0:09

Like the whole point is

0:12

to learn a system of thinking,

0:14

like to learn how to

0:16

analyze how to like pick out

0:18

what's happening and identify your

0:20

problem and then to implement a

0:22

solution that fits your needs.

0:24

Welcome, friends, to the modern .NET

0:26

Show, the premiere .NET podcast

0:28

focusing entirely on the knowledge, tools

0:30

and frameworks that all .NET

0:32

developers should have in their toolbox.

0:35

We are the go -to podcast

0:37

for .NET developers worldwide and

0:39

I am your host, Jamie Goprodma

0:41

and Taylor. In this episode,

0:43

Harrison Foroni joined us to

0:45

talk about his journey from

0:47

being an English major to

0:49

a self -taught programmer and instructional

0:51

author focused on accessible tech

0:53

education. Harrison also talked

0:55

about his book, Learning Design Patterns

0:57

with Unity, which is designed as

1:00

a practical guide for video game

1:02

development using well -known patterns and

1:04

emphasizing the importance of quick wins

1:06

in learning. Like we do so

1:08

much work in the later parts

1:10

of each chapter with like pattern

1:13

variations and customizations because I want

1:15

I want readers and students and

1:17

learners to like look at it

1:19

look at the first you know

1:21

70 % and be like oh but

1:24

what oh oh we're gonna talk

1:26

about what ifs fantastic because

1:28

I have a lot of what

1:30

ifs anyway without further ado

1:32

let's sit back open up a

1:34

terminal type in .NET podcast and

1:39

we'll dive into the core

1:41

of modern .NET so

1:44

Harrison welcome back to the show

1:46

it's been like three years my goodness

1:48

I know it's been it's been

1:50

a while it's been a really long

1:52

time you you were you were

1:54

approaching another milestone for like listeners in

1:56

the podcast last time I like

1:58

keep coming on at these odd,

2:00

odd like milestones. I

2:04

mean, that's totally fine with me. If

2:06

you want to be on the show

2:08

after a milestone, that's cool. Well, I

2:10

wanted to congratulate. That's awesome. You have

2:12

so many listeners and you got the

2:14

new MVP thing, didn't you? Did you

2:16

get rid of it? Yeah, yeah, thanks

2:19

for that, yeah. So for the context

2:21

for the listeners, we're recording this August

2:23

8th, 2024. Only

2:25

a few weeks ago, I announced that

2:27

we hit a million, over a million downloads.

2:29

So thank you, everyone, for that. And

2:32

I've been renewed as a Microsoft MVP

2:34

for the third time. So, yeah, getting

2:36

closer and closer to that blue disk

2:38

with five years on it. You get,

2:40

is it like, is it like working

2:42

at Blizzard? Do you get like a

2:44

different color sword every time you hit

2:46

a milestone? So no,

2:48

as far as I'm aware, you get

2:50

these these wonderful like frosted disk things with

2:52

like a year that you're made the

2:55

MVP. And then when you get to five

2:57

years, you get like a blue one.

2:59

And then that says five years. And then

3:01

when you get to 10, so it's

3:03

every multiple of five, you get one that

3:05

says whatever your multiple of five is,

3:07

like five, 10, 15, 20, that kind of

3:09

thing. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty

3:11

cool. That's awesome. Well, congratulations. Thank you very

3:13

much. Thank you very much. But

3:16

yeah, so Harrison, for the folks

3:18

who perhaps haven't heard your previous appearance,

3:20

which was episode 87, where we're

3:22

thinking this is going to be episode

3:24

156. So you're almost like double

3:26

from last time. Yeah, we're almost there.

3:29

Yeah, right. So for the folks

3:31

who didn't catch that episode, I'm wondering

3:33

would you be able to sort

3:35

of give everyone a bit of like

3:37

an elevator pitch about you and

3:39

what you do, that kind of thing?

3:41

Sure. I went,

3:43

well, I started out as

3:45

an English major. I found

3:47

programming kind of halfway through

3:49

that a long, long time

3:51

ago, went

3:53

into game development, went into

3:55

iOS development, worked at that

3:58

for a few years, and

4:00

then it. kind of stumbled

4:02

into a instructional author teaching

4:04

kind of path. I

4:06

can't remember if it's like

4:08

WWDC for the Apple conference, the

4:10

yearly Apple conference. I think it was

4:12

in like 2014 I think and someone at LinkedIn

4:14

was very nice and was like if you're gonna

4:16

be there would you like to you know live

4:18

blog? I said sure

4:20

and then I started making

4:23

programming courses for LinkedIn

4:25

and eventually started writing books

4:27

for Unity and for

4:29

doing tutorials for like iOS and

4:31

Swift UI and Swift programming language

4:34

in general and now now I'm

4:36

pretty much all in

4:38

on Unity and Swift for the

4:40

past few years. So

4:43

a lot there's there's a broad

4:45

spectrum but that's you know I

4:47

literally just make educational content and

4:49

try and try and make people's

4:51

lives a little bit easier because

4:53

for the most part even though

4:56

I started programming in in college

4:58

I didn't actually do

5:00

very much computer science so

5:02

I was I still

5:04

am largely self -taught so I

5:06

figured it would be it would

5:08

be a logical connection to

5:10

target that audience and help people out so they didn't

5:12

have to do what I did. So

5:16

what I often find is

5:18

folks who didn't go down that

5:20

academic route of taking like

5:22

a comp side degree or a

5:24

you know software engineering degree

5:26

or anything like that when they

5:28

come around to making their

5:30

educational content because they have a

5:32

a slightly different background to

5:35

pull from I often find that

5:37

those folks are a little bit better

5:39

at sort of creating that educational content

5:41

getting that idea across because it's a

5:43

case of less a case of hey

5:45

here's the math behind why it all

5:47

works and here's the theory behind all

5:49

and it's more a case of right

5:51

let's get you to the point where

5:54

you're making something and doing something immediately

5:56

right yeah because I feel like when

5:58

you're teaching yourself you have to to that

6:00

point very quick, don't you? Because otherwise, you're

6:02

not going to get anywhere, right? Oh,

6:05

yeah. You have to get those quick

6:07

wins early on. Like, our brains need that,

6:09

you know, hit a dopamine that's like,

6:11

ooh, we made something, you know, we created

6:13

life. The program ran and printed out

6:15

10. You got to

6:17

get there real quick. Absolutely.

6:22

Yeah, I find that too. You can

6:24

tell a lot of times. And again,

6:26

I kind of wish I had done,

6:28

you know, computer science theory, because I'm,

6:30

you know, I still struggle with like,

6:33

algorithms, like data structures

6:35

and algorithms are not my strong suit.

6:37

I keep, you know, I keep

6:39

plugging away, but like, there are definite

6:41

gaps in my, in my self

6:43

taught journey. But you can sort of tell by

6:46

the amount of assumptions that are in

6:48

the learning content that you take. And

6:50

you can usually pick out who's been

6:52

self taught and who's gone through academia,

6:54

because there's a lot of assumptions with academic

6:57

teaching. And there's much, hopefully

6:59

much less with people who are self

7:01

taught because they remember what it

7:03

was like to try and figure this

7:05

out on their own. Absolutely

7:08

agree. I agree on the, the little

7:10

wins. And they agree on being able

7:12

to identify perhaps sometimes those folks who

7:14

are self taught because of the way

7:16

that they're putting their content across. I

7:19

always tell people like, you know, I've

7:21

got a friend who's like, I want to

7:23

learn, you know, want to learn development,

7:25

and I want to learn to develop a

7:27

mobile app, and I want to learn

7:29

game development, and I want to learn three

7:31

different programming languages at once. And I'm

7:33

like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's fantastic. You can

7:35

have all of those goals if you

7:37

like, but you want to make it what you

7:39

want to do is you want to make

7:41

that learning journey as easy as possible by

7:43

reducing the scope, right? You

7:47

don't want to be trapped in the

7:49

situation where you're like, I don't know whether

7:51

it's the language that I've maybe not learned

7:53

this bit, or maybe it's the tooling, or

7:56

maybe it's the process, or maybe, you know,

7:58

you don't want to be I'm

8:00

confused about what's broken. I

8:03

know that there's a certain

8:05

subset of people when they discover

8:07

software development and computer science

8:09

and stuff like that, they go,

8:11

oh my goodness, I'm gonna

8:13

install a Linux distribution, even though

8:16

my course details say you

8:18

have to use Windows. And I'm

8:20

like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

8:22

Just, I get it, absolutely. Linux

8:24

on the desktop is brilliant,

8:27

but also if you get stuck, your

8:29

teachers, tutors, lecturers, whatever, whoever's designed

8:32

that course, won't be able to

8:34

help you. Because he designed

8:36

the specific Windows. Who's gonna help you?

