What is your programming experience and future plans?

[mikeschuld]

I was reading through some of the older posts in the forums earlier and stumbled on a post where a few of us laid out our histories in programming and a bit of future plans and I thought I'd bring the topic up again since so many more people have joined up. Let us all know where you have come from and where you think you want to go in this XNA world (or the world in general).

The original posts (me, Chr0n1x, and Cat) are here: http://www.thehazymind.com/smf/index.php/topic,14.0.html

[Nemo Krad]

After reading the other thread you all sound so young.... 

For me it all started in 1983 with a ZX81 (with a 16k Ram pack) my dad bought for his business, he couldn?t use it and so he moth balled it, I started nagging my dad about getting a ZX Spectrum as all the kids at school were getting them so dad said if I could get the ZX81 up and running that I could have a Specky. Low and behold and to his surprise I got it drawing a circle, doing graphs even printing my name on the screen ten times!  . So then I get a Specky, and do a bit more ZXBasic, but nothing too adventurous peek and poke frightened me and I just used them when copying games out of magazines; I was to busy playing jetpack, attic attack and quake to do any real coding.

Then I found beer and girls so I pretty much flunked out of school and went into manual labor as a roofer (a wasted youth...).

In 1994 I went on a local night school course to learn C, having passed the course and loved every minute of it; my tutor offered me a starting roll of applications developer at his place of work. So I really started coding in anger in 1995 in C on a concurrent DOS called Real32, writing POS systems. I then bounced around a few companies over the past 10+ years and picked up skills using BCLP (I know, why?), C++, VB6 & VBScript, HTML, XML, ASP, JavaScript, MSSQL, C#, ASP.NET and others I cant remember.

I now code almost exclusively in C# and have been for the last 12 months, again for a company developing POS systems.

I stumbled across XNA when mooching through the Microsoft web site just before Christmas, downloaded the stuff and started playing about with the basic project you get with it, got my self totally bewildered and had a look for XNA tutorials and found this little gem of a site.

My future plans are to continue doing what I am doing as I love my job; I get to write lots of different stuff with all the new tools. From the whole 3D stuff I just want to understand how it all works and to one day be able to pop a game out and enter it into a comp or two just to see how it fairs.
 

[MicahN]

Alright!  I love talking about my computing history.

Like Nemo Krad ( Dark Omen? ), I started a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.  When I was in the 3rd grade a rep from Apple computer showed our class the Apple II.  I was totally hooked.  My friend and I started to read the BASIC book and did various programs from the appendix.  We eeked out a couple of text based games and I did a D&D dice rolling proggie. Then when 4th grade came around and we moved to middle school our library had a couple of Apple IIe's with the big color tvs and stand.  We started to read about the xplot and yplot calls and figured out how to put colored pixels on the screen.  Somehow we got a few of them to look like the unfinished Death Star and we made a cool little Star Wars space battle scene.
Then my dad got a Vic-20, then C-64..blah..blah..

Well then like Nemo Krad, I found girls, skateboarding, and car audio. 

So when I started college ar Oregon State in 1990, I did not pursue a CS degree, because I thought of computers as just toys...and still do.  BUT! I did get involved with the internet, usenet, gopher, email, telnet, unix shell, during my college days and renewed my excitement for programming.

In 1994 ish when I started using the Mosaic browser and left behind the command-line tools for surfing the net, I started to learn HTML, then PERL.  After moving to Seattle in 1997, I got even more passionate about programming and moved in to VB, VB Script, SQL, then in 2001 C#.  I love .NET!! 

In 1999 I left Startbucks as a R&D Quality Control dude to move in to High Tech as a pro.  I helped start a Free internet company called No Pay Net, them moved to Telcom, did some mortgage software, did some consulting as Shakaware Software, then I did business software for the largest video game testing company in the world VMC Consulting.  About 4 years ago when I started with VMC I was learning DirectX and wanted to make a game, but found/find it very challenging.

I like XNA and Managed directX and I like that I can now use C# to make games and am currently working on my game using techniques from Mike and this forum and others around the web.  I am having a hard time recently finding time to work on my game due to my recent arrival of my first child.

Finally, about 3 weeks ago, I left VMC and came down the street as a new dev with Microsoft Casual Games group to help work on games.msn.com and the like.

So for 2007, I plan to have my game finished and hopefully have everyone in the XNA community and beyond find it entertaining and challenging.

Thanx
Micah Nasarow
Shakaware

[mikeschuld]

After reading the other thread you all sound so young.... 

