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"Graphics programmers" are historically some of the highest paid and hardest to hire programmers in gamedev. But they're probably less of a thing in the age of

"Graphics programmers" are historically some of the highest paid and hardest to hire programmers in gamedev. But they're probably less of a thing in the age of Unity and Unreal.

fckgnad 4y ago
Not to mention graphics is way harder then web. Let's be honest... Web, which encompasses frontend and backend is significantly easier then graphics programming.
- reidjs 4y ago
  Easier in terms of less math for sure, but there is still plenty of complexity with web. Async, constantly changing environment, and specific device quirks to name a few.
  - seba_dos1 4y ago
    You get all of that in gamedev as well.
  - fckgnad 4y ago
    I've done both. Graphics programming is significantly harder. It's both harder to program for and harder to learn. Make no mistake, they are different, but in terms of challenge, Web is trivial compared to it. You'll get a lot more people in Highschool who know Web simply because of how accessible and easy it is and a lot less people in Highschool who know how to create a physically correct rendering engine or a realtime graphics engine. It is brutally harder.
  - bessiesboobies 4y ago
    lol
- m00x 4y ago
  It depends. If you're implementing something like K8s or Spark it's just as hard as a rendering engine, and you only need one K8s and one rendering engine. These days unity, unreal, or Blender can't really be beat. If you're just working on top of a platform, it's trivial for sure.
  - fckgnad 4y ago
    No spark and k8s are configuration problems. Hard but you are not creating the tool, just configuring it. It's more of a dev ops /sys admin thing and, though I agree it's very hard, it's a very left field comparison IMO. With engine creation you are creating the tool. It's programming through and through. Though I can see how a lot of backend people are taking on the role of "configuring" stuff so it's hard to delineate backend programming away from it completely. Still even when taking this into account, it is of my opinion that a rendering engine is significantly harder then even K8s or spark. You are right though that with existing game engines graphics programmers are not as needed anymore.
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      > Hard but you are not creating the tool, just configuring it. It's more of a dev ops /sys admin thing and, though I agree it's very hard, it's a very left field comparison IMO. They specifically are talking about creating the tool.
      - fckgnad 4y ago
        They're talking about the developers working on spark and K8? That's different. But I don't think they are talking about that. They are more likely talking about using these tools.
        edgyquant 4y ago
        No they aren’t they said “implementing k8s”
- pyrrhotech 4y ago
  Web programming is incredibly easy in general, and gets even easier every year. Game programming is much harder in my experience. Game Engine programming is not even comparable.
  - iamsaitam 4y ago
    You mean creating a HTML/CSS website is easy in general. Because you can also develop games on the web and create whatever complex kind of application you can think of. Best to be precise when saying these things.
theshrike79 4y ago
Yea, nobody needs a "graphics programmer" unless they're making their own game engine. In the mobile world very few companies bother. If they do, they're either so old that Unity mobile wasn't very good and already have their own engine or they're doing something niche where Unity doesn't make sense. Everyone else just uses Unity and Unreal, because trying to launch a new game is hard enough without having to build everything from scratch.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
  This isn't true at all. You can possibly get away without a graphics programmer on those platforms due to the immense market of graphics techniques available due to... graphics programmers publishing them. There's a ton of shader development happening. Optimizing the graphics stack takes some specialization.
  - forrestthewoods 4y ago
    > due to the immense market of graphics techniques available due to... graphics programmers publishing them Depends on how one defines “graphics programmer”. Those people are arguably more “tech artists” than “graphics programmers”. Lots of people can write clever shaders in node graphs. Those folks are usually more “tech artist”. Although the line between “graphics programmer” and “tech artist” is very very very fuzzy.
dijit 4y ago
Render programmers are not all that well paid, but they are absurdly hard to hire for. The highest paid IC's at my last few companies (gamedev) were people that had been there 20 years (He was AI programmer) or the infrastructure people running the gameservers and multiplayer backend. That might seem weird. But it's hard to hire infra people as they can work basically anywhere and will have as much enjoyment. Render programmers can work in CAD or Games, there's much less demand, and they tend to want to work in games.