8:38

Yeah, right? Yeah, there's nowhere to

8:40

go to ask for help. That actually,

8:42

the same thing happened in my

8:44

C++ programming class. When I was first

8:46

getting introduced, there was a guy

8:48

that was so, like he was whip

8:50

smart at this and you could

8:53

just see his brain turning. And he

8:55

got so far ahead that we

8:57

couldn't help, like he couldn't get any

8:59

help. It's like, wow, okay. But

9:01

like, you figure it out, but you're

9:03

right, like when you're circling back to

9:05

like curriculum development, you're trying to take

9:07

away as many variables as possible and

9:10

to teach as broadly

9:12

and as like language

9:14

or hardware

9:16

agnostically as possible, I would

9:18

say. Because if you learn, like you said,

9:20

your friend could, all those disciplines that he

9:22

wants to learn and build and all the

9:24

projects he probably has in his head, the bones

9:26

are fairly similar if you start

9:28

at the right place. Yeah.

9:32

I mean, it's like

9:34

you said, it's

9:36

to do with curriculum development. When I

9:38

have this background in teaching and did

9:40

like a, out

9:42

of uni, I took a direction

9:44

where I was learning to

9:46

teach people. And

9:49

just like you're saying, right, you have to,

9:51

you can assume a certain amount of

9:53

knowledge or assume a certain platform that you

9:55

can bounce off of to be able

9:57

to provide these metaphors to be able. to

10:00

provide the information. But you also have

10:02

to remember that some folks aren't going to

10:04

know a great deal. So you might

10:06

be able to, you might have to sort

10:08

of bring people up to speed as

10:10

well. And that's a real challenge when you're

10:12

making any kind of decision as to

10:14

like, how are we both going to learn

10:16

this or whatever? Yeah,

10:18

no, it isn't. I mean, there's, there's a

10:21

fairly simple answer. I mean, it makes it

10:23

more complicated for the people making the resources.

10:25

But like, if you're as inclusive as possible,

10:27

which basically means you have

10:30

the least amount of like entry, like

10:32

barriers to entry or like obstacles

10:34

that someone would need to understand

10:36

or to have competencies in, you

10:38

end up including everyone by default, which

10:40

is wonderful. It makes it harder. Again,

10:42

it makes it harder for you as

10:45

the teacher, but it includes everybody and

10:47

it doesn't, it doesn't leave anybody wondering

10:49

anything. Totally, totally.

10:51

I remember back at

10:53

uni, so I mean, I

10:55

graduated, I often tell

10:57

people I graduated in

11:00

like the Triassic era. But

11:02

like, I

11:04

remember one of the first few

11:06

lecturers, one of the first few

11:08

lectures, sorry, at uni, I'm making

11:11

furious amounts of notes. And someone

11:13

turns to me and goes, don't

11:15

you know this already? And I'm

11:17

like, well, thanks, dude. You just

11:19

put me off of coming to this class

11:21

now. Well, what are you doing? That

11:25

would be the, that would be so

11:27

weird to have someone say that. Like,

11:29

I don't even know how I would be able to take that be

11:31

like, no, because if

11:34

we did, we wouldn't

11:36

be here. I'm confused. Right.

11:41

Did we miss something? Was

11:43

this the class where you're supposed

11:45

to already have taken the

11:47

class? Yeah. And you know, if we missed

11:49

that. Or are you not

11:51

telling me that you failed it and having to

11:53

take it again? Right? That's

11:55

a good point. I'll see what you're really

11:57

telling me is that you've already done all the

12:00

homework because he didn't pass the final last time.

12:02

So we're going to be friends, but

12:04

still a weird flex,

12:06

still weird. It

12:09

really is. It really is. Oh my

12:12

goodness. So that, I guess, leads us nicely

12:14

on to this. You were on the

12:16

show, you had a book last time, you

12:18

have a new book this time. Let's

12:20

talk about that, right? Yes.

12:23

So I'm trying to work my way up into

12:25

like a trilogy of like, you know, zero

12:27

to hero. But like the last book, and there

12:29

have been so many, there have been several

12:31

editions since then. But, you know, the first book

12:33

was very basic and like, we're going to

12:35

teach you how to, you know, program in C

12:37

sharp, but really we're going to, from scratch,

12:39

but really we're going to teach you how to

12:41

think programmatically

12:43

and to think in systems and to

12:45

think about how to put things together in

12:47

a way that, you know, makes sense

12:50

and, you know, is maintainable and flexible. And

12:52

we kind of introduce, you know, you

12:54

go from like, oh, we're going to write

12:56

our name all the way up to

12:58

like building a simple little like, unreal, unreal

13:00

tournament kind of game, if, you know,

13:02

we're dating, I'm dating myself with that reference,

13:04

but whatever, a little arena shooter. And

13:06

it's super fun. And so I was, I

13:08

get a lot of questions because

13:11

the publisher that I work with packed has

13:13

a discord server for the book. And I

13:15

started to get a lot of questions about

13:17

a year after I released, you know, like

13:19

the sixth or seventh edition or whatever it

13:21

was. And people were like, well, you

13:24

know, where do I go? Like, what do I

13:26

do now? Well, that's

13:28

a good question. I don't have a

13:30

great answer for you. You know, when

13:32

I give people, I had a little

13:34

like resource cheat sheet of like, because

13:36

like the last chapter in the book

13:38

in the in the old book has

13:41

like, here's next steps. And I had

13:43

some other ones too, if people wanted

13:45

to ask for them. And I started

13:47

thinking like, what, what would have been

13:49

useful to me in university and in

13:51

my actually in my like in my

13:53

first job when I was like a junior

13:56

programmer? And what would have helped me

13:58

the most? And it was really

14:00

easy to come up with the answer.

14:02

And it was like systems design.

14:04

I was like, okay, well, that's not

14:06

super helpful. Like what what concrete

14:08

tools could what it would have helped me

14:10

be better at my job faster? I

14:13

was like, Oh, design patterns, that's easy. That's

14:15

an easy design patterns and testing. I

14:17

was like, I don't really want to write

14:19

a testing book right now. But maybe

14:22

I will in the future. But design patterns

14:24

kind of jumped out. And

14:26

they do all the

14:28

things like they take like the

14:30

analytical soft skills that I was trying to

14:33

teach in my first book and kind of

14:35

took them further and took it out into

14:37

like this, you know, kind of macro view

14:39

of, you know, whatever you're building, it can

14:41

be an iOS application and be a game, it can

14:43

be, you know, whatever it can be a website if

14:45

you wanted. But

14:47

like how to think of

14:49

or how to think of

14:51

projects in terms of like

14:53

components and systems and how

14:55

to communicate effectively how to

14:58

reuse your code how to

15:00

just be a more efficient

15:02

programmer and like be able

15:04

to have enough, I guess, competency to like

15:06

have someone else look at your code and be

15:08

like, Oh, I see what you're doing. I

15:10

got it. Like we can we're talking, we

15:13

can communicate. And so I

15:15

started doing writing this

15:17

design patterns book and it

15:19

took me two and a

15:21

half years on and off.

