Ara leading ideas
My father wanted me to be an architect. He would bring 3ds Max, Photoshop and books that teaches those softwares. In Turkmenistan, architects earn a lot, and well respected in the society. And since childhood I was into the art, my father wanted me to be architect and be respected in the society.
But I didn't want to be an architect. My curiousity led me to learn how computers work. It was in late 2000s. Turkmenistan just opened the Internet for mass. But it was a mobile internet. Slow and very expensive. I didn't have access to the video courses. To read the web articles as it was expensive for the internet traffic.
I also didn't know English very well. In my situation, the books with the smallest size (.djvu, .pdf) that covers topic in depth were ideal.
So, I would learn programming by downloading books that were 3-6 megabytes in size in Russian language. And it was the books that are outdated. Books that would talk about Microsoft/Open-source wars, about operating systems such as OS 360/1, programming languages such as Cobol, Fortran and how C, C++ were great than them.
Besides touching the history, I also grew up with their dream.
When I was an intern in 2017, I saw how the company organized an event related to the Cryptocurrencies and Web3. But that made me confused. I knew what was web3 as the semantic web not something as data ownership.
I knew AI not as the deep learning, but as the expert systems. I knew Steve Jobs not because of Iphone, but from 80s in their war with Microsoft.
I was learning programming to earn a passive income. After every project, I learnt something new. About design, UX, market research, team work and so on. The lesson that I took is that, writing the app is just 25% of the work. Another 25% of the work is dedicated for the maintaining the app, another 25% for the markeeting, another 25% for the business operations, UI, and so on.
Eventually Entrepreneurship start to drain me. I start to look for the purpose of the life. What is the meaning of the life? One of the books said to me, combine what you are good at and what do you want to do since you were a child. I wanted to write stories. I knew art and programming. Combining them together led me to start working in the game industry.
The Ara is a result of my experience: learning design tools before programming, game engines, crypto, open-source and dream of early computer pioneers with what I grew up with.
When I moved to China I got an unlimited internet traffic with WiFi. I tried video tutorials. But eventually inclined to the fundamental works. They are dry but covers the topics in a systematic way. My questions about purpose, who am I also led to the interest in the history, religion. But even then, I could get with the monographs rather than reading articles of the science popularizers.
And until when I was 25, I was going with what books were telling me, as they are smarter than me. Only in 2020s I start to get my own opinion and build my own philosophy. Still, my teachers are respected by me.