Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: "David Smethurst" Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: Advice needed! Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 18:22:38 +0100 Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 145 Message-ID: <6qcor8$ldg2@chuka.playstation.co.uk> References: <35C8656E.EC8288B0@nospam.easynet.co.uk> <35C88521.2DCE3E9@scee.sony.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: 195.152.73.89 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.5 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 James Russell wrote in message <35C88521.2DCE3E9@scee.sony.co.uk>... >Phil Gooch wrote: >Well, the best advice I ever heard was "Find a job you love, and you'll never work again for the >rest of your life." which is certainly true (but it doesn't mean I don't do any work here at Sony! >:O) ). Most people dream of doing their hobby for a living, so if you program the Yaroze for fun, >imagine doing it and getting PAID for it too! Damn ... that would be nice. Then there are those people who are employed to play games all day long ! >There's about 5 or 6 professional PSX developers on this site, and I'm sure they'd concur the >following: Urm .. where .. I can't see any ;P >The Bad News about the games industry: > o Remuneration (i.e, pay) isn't fantastic _in_comparison_ to some of the jobs you can > get in IT. Not everyone will be creating the next Tomb Raider. On the other hand, > you can get £100/hr programming Lotus Notes, but your life will suck for 8 hours > every weekday. it's not too bad , slightly more than my last job but having only been out of Uni for a year and this being my second job I don't think it's too bad. > o You can spend years honing your skills on a platform (say, Saturn) which dies a > horrible (and not very lingering) death. True, but if you understand the basics of what you are doing on the platform (3D/2D wise) then transfering to a new one shouldn't be too hard. Considering this though I am broadening my skills in all areas - Glide, DirectDraw, PSX (yaroze & professional) and I am just getting into learning OpenGL ... and maybe someday I might force myself to look at D3D ... but having had a glimpse over DX6 it looks alot better than 5 did ! >The Good News about the games industry: > o The job is intellectually stimulating and challenging. You're always learning > something new. That's something many IT jobs don't offer. True .. I was stuck in my old job doing the same thing day in day out for over 3 months to track 1 ... yes 1 ... bug down , that in the end turned out to be a problem with the dev system & API layer we were using !! > o You get the chance of worldwide fame! Errm ... yeah ... > o The demand for programmers is huge. Definately ! >The fact is, you'll probably be working in the computer industry for the rest of your working life. Yup .. I hope so ! >Once you learn one language or skill, its very simple to pick up another. So by learning C, you can >pick up C++ and Java very easily. From there its a simple step to Visual Basic and many other >languages. Similarly, once you learn Yaroze and the 3D concepts that go with it, it's very easy to >pick up Saturn & Nintendo operating systems, because they're all quite similar in many respects. It >all snowballs after a while. Once you've hit a 'critical mass' of knowledge about computers and >operating systems, you'll find that it's very very easy to learn new systems, so don't worry about >painting yourself into a niche career. Having good low-level knowledge of computers is even better, >because knowing those fundamentals in turn increases your knowledge of how OS's, languages and >applications work. I think most of this depends on the ease of picking up a language quickly. The learning curve from C-C++ can be steep if you don't get the fundamentals of OO. but once you are there it does seem to make sense. Looking at the current trend of programming and languages I think it is hard not to get away from OO being involved somewhere down the line. Java - hmmm ... having done C++ the transition to this was easy - learnt the core of the language in less than 5 hours !(helping someone else to do coursework =) ) >As for the degree, some employers consider it gives you a lot of credibility. Not only does it mean >that you know the fundamentals, it also shows that you can stick out 3/4 years at university, which >many people don't/can't. I would say that most people who went to university believe that most of >what they were taught was out of date and impractical, but that it did give them a good grounding in >the fundamentals of the software engineering process and the linear algebra required for 3D work. I think more people are giving the credibility aspect of the degree to the fact that you stick going to university for 3/4 years than what you actually get at the end of it all. There are alot of people _going_ to university for the first year but have a look at the figures of the people who graduate and you'll probably find there are alot less - the course I did there were 48 of us in the first year, this was down to about 30 by the second and by the start of the 4th there were 22 of us, of which 20 people got degrees, the last 2 got passes - less than 50% of the people starting made it to the end ! Anyway ..less of that, most of the stuff I was taught at uni I haven't really found that usefull so far , besides the bucket load of OO stuff we were fed, and the whole software engineering lifecycle stuff (as James said). D. --- dave@ulthwe.demon.co.uk ICQ: 244386