gustavopezzi

20 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

It's extremely rare that I buy any books written after 2020. Not (just) because of AI, but because most publishers started to approach influencers that were not experts on their field to write books, hoping to piggyback on their high number of followers to sell more copies once the book is out.

gustavopezzi

2 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Thanks for the kind words. I still want to record "Operating Systems" and "Algorithms & Data Structures" to finally complete the core CS areas. It's missing Networking but I don't know much about that topic anyways. I also wanted to continue the retro programming with at least one 68K machine (maybe the Mega Drive) plus a MS-DOS x86 course too. Also, I wanted to teach 3D game physics, either as a new course or adding more chapters to the existing 2D physics course.

Hopefully, I'll decide on what to tackle soon.

gustavopezzi

2 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I left my fulltime faculty position at the university. I'm only teaching two modules this semester and I'll probably fade out even more in the future.

I've also paused recording any new lectures at pikuma.com for now. I'm still taking some time to decide what's next for the website. I'm currently focusing on reviewing math & physics to help homeschool my son.

Other than that, I just improved the roof of my chicken coop and I'm slowly evolving the foundation of my study cabin. This new place will be my offline library and music room soon. My plan is to only really go online once a week starting August this year.

gustavopezzi

5 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

If I look back, it was not even AI, since I don't use any AI model (almost at all). So, I don't think AI was really the main divisor for me. I have a feeling it was the "you don't own anything and everything is now a cloud/subscription" that was the main disappointment, which happened years before LLMs or AI-assisted programming.

gustavopezzi

5 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I stopped working as a programmer and I'm teaching CS+math and homeschooling my kid.

gustavopezzi

5 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

That's correct! Even though I have been focused more on math lately (which was always my main study area outside the tech industry). That being said, I have limited my internet usage to ~2 hours per day to answer questions from students and I am doing a lot of homeschooling with my son.

gustavopezzi

5 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Thank you for writing this. My feelings are very similar to the ones described by the author and the timeline almost matches. The thrill of tecnology for me started to fast decay since the early 2010s and now I see it as a no-return stage. I still have fun with my retro hardware & software but I am no longer an active practitioner and I have pivoted my attention and my efforts somewhere else. Unfortunately, I no longer feel excited for the future decades of tech and I am distancing myself from it.

gustavopezzi

5 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Thanks for mentioning pikuma. :-)

The 3D software rendering is still the most popular lecture from our school even after all these years. And it really surprises me because we "spend a lot of time" talking about some old techniques (MS-DOS, Amiga, ST, Archimedes, etc.). But it's fun to see how much doing things manually help students understand the math and the data movement that the GPU helps automate and vectorize in modern systems.

gustavopezzi

6 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

https://pikuma.com

gustavopezzi

6 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Gustavo here. Thank you for the mention!

gustavopezzi

7 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

That's right. :)

gustavopezzi

7 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

pikuma.com

gustavopezzi

7 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I also started teaching on Udemy in 2019 and even though the number of students was high, I quickly noticed that income was low and most enrolled students did not even start the courses they purchased (let alone complete them). I also decided to invest time and money in my own website/school and that was probably the best decision I've ever made. Also, I'm not sure most people know that Udemy was never profitable up until 2025. Before going public, Udemy had never been profitable despite good revenue growth. As of mid-2021 (around its IPO filing), the company had accumulated significant losses (hundreds of millions of dollars) and explicitly noted it had not generated a profit in its SEC filing. After its October 2021 IPO, Udemy continued to report net losses most quarters and years, even as revenue grew. Losses persisted through 2023 and into 2024. Finally, in 2025 they saw profits for the first time since its IPO.

gustavopezzi

8 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Hi there. Gustavo Pezzi here! Thanks for the mention. I always add new stuff to the lectures and I'm happy to inform that about a year ago I have added a bonus lecture on fixed-point rasterization at the end of that course. Nothing too crazy, but enough to cover the main points. Also, the PlayStation programming course is pretty much 100% fixed-point if anyone feels like diving into that too.

gustavopezzi

ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

My pleasure! :)

gustavopezzi

ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

As someone who has been teaching assembly to undergrads for many years, I have a couple of things to say about this. First of all, I agree. The 6502 is great for beginners but that is not just merit of the 6502 language and I want to explain why.

I have taught 68K, MIPS, ARM, x86, etc., and the overall good student feedback I got by teaching 6502 is mostly because of the surrounding context that comes with the CPU. The reason 6502 clicked better than other modern alternatives (MIPS, ARM, x86, etc.) was because we use it to program a real machine that is simple to understand (i.e. Nintendo Entertainment System). Rudimentary memory mapped IO, no operating system, no pipelined instructions, no delay slots, no network, no extra noise, ...it's just a simple box with a a clock inside, a CPU, some memory addresses, some helper chips, IO mapped to memory addresses, and that's pretty much it!!! So, even though I agree that the 6502 is not the simplest instruction set out there, THIS simplicity of the system helped a lot.

And about the limitations of the 6502 CPU, these limitations were also important for students to understand that these instructions have a reason to be the way they are. CPUs were designed and wired given the constraints of that time, and that reflects on how we programmed for them.

So, even thought this was mostly empirical, I have to say picking 6502 and the NES to teach beginners was successful. Once again, not really because it was the 6502, but because the 6502 forced us to go simple in terms of the sytem we were moving bits left and right.

Once students played around with the 6502 and saw NES tiles moving on the screen, then it was super cool to evolve and show them how the 68000 did things differently, and then evolve more and show how MIPS came, show how pipelining works, how to take advantage of delay slots, and being able to compare the differences of RISC and CISC. It's super simple to evolve once the basics are there.

gustavopezzi

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I agree. To be honest, I don't think I ever used the term EDM before in my life, but I went with the same expression that my sources used.

gustavopezzi

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Hi there. That was probably just a small mistake on how I tried to explain the paragraph or the poor choice of words/terms I used. Thanks for the heads up.

gustavopezzi

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Thanks for the heads up. It's funny how we encounter different sources telling us different things about the history of these subgenres. I'll go back and review/expand that paragraph soon.

gustavopezzi

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Hi there. Author here. Thanks for the heads up. I would never even consider using LLMs for this, this is just a subject that was always interesting to me so I thought it would be a good idea to write some of it down. Some of these mentions look like shortcomings of English not being my first language; I'll try to review it and change the words or terms that you suggested.

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