When I started my Udacity VR Nano degree I knew I was in for a challenge. Now that I’ve successfully completed my final assignment I thought I’d share some lessons learnt. So in no particular order:
- Use version control. Thankfully I started doing this very early on. I had heard of the benefits and for whatever reason actually took them seriously. I started a religious habit of regularly pushing changes to GIT. I only used GIT to roll back to previous versions of projects hand handful of times, but had I not had the option I would have had a much bigger problem on my hands.
- Don’t underestimate the time required. Taking on any study that requires large blocks of time can’t be taken lightly. It’s not going to be enough to only do a 30 min stretch at lunch, or an hour once the kids are in bed. You’re going to need a clear half day at least once a week to make real progress. Also, make sure you know what’s going to consume your time on projects in any given block. No sense clearing 4 hours for study only to have 3 hours of that time consumed rendering a 4k 360 video.
- Don’t forget to look after yourself. With pressure on your time, it’s easy to cut out things like exercise or time with your family. Don’t do that. Cut out things that are actually a waste of time instead. TV is a big one but also think of ways of compressing your time. Like listening to audio books while you go for a run rather than reading a book alone.
- Take breaks. If your mind is cluttered you’re not going to learn as well as you might. I found when I spent more than an hour trying to solve an issue the thing to do was take a 20-minute walk, clear my head, then take another crack at it. It’s amazing how often your mind will solve problems for you when you let it.
- Take notes. Even if you never refer to them, take them anyway. Do this with a pen and paper (or a tablet and a pencil). It’s all about making the information get in your head. I almost never refer to my notes, I don’t take them to remember later. I take them to remember them now.
- Try and integrate your life into your study. I did this by using my kids as the target audience for my projects and used them as user testing subjects while developing. It let me spend quality time with them and get some study done. It was also an education for them too so a real win-win.
- Scope out what you’ll need before you begin. I started my course with a late 2009 Mac Mini. While old, it was fine for much of the course. The later parts that required 4k 360 video editing, not so much. This sort of thing can add considerable costs to your study budget so make sure you have a line of sight on this and save accordingly.
- Get involved in the community. A huge part of successful study for me was the community of learners and educators around the subject. Help others and ask for help when you need it. Don’t waste time beating yourself to death if you get stuck. Solving your problem on a public forum helps everyone else with the same issue in future. So don’t be selfish, ask for help.
- Be grateful. To your partner for looking after the kids. To your friends for listening to your ramblings about project issues. To your classmates and mentors for helping you along the way. Be grateful.
- Stick it out. Software development is hard. It’s not supposed to be easy. It is literally constant problem-solving. There will be times you’ll think “maybe I’m just not good at this”. Just keep going.