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Vulkan/DX12 _are_ learnable by hobbyists. This was a pretty popular post here on HN 4 months ago of someone learning Vulkan and making an engine in it https://n

by jms55 2y ago

Vulkan/DX12 _are_ learnable by hobbyists. This was a pretty popular post here on HN 4 months ago of someone learning Vulkan and making an engine in it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40595741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40595741. Universities usually teach theory, oftentimes in the form of a raytracer on the CPU, or like you said a simple OpenGL renderer using some prebuilt abstractions. I don't think it really makes sense for them to teach how to use Vulkan well or how to make a fast renderer, the details of that often change quickly year by year anyways. > That's a pretty sad state of affairs given the "audience" is shrinking by the day. And then later those graphics programmers leave/get laid off by Unity/Epic/AAA Studio with a custom engine and they wonder why they can't find any DX12/Vulkan engineers to their satisfaction. That's more a symptom of how garbage working in the game development industry is, and less about any underlying technology. There's a reason I work on a game engine for fun, as my hobby, and not professionally despite having the option to do so. Everyone I spoke to in the industry talks about how terrible the working conditions are. A professional graphics developer I recently talked to summed it up well - everyone needs a game engine, but no one wants to pay people to make and maintain one.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
>Vulkan/DX12 _are_ learnable by hobbyists. I did see that post. It is commendable, but we should also note that that author has 15 years of experience in tech and was already a solo developer as a hobbyist. It can be easy to forget that there's a lot of cruft and API to grok through for these things, things potentially out of the scope of students and juniors who haven't had to navigate codebases with millions of LoC in various states of disarray. That speaks more to our ability to tolerate the chaos than the learnability of the API. >I don't think it really makes sense for them to teach how to use Vulkan well or how to make a fast renderer, the details of that often change quickly year by year anyways From a learners' POV I agree. From the industry's point of view they want someone who can jump into the fray with minimal training. And we both hopefully understand that theory doesn't necessarily correlate to real world experience. So there's some critical bridge that is missing on some side that as of now industry just expects potential programmers to learn in their free time somehow. Which in and of itself still isn't a trivial matter. Because so much of this knowledge is tribal wisdom carried by industry. So you see where the issues add up. You'll find breadcrumbs here and there scattered across the net, but this is only adding more obstacles for people to hit that bar. >That's more a symptom of how garbage working in the game development industry is, and less about any underlying technology. There's a reason I work on a game engine for fun, as my hobby, and not professionally despite having the option to do so. Everyone I spoke to in the industry talks about how terrible the working conditions are. I can concur with that as someone in the industry. But there's not really that many places you can go to work professionally if you're not in games: - animation renderers (Pixar, Dreamworks, Illumination. maybe Laika), but the reputation in that industry isn't much better - various research firms that look more for PhD's if anything. Maybe some Masters students. So you're basically in acedemia land (which is known for its lack of pay, even compared to games). - and of course, the GPU companies. Nvidia, Intel, and AMD among a few others. It's a very niche field that requires very specialized knowledge. If no one's offering training nor even an above average pay for that, what are you going to do? If left unchecked, these kinds of fields will be the first to suffer the brain drain as pioneers start to retire or die off. >A professional graphics developer I recently talked to summed it up well - everyone needs a game engine, but no one wants to pay people to make and maintain one. I'd say that's the 2020's in general, yes. Everyone wants senior+ level workload with the pay of a junior. Meanwhile efficiency is going up and they instead try to pack on more work than ever to "compensate". Something's got to give.
- jms55 2y ago
  Yeah I don't disagree with anything you said.

by jms55 2y ago

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>Vulkan/DX12 _are_ learnable by hobbyists. I did see that post. It is commendable, but we should also note that that author has 15 years of experience in tech and was already a solo developer as a hobbyist. It can be easy to forget that there's a lot of cruft and API to grok through for these things, things potentially out of the scope of students and juniors who haven't had to navigate codebases with millions of LoC in various states of disarray. That speaks more to our ability to tolerate the chaos than the learnability of the API. >I don't think it really makes sense for them to teach how to use Vulkan well or how to make a fast renderer, the details of that often change quickly year by year anyways From a learners' POV I agree. From the industry's point of view they want someone who can jump into the fray with minimal training. And we both hopefully understand that theory doesn't necessarily correlate to real world experience. So there's some critical bridge that is missing on some side that as of now industry just expects potential programmers to learn in their free time somehow. Which in and of itself still isn't a trivial matter. Because so much of this knowledge is tribal wisdom carried by industry. So you see where the issues add up. You'll find breadcrumbs here and there scattered across the net, but this is only adding more obstacles for people to hit that bar. >That's more a symptom of how garbage working in the game development industry is, and less about any underlying technology. There's a reason I work on a game engine for fun, as my hobby, and not professionally despite having the option to do so. Everyone I spoke to in the industry talks about how terrible the working conditions are. I can concur with that as someone in the industry. But there's not really that many places you can go to work professionally if you're not in games: - animation renderers (Pixar, Dreamworks, Illumination. maybe Laika), but the reputation in that industry isn't much better - various research firms that look more for PhD's if anything. Maybe some Masters students. So you're basically in acedemia land (which is known for its lack of pay, even compared to games). - and of course, the GPU companies. Nvidia, Intel, and AMD among a few others. It's a very niche field that requires very specialized knowledge. If no one's offering training nor even an above average pay for that, what are you going to do? If left unchecked, these kinds of fields will be the first to suffer the brain drain as pioneers start to retire or die off. >A professional graphics developer I recently talked to summed it up well - everyone needs a game engine, but no one wants to pay people to make and maintain one. I'd say that's the 2020's in general, yes. Everyone wants senior+ level workload with the pay of a junior. Meanwhile efficiency is going up and they instead try to pack on more work than ever to "compensate". Something's got to give.

jms55 2y ago
Yeah I don't disagree with anything you said.