Thread: Help me choose my path

  1. #1
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    Help me choose my path

    i hav a long hoilday to come and i wan to concentrate in a field,i learn java,c++ and love to make games but sometimes some programming is too hard and for designing my drawing not good,which field shld i go into?web designing,games programmin or any suggestion?
    S.b

  2. #2
    Banned nickname_changed's Avatar
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    How good would you say you are with C++/Java?

    Since you find some programming, and also designing, difficult, I would reccomend you work on your development skills. Go for the game programming.

    Make a game up yourself, spend plenty of time on how the game will work. Do all the flowcharts and all that other important crap you should be doing during the design stage. Since its your project, you'll be the one deciding what happens, so you can chose how hard/easy the game will be to create. You will learn a lot about design and planning and management during the process. Also, registering it on something like www.souceforge.net as a project and perhaps looking for some other developers to help will take some of the strain off you, but will also teach you a lot about people management, communicating your ideas and how to write specs and other things vital to the games development.

    It doesn't have to have fancy graphics, maybe just a console program. The point is you will still learn a lot about program design and development, and also about programming. It's a great way to build your design skills, and also communication skills. Also, what you learn about development can be applied to all languages, not just C++/Java, so it is much more valuable.

    -----------------
    Ignore this:
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    Ever since I started programming (about 4 years ago) I have been working on small personal projects, usually calculators for games I used to like (warhammer), a game I made (based on Ports of Call if anyone remembers that old jem), etc etc. About half way through last year I decided I was ready for something more advanced, and so decided to create my web server.

    The project involved about 3500 lines of C++ as the core server. Add on a few thousand for the GUI that ran on top of it, written in VB by another programmer from the USA. We also got someone to start making a *NIX port of the project (which was eventually cancelled). The project was registered on sourceforge, which meant I learned how to use CVS (look it up if you want to know more), how to attract more developers to my project, and a few other things a good open source project needs.

    The server took many forms, starting off as a windows NT service, and eventually transferring to being a DLL invoked by the VB GUI. Along the way I learned:
    * Quite a lot of the WinAPI
    * How HTTP protocol works
    * How CGI works
    * How DLL's work
    * How windows services work
    * How SSI works
    * How to interact with a parent process
    * How threads work, and how to create/destroy and manipulate threads (to some extent).
    * How sockets work
    * How TCP/IP works (giving me a solid enough understanding of networking)
    * How to make sure to make backups of code!!!

    I also learned a lot about communicating with the rest of the team, discussing and documenting ideas so the team could understand each other.

    The skills I learned about designing a project were very important, and because of the web server project I have learned to code regardless of what language I use, and I can now pick up almost any new language within a couple of days.

    Never made any money out of it though, but now for a lot of projects I currently work on, I just need to say I wrote a web server when I was 16 and my chances of getting paid become much higher. Although I know I'm no salem or prelude.

    --------------------
    Stop Ignoring:
    --------------------
    The value of the knowledge I learnt from my past projects is priceless. So my advice to you is, pick a project you think would be fun to do, but not too difficult (I chose a web server because it didn't require fancy 3D graphics, because I knew at the time I wasn't capable of anything at that level). Have fun with your programming, don't do it because you have to.

  3. #3
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    Go into the field over there.

    The grass is much greener.


    Seriously, how are we supposed to tell you what field to go into? It all depends on your interests and goals in life.

  4. #4
    aurė entuluva! mithrandir's Avatar
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    That Bubba, he's one smart guy.

  5. #5
    5|-|1+|-|34|) ober's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Bubba
    Go into the field over there.

    The grass is much greener.


    Seriously, how are we supposed to tell you what field to go into? It all depends on your interests and goals in life.

  6. #6
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    actually i'm intrested in games programming but in my country,Singapore,there are not many games company so the jobs aren't many and the market is too small for games...
    anyway,thxs everyone for the motivation...i been waiting for tat...
    S.b

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