Hi 👋, I am going take a break for year and will be watching all of the handmade hero series, skipping the QNA. Currently I am on initialising direct sound and I cant believe how much I have learned. So what I plan to do is to watch 6-8 hours of lectures and make notes on weekdays. After that code it myself on weekends and rewatch the specific section only when there is no other option. But the question is: Is it sane? Has anyone followed the entire handmade series. Right now casey is articulate with his explanation but do he start to ramble in the upcoming videos?

You'll get less value after some point. I believe it's better to follow and code along for the first 50 episodes (maybe less). What you'll get from the series is learn how to program/reason about solving problems.

The engine and game code isn't something you should use as is. Also the series was never finished, so you won't get much by following to the end. And several things would be written differently now, like using DirectX11 instead of OpenGL, using WASAPI instead of DirectSound.

I did a similar thing alongside uni work when it came out. I did 250 episodes following along, but I could have used my time more wisely looking back.

I think if you are learning equal parts with modern stuff as well is a good idea, like learn C++ (basic OOP, Cherno YouTube channel), and learn shaders in openGL or Direct3d from the get go. Write some simple games using this stuff. I think if you do this alongside Handmade Hero you get a better idea of why Casey is doing it the way he is. And can decide what to take from Casey and what not. And what makes you most productive & happy.

Some things I use still are: platform layer idea, game state struct, memory arenas, game & engine code structure, Casey thread code, Casey's collision detection, render command buffer, seperating backend & frontend render code, font code (probably more?). But I've gone away from metaprogramming, strictly C style (I think simple oop makes things easier), using more dynamic arrays than Casey.

This is just my opinion and there has been people who have had a lot more success from this community who has a different view.