The LCTHW Weekly Update #1

Hello, Zed here with this week's status for learncodethehardway.com. This week I have some extremely good resources I've found on everything from C++ to game development, big announcement on courses, and progress reports on where I'm at with videos and course development.

You can read this email at https://learncodethehardway.com/emails/09-lcthw-weekly-update-1/

The End of My Tech Woes (Maybe)

I have had some of the biggest technology problems for the last 3 years. Everything from bad electrical systems in my house frying audio equipment, to bad service providers breaking my sales, to Dell pushing out a BIOS fix that actually bricked my computer completely.

Dell's horrendous disaster ended up being my salvation because I was able to cannibalize parts from that old laptop and use them in a new PC that was not only way cheaper than buying new, but about 8x faster than the laptop. If you're looking to build a PC, the parts these days are really good (just don't buy Intel though).

I'm at a point now where I haven't had any major tech catastrophes for a whole month, and so I'm now able to get back to finally recording videos and producing content for the courses. You honestly do not know how much all of this has been holding me back. It was an absolute nightmare.

Big Server Migration Done

One massive blocker for almost all of my other work has been the need to get off multiple servers I don't need. This problem has prevented me from doing critical upgrades, using resources to pay for email delivery, and possibly hiring people to do other work for me like design or possibly some marketing.

This week I finally migrated off everything I've been using that's not necessary, cleaned up all of my servers, and moved to two smaller but faster and cheaper servers. I'm still bringing back the better video performance I've used in the past, so please be patient if your videos seem to load a little slowly for the next week or so.

Now that the servers are migrated I'll be able to finally write these news letters each week and also reliably stream and produce content for the exercises.

C++ Course on Game Development

Yep, that's right, I'm making a C++ course that will be free to read at https://learncodethehardway.com/courses/learn-cpp-the-hard-way/ with a very small fee for videos (to cover serving costs). I want to have a resource that anyone who wants to learn "old school" programming can read, and games are typically a big motivator for people getting into programming. I mean, even I want to learn to make games.

Why C++? Didn't the Whitehouse throw C++ under the bus with C and declare it dead? Yes, but that's kind of why I'm teaching it. C++ is punk rock now. The government hates it. I'm sticking it to the Man baby.

Also because C++ is really fun and you can make games with it very easily. Think of C++ as teaching the same important things C teaches, but with better ergonomics, way better capabilities, and a ton of support in the game development world.

If you want to read a longer form essay about my thinking on why C++ you can read the blog post I wrote about it. I break down the reasons, analyze what to teach and what not to teach, and go through existing material to sort out what's useful for my own re-education.

Automated Dev Tools Installs on Windows

I've created a small project that hosts a bunch of PowerShell scripts to automate installing various developer tools and programming languages on Windows. These scripts are not fancy, but they get the job done.

If you're looking for a quick way to setup a basic dev environment for C, C++, Python, Ruby, Zig, Go, Rust, Crystal, and many more then check out the lcthw-windows-installers git repo to find out more. I'm also looking for help adding more languages, so feel free to submit your own script to me.

My game-dev-starter-pack is Live

I did a bunch of research and created a little SFML C++ game dev starter pack that includes most of what you need to get started making little games. It already has ImGui and Box2d integrated, and makes a bouncing little smiley face. If you've been curious about game dev, then check it out as the code is very tiny for what it does:

https://git.learnjsthehardway.com/learn-code-the-hard-way/game-dev-starter-pack

Turing's Tarpit is My First Game

To learn game development I've been working on an idea for a game called Turing's Tarpit. It's pretty weird, but basically it watches you code and runs your builds for you. Every error you make translates into damage you've taken. When you run out of HP you die. It's like Elden Ring for Programmers.

Very simple right now, but I'm going to be making it more complex in the future and more like a real game to keep you on your toes while you code.

The idea for the game comes from watching a bunch of people do coding live streams and thinking, "We need something that can spice up coding streams!" This little game is the result of that idea.

You can check out my extremely alpha and mostly broken because I'm working on the new UI at the git repo:

https://git.learnjsthehardway.com/learn-code-the-hard-way/turings-tarpit

Watch Me Code a Game on Twitch

Finally, now that all my problems with servers and technology are over I'm back to streaming every day on Twitch. If you want to watch me write code for Turing's Tarpit, make art for games or just old school art, and play some video games, the please follow me on Twitch at:

https://twitch.tv/zedashaw

Hope to see you there one day. It's a good time.

Crazy Useful Links I Found

• David Mazières C++ coroutine tutorial -- I've learned more about C++ (not just coroutines) from this one tutorial than probably anything else I've read in the last two months.
• https://cppreference.com -- The best C++ reference material out there, and more importantly it indicates when a feature was introduced so you can see if your compiler supports it.
• https://www.youtube.com/@AdamCYounis -- Adam C. Younis' Youtube Channel is an insanely good resource for Pixel art education.
• https://www.sfml-dev.org/ -- A decent simple C++ game library that I'm using which works well. Joystick support is kind of meh though.
• https://libresprite.github.io/#!/ -- Really good pixel art editor, mostly an AeSprite knockoff but works well.
• https://www.aseprite.org/ -- Aseprite is currently the king of pixel art tools.
• https://www.mapeditor.org/ -- Tiled is a really great map editor that supports a wide range of map generation and designing styles. I've been using it to toy around with isometric maps and how they should work.
• https://www.wistedt.net/tutorials/tutorial-isometric-dungeon-map/ -- A very good tutorial on how to draw (with pen and paper) an isometric dungeon map.

Have a Great Week

I only have time to send these out once a week, so I'll see you next week. If you have something cool you think I should check out, hit that reply and let me know. I'm always looking for awesome stuff to write about or use.

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