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Comment by MrVandemar | Hacker News Reader

"Programming on and off" sounds like you haven't approached the field in a structured way. You can learn and accomplish a great deal that way, but it also means you have some gaps. Ever implemented a linked list? Compared sorting algorithm efficiency? Doing a course in computer science will probably give you a better grounding