LeMaster Tech Q&A - YouTuber, Programmer, and Engineer!

okay so uh I switched cameras from a GoPro which was actually pretty high quality to a integrated webcam which I know is a little bit fuzzier um but the delay between the video and the audio was actually pretty substantial and that was going to bother me the whole time hopefully it doesn't bother you guys um if the lighting in here seems a little weird my son is taking a nap right next to me and he doesn't mind noise but he does not enjoy um he does not enjoy bright lights so I just have like a ring light and a little bit of background light okay I'm gonna dive right into the questions that I uh have on the list of questions I already got so I'm going to start with some questions from Dale topley a friend of mine long time supporter of the channel and patreon supporter of the channel so Dale thank you so much for the support and for the great questions and his first question is are you or will you become a full-time YouTuber uh and this question I like it but I feel like it's a little bit out of my hands um for the first half are you a full-time YouTuber no I am not I work a full-time job I am currently an instrumentation and controls engineer is what the title technically is and uh I would love to eventually be maybe not just a full-time YouTuber but definitely self-employed entrepreneurial between YouTube online education other formats of working for myself I would love to get to that point um I think it's probably a few years out at a minimum just looking at kind of projections of the future um but yeah second question he knew uh we were expecting and we've had our son and he said what are you looking forward to most about being a parent a really good question I have wanted to be a dad for a couple years uh hey manolis thanks for joining thanks for uh shooting me a message I'm doing a q a where I run through questions people have sent in ahead of time but if you have any questions feel free to throw them down in the chat and I'll try to get to those a little bit sooner um but yeah so uh Dale's question what are you looking forward to most about being a parent uh kind of everything um I am looking forward to sleeping through the night which is not something I've had in the last two weeks uh since my son was born but definitely um like educating him I guess doing fun stuff playing sports going to like museums in the zoo and stuff like that uh as well as just kind of watching like a human being grow I'm gonna try not to mess them up too much uh but as a dad I'm just like it's a whole new level of responsibility that kind of makes a lot of things that were already there um feel less important um but okay so Dale third question and great question what's your biggest motivation uh this one is funny for me I I kind of have to give a few different names because I became a YouTuber and specifically started doing uh long-term um projects like python projects on the YouTube channel because of a couple different quests questions manolis I am 26 but I turned 27 in about a week um so he asked how old are you in the chat um so yeah I am almost 27 I'll turn 27 next week um but yeah back to the question of biggest motivation I'll say as a YouTuber I think what's up our uh athar of Kapoor I hope I didn't mess that up he said yo I'm such a big fan of you thank you so much I've never gone live before so just seeing chats come in is is really fun to me um so thanks guys let's go uh biggest YouTube motivation I don't want to keep getting distracted too much but I do love the chat going on um so biggest YouTube motivation probably was freecodecamp.org it's like I think it's over 7 million subscribers now I don't know probably a lot of fans of the channel have seen their videos they'll do like three or four hour deep dives into uh like any concept and they've actually shared two of my projects before they shared my beat maker which just launched my channel forward I went from like 500 subscribers to almost a thousand in like two weeks uh because they shared a project of mine and I learned a lot of what I know about programming from their YouTube channel so I knew there was an audience who would want to watch long-form educational content particularly in stem and programming so I knew the audience was there on an individual level because there's definitely a lot of people that work on free code Camp Tech with Tim I'm sure probably everyone who learns python on YouTube knows Tech with Tim but I think he's over a million subscribers uh and uh oh manolis you're 11 and watching since the first video and Arthur was 5 24. you guys have been around a while thank you so much for being here um and uh Manila that's awesome you're getting started programming at 11 years old good for you man I didn't start learning to code until I was like 19 years old so you're getting a good head start on it and athar 524 man you've been around that's probably like May of 2021 2022 I forget but uh that's awesome um so yeah uh there's also um a few individuals that like I really love them on YouTube but I don't think what I'm trying to do lines up too well with them like uh Mark Rober William Osmond they're some of the like funny science YouTube channels that I think are awesome um I made like a like a table saw video and a circle drawing video uh that I thought would be funny um and I thought they'd be in that kind of like funny science Niche but I think I've built a pretty good Community around fun programming tutorials and we've definitely mixed in some Arduino and stuff um so yeah I I think those are probably the biggest uh YouTube motivations um in personal life there's