15:24

It's a monster. It's like, I

15:27

don't even know if I think it's like 700

15:29

pages long, I think it's a a

15:31

it's heavy. It's a good it's

15:33

a good it's a good books. It's

15:35

a good shelf, you know, it's

15:37

a good bookend. If you don't read

15:39

it, it's fantastic at that. It

15:41

just sits there flattening your dollar bills

15:43

with it. Yeah, exactly. Or put

15:45

your put your external laptop on there,

15:47

your external screen, you know, if

15:49

you need it a little bit higher,

15:52

feel free. But yeah, so that's

15:54

that's where that came about. And

15:56

I was trying to like address

15:59

all the questions of where do

16:01

I go once I'm kind of

16:03

once I've got a handle on

16:05

a language and I want to

16:07

actually build something that works

16:09

and that works well, not just like

16:12

a prototype. So that's that's

16:14

kind of where the design patterns came in

16:16

and I love unity so much even,

16:18

you know, we don't have to talk about

16:20

all the craziness but I still love

16:22

unity and I still like it just because

16:24

I don't know maybe I'm too old

16:27

to change but I it's never it's never

16:29

let like I've never wanted to

16:31

jump ship right so I

16:33

chose that and C

16:35

sharp almost everything you know except

16:37

for friend classes is available and

16:39

I was looking through and I

16:41

was like great there's you know

16:44

maybe one book in the world

16:46

written in this you know kind

16:48

of market and it seems like

16:50

it's missing and it's funny while

16:52

I was writing the book

16:54

Unity started releasing

16:56

these little like

16:58

these PDF books

17:00

and one of them is like you

17:02

know here's five design patterns or

17:04

something that you know are really you

17:07

know helpful I was like a

17:09

ha see I see you've someone has

17:11

someone has someone has found the

17:13

niche they have found the gap and

17:15

so I kind of had to speed up

17:17

a little bit but I don't know

17:19

I always felt like the like

17:21

game design and development or

17:23

game programming specifically always miss this

17:25

and like you had to learn it some

17:27

mystical way like through your job or

17:29

through a mentor that you you know if

17:31

you were lucky enough to have one

17:33

that would teach you these you

17:36

know secret arts and yeah

17:38

so I I said about and

17:41

like I don't know this

17:43

was I think this was

17:45

the hardest thing I've done

17:47

so far I got to

17:49

say so I guess a couple of

17:51

questions based off of that just for the

17:53

folks who rambled on I got so

17:55

excited now that's cool no it's cool it's

17:57

all good so for the folks who

17:59

listening in Um, can you tell them what

18:01

the, the name of the book is?

18:03

Cause we've sort of danced around it. We

18:05

haven't really. Yes. So it's called learning

18:07

design patterns with unity, very simple title. It's,

18:10

um, you can

18:12

get it on Amazon or

18:14

from packed and it's, we're using

18:16

unity 2023, uh, and C

18:18

sharp. And

18:21

yeah, it's all updated. It's all, it

18:25

all works for the current version that's out right now. And

18:29

let's see, we cover, I

18:31

think there's, I think

18:33

we cover 19 patterns. If I,

18:35

if I remember correctly, 18, sorry,

18:37

18 patterns and two bookend, two

18:39

bookend chapters. So, um,

18:43

you know, like if anyone's ever read, you

18:45

know, there's an original book called,

18:47

um, The Gang of Four. Yeah. The

18:49

Gang of Four. Yeah. And, uh,

18:51

like elements of reusable software, object oriented

18:53

software. I can never remember the

18:55

name because it's so long, but yeah,

18:57

The Gang of Four and they

19:00

have, you know, 20 something patterns and

19:02

then a guy named Robert Nistrom

19:04

came out, uh,

19:07

I want to say like

19:09

10 years ago and he

19:11

wrote a really, really comprehensive,

19:13

um, book about additional patterns that

19:15

are specific to game programming, but

19:17

it's in C plus plus and

19:19

it's, it's really good, but it's

19:21

more on theory and like example

19:23

snippets. There aren't any actual projects. So

19:27

in game programming from what,

19:29

I mean, my, this is my

19:32

journey, but it, I've confirmed this

19:34

with, with loads of people. It's

19:36

like everyone tries to read these

19:38

two books together and, you

19:40

know, somehow learn you know, how

19:43

to be a better software

19:45

architect or a software engineer with

19:47

gains. And it's really difficult because it

19:49

doesn't, it's hard to translate. It's

19:51

like literally trying to translate like a

19:53

different language. And you know, some

19:56

things don't work. Some things aren't directly

19:58

applicable. Some things can't be. one

20:00

-to -one translated. And

20:03

Unity is a

20:05

special case, one because

20:08

it's built on a component

20:10

design pattern. So it's already doing its

20:12

own thing, and you kind of have

20:14

to learn how to get everything working.

20:16

C -Sharp has its own way of working,

20:18

Unity has its own way of working,

20:20

and then they both work together in

20:22

a third way. And

20:25

this was all really... The research

20:27

took the longest time in the

20:29

testing because I wanted to make

20:31

sure that the patterns I

20:34

was teaching were you could

20:36

actually test them be like, oh, this is how

20:38

it's supposed to work. With a little tweak here,

20:40

a little tweak there for the engine, that

20:44

it would still be the correct content. And

20:48

I hope that's what we ended

20:50

up with. I mean, we'll see. It's

20:52

only been out for, I think

20:54

now it's two months, but by the

20:56

time this releases, it'll be more than

20:58

that. But it came out at the

21:00

end of, if I remember, May. So

21:03

basically June 1st.

21:05

Right. See,

21:08

what I really like, and we'll...

21:11

Actually, we'll circle back to the

21:13

thought I was just about to

21:15

have. Let's

21:18

talk about the... You

21:20

said there's the other design

21:22

pattern the book, and

21:24

it's very C++ -y and

21:26

very... Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

21:29

It feels like it reads... I

21:31

haven't read it, so from your

21:34

description, I'm inferring, right? It feels

21:36

very much like it's almost like

21:38

a reference manual, right? Oh, you've

21:40

heard of this design pattern here

21:42

is an example implementation, right? Yeah,

21:44

or like, you definitely have to

21:46

know about design patterns because the

21:49

ones he kind of puts in

21:51

there are new ones. They're not

21:53

in the gang... Most of them

21:55

are not in the gang of

21:57

four. the

22:00

game of Fortech. So yeah, it's definitely

22:02

like a secondary, it's almost like an appendix

22:04

just for game programmers. But you know, it's

22:06

a it's a big book. And

22:09

but yeah, again, it's in

22:11

C++. And, you know, if you're in Unreal,

22:13

some of it will like a lot of

22:15

a lot more of it will translate. But

22:17

again, even if you're in Unreal and you're

22:19

in that development environment, it's not going to

22:21

take into account like blueprints or any of

22:23

the other component, components

22:26

that you can use. So even if you're

22:28

doing that, it's, you know, the book

22:30

is really, it leaves

22:32

a lot to, to you,

22:34

to the reader to kind of make the

22:36

intuitive jumps into actual implementation. And that's

22:39

where I think a lot of people stumble

22:41

and get frustrated. Sure,

22:43

sure. Because when you're learning, like we

22:45

said at the beginning, right, when you're

22:47

learning something new, you've got to make

22:50

it as easy as possible to get

22:52

to that, that quick win, right? And

22:54

the entirety of your learning journey can

22:56

be made up almost exclusively of quick

22:58

wins. But the great thing about them

23:00

is they stack. Yeah, oh, absolutely. Oh,

23:02

yeah. And then, and they stack so

23:04

quickly and stack so well. And that's

23:06

how we get to get to like

23:08

the end of a course, and you

23:10

get the final exam, right? You've already

23:12

done it a whole bunch of times.

23:15

All you're doing there is just

23:17

proving that you can recreate that

23:19

thing, right? And I think that

23:21

goes back to curriculum design, right?

23:23

A good curriculum for learning anything,

23:25

right? Learning to walk, learning math,

23:27

learning English literature, learning software development

23:30

with whatever programming language is, it

23:32

starts with, let's go with, like

23:34

you said, right, we'll start with

23:36

writing your name on the screen,

23:38

right now that you've written your

23:40

name on the screen, maybe we

23:43

can introduce variables and say, well, we can

23:45

hard code it to say Harrison. But maybe

23:47

we can have a variable that you can

23:49

change to Jamie and then rerun it. And

23:51

then we can change it to, I don't

23:53

know, Michael and rerun it or change it

23:55

to Sarah and rerun it. And then that's

23:57

teaching a little bit about variables and stuff.

23:59

That's another quick win, boom, boom, boom,

24:01

boom. Because like you said, you need

24:03

that dopamine hit of, wow, I've achieved

24:05

something, I've achieved something as fast as

24:07

you can. Right,

24:09

like I don't know enough about neurochemistry,

24:11

but like I really feel like

24:13

I get it stamped harder in my

24:15

brain like a new concept if

24:17

I get that little hit of like,

24:19

ooh, that worked. Like I feel

24:21

good about that. That's why we play video

24:24

games in the first place. But like when

24:26

you're learning to program it's almost the same

24:28

thing. If you can make it like that.

