I have been creating mods for Skyrim and Fallout for a few years now. One day another modder wanted to make his own game using Unreal Engine 4. I wanted to learn UE4 anyway and the other members have made many mods before, so I joined in.

Well, it turned out I was the only one with a professional programming background (this is where I should have run). The others were all modders who somehow got their shit working. "It works, so it's good enough right?" On top of that UE4 has a visual scripting system called Blueprint. Instead of writing code you connect function blocks with execution lines. Needles to say that spaghetti code gets a whole new meening.

There was no issue board, no concept, no plan what the game should look like. Everyone was just doing whatever he wants and adding tons of gameplay mechanics. Gameplay mechanics that I had to redo because they where not reusable, not maintainable or/and poorly performing.

Coming from a modding background, they wanted to make the game moddable. This was the #1 priority. The game can only load "cooked" assets when it got packaged. So to make modding possible, we needed to include the unpacked project files in the download. This made the download size grow to 20+ GB. 20 GB for a fucking sidescroller. Now, 1 year after release we have one mod online: Our own test mod.

Well we "finished" the game eventually and it got released on Steam. A 20 GB sidescroller for $6.99. It's more like a $2.99 game in my opinion. But instead of lowering the price they increased it to $9.99, because we have spent so much time creating the game. Since that we selled less than 5 more copies. And now they want to make it work on mobile. Guess who will definetly NOT help them.

I have spent ~6 month of my freetime for this project, my rev share is < 100€ and they got me a lot of headaches with all their dumb decisions. Lesson learned. But hey, I am pretty good with UE4 now.

TL;DR:
What do you think about visual scripting.

Pretty much anyone here knows Scratch. And most devs make fun of it (while most also know it's a real programming environment), yet what do you guys think about BLUEPRINTS or Visual Scripting?
Starting to learn Unreal, I have two choices. C++ or Blueprints. While some argue that Blueprints can't achieve and replace C++ in Unreal, I saw others ignoring the fact and making awesome stuff you didn't think was possible. I saw how powerful even this node-based programming environment is and started learning it. What do you think?

(Image from Masterclass, not by me)

Age 8 - Gets first computer and struggles with dial up Internet and my parents yelling at that they ended to use the phone

Ages 12 to 18 - Gets first laptop, starts messing around and interested in websites, gets involved with SMF, and open source message board system written in Php, and starts helping people out, eventually getting paid work for setting up websites etc.. which lead onto learning html/CSS and picking up bits and pieces of Php (and also Photoshop/Illustrator etc..)

Age 18 - Goes to college to study Multimedia, refreshes knowledge of HTML/CSS, learns a bit of Actionscript and some PHP

Age 20 - finishes Multimedia degree, ends up working as an IT consultant for a small business, which leads me to pick up a bit of bash scripting, small hit more PHP. Leaves this after 3months and decides to do a small Software Dev course. Get my first taste of Java and Visual Basic there

21 - Enter into a Software Dev degree. Dive deep into Java and a small bit of Javascript.

23 - After 2nd year of college get taken on an internship with a large multinational where I learn and get hands on experience with Angular, JS, Coffeescript and C#

Present Day - currently coming up to the end of my degree and can switch between Java, C#, Python, Coffeescript/Javascript (front-end or Node) , C and Golang, C and Python introductions from college modules which I kept playing with in my spare time, Golang I just heard of and decided to write a few things in it because why not, I've picked up various frameworks (spring, echo, express etc.) at some point. I basically learn by doing, if something interests me and I enjoy it, I seem to pick it up quickly by diving in and trying to use it.

From long Using Visual Studio Code for Programming.

Why i love
supports Typescript
supports java
Lighter
plugins available like linter, git lense

Best for small web app projects.

And Favourite IDE, intellij Idea

Why ?
For writing java i use as
it can easily generate getter setters
constructor
importing
and build process.
best for java.

last but not the least
Nano
why ?
because most of the devops configuration, requires to be done via terminal only and i often use nano.
it is good for shell scripting,
editing configurations

that is all....

Well, I am not sure whether this is supposed to be about worst experience as a reviewER or a reviewEE so I'ma do both. First as a reviewer.