definitely some other people that motivate me like I think regardless of how you feel about his politics and his handling of Twitter um Elon Musk just in terms of like being a stem person and being like an engineer uh is definitely a motivation for me just in terms of like you think something would be cool to do or to try and just go do it and I think that Elon um with all of his businesses I would say up till Twitter uh was just like someone I was like man he thinks something's a good idea he puts the money behind it and he puts the effort in I think Tesla and SpaceX are super cool even as like flamethrower that he made with the boring company uh really cool so just a guy who it's like he thinks something would be cool we're up to four people in the chat thank you so much everybody for joining um the current question is like biggest motivation for me um and so for non-youtube uh channels um yeah probably Elon I'm a musician and I absolutely love Paul McCartney and all the Beatles so that's kind of all my motivations uh my favorite program of yours is the Pac-Man one yeah thank you so much that one's uh that one's done extremely well um it was kind of like a 2 000 subscriber uh project that we did was Pac-Man and I was a little nervous that people wouldn't want to watch a four and a half hour video um I was also kind of nervous I wouldn't be able to pull it off because that was a really hard piece of programming um I'm curious if you made it through the whole four and a half hour tutorial or if you just kind of grabbed it from GitHub but I was really excited when we managed to get Pac-Man working in Python from scratch that was really cool and um something I really liked about that project is we drew the board procedurally you did do the whole tutorial my man um so we drew the board procedurally where like it was just numbers and every number corresponded to a different pygame.draw.shape which was way harder than just loading in the background but I think the concepts it taught were totally worth the extra effort so I loved doing Pac-Man minola said where are you from that's a good question uh where am I from is a hard one to answer originally from Cleveland Ohio uh in the U.S and then spent like four years in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and that is where I actually started the channel and my wife and I were also renovating a house while we were there so like uh we were we were taking it apart and rebuilding it and working on it which is why if you watch some early videos it seems like I change uh filming location every couple of months because I was actually going into whatever room wasn't currently under construction but so I spent about four years in Pittsburgh and now I am living in Colorado Springs Colorado um which is you know just something I had to do for work so I do miss Pittsburgh fairly often and all my family's still in Cleveland so um it's kind of hard to be uh in Colorado especially with a new child but that's where I am right now uh manolis is from Greece that's very cool I am about a uh okay no problem atharv thanks for uh hopping in have uh have a good day um minolas you are from Greece that is uh very cool I am about a quarter Greek my grandpa and his family came over from Greece so uh yeah that's very cool I like um spanakopita and baklava so I'm sure those uh I'm sure those uh work for you too um but yeah okay the next question um is oh Euros for sure yeah um so the next question is from another uh long time supporter of the channel Philip Nunes um who said he loved the video for his usual and was curious if I could someday teach a game theory slash game design class uh he's enjoyed learning from me but still gets lost trying to come up with his own Concepts um yeah that's a really good question uh I wouldn't maybe not be the best person to teach a class on how to come up with brand new game ideas from scratch because most of my best uh videos on the channel have actually been sort of recreating existing games but in Python but I do know a lot of like you know okay we have a problem how do we break it down into like bite-sized pieces so that would be a good idea I would be interested in talking about how I come up with ideas for videos and stuff like that um but also so my brother is a actual game developer like he went to college for computer science and game development I went to school for engineering so a cool idea for a video might be if I could get my brother on uh and chat with him about how he comes up with ideas and how he actually goes about procedurally making them and then I can talk about sort of from a programmer standpoint how to do the same thing so yeah I think that would be cool it's a good idea and thank you for the question Philip uh the next one's pretty uh technical but I like it um from Sarah and she said in your opinion between mechatronics and controls what is the wiser choice in terms of income job market and continuing education um so I really like this question I am pretty into the Weeds on the different Niche fields of engineering and so she is talking about mechatronics which is basically what it sounds like it's a combination of mechanical engineering with electronics um the most like consumer-facing product that you would think of would be like arduinos and raspberry pies but this also refers to robotics and controls controls and automation engineering which is what I actually do currently um between those two your education is going to look very similar on the things you learn I would say the biggest difference is in industrial controls and automation it might uh it might be a little less glamorous the