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Original post by Xnin
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????

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Don''t forget that beginning students usually have no programming experience whatsoever, not to mention those who have barely touched a computer. And uni''s are usually focussed on the workload an "average" uni-student can handle.
Going into API specific topics is usually not an option because you need the people with experience in that API, the students who have the basic experience, and the time to cover it.

When I look back of how difficult was when I started out at school with programming. It was all chinese to me and I didn''t believe that anything really usefull could be done with it (for me then anyway). Then you get concepts as OO and OO design... and it doesn''t stop there...

The schools goal is always to teach people as many basics as possible so they can grow better in the companies later on, not to release a batch of pre-programmed robots who can only program one language/API very well. That''d be useless for aswell the company that hires people from that school aswell as for the student whose choice of proffession will be narrowed down.

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School does not really teach OpenGL in detail, just the basis.

Even though school is a good start, it''s just nothing more than a start, and I think that all of us have learned "deep" OpenGL thanks to the Internet.

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You''ve learned OpenGL in School?? What the hell! Where do live?? My future children should go to school there :D

I''ve never heard that before! I heard of C++ or VB but OpenGL (Game-Programming) is absolutely new for me!!

Well, to answer the thread opener:

I''ve never read a book about opengl. I first found this site and worked my way through the tuts. Then I found one other good site (gametutorials.com) and I went through their tuts. MSDN helps a lott, too.

BTW. I''ve not read the whole thread. I hope I did not say something which is allready done

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You''ve learned OpenGL in School?? What the hell! Where do live?? My future children should go to school there :D

I''ve never heard that before! I heard of C++ or VB but OpenGL (Game-Programming) is absolutely new for me!!

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I''ve learnt OpenGL for digital image processing, but it was barely limited to glBegin/glEnd and glPushMatrix/glPopMatrix. Not the fancy per-pixel lighting and shadow volumes hanging out there
And for information, it was not "Game-Programming" at all. Sure, in the end it could be used for games, but it was not the intention.

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You've learned OpenGL in School?? What the hell! Where do live?? My future children should go to school there :D

I've never heard that before! I heard of C++ or VB but OpenGL (Game-Programming) is absolutely new for me!!
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Gerge washington university in DC, USA
and George mason university in VA, USA teaches OpenGL pretty in depth I heard.

Take a look at
http://cs.seas.gwu.edu/graduate/areas.html
Multimedia, Animation, Graphics and User Interfaces

CSCI 181 - Design of Computer Animation I
CSCI 182 - Design of Computer Animation II
CSCI 185 - Computer Graphics I
CSCI 187 - Design of User-Interface Programs


CSCI 191 - Computer Game Design and Programming


CSCI 260 - Design of Interactive Multimedia
CSCI 261 - Design and Implementation of Educational Software
CSCI 262 - Computer Graphics Programming Tools
CSCI 263 - Computer Graphics II
CSCI 264 - Design of Human-Computer Interface
CSCI 266 - Computer Animation
CSCI 361 - Advanced Topics in Interactive Multimedia
CSCI 362 - Advanced Topics in Human-computer Interaction
CSCI 367 - Advanced Topics in Computer Graphics
CSCI 368 - Advanced Topics in Animation & Virtual Reality



http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~graphics/courses.html
specially, CSCI 262 Computer Graphics Programming Tools


[edited by - choesh on January 10, 2003 4:50:16 PM]

And for all the swedes here there is this.
http://gscept.tt.luth.se
It''s not stricly ogl, it''s allso alot of dx + a buttload of other shit.

I am myself a student there and i like it.
allso if you want to sheck the small game i made for a project there, then go to http://flashbang.nu and download xmas ball hunter.
Remember that we havn''t even begun to touch the words game/programing/graphics in the six months we have been here.
Still the engine itself actuarly have stencil shadows of the doom3 kind(and it''s based on the NeHe base code). _-**shameless plug**-_

I just started 4 days ago learning OpenGL on my own. Did a lot of searching on the internet and found this site. My hat goes off to all the individuals who have contributed to making the site a valuable resource for budding CG developers like myself.

the forums were being screwy for me this morning, and so it didn't send this (i thought it wouldn't though so i saved it to send later) well here it is, slightly late:

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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.

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I agree, and alot of people have said they learned just by looking at other people's code, but that doesn't make much sense to me... You need to know at least what some of the functions do before you can learn from other's code.

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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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Lol... I qualify for Proffessionalism in graalscript then (though I've lost my edge since i quit graal for a couple months)


[edited by - Sky on January 10, 2003 10:35:15 PM]

hi, ok but if universitys are teaching say basic c++ or other programming language (basics only). What happens then if a guy wants to work somewhere were they use a programming language that the guy doesnt know, or knows only the basics. Will he have to learn it himself in his own time? Will he not get the job? Will they teach him (though they might aswell hire someone else who knows it)?

Oh, just another question. What course should someone take in university if he/she wants to get into game programming? Would s/w engineer or computer engineering? or multimedia?



Thanks, im just asking as im really curios.

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You''ve learned OpenGL in School?? What the hell! Where do live?? My future children should go to school there :D

I''ve never heard that before! I heard of C++ or VB but OpenGL (Game-Programming) is absolutely new for me!!

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heh, at least in Michigan, we have both... I goto the University of Michigan - Dearborn, and we have Comp Grap and Adv Comp Grap, which is OGL, and Game Design, which teaches DirectX, but you can complete the projects in OGL...


I believe its the same way in Ann Arbor.

Michigan State is the same way, but the game class costs lots more, and its more about Game programming, not design(i.e. Code not designing said code)

I had no choice but to learn OGL by myself. I heard about OGL when i was 16 and had just finished grade 12 programming (now 18). First i had to learn C++ so i picked up a book and in about a month i was comfortable with it. Then i just started reading NeHe''s articles and two years later ive been through them twice, and have read a boat load of other articles and am fairly good with the OGL system and a lot of other systems i never new existed.

The school system here in Ontario is pitiful. In grade 12 programming we only went as far as recursion, and never even touched C++ (the sad thing was that i was the youngest in the class and was the only one who understood anything). The college courses are worse. My friend started taking college courses at 17 to learn C++ (i told him that he could do it in 1 month but he wouldnt listen) and now, one and a few hundred dollars later, he is on the second part of the course and has only started pointers to functions. University is a little better but not much. The first year is spent on learning C++, and it takes about 3 months to get to functions...i''ll be board as hell.

So as you can see, the only practical way to learn OGL (for me that is) is to start reading and never stop. IMO, courses are a waste of time when you can figure out everything for yourself.