4 ms·

I as well quit the industry because of this. While I never had it that bad (I knew I couldn't be productive after 8-9 hours so I just left at the time) nor was

by BSousa 14y ago

I as well quit the industry because of this. While I never had it that bad (I knew I couldn't be productive after 8-9 hours so I just left at the time) nor was I ever 'attacked' for it, I can imagine I may have been overlooked on raises/promotions for it. But there is one good thing I would say about the industry. You LEARN ALOT. C/C++/AI/Shaders/Animation and the intrinsics of low-level hardware, all in a days work. Compared to most folks I know that didn't spend time in the industry, their only experience with those topics was a semester in University. Just yesterday there was a topic here in HN about python/ruby being slow, and while going down to C was suggested, I find appalling that most of the replies to those were 'it is hard to find a decent C programmer' or 'most of the ruby/python devs don't know C'. I can honestly say I this isn't an issue for me and for most I know that I worked in the industry. Heck my previous job had me writing nginx C modules and C++ cross platform (iOS/Android/Mac/Windows/Linux) download/caching/audio code.

endtime 14y ago
"C/C++/AI/Shaders/Animation" is "a lot" to learn in a career?
- BSousa 14y ago
  No, I mentioned in a day. Sometimes you mess with all that kind of code in a day (I mentioned C and C++ as base)
  - mikevm 14y ago
    Do you need to have relevant background before you can touch that code? How does that work?
    - BSousa 14y ago
      My background has always been Game AI so that was the part I worked 90% of the time. The thing about games is usually, it is hard to just remain on the same general code. AI is related to movement, which is related to collision detection and animation, and sometimes you have to go through the rabbit hole deeper and deeper to either try and find a bug or why code doesn't work, or to make something work like you want. In smaller companies, most of the time, Gameplay programmer = Just do whatever it needs to be done, including shaders, AI, sound, etc.
- jmduke 14y ago
  Compared to the fundamentally CRUD-like nature of most startups?
  - endtime 14y ago
    No, compared to most people [OP knows] not in the games industry, as the OP said. I've worked at a lot of different, varied places (including someone else's startup, and my own, and a government agency, and an investment bank, and a chip manufacturer, and a couple large software companies) and I'd say there's more to learn there than C/C++, GLSL, "AI" (game AI implementations might be large/complex planners or whatever, but AFAIK they aren't doing serious ML) and animation.
    - BSousa 14y ago
      Most definitively there is more to learn than what you learn in game development. Heck, since I left the industry I've been working on a few projects that taxed me as well (multi-platform threading code, nginx custom modules, metrology algorithms (most of the math here went over my head to be honest)). But in all honesty, and I may just have been unlucky, most developers I know can't do C/C++ or any kind of memory management in non GC languages and have trouble developing algorithms that a bit more complex than qsort. As I pointed out, I find it sad that most replies on the older thread to 'when you need performance you just drop down to C for that part of the code' where complaining that most Ruby/Python developers couldn't do it. Comparing this with having someone (and that was over my head) profiling the damn game for cache misses on the Xbox 360, and you can understand why I said what I did.
      - endtime 13y ago
        Fair enough. There are a lot of tedious jobs out there - but there are plenty of varied bigcorps (e.g. Google, AMD, Goldman Sachs, NASA) of whom the following isn't true: "Compared to most folks [I know] that didn't spend time in the industry, their only experience with those topics was a semester in University."
npsimons 14y ago
There may be a bit of a filter here on HN: it's very startup web dev heavy, so you won't see many people wasting their time (yes, it would be a waste of time for them) going down to the hardware level. Try working in a more applied domain, such as industrial, where real-time low-level hacking is a daily occurrence, and you will find many extremely competent low-level programmers, who don't work insane hours, because it's more important to get the code right (lives depend on it), than it is to keep to some market driven schedule. Sure, it's not as glamorous, but it pays the bills. It also doesn't very often have the challenges of maintaining one codebase across multiple platforms, but you learn pretty quickly when each new project is a whole different architecture, with a different assembler, IDE, buses, memory model, register layout, etc, etc. On top of which you have to know your domain at least well enough to get requirements from your users . . .

by BSousa 14y ago

endtime 14y ago

"C/C++/AI/Shaders/Animation" is "a lot" to learn in a career?

BSousa 14y ago
No, I mentioned in a day. Sometimes you mess with all that kind of code in a day (I mentioned C and C++ as base)
- mikevm 14y ago
  Do you need to have relevant background before you can touch that code? How does that work?
  - BSousa 14y ago
    My background has always been Game AI so that was the part I worked 90% of the time. The thing about games is usually, it is hard to just remain on the same general code. AI is related to movement, which is related to collision detection and animation, and sometimes you have to go through the rabbit hole deeper and deeper to either try and find a bug or why code doesn't work, or to make something work like you want. In smaller companies, most of the time, Gameplay programmer = Just do whatever it needs to be done, including shaders, AI, sound, etc.
jmduke 14y ago
Compared to the fundamentally CRUD-like nature of most startups?
- endtime 14y ago
  No, compared to most people [OP knows] not in the games industry, as the OP said. I've worked at a lot of different, varied places (including someone else's startup, and my own, and a government agency, and an investment bank, and a chip manufacturer, and a couple large software companies) and I'd say there's more to learn there than C/C++, GLSL, "AI" (game AI implementations might be large/complex planners or whatever, but AFAIK they aren't doing serious ML) and animation.
  - BSousa 14y ago
    Most definitively there is more to learn than what you learn in game development. Heck, since I left the industry I've been working on a few projects that taxed me as well (multi-platform threading code, nginx custom modules, metrology algorithms (most of the math here went over my head to be honest)). But in all honesty, and I may just have been unlucky, most developers I know can't do C/C++ or any kind of memory management in non GC languages and have trouble developing algorithms that a bit more complex than qsort. As I pointed out, I find it sad that most replies on the older thread to 'when you need performance you just drop down to C for that part of the code' where complaining that most Ruby/Python developers couldn't do it. Comparing this with having someone (and that was over my head) profiling the damn game for cache misses on the Xbox 360, and you can understand why I said what I did.
    - endtime 13y ago
      Fair enough. There are a lot of tedious jobs out there - but there are plenty of varied bigcorps (e.g. Google, AMD, Goldman Sachs, NASA) of whom the following isn't true: "Compared to most folks [I know] that didn't spend time in the industry, their only experience with those topics was a semester in University."

npsimons 14y ago

There may be a bit of a filter here on HN: it's very startup web dev heavy, so you won't see many people wasting their time (yes, it would be a waste of time for them) going down to the hardware level. Try working in a more applied domain, such as industrial, where real-time low-level hacking is a daily occurrence, and you will find many extremely competent low-level programmers, who don't work insane hours, because it's more important to get the code right (lives depend on it), than it is to keep to some market driven schedule. Sure, it's not as glamorous, but it pays the bills. It also doesn't very often have the challenges of maintaining one codebase across multiple platforms, but you learn pretty quickly when each new project is a whole different architecture, with a different assembler, IDE, buses, memory model, register layout, etc, etc. On top of which you have to know your domain at least well enough to get requirements from your users . . .