Coding seems really boring...
- Thread starter merc
- Start date
That depends completely on the position you would be applying for. If you're applying for any programming or QA jobs then you would certainly need to know how to program. However for jobs dealing with art, administration or misc. then you probably wouldn't have to know how to program, though some knowledge would probably be a bonus.
For an idea of possible requirements (omitting *pure* programming positions):
EA Canada: QA Test Engineer
...
Requirements
- Computer Science Degree, Computer Engineering Degree, or equivalent.
- Development experience (Co-op Terms included).
- Demonstrated programming skills in C ++ & real-time software development.
- Preferred knowledge in some of the following: Python, Perl, C#, Java, Flash Actionscript and XML;
- Preferred knowledge in gaming consoles.
- Solid understanding of the iterative software development model and life cycle.
- Excellent understanding of software quality assurance concepts, debugging processes and procedures.
- Pro-active and takes initiative with ?can do? attitude.
- Demonstrated strong interpersonal and communication skills.
- Strong ability to self-manage and prioritize work effectively under pressure.
- Demonstrated analytical and problem solving skills.
...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EA United States: Comp Graphic Artist III
...
Requirements
* 4 to 7 years experience in some combination of print, web, multimedia design
* Bachelor's degree in Graphic Design
* Demonstrated expertise in Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash
* Solid understanding of HTML and experience with asset management systems
* Acute sense of design, composition, typography and branding
* Strong ownership and strict adherence to deadlines
* Manages and executes multiple projects successfully, with minimum guidance
* Demonstrated ability to present ideas clearly to internal and external customers
* Excellent and consistent verbal and written communication skills
...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blizzard : Senior Network Analyst
...
Requirements
Strong customer service skills.
Strong written and verbal communication skills. Ability to communicate and present complex issues and analyses in an effective manner.
Good organization and time management skills.
Must be highly dependable, with a "Can Do" attitude.
Advanced knowledge of Cisco configuration and programming.
Ability to troubleshoot network hardware, software, or routing problems.
Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Exchange Server and Active Directory.
Advanced knowledge of network routing technologies (TCP/IP, DNS, WINS, management of NT/AD domains).
Must have extensive hardware experience (ability to build, diagnose and repair computers; strong troubleshooting skills).
Advanced skills in installing and administering Windows 2000/2003/NT/XP.
Must have intermediate knowledge of *nix in a networking environment.
Intermediate to advanced knowledge of backup/restore procedures.
Must be available on-call for emergencies; must be able to work weekends if needed.
Must be able and willing to lift a minimum of 50lbs.
Must be experienced in playing computer games and have a familiarity with game software/hardware.
...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bioware : Project Manager
...
Requirements:
Graduate of a recognized post secondary program in project management is preferred.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office and a broad knowledge / familiarity with scheduling software.
Two years of experience with scheduling resources and managing projects of significant complexity.
Experience in the Information Technology or entertainment industry is required.
Excellent analytical and mathematical skills are required.
Superior customer service approach when completing work tasks is required.
Ability to work under pressure and coordinate numerous activities and groups of people who need to cooperate to achieve maximum efficiency.
Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment is required.
Superior time management and organizational skills are essential. Excellent attention to detail is essential.
Good oral and written communication skills.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bioware : Senior Writer
...
Experience:
Must have at least two scripts that have been used in television or movies, or have at least one novel published by a major, internationally distributed publisher (ex. Wizards of the Coast, Random House).
Minimum education:
Canadian applicants: no minimum education requirement; preferred: post-secondary diploma, certification or degree.
International applicants: for immigration purposes, minimum education requirement: post-secondary degree or diploma.
Familiarity with the fantasy genre and role-playing games is a must. Should have some experience with the NWN editor. Examples of work must be provided (see below).
Required Submission:
An example of writing via the Neverwinter Nights toolset should be provided. However, if you do not have access to the NWN toolset, then alternative submission option is below.
