University offers degree in game programming.

atomly writes "It seems a British university is offering a degree in game programming with courses like the history of games, and game appreciation. " A class where you compare Sonic and Mario? God yes. Makes me wish I thought for more than 3/10ths of a second before rejecting the idea of grad school ;)

Comments

PHD in game programming

[Orion2o6]

You would think, getting the 100 lives in Super Mario Brothers in Level 3 after 50 million attempts would surely be equivalent to the dissertation a Game Programming DOCTOR would face. Are we sure that this isn't just a major offered at Ziff-Davis University (www.zdu.com). Heh....

Specialization is for insects

[dmorin]

[I think Lazarus Long said that.]

This looks to be the ultimate catering to the "I only want to learn what I think I need when I'm a kid" mentality, which is about as useful as "I don't like carrots therefore they're not good for me." We tend to forget that many kids are stupid, and can't make decisions for themselves. Many make it most of the way through college before deciding "Hey, I don't want to do this." Matter of fact, lots of them get all the way through and then out into the world before realizing they made the wrong choice. Giving them the candy of "Want a degree in game programming?" is a stupid, stupid idea. I used to hang out on rec.games.programmer, and every time a new language came into vogue, two questions would become frequently asked: "I'm writing a 3D shooter in language xxx, who wants to help!" and "I'm in school and I want to be a programmer. Does anybody know schools where I can get a degree in language xxx?" You can lead a kid to college, but you can't make him learn.

My undergrad thesis was on computers in education, my first two jobs were in writing software for medical devices, and my last 3 have been eCommerce web sites. Why in the world would I have wanted to deliberately limit my choices by only learning about one of those things?

Are our brains getting smaller?

I agree completely that there is too much information to be expert at everything. I don't claim to be. But I think that I could learn to be pretty darned good at just about anything you hand me. That's what education is supposed to be about, as far as I'm concerned -- not specific knowledge, but rather training your brain to learn how to learn. I have more confidence that I'd be able to pick up game programming, then in one of these newly trained game kiddies being able to write some embedded medical software.

d