Re: University and Programming

Sean Kelly (sean.kmindspring.com)
Fri, 01 Oct 1999 13:01:31 -0400

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>I strongly disagree with this advice. I went to the
>Vancouver campus years ago and it got me nowhere. I
>found it more usefull getting some game programming books and learning on my
>own.
>
> ---- you wrote:
>> My bottomline is that uni may be worth it, and my advice is to take at
>look at the Digipen Institute of Technology.

It depends on where you go. I've met self-taught programmers that I wouldn't
hire out to my worst enemy, and I've met others who were incredibly talented.

An engineering professor once told me that university courses are generally 7
years behind the real world. In my experience, he is often right. This is
not to say, however, that the courses aren't valuable. 3D programming has a
very firm base in higher mathematics and the CS curriculum often teaches a
lot of theory and builds decent technique that is invaluable for a
programmer. Can you learn this all on your own from books? Sure you can.
What you get out of a course is as much dependent on a good professor as
anything else.

That said, you should spend time on your own outside of class working on game
programming, because the courses won't cover it. Write demos, play with D3D
and OpenGL (the latter of which may be covered if you're lucky) and build
some experience with that side of things. The vast majority of CS kids I
went to university with were very academic -- they knew theory like crazy but
they couldn't design or code their way out of a bottle, and they didn't make
any effort to do any coding or learning outside of class assignments and
curriculum.

I also am a huge fan of books. Scott Meyers has written some great stuff on
C++ and there are others that have done the same for different technoligies
and areas. Besides that, it takes time and practice to develop good
technique. I look back at code I wrote a few years ago (which at the time I
thought was pretty tight) and just shudder. Sure it worked as planned, but I
would definately do things differently now...

Sean

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