Thanks — glad it resonated! Part 2 should uncover a lot of the magic behind the scenes. And thanks for sharing the link. Running claude code against a local llm is a really interesting direction, but I need more RAM...
I have yet to see any source that proves 174 is the sole or major reason for the downturn. If you have something that suggests otherwise that, please do share.
As far as I was able to surmise, after becoming interested in the topic last year, it was a combination of factors: interest rates, 174, over hiring during 2020-2022, over estimating future demand for digital goods/services during the covid, lack of cheap money for funding unprofitable businesses, AI hype, and probably other factors.
The most logical answer is multiple events/factors all within a short span of time, rather than one single thing being the sole reason for the downturn.
The changes to the market are not just in the US though. Admittedly the US has ripple affects worldwide, but if you take the UK for example, the contracting market is basically non-existant now.
The last time I job searched in 2020, it took 7 months. For me, it was the adoption of the leetcode interview process, even at startups. I'm not especially good at leetcoding, and at some companies you need to solve 4-8 problems. So it's just a strange stochastic process where eventually you pass them all, but it takes many tries.
I also feel the same way about getting all but one question. I usually make it all the way to the end of a really grueling process before getting rejected.
Good guess, but I think I found what it actually was: Toll-Free Bridging[1]. Basically how you can use many Core Foundation types and NeXTSTEP classes interchangeably, like CFLocaleRef and NSLocale.
Never really had to use it myself, at least IIRC, but I was aware of the concept generally. But because I didn't answer by saying 'Toll-Free Bridging', I was done.
I am a non-game developer, and I have been looking into this as well for 3D games.
1. It seems the major game engines are Unreal (C++, many AAA titles) and Unity (C#, widely used). Godot is open source and uses a python-esque GDScript. There is also Roblox Studio (Lua) which is its own walled garden.
For multiplayer, you can use Unity and Unreal’s systems or Steam or you could try to roll your own with something like Agones.
For Assets, major tools are Blender and 3DS Max. You could also use tools like Shapr3D or MagicaVoxel. Or buy on sites like Turbosquid but the meshes/textures may not be organized well.
2. Reasoning about geometric transformations can be challenging. Also animations, character rigging, organizing assets, memory management, framerate performance.
All of this is in addition to game design, which is its own thing. Good luck!
I use both Claude Code and Xcode with a local LLM (running with LM Studio) and I noticed they both have system prompts that make it work like magic.
If anyone reading this interested in setting up Claude Code to run offline, I followed these instructions:
https://medium.com/@luongnv89/setting-up-claude-code-locally...
My personal LLM preference is for Qwen3-Next-80B with 4bit quantization, about ~45GB in ram.