Anybody else experienced this?

[Kitt Frostpaws]

So for the past few months/year or so I've been on my Foundation Games Development course and last week I came to the realization that I'm really not all that useful in programming from my experience this year; Either that or we're just being terribly taught.

 

I've been thinking about once I've graduated from this course to take something in writing (although I'm yet to explore my possible options for this) but I'm not sure if I should do that or find a different course. I'm still looking to pursue a career in the game development industry, but right now I'm just not 100% sure on how I want to try that or where I want to try and fit in as I kind of feel like programming isn't going to work for me anymore as I kind of feel like I've let myself dip behind and teaching myself C++ has kind of been put on stand-still for college as of late.

 

To be honest I'm a little conflicted on this, I kind of feel like I'm letting a few bad experiences this year influence me a little too much but at the same time I think it might do me some good to try and branch out into something that isn't strictly IT/Games related

 

Anybody else experienced something like this? I'm genuinely curious right now.

 

[Cdr.Keen]

To be honest, it's not easy to talk about this, because i don't like to sway you in your decision.

 

Overall, it's always a good point of view to look up the whole story, not only a part of it.

[Kitt Frostpaws]

35 minutes ago, Cdr.Keen said:

To be honest, it's not easy to talk about this, because i don't like to sway you in your decision.

 

Overall, it's always a good point of view to look up the whole story, not only a part of it.

 

To be honest I'm not so much looking for someone to sway my decision, but rather if anybody has experienced this and what they did in their own experience; 

I'm planning to do more research into this whole ordeal once my summer break has started, but that's still 3-4 weeks away.

[Keepbro]

Speaking as someone who is now having to go back into education - don't give up on learning. 

 

I'm stuck in a situation where I can't earn money because I can't get good jobs which I can't get because I don't have the right education for them and I need money to pay for the education which I can't get because I can't get decent jobs. I would say that's catch-22 but it's a three prong problem so really it's catch-33 (TM patent pending). 

 

I would really start to abuse your learning privileges. If you are keen on something then you need to go full ninja. Spend every minute learning your trade. Focus solely on what is necessary. Discard all useless shit. Use and abuse every useful resource. Spend spare time doing fun projects that teach you skills and use those projects as a portfolio to show off  I did that when I wanted to be a National Geographic photographer and although that never panned out I was able to transfer the skills to a minor yet hughly lucrative film biz career. Be warned though that specialising in something may necessitate retraining later on (especially if it all goes to pot like it did with me). 

 

Don't get discouraged with education. I've found employers don't really give a fuck about qualifications unless it's law or public service. For creative businesses its about skills and shipping. Prove you have skills and you can deliver those skills and ship those skills to an audience and you'll be fine. Focus on that. 

 

That's my two cents. 

[Connall]

Keepbro has pretty much hit the nail on the head, but I'm just going to extend it a little bit more.

 

Now what I'm going to say is not necessarily a reflection on yourself or your skills, but rather I'm just generally talking because I'm not too sure what position or confidence you have in programming. As background for everybody I am currently sitting my exams for my degree year in Computer Science BSc and will (hopefully) graduate in July. I tutored some folks who were struggling with programming, since I was in the very fortunate position of having actually done a lot of the things the University was trying to teach us, I don't consider myself that great a programmer, I would say I have maybe average skill at best I just have a huge amount of passion for the craft, to where I started this all off when I was 13. I was programming for 4 years (on and off) before I even went to University.

 

The one thing I do say to those people, and said to those I helped tutored was you HAVE to do this stuff in your spare time because the education at University and colleges (in this area at least) is just flat out not that great. Lots of repeating generic stuff and working on menial tasks. University nearly killed my love of programming because of all the unimaginative drivel I had to work on. I hated every minute of it, and if it wasn't for me doing projects at home, I would have probably wanted to quit programming all together.

 

I think it's very critically important that you self-evaluate and figure out whether you have a passion for programming, best way is to think of a project you really want to do and just do it. Some people say "Start small etc" but bollocks to that I have always been keen to jump in and just figure the stuff out. If there's legitimately no passion in programming, then it is what it is, you got no passion for it, can't do much about that. It just means you need to refocus and find the area you do have passion for and use the summer to try and make up for lost time. Having seen people switch courses for good reasons and eventually went on to thrive, it's wise to try and figure out what that thing you're looking for is, even if it requires the "I would never get paid for this" approach.

 

One last thing:

 

22 hours ago, Kitt Frostpaws said:

 I kind of feel like I've let myself dip behind and teaching myself C++ has kind of been put on stand-still for college as of late.

 

 

That's the nature of programming, it's something you're always going to have to learn and spend time on at home and at work/college.

 

I'm kicking around on Discord if you ever feel like messaging me.

[DresdenBBQ]

Me i'm still in high school, but I too want to pursue a career in game design to give a little something back to the games that have caused me so much joy and rage. But even in high school i feel you on that, because i was taking a programming class and i missed most of the school year and i still basically know nothing about programming other than a few simple commands on Jcreator, even then i'm still not sure i want to do the programming part. So next year i was going to get into the Video Game Design class at my school and animations because i have always been fascinated by animations and the art in games but unfortunately theres a reason a flunked out of art in my 6th grade year :/. So iv'e hit a crossroads, do something im decent at and follow that, or do something that im horrible at but try to get better. And even in college if i hadn't figured out what i want to do i'll just get my core classes out of the way at a college like Blinn then i can do all the video game design classes and such at A&M.

