Sponsored By

The Start of My Life

The start of a hardware guy's transformation into a C++ game programmer. Let the sleep debt begin...

S _, Blogger

May 6, 2009

2 Min Read
Game Developer logo in a gray background | Game Developer

I have been attending a tech school for Game and Simulation Programming. I am around 20 years old and of course the "party" side has taken over just tad. Who am I kidding, it is all I used to do, but can you blame me? 12 years of high school seemed like such a task just to spend in sitting in front of a computer for another 4 years? Hold on, sorry maybe I got off to a bad start.

Name is S, I enjoy PC construction, been building computers ever since I knew what a computer  was. I enjoy hardcore PC FPS gaming and skateboarding =]. Ok, enough with the sulky stuff, heres the dibocal:

I am about 90% completed with my bachelor's degree at ECPI College of Technology and I have been doing ok so far. But as my final classes approach I feel myself getting very nervous that my knowledge of programming is not sufficent to ace my most demanding classes. Well, my fears have been realized when I started my Algorithm Analysis and Design class.  I am aware that  things such as the "Big Oh Notation" exists (or as I call it the Big Oh Sh*t Notation) and that they measure the efficiency of algroithm processes in miliseconds (10^-6) and somehow logarithms come into play. Well that didn't set to well with my brain and I had to get switched out of the class due to not being able to complete even the first assignment which consisted of measuring algorithms. The problems looked like this:

              Linear             Quadratic           Constant

             --------             -------------           -------------

               2^Nlog           logNlog                2n

0             ?                     ?                         ?

1             ?                     ?                         ?

2             ?                     ?                         ?

64            ?                     ?                         ?

128         ?                     ?                         ?

1024       ?                     ?                         ?

 

That may not be an exact representation, I am just going off what I remember being on the screen.  But enough about the class, let's talk about the transformation.

 I have to relearn c++ Data Abstraction and problem solving which consists of stacks, queues, the big O, etc. and was a class I had about 2 years ago which is the pre-req for my Algorithm class.  I have to also review most ending programming II topics such as linked lists, muilt-dimensional arrays, templates, etc.

I will be posting my progress as I venture to the programming golden gates to finally meet the "return 0" god. lol.

Read more about:

2009Blogs

About the Author

Daily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inbox

You May Also Like