Alternate Submission guidelines:
Please provide a sample of your writing in a movie or play script format. The script should be 1000 to 2000 words. It should take place in a fantasy setting. You will be judged on the ideas you put forth as well as the quality of the dialogue.
Here are the guidelines for the module:
Make the module short. It should be a short interesting story that can be played within 15 to 30 minutes.
Start the story off with a bang! If it doesn't catch our interest with the first character, your submission will likely be discarded.
There should be at least 3000 words of dialogue within the module.
We will be judging your ability to write dialogue that is interesting and has personality. The characters you are writing have to be engaging in a manner that immediately draws in the reader.
The dialogue must be fun and easy to read, not overly verbose.
We will also be judging the structure of your dialogue. Does the dialogue flow logically? Does the player feel in control of the conversation?
...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For an idea of possible requirements (omitting *pure* programming positions):
EA Canada: QA Test Engineer
...
Requirements
- Computer Science Degree, Computer Engineering Degree, or equivalent.
- Development experience (Co-op Terms included).
- Demonstrated programming skills in C ++ & real-time software development.
- Preferred knowledge in some of the following: Python, Perl, C#, Java, Flash Actionscript and XML;
- Preferred knowledge in gaming consoles.
- Solid understanding of the iterative software development model and life cycle.
- Excellent understanding of software quality assurance concepts, debugging processes and procedures.
- Pro-active and takes initiative with ?can do? attitude.
- Demonstrated strong interpersonal and communication skills.
- Strong ability to self-manage and prioritize work effectively under pressure.
- Demonstrated analytical and problem solving skills.
...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EA United States: Comp Graphic Artist III
...
Requirements
* 4 to 7 years experience in some combination of print, web, multimedia design
* Bachelor's degree in Graphic Design
* Demonstrated expertise in Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash
* Solid understanding of HTML and experience with asset management systems
* Acute sense of design, composition, typography and branding
* Strong ownership and strict adherence to deadlines
* Manages and executes multiple projects successfully, with minimum guidance
* Demonstrated ability to present ideas clearly to internal and external customers
* Excellent and consistent verbal and written communication skills
...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blizzard : Senior Network Analyst
...
Requirements
Strong customer service skills.
Strong written and verbal communication skills. Ability to communicate and present complex issues and analyses in an effective manner.
Good organization and time management skills.
Must be highly dependable, with a "Can Do" attitude.
Advanced knowledge of Cisco configuration and programming.
Ability to troubleshoot network hardware, software, or routing problems.
Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Exchange Server and Active Directory.
Advanced knowledge of network routing technologies (TCP/IP, DNS, WINS, management of NT/AD domains).
Must have extensive hardware experience (ability to build, diagnose and repair computers; strong troubleshooting skills).
Advanced skills in installing and administering Windows 2000/2003/NT/XP.
Must have intermediate knowledge of *nix in a networking environment.
Intermediate to advanced knowledge of backup/restore procedures.
Must be available on-call for emergencies; must be able to work weekends if needed.
Must be able and willing to lift a minimum of 50lbs.
Must be experienced in playing computer games and have a familiarity with game software/hardware.
...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bioware : Project Manager
...
Requirements:
Graduate of a recognized post secondary program in project management is preferred.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office and a broad knowledge / familiarity with scheduling software.
Two years of experience with scheduling resources and managing projects of significant complexity.
Experience in the Information Technology or entertainment industry is required.
Excellent analytical and mathematical skills are required.
Superior customer service approach when completing work tasks is required.
Ability to work under pressure and coordinate numerous activities and groups of people who need to cooperate to achieve maximum efficiency.
Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment is required.
Superior time management and organizational skills are essential. Excellent attention to detail is essential.
Good oral and written communication skills.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bioware : Senior Writer
...
Experience:
Must have at least two scripts that have been used in television or movies, or have at least one novel published by a major, internationally distributed publisher (ex. Wizards of the Coast, Random House).
