Talk me into it

[amul]

I fell off the bottom rungs of the programming career ladder about 20 years ago and haven't touched much code since then. Lately, all my time playing RimWolrd has me thinking about learning C#, Unity and maybe buying Tynan's game design book.

Somebody talk me into this idea? I'm particularly interested in hearing from other folks who have come back to hobby-coding after leaving the industry.

[Darth Fool]

Tynan's book is an excellent read about game design.  You will see a lot of fantasy castle, I mean RimWorld, in it.  It is not, however, going to teach you any C# or other programming skills.  That said, if you are interested in getting back into programming, starting off modding something is definitely the way to go, although an open source project where you can read all of the source code might be a better place to start.  The most important thing is to find a project that you enjoy thinking about and working on, because the only way to really learn programming is to do it, and the best way to get yourself to do it is if it is something that you enjoy.  Set yourself a goal to make some mod, lay down some milestones of how you think you can get their in smaller steps.  Preferably, the steps should be small enough that you can get positive feedback from accomplishing them at a reasonable pace, while still significant enough to feel like you are making progress toward your goal.  Lastly, don't worry about changing the milestones or even the final goal as you learn from you previous steps.  Good luck!