work um you might not um be on like The Cutting Edge companies as much because mechatronics tends to deal with robotics a lot of times the companies are more r d type work and controls and automation can deal with a lot of factories and Industry which maybe doesn't sound as cool or enticing but I will say I actually think for income and job market uh controls and automation might be easier to get into because fewer people have those skills and fewer people are applying for those jobs because if Boston Dynamics says something like they need a mechatronics engineer everyone who is uh who is vaguely qualified for mechatronics is going to apply for a Boston Dynamics job but there are some cool companies out there Tesla has a ton of listings for Automation and controls and they don't have enough people with those skills um and then continuing education you can really do whatever continuous education you want from either of those fields so manolis asked what can I do if I want to go to Harvard that is a great question I did not go to Harvard um I went to a pretty good school in Cleveland called Case Western Reserve University um I do think that in general best thing I can say uh places like Elite universities look for is um not just great grades that is important doing really well in school is important but your side projects and your extracurriculars so um Sports Community Service uh also like being engaged in additional clubs it seems to me like the top tier universities I think in the Europe in the UK in the US they all seem to have in common they want really well-rounded people um I didn't apply to any Ivy Leagues I was pretty excited to go to the school I went to was great for science but if you want to go to Harvard um okay chess in the chess club that's a great start I would say probably um I don't actually know because you're from Greece I don't know what international um I don't know what sort of like changes for international applicants but where I went to school almost half the school was International so I assume that might actually help you because it would be cool to say like oh we have we have students from Greece um but yeah I would say just education is super important um getting good grades is really important so don't forget about that part of it but being well-rounded Sports Hobbies clubs uh side projects if you're programming you could build some games and stuff or or start a YouTube channel or have um a game that that you could also include in your application to sort of let people know uh how well-rounded you are so that would be my advice for that one um okay the next question I'm only answering this because uh he's my brother and he's a dingus but Southpaw development asked on the YouTube poll where I asked for questions will you ever forgive yourself uh which is pretty open-ended and I don't know what specifically he's referring to I'm at peace with most of the things I've done in my life but when he was a little kid I'm his older brother I was kind of mean to him so maybe what my brother meant when he asked that question is will I ever forgive myself for being mean to my younger brother um sorry George I should not have been mean to you if that's what your look looking for okay all right the next question is from Mustafa Khan and he said have you thought of making your own website where you teach programming for free that would be so cool yes I have thought about it I really want to do it um it is a lot of work to get a website up and running I would love to do programming courses I would love to do a free online education platform I own the domain Lemaster technology.com so when I'm ready to fill out a website and put that work in I can do it but it's gonna take me a little bit of time because I am pretty new to web development most of the programming I've done has been just desktop based my wife actually runs a Blog and a website pretty well so she'll probably help me set up the website but yes I have thought about a website I have a domain I want to get to that in the next few months or next year or so but it's probably still a little ways off okay Yorn salveson said I was following and made the drum machine in Python using pi game so yes I really like that project that was like May a year and a half ago I made a drum machine beat maker in Python using pygame and he says I know she used a lot of methods but no classes was there any particular reason for not using classes I was thinking maybe classes would have made the code better you are completely right uh one thing about learning to program and making content at the same time is uh is that your um you're getting better at programming every time you do a new project so if I go and I watch some of my really early projects uh a lot of them are still cool and I'm glad that I made them I have no regrets about releasing the beat maker when I did but I was not nearly as good with classes and even like Sprites and other features available to you in pi game as I am now um so there were a lot of mistakes I would say not really mistakes because the code worked right but there were a lot of things that I could have done much better in that prog program I think you're absolutely right classes for the different um like buttons and beats would have been one very good way to make it a lot smoother it's funny free code Camp actually shared that project on their Channel and a lot of the comments I've been skimming through a lot of the comments over time are like hey this Project's really cool but uh the code is not super pythonic so that they're right it's not super pythonic I've been getting a little bit more familiar