Tim Sweeney's advice to programmers | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips

Summary

In this Lex Fridman Podcast clip, Tim Sweeney shares his journey of becoming a successful programmer through relentless learning and experimentation. He emphasizes the importance of not just putting in hours, but consistently acquiring knowledge and skills, even if they don't seem immediately useful. Sweeney recounts how his childhood projects and continuous experimentation laid the foundation for his future achievements, including developing the Unreal Engine. He also stresses the value of a broad education, suggesting that subjects like linear algebra can be surprisingly beneficial. Sweeney criticizes the modern focus on grades and credentials, advocating instead for genuine learning and hands-on experience. He reflects on the freedom and creativity he had growing up, which he fears is diminishing in today's structured society.

Highlights

• Tim Sweeney emphasizes the importance of learning through experimentation, not just counting hours. 🕵️‍♂️
• Childhood projects can serendipitously lay the groundwork for future successes, like the Unreal Engine. 🎮
• Subjects like linear algebra prove more useful than they seem during studies. 📐
• Facing tough learning challenges prepares you for unprecedented tasks in the future. ⚙️
• Genuine passion and skills will attract opportunities, not just formal credentials. 🎯
• Youthful freedom fosters creativity and should be protected against overly structured lifestyles. 🏞

Key Takeaways

• Experimentation is key to learning; focus on gaining knowledge rather than clocking hours. 🕒
• Unexpected lessons from childhood projects can lead to future success. 🚀
• A broad education, even in seemingly unrelated fields, can be immensely valuable. 📚
• Learning hard things boosts confidence in tackling new challenges. 💪
• Credentials are less important than the actual knowledge and work you produce. 🎓
• Freedom and creativity in youth are crucial and should be cherished. 🌟

Overview

Tim Sweeney's journey as a programmer started young, with an emphasis on creative learning and exploration. Instead of a rigid plan, he embraced a more open-ended approach, moving from project to project purely based on interest and curiosity. This hands-on experience allowed him to gain valuable insights that would eventually contribute to his success in developing groundbreaking technologies like the Unreal Engine.

Sweeney highlights the power of a diverse education, pointing out how knowledge from various fields can unexpectedly become crucial. He uses his own experience with linear algebra, a subject he once deemed unrelated, to illustrate how it later played a key role in his programming projects. This underscores the importance of maintaining a broad skill set and continuously learning, regardless of immediate relevance.

Reflecting on his formative years, Sweeney offers a critique of the modern focus on grades and credentials, advocating for real-world learning and experiences. He reminisces about a less structured upbringing that allowed for creativity and entrepreneurial endeavors, a freedom he fears is waning due to societal changes. Through his story, he urges youth to seize the opportunity to learn widely and innovate without the constraints of formal structures.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Value of Early Learning in Programming This chapter explores the importance and impact of early learning in programming. It begins with the mention of spending 10 to 15,000 hours programming as a child and discusses the role this played in later success. The chapter gives advice to younger individuals on how they should allocate the hours of their early life, emphasizing that it's not just about clocking hours. Instead, it highlights the significance of striving to learn, understanding one's knowledge gaps, and continuously conducting experiments and practical work to truly benefit from early programming experiences.
• 01:30 - 04:00: Application of Math and Engineering Principles The chapter discusses the application of mathematical and engineering principles through project-based learning. The individual recounts their experience of engaging in various projects without a structured plan, focusing on projects that seemed interesting and enjoyable. Through each project, they acquired new skills such as data storage and management, handling advanced data structures, and writing complex programs. These learnings were crucial for future endeavors, including a significant project released in 1991.
• 04:00 - 06:30: Importance of Learning and Experimentation This chapter discusses the significance of learning and experimentation in the context of developing the first generation Unreal Engine. The speaker reflects on their journey over a decade, emphasizing how the knowledge gained from engaging in hobby projects was instrumental in achieving later successes. They highlight that all the experimentation and exploration were crucial and contributed to building future advancements.
• 06:30 - 08:30: Freedom and Organic Learning in Youth The chapter 'Freedom and Organic Learning in Youth' explores the serendipitous and interconnected aspects of life and learning. It reflects on how different parts of a person's learning journey eventually align and make sense. The speaker shares their experience of learning math in high school and further pursuing studies in mechanical engineering in college. During this time, they learned various mathematical concepts including vector calculus, matrices, and their applications in physics, stress, and strain. This suggests that despite the complexities and broadness of subjects learned, they find a way to integrate into one's life and career over time, emphasizing the natural and organic process of learning.