24:31

And like each chapter, so I wrote

24:33

my book, I decided not to have

24:35

one project through the whole book because

24:37

one, it would have

24:39

been very difficult to have one

24:41

single project that was naturally, or that

24:43

naturally needed all the design patterns

24:45

that I was teaching. Because that's kind

24:47

of the central point of the

24:49

book is like they are not all

24:51

applicable all the time. Right

24:54

tool for the right job. So

24:56

like I couldn't think, I

24:58

would have had to unnaturally inject

25:00

problems into a single game

25:02

that probably wouldn't have made sense.

25:05

So unfortunately my book, or

25:07

maybe fortunately it is more

25:09

of a reference book, but

25:12

you can pick up any chapter,

25:14

you get a white box starter project

25:16

and you get, you have the

25:18

little block set ups, you have a

25:20

client and you have like an empty

25:22

system and your job is to

25:24

build the design pattern into a workable

25:26

system from scratch. And like you

25:28

said, each little, you know, each couple

25:30

of pages you get a quick

25:32

win that you're stacking, stacking, stacking until

25:34

at the end you have a

25:36

almost fully ready like plug and play

25:38

system to take where, then do whatever

25:40

you want. You know,

25:42

it's not, I don't use any

25:44

art assets or anything crazy because

25:46

that, I feel like that always

25:49

clutters learning and especially with stuff that's more

25:51

intermediate or advanced. I feel like this stuff

25:53

is already hard enough. Like you don't need

25:55

to be worrying about audio like

25:57

to teach this. It's not, it's. not

26:00

necessary. But

26:03

yeah, those stacking those, stacking those wins

26:05

is definitely the way I prefer to

26:07

learn, which, you know, then makes it

26:09

my preferred way to teach, I suppose. Totally.

26:13

Yeah. And like, if someone's listening to this

26:15

and going, no, I want to go from

26:17

no code on the way to the end

26:19

goal without having any quick wins in the

26:22

middle, that's totally fine too, if that's how

26:24

you want to do it. But I agree with

26:26

you, Harrison, I'm very much a quick win

26:28

type of person, right? When I'm learning a

26:30

new programming language or using a new library,

26:32

I'm like, right, okay, I hate the defaults,

26:34

but show me how to get it running

26:37

with the defaults, and then I'll go change

26:39

it. Because once I've got it up and

26:41

running, I've achieved something, right? Whereas I don't

26:43

want to be sitting there for hours and

26:45

hours on end, just churning out code in

26:47

the hopes that eventually, when I

26:49

hit go, it will work. When you

26:51

hit run, it'll work. Yeah, yeah,

26:54

yeah. Yeah, that was the hardest thing.

26:56

Like, I kept finding solutions that

26:58

I would look at and be like,

27:00

all right, I mean, I understand

27:02

what's happening. But I don't

27:04

think I could realistically, like,

27:06

backward engineer explain this to

27:08

someone, to a student, like

27:11

to how you got here. Like, there

27:14

are a lot of missing

27:16

steps, a lot of insider information,

27:18

a lot of, you know,

27:20

hidden choices that you made. And

27:22

that was, that was really hard. There's

27:26

only so many times when you can wave your hands and

27:28

go, don't worry about this bit just yet. Yeah,

27:30

right? Like, you know, you know,

27:32

it happens occasionally when you have dependencies,

27:35

but like, almost all the time,

27:37

that's that seems to be either a

27:39

flaw in the understanding of the

27:41

theory or the flaw in the setup,

27:43

or the implementation. There are very

27:45

few things, at least in what I've

27:47

found with like systems design, where

27:49

you can't have a solitary, like

27:51

starting point, like almost from

27:53

scratch. Yeah,

27:57

that's the great the crazy thing about

27:59

about it's especially with systems design. One

28:01

of the things that I never really

28:03

understood at the time when I

28:05

was at uni, one of the semester

28:08

long courses we had to take

28:10

was on, it wasn't called systems design,

28:12

but it was on systems design.

28:14

And it was one of those sort

28:16

of, we'll almost ninja the knowledge

28:18

into you. And I didn't appreciate it

28:20

at the time and I didn't

28:22

get it at the time. But the

28:25

lecturer wasn't even a software developer,

28:27

right? We were all learning compsci and

28:29

different software development flavors, I guess. And

28:31

he was like, right then, let

28:33

me talk you through how I

28:35

built the fuel injection system for this

28:37

airplane. And we're like, what? What's

28:41

that software? Yeah. And what I didn't

28:43

realize at the time was that he was

28:45

talking through, right, we have a problem.

28:47

We have to get the fuel from this

28:49

end of the plane to that end

28:51

of the plane. It can't go too fast.

28:53

It can't go too slow. It has

28:55

to be warmed up along the way. It

28:57

can't stop and it can't freeze or

28:59

drop in temperature. We have to maintain pressure.

29:01

Although the outside pressure of the plane

29:03

is going to drop because we're going up.

29:06

And then it's going to come back

29:08

up because we're coming down. And like none

29:10

at the time, none of it made I ended

29:12

up passing the exam. But I was like,

29:14

what has this got to do with software development?

29:16

Because I just want to write code. And

29:18

then actually thinking back on it over the

29:20

last maybe, geez, I don't want to

29:22

say how long it is since I've

29:24

graduated. But let's put it this way.

29:26

If someone was born the year that

29:28

I graduated, they'd be more than an

29:30

adult now. But in the years since,

29:33

the more and more I think about

29:35

it, the more I'm going, wait, he's

29:37

actually teaching design, but from outside

29:39

of a software

29:41

development space. And

29:43

what I've actually done over

29:45

the last few years with my

29:48

own sort of practice and my

29:50

learning is I've been looking outside

29:52

of software for ways that other

29:54

people are applying the same knowledge

29:56

that we have within software development,

29:58

right? So It's come up a

30:01

whole bunch of times on the show already.

30:03

But one of the examples I give is,

30:05

you know the Konmari method for tidying up? Sure,

30:08

yeah. Clean cup. It

30:10

doesn't spark joy. Yeah, that's literally what

30:12

it is. Yeah, he's totally right. Yeah,

30:16

no premature optimization, no

30:20

unnecessary things that you'll

30:22

never need. Oh, that's

30:24

genius. I never thought of that. Yeah, my wife and I read

30:26

that book a couple of years ago and we're like, oh,

30:28

this is great. Yep. Oh,

30:31

here's another one. I was just

30:33

looking it up. If you heard

30:35

my little clickety -clacks, folks, I'm

30:37

so sorry. I couldn't remember the

30:40

name, but it's called Thinking in

30:42

Systems. It's by Danella Meadows. And

30:44

it's exactly what you're talking about

30:46

because the book is written for

30:48

what do you call it? Economics

30:50

and like societal structures and not

30:53

zoology, but what do we call

30:55

that? Like ecosystems, that's what it

30:57

is. And like how ecosystems function.

30:59

And it's such a great, like, you

31:01

know, it's not a super big book,

31:03

but man, that just opened my eyes

31:05

so much to have her talk about

31:07

like, oh yeah, we introduce some wolves

31:09

into the system and what happened. And

31:12

like with all the systems graphs. And

31:14

you're like, oh, all this,

31:16

like we could do this with software.

31:19

That chaos monkey, right?

31:21

Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

31:23

exactly. And you're like, oh, you're looking

31:26

at all the connections and like the

31:28

balances and counterbalances and the communication, like

31:30

the message of the stimuli being sent.

31:32

If that's, if you go back far

31:34

enough in software development and stimuli, not

31:36

events. And you're looking at it and

31:38

you're like, oh, I see. We're

31:40

all doing the same job. Absolutely.

31:43

Everything. See what you're doing. Everything

31:45

changes, everything stays the same, something

31:47

like that. Yeah, the more everything

31:49

changes, the more everything stays the

31:51

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32:49

I really like from the

32:51

way you've described it is using

32:53

Unity as a teaching tool,

32:55

because we've both said it a

32:57

couple of times. Those immediate

32:59

quick wins and how they stack

33:01

up. I'm kind of obsessed

33:03

at the minute with stacking things,

33:05

and I don't mean like

33:07

piling things up in it. I

33:09

recently read Atomic Habits, which

33:11

talks about habit stacking. I

33:15

was at a talk a

33:17

few days back at the

33:19

time of recording where someone had

33:22

said about skill stacking, which

33:24

is the same kind of idea.