[Keepbro]

Just curious Connall but I'm doing some serious learning on the whole programming thang. I wanted to devote some serious energy to one particular programming language and, whilst I know its purely down to personal choice and how you implement it,  was wondering what languages you've found to be fun and useful?

 

In particular I've been looking to really get into Ruby and its bastard lovechild Ruby on Rails and just wanted to get your opinion on those especially.

[Connall]

31 minutes ago, Keepbro said:

Just curious Connall but I'm doing some serious learning on the whole programming thang. I wanted to devote some serious energy to one particular programming language and, whilst I know its purely down to personal choice and how you implement it,  was wondering what languages you've found to be fun and useful?

 

In particular I've been looking to really get into Ruby and its bastard lovechild Ruby on Rails and just wanted to get your opinion on those especially.

 

It's all a matter on what you want to do/accomplish really, and different languages, different minds etc. I guess the question is what would you want to do? Web development, desktop application development, game development.. etc, etc.

 

Personal opinion on Ruby would be, if you could find a job that seeks that skill would probably pay very well, however if you want long term prospects, I would argue Ruby is on the tail end of it's lifecycle.

[Connall]

1 hour ago, Queen Glory said:

Me i'm still in high school, but I too want to pursue a career in game design to give a little something back to the games that have caused me so much joy and rage. But even in high school i feel you on that, because i was taking a programming class and i missed most of the school year and i still basically know nothing about programming other than a few simple commands on Jcreator, even then i'm still not sure i want to do the programming part. So next year i was going to get into the Video Game Design class at my school and animations because i have always been fascinated by animations and the art in games but unfortunately theres a reason a flunked out of art in my 6th grade year :/. So iv'e hit a crossroads, do something im decent at and follow that, or do something that im horrible at but try to get better. And even in college if i hadn't figured out what i want to do i'll just get my core classes out of the way at a college like Blinn then i can do all the video game design classes and such at A&M.

 

I think passion should be a factor into your decision. If you're passionate about one thing over another, it gives you drive to become better.

[Kitt Frostpaws]

59 minutes ago, Connall said:

 

I think passion should be a factor into your decision. If you're passionate about one thing over another, it gives you drive to become better.

This.

 

I wouldn't have made it half this distance as I have if it wasn't for my passion for games - I really only got into indie games thanks to TIS and PZ; Otherwise I might never have known anything about them - or even gotten into PC gaming.

 

As for the situation at hand, I think I'll continue practicing my programming while mainly focusing on my writing, as I tend to put more thought and effort into that.

[Connall]

1 minute ago, Kitt Frostpaws said:

This.

 

I wouldn't have made it half this distance as I have if it wasn't for my passion for games - I really only got into indie games thanks to TIS and PZ; Otherwise I might never have known anything about them - or even gotten into PC gaming.

 

As for the situation at hand, I think I'll continue practicing my programming while mainly focusing on my writing, as I tend to put more thought and effort into that.

 

If you ever need a hand with the programming side, feel free to give me a poke.

[Spaniard]

45 minutes ago, Kitt Frostpaws said:

This.

 

I wouldn't have made it half this distance as I have if it wasn't for my passion for games - I really only got into indie games thanks to TIS and PZ; Otherwise I might never have known anything about them - or even gotten into PC gaming.

 

As for the situation at hand, I think I'll continue practicing my programming while mainly focusing on my writing, as I tend to put more thought and effort into that.

The nice thing about writing is that it can help you regardless of what career path you take. Hell, writing video game scripts would be awesome, and it really makes a big difference for more story oriented games.

[Ontogenesis]

Is it normal to occasionally lose interest and have doubts about your chosen career/route? Yes definitely. I studied psychology for undergraduate and it wasn't until I did my sandwich year that I realised what I was even doing it for. I'm the same as Connall in that I didn't really like it. Even nowI have doubts about my ability and desire to do this from time to time, but know deep down it is right for me.

 

Sometimes in therapy I talk about passion - see passion comes from the latin 'to suffer', so to be passionate about something is to suffer for it.  That means time, boredom, apathy, stress etc. that comes and goes when the novelty is gone. At the same time, you still need some drive and you need to take some enjoyment and mastery from it at times, otherwise it becomes too much of a 'job'. Also, education is so very different from actual work. I don't really like education but love working, so for me it was a case of tolerating education and not going mad so I can get out there and do it.

 

At the same time, you also need to be realistic about your appraisals about your abilities. Note 'realistic'; you don't need to be the best at something to do it (otherwise we'd never do anything), other factors are also important, especially as over time you learn more and get better at it naturally.  At the same time, you need some aptitude. It's a difficult call.

 

So to conclude, it's complicated, but decision needs more than just how you feel about it at any moment, because feelings are unreliable and change all the time.

[Spaniard]

11 hours ago, Ontogenesis said:

 Also, education is so very different from actual work. I don't really like education but love working, so for me it was a case of tolerating education and not going mad so I can get out there and do it.

 

Education is not just schooling, and it is not mutually exclusive to work.  I think it's good to have an open mind, too many people now days specialize, but I think there's merit to have an eclectic set of skills. Especially if you like art so, yes, it's important to be passionate and follow one's dream.  But it's also important to be humble and accept the fact that you don't know everything.

 

You could always program as a hobby, and major in English or writing. Or you could keep doing CS and write as a hobby. Honestly, I think it's easier to teach yourself how to program than it is to learn to write on your own(especially since many CS graduates leave college only to find that the programming language/s they learned are now obsolete), yet writing is universally helpful regardless of what you ultimately decide to do.