Take your time Jakob. Thanks for all the knowledge shared so far, definetly pushed me to look at programming in a way different more fun way - and I will always aprechiate that and I will share my knowledge I have gained as have you, be it on the field, in the office or online via stack overflow or any other place people search for the answer on the locked up questions! And just to make you feel better - I think everyone is busy out of their mind lately, for at least 6 months now I too have been working non stop and lost a lot of "fun" when doing new projects. But we try :)
3 weeks ago | 0
I completely agree with the idea of bringing modern software engineering practices into the automation industry — that’s exactly how I see it as well. I came across your channel by chance, and it was such a pleasant surprise, as your thoughts really resonate with mine. I truly appreciate Beckhoff’s approach and believe it is the right direction. I’m from China, where the automation industry is thriving, but unfortunately, there are still many outdated mindsets and quite a few stubborn holdouts in the field.(加油!)
2 months ago | 0
Low skill "old guard" being afraid of being replaced. They are being replaced because they are overpaid and unskilled. Thanks for the content and enjoy your pause !
2 months ago | 1
Thanks a lot for everything! I hope you will recharge your batteries and regain the positive energy you had! You channel is great dont let anyone ruin this!! 🤗
2 months ago | 0
Wow dude! hate from the internet! No way! What times we live in when a guy spends hours to help people for free, only to get landed with that kind of crap. Good on you for getting out for a bit with your own wellbeing in mind. I feel more people should do that for themselves as burnout is really bad. But equally you shouldn't have to deal with crap like that at all. People need to grow up be respectful and if some are worried about new people they should just be good at what they do and they wont need to worry. I appreciate your course is helping me learn a new skill after 20 years of fixing machines to learning how to program them too.
2 months ago | 2
you getting that kind of hate by a handful of gurus means you are doing an excellent job and I wish equally talented people would do the same. that despicable need making things almost impossible to access to people and companies without unlimited budget needs to be destroyed. I'm very glad to hear you have more work than you can handle . cheers for that
2 months ago | 0
Hi Jacob perseverance in the future. I would like to see more content like this on the channel even though I work in the same industry. Keep it up!
2 months ago | 0
Damn, that’s awful. Death threats for making free educational content is wild. We make simulation software for industrial automation. Your videos helped me immeasurably, so thank you! If you’re ever interested in programming virtual machines in simulation, let me know.
2 months ago (edited) | 1
hard to read that you've received death threats. I mean, what's wrong with people? Even though you're working for the "wrong" side ( 😉 ) I wish you all the best. come back stronger 💪
2 months ago | 2
It’s 0.1%. Why bother? Your insight into automation is important and you’re inspiration to many of us.
2 months ago | 0
After browsing PLC subreddit for years this surprises me none. Lots of strong personalities and angry gatekeepers in the industry. Every new post gets downvoted immediately. Any post asking about getting into the industry really gets the grumps going. Meanwhile software engineering has insane collaboration with people who contribute to free-to-use open source projects all the time. Node-Red comes to mind. Not sure if it will ever get better as long as the hardware and software are expensive and proprietary, especially in the States.
2 months ago | 0
Take as much time as you need. As you said, if it is free and not even fun there is no reason to be doing it, hope once your workload is lower, you can come back. I really enjoy your videos and they have helped me a lot. I hope any time soon all automation world could be open source and the only thing that has to be paid is equipment and work, not knowledge and software. Hope all your projects work good and fast! 🫡
2 months ago | 0
Jakob Sagatowski
Hey all!
I haven't posted a video here on YouTube for 8 months (!). Let me explain why.
1.
Though not on purpose, our company has turned into a part-time unpaid advertising pillar for Beckhoff/TwinCAT 3. Though I'm very happy that the TwinCAT 3 course on YouTube has received so many views (2.3 million video views as of today, 225.000+ watch hours!), it has also meant that we're filled with questions about Beckhoff and TwinCAT every week. It was never the intention to make any money off the course, but it has lead to an unsustainable amount of work supporting all the companies asking questions about Beckhoff and TwinCAT. I want to point out that this is not Beckhoff's fault, as I created the course with the idea that I think the automation industry should be more open and it should not cost thousands of $€£ to get into our industry. Beckhoff are in no fault whatsoever here, quite opposite I'd say they've made a great product and that's why I always wanted to share content about it. However, I never thought it would mean a flood of companies and people with so many questions, all of them assuming I'm getting paid by Beckhoff and demanding free support for all their Beckhoff related questions, and getting angry when I try to convince them that the course was made entirely for free.
Which leads me to the next point.
2.
Though 99.9% of the feedback has been positive, there has been plenty of hate. It's related to the fact that I made the PLC programming course for free. "You're destroying the automation industry as we will get flooded by new people now". It has even gotten so bad I've received death threats and people demanding me to delete the TwinCAT course from YouTube. It's a "I've paid thousands of $€£ for my knowledge, so everyone else should too!"-kind of thing. I thought the automation industry needed new ideas and new talent?
3.
My company has more work than we can handle, to the point where we can't take on all the work requests we receive. The amount of work lately has meant social media activity is down. It's hard to keep the balance of helping all our clients, and sharing as much of our knowledge as we can to give back to our wonderful industry. We'll be hiring more people!
With this being said, I've decided to take a pause from social media. I've paused my Patreon (thanks to all supporters!). In order for me to make free courses/content, the very minimum I have to get back is that it has to be fun, which it currently is not. I still want to continue bringing modern software engineering practices to the automation industry, and I will still continue to maintain the open source unit testing framework TcUnit and work on (free) training material for it.
I "just" have to find a way for it to be FUN to make PLC programming content again, but until I've found out how, I'll take a pause.
Thanks everyone!
2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 64