"Graphics programmers" are historically some of the highest paid and hardest to hire programmers in gamedev. But they're probably less of a thing in the age of Unity and Unreal.

fckgnad 4y ago

Not to mention graphics is way harder then web. Let's be honest... Web, which encompasses frontend and backend is significantly easier then graphics programming.

reidjs 4y ago
Easier in terms of less math for sure, but there is still plenty of complexity with web. Async, constantly changing environment, and specific device quirks to name a few.
- seba_dos1 4y ago
  You get all of that in gamedev as well.
- fckgnad 4y ago
  I've done both. Graphics programming is significantly harder. It's both harder to program for and harder to learn. Make no mistake, they are different, but in terms of challenge, Web is trivial compared to it. You'll get a lot more people in Highschool who know Web simply because of how accessible and easy it is and a lot less people in Highschool who know how to create a physically correct rendering engine or a realtime graphics engine. It is brutally harder.
- bessiesboobies 4y ago
  lol
m00x 4y ago
It depends. If you're implementing something like K8s or Spark it's just as hard as a rendering engine, and you only need one K8s and one rendering engine. These days unity, unreal, or Blender can't really be beat. If you're just working on top of a platform, it's trivial for sure.
- fckgnad 4y ago
  No spark and k8s are configuration problems. Hard but you are not creating the tool, just configuring it. It's more of a dev ops /sys admin thing and, though I agree it's very hard, it's a very left field comparison IMO. With engine creation you are creating the tool. It's programming through and through. Though I can see how a lot of backend people are taking on the role of "configuring" stuff so it's hard to delineate backend programming away from it completely. Still even when taking this into account, it is of my opinion that a rendering engine is significantly harder then even K8s or spark. You are right though that with existing game engines graphics programmers are not as needed anymore.
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    > Hard but you are not creating the tool, just configuring it. It's more of a dev ops /sys admin thing and, though I agree it's very hard, it's a very left field comparison IMO. They specifically are talking about creating the tool.
    - fckgnad 4y ago
      They're talking about the developers working on spark and K8? That's different. But I don't think they are talking about that. They are more likely talking about using these tools.
      - edgyquant 4y ago
        No they aren’t they said “implementing k8s”
pyrrhotech 4y ago
Web programming is incredibly easy in general, and gets even easier every year. Game programming is much harder in my experience. Game Engine programming is not even comparable.
- iamsaitam 4y ago
  You mean creating a HTML/CSS website is easy in general. Because you can also develop games on the web and create whatever complex kind of application you can think of. Best to be precise when saying these things.

theshrike79 4y ago

Yea, nobody needs a "graphics programmer" unless they're making their own game engine. In the mobile world very few companies bother. If they do, they're either so old that Unity mobile wasn't very good and already have their own engine or they're doing something niche where Unity doesn't make sense. Everyone else just uses Unity and Unreal, because trying to launch a new game is hard enough without having to build everything from scratch.

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
This isn't true at all. You can possibly get away without a graphics programmer on those platforms due to the immense market of graphics techniques available due to... graphics programmers publishing them. There's a ton of shader development happening. Optimizing the graphics stack takes some specialization.
- forrestthewoods 4y ago
  > due to the immense market of graphics techniques available due to... graphics programmers publishing them Depends on how one defines “graphics programmer”. Those people are arguably more “tech artists” than “graphics programmers”. Lots of people can write clever shaders in node graphs. Those folks are usually more “tech artist”. Although the line between “graphics programmer” and “tech artist” is very very very fuzzy.

dijit 4y ago

Render programmers are not all that well paid, but they are absurdly hard to hire for. The highest paid IC's at my last few companies (gamedev) were people that had been there 20 years (He was AI programmer) or the infrastructure people running the gameservers and multiplayer backend. That might seem weird. But it's hard to hire infra people as they can work basically anywhere and will have as much enjoyment. Render programmers can work in CAD or Games, there's much less demand, and they tend to want to work in games.