33:26

You're just taking skills from

33:28

outside of your current interest and

33:30

applying those into it. This

33:32

person was, as a teenager, they

33:34

were into equestrian things, and

33:37

they got themselves a sports coach

33:39

to help with that. Then

33:41

they went and worked in the

33:43

serial industry and then worked

33:45

in the PR industry. Then when they

33:47

had a whole bunch of different industries and

33:49

when they came to start their own

33:52

business, they realized, hang on, the

33:54

stuff I did in the serial industry is customer

33:56

service. The stuff I did over

33:58

in the PR industry obviously PR, but

34:01

it's the interpersonal skills of being

34:03

able to talk to people. The

34:05

stuff I did in my sports

34:07

stuff with my equestrian coach, that's

34:09

personal development. We can apply all

34:11

of these to this one business

34:13

idea. I think that idea of

34:15

taking those disparate ideas and skill

34:17

stacking them is fantastic. But that's

34:19

beside the point. Let's get back

34:21

to what I was actually saying. You're

34:25

obsessed with stacking things. Absolutely.

34:27

What I really love about what

34:29

you're saying is using the visual tool

34:31

of unity to take care of most

34:33

of the wiring up of creating a

34:35

3D environment and creating that scene and

34:37

doing some of the difficult work so

34:39

that I as a reader or I

34:41

as a learner can then apply the

34:43

lesson you're trying to teach me and

34:45

make something happen. I can push the

34:47

button and then immediately, as long as

34:49

it compiles and I haven't done something

34:51

silly, but then I can compare it

34:53

to the code that's in the book

34:55

and go, all right, I've missed a

34:57

semi -colon or whatever. As soon as

34:59

I hit go, as long as it runs,

35:01

I literally have something that not only

35:03

is displaying on screen, but I can

35:05

interact with. I can grab a controller

35:07

and actually interact with it, right? Yeah.

35:12

That's one of the

35:14

main reasons that I

35:16

chose to teach C -Sharp

35:18

with Unity for beginners.

35:20

Exactly for that reason

35:22

because it's so immediate.

35:24

I feel like you can

35:26

be a visual learner and

35:28

you can have all different styles

35:31

of learning, but I feel

35:33

like when most humans see

35:35

things in motion, something

35:38

clicks between what you

35:40

tried to create and then it

35:42

starts to move or it starts

35:44

to work. If you see

35:46

it, something happens. It

35:48

just happens and you're like,

35:50

oh, okay. That's wonderful.

35:52

Let's give me some more of that.

35:54

I want more. that

36:01

was my approach to like the starter

36:03

projects. Not all design patterns have super

36:05

fun visuals behind them. Some of them

36:07

do, and some of them can be

36:09

applied to have those. But they're

36:11

not all you know applicable to like

36:13

having a character run around. You

36:15

know some of them are for like inventory

36:17

management. You know some of them are for

36:19

save systems that you know aren't super flashy.

36:21

But there's

36:24

still I still tried to

36:26

make especially with with using the Unity

36:28

editor tools and the components that

36:30

you have accessible like to build out

36:32

levels of abstraction that that lets

36:34

you get your hands in it like

36:36

you said that like make you

36:38

be able to go and change things

36:41

and to see it in action

36:43

as you're testing or something like that

36:45

because it really does seem to

36:47

bring systems alive. If it's not you

36:49

know if it's not immediately apparent it's like

36:51

oh somebody did a really cool combo. Like

36:54

you know there are a few design

36:56

patterns that do that. But but but

36:58

that's not the the prevailing use case

37:00

I would say. Right,

37:03

right. Okay yeah

37:05

and and that immediate

37:07

feedback is

37:10

we keep talking about it right? The immediate

37:12

feedback is incredibly important and especially if

37:14

you're just like reading through a physical book

37:16

right? You're working way through a book.

37:18

You maybe got to open on your desk.

37:20

You've got your laptop open and you

37:22

know you're leaning across it and you're going

37:24

to type this thing in and then

37:27

I'm going to hit go and the book's

37:29

fun to read but I can't say

37:31

oh wait, it's happening. Ah right. That's you

37:33

can't be that right? I get the

37:35

feeling now you really can't. It must be

37:37

similar to like in maybe the film industry

37:39

right? Because you can see as soon

37:41

as you finish editing something you don't

37:43

even have to edit the whole thing.

37:45

As soon as you well maybe now

37:48

with visual tools you can see it

37:50

as you're editing right? But you're seeing

37:52

it happen in real time and yeah

37:54

you can't be that right? Because like

37:56

when I started my programming adventures as

37:58

a It was with basic and we

38:00

were on a like a green screen,

38:02

right? The screen was black with green

38:04

text and there was no visual anything

38:06

no visual feedback You would sit and

38:08

type for hours you'd hit go and

38:10

it wouldn't work, right? And then you'd

38:12

be like, I don't understand right but

38:14

because it got nothing Yeah, and because

38:16

it was ephemeral as soon as you

38:18

hit go it would start interpreting it

38:20

because it was basic If it didn't

38:22

work or when you when you dropped

38:24

out that code listing didn't exist anymore

38:26

Yes, type it all back in again.

38:28

Oh Yeah, that's the

38:30

thing it's it's almost like it's like the

38:32

mental equivalent of like doing martial arts or

38:34

sports or something you get that like Agency

38:37

where it's not physical. It's

38:39

like ooh something came out

38:41

of my brain and made something

38:43

happen instead of Like oh my hand,

38:45

you know put the ball through

38:48

the hoop Yeah,

38:50

but there's still something very visceral about that

38:52

and like there's

38:55

This was one of the harder challenges to

38:57

to to balance was like who was I

38:59

writing the book for? because

39:02

at some point skill skill level and

39:04

competency comes into the equation when

39:06

you're trying to like get those Moments

39:08

to people to like the right

39:10

people that you're trying to get them

39:12

to right and It

39:15

was a weird balance between like well,

39:17

I'm gonna write this for people that

39:19

know a little bit like that no enough

39:21

of no enough C sharp to hurt themselves and

39:25

You know a little bit of unity and That's

39:28

about all you need like you

39:30

could even start this Just

39:32

from a purely like

39:34

I don't know anything about this But

39:36

I want to understand how systems work

39:38

because like we're not starting like everything

39:40

is provided Like you don't have to

39:43

imagine, you know, there's no there's no

39:45

hidden steps Right, so I mean that

39:47

wouldn't be the ideal target like that,

39:49

but you could totally do that, but

39:51

I I

39:54

Wrote it mostly for people that are

39:56

coming from C sharp or some kind

39:58

of object oriented language in unity is

40:00

kind of like the visual, I

40:04

don't know, the sugar, the flavor

40:06

for what we're doing. Because most

40:08

of the code in the book,

40:10

I'd say even probably above 90 %

40:12

could be taken to any other

40:14

C -Sharp application in .NET

40:16

if you were

40:19

working with object -oriented

40:21

systems. Yeah,

40:25

I think that's an important

40:27

lesson for folks to learn,

40:29

especially if they're in the

40:31

early part of their journey

40:33

is that you can take

40:35

the knowledge, right? Like I

40:37

could possibly teach someone, say,

40:39

a builder pattern, right? But

40:43

depending on where they are in

40:45

their personal journey of how I'm

40:47

learning about the way I learn,

40:49

they may go, cool, I will

40:51

learn this and be able to

40:53

repeat that code exactly as it

40:55

is. And that's fine.

40:57

But the problem is that it's not always

40:59

going to fit the actual problem you're trying

41:01

to solve, right? That maybe you're using a

41:03

different class name or whatever, right? But having

41:05

a visual tool that you can actually run

41:07

it and then go, oh, cool, yeah. So

41:09

I know enough C -Sharp, why don't I, and

41:11

this, I'm not saying this is in the

41:13

book, I'm not going to ask you if

41:15

this is in the book, why don't I

41:17

try and recreate this pattern somewhere else and

41:19

something completely different, right? Because that's the key

41:21

thing, right? Yeah, exactly. No,

41:23

that's, I spend so much time drilling

41:26

that in the book. It's like, I,

41:28

like the whole point is to learn a

41:31

system of thinking, like to

41:33

learn how to analyze,

41:35

how to like pick out

41:37

what's happening and identify your

41:39

problem and then to implement a

41:41

solution that fits your needs,

41:43

like the reader's needs, not your

41:45

needs. Like we do so much

41:47

work in the later parts

41:49

of each chapter with like

41:51

pattern variations and customizations because

41:53

I want readers and students and learners

41:56

to like look at it, look at

41:58

the first, you know, 70 % and

42:00

be like... like, oh, we're going to

42:02

talk about what ifs, fantastic, because I

42:04

have a lot of what ifs. The

42:07

what ifs are what I feel

42:09

like that's where the real skill

42:11

or the real tool is learned

42:14

that you can take into anything

42:16

else you're going to do with

42:18

software engineering. Right.

