On Tuesday, 7 June 2016 at 10:28:37 UTC, Ethan Watson wrote:
performance. There are plenty of ex-game-developers in that
sector making three times as much money as they used to.
I am sure there is, game programmers/smaller companies also
contribute a lot of libraries and knowhow (tutorials etc).
Whereas the suits in games are in it for the money, I think most
game programmers are in it for other more "idealistic" reasons.
The difference between:
1. Programming in order to reach some non-software performance
goal.
2. Programming in order to achieve a programming related esthetic
result.
Attracting the culture in group 2 is much more valuable to a
community project as they find it meaningful to share their
knowledge (games, raytracing, compilers etc). It isn't only a job
then.
Not to say that it isn't boring. That's purely a subjective
thing.
I don't know if it is boring or not, probably depends on where
you work, but the reputation isn't very marketable. Unlike say
embedded programming.
Embedded programming -> excellent hardware access / memory usage
Games programming -> excellent access to OS APIs and resource
management