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Since a lot of my programming experience is writing hobby engines and games (and reading up a lot of engine code and gamedev resources), I sometimes wonder how negatively does this impact my regular career (previously web, now desktop applications).

EDIT: to clarify, I mean the code I write, not my career prospects.

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I know several people who used to work in the video game industry, and I used to as well (I still may get back into it eventually). It's much harder to convince interviewers that you can handle the work than it is for you to be able to do that work.

Granted, there was a lot I've picked up over the past few years working for large corporations, but not all of it was good. And there's just as much awful code in business applications as there are in game applications, and it's even less fun to debug them.

Bit of a tangent but how was the switch from web to desktop apps?

Quite fine, actually. I like desktop apps better.

Architectural patterns are pretty similar in both; the primary difference is that in a desktop app, you deal with single user and a lot of impersistent state.

I can imagine that would be a lot nicer, do you work for yourself? If not, how did you transition from a job in web dev to desktop?

No, dayjob. I simply applied to a non-web company; turned out they make various software for use in factories.

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