Hello,
Long story short, I'm leaving civilization for about a year as I'm getting my ass conscripted. What technologies should I start learning now, so that when I get out of the army and go to university everything I've prepared for will still be relevant? I have been doing some more or less serious C#/XNA development, but as XNA seems to be on the death row, I'll be dropping that. I will also most probably jump on the Windows 8/Metro bandwagon, so it seems like HTML5/JavaScript and C#/XAML are calling.
What do you think?
I'm not too much into hardcore 3D programming and such by the way, more 2D casual stuff, hopefully getting some of my masterpieces on the Market some day.
Future-proof technologies to start learning now
C#, Java, C/C++, Objective-C/C++, HTML(5), CSS, XML, Sockets, JavaScript, Python, OpenGL3, GLES2, Direct3D11 are all keywords that you can see desired in games-related job applications today. Android and iOS experience is very hot for several games companies.
Off the top of my head, some technologies I can think of phasing out are D3D9, MDX, OpenGL2, GLES1, XNA, Symbian.
Qt is a bit of an interesting case - Qt for mobile is pretty dead with Nokia, but for desktop and non-games/non-3D it's still strongly alive.
Off the top of my head, some technologies I can think of phasing out are D3D9, MDX, OpenGL2, GLES1, XNA, Symbian.
Qt is a bit of an interesting case - Qt for mobile is pretty dead with Nokia, but for desktop and non-games/non-3D it's still strongly alive.
Instead of listing all the popular languages in a post, I will try to make it a bit easy on you 
.
Well the only thing future-proof are algorithms, or computer graphics theory.
If you understand algorithms you are set to go. Most languages can be learned in a relatively short amount of time.
It is just a language after all and there are many similarities between them. So If you know let's say C# you can learn Java super easy, or if you know c++, learning C# will just take a few weeks. You won't understand all it's fine details, but you can get your algorithm to work relatively easy on any of them.
I don't know what experience you have but I can direct you to Cormen's book Introduction to algorithms or any other good theory book depending on the field that you want to study.
.Well the only thing future-proof are algorithms, or computer graphics theory.
If you understand algorithms you are set to go. Most languages can be learned in a relatively short amount of time.
It is just a language after all and there are many similarities between them. So If you know let's say C# you can learn Java super easy, or if you know c++, learning C# will just take a few weeks. You won't understand all it's fine details, but you can get your algorithm to work relatively easy on any of them.
I don't know what experience you have but I can direct you to Cormen's book Introduction to algorithms or any other good theory book depending on the field that you want to study.
C# are fine to learn. Objective-C are gaining popularity thanks to recent rise of the iOS.
HTML/Javascript have surprisingly stood well against the test of time.
HTML/Javascript have surprisingly stood well against the test of time.
If you want to learn something really future-proof, remember that when a lot of time has passed, enough time that C# and Java are just glimmers in the eye of an old nostalgic geezer, people will still be writing plain C.
That's my theory.
That's my theory.
If you want to learn something really future-proof, remember that when a lot of time has passed, enough time that C# and Java are just glimmers in the eye of an old nostalgic geezer, people will still be writing plain C.
That's my theory.
...I'm not sure that's a valid argument. I could make the same one for BASIC.
IMHO, a year really isn't that long. I would be surprised if any popular languages today are obsolete in a year. I think the key is to learn a language, any language, first. This will teach you the basics about programming in general. Once you understand the basics it is very easy to jump from language to language (as mentioned before).
I would go with an object-oriented language. This will allow you to start picking up principles of object oriented programming as well. I think almost all of the languages mentioned above fit the bill, with the exception of C and BASIC.
I would go with an object-oriented language. This will allow you to start picking up principles of object oriented programming as well. I think almost all of the languages mentioned above fit the bill, with the exception of C and BASIC.
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