Minimum education:
Canadian applicants: no minimum education requirement; preferred: post-secondary diploma, certification or degree.
International applicants: for immigration purposes, minimum education requirement: post-secondary degree or diploma.
Familiarity with the fantasy genre and role-playing games is a must. Should have some experience with the NWN editor. Examples of work must be provided (see below).
Required Submission:
An example of writing via the Neverwinter Nights toolset should be provided. However, if you do not have access to the NWN toolset, then alternative submission option is below.
Alternate Submission guidelines:
Please provide a sample of your writing in a movie or play script format. The script should be 1000 to 2000 words. It should take place in a fantasy setting. You will be judged on the ideas you put forth as well as the quality of the dialogue.
Here are the guidelines for the module:
Make the module short. It should be a short interesting story that can be played within 15 to 30 minutes.
Start the story off with a bang! If it doesn't catch our interest with the first character, your submission will likely be discarded.
There should be at least 3000 words of dialogue within the module.
We will be judging your ability to write dialogue that is interesting and has personality. The characters you are writing have to be engaging in a manner that immediately draws in the reader.
The dialogue must be fun and easy to read, not overly verbose.
We will also be judging the structure of your dialogue. Does the dialogue flow logically? Does the player feel in control of the conversation?
...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FictiousWill
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Brilliant post, Akrin.
merc: coding is the core of game dev. You can get a ways without it, but only as an artist, mapper, etc. What code have you seen that appears boring? Have you taken any CS classes in high school or looked any programming languages up? Somebody's going to have to code the game. If you don't find it interesting that's fine, but if you still find code boring after seeing the product of excellent coding (HL2, Doom3) then I doubt you will ever find it interesting.
merc: coding is the core of game dev. You can get a ways without it, but only as an artist, mapper, etc. What code have you seen that appears boring? Have you taken any CS classes in high school or looked any programming languages up? Somebody's going to have to code the game. If you don't find it interesting that's fine, but if you still find code boring after seeing the product of excellent coding (HL2, Doom3) then I doubt you will ever find it interesting.
merc
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well i havent really seen coding before, but isnt it just a bunch of letters and numbers and stuff? i would rather want to work on making maps and models or demos or trailers for the game etc. rather than typing up letters and stuff.. but if i have to learn it to get in the games industry i will... after my visit to valve i am ready to do anything to be allowed to work at a place like that... it is my dream work place..
-merc
-merc
QA you don't just "play" games. Imagine playing the same ten minute sequence for 1 hour straight trying to find bugs and going through it in so many different ways just to find bugs.
There are playtesters, the stuff you did at valve(would be a heck of a lot more involved though)
And there are Q&A which is usually handled at the publishers end and is super crap usually.
If you want more information about the industry or ways to get into it.
Goto http://www.igda.org
There are playtesters, the stuff you did at valve(would be a heck of a lot more involved though)
And there are Q&A which is usually handled at the publishers end and is super crap usually.
If you want more information about the industry or ways to get into it.
Goto http://www.igda.org
B
botman
Guest
"well i havent really seen coding before, but isnt it just a bunch of letters and numbers and stuff?"
Yeah, pretty much. You do some random qwerty action and throw in lots of ';' and '{' and ']' and stuff like that and pray to the hax0r gods that it compiles and runs sucessfully. It doesn't hurt to sling some chicken or goat blood on your computer every once in a while either.
botman
Yeah, pretty much. You do some random qwerty action and throw in lots of ';' and '{' and ']' and stuff like that and pray to the hax0r gods that it compiles and runs sucessfully. It doesn't hurt to sling some chicken or goat blood on your computer every once in a while either.
botman
FictiousWill
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T
tehoen
Guest
its easy to get started, just buy a book on whatever language you want to learn and then just google for a free compilator.