So, on my first project in this company, I introduced automated build scripting (read: suggested, was "volunteered" to do it, then had to bust my ads to get it done). Prior to this, our process was run the thing in Visual Studio a bunch of times (don't ask) and package the resulting files. Well, new requirements made this not sustainable.

So after many many meetings in which I assured my co-workers that the script wouldn't cock up and go sideways and format our server (HOW???) and showed them how to work it AND added all the features they requested. I finally send the script out for code review. Oh the joy. Questions like: "why did you implement this?" Came from the guy who told me to implement it. "Can you change the formatting?" I checked and no. "Why isn't this to the code standard?" Because the code standard doesn't include scripting languages.

And here is the piece that takes the whole piss soaked shitsicle pie "I don't understand why we're doing this in the first place. We have a build process already, why do we need a new one?" FUCKING REALLY?!?!? YOU WERE IN THE GODS DAMNED MEETING WHERE WE DECIDED TO DO THIS!!! SET OUT THE REQUIREMENTS!!! LITERALLY EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THIS SCRIPT YOU WERE THERE AND YOU'RE ASKING WHY WE'RE DOING IT NOW!?!?! Fucking hell. I forced it through anyway because I had the higher ups all signed off on it, but seriously. Just because we're doing something new that slightly inconveniences you, doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done. Stop being afraid of change.

Side note: these people actually would regularly hold up process and product improvement because change is scary.

Still using a database from 90' - Enea Polyhedra:
- no decent visual sql client
- utterly limited scripting language
- weird communications protocol
- no redundancy beyond master-replica
- no encryption of communication protocols
- etc.

The closest thing to cutting edge was probably the first survey project.

We found something named remote scripting in a sub folder in the visual interdev default site.

It was the precursor to ajax, a few years before ajax was born and we used it to interactively call the backend from the page.

Otherwise I have mostly worked on mature projects where cutting edge is mostly avoided.

So i bribed a fellow dev/friend who HATES php and Magento... to help me grind out a Magento site while im super behind on a bunch of crap that's mostly boring administrative bs (#ReluctantlyInCharge)

He knew I was coding in python several times over the past several months... yet, despite my near constant griping of formatting bs and high preference of basically anything that doesnt require readability-esq formatting... he apparently didnt get it.

I need to make a quick splash page with a timer on it (other cool elements that i dont think ive ever seen done but i figured why not... weird shit is totally on brand here... like scripting page elements to change and see if people catch on... in very basic ways)...

I know js plenty... but I'd likely have looked up the syntax, was lazy, he loves js (for the intended purpose... he does a lot of blockchain dev) so i asked if hed write me a quick timer line cuz... well im lazy.

He totally overcomplicated it and sends me a page he typed up incl html header. Timer was 3 short block/lines with semicolons... i laughed and wondered why he did all that instead of just the little js... he didnt know either. I told him as a courtesy id make sure to keep the js formatting as he wrote it instead of 1 line...

He sends me 2 examples of a js timer in 1 line... like 1semicolon... i had to show him what i actually meant... 3 'lines' with semicolons on 1 visual line...

He was stunned, then realised i must really hate python

Oh... I dont know what to pick...
So i will pick 3 projects from my 3 stages of my dev "carrier"

1.Right after i discovered programing and learned how ,if, while and similar structures worked. The launguage was object pascal with delphi 2007
That was a "safe" with a stupidly complicated lock (text inputs, sliders, ect) it opened a secret folder in the end.

2. It was a embedded code for a Atmega8 AVR, Atmel studio, pure C but without memory managment (i didnt even know that it even existed)
It was a Pip boy knockoff, 16x2 display and a small keyboard connected to the arduino like board that i made on a proto board.
It wasnt that much of a pipboy, it was more of a showoff of atmega8 internal systems, (ADC, timers, interrupts and such)

3.DataLab, after helping my friend with his master thesis, (we meet on discord long story, i was in high school) i decided that mathlab is shit and i created a visual scripting enviroment, launguage C# .net 4 (in the latest version)
I remade the whole program from scrach 1 time, significantly improving everything (code reuse, better algorithms, data processing, code redability and edge cases) I have learned good practises from everywhere. I learned how to use git.

DataLab project looks just like LabViev (i didnt notice that it even existed...), it is frozen now because of my mental status but im planning on using it on my CV when i will be looking for jobs on holidays. There are many things that i can improve in that program but ... first i have to fix myself.