Priorities and Me; Gaining productivity.

Priorities and Me; Gaining productivity.

I wrote a big, rambling, long post basically going over things I have already gone over then deleted it. It was more of a way to clear my head. I'll summarize the more useful/important parts here. Then proceed to ramble, as it is my way.

TL/DR; Not sure it's time for Rust. Need to be productive. Using Godot since it's what I have access to and what I can run on this machine and the only way I can rapidly develop a game and have time to create the music and art for it as well. I will continue work on my web development projects and I also have to keep up my servers which I mostly do in my free time anyway.

Do not try to learn Rust via rustlings. Use it after you learn Rust as a quiz. Unless you feel the need for self flagellation. It's gonna hurt your brain if you come from pretty much any other programming language. Read the Rust book.

Rust will cook your brain if you come at it from a C perspective. I have been having a hell of a time with it and that's mostly because for some reason I thought the Rustlings thing was a way to learn Rust. Mostly because it said:

Greetings and welcome to rustlings. This project contains small exercises to get you used to reading and writing Rust code. This includes reading and responding to compiler messages!

It hurts.

I'm reevaluating my decision to learn Rust in the first place. I'm not sure where I will use it outside of writing a game engine and that's a long term many hours of work kind of thing. Of course there's Golang which will likely come in handy in the future with webdev but I am not sure what I will need rust for outside of game development. It doesn't have a large mind-share yet either and C++ is still very strong, hell it's been getting better lately.

I really like the cargo system, I am a big fan of the memory safety and thread safety but at the same time I don't know what use I will get from it all. Maybe it's better to just stick with the C++ rocket launcher and keep trying to kick it away from pointing at my feet.  

I got Python for my hackery and web back-ends, I can use it where speed and concurrency isn't terribly important. If I need something to go fast I can make calls to an API I write in C++ or if I can get my brain to change enough Rust... though Rust really doesn't seem to be going anywhere at the moment. At least from the metrics I have, it's kinda stagnant which worries me. It's 10 years old, solves a lot of the problems we have with memory management and somehow has less market share than Visual Basic.    

Python at 10 years old had become very popular. I mean I am comparing apples to oranges, but it is still a fruit to fruit comparison. I want it to succeed but I don't know if I want to take the risk on it at this point. Not with a sink hole in my front yard and being too broke to possibly move.

I am not sure... what I do know is I want to build games, primarily. Rust seems like it would be awesome for game dev, too. I'm exhausted again. Is it worth it? I could spend the time I would spend learning Rust getting better with C++ or SQL. Maybe it's better to have a rocket launcher I have to wrestle away from blowing me up all the time. It's really hard to say.  

There's always going to be C++ work and SQL work and Python work and Javascript work. I can write a game engine or contribute to existing engines or even join a team using Unreal with C++... it's where I got my start... maybe I'm better off sticking with what I know for now and learning new things when I become profitable?  

I really need to stop getting distracted by new and shiny.

Ultimately I have goals and I need to decide which are most important as well as how to best be profitable. Game dev and web dev seems to be where I am at my best. Running crazy ass dev ops and managing my own servers and networks. Playing music and drawing... So... I arrive as always back at my old friends Godot and C++. Knowing however that GDNative is going to be deprecated at Godot 4 and that I wont be able to run Godot 4 on my dev machine...  

Productivity-wise I could just sit my ass down with Godot 3.4 and go from there. Create a simple RPG with the features and functions I want with a small area but a lot to do in it.  

Challenge and leveling up-wise though I could just sit down with either Raylib or SDL and my old friend C++ and start building my own tools with python and whatever else.    

While I would love the latter, the former would have more productivity and thus more chance of getting funds from people who can actually play the game as I build it. I would also be able to maintain the Yarrdachi project a little better, since I would have more time. I always seem to end up running this same circle.  

It's getting really fucking old. I need to clarify my vision and lock myself into something. There's so much I want to do but I will never get any of it done if I keep getting distracted by new and shiny or worrying about if the current thing I am working on is worth it at all. As long as I learn something it will be worth it... but man I am really worried about getting stuck here. I am worried about that fucking sink hole in my front yard. I am worried about the never-ending stream of mice that I keep catching in my house.    

I need to take the fastest route I can and not look back. I guess from where I am here, that's going to be Godot. I can make a game with Godot and I guess it wont be as awesome as coding everything myself from the ground up but I don't really have the time, do I? I've got a lot to maintain and as a solo developer I need to have the time to create the music, the art and the game-play as well as write the story and fix bugs. I also have Yarrdachi to continue working on and my network of server to maintain. I need to just focus on getting something done in game dev for once.  

I can become a genius ultra guru programmer afterward.

Just. Make. Game.