That's cause I'm 21 I also started on an Apple II when I was about 2 years old, actually have the thing sitting in a corner in my room right now. I think I was solving the sliding piece apple logo puzzle in this one.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Jonotron]

Hey,
I love your tutorials.  Your childhood kind of reminds me of myself.  I'm 15 and I started with HTML when I was 7 because a friend showed me what awesome things it could do (now it seems dumb).  I originally started with fixing computers and learning the hardware part first.  When I was about 10 I started coding seriously, but only started with VB.  After getting bored of the useless programs I was making, I wanted to make something I would actually use.  I thought I should start making a game and searched for hundreds of hours to find what I could.  Eventually, I found the Mirage Engine (ORPG).  I thought it was the "be all, end all".  After screwing around with that for about a year, I decided to learn a harder language.  I Started out with C++ with tutorials from cprogramming.com.  A couple of years ago, the same friend that started me with computers showed me C#.  I was pretty amazed.  I then started learning that and loved it.  We started making the same engine as Mirage but in C#.  I realized I should just try to learn 3D game dev as soon as possible so I understand it more later.  I'll tell you, it's so hard to learn 3D development when you havn't even completed the ninth grade.  When I found this site, I found gold.  I started with your MDX tutorials and for once, read everything instead of copying and pasting.  I like how you explain EVERYTHING and/or show where to learn important math stuff (eg. Quaternions).  Lately, I havn't been on the computer as much and socializing more, but I still program when I can.  Keep up the good tutorials, it's the only place that people who don't understand 3D game development can learn!

Jon Clark

[endre]

Sometimes I hate you guys, you make me feel old

Anyway, I'll get over it.
I am 34 years old soon. I have been programming more than 20 years.
I started on a Commandore 64. It was mostly typing in games from magazines in Basic.

Code:

10 print "endre"
20 goto 10

Then it was a bit on and off until I took my first Computer class in 1990. After that I have been programming in about 10 different languages. Most of my programming have been non-game related. To day I work as a Senior Developer making webapplications and dataprosessing applications for my firm.

My gameprogramming career have been messy and incompleet
I have always been interrested in game programming, but never really completed anything.
I have made a breakout clone once and a tetris clone, thats about it... and about a 1000 different "Hello world"-ish stuff. 
I have been messing with DirectX since MS called it GameSDK. Mostly in C++, but also C# and VB.
I have programmed some OpenGL and even tried to make some games in Java.
 
When I found XNA I desided that this is what I've been wating for. I have programming mostly in C# for the last 3-4 years so the language suits me and I have alwyas been fasinated with console programming (don't know way). So now I'll reading thies great tutorials to make something that looks like an engine before I'll try to make an entry for the upcoming dreambuildplay-contest. If that fails my resolution for 2007 is to make atleast one complete game in XNA/GSE.

Endre

[Nemo Krad]

 

Well as I expected I am the old fart of the forum....

 

Nice to see you still have your first machine, I still have that old ZX81 in my loft, with its 16K ram pack taped to the back of it, for those of you who have never heard of a ZX81 (and are probably to young to know of them) it was the second offering of machines from Sinclare. It had no keys, just an odd touch pad "keyboard" it was in black and white, thats right no color, it also had no sound either and it shipped with 1k, thats right, 1k of ram, no hard drives, you saved all your stuff to tape or lost it when you switched it off!!

http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/zx81/zx81.htm

Please don't laugh or point at me...

[MicahN]

Code:

10 print "endre"
20 goto 10

Hey Endre,

I always liked when my mom and I went to the mall and I would see TRS-80's in Radio Shack and C-64's at Sears and I would always run the code you posted, but with my name ( of course ).

However, I would put a semi-colon after the text in Line 10 ( I can not remember if it was inside the quotes our outside the quotes ) and it would make the text in Line10 fill the screen and scroll.

So the end product is a bunch of computers in the store all showing my message to the whom ever happens to walk by 

Micah

[h4rdc0m]

I started using computers in 1985 and learned DOS from my grandpa.

Playing choplifter etc.

My first programming experience was in about 1991 with QBasic
After that I found out about raves and didn't use the computer that much for a couple of years.

After that I went to the S.A.E. in Amsterdam  in 1999 to complete the Multimedia Producer course.

I 2000 I started my own multimedia company and until 2002 I did loads of HTML / Flash(actionscript) / Director(lingo).
In 2001 I started using PHP for my web projects and built my first news system.

In 2002 I stopped running my company and went to work for a multimedia company called Trix, where I currently am the lead developer.
Here my main focus is PHP / Lingo / Actionscript. And I built my own CMS for this company, which I currently still maintain and update.

