10 Questions with Cameron Vetter

By day, Cameron is a straight-laced Azure architect. By night, he dons the cowl and cape and writes amazing HoloLens tutorials on his blog, Indubitable Development, to help the wider xR community. Several of these tutorials revolve around building a game that you can even download for your HoloLens called Western Town. Most people will know him best, however, for his tutorial on Spatial Understanding, one of the most difficult topics when developing for the HoloLens. Without further ado, I give you Cameron’s answers to the 10 Questions:

What movie has left the most lasting impression on you?
The Matrix because of the amazing technological concepts shown in the film combined with the implications of not having the proper safeguards on AI combined with the ethical implications of technology.

What is the earliest video game you remember playing?
Pick Axe Pete on the Odyssey 2. I was 6 years old and my parents had entered the world of video games, this machine was formative for me, especially because it had a keyboard making me more accepting of computers when I was exposed to the Commodore 64 2 years later.

Who is the person who has most influenced the way you think?
Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of Turbo Pascal and designer of C#, the two languages that have been most impactful on me and the way I think about logic and design patterns.

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
30 seconds ago, I designed a web service interface, implemented it, decided it stunk, and redesigned it.

What’s a programming skill people assume you have but that you are terrible at? Javascript / Web development, most non developers assume every developer creates web sites, I don’t and I can’t help you make your web site :slightly_smiling_face:

What inspires you to learn?
Learning for the sake of learning, I have a general thirst for knowledge at least associated with technology learning.  This has helped me stay on the cutting edge each time the tech world makes a major shift.

What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
That although I will never keep up with technology, design patterns, languages, and everything else that goes with our field, I have the ability to learn these items as needed when the time comes and can’t be obsessed with trying to keep up.

What’s a view that you hold but can’t defend?
IOC is the most abused design pattern in software development, it is used where D/I is all that is really needed, or nothing at all.  The hotness of the pattern adds unneeded complexity, maintainability problems, performance issues, and unnecessary resource use.

What will the future killer Mixed Reality app do?
The “killer app” for mixed reality isn’t an app at all, it’s an operating system where everyone is in the same Mixed Reality world overlaid on the entire world at the O/S, level and all of the apps are running and influencing that world simultaneously as well as interacting with each other.

What book have you recommended the most?
There are so many I recommend a lot, but the most fitting for this group is Ready Player One, a must read for anyone in the MR or VR space.