Coding (or programming, as normal people call it) is no more "just a bunch of letters and numbers" than the English language is (or any language for that matter). It is a language in a true sense. You learn to use it to communicate with a computer, just like you learned to communicate with people using English. It's not just a bunch of random cryptic stuff thrown together that magicly produces something. Programming is all about logical problem solving. You have to be able to instruct a computer how to do something 1 step at a time, because the computer is a rediculously stupid machine. It doesn't make interpratations of your commands like a human does. It does exactly, literally, what you tell it to. So, if you like to solve problems using logic (and by logic, I mean a lot of math), then programming will be fun for you. If you'd rather do artistic stuff, then you probably won't enjoy programming very much.
Note that I don't particularly like math, but I still like programming because I like to solve problems and I like to make computers do cool stuff.
On the other hand. It doesn't hurt to have at least very basic knowledge of what programming involves. Something more than "isn't it just a bunch of letters and numbers" will save you many insults, laughs, and punches in the gut from the guys who make the tools that let you make maps or models or do whatever else it is you want to do in the game developement process. It might also keep you from making a fool of yourself by asking the programmers to do something that would require the NEC Earth Simulator to perform in real-time.
P.S. The Earth Simulator is currently the fastest computer in the world. It is used to simulate the earth's techtonic plate movements in order to attempt to predict earthquakes. It runs at about 36 teraflops. Which essentially means that it can perform roughly 12,000 times as many operations per second as the fastest PC.
Note that I don't particularly like math, but I still like programming because I like to solve problems and I like to make computers do cool stuff.
On the other hand. It doesn't hurt to have at least very basic knowledge of what programming involves. Something more than "isn't it just a bunch of letters and numbers" will save you many insults, laughs, and punches in the gut from the guys who make the tools that let you make maps or models or do whatever else it is you want to do in the game developement process. It might also keep you from making a fool of yourself by asking the programmers to do something that would require the NEC Earth Simulator to perform in real-time.
P.S. The Earth Simulator is currently the fastest computer in the world. It is used to simulate the earth's techtonic plate movements in order to attempt to predict earthquakes. It runs at about 36 teraflops. Which essentially means that it can perform roughly 12,000 times as many operations per second as the fastest PC.
blahblahblah
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Pendragon said:
I've started to learn coding and that has to be the most aggravating thing in the world. It's even more fun when I accidently transpose letters and spend hours looking for that mistake.
blahblahblah said:
No, the most aggrovating thing in the world are logic errors. Syntax errors are easy to find since you'll probably get an approximate line number from the compiler or the code will just not compile at all. Logic errors on the other hand don't neccesarily cause any error at all. Sometimes they don't even show up until some obscure situation occurs in the program. At which point you have to spend days - not looking for out of place characters or missing semi-colons - but going through every single piece of code trying to figure out what instruction or large conglomeration of instructions could possibly be causing - or interacting with each other in a way that could be causing - the problem. Those are by far the worst part of programming, because if you thought your logic was correct to begin with, now not only do you have to identify a problem that you didn't even know would be a problem. But you have to come up with a solution to something you thought you already had a solution to.
And imagine trying to find a problem like that in a program that consists of hundreds or thousands of lines of code, comprising dozens of functions which may each be passing several variables back and forth between one another.
If you wanted to condem somebody to hell, you would put them a job where they do nothing but hunt down and solve logic errors day in and day out.
psyno
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That's why you need a good test kit (which is solved very well in Java with JUnit, I might add). A good compiler and development environment should help you sort out the little things easily, as Cyanide said.
It can be really ridiculously fun to code. It's true. And no one knows why. :O
:bounce:
It can be really ridiculously fun to code. It's true. And no one knows why. :O
:bounce:
tim8604
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merc said:
I think you are thinking of hex
. Programming can be really rewarding after you get ahold of what's going on. If you want to start learning, just start with a high level language (c++, vb, etc) rather than assembly or something like that. Good luck with whatever it is you decide to do though.Well, you can program in hex...
