Need Someone Else

[Tim Stirling]

My parents have got me a job (eek), It pays > $10 (which is not bad) an hour but is only for a few hours a week but that gives me plenty of time to program and it should also stop my parents complaining that I am lazy. However it is a gardening job and I don't have a clue about gardening but I think it is mainly cutting the grass and some general manual work which shouldn't be too bad. There are several other people thinking about hireing me to do their garden. Soon I might be a full time gardener, noooo, I will be ruined.

Out of curiosity and sorry for being personal but how old is the oldest person here and how young is the youngest. I once saw a pole on a 3d programming site which showed that most voters were between 15 and 20 and that no one was older than 35 and the youngest was 11!

[This message has been edited by Tim Stirling (edited 04-17-2001).]

[Michael Steinberg]

Hey tim...
I'm 18... birthday on 2.3... pisces

[lpVoid]

Tim, don't fret the gardening gig. I worked on a golf course for 2 years, and it was a lot of fun. While I was surrounded by people who didn't know how to use a computer, it paid for my side projects, small contracts, and everything else. I don't know if my job and my hobbies/interests will ever run parallel, but anything that keeps a warm machine in my apartment is worthwhile.

I'm 25, and the youngest coder at my company. Got my first "under the table" contract when I was 10, writing a hard disk driver for the Atari computers at the company my dad worked at. Thank god for engineer parents! I think I got paid $200 for it altogether, which was millions to me at the time.

As a side note, I feel bad for helping turn this thread into another one of our community discussions, but it's good to get to know all of you.

Dave

[Deiussum]

Matt is only 19!? Wow... I pictured him being older.

I'll be 28 myself in May. I didn't actually start coding until I was a senior in HS back in 1990. (BASIC & Pascal) I fell in love with it but never seriously thought about getting a job as a programmer at the time. I felt like I could never obtain the skills needed to become a real pro.

I went into college to get a Zoology degree because I wanted to get into Wildlife Management. The last couple years of that, I was getting depressed because it's hard to get a job in that field. At the same time my programming was eating up my study time. By this time I had got past the stage where I didn't feel like I could do anything and was in my current state of mind where I feel, not so much that I know everything, but that there is nothing I can't LEARN to do.

I finally decided to pick up a second major in CS and I'll be finishing that in May. In July I start a job with a medical imaging company in Seattle, where I'll be working with OpenGL.

Looking back, I think the whole Zoology thing was my way of trying to convince myself and everyone I know that I wasn't a computer geek. I am now able to admit it. "Hi, my name is Dan. I'm a computer geek."

Anyway, it's interesting getting to know more details about other people on the forum. You get to know the people from their posts and start to form your own views of them. For instance, I was picturing Matt to be at least around 27-28.

[Rob The Bloke]

Originally posted by Tim Stirling:
... However it is a gardening job and I don't have a clue about gardening but I think it is mainly cutting the grass and some general manual work which shouldn't be too bad.

Hey, dont knock it, my first ever job was a gardening job. Was a bit on the lame side, but it sorted out enough coins to get a few sly beers in at the weekend.... (ps, if you've got a center parting, make sure your careful when combing your hair after being in the sun all day - I still remember the pain....)

Out of curiosity and sorry for being personal but how old is the oldest person here and how young is the youngest.

I'm 21, and got into programming at an early age on a spectrum 48k. My uncle gave my family one because he'd been involved in tooling up the factory for production.

I then went on to amiga, and found the technical stuff more intersting, I seem to recall shunning the idea of a console, mainly because you could only play games and not doing anything else on it. (ahh, the playground arguments of why a speccy was better than a master sytem...).

I kinda ignored computers for ages (they moved too fast, my paper-round wouldn't pay for the latest stuff).

I did A-Levels in art, physics & maths, and was pondering what to do after school. I found a little entry in our UCAS book (for those outside UK, a list of all degree courses) that listed a degree in computer animation. I decided to do that, applied, was accepted, started it, and I'm now about to finish.

We do C, C++, Java, & openGL as part of it, as well as animation, film techniques etc. We had to do a group project in the second year, for which a bunch of us decided to do a computer game (www.boonaracer.co.uk - it is rubbish by the way, but you gotta start somewhere.. ). For that I was doing modelling, and was very unhappy with editors and methods we had to use to get stuff into the game. From then on I've been doing programming, and getting other people on the course to do the animation & modelling etc for me.

Getting to the point where I am now, I was very worried about the standard of programming needed to get a job, so I went to see the software engineering degree people.

