What/where did you study, and do you consider it to have been useful to you?
category: general [glöplog]
(^as the title says)
i've read about a fair amount of demosceners who were self-educated for this type of stuff, and i wonder if it's common.
what are things you learned in formal education that were useful, and what things were less useful?
what kind of education do you consider to be better than others, etc.
feel free to add whatever else you want.
i just feel like starting a loose discussion around this type of stuff
i've read about a fair amount of demosceners who were self-educated for this type of stuff, and i wonder if it's common.
what are things you learned in formal education that were useful, and what things were less useful?
what kind of education do you consider to be better than others, etc.
feel free to add whatever else you want.
i just feel like starting a loose discussion around this type of stuff
and i just feel like pointing out that you could have easily combined all 3 topics you started so far into 1
They're disparate questions though.
still looks like a flooding attempt to the casual observer though
Honestly, I don't know if my educational background is anything to follow but for what it's worth, I went to university because I wanted to be a game developer, and when I got to university I had a striking realization that noone knows or cares about anything like that (the concept of "realtime" wasn't even on the table) and I found very quickly that I'm not compatible with either the students or the teachers around there. That way, I learned way more from the scene and my entire gamedev career is more or less owed to that.
There's a caveat here though, and this is something I saw in a Rami Ismael talk at some point that's worth mentioning: Not everyone has the luxury to drop out, and for some people it's definitely not the right move to make - the western world sometimes turns a dropout success story into something aspirational, but in certain developing countries with more severe crime problems it's sometimes a death sentence.
There's a caveat here though, and this is something I saw in a Rami Ismael talk at some point that's worth mentioning: Not everyone has the luxury to drop out, and for some people it's definitely not the right move to make - the western world sometimes turns a dropout success story into something aspirational, but in certain developing countries with more severe crime problems it's sometimes a death sentence.
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and i just feel like pointing out that you could have easily combined all 3 topics you started so far into 1
i don't think so? it would have caused a mishmash of somewhat unrelated subjects, decreasing the quality of topics.
what's a glöp by the way :D i tried to post an image and it says i need at least 1 of em
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what's a glöp by the way :D i tried to post an image and it says i need at least 1 of em
https://www.pouet.net/faq.php#faq35
You cannot become anything special if you ONLY learn things that others have already known instead of learning by doing and teaching that to others. :D
I was too lazy for school and too lazy for vocational training. tbh. That's why I broke everything off. Today I am ashamed of it and feel inferior. (-_-)
My love and affection has always been for music and art. I couldn't do anything with the dreary world of work and school. I got bored of learning crap that I will never need again in the rest of my life. So I became a freelance artist.
That didn't make me rich or put me in management positions, but I had loooot of fun and was happy with little and less.
Now as an middleaged man I see things a little differently because you hardly have any reserves and you have to see where you stay. During the pandemic in particular, it stole the ground from under my feet and I would currently be happy if I had learned a normal job. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But you have to take responsibility for decisions in life yourself and you cannot hold anyone else responsible for them. All in all, I can only say: Yes, my path was worth it for me, even if I can no longer continue like this.
I was too lazy for school and too lazy for vocational training. tbh. That's why I broke everything off. Today I am ashamed of it and feel inferior. (-_-)
My love and affection has always been for music and art. I couldn't do anything with the dreary world of work and school. I got bored of learning crap that I will never need again in the rest of my life. So I became a freelance artist.
That didn't make me rich or put me in management positions, but I had loooot of fun and was happy with little and less.
Now as an middleaged man I see things a little differently because you hardly have any reserves and you have to see where you stay. During the pandemic in particular, it stole the ground from under my feet and I would currently be happy if I had learned a normal job. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But you have to take responsibility for decisions in life yourself and you cannot hold anyone else responsible for them. All in all, I can only say: Yes, my path was worth it for me, even if I can no longer continue like this.
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I went to university because I wanted to be a game developer, and when I got to university I had a striking realization that noone knows or cares about anything like that (the concept of "realtime" wasn't even on the table) and I found very quickly that I'm not compatible with either the students or the teachers around there. That way, I learned way more from the scene and my entire gamedev career is more or less owed to that.
