every programmer has to start somewhere, and lopping in graphics while trying to learn the fundamentals would be insane.

also, modern consoles are rather advanced, and nearly everything has them. hell lynx is a web browser in a freaking console terminal.

No, but I didn't vote in the poll because I disagree with the additional stipulation about people who feel like they wasted their time - most of those people probably benefited from the experience as well, whether they feel like it or not.

Some modern languages, environments and toolkits make the console experience irrelevant, and in that context the question doesn't even really make sense, but when learning a language like C++ console based exercises are an excellent way to learn and practice the basics without some of the additional headaches and distractions that working with windowing and graphics can provide.


As with anything, individuals will get out what they put in, so those with the wrong attitude will minimise the benefits of the experience - but they'll certainly never learn nothing at all from it.


Additionally, the basic skills of working with a console are very useful to have, allowing you to work with a range of different OS and tools which may not always provide a GUI.


(Posted from mobile, please excuse any small formatting or auto-correct errors. )

If you mean drawing stuff to the terminal, it's not that different than drawing to a screen. A terminal has a frame buffer, with characters instead of pixels, all this can be abstracted into update, draw, display routines. There's nothing special or unusual about drawing to the terminal, and everything you learn there can be applied to graphical games as well, you still have an event loop, the game logic is identical, and so on. Sure, there are GUI frameworks today that can be set up in a few clicks, but that doesn't mean terminal-based games can't teach you anything.

And even if you're not writing a text-based or ascii-graphics game, you will certainly want to at least be familiar with how to interact with the console (both manually, i.e. through the shell, and also programmatically) for all the tooling surrounding your game (or any software in general), especially automated tasks like packing assets, converting a bunch of models and textures, setting up your testing platforms, and so on, which probably won't have a convenient GUI to do it. Really, having an understanding of how to integrate console programs into your workflow is an essential skill, though admittedly not the most pressing one for a new developer.

I'd actually like to hear from some of the people who feel that console programs are a waste of time -- obviously for certain language or technology choices a console isn't available or isn't the normal approach, but for more traditional languages I'd like to hear some of the reasons people consider it a waste, and what approaches they might suggest instead.

Anyone willing to explain that viewpoint?

If you mean drawing stuff to the terminal, it's not that different than drawing to a screen.

INB4 TTYs with indirect lighting and ambient occlusion.

INB4 TTYs with indirect lighting and ambient occlusion.

It's probably been done... after all, converting videos to ascii is a thing, so you could technically hook up a terminal to a graphics pipeline and there you go. But I really meant the architecture in general, obviously you usually go for different forms of artistic output with such limited resolution (top-down view, for instance).

When learning C++ I started off in the console, like most of us do, and it was of course a great learning area for a beginner - NOT a waste of time.

However, I really started to understand games when I started modding Half-Life 1, where the code for a real-time game loop was already written, and I could insert small sections into this existing real-time system. At the time, I didn't even understand how game loops worked, or how their event callbacks worked, or the logic behind the flow-of-control in general... but I still was writing interactive real-time gameplay!

Jumping around in as many different programming environments as possible is going to be beneficial.

INB4 TTYs with indirect lighting and ambient occlusion.

I was talking the other day to someone about Watch Dogs (IIRC, I think), and they mentioned it has an ASCII-mode renderer easter egg in there ;)