with what that means um as I've kind of been programming more so um I noticed my uncle was in Harvard nice congratulations I do not know a single person who went to Harvard um I watched a few of their online programming courses because it was uh really useful as a self-taught programmer to see what they're actually teaching in cs50 so um I think Harvard's a brilliant School my uh my brother older brother lived in Boston for a few years got to see the campus and it's really cool um yeah if if Harvard's your dream man go for it um there are a lot of really good universities even in Massachusetts there's MIT there's there's a lot of really good universities so I would say too if Harvard doesn't work out don't get discouraged because there's so many great places to learn um education and technology and stem and programming uh and you're I mean if you're 11 and getting starting to think about college right now I think you're going to be just fine my man um okay uh next question from the polls uh gwarov tandoan I hope that I pronounced that close enough to write um have you ever thought of live streaming a coding tutorial yes uh I really want to do that I have a few uh projects in mind that would make for good ones um with a new sun it's kind of like a toss-up of when is gonna be like a good window of time to do something like that uh you know if he's too fussy or anything else like that um it could it could really ruin the middle of a stream I am trying to not just leave my wife with the baby and no help for too long um but in the next couple weeks or maybe month I do want to hop on and do a live coding tutorial um uh on YouTube and do like a full python pie game game I think that would be really fun um it is it's a bit of a challenge to figure out the live stream same thing on YouTube because if I share a screen I have to use like a third party encoder I haven't done that before but I'm gonna work on it I'm gonna figure out how to do that and we are going to do some live uh code long tutorials yes that is my plan okay uh next question is from Diego Guerrera I hope I just pronounce that okay too uh why did you make the switch from me to programming so switch from mechanical engineering to programming um it's a good question I would start by saying I didn't really um I got a Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in college and my entire professional career so far has been actually in controls and automation engineering which is sort of a hybrid blend of engineerings so like I write some code I do some mechanical Concepts um a lot of electrical engineering Concepts and so professionally I've only ever been in instrumentation and controls it controls an automation engineer but the YouTube channel can make it seem like I switched to programming because most of the channels been about programming um actually probably the best reason that I made this Channel programming is because I was super curious in learning programming and I figured if I was teaching classes on it then I would also uh be getting a lot better at programming and it's not too hard to screen record yourself doing a programming concept and sharing it with people and teaching that way uh it's basically like you need a decent laptop I would like to get a better webcam I know it's kind of grainy um but it's basically like get a decent laptop find a screen recording software and a decent microphone and you can teach programming teaching mechanical engineering Concepts is a lot harder you need a lot of visual elements and there's a lot of moving pieces gears and you know things like that so that's a bit of a challenge and then also um I I don't do a ton of controls and automation uh talking because that is a really Niche field of engineering and all of the software that you use to do controls and automation engineering stuff um all of the software that you use is really expensive it's always licensed to whatever company you're working for so I can't get like a personal copy of Rockwell's rslogix 5000 which is like what I program plc's in I can't really get a copy of that and do tutorials for you guys without using my company's software which I don't wanna I don't want to make like monetized YouTube content using software that my company owns and get into a weird territory of like using something that wasn't licensed directly to me um so I didn't really make switch from mechanical engineering to programming I am just super interested in basically every field of engineering so electrical mechanical computer science even chemical uh you know I I love it all and so I'm just trying to learn everything that's why the YouTube channel kind of goes all over the place sometimes because if I'm interested in it I'll make a video in it and sometimes the videos don't do super well because I dive a little out of the norm for my channel but I've got to make videos that keep me engaged and keep me interested so uh yeah that is hopefully a good answer to that one the next one is from Ismail Ibrahim and I uh he comments on a lot of things so thank you for the continued support Ismail I hope I pronounce that okay I have a question regarding working in the automation field my question is can you work in the automation field with just a computer science degree and some knowledge of PLC programming and electronics um my short answer would be yeah definitely a computer science degree will make you plenty good at the programming side of things and most companies who are looking for Automation and controls are actually worried that their people won't be good enough at the software side of things and in general learning the electrical and