I am a programmer for a AAA video game studio.

When I was young, my parents encouraged me to love and play video games, but they limited my play time, and they didn't buy many games. I probably got a new game an average once every 3 years.

They did however let me spend almost unlimited time programming my own games. And when I asked for new games, they would say "games are so expensive. Why don't you program your own?"

My programming skills definitely benefited from this. Many of my friends had more, newer, and cooler games than me. But hey, I'm happier now.

If you're in the top 1% or 2% of the population, just call yourself an expert. If you've programmed for more that 2 decades you are in the top 1% or 2%.

What you're complaining about is that the growth isn't linear. But all of the improvements you're pointed out have seemed "smaller" than the last. Imagine if we could get the kind of improvement SNES had over NES again. But that sort of thing just isn't possible in modern games; the required complexity of the art grows way faster than the required complexity of the hardware.

Science and democracy have killed many, many people too. Your argument is invalid.

The lies listed in this article are all focused on doing unnecessary cleanup. Real life isn't full of down-time where we can polish everything perfectly. Anywhere you go where there are experienced programmers, you will see they avoid issues by not over-extending themselves. Don't tell yourself your code will be clean if you want it to be fast, or you want to develop it quickly. Don't tell yourself you'll fix it later if you honestly don't NEED to fix it later.

I get annoyed by programmers who get stuck in the weeds. Solve it, and move on.

A good drum programmer always includes lots of dynamics in the velocity, filtering and timing. :)

If you are depending on serious precision, floating point was not the way to go in the first place. Floating point implementations are not guaranteed to be exactly the same, nor exactly correct.

Don't pity us. Like, yeah, its hard work, but it's creative and flexible and fun. Its better than any other job I could imagine.

The group was 47/31 female to men, so guessing "female" would be a 59% success strategy, so blind guess does not have 50% chance of being right, however you're still right on the main point, I think. To rephrase their finding, something like 30% of twitter posts are markedly masculine or feminine. I can't think of any way to use that information practically.

Agreed.

The world has a plethora of people with skills. I can hire 50 coders before lunch who are skilled enough to work on my enterprise app, but not to design it. I'm sure MBA's are the same.

In my opinion, the most intelligent people I know are those that have successfully mastered multiple skills at professional levels, who concern themselves with knowledge at all levels from the big picture to the small details. These are the type of people who are constantly ahead of everyone else. These are the people that understand statistical bias, sample size, leading questions, Rayleigh scattering, and are confident and interesting speakers. This is where (I think) you'll find the best CEOs.

I guess I'm saying, there are lots of people smart enough to get degrees... less who can run huge companies well.

I also really like the term "myopia" you've used to describe the current state of business.

Producing goods and improving life are cooperative tasks, that are best served with long term planning for global maxima. Modern corporations make that approach impossible because they actively compete. The rationale for a competing agent is totally different from a cooperative one. Competing agents need to think more carefully about the near future, and less carefully about the long term future. Competing agents have incentive to chase local maxima instead of global maxima. Etc.

I do think that movie had a good solid scientific background, except for the part where the paradoxes started to affect the character's health. I don't see any evidence to the contrary, but its kind of an odd leap to make.

Yes, its valuable to research the hard, practical stuff. But come on, do you really want to live in a world where no one explores the interesting possibilities?

This post strikes me as narcissistic and pessimistic. Reminds me of those wise words, "If man was meant to fly, God would have given him wings."

I started taking a medication years ago that made my dreams more vivid, and for the last 4 or 5 years I have lucid dreams almost every morning right before I wake up. I find them very interesting, and I have often wondered about dreams and if their evolutionary purpose is to train us for potential threat situations.

So yes, I am interested in hearing more research on this topic.

I remember reading a previous slashdot story about dreams being "threat simulators" and a lot of people were quite skeptical that dreams could actually serve this purpose. Anecdotally, most people recounted dreams that seemed pointless and unrealistic. I would argue that those dreams could have actually been training them in many ways that those people don't realize.

Any time your dream changes in a way that is totally unrealistic, you learn to expect the unexpected. And if that's true, then dreaming really is an important area of human study.

As a computer programmer at a Bioware, I can tell you that video game design degrees/diplomas are respected here. I do know several people who came in with a game design diploma. Most of the game designers I know came in with a Comp Sci degree though.

I also know people who came in as QA or got lucky and were hired with no experience when the company was starting.

I do not, however, know anyone who was hired after developing an indie game, without a degree or diploma.