"Your right...
We should all goto some of those colleges that are a year behind technology.. Since Technology changes everyday it''s always good to be taught old methods, NOT.

I think the best thing is to stay upto date.
A revolutionary new company that want''s to use state of the art technology, .NET for example and it''s web services, You''re going to have to learn a whole new language/format therefor rendering those old techniques useless.
"

Actually, you''ve just demonstrated one of the great things that a good college would teach you - not to be tied to one particular language/technology...

A good computer science course teaches you the fundamental principles of programming, of computing. It doesn''t teach you JUST the latest buzz technology or languages. It teaches you how to rapidly learn them - without getting tied to those particular languages.

Going to college isn''t for everyone. However, it''s a great way to get some solid structure to your background as a programmer. It''s a great way of being exposed to different computer *science* that you wouldn''t normally expose yourself to - that''s a great thing for a game programmer to do.

I know from my own university course, I got exposed to technques & theories that I would never have dreamed of looking at from a purely game programming way of thinking. All of it is really useful to me as a pro programmer.

If you don''t want to go the college course, fine. You better be damn good & have a good solid FINISHED project to demo your skills.

Alright, first thing that needs to be said is that a college education is not a prerequsite for being a good programmer.

However, I think that you will have better odds at becoming a good programmer if you have that education.

Yes, they teach you many things that you will never use. Yes, some of the teachers have insane theories on "good" style or whatever. But, college teaches you good basics in Math and logic. Though I could have gotten that same information out of the textbooks that I bought, sometimes an author''s style is contrary to how I learn, and utterly unintelligable. It helps to have a real-live person available to hold your hand when this happens.

So, if you feel that you are already a coding god... can write a 5k line program and then go back and modify it with ease, hand it off to a newbie and they can understand it, etc. Then by all means skip the school.

But for those of us not so blessed, who have to go to a non-Game realted job to keep Dr Pepper in the fridge, a degree is invaluable.

Ah, hell...I''ll weigh in on this one too...

To start off with, I''ve been programming since 1985, graduated college with a CS degree in 1991, and I''ve been programming professionally since then in several different industries. I''ve climbed up from the entry level, been a Programmer, a Programmer/Analyst, a Systems Analyst, a Senior Systems Analyst, a Senior Software Engineer, trained as a Database Administrator, and I''m now an Independent Software Developer. I''ve worked with people who have CS degrees, MIS degrees, CIS degrees, and no degree at all.

I recommend college because I enjoyed it and learned a lot more than I would have otherwise. I had been programming almost 3 years *before* I went to college, teaching myself, and I was doing well on my own. When I started, I considered college a 4-year dues-paying period to get the degree so I could get a job doing what I wanted to do.

Despite the attitude that there was little I would learn from college, I learned a huge amount: Data structures, object-oriented techniques, database structure and programming, low-level file structures, assembler, compiler construction, and on and on.

For instance, in my 3rd year I built a working 4-bit CPU from component NAND, NOR, and similar ridiculously low-level hardware. Can''t do that reading a book, and you get a good feel for why assembler instructions work the way they do. (I still have a photo of the mess of wires and breadboards around here somewhere...) Just an example of something done in college that I would probably have never done/experienced otherwise. Another is the semester spent programming in esoteric languages like LISP, SNOBOL, Prolog, Smalltalk, and others.

That being said...

1. Programming is programming. Learn the essentials of stringing together statements to produce a desired result, and you have programming down pat. Language used is irrelevant. The only reason I don''t know Java is because I''ve never bothered to learn. Give me a reason to learn it (hint: the reason probably involves money) and I''ll be up in running in a matter of days. Most professional programmers would say the same, and you don''t need a degree to learn this. On the flipside, though, complaining that colleges teach old or "dead" programming languages is being silly. If you can''t abstract the language you''re taught to learn the concepts of programming, teaching you C++ right off the bat because "it''s more useful in the job market" isn''t going to help.

2. Experience beats eduction...mostly. In many cases, it''s more desireable to hire the person who "does" than the person who "hasn''t yet." Experience without education, though has a tendency to ingrain bad habits. So pick your poison... But don''t count on non-professional experience to get you very far. I mention I''ve been programming since 1985 in informal settings. On my *real* resume, I only list my professional experience, which begins in 1991. Because that''s all anyone cares about. Don''t get me wrong, I''m proud of what I accomplished in those 6 years (2 years of high school and 4 years of college)...but I''m not so naive to think that any of it matters to the guy who wants *real* experience.