mechanical side of things on the job is totally doable um now that doesn't mean that every person who has a job listing for um every person who has a job listing for controls and automation will hire someone with a computer science degree but if you're really interested in getting into this field and you're willing to apply to a few places I think that's a great resume to start with it is a little more challenging if you have like five to ten years of Industry experience in a different industry and then you're trying to jump ship again to controls and automation with a computer science degree the question might come up like why why are you changing careers at this point but if you have a good answer to that I don't see that being a problem either um so yeah I hope that helps excuse me manolis asks can from the chat can you do a tutorial with python making a chat bot um yes I could do a tutorial with python making a chat bot that would be interesting um I know with like Ai and chat GPT uh chat Bots are sort of all the rage right now um I have actually seen on YouTube a couple uh decent tutorials on that um I am not super familiar with uh using like open ai's uh API or anything so I I don't think I would want to do like a manual create like a large language model or anything like that but it could be interesting to just do a quick um video on like how to use that API I would just candidly I would have to do a lot of homework first and figure out sort of how to interface with that um I know that chat open ai's chat GPT isn't the only large language model it's not the only chat bot um so that's something I would have to do some self-educating on before making a video on um but that's an interesting concept uh chat Bots are all the rage right now so if you wanted to hop on the bandwagon get some hopefully some views and some new subscribers then that that might be a great project um okay so this is the uh last question from the polls that I got ahead of time and rs says uh congrats my friend wish your family all the best so that's about the baby um you said earlier that you were working as an Industrial Automation engineer yes I am do you work with scada yes uh scada essentially is referring to like a distributed Control software that handles security and graphics and user interfaces for a whole plant they can do a million different things and the scada system that I work with is actually GE iFix so prophecy iFix scada it's a GE product I know a lot of the scada software has a lot of overlap um he then says in particular within touch scada and if so can you make videos on how to work with it so in touch I believe is the scada product from uh into Lucian or maybe Aviva wonderwear there I have worked with wonderwear I have worked with their plcs and their hmis I haven't done a ton with InTouch scada but there's a lot of overlap from scada skada I talked about this a little bit ago when I was talking about the automation field it would be hard for me to make videos on how to work with it purely because it's really hard for me to get a personal license of these softwares they're typically only licensed to companies they're very expensive so to get a personal copy of one I would either have to use a version that was licensed to a company or I would have to spend a lot of money and the YouTube channel is not making thousands of dollars so I can't spend thousands of dollars on buying these softwares to do these uh sort of Niche tutorials I would love to do more uh controls and automation education because it's a cool field of engineering and of all the things that I could talk about it's probably the one I'm the most qualified to teach on um even more than python honestly but again it's just it's really hard to do in-depth controls and automation tutorials because almost all the good software is behind a paywall there are a few like automation direct and I think back off where you can get the uh like base programming software maybe for free or for very cheap so I might use those to try to teach some generic like PLC programming education stuff but specific to InTouch scada you know I would love to teach on some of these products but that's going to be a pretty big challenge um okay so uh that is all the questions I got from the polls uh I am uh back from having a newborn I guess back to posting regularly back to doing projects uh I promise I'm gonna work on getting a decent webcam figured out because I know this uh footage is kind of grainy thank you so much to the guys who called in and uh chatted and uh Manola specifically all the great questions and uh comments and um oop I knocked a headphone jack out okay sorry about that um but thank you so much to everyone who called in uh if you're watching this in the future thank you so much uh for watching the video and supporting the channel um you know I don't know how frequently I'll do Live Events first just my normally recorded videos I know I have a ton of international audience I can see that in the demographics and so calling in at noon my time zone in the western us is probably middle of the night for a good chunk of my audience um but uh we'll see I I enjoy going live it's very fun having the live back and forth uh chat that we had here today so thank you so much uh everyone who is watching live watching in the future thank you everyone who submitted questions I hope you enjoyed the answers to the questions as always any comments on any of my videos and I will try to get back to you guys as soon as I possibly can um thanks so much for watching and until next time good luck with any projects you're working on and uh yeah see you next time bye