42:21

Right. So you talked about how

42:23

those, I think you said around, now

42:25

I may be misremembering because we've

42:27

talked about a lot of stuff so

42:29

far. So I apologize everyone who's

42:31

listening, but I think you said something

42:33

around 20. No. And yeah, there's

42:35

like 18, more or less evenly split.

42:38

Right. Between the three. Right.

42:41

And then, you know, that's only

42:43

about half, that's only about 60

42:45

% because there's 34, I think,

42:48

with the Gang of Four and

42:50

the game, the game programming pattern

42:52

book combined. Right.

42:54

Right. And I think that's an important

42:56

lesson for anyone who's learning anything.

42:58

Right. There's a quote that I use

43:00

in any of the talks that

43:02

I do, and it's Yamaoka, Tesshu, and

43:04

he says, what is it? Do

43:06

not think that this is all there

43:08

is wonderful teachings exist. The sword

43:10

is unfathomable. Right. Just because you're learning

43:12

this small part of something doesn't

43:14

mean that that's all there is to

43:16

learn. And that isn't meant to

43:18

put anyone off. It's meant to say,

43:21

hey, these are some of the

43:23

things you might need. But also, you

43:25

can then use the knowledge you've

43:27

learned learning these things to help you

43:29

learn those other things faster. Right.

43:31

I think that's actually more of a

43:33

positive like, oh, let's get up

43:35

and go. Because if you can't ever

43:37

learn everything, then the simple act

43:39

of trying, you're like, you win, you

43:41

win by continuing to try. Yeah,

43:44

absolutely. And I like that. I

43:46

like that there is no like gatekeeping

43:48

with that. Yeah, like learn it

43:50

this way or you fail. Oh, I

43:52

hate that. Yeah, I'm like, no,

43:54

no. I mean, if I if I

43:56

could take up an extra page

43:58

every chapter, I'd be like. And this

44:00

is not the only way to

44:02

do it. All of this

44:04

could be, you could bin

44:06

the entire thing and start

44:08

over from something else, and

44:10

it would still, if it

44:12

addresses the problem with similar

44:15

or the same results, wonderful.

44:17

You did it. Congratulations. You

44:20

don't have to use exactly what we

44:22

do in the book. Absolutely,

44:27

absolutely. So

44:30

let's not worry about which design patterns

44:32

are in the book, but I like

44:34

the idea that there's the three different

44:36

types of design patterns. So can you

44:38

talk real quick about the different, I

44:40

guess, some of the different types of

44:42

design patterns that you've chosen and then

44:44

how you've categorized them? Like, are they

44:46

categorized based on, like, how other

44:49

people categorize them? Or is

44:51

this the Harrison way of

44:53

categorizing them? That's fair. They

44:56

are categorized, the main ones are categorized according

44:58

to the game of four because it's a

45:01

very good metric. They have a very

45:03

good idea of what goes where. And

45:07

the additional game programming ones, some of

45:09

them were categorized, some of them were

45:11

not, some of them were in different

45:13

new categories. I put them where I

45:16

thought they would best fit. So, you

45:18

know, for example, like, creational deals with

45:20

problems arising from object creation and how

45:22

to do that more efficiently in a,

45:24

you know, a variety of scenarios. Behavioral

45:27

is how to have usually,

45:30

you know, how to achieve

45:32

different behaviors without having crazy

45:34

unmaintainable code in different situations.

45:36

Structural, again, is, you know,

45:38

you can think about this,

45:41

it's the bones of the,

45:43

or these design patterns are

45:45

more like the bones of

45:47

certain systems that make, that

45:49

make communicate, usually communication, but sometimes

45:51

behavior and data sharing work

45:53

more efficiently. And

45:56

there are a couple like the

45:58

ones from the game program patterns

46:01

that weren't. that we're in, you

46:03

know, new ones. So for instance,

46:05

like object pooling, you could call

46:07

that an optimization pattern, but it

46:09

is, you know, it's also a

46:11

creational pattern. You're dealing with lots

46:13

of objects being created in your

46:15

memory and how to like, how

46:17

to manage them effectively. So

46:19

it's things like that, like

46:21

I don't quibble about that

46:23

minute kind of

46:26

theory, because

46:28

that doesn't help anyone learn

46:30

the skill. But, you know,

46:32

I put things where I

46:34

thought they would be most understandable.

46:36

But for the most part,

46:38

it's the theory behind everything is still

46:40

back to the game before, because it's,

46:42

I mean, I'm not trying to beat

46:44

that or rewrite that, like it's very

46:46

usable and it's very, you know, it's

46:48

very well researched and it's lasted so

46:51

long and it's helped so many people

46:53

make better software. But on the flip

46:55

side, it is really dry. It's really

46:57

dense. It's very hard to, like

47:00

it takes multiple re -reads and like, ooh, again, like

47:02

if you're lucky enough to have a mentor, like

47:05

you take it to them and be like, yeah,

47:07

I don't understand what's happening. And

47:09

if you're, if you don't

47:11

have those things, you know,

47:13

that a book like that

47:15

can seem like it's,

47:18

like it's not accessible. Yeah.

47:22

And that really like got me.

47:24

Like I don't want that to happen.

47:26

Like this stuff is really useful. Yeah,

47:29

yeah, sure. A couple of thoughts

47:31

on that then. So first one, I

47:33

guess, if from my perspective, and I

47:35

haven't read the book folks, I've

47:37

not read it, but it is on

47:39

my list. If your design patterns

47:41

are organized similarly to the ones in,

47:43

say, the Gang of Four, then

47:45

if folks graduate from your book to

47:47

the Gang of Four, they're gonna

47:49

go, oh wait, I remember this one

47:51

because Harrison told me this one.

47:54

And then they're gonna see a slightly

47:56

different way of implementing it, but

47:58

it'll also be categorized the same. way,

48:00

right? So it's like everybody

48:02

wins. Yeah,

48:04

exactly. Like the tools are the

48:06

same. The underlying material is all the

48:08

same. It's just the veneer that's a

48:10

little bit different. You know, the nails

48:12

are different. The hammers not different. Nails

48:14

are a little different. The woods a little different. But

48:19

yeah, like that's a good

48:21

point. I would encourage people to

48:23

like start with something

48:25

like mine and then graduate. Like

48:27

you said, and like go read

48:31

game four and go

48:33

read program game program

48:35

patterns because it'll

48:37

fill in more of those

48:39

what if gaps on a more advanced level

48:41

and you won't be starting from scratch. Like

48:43

I feel like those books missed, like there

48:46

was a primer missing and I tried to

48:48

write the primer for that. Yep.

48:50

Yep. I remember when I tried

48:52

to read the first time I tried

48:54

to read Gang of Four. I was

48:56

very early in my career and

48:58

hadn't really gotten the idea of design

49:00

patterns. And so I'm reading this book.

49:02

It's not even in a programming language

49:04

that I use. How am I

49:06

supposed to learn this? Yeah.

49:09

Yeah. I mean, that

49:11

that is one of the

49:13

fundamental things that is difficult

49:15

with learning this level of

49:17

skill. Because I don't think like

49:20

systems design is easy by any means, but

49:23

it is a core competency that people

49:25

should have early on. So it's

49:27

a weird, it's a weird, you

49:29

know, it's a weird double thing. Like,

49:31

oh, it's really hard, but I should learn it early.

49:34

Yeah. When I may not be

49:36

able to fully grasp it. I still,

49:38

I still maintain that you should do

49:40

that because you'll be farther ahead either

49:42

way. But yeah,

49:44

like, you know, I can

49:46

kind of, I can read C++. I

49:48

can understand what's happening. But even for

49:50

me, it was, it was difficult

49:53

and like the

49:55

lack of complete

49:57

projects where you could reach out and touch them.