I have been using C# for a few years now, but just as a hobby.

[Machaira]

Well as I expected I am the old fart of the forum....

I'm sure I'm right up there with you. I hit 40 last August. 

I started in 1980 doing BASIC on the Apple II (and typing in hex code from the old Compute, I think it was that one, magazine for one of my Math teacers) and doing COBOL and FORTRAN on a mainframe workstation and punch cards.  I bought a Commodore 64 and started more serious stuff (anyone remember using Peek and Poke?) I spent 3 years in the game industry doing 2D citybuilder/strategy games. Now I'm just doing hobby game programming and hoping to make a few bucks on the side (maybe via getting my games on Live Arcade!  ).

[nemyhlovecraft]

I suppose my computer history begins in 1983 when I was living in Tulsa at age 3 and my dad brought home a Radio Shack Model 100 "laptop" computer. He showed me some BASIC programs and I was instantly hooked. We moved around a lot and eventually landed in Ambler, PA where we ended buying an Laser Apple Compatible and my dad had some BASIC books sitting around, which I would read and copy code from to learn how to manage program flow with GOTO and IF...THEN. In fifth grade I was designing and writing very simple decision-based adventure games in BASIC. My friends and I were really into elaborate mazes and so I brought some of my "finished products" to school to show off. In middle school and high school, I picked up an Andre Lamothe book and was frustrated by the amount of work it took to put the crappy games he put into the book together. There was some focus on engine production, but it was lost on me at that point. This was also my first taste of C and I kept hearing that C++ was what you needed to know. By the time I got to college I was at least confused on a higher level that most of the other CS department first years at University of Rochester. Much to my dismay, we weren't going to learn C++, we were learning Java. As it turns out though, Java is a much better language to learn programming concepts with because its organized and object orientation is baked right into it. So I learned Java over four years, with smatterings of C and C++. When I popped out, I joined a small startup which was developing Flash "games" for educational textbooks. I'm still doing that, but I'm also looking towards 3D game development. I've played around with DirectX 8 and 9 but the text books I've always used to guide me kinda seem to gravitate toward a particular way of organizing things which is so procedural and old fashioned I can't really get interested. When I saw XNA, and some of the code examples out there I kept saying: "Wow, that makes sense and its a clever way of doing things!". This tutorial alone has helped me aquire several months of knowledge in about three weeks. At this point, I'm trying to make a game demo in XNA which the company I work for can show at GDC. Over the next 6 month, I would like to program a game with a small team to learn the ins and outs and to solidify my knowledge. After that, I plan to move into a game programming job in NYC or Boston.

[Kitrik]

This is actually my first post here. It seemed like a good place for it.

Just graduated with a B.S. in CS. Got extremely lucky and am working for Destineer Studios in Minneapolis making a next-gen 3D game engine to be used for a lot of upcoming and current projects in the company. (http://www.destineerstudios.com)  I am the Multiplayer Engineer so I work with networking code as well as game-level synchronization of game objects. This day-job is all done in C++. I've learned a ton about game design since I started 8 months ago but am interested in different areas of the project. I get bored if I'm not always learning something new, so thus I started digging around in pretty much everything else.

"Why are you here?" you may ask, since I already have my dream-job. Same reason everyone else is here - to learn and to hopefully contribute to the work that is being done in XNA. I don't know C# in-and-out yet, but it's close enough to Java and C++ that I should be good to go in a few weeks. I do see XNA and the homebrew mentality that it brings to the game industry a big plus. I now have experience in game design and have a pretty good idea of how a 3D engine should be laid out seeing as I work in a very advanced engine at this time. However, there are a lot of little things that I don't know and am hoping to learn. I hope that I can contribute to this HM engine if it needs it and to the XNA game design world in general.

Mike - your tutorials are fantastic! If anything, they are helping me understand C# patterns. I've also gotten a good brief on shaders and rendering - great lessons! Looking forward to more!

If you guys are experienced programmers, doesn't even have to be in the game's industry, check out Destineer. We have offices in MN, Raleigh and I think Texas soon... Our CEO was the former Bungie CEO. We have designers from Red Storm who worked on R6 and Ghost Recon. We have programmers who have worked on a good chunk of the Ultima games and other big titles. Etc. It's not a startup. It's funded by the government. And it's hella-fun to work at!

Kitrik

[DaphydTheBard]

Hi guys.

Well, I'm not quite the oldest fart on this site! 

I'm 29, real name is Dave Bonner, live in Lichfield in the UK with my wife and 2 cats.