I'm curious - how did you end up in gamedev? What did you do after you dropped out of university?
i'm at the tail end of my first university year in computer science, and i feel the same as you. i'm from the northern part of belgium, where there exist high school systems that are more applied to certain fields of work (in my case called TSO), and i did my last 2 years of secondary school studying IT. i clicked very well with the students there, we had a lot of banter and we had similar interests. but unlike most of them i went to university, and now i feel the same as you describe.
the curriculum feels outdated, they teach us old obscure languages and it's just way too theoretical for me. what they call 'applied courses' are just a bunch of theoretical exercises, i still often have little idea of what use the material has.
to me, the students are also incredibly bland, they don't seem to have genuine hobbies or interests or any friends, they only talk about studying or what jobs they will have later with what salary, ugh.
on the side - i don't know if anybody out here is familiar with the flemish education system - but i'm thinking of studying informatics or multimedia at a hogeschool, which is higher education but more applied. my parents say i wont be able to climb in hierarchy and that people always prefer people with university education, but they're a generation older and did not study in flanders, i often regret listening to their advice. would be extra chill if someone can help me here too (no worries if you can't :D)
then again, being a student is a good excuse (to parents and/or welfare/student loan) to spend all amazing free time that comes with being a student in reading up on topics you ARE interested about, like, demo making :P
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Quote:I went to university because I wanted to be a game developer, and when I got to university I had a striking realization that noone knows or cares about anything like that (the concept of "realtime" wasn't even on the table) and I found very quickly that I'm not compatible with either the students or the teachers around there. That way, I learned way more from the scene and my entire gamedev career is more or less owed to that.
I'm curious - how did you end up in gamedev? What did you do after you dropped out of university?
I have to repeat that my story is probably an outlier, but essentially around year 2 or 3 BoyC asked me if I'm interested in contributing in a game project he was getting involved in - nothing big, really, maybe a few months project. Ended up working on it for 10+ years, and at one point I realized the time I can spend on doing what I always wanted to do (working on games) is being taken away by trying to get a paper that would - theoretically - allow me to do the thing I'm already doing.
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I have to repeat that my story is probably an outlier, but essentially around year 2 or 3 BoyC asked me if I'm interested in contributing in a game project he was getting involved in - nothing big, really, maybe a few months project. Ended up working on it for 10+ years, and at one point I realized the time I can spend on doing what I always wanted to do (working on games) is being taken away by trying to get a paper that would - theoretically - allow me to do the thing I'm already doing.
You only worked on that game for 10 years? Or maybe you did some other projects during that time as well?
University is never about teaching you the hot shit that is everyone wants to use right now but will be forgotten about in 5 years, it's about teaching you the concepts that are still applicable in 30 years from now on. I know many students in their first semester that think that they will never be using Scheme or Haskell in production code, and maybe they are right. But the concepts they learn from these languages are extremely valuable in other languages as well. Few people use purely functional programming for their production code, but even procedural languages borrow more and more concepts from functional programming. Knowing those concepts makes you a better developer.
But in the end, yes, university is more theory than application. It's not for everybody but I'm very grateful about all the stuff I learned there that I can now apply in completely different contexts. Maybe a university of applied science (which sounds like what you describe as hogeschool) would be more your thing. In many IT related jobs, it really doesn't matter much if you studied at a university or a university of applied science.
But in the end, yes, university is more theory than application. It's not for everybody but I'm very grateful about all the stuff I learned there that I can now apply in completely different contexts. Maybe a university of applied science (which sounds like what you describe as hogeschool) would be more your thing. In many IT related jobs, it really doesn't matter much if you studied at a university or a university of applied science.
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concepts that are still applicable in 30 years from now on
That is highly dependent on the university. I vividly remember almost failing Assembly class because I couldn't be bothered to memorize PMODE descriptors - in 2004! I asked them if they'll teach any sort of SIMD and it wasn't even in the long term plans. Another lecturer came in and said, quote, that some computers can have up to 16MB of RAM in them - as I was sitting there with a Core22Duo 2GB laptop.
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You only worked on that game for 10 years? Or maybe you did some other projects during that time as well?
It was what I made a living out of for 10 years, yes. I sometimes did occasional (usually web) projects on the side when money was skint.
After already having something of a programming career I enrolled in polytechnic (which then renamed itself "university of applied sciences", but who cares) as an adult student and did B.Eng. in .. computer stuff? I did a bunch of electronics and programming, etc, but what really helped was the math.