49:59

and like try and figure like try and break

50:01

it apart and put it back together you know

50:03

like a like an old watch like Oh, I

50:06

want to see how it works Not

50:08

that it works, but how and

50:10

can I replicate it? Because

50:12

that's how you know, we talked about that a bunch. That's how we

50:14

will learn If

50:19

you're enjoying this show would you mind sharing

50:21

it with a friend or colleague? Check out

50:24

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50:26

Which has an embedded player within it and

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50:30

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you could indeed share the show, but if

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to do that You could consider

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buying the show a coffee the buy

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50:53

This is a one -off financial support

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option. You could become a patron This

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is a monthly subscription based financial support

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option and the link to that is

51:01

included on each episode show notes page

51:03

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51:05

it if you could share the show with a friend or

51:07

colleague or leave a rating or review The

51:10

other options are completely up to

51:12

you and are not required at all

51:14

to continue enjoying the show Anyway,

51:16

let's get back to it Yeah,

51:21

exactly really looking at looking at the

51:23

page and it's showing me a

51:25

factory pattern written in whatever language I

51:27

don't I don't use isn't as

51:29

useful as here is a factory pattern

51:32

in the language that you use

51:34

so you can implement it yourself and

51:36

Then tear it to pieces like

51:38

you said and figure out how it

51:40

works and change something and see

51:42

if that works and and then Understand

51:45

why that pattern exists and what

51:47

problems it can help to solve And

51:49

then I guess if folks are

51:51

reading your book And they can

51:53

recognize the the patterns and

51:55

recognize how these patterns are built

51:57

up then if they do draw

52:00

it up to the Gang of

52:02

Four. They can look at your implementation

52:04

of, say, I'm going to use

52:06

Factory Pattern again, because I just said

52:08

it. They can look at your

52:10

Factory Pattern implementation. They can look at

52:12

the Gang of Four Factory Pattern

52:14

and go, oh, I see how these

52:16

languages map to each other. So

52:18

when I look at the Options Pattern

52:20

or the Visitor Pattern, wait, I

52:22

get this now. So that, so, you

52:24

know, Line 1 in Harrison's Pattern

52:27

mapped to Line 4 on the original,

52:29

whatever, and then I can then

52:31

start to make inferences about how

52:33

the languages are working. And

52:35

maybe I can take a whack

52:37

at re -implementing one of the

52:39

Gang of Four patterns in

52:41

my chosen language, C Sharp, whatever,

52:43

because I have a little

52:45

bit of background. It's like how

52:47

people translated old texts, right?

52:49

I was going to say it's

52:51

like a Rosetta Stone for

52:54

going back to this. Yeah, 100%.

52:56

And that's why I chose the patterns

52:58

I did to include, because the ones for

53:00

the most part, the ones that I

53:02

left out, are familiar enough once

53:04

you get through the ones that

53:06

I've been teaching, that you can

53:08

jump in and be like, oh, I see what

53:10

we're doing. This is this pattern, but with a

53:12

little bit of a twist. And

53:16

that's kind of the reasoning for

53:18

what didn't make the cut in

53:20

this volume. Yeah.

53:23

Nice. Okay.

53:25

So I guess

53:27

just before we drop off then,

53:29

I think you answered this one

53:32

earlier, but I'm going to ask

53:34

it again anyway. So this can

53:36

be read by someone who is

53:38

like early in their career. They

53:40

know a little bit about C

53:42

Sharp, a little bit about Unity,

53:45

or maybe just some about one

53:47

or the other, as long as

53:49

they're willing to hit road bumps

53:51

along the way. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

53:53

Like everything starts very basic. You

53:55

really, you don't need very much

53:57

specialized C Sharp knowledge. The

54:00

few places that you do, I either explain

54:02

what you need to know or show you

54:04

where to get it. So

54:06

really like, you know, a

54:10

few months in of playing around with, you

54:12

know, of, you know, really getting a

54:14

no C sharp, you don't have to be,

54:16

you know, much more than a beginner

54:18

intermediate level, you'll still get something out

54:20

of the book. Likewise, if you're

54:22

more heavily on the unity UI side

54:24

of things, you've been doing everything

54:26

in the editor, totally fine. You'll still

54:28

be okay. And if you're straight

54:30

up just C sharp, and you've never

54:32

used unity, like all you really

54:34

need is to watch one of, you

54:36

know, unity learns, which is their

54:38

learning platform, you really just need to

54:40

watch like their quick video on

54:42

like how to use the editor because

54:44

everything else, you know, like if

54:47

you learn how to use the editor and

54:49

sort of conceptually understand what scriptable objects

54:51

are, that's it. Like everything

54:53

else, I, you

54:55

know, we build up

54:57

block by block

54:59

and everything, all the starter projects are

55:01

on, on a GitHub, on, on GitHub. So

55:04

you can just, you download the whole

55:06

thing, you start each, you start each chapter

55:08

with a new project, with a new

55:10

problem. I mean, every chapter,

55:12

the problem is framed as like, how

55:14

would you implement, you know, such and

55:16

such game mechanic, but really it's how

55:18

would you solve this problem if you

55:20

were told, you know, as a junior

55:23

developer, hey, I need this new

55:25

feature implemented. And then you

55:27

think to yourself, oh, okay, well, what

55:29

do I do? Where do I start?

55:31

So that's how every, that's how every

55:33

chapter starts is like this, you know,

55:35

kind of made up feature, feature task

55:37

from, you know, your dev lead or

55:39

something. Here, go do this. And then

55:41

we start. Right,

55:44

right. And I guess, and this

55:46

is me just extrapolating and

55:48

guessing something, right? One

55:50

of the things because you said earlier on

55:53

about, you know, I chose unity, I'm happy

55:55

with unity. This is one that I really

55:57

like. Let's not talk about the weird licensing

55:59

stuff that happened. Because if you're reading this

56:01

book, you're probably not going to be publishing

56:03

a game at the end of it. You're

56:05

reading this one to learn, right? So you're

56:07

learning how to use the tools, you're learning

56:09

how to use the language, you're learning how

56:11

to produce some stuff. And I feel, because

56:13

I've played around with the Unity, I've played

56:15

around with Godot or Godot or however you're

56:17

supposed to pronounce it. Yeah, I say Godot,

56:19

but I don't. Yeah, right? Who knows, right?

56:24

And then like I've played around with a

56:26

few of the others, the free versions of

56:28

a few of the others. But I'll tell

56:30

you something, right? As someone who knows nothing

56:32

about these things, they all look and behave

56:34

quite similarly. So if you're happy with using

56:36

Unity, you know, you're

56:39

going to be, you're already two

56:41

steps ahead of someone who hasn't used

56:43

Unity, and then some, because you'll

56:45

be able to perhaps transfer this knowledge

56:47

over to Godot, Godot, however we're

56:49

pronouncing it, maybe even Unreal, if you

56:51

can get a license for that

56:53

or whatever, right? It's, it's like, it's

56:55

not like these tools are all

56:58

designed differently. They're kind of all, they're,

57:00

they're all something they're all, yeah,

57:02

exactly. And the learning curve for each

57:04

one to get to the

57:06

stage you need to start learning this

57:08

material is very small. Like it's

57:10

not, it's not very steep at all.

57:12

And even the learning is kind

57:14

of a system in itself. It's like

57:16

abstracted, right? Like you can, you,

57:18

what we really want to teach is

57:20

how to think like an object

57:22

oriented, you know, engineer, and

57:24

then we go, Oh, well, how do we do

57:26

that in this specific language? Ooh, how do

57:28

we do this in 3D? Ooh, how do we

57:30

do this in Unity components? But,

57:33

you know, the top level is really the

57:35

most important one is like, how do I

57:37

learn these analytical skills to be a badger

57:39

engineer? Again, the one

57:41

caveat is that this is all object

57:43

oriented. So take that for, take that and

57:46

to keep that in mind. But, you

57:48

know, 85, 90 %

57:50

of these skills are directly transferable

57:52

to any other object oriented

57:54

framework or problem, I guess would

57:56

be the better word, like

57:58

a problem. area that you're trying

58:00

to solve. And

58:03

that's the big thing that

58:05

I focus on when I'm

58:07

trying to teach. I don't want

58:09

you to get pigeonholed into

58:12

some crazy

58:14

dogmatic version or viewpoint about what

58:16

you're learning. And then you know

58:18

you're so narrow and you're so inflexible

58:20

that you can never grow. It's

58:24

a hard line to walk,

58:26

but anyone can pick this

58:28

book up after a few

58:30

two or three months of

58:32

C -sharp programming or Unity

58:34

just bopping around their tutorials

58:36

or whatever, as long as

58:38

you are curious about how

58:40

systems work. That's the main thing,

58:43

isn't it, if you're curious or

58:45

not? Cool.