86 48 B7 E1 00 80 03 B7 E1 01 86 4C B7 E1 02 B7 E1 03
8B 03 B7 E1 04 86 20 B7 E1 05 86 57 B7 E1 06 86 4F B7
E1 07 86 52 B7 E1 08 86 4C B7 E1 09 80 09 B7 E1 0A 86
21 B7 E1 0B 86 00 B7 E1 0C CF
Assembly code that stores ASCII string "HELLO WORLD!" to $e100 on a motorola 68HC11 microcontroller (null terminator and everything :E )... while no one in their right mind would actually program in hex... I'm not now nor have I ever been in my right mind.
botman said:It doesn't hurt to sling some chicken or goat blood on your computer every once in a while either.
I just find that threatening my computer with a picture of onions does the job for me
As for mistakes, missing ';' are easy to find, its when you put an EXTRA one at the end of an 'if(...)' line which causes the condition to execute all the time and cause god knows how many headaches....
i love coding, for the problem solving.
But, i'll tell you this.
You won't be any good at coding if you don't learn how to learn on your own. That's the biggest part of being a programmer. You HAVE to learn on your own, because, every single library or API is pretty different, and you have to learn it if you're going to use it.
Secondly, it's a damn good idea to get good at reading and more importantly understanding other people's code. I'm bad at it, and I need to get better at it.
Thirdly, start in Visual Basic. It's easy to learn, you don't have to worry about GUI (graphical user interface). But switch once you've reached it's limits and go to java or c++
But, i'll tell you this.
You won't be any good at coding if you don't learn how to learn on your own. That's the biggest part of being a programmer. You HAVE to learn on your own, because, every single library or API is pretty different, and you have to learn it if you're going to use it.
Secondly, it's a damn good idea to get good at reading and more importantly understanding other people's code. I'm bad at it, and I need to get better at it.
Thirdly, start in Visual Basic. It's easy to learn, you don't have to worry about GUI (graphical user interface). But switch once you've reached it's limits and go to java or c++
Q
qckbeam
Guest
I always find coding to be a very fun pursuit, no matter what the task at hand happens to be. Even the most tedious aspect of a project can be made into something fun if you look at it from a problem solving point of view, as Synthos said above. I personally love learning everything I can about computers, so when I run into a problem, I don't get frustrated, I just take it as another opportunity to learn. As far as the very tedious "I forgot to add a semi-colon on line 12" errors go, I try very hard not to let them phase me, or take my mind off the task at hand, because they are unavoidable errors you'll run into regardless of experience (for me at least). I do however find them to be useful at times, since they force me to scrutinize everything I wrote and could lead to optimizations and things of that nature. So yes, coding can be boring I guess if you let the little things get to you. However if you look at errors as opportunities for more learning you'll see that it isn't so bad after all, and you'll end up making fewer and fewer in the long run
Coding isn't for everyone though, and as a skill, it is not required in all areas of game development. If you are inclined to the more artistic side of things (and it seems you are) then by all means pursue those areas. Just don't forget that coding is an art as well, and allows for just as much creativity as anything else.
Coding isn't for everyone though, and as a skill, it is not required in all areas of game development. If you are inclined to the more artistic side of things (and it seems you are) then by all means pursue those areas. Just don't forget that coding is an art as well, and allows for just as much creativity as anything else.
antimatter
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When you are coding, your mind is working hard trying to find a way to solve a problem. Your mind is active. Boredom by definition means "the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest". So if you are in the process of coding, you already have an interest in something. That something is finding the solution to a problem. Coding can be frustrating at times but never boring. To me anyway. Although I can see why it might seem boring to someone who is watching someone else code.
ComradeBadger
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I must say that during my brief liason with C++, I found it to be fun, and intensely rewarding.. but after a while, I discovered that my mind really wasn't for it.. I couldn't take the leaps required to program outside of a tutorial
Back to mapping :E
Back to mapping :E
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