I completed Unity's Jr. Programmer Pathway!

Yesterday was a big day for me. I finally completed this course after months of hard work.

I find it ironic that this course was rated for "12 weeks." Depending on your circumstances, between working full time and balancing family duties, your mileage will definitely wary.

It says I took 491 days to complete this course, but that's not entirely true. For the short break down of how long it actually took me, and my review of the course, skip past this section. If you want the nitty gritty, feel free to continue below.

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The course is split into 4 parts. The first two parts contains their "Create with Code" series, which I began in October of 2020.

Between my full-time job and this, I only was able to 1-2 hours every other day, after dinner. Most days I'd be starting the course with 0 motivation and sleepiness.

I began that course with 0 coding experience. It was so confusing to me that I stopped after the first few lessons in order to do another course, their "Beginning Scripting" series, to get more of the basics down. By January of 2021, I finished that course and continued with the Create with Code series (this time inside the Jr. Programming Pathway, because they were identical) in January of 2021. This time I was able to redo the first part, and finish the second part by March of 2021.

My best work at the time was my Runny Deer project. After completing this project I experienced a burn out. I started questioning my motivation and my progress. It dawned on me that to make real consistent progress I would have to leave my biggest time consumer: my full time job in managing an Online Store (part administrative / marketing / customer service). It was really nice working here for the last 3 years, but I knew I didn't want to do this long term. A career switch was due.

If I wanted to quit, I needed a pile of savings. That pile of savings needed to last me a good year, which is what I expected to get good practice and learning in. I hunkered down on my full time job for the next 6 months. In August of 2021, I prepared enough savings to go cold turkey for awhile. I told my workplace of my plan a whole two months in advance to ensure a smooth transition and created trainings for my replacement. My employment concluded end of September 2021.

By October of 2021, my situation at home was changing. I needed to downsize as my family was renovating the house, so I spent the majority of this month moving and helping out with the deconstruction. In November I dabbled in another course, Thomas Brush's Full Time Game dev course. I really liked that it reinforced the lessons from the Unity's Jr. Programmer pathway course in its own way. It inspired me to go back to visit the Jr. Programmer pathway.

I decided to redo it again, a 3rd time, from the beginning to the 2nd part. This time, things just clicked a lot more to me. The coding syntax and logic came to me more naturally. I decided to spend December and January just taking notes and watching the lessons for the whole course (parts 1-4). In February I did the prototypes from parts 1-2. I felt pretty confident I could finish the whole course by end of March 2022. Here is a brief overview of the course, its topics, and the accompany projects that I did. Note that the links are all the corresponding projects I did with each section. I did each lesson and added extra functionality outside the lesson, to get more practice in.

Unity’s Junior Programmer Route

1. Mission 1: Create with Code 1 - 14 hrs

   1. Unit 1 - Player Control

      1. Car Simulator

      2. Debug the Plane

   2. Introduction to project management and teamwork

   3. Unit 2 - Basic Gameplay

      1. Feed Animals

      2. Debug the Dog Fetch

   4. Mission 1 Checkpoint

      1. Modded Cube Submission

2. Mission 2: Create with Code 2 - 25 hrs

   1. Unit 3 - Sound Effects

      1. Runny Cone

      2. Debug the Balloon

   2. Unit 4 - Gameplay Mechanics

      1. Rolly Ball

   3. Unit 5 - User Interface

      1. Food Clicker

   4. Intro to user feedback and testing

   5. Career Research and Preparation

   6. Introduction to portfolios

   7. Mission 2 Checkpoint

      1. Who's a Good Dog

      2. Runny Deer

      3. Debug the text

3. Mission 3: Manage scene flow and data - 5 hrs

   1. Introduction to real-time 3D experience design

   2. Set up version control

   3. Explore the sample project

   4. Principles of object-oriented programming

   5. Create a scene flow

   6. Implement data persistence between scenes

   7. Implement data persistence between sessions

   8. Mission 3 checkpoint

      1. Data Persistence Project

4. Mission 4: Apply object-oriented principles - 5 hrs

   1. Abstraction in object-oriented programming

   2. Inheritance and Polymorphism in Object-oriented programming

   3. Encapsulation in Object-oriented programming

   4. Profile code to identify issues

   5. Job preparation: Junior Programmer

   6. Mission 4 Checkpoint

      1. Ball Bounciness Study

It's kind of ironic what happens at this point. The course says that the first two parts would take approximately 40 hours, while the next two parts would only take 10 hours. After previewing the entirety of the course with my notes and finishing the bulk of the first two parts, I thought the last two parts would be a breeze: they were only rated to be 10 hours!

Boy, was I wrong. Although they were short, the last two parts involved a lot more complex code. In addition, the two projects at the end required us to build a whole program from the ground up. No step by step instructions like the previous tutorials. It was at this point that they were letting us take the reins. I ended up taking two weeks longer than expected.

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So all in all, I devoted 9 months to this course, instead of their rated 3 months.

The first 5 months I only completed Parts 1 & 2 while working full time (October 2020 - March 2021). Was super confused and burnt out half way and stopped.

The next 4 months (December 2021 - April 2022), I restarted the course from beginning to finish to better reinforce the lessons. In these 4 months, the December was devoted purely to note taking, and the latter was building prototypes and projects. Note taking gave me a good preview of the course--It helped me see the bigger picture without getting lost in doing the projects, so I knew my beginning, middle, and end. I also was able to devote a lot more hours being off work.

Overall I really like this course. The first two parts were loaded with video lessons with Carl (the instructor) who shared his screen. All parts have written instructions to follow and pictures of the script. There are projects for you to complete, projects for you to debug, and quizzes at the end of each section. In addition there were sections you had to submit your own independent work. I liked the career advice provided, like making your own portfolio, working in teams, and providing user feedback. The best part was that it was free. An insane amount of professional value.

Because this pathway uses their Create with Code course, there is quite of an abrupt transition between the Parts 2 and 3. Carl is no longer guiding us through video, and it switches to more of a textbook like format with text instructions. While parts 1 and 2 were heavy with tutorials and projects, parts 3 and 4 were much more complex.

I saw a lot of people in the comments talking about this and complaining about how there wasn't enough instruction. I somewhat disagree--at some point a lot of coding is just researching how to do something without anyone else telling you exactly how. Parts 3 and 4 encouraged me to be more independent. I also am OK with just text instruction, as I've had to do a lot of it in university.

For me, I personally would have preferred more emphasis in the beginning sections on basic programming functions for C# (that was provided through their "Beginning Scripting" series) during the Create with Code sections. These functions form the back bone of this code and without it, I felt myself trying to figure out how the code was written, instead of the role that the code performed.

If you decide to take this course, feel free to send me any questions that you have! Although this was a big step for me, I know that it is just the beginning. Up next on my list is their Creative Core pathway!