Thanks to everyone who participated in the Handmade Essentials Jam last month! It was our biggest jam turnout ever, and there was lots of energy on the Discord as everyone was sharing updates about their projects. We just published the recording of the recap stream, so give that a watch if you’d like to see several of our favorite submissions:

The Essentials Jam is yet another case of people really resonating with challenges that make them a better programmer. (I hate to use the term “tradcoding”, but, here we are.) Our Handmade Hero Replay group is going strong too (a Handmade Hero book club, basically). More and more people keep joining the Discord server (we’re over 10k members now!) and whether they are a seasoned programmer or a fresh college dropout, they are all eager to be part of a community that actually cares about the craft of programming.

There’s a moment in the early episodes of Handmade Hero that I particularly enjoy. On day 20, after an hour of nightmarish audio debugging and MS Paint diagrams, Casey says out of the blue:

Does anyone else love this stuff?? That’s the weird thing about it, I feel like there’s probably a lot of people thinking, “god, there’s just so much finicky stuff in here”, but it’s just like—there’s something so satisfying about banging your head against something for a little while, and then making a little breakthrough. It’s kind of like playing a great puzzle game, right?

It is not easy to find programmers who are so infectiously interested in the fine details. Casey derives so much joy from even little things like really robust audio sync. As LLMs continue to radically alter the software industry, it’s been very interesting to see how effectively they draw a line between two kinds of programmer: the kind who care about and enjoy the act of programming, and the kind who just want results, implementation be damned. I like results; results are important. But I’m very glad to be part of a community who cares intrinsically about their craft, even when real life makes that difficult.

If you missed the Handmade Essentials Jam, don’t worry: we’re planning to run another jam sometime in the fall. Sign up for our email newsletter to be notified when we announce the date and theme.

Expo update: SOLD OUT!

Last month we officially sold out the first-ever Handmade Network Expo. The response has been tremendous and I’m very excited to see everyone in just a few short weeks!

Matthew (the organizer) has been hard at work scoping out all the outlets in the venue, ordering furniture, procuring monitors, setting up catering, and all the other little details that go into an in-person event. We think we have enough chairs now. Possibly we have too many chairs.

For those who didn’t grab their ticket in time, don’t worry—all the presentations will be recorded and published on our YouTube channel shortly after the Expo. (We’re not running a livestream for multiple reasons: first, it tremendously complicates the logistics, and second, we are trying to focus 100% on the in-person experience.)

That’s all for this month—after the expo next month, we’ll have plenty more to talk about 🙂

-Ben