It became very apparent that I actually knew more than is required to pass one of those degree's.

I'm now applying to some games companies for work when I finish, and I'm somewhat more confident of my abilities. I will say though, that it is probably a good idea to work with some artists to put together something that is artistically cool, as well as technically coll, you get a lot more out of it.

Basically the moral is, if you want a job in programming, it doesn't really matter when you start, if you are into it, you'll get a job becuase you'll spend 12 hours a night doing what you enjoy. Some bloke on a programming degree, will feel as motivated to do some programming, as you did(would) in a french lesson......(nothing against the french, just my french teacher and my lack of ability in the subject)



[This message has been edited by Rob The Bloke (edited 04-17-2001).]

[jwatte]

I'm 31 and just recently went into hard-core 3D graphics (I used to do audio & video systems programming before). The only thing that doesn't work for me is that I can only pull 12-hour work days, then the wife & kids call me home :-)

[ffish]

I'm 28 and in the final year of an engineering degree. Luckily, I chose a final year project on 3D medical visualisation that allows me to use OpenGL as the rendering API so I get to spend a lot of time doing it.

I'm also likely to get a job next year with a defence contractor doing sims in Java3D and Java/VRML which is as close as I can get to OpenGL. At least J3D uses OpenGL as its underlying driver sometimes (I think).

[Overmind]

How can one have a job with 19 years???
I have the feeling that I have to learn 10 years in school and university until I get a job. What's the trick?

You don't have to go to university to get a good coder. Here in Austria (Europe, no Kaenguruhs) we have technical schools where you learn this. I don't know if there is such a school in other countries.

I am 18 years, next year I will finish the school. Until now I learned Pascal, C, C++, Java, Unix Shell, C for Unix (OS calls), MFC, SQL, Database Engineering, Project Management, Network Technics, ... in school, so at least here in Austria there is no need for an university.

Of course I don't learn OpenGL at school, but this is a very easy task when you know C and a bit of advanced math.

So, theoretically I could get an IT job next year, when I'm about 19 1/2. I don't see the problem when you start learning this stuff early enough, I'm sure if you specialise a bit you can manage this without a school, too.

[Unormal]

Well, I'm 21 and tend to be passed around as an engineering team in a box for small startup companies doing random and assorted software; flight tracking,network administration, OS2/Warp... and like the rest of you, this sounds frighteningly like me...

I don't have a degree; and as far as I can tell - though a degree is nice and all - being a good autodidact when you need to be and alot of elbow grease are what you need to get along professionally in the world. Genius and training are nice, but good ol' long-hours and hard-work will beat em every time

Once you finally get the lucky break into the professional world, your love of what you do will let you rock the socks of the degree-sought but mundane programmers around you, and 2 or 3 years of shipping real product for real people is worth any degree you could want or find; and from there it's upwards and onwards.

Also; Try getting outside of code. I know big, stupid adult-like people will tell you this all the time, but it's true. Girls are good, beer is good (in a couple years, of course), a little bit of physical activity is good (maybe in relation to girls...), history & music are good. The world is full of great stuff, and anything you learn outside of coding can be applied back in if just in terms of an expanded world-view, especially if your doing games, which are definitly a multi-genre item. Pick up Asimov's chronology of the world, and read it front to back, or take some time to find and appreciate some rachmaninoff, maybe even play it... It'll take you a bit, but I promise you'll come out happier - and maybe even a better coder - for doing it... =)

Just thoughts of someone who's travelled part of the path you're already on your way down...

...and holy cow; btw.. If *I* had had the opengl forums when *I* was 14... geeze... You know how long it took me to figure out matrix representation of orientation and position before we had all of human knowledge at our fingertips in the form of the web! *snort* Kids these days... I had to walk uphill both ways... *grumble*

[Tim Stirling]

Originally posted by Deiussum:


Looking back, I think the whole Zoology thing was my way of trying to convince myself and everyone I know that I wasn't a computer geek. I am now able to admit it. "Hi, my name is Dan. I'm a computer geek."

I was picturing Matt to be at least around 27-28.

I know what you mean about being a geek. I took up the korean martial art of TaeKwondo to change this view of me, it is also good to get away from a computer desk for a bit. One thing about being a geek is that even the idiot/bullies at school called me a geek. I didn't even tell them to say this! I think maybe that they don't know what a heek is!!
Yeah I pictured Matt to be a lot older (>25) like everyone else has.