I am learning OpenGL by myself. School doesn''t teach everything so a determinated person can make difference.

THanks you all for the replies~!!
I hope everybody learn alot of their own... and be better.. ^^;;

choesh,

P.S.

THis is my first month studying openGL. How about you guys ? ?

You can learn the best by teaching yourself. I teach myself pretty much everything w/ comps. OGL isnt that hard most ppl just get tripped up on the code.

I learn openGL all by myself, and still learning. I bought only one book "OpenGL game programming" that is featured book in gamedev.net, for reference i have MSDN library, it''s more than enough.

I attend a HTS computer science in the Netherlands and the study is mainly oriented at everything that has to do with computers. That includes a bit of hardware, server configurations, OS-es, basic programming etc etc...

I''m learning OpenGL by myself because school doesn''t do anything in that direction. The most complex thing I''ve seen there is MSFC (and I never want to see those again) and the overall level of programming there is so bad that when some of my co-students sees more than 40 lines of code in a program I write, they flip out (in the lines of: "WOA, YOU SICK DUDE").

So self study is necesary as there is little depth (in programming) in the study and there are no people I can ask.
I''m coming along fine in the two months I''ve been doing OGL and I hope to get a lot of "WOA, YOU SICK DUDE" reactions when I show then my first pong3D game (yeh, you laugh, but it has reflections!!!) when I go back to school in february (working as an intern now).

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Original post by Crispy
...it seems I can handle basic and advanced stuff - still a long way from professionalism, though...

Crispy

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Hey Crispy, what in your mind is ''professionalism''? If it''s what I think you mean, then you may be surprised and find that you may be closer to ''professionalism'' than expected. I''ve come across a fair few guys who are rather slow in picking things up or even grasping concepts.

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choesh,

PS THis is my first month studying openGL. How about you guys ? ?

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Ditto. I''m finding NeHe''s tutorials quite useful and they''re an easier read than the OpenGL specs I''ve printed out . However, I just don''t seem to get enough time to play and explore as much as I''d like though.


As a note to the more advanced OGL programmers, I personally find it a great help when a program has been released with the source code. I''ve found that going through someone elses code is one of the best ways to pick up ideas, tips and programming knowledge for a specific language.

Cheers,
Jeroen

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Original post by BigBoy
Hey Crispy, what in your mind is ''professionalism''? If it''s what I think you mean, then you may be surprised and find that you may be closer to ''professionalism'' than expected.

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Professional(ism): you still refer to the docs for syntactic correctness, but not for semantic. You write more code and spend less time thinking about it because you know what to do (mainly out of experience). You use correct terminology (note that while this might seem like a redundant thing, you must find your way around in complex explanations and literature for the very advanced - it''s not always that easy - you need to be "educated" for that and this kind "education" comes over time). You don''t mess up that often and you don''t spend any more than perhaps 5-10% of your time hunting down bugs in your code. Now think: do you qualify for that (by ''you'' I mean ''most of the people here'') - I know I don''t...

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I''ve come across a fair few guys who are rather slow in picking things up or even grasping concepts.

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Err.. I''m not sure what to make of this

Crispy

Learning OpenGL in itself is a pretty simple task I''d say. It''s a fairly straightforwards API after all.

Then gathering enough knowledge to actually DO something with opengl.... well... that''s a different matter. =)

Can some one clarify some things for me, really confusing.

Some guys are saying that in uni, the closest thing they teach is c++ basics etc... Then what happends when u get a job in a programming area? How would basic c++ help? Is uni wasting time????

Not wasting time, there are lots of other concepts like memory management, stacks/files, etc that are very well treated.
For the *specific* case of OpenGL or C++, uni''s a bit light ; but for the *generic* case of 3D or programming (respectively), it''s better.