through of these two sections. They’re really not that special just some intro to Unreal and C++. Some of the C++ concepts is covered very quickly and can be hard to understand, but this is just an intro to something we will be using a lot in the rest of the course so hopefully we’ll learn more about how to use it as the course progress.

    Edit: Did some editorial stuff to make the piece read better. Also changed from Unity to Unreal as I somehow got confused when I wrote the article and wrote the wrong name.

  • A new start

    young-game-match-kids.jpgSo, this spring might be a new start for me. Things happened earlier in winter that gave me time to think about a lot of things. So I decided to take advantage of what happened and run with it. Sadly life always comes in the way, so for now I haven’t been able to run as far as I wanted to, but maybe. This is a first step and hopefully there will be many that will lead me to new and wonderful places. It will be a multipart journey and I will try to document all of it on this site.

    Health

    pexels-photo-262876.jpeg

    One part is my personal health and well-being. I’ve been way to heavy for a long time, clocking in at around 115kg. That is way too much when I’m only 177cm tall. For a long time my goal has been to get down to two digit weight, so 99kg. It’s been far from easy and I’ve been hovering around 112-115 for ages with no real progress.

    But over 5 weeks this winter I went down about 10-12kg “for free”. I got ill, lost my appetite and the kilos vanished, so now I hover around 103-104kg in stead. Much better and SO much closer to my 99kg goal.

    Now you will probably say that weight you lose when ill will always come back. Well, I’ve managed to stay at my current weight for about a month now without gaining anything, so I have hope that I might not get heavier again if I continue do the right things.

    The other thing I got from being ill over a longer period was a huge change in my eating habits. I used to be very fond of chocolate and Coca-Cola. I still like chocolate, but I don’t have the same hunger for it that I used to. And Coca-Cola and other sugary drinks I can’t even touch now. They are just SO sweet. But I do have gotten a liking to fruit. So this means what I put into my body will contain much less calories and also be more healthy.

    The other thing is that since I’m now lighter it’s much easier to move around. I have just dropped a 10kg weight behind and that is quite a lot when walking, bicycling, doing push-ups, lifting weights or other exercises. This means it’s much more probable that I will increase my exercise and the amount I move around.

    So my health goals for this year is to get below 100kg in weight, increase my fitness and build core musculature. I’ll target my weight by eating properly and don’t stuff junk into my face whenever. The fitness will be addressed by using a rowing machine that we have at work, my bicycle and general trekking in the woods around where I live. The core musculature will be taken care of by lifting weights. If I can I will do the Stronglifts 5×5 program, but at least I will do a mini version of that. And sleep! Sleep is important. I’ve gotten way too little of that in recent years.

    Hopefully this will make me get in better shape, get stronger and generally feel better. This feeling leads me to part two of my journey.

    Personal development

    notes-macbook-study-conference.jpg

    There are two parts to my personal development this year.

    • Professional skills
    • Personal motivation

    Professional skills

    For my professional skills I will be learning programming. And not just any language, I’m attempting to learn C++. To do that I’m taking a couple of courses on Udemy.

    Both courses are pretty extensive and are lead by people with real experience and a goal of teaching people new skills.

    The Beginning C++ course is still not completed on the site, but so far contains 240 lectures and over 34 hours of video content. It’s 21 sections and 20 of them are complete so I have lots of stuff to get through before that last section completes the course.

    The Unreal course is complete but they still update it when needed. For instance it was written using Visual Studio 2015, but they have added and or edited videos to include content related to Visual Studio 2017 if there’s a difference. They’ve done the same with the Unreal Engine and updated  the course to include whatever changes there are between older versions and the current Unreal Engine v4.19.1. This course contains 319 lectures and a whopping 56 hours of video.

    Personal motivation

    For this one I’ve also chosen to start with a couple of  Udemy courses.

    The first course is pretty small, but I guess there’s a reason for that since one of the points of the course is time management and don’t wasting it. So 14 lectures and less than 1 hour of video, but it will give you the tools needed to identify tasks and optimize your time usage.

    The Finish It! course is more about projects and how to complete them. It again gives you the tools needed to getting the overview, identifying blocks, building your momentum and habits to get the results you need.

    I’ll be making separate posts about all the courses I take in separate blog posts. I will also make posts about the courses every time I have gone through some lectures. I will try to summarise what I’ve learned but also try to answer any questions that I got after watching the lectures.

    I hope you will join me on my journey. If you have questions about the topics I write about I’ll try to answer to the best of my abilities. I also hope I can get help from you people to answer questions I might have and that I can’t find the answer for anywhere else. Hopefully all of us will get something out of this. That’s my end goal for this blog.

  • The Journey Begins

    Thanks for joining me on my journey through the rest of my life.

    I just put up this website today so it’s kind of empty right now, but I am busy writing posts and there will be at least three more this week. And then goal is to have at least two or three every week going on.

    Hope you will be joining me, as I really like to get feedback on things I do.

    Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

     

    post