58:47

Okay, so let's say someone's listening

58:49

along and thinking, wait, I didn't

58:51

write down the name of the

58:53

book. Give me the name of

58:55

the book again. All right, it's

58:57

Learning Design Patterns with Unity. It's

58:59

the only one on anywhere. You

59:02

can get it from Amazon or

59:04

PACT. One or the other is honestly

59:06

usually having a sale at some

59:09

time. So grab it. We do, like

59:11

I said at the beginning, we

59:13

do have Discord servers for all our

59:15

Unity content, which is great. So

59:17

PACT has actually

59:19

a pretty solid offering for Unity. So

59:21

all the authors are on the

59:24

servers. You can ask any question to

59:26

any of the authors or any

59:28

of the mods about whatever book you're

59:30

following along with. And you know,

59:32

it's kind of just a nice place

59:34

to post ongoing work and where

59:36

you go from there and kind of

59:38

just share, I mean, it's Discord.

59:40

So it's community driven, but

59:43

I'm on there most

59:45

every day. And you

59:47

get the server invite

59:49

from the ebook or the

59:51

print copy or both, whichever way you

59:53

grab it. So definitely

59:56

don't leave out that step,

59:58

because that, especially with this

1:00:00

kind of content it's important to

1:00:02

talk about it to like have

1:00:04

your stuff almost you know peer-reviewed

1:00:06

in a nice way to make

1:00:08

sure that it's it's getting through

1:00:10

and you also have a server full

1:00:12

of people who are likely could be

1:00:14

mentors as well right oh I need

1:00:16

to help with this I'm a bit

1:00:18

stuck oh well let's jump on a

1:00:20

session and we'll we'll peer we'll work

1:00:23

on it together we'll pay program or

1:00:25

whatever right it's I mean The community

1:00:27

aspect kind of surprised me because you know

1:00:29

a lot of the times now You know because

1:00:31

it's it's years and years later a lot

1:00:33

of the times if Because a time difference

1:00:35

that you know I'll be asleep and by

1:00:37

the time I get up and look at

1:00:39

a problem You know look at someone's question

1:00:41

or a problem somebody else will have jumped

1:00:43

in like some other learner and been like

1:00:45

oh I ran into this You know this

1:00:48

is how everyone's it's like solving each other's

1:00:50

problems which is wonderful like everyone's kind

1:00:52

of learning Learning by doing.

1:00:54

Yeah, that's interesting because that's that's

1:00:57

almost there's almost the exact same

1:00:59

feeling that a fellow author of

1:01:01

yours Mark J. Price had said

1:01:03

that he's on there helping out

1:01:06

but other people will jump in

1:01:08

and help out as well. Yeah,

1:01:10

it seems to be like that there's

1:01:12

you know after a certain number of

1:01:14

people join and are involved you get

1:01:16

to you get to this line where

1:01:19

It just explodes. It just

1:01:21

explodes. Like there's so many

1:01:23

eyes on it that somebody will help,

1:01:25

which is great. Yeah, oh man, Mark just

1:01:28

released his awesome tools and tools

1:01:30

and services or tools and tricks,

1:01:32

right? For C-sharp, his books are

1:01:34

great. They really are. Right? Amazing.

1:01:37

Okay, so someone's listening in,

1:01:39

they're like, this is amazing.

1:01:41

I've got a question for Harrison.

1:01:43

Is there a way for folks

1:01:45

to get in touch? Yeah, I'm

1:01:48

always on LinkedIn. I'm the only

1:01:50

Harrison Fironi, F-E-R-R-R-O-N-E. You can inbox

1:01:52

me or DM me or whatever

1:01:55

it's called on LinkedIn any time.

1:01:57

That's the main way or through

1:01:59

Discord. Those are my

1:02:01

only two kind of social

1:02:04

media, social media hooks

1:02:06

that I have. Right,

1:02:08

right. Yeah, I totally

1:02:10

get that. I went

1:02:12

through a period during

1:02:14

the time when

1:02:16

everyone was sent home, should we say?

1:02:18

I don't like to talk about that.

1:02:20

During that period of The dark time.

1:02:23

That's it, right? I actually went through

1:02:25

all of my socials and was like,

1:02:27

am I actually using this? Do I have

1:02:29

the time, even though I've got nothing

1:02:31

to do at this moment in time, do

1:02:33

I even have the time that is

1:02:35

required to keep this up and going? No,

1:02:38

I don't. It's gone. And gone. No,

1:02:40

I probably have a Twitter and an Insta

1:02:42

somewhere for programming, but I honestly

1:02:44

couldn't tell you what they are.

1:02:46

I focus on Discord and through

1:02:48

LinkedIn, it keeps it easy, keeps

1:02:50

everyone in one place, and I'm

1:02:52

much more likely to see any

1:02:54

of your wonderful questions. Yep,

1:02:58

absolutely. Okay, cool. Well,

1:03:00

Harrison, it's been a wonderful

1:03:02

conversation with you. I absolutely love

1:03:04

these conversations. Thanks

1:03:07

so much for having me on again.

1:03:09

Hey, no worries. You're always welcome on the

1:03:11

show. Just get in touch and we

1:03:13

can talk more unity. We can talk education.

1:03:15

We can talk development. can talk whatever

1:03:17

you want. Oh

1:03:19

man, that would be a fun one because

1:03:21

I feel like the unit is taking

1:03:23

kind of a hit, but it's such a,

1:03:25

they've really put, I mean,

1:03:28

this isn't just recently, but they've

1:03:30

always put a lot of their backing

1:03:32

into their educational content. And I like

1:03:34

that. Maybe that's why I keep using

1:03:36

them because I always see them trying

1:03:38

to make that better and useful for

1:03:40

not who they think their audience

1:03:43

is, but for their actual audience. I

1:03:45

think that's an important distinction. And so,

1:03:47

oh man, talk unity and curriculum development

1:03:49

all day. Do something. Absolutely.

1:03:52

Maybe you, me, and Mark

1:03:54

can do an episode there. Oh,

1:03:57

that'd be awesome because his

1:03:59

books are very light. mine just like with

1:04:01

like his are so nitty gritty like

1:04:03

with like comp like each little

1:04:06

piece is so important to learn

1:04:08

and like I think that's that's wonderful

1:04:10

but like his books are massive

1:04:13

you know and he's got so

1:04:15

many so oh yeah I'd love that that'd

1:04:17

be that'd be good fun well

1:04:19

there you go right we've said it

1:04:22

now and he's on an episode so

1:04:24

maybe it's gonna happen Amazing. Mark I'm

1:04:26

sorry I didn't I'm sorry I didn't

1:04:29

message you before this I should have.

1:04:31

Well look alright for the listeners who've

1:04:33

gotten this far we talked about it

1:04:36

just before we hit record let's just

1:04:38

free-formed jazz this and we free-formed jazz

1:04:40

that we come out with we've got

1:04:43

a trio for the next one. Oh

1:04:45

that'll be good all right. It sounds

1:04:47

like a plan. Yeah yeah well thank

1:04:50

you over so much Harrison. I've really

1:04:52

enjoyed this this recording this episode. Oh

1:04:54

me too. Thank you for listening to

1:04:56

this episode of the Modern.net show with

1:04:59

me, Jamie Taylor. I'd like to thank

1:05:01

this episode's guest for graciously sharing their

1:05:03

time, expertise and knowledge with us. Be

1:05:05

sure to check out the show notes

1:05:08

for a bunch of links to some

1:05:10

of the stuff that we covered and

1:05:12

a full transcription of the interview. The

1:05:14

show notes as always can be found

1:05:16

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1:05:19

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1:05:21

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1:05:23

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1:05:25

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1:05:41

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1:05:43

hope you have a fantastic rest of

1:05:45

your day and I hope that I'll

1:05:47

see you again next time for some

1:05:50

more.net goodness. I'll see you again real

1:05:52

soon. See you later folks.