hi! i''m 15 years old, and would like to be a game programmer. i''ve been learning c++ now for 5 months. i spend about an hour coding and learning stuff from "teach yourself c++ in 21 days". i was just wondering, how good of a programmer do you have to be in order to make it into the game industry? am i spending enough time learning? and if i went to a regular college, would it be the same as if i had went to a school like digipen? thanx!

I''d spend 90% of any free time you have coding, the other 5% excercising...(It''s good for the brain) and the other 5% playing video games.

-=Lohrno

Digipen is specially for Game programming, and its MUCH harder

"I''ve learned something today: It doesn''t matter if you''re white, or if you''re black...the only color that really matters is green"
-Peter Griffin

How good of a programmer you have to be? As good as everyone else who is looking to be a programmer - in other words, learn as much as you are capable to. Remember, you are competing to get hired, and if your employer decides to hire you, they will provide you with training anyway. The less training they have to give you, the better off you''ll be.

As for college (as least in the USA), I don''t recommend going to DigiPen until they get accreditation from the US department of education (which I believe they can apply for in 2005 - give or take a year or so). Without accreditation, you will not be able to apply for federal financial aid, and all your courses taken there are worthless should you decide to persue a degree in another college (maybe a M.S. or a PhD - DigiPen currently only offers a B.S.). In spite all of this, DigiPen does train you specifically for interactive software development and the graduates there that I have contacted landed pretty nice jobs at places like SCEA and Nintendo(which funds DigiPen, FYI).

For a regular college, you get a much more diverse education. Should you not be able to get a job for game programming right out of college, you would know enough to able to land a ''temporary'' job outside of programming (maybe a network administrator or something) until you can find a game good programming job.

Hope this information proves helpful.

quote: Original post by matrix2113
Digipen is specially for Game programming, and its MUCH harder

Please. It can''t hold a candle to MIT. Or Stanford. Or CalTech. Or Berkely. Or Harvard. Or any of the other top-tier colleges - especially their CS programs.

[ GDNet Start Here | GDNet Search Tool | GDNet FAQ | MS RTFM [MSDN] | SGI STL Docs | Google! ]
Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

thanks for all your responses! i''m going take the advice of spending more time programming and going to a regular college.

thanks for all your responses! i''m going to take the advice of spending more time programming and going to a regular college.

Agreed with Oluseyi, no way Digipen is nearly as hard as a CS degree at any decent university, and there's no way it'll hold a candle to any of the better schools (But come on Oluseyi Harvard? Harvard isn't that great for CS. It's more of an Arts school).

A real CS degree will give you a stronger foundation in math, data structures, algorithms, etc. and will prepare you for work in many possible fields (including video games if you take the right courses). On the other hand you'll come out of Digipen with a portfolio of completed video game work.

In other words the CS degree probably won't give you the specialization in video games that could be an edge in the industry, but after Digipen you might be _too_ specialized.

[edited by - Dobbs on March 17, 2002 10:14:13 PM]

quote: Original post by Dobbs
(But come on Oluseyi Harvard? Harvard isn''t that great for CS. It''s more of an Arts school).

I wasn''t speaking about CS specifically, but college in general. Harvard is still tougher than DigiPen (both to get into and to get out of).

[ GDNet Start Here | GDNet Search Tool | GDNet FAQ | MS RTFM [MSDN] | SGI STL Docs | Google! ]
Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!