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Video Games: Gateway To a Programming Career?
Nerval's Lobster writes: Want more people to program? Encourage them to play more video games, at least according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In an online Q&A, Zuckerberg suggested that a lifetime spent playing video games could prep kids and young adults for careers as programmers. "I actually think giving people the opportunity to play around with different stuff is one of the best things you can do," he told the audience. "I definitely would not have gotten into programming if I hadn't played games as a kid." A handful of games, most notably Minecraft, already have a reputation for encouraging kids to not only think analytically, but also modify the gaming environment — the first steps toward actually wrestling with code.
Those of you who have done programming work in your career: did video games influence your path?
All my early DOS knowledge came from learning how to configure my PC to play video games.
Being able to fully explain how to do things like mem /a off the top of my head not only landed me my first good IT job, but got me hired at a higher position than I was interviewing for at the time...
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Not to be a downer, but when I was a Teaching Assistant for a Computer Science class, the students that told me they wanted to do computer science because they loved computers games were usually the first ones to drop out.
Not that Computer Science equals programming. It certainly does not. Computer Science is generally more focused on the science part anyway, not on the programming itself. So I'm not saying that people who love computer games don't become great game programmers themselves. I'm just saying that based on my own biased and subjective experience, I've come to find that gamers didn't make great Computer Science students at all.
Good analysis. I think the main problem of today is that there is no need for being a "hacker" anymore.
The ancients here will remember how it was vital for them to be "hardware hackers". Because a computer, that was something IBM built, that filled storage rooms and that NASA could afford. If you wanted one, you built your own. Out of necessity. It was either impossible to get one, or at the very least impossible to afford one.
Fast forward to the 70s and 80s, when computers became more or less portable little things you would plug into a TV. We didn't have to solder our own boards together anymore, but programs was a different matter. We had to know quite a bit about programming, even if we weren't into it, for some of the more important tasks were only possible if you at least understood what's going on inside your machine. Not to mention that nearly all of them came with some kind of "user port", where the user could plug in ... hell, nearly anything.
90s and 2000 brought the internet, along with having to learn a bit about TCP/IP if you wanted to actually get anywhere. Let's face it, Windows was not really too keen on letting you connect to the internet without jumping through more hoops than should be necessary, and trumpet was to us far more than just an instrument.
What these eras have in common was that you had to learn something to get somewhere. In the stone age of computing, you actually had to learn how to build such a machine. And I'm not talking about "putting a CPU without accident into its socket". Later you had to understand the machine's language and had to be able to program, at least a bit, if you wanted to get anything. The early years of the internet meant for you to learn a thing or two about networking if you wanted to succeed.
Today, we transcended it all. Nothing is necessary anymore. NO knowledge, no information, for everything there is a "wizard". Our kids aren't learning anything anymore, and I could hardly blame them. Would I have learned how to build a computer if I didn't have to? Unlikely.
We're also at the point where anything big can only be done with a LOT of manpower behind it, and everything small can be bought for a few cents from China. There simply is no reason anymore for anyone to learn anything about the machines he uses. Unless, of course, he'd be interested in it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
People over 45 (like myself) tend to think that learning to operate a computer is an educational experience. It isn't. It was at least mildly educational when we were kids... because the first thing you saw when you hit the "on" switch was a shell for a BASIC interpreter, or something similar. Now the first thing you see are *pictures*, which you point at, like a three-year-old at a candy store.
Even as late as the mid-90s, you would hear a lot of talk about "computer literacy"-- the idea that operating a computer was a core skill, like reading and writing. You don't hear that phrase much any more, "computer literacy". You might as well speak of "microwave literacy" or "Netflix literacy". Yes, there is technically some "learning" involved when you fire up a microwave or Netflix-- you do need to learn which buttons to push-- but it's a tiny area of knowledge which doesn't lead to anything else. And the same is true, I think, of video games.
At the moment, I work with a lot of inner-city teenagers (most of them from seriously dysfunctional homes and communities, most of them "educated" by Chicago Public Schools). ALL of them have computers, tablets, phones. ALL of them can operate their devices like a champion (and most of them love video games). Not one of them, so far, has become a computer programmer.
As a lead video game tester for three years, I had to teach the next generation of video game testers fresh out of high school. They like the idea of being paid to play video games, and then they learn that testing video games is not the same as playing games. Writing bug reports, going to meetings, and testing the same broken piece of shee-it game for weeks at a time is just the beginning. Most don't survive the mind-numbing crunch times of working 80 hours a week for months.
Most people leave the video game industry for good after they realize that they want a personal life that includes a significant other and having a family. Very few testers work their way up to become producers or programmers. I went into help desk support for ten years and I'm now doing computer security, making twice as much money for half the hours that I did as a video game tester.