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Comment Very similar situation (Score 5, Interesting) 133

A very similar situation happened at the University of Alberta in the early 2000s.
They spent millions on a new registration system that turned out to have a completely crap web interface. So a student wrote his own, which rapidly became the only one used by anyone.

I believe the university eventually just bought it, and hired the student⦠rather than trying to shut it down.

https://www.itbusiness.ca/news/u-of-alberta-gets-behind-student-developed-it-system/5587

Comment My 8 years experience. so far so good (Score 1) 189

I've been a programmer at Bioware Edmonton for 8 years. I love my job and always have.

I have not experienced crunch on any scale that would make me discourage anyone from joining the industry (maybe a couple weeks at a time a couple times a year). It is well known at this point that extended crunch reduces productivity to the point of being useless.

One thing I would highly recommend against in any position is putting in extra hours to complete your work faster, appear more productive, and move up the promotion ladder faster. That is a great way to burn yourself out.

Comment Math focus in university is not ideal for game dev (Score 1) 1086

I work as a graphics and animation programmer in the games industry, and I found that in university the required math courses focus mostly on calculus, (for my cs degree I had 3 required calculus courses, 1 required linear algebra course and 1 required logic course), which maybe isn't the best focus for many people.

Calculus still does come in handy in quite a few games related places like lighting equations and physics simulation, however, for the most part other areas of math apply much more directly to my every day work. Which is to say, math is used in my every day work, but maybe not the parts that are most frequently taught.

Understanding geometry and linear algebra techniques used for modifying, blending, and interpreting spatial information (transforms, positions, directions) is a requirement for any game programmer, but little of it is taught in basic university math courses.

Even in my first linear algebra course (which I looked forward to because I was trying to learn matrix math on my own), most of the time was spent on solving systems of linear equations, least squares etc, with very little time spent on geometric transformation... and I don't think any course I ever took covered quaternions at all, which is the most difficult to grasp, and useful math construct for storing 3d orientation.

Anyway, yes of course you need to learn math! Learn whatever math they will teach you, it will help make it easier when you have to learn the really useful stuff yourself.

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