3. "Welcome to the club! Do you know the secret handshake?" A lot of times, a degree is required because the person doing the hiring has a degree, or the company has a policy of only accepting applicants with a degree. Sound unfair? Bummer. I hate taxes, but I still pay them.

When I was still in college, the discussion amongst CS majors was whether it was worth it to go on get a Masters degree. The common wisdom was that you could get a better-paying job with a Masters. But you could go to work with your undergrad degree and after 2 years you would be making the same as you could with your Masters. So it was rather a wash, no penalty either way. And after 4 years, most people just want *out*, so they went and got jobs (me included).

The shortage of qualified Information Technology professionals has changed that question some. Instead of wondering whether you should get your Masters, or go to work with an undergrad degree, you''re pondering whether college is worth the trouble when you can get a job right out of high school.

If you think you''ll be as valuable in 4 years *without* your degree as you will be in 4 years *with* your degree, then college is arguably a waste of your time.

I had a ball at college. It''s not all books and classes. It''s an incredible social experience. But that''s hardly a reason to go.

I guess it all boils down to this: Make up your own mind.


DavidRM
Samu Games

Well said Daivd...

Also *if* people find they cannot get a job with their current skill''s, demo''s, and what not... what is stopping them from going to University say, 3 years down the track and completing their CSD, I suppose you could think of it as "wasting" 3 year''s for not going to College/University straight away. I don''t know about in the U.S but there''s only 1 *decent*, maybe 2 universities here that are somewhat upto date on the IT sector.

Another thing that people just want to "get out and work" is that IT is in demand in most nations. Israel.. don''t exactly know anyone who would want to go over there at the moment but if you can demonstrate IT skill''s then immediately you''ll be accepted over their with a well paid job, same goes for the UK, etc etc.

Hello again

K, first I just want to say (again) "if you think you will learn somehing in college, GO FOR IT" I see some people didn''t paid attention to that line heh

Also, I didn''t what a discussion on the terms :"You go to college ? YOU SUCK", "You don''t go to college ? YOU SUCK" let''s be civilized, since this can help some 16''ers decide what they will do.

For first, Im going to contradict David on a couple things
"I had a ball at college. It''s not all books and classes. It''s an incredible social experience. But that''s hardly a reason to go."

You''re right, that''s hardly (if any) reason to go, but then again, I''m going to explain how things work here (Portugal). There is a freshmens ''initiation'' (which I think there is everywere) which is tough, I had a couple friends that were betean, I got into a fight cause I would refuse to be on my knees for someone that as in his 3rd year, and I didn''t even went there, just was with a couple friennds in the CS signing line cause I was going to go with them someplace, and even without being in college, I got that
Continuing ''initianion'' ideas, you proably heard this one, last year, in France, all this freshmen initiation all FORBIDDEN and PUNISHED BY LAW, when some STUPID (lets just call them stupid) send a guy in a coffin home as the initiaion task, and when arrived he was dead (I think they were found guilty of murderer or something)

Now, here, college isn''t that pretty and nice, you dont know how to integrate using Taylors method ?? tought luck cause noone will help you out, its just a competition, NOONE will help, they see you as a adversary.

Again, the library is proabably the best thing in a college.

Ohh btw dave, did you ever used that bunch of wires in a job ? heh (maybe you did, not trying to start anything)

About programming languages... hmm My gf in 5 years of her course, will learn, 3 (yes THREE) languages, and each language will be 4 months teaching, 4 hours per week, not more, not less..

Now, how can say they know Haskell ??? Anyone ??? Come on you little guy in the back you know it ??? No ??? Ok... She was introduced to programming using this language.... (dont ask me) second is C and the third is Java... And the more complicated thing they are teached (in C) is a single linked list... I wonder what will she do when she has to work with bin trees, bit manipulation, complex I/O etc etc....

One more thing... they only teach (li)unix... not even Windows 3.11 or NT, only UNIX, they dont let their projects be presented in any other enviroment... is this good ?? 90% of the computers in the world use a Windows OS, so that goes about 90% of the work opportunity off the window...