Got my first computer when I was about 11, my dad bought me a commodore 16 from a friend to play with.  I got instantly hooked.  First program I ever wrote was a little man walking across the screen, stopping in the middle, and saying "HI MOM!".

From day one I knew programming was going to be a vocation for me.  I moved from the C16 to our first PC a few years later and taught myself C.

Then, at 15, my dad bought me a copy of Turbo Pascal so I threw myself into that, and succesfully wrote a couple of games with it.  I did a lemmings clone, and a "pang" clone.

After a year doing computing at college I got bored and dropped out of the course, as we were learning stuff I could already do in my sleep (although in hindsight, this was a mistake).

I then did a few years working in a factory as a forklift driver until I got my first office job with a bank, moved around a bit internally, finally got a job doing contingency planning on Unysis mainframes (yawn) but it was a step in the right direction.

I then got my first job as a junior software developer for company in Leicester, where I developed several packages that are now in use by most of Cambridge and Oxford universities for student accommodation and conferencing.  Here, I picked up VB6 and SQL skills. 

I also spent a considerable amount of time writing my own DirectX engine, for fun, in VB6 (laugh if you want) and I've written 2 games with it - an asteroids clone, and a PC version of Geometry Wars.  It's got some pretty lighting and translucency effects but the only 3D code is used for rotating sprites.  ( I love retro-games ).  Probably because I'm old

After reaching senior developer there, I left 2 years ago (as the company was going no-where and payrises had stopped) and I now work for a company in birmingham as a project manager (everything from design, implementation, installation and support).  I now code in VB6, VB.NET, ASP.NET, and also develop using the Compact Framework for PDA's.  Currently I'm doing everything from supporting and enhancing legacy code, to writing web components, data-migration tools, etc.

However this is all really BORING.

I also found XNA just before Xmas, downloaded it, had a play, liked it MUCHLY, and decided it was time to make the jump to C# and XNA, and 3D games programming.

The last couple of months have been a real learning curve (2 months ago I thought a Matrix was an evil slave-society run by intelligent machines).

I now know better!

I'm really enjoying learning XNA and my dream has always been to work for a games developer.  I actually applied for a job with Bizzare (Project Gotham) a few months ago, and for a while, I thought I was in there.  I wrote a clone of their Geometry Wars game for the PC, as there is no PC version, and just for a laugh sent them my CV and some screenshots.

They actually wrote back, and asked for the source code!!  However once they discovered it was coded in VB and my C skills were rusty, they weren't interested anymore. 

At that point I realised it was time to really get stuck into C# and XNA and hence the burst of current enthusiasm.

Oh, I also run my own private bespoke software company on the side, doing everything from funeral software to voice-activated home-help systems.

Mike's tutorials are ace - and have been of a great help.  Love this site, friendly community, might stay a while

Now if only I could get my post-processing function to work....

UPDATE: I've got an interview next tuesday, for a job on a LOT more money than I'm earning now....so fingers crossed, I'll need to update this post before too long!!!

[bkaye]

Move over kids....at 69, there's no question as to who's the oldest fart....

Been messing around with computers (never had anything resembling an IT job) since the early 80's...TRS-80.   Had it about an hour or two before I found the Basic primer in the back of the instruction manual (yes, an actual hard copy) and that was the beginning of what is now a 25 year love/hate relationship with programming.  Basic -> TRSDOS assembler-> DOS assembler->C(advent of Windows forced learning this, tho not without a fight)->C++->C#->some web stuff->etc....

I was blessed with being relatively successful in my profession, so money to buy books (major knowledge source for the first ten years or so) or new hardware posed no problem.  At one point considered going back to school to get some sort of a CS degree, but college (three kids) kind of killed that.  Also was concerned that what I was doing as a 'labor of love', would turn into drudgery if I had to do it for a living.

So, now retired for two years, I have plenty of time to continue to pursue what at one time my wife referred to as 'my electronic mistress'.  Still spend a few hours a day doing some programming, or looking for something new to learn.  XNA and graphics will probably be that 'something new'. 

Still love programming, but do not miss the the anal bug searches that ended at 4AM when I had an 8AM plane to catch....

Bob

[Nemo Krad]

AWESOME!

Bob, you are where I want to be mate, but I would like to be about 40 when I retire  , not going to happen but we all have a dream

XNA seems to have take up ALL my spare time, if I am not at work or doing stuff with my wife and child ( we have one on the way too) I am trying to learn more about the world of 3D. As you can probably tell by the amount of time I spend on this site, I have the forum open pretty much all the time I am at work......sad isn't it...