Hacker News: gustavopezzi

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Pre-2022 Books"

gustavopezzi — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 10:34:04 +0000

It's extremely rare that I buy any books written after 2020. Not (just) because of AI, but because most publishers started to approach influencers that were not experts on their field to write books, hoping to piggyback on their high number of followers to sell more copies once the book is out.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)"

gustavopezzi — Mon, 11 May 2026 14:29:22 +0000

Thanks for the kind words. I still want to record "Operating Systems" and "Algorithms & Data Structures" to finally complete the core CS areas. It's missing Networking but I don't know much about that topic anyways. I also wanted to continue the retro programming with at least one 68K machine (maybe the Mega Drive) plus a MS-DOS x86 course too. Also, I wanted to teach 3D game physics, either as a new course or adding more chapters to the existing 2D physics course.

Hopefully, I'll decide on what to tackle soon.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)"

gustavopezzi — Mon, 11 May 2026 09:21:03 +0000

I left my fulltime faculty position at the university. I'm only teaching two modules this semester and I'll probably fade out even more in the future.

I've also paused recording any new lectures at pikuma.com for now. I'm still taking some time to decide what's next for the website. I'm currently focusing on reviewing math & physics to help homeschool my son.

Other than that, I just improved the roof of my chicken coop and I'm slowly evolving the foundation of my study cabin. This new place will be my offline library and music room soon. My plan is to only really go online once a week starting August this year.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed"

gustavopezzi — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 23:05:30 +0000

If I look back, it was not even AI, since I don't use any AI model (almost at all). So, I don't think AI was really the main divisor for me. I have a feeling it was the "you don't own anything and everything is now a cloud/subscription" that was the main disappointment, which happened years before LLMs or AI-assisted programming.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed"

gustavopezzi — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:59:10 +0000

I stopped working as a programmer and I'm teaching CS+math and homeschooling my kid.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed"

gustavopezzi — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:58:14 +0000

That's correct! Even though I have been focused more on math lately (which was always my main study area outside the tech industry). That being said, I have limited my internet usage to ~2 hours per day to answer questions from students and I am doing a lot of homeschooling with my son.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed"

gustavopezzi — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:54:23 +0000

Thank you for writing this. My feelings are very similar to the ones described by the author and the timeline almost matches. The thrill of tecnology for me started to fast decay since the early 2010s and now I see it as a no-return stage. I still have fun with my retro hardware & software but I am no longer an active practitioner and I have pivoted my attention and my efforts somewhere else. Unfortunately, I no longer feel excited for the future decades of tech and I am distancing myself from it.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Implementing a tiny CPU rasterizer (2024)"

gustavopezzi — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 11:54:16 +0000

Thanks for mentioning pikuma. :-)

The 3D software rendering is still the most popular lecture from our school even after all these years. And it really surprises me because we "spend a lot of time" talking about some old techniques (MS-DOS, Amiga, ST, Archimedes, etc.). But it's fun to see how much doing things manually help students understand the math and the data movement that the GPU helps automate and vectorize in modern systems.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

gustavopezzi — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 05:35:03 +0000

https://pikuma.com

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Learn computer graphics from scratch and for free"

gustavopezzi — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 21:30:30 +0000

Gustavo here. Thank you for the mention!

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Coursera to combine with Udemy"

gustavopezzi — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 20:28:02 +0000

That's right. :)

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Coursera to combine with Udemy"

gustavopezzi — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 03:30:32 +0000

pikuma.com

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Coursera to combine with Udemy"

gustavopezzi — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 17:41:20 +0000

I also started teaching on Udemy in 2019 and even though the number of students was high, I quickly noticed that income was low and most enrolled students did not even start the courses they purchased (let alone complete them). I also decided to invest time and money in my own website/school and that was probably the best decision I've ever made. Also, I'm not sure most people know that Udemy was never profitable up until 2025. Before going public, Udemy had never been profitable despite good revenue growth. As of mid-2021 (around its IPO filing), the company had accumulated significant losses (hundreds of millions of dollars) and explicitly noted it had not generated a profit in its SEC filing. After its October 2021 IPO, Udemy continued to report net losses most quarters and years, even as revenue grew. Losses persisted through 2023 and into 2024. Finally, in 2025 they saw profits for the first time since its IPO.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)"

gustavopezzi — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 23:33:50 +0000

Hi there. Gustavo Pezzi here! Thanks for the mention. I always add new stuff to the lectures and I'm happy to inform that about a year ago I have added a bonus lecture on fixed-point rasterization at the end of that course. Nothing too crazy, but enough to cover the main points. Also, the PlayStation programming course is pretty much 100% fixed-point if anyone feels like diving into that too.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Writing toy software is a joy"

gustavopezzi — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 10:33:30 +0000

I share the same feeling. Programming can be an entertaining and joyful activity where enthusiasts don't really need to worry about creating something useful that will be shared with others.

It's like cooking a beautiful and tasty gourmet recipe that serves only one.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Understanding the Origins and the Evolution of Vi and Vim"

gustavopezzi — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 06:09:54 +0000

Author here! I remember struggling with the decision of adding that last sentence or not. But at the end I was sure most readers would get that it is obviously a joke. Maybe a bad one but still a joke.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "Writing a DSL in Lua (2015)"

gustavopezzi — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 01:50:59 +0000

Lua's LPeg library would also be a great option here. A couple of years ago I taught an interpreters class together with Roberto Ierusalimschy and we used LPeg for lexing and parsing. The end result was great. Even if you're not using PEGs for your implementation I would recommend spending 30 minutes and looking at LPeg.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "TinyCompiler: A compiler in a week-end"

gustavopezzi — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 01:05:12 +0000

Hey there. Thanks for the mention and for the kind words.

New comment by gustavopezzi in "NESFab – A new programming language for creating NES games"

gustavopezzi — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 01:58:28 +0000

Hi there. I'm glad you enjoyed the NES module. :)

New comment by gustavopezzi in "I believe 6502 instruction set is a good first assembly language"

gustavopezzi — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 16:11:07 +0000

My pleasure! :)