I sometimes have the idea that people expect someone who sais he can write code in a certain programming language and use a graphics library like SDL to write a game in a matter of minutes. They don't seem to grasp what kind of work it takes to make even a simple game or library. For example, I was playing Advance Wars 2 with my little brother and my father (yeah :) i got him so far that he wanted to play, he had great fun) when my mother asked if I wrote that game. I wish. I know I can't expect my mother to know how much work such a game would be, but still it does not feel comfortable: it seems like she expects me to be able to do that, while I am not even near. I know it is not her fault, she couldn't know, but still. Or take this one, a better example. I am writing a small codebase for a very simple game, which I will then give to another person who comes with the contents. But while I am writing and building a networking subsystem (message-of-the-day, it is a verry small client/server game), a font engine, a tile engine, and building my library (ManagedGL) so it has all features I need, and occasionally show the progress - like a message of the day server program and receiver or a prototype of the map editor, one of the others build a very simple website with some design tool, and tells me (with other words), that he did something and that I am actually doing nothing at all. It feels so depressing when you write 100s of lines of code (at 3000 now) and someone thinks he has done just as much by making 3 'tiles' in paint by filling 3 64x64 files with solid yellow, blue, or gray. Do they really think that programming is a matter of dragging and dropping two buttons in a form and 'say' that a message should be sent from one pc to another? Don't they know how much work it is to make such a thing? Don't you ever have that feeling?

Quote:
It feels so depressing when you write 100s of lines of code (at 3000 now) and someone thinks he has done just as much by making 3 'tiles' in paint by filling 3 64x64 files with solid yellow, blue, or gray.

Hehe, pwned.

:)

No, I don't ever feel like that because I don't have anyone to talk about it to. What true geek actually knows people in RL that will talk about something of interest, face-to-face?

Your path of choice is, by nature, a lonely one; and will continue to be for a long, long time...

May one day you'll get lucky at your Uni or maybe even a job, but I've managed to go 3 years at my Uni and barely meet anyone who knows or cares about anything beyond what they're "learning" in class.

I solve this problem by never telling anyone what I can do with computers.

Gets rid of those anooying "OH CAN YOU FIX MY" people too.

Yeah,
sometimes I get such comments too from people not in the know. lol many many things in a program happen behind the scenes that people don't know about. You can write a whole engine with a huge codebase and let it display a black window because you don't have any content yet and people won't believe the amount of work that you have done.

I felt like this. I talked to him. He knows better, now.

Here's a thread that ended up discussing some of the work involved in creating games. The gap between the big guns of gaming and hobby programmers is so huge now that a lot of people end up laughing at our 'feeble' creations, wondering why we can't do better. It's a shame, but I've now begun to accept that it's part of the 'job'. Let's face it, most of us are in this for personal learning and fun; I mean you have to enjoy programming to do it, right?

It's nice if other people will play our games and enjoy them, but to be fair most of them have their expectations set too high. I really do long for the good old days of the bedroom coder, but they're long gone. Never feel worthless in comparision to the competition, because when it comes down to it, you're playing on a different field to them now.

Quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
What true geek actually knows people in RL that will talk about something of interest, face-to-face?

Your path of choice is, by nature, a lonely one; and will continue to be for a long, long time...

That is so true, and so depressing at the same time...

I don't think programmers are geeks. At least, I know I'm not. In real life, I don't even WANT to be talking about programming. I rather go sport or play guitar/sing whatever. I think spending so much time behind my computer is enough, don't want to THINK about it when I'm not.