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Oh man, the ending credits to that demo blew me away. This was only 3 years after Michael Jackson's Black & White, and a couple after Terminator 2 and here was

by bane 7y ago

Oh man, the ending credits to that demo blew me away. This was only 3 years after Michael Jackson's Black & White, and a couple after Terminator 2 and here was basically kids doing the same special effect on commodity PCs in real-time. (not to mention commercial game quality 3d terrain) As for your question: coding used to be really viewed as a creative activity, akin to any other art form. Now it's just data plumbing and CRUD apps. For the people who really still view coding as an art, the demoscene can absolutely be a gateway. I think the most important thing being in the scene taught me was how to do teamwork on a complex technical project with vague and ambiguous requirements. I didn't encounter another environment like that until maybe grad school and professional development work. It prepared me in ways I still rely on, decades later. The competitive nature of the scene also prepares people well to work in non-academic/commercial places where the only proof of success is winning. Academia has nothing quite like this.

gwittel 7y ago
That’s a really good point about preparing for industry. So many people don’t get much experience starting from a blank slate. I think for me, the question is how to make it a more obvious gateway. As a child we had things like the spartan C64 or logo. There are some modern equivalents but most are simple. Hard to inspire kids with that compared to what they see (vs an 80s kid). Perhaps on online repl (like shadertoy) plus a demo 101 lib with pre baked effect routines and simple graphics primitives?
- jowiar 7y ago
  I think the two places I'm seeing this right now are in the Processing/P5 community (https://editor.p5js.org https://editor.p5js.org), and interesting things built on top of Glitch. Hydra is fascinating -- I sat down with it for a couple hours and was having lots of fun layering transformations on top of webcam input. https://github.com/ojack/hydra https://github.com/ojack/hydra
Jare 7y ago
Note that when we released Heartquake, many people in the group, and definitely the programmers, had college degrees, several years of professional experience, and/or multiple commercial videogames published. It was quite a shock when I first entered Assembly 93 (my first demoparty ever) in Kerava, and saw all those teenagers installing Linux or programming or making music or being awesome. Already well in our 20s, we were kind of old for the scene already. :)

by bane 7y ago

gwittel 7y ago

That’s a really good point about preparing for industry. So many people don’t get much experience starting from a blank slate. I think for me, the question is how to make it a more obvious gateway. As a child we had things like the spartan C64 or logo. There are some modern equivalents but most are simple. Hard to inspire kids with that compared to what they see (vs an 80s kid). Perhaps on online repl (like shadertoy) plus a demo 101 lib with pre baked effect routines and simple graphics primitives?

jowiar 7y ago
I think the two places I'm seeing this right now are in the Processing/P5 community (https://editor.p5js.org https://editor.p5js.org), and interesting things built on top of Glitch. Hydra is fascinating -- I sat down with it for a couple hours and was having lots of fun layering transformations on top of webcam input. https://github.com/ojack/hydra https://github.com/ojack/hydra

Jare 7y ago

Note that when we released Heartquake, many people in the group, and definitely the programmers, had college degrees, several years of professional experience, and/or multiple commercial videogames published. It was quite a shock when I first entered Assembly 93 (my first demoparty ever) in Kerava, and saw all those teenagers installing Linux or programming or making music or being awesome. Already well in our 20s, we were kind of old for the scene already. :)