Tim Sweeney's advice to programmers | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 10 to 15,000 hours. What was the value of the hours as a kid you put in in programming that led to the success you've had in later life? Maybe this is by way of advice to younger people in terms of how they allocate the hours of their early life. Yeah. You know, it's not just hours. It's really striving to learn, to understand what knowledge you have, what knowledge you lack, and to continually do experiments and work on
• 00:30 - 01:00 projects that improve your knowledge base. And I didn't do this with a great amount of structure or planning. I was rather just going from project to project doing things that I thought would be fun and cool. And with each project, I learn new things. You know, learning about how to store and manage data, learning how to deal with advanced data structures, how to uh write complex programs that have deeply nested uh data and control flow. Um each one of those, you know, provide a lesson uh which were later essential. You know, when uh in 1991, I released my first
• 01:00 - 01:30 game and over the the course of that decade, we went from, you know, zero commercial releases to the first generation Unreal Engine. But, you know, this was largely just using the knowledge that I built up over the previous decade. Um, just doing fun hobby projects. Um, and if I hadn't done all that work, there's no way I could have ever built the things that came later. All the experimentation and all the exploration somehow contributed, somehow made sense later on. Like all of that is integrated
• 01:30 - 02:00 somehow in the stuff you build. It's funny how life works. Like it the pieces kind of come together eventually. Yeah. You know, there are definitely karate good moments. Uh cuz you know, all this time I was learning math in high school and in college. I studied mechanical engineering and so you know, you learn all kinds of math, vector calcul calculus and vector math um and matrices and you know all these related fields uh physics and stress and strain and uh how
• 02:00 - 02:30 to you know deal with complex physical systems. Um, and yeah, I wasn't really sure how engineers would actually make use of that knowledge. Do you just like forget about it when you actually go off to do work or is it do you write down equations on paper? It was actually not clear as an early engineering student what you do. But when I started writing the first generation Unreal Engine and I was dealing with 3D math, I was like, wait, I know this stuff. I learned this and you know so you know suddenly like the karate kid you know you get to paint the fence and uh wax the car and
• 02:30 - 03:00 suddenly put all the pieces together into you know a 3D engine based on whole lot of accumulated programming language and math knowledge often often knowledge gained without ever anticipating that I might use it in that way also I think what's useful is over and over learning a hard thing and then showing to yourself, you know, uh that you can do it, that you can learn a hard thing. So then when you come to having to write a 3D engine that
• 03:00 - 03:30 uh in ways that haven't been done before, you're like, I've I've been here. I've been here in this experience. Like I don't know what to do, but we'll figure it out. We'll learn. I'll learn all the necessary components. So just not being afraid of something new. That's right. and constantly striving to make connections between these fields and look for their applications long after I chipped on Unreal Engine. It was like going back through an engineering textbook and looking at oh yeah I use that I use that I use that and then I got to the section on EN values I'm like
• 03:30 - 04:00 don't know what the hell this is. Um but you know it turns out IGEN vectors and IGEN values were the critical breakthrough that made the Google search engine technology work and stand apart from the rest because they found if you threw all the links that existed in the web and you know links from and two different sites and you put them in a giant matrix and you conclude it you found the dominant values then those vectors described the best search results for different things. And so constantly picking up knowledge and
• 04:00 - 04:30 looking for ways to put it together is is the thing to do. And if you aspire to be a programmer, you've got to write a lot of code and you've got to continually learn new things and improve. And if you want to be an artist, you've got to continually draw artwork of all styles and all kinds and constantly push yourself to learn more and more. uh because you you never know exactly what you're going to end up doing in the long run, but the more knowledge you have and the more skills, the more chance you have putting it together and being successful. And whether you're a programmer or an artist, you should probably take linear algebra, even though it doesn't make
• 04:30 - 05:00 sense at the time. I found getting engineering an engineering degree and then never working in an engineering field, uh you know, just being a computer programmer was immensely valuable. Um yeah, I went to University of Maryland, which for some disciplines it's kind of known as a party school, but they work the engineers to death. Worked really hard. And if you learn any engineering discipline, you learn massive amounts of math and you learn the rigor of problem solving, you know, not just what you find from the Wikipedia article, but going through all the exercises of solving complex
• 05:00 - 05:30 problems and building up series of solutions to to derive an answer, it's it's valuable and it is it embodies the knowledge that you need as a programmer. And you know, people often go to university and think, okay, my goal here is to get good grades, so I get a diploma and I prove to an employer that I'm valuable. like no, that's just kind of the superficial bookkeeping of the university. The real purpose of all of this is to learn and whether you learn formally or you learn on your own, it's the learnings that are really valuable in a career. Um, and especially if
• 05:30 - 06:00 you're going to be entrepreneurial, it's really knowing the stuff that matters and not having the the diplomas and uh, yeah, there's ever more pressure to make a build rebuild society more and more around credentials. Do you have this certificate? Do you have that proof? But like you know companies that are focused on just building great products and doing great things uh gravitate towards people who do the great work. Yeah. One of the great things about youth is uh there's more freedom.
• 06:00 - 06:30 There's just more time to learn. And people when they go to high school they sometimes thinks why I can't wait to get out of this and be an adult and be free. But it's not quite freedom. When you get a job, you start a family. all wonderful things. We get less more and more busy and less and less time to learn in the general sense. Learn whatever the hell you want. And that that is a wonderful time in life, the the teenage years, the early 20s, the 20s, when you could just
• 06:30 - 07:00 learn random Yeah. You know, I think this is something that's kind of changing in America. Um there's so much focus on grades and homework and um structure around kids' lives. You know, when I was growing up, you know, my mom would feed me and my neighbors, you know, my their my neighbors and moms would feed them breakfast and they'd, you know, be like, "Well, be back by dark." Um, yeah. And, you know, we'd go out and we'd play and we'd do all sorts of things. We'd, you know, explore the woods. We'd build go-karts. We'd uh, you know, salvage old pieces of electronics
• 07:00 - 07:30 and build you what we thought were our space uh, spacecraft control panels um, for the, you know, fake spaceships we were building as play. And uh we'd have anor enormous amount of freedom and uh you know from basically being a little kid through um through the time I went off to college um it had an enormous amount of free time and some people just used that and waste it and watch TV. Some people socialized um and some people really got into serious projects. Uh so many people at all times were
• 07:30 - 08:00 doing cool things. You know I was programming. I was learning to build things. I was uh you know before I was releasing games to the world. I'd be like yeah having neighborhood folks over to play the things I was working on and check them out and sometimes they're impressed and sometimes they weren't. Um and they'd have their own projects and often we'd have spare time jobs and everybody was entrepreneurial like everybody you know had a side gig. Sometimes you go around and mow people's lawns uh or you'd you know you know rake the leaves up and you know earn money and the freedom there and the the
• 08:00 - 08:30 organic learning that occurred there I think is something that is really critical to the American experience I I worry is increasingly going away as society is ever more protective and sheltering um and makes it harder to get these experiences