Doesn't mean you can't learn a lot from the attempt. Technical craftsmanship and project management skill are two completely separate skills. Definitely don't learn project management from Casey.
Sure, but the biggest reason to direct anybody to these videos is that they should actually make that video game they want to make, not just think about it - and so the fact that Handmade Hero just trails off and doesn't end up producing a finished video game is a problem.
The craftsmanship is dubious. I think it's a problem that people assume Casey knows what he's doing when so often he's like "We're doing it live" and Casey's hand coded solution is pretty bad whereas the thing which came in the box is very good. Casey understands Casey's version, and that's an upside if you are Casey but you are not. If the result was a finished game then hey, whatever, the game was finished and that matters. But that part didn't happen either, so then it's just like watching Tsoding or something.
At some point I stopped caring about Handmade Hero because he just never got out of the global illumination rabbit hole. He should have followed that as a side quest, behind a feature flag. Maybe one week for progress on the game, one week for rendering experiments. He didn't seem to make much progress, and it just fizzled out as he ran out of steam. Finishing should have been a bit higher on the priority list. It was just not setting a good example from a project or self management perspective.
Well Billy Basso was hugely inspired by the Handmade Hero series and went on to make the critically acclaimed Animal Well because of it. That's enough of a win for that series in my eyes.