''If unix is the face of the future I wanna go back to quill pens.'' -Joseph Snipp

This was on the start page when I loaded Gamedev heh

About big game companies, they say: "CS/bla/bla Degree or equivalent experience" meaning, a CS is not necessary, I cant remeber if it was Bullfrog, Team17, one of the EA companies or Blizzard that had this motto:

"Even if you are taking a business course, but did programming as a hobby making pacman or tetris clones and have anything impressive to show us, do so, we are always looking for fresh new programmers with new and good ideas" (or something bvery very similar to that...


"Experience beats eduction...mostly. In many cases, it''s more desireable to hire the person who "does" than the person who "hasn''t yet." Experience without education, though has a tendency to ingrain bad habits. So pick your poison... " (again a quote from David

I second that... the thing is, CS graduates usually look to self learnes as unresponsabile, weird habits, bad style etc etc... but thins is changing and much..... making Code complete, and a couple other good books on design, the internet now has articles all over the place about code structuring, etc. where pepole learn. That used to be the case a couple years ago cause:

1) it was needed for optimization purposes, and callign 5 functions or just 1 for doing the same thing would be benefitial (it isnt in our days with this 800+ Mhz computers with 128+ Mgs Ram) or using weird loops using pointers to make the code faster

2) using cryptic names like x or y or t, why ? because in those days, a game was done in under a month, and there were no patched, there was no code reuse, there was only one programmer... so WHY NOT ?? saves a lot time of typing... Not it isnt the same, and now programmers know it, and do use xLoopTemp or tMatrix, or yCollumn (or whatever, it was the first 3 words that came to my mind)

3) Information sharing is now considered a must (almost) and big time guys do plan files, post in this boards, write articles for magazines etc etc etc... before ?? if they could find something in the internet about code design.... "WHOOOAAAAAA we have a winner, the bike goes to ...."

4) Many programmers learned from other code, and that code was like I said, BAD, so they learned how to code BADLY, it isnt the case now, 75% of the code available now is well designed, well commented, etc etc

5) MAny programmers also learned from those magazines that bought some games there or books that only had code you could type to your spectrum... thsoe where ALWAYS made to take the less space possible, so naming conventions would just be x y z t p o

K, I had some more things to say but I''ll leave it for the next time

Again, choose carefully what you want to do...

jsut to add one thing i just saw in the news.....

"one out of three college people takes drugs.... and college provides an easy easy way to get first experience to a ''newbie'' start experimenting with them"

(Again portuguese college....

Akura,
I truly am sorry for the situation you are in with colleges in Portugal. My assessment of the situation was based upon US colleges and should probably relax a bit if indeed your experiences seem to be indicative of the college system as a whole in Portugal.

That aside, I mentioned in my earlier post that in my experience, self taught programmers more often than not, lack the organizational skills and general group project skills that programmers with more formal education or training posess. This is a ''general'' rule of thumb that I have seen and does not apply personally to any one individual in this thread.

My advise to new programmers is two fold; if you have the skills to program then try out the market if you like or go take a few classes that can help solidify your foundation. If you don''t have the skills yet, then it is best to go get that foundation before you get into the messy state of affairs that is the current market. Its that simple.

Kressilac

ps When I mentioned organizational skills, I was referring to the ability of a self taught programmer to produce code that works well, is easy to understand, and has been well documented. My single largest indicator of this is how well a completed segment of code survives a peer review.

Derek Licciardi
President
Elysian Productions Inc.

My position on this (CIS degree of a University of California campus) is that a degree is only valuable if you follow up on it. I have not worked a day as a programmer, so my degree is irrelevant.

However, I would also point out that being in an academic environment is almost as valuable as being in class. I learned at least as much from my fellow classmates as I did from my lecturers and professors. Some of the things I learned were not so much factoids or techniques, but approaches and philosophies.

Not that you can''t find this environment outside of universities, but they are the most obvious place to look.

$0.02

How about a new wrinkle. Distance education. I started programming 6-8 years ago (you know the stuff, basic programs with ascii text and line drawings), slowly getting more advanced, finally arriving at c++ and game programming of the directx variety. Now I''m taking courses from an on-line college, you can check it out at www.accis.com, and working towards a Bachelor''s Degree in Computer Science. I enjoy this type of education, because you can skim parts that you''re already familiar with (one class took 3 weeks to finish), and go over rough spots until you''re ready. This seems like a strong alternative to some of the things mentioned previously.

Bad link on the last post. Try www.accis.edu
BTW all of the tests are taken online now, which means you get fast feedback on a number of them.