It's surprising how little math you actually *need* in programming, so I had already forgotten basically everything from high school. The math started from the level of "3x = 7" and ramped up from there, and it was really interesting, for me, for the first time, as I could instantly see applications of everything, something I couldn't have grasped back when going through it the first time.
Schools aren't factories that pump information into people and turn everyone into experts in everything. What you get out of a school depends a lot on you, your perspectives, needs and interests. I turned a bunch of school projects into way, way larger projects than they were really asking for, and had a blast doing so.
It was also really taxing, doing all that alongside working full time, but once you get in the rhythm of never, ever postponing any homework, it's doable.
It's surprising how little math you actually *need* in programming, so I had already forgotten basically everything from high school. The math started from the level of "3x = 7" and ramped up from there, and it was really interesting, for me, for the first time, as I could instantly see applications of everything, something I couldn't have grasped back when going through it the first time.
Schools aren't factories that pump information into people and turn everyone into experts in everything. What you get out of a school depends a lot on you, your perspectives, needs and interests. I turned a bunch of school projects into way, way larger projects than they were really asking for, and had a blast doing so.
It was also really taxing, doing all that alongside working full time, but once you get in the rhythm of never, ever postponing any homework, it's doable.
I'm in real life a lawyer and never had any IT education .. I do it just for fun as hobby but for this reason alone cannot keep up with many others here at eye level :)
I graduated in finance an accountancy For several universities in Europe. Was it usefull in my demoscene path ? Yes because i Met local sceners ( Pink in Liverpool during my atari days ), Fuel guys in belgium ( Necro, IR, Cyclops)... beside that ... well it had no connections at all.
At the university where I studied there was a good course about theoretical computer science, due to which I think I have a good understanding of the matter. I did not learn much about practical programming at university but I was a self-taught programmer already anyway.
I studied design after working as a (self-taught) games artist and graphic designer for many years .. so my perspective is one of being self-taught -> taught -> back to self-taught
The pros of going to uni IMO were that a lot of things became more clear and well articulated - I found that much of the stuff I had been doing fit into a bigger picture. What I had been doing wasn't wrong - I just hadn't thought of everything there was to do. So for me, uni opened up new avenues of practice, and brought a bunch of knowledge that I had never been aware of. It gave me a new way of thinking about design, and a language with which to speak about design with much more clarity. At least I hope it did :)
The cons of going to uni I would say are (a risk of) unoriginal thinking since you are mainly receiving information rather than making it up yourself. It doesn't have to be like that though...
Another risk is that uni kind of lives separately from the real world (does uni prepare you to actually hold a job? or is it the job itself that prepares you, and uni is just a ticket through the door?).
Finally I guess what you're taught at can be outdated. Given that research and knowledge production is a slow process, knowledge at uni may be behind the curve VS what's being practiced out in the real world, at least in any field that moves rapidly. I don't know if that's true, it just feels like it.
So to summarize: I think you'll have a much better and more rewarding experience of going to uni, if you go into it with some experience as a ballast. I found uni useful, and I think there's a lot to be said for not having to discover everything yourself. That doesn't necessarily have to be done via an education at university however, you could just as well find a mentor or head into an apprenticeship somewhere.. kinda depends what you want to do.
The pros of going to uni IMO were that a lot of things became more clear and well articulated - I found that much of the stuff I had been doing fit into a bigger picture. What I had been doing wasn't wrong - I just hadn't thought of everything there was to do. So for me, uni opened up new avenues of practice, and brought a bunch of knowledge that I had never been aware of. It gave me a new way of thinking about design, and a language with which to speak about design with much more clarity. At least I hope it did :)
The cons of going to uni I would say are (a risk of) unoriginal thinking since you are mainly receiving information rather than making it up yourself. It doesn't have to be like that though...
Another risk is that uni kind of lives separately from the real world (does uni prepare you to actually hold a job? or is it the job itself that prepares you, and uni is just a ticket through the door?).
Finally I guess what you're taught at can be outdated. Given that research and knowledge production is a slow process, knowledge at uni may be behind the curve VS what's being practiced out in the real world, at least in any field that moves rapidly. I don't know if that's true, it just feels like it.
So to summarize: I think you'll have a much better and more rewarding experience of going to uni, if you go into it with some experience as a ballast. I found uni useful, and I think there's a lot to be said for not having to discover everything yourself. That doesn't necessarily have to be done via an education at university however, you could just as well find a mentor or head into an apprenticeship somewhere.. kinda depends what you want to do.
Studied computer science in the 90s, learned 68000 assembler, never needed it.
I took a different turn from most people here, where I was first very interested in art and applied cs, and spent a lot of my free time in high school and my undergrad teaching myself cs, writing synthesizers and playing around on shadertoy. But when I was wrapping up my degree I felt as though I was being limited by not knowing enough algorithmic theory to implement the ideas I had, and I was finding any kind of straightforward software development to be really boring.
So, I enrolled in a theoretical cs masters degree, and I think it was an excellent decision. It's given me the tools to solve any kind of math problem I need to and ultimately to make software that really pushes what's been done before. Sure, the stuff I'm learning and researching is not directly being applied, but I can now study things in this simplified framework (math) where it's easier to reason about complicated systems and algorithms, and can easily be translated to any programming language when the problem is solved. I love this approach so much that I am going on to a PhD. It just feels like by studying theory I really get to accelerate the rate at which I improve my skills.
In theoretical cs I think there is most certainly the opposite situation!
I think this can be an issue with more subjective areas of cs such as software engineering or computer art, but with many of the things you learn it's a waste of time to try to reinvent it yourself. For example trying to make a sorting algorithm on your own.
I also noticed this among a lot of undergrad students but graduate students are rarely like this.
So, I enrolled in a theoretical cs masters degree, and I think it was an excellent decision. It's given me the tools to solve any kind of math problem I need to and ultimately to make software that really pushes what's been done before. Sure, the stuff I'm learning and researching is not directly being applied, but I can now study things in this simplified framework (math) where it's easier to reason about complicated systems and algorithms, and can easily be translated to any programming language when the problem is solved. I love this approach so much that I am going on to a PhD. It just feels like by studying theory I really get to accelerate the rate at which I improve my skills.
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knowledge at uni may be behind the curve VS what's being practiced out in the real world
In theoretical cs I think there is most certainly the opposite situation!
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The cons of going to uni I would say are (a risk of) unoriginal thinking
I think this can be an issue with more subjective areas of cs such as software engineering or computer art, but with many of the things you learn it's a waste of time to try to reinvent it yourself. For example trying to make a sorting algorithm on your own.
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to me, the students are also incredibly bland, they don't seem to have genuine hobbies or interests or any friends, they only talk about studying or what jobs they will have later with what salary, ugh.
I also noticed this among a lot of undergrad students but graduate students are rarely like this.
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the curriculum feels outdated, they teach us old obscure languages and it's just way too theoretical for me. what they call 'applied courses' are just a bunch of theoretical exercises, i still often have little idea of what use the material has.
I think this is one of the biggest failures of cs education. In my degree I took a lot of courses that were strictly applied, but the material was often outdated. Plus I took courses that were purely theoretical. The middle ground---how to actually apply the theory---was completely absent.
But it really is key to connect the two. The (outdated) applied stuff starts being more useful when you can reason about it theoretically and remove it from the context of the outdated systems. And the theory becomes useful when you can actually implement it and see when and where it is useful to do so.
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I also noticed this among a lot of undergrad students but graduate students are rarely like this.
Is it the same crowd by then or is there a lot of in-and-outflux?
I studied theoretical physics at university then studied again in Engineering / CS because for some reason I had fun studying. In the end I got 2 degrees to end up making videogames because that's where I was having the most fun, which I could clearly have done without studying :D
Not sure what helped me or not for work but I enjoyed doing it and it's the the most important aspect. It probably helped me develop analytical skills, gave me a solid math background that came in handy a few times and probably a good scientific culture, which can't hurt when you work in a tech related field. However, I'm pretty sure the CS stuff I learned during my studies is insignificant compared to what I learned during my spare time or at work.
For your question, there is no better education imho, just study what you find interesting or just go work directly if that's what you feel like doing. You will have your entire life to educate yourself anyway :)
Not sure what helped me or not for work but I enjoyed doing it and it's the the most important aspect. It probably helped me develop analytical skills, gave me a solid math background that came in handy a few times and probably a good scientific culture, which can't hurt when you work in a tech related field. However, I'm pretty sure the CS stuff I learned during my studies is insignificant compared to what I learned during my spare time or at work.
For your question, there is no better education imho, just study what you find interesting or just go work directly if that's what you feel like doing. You will have your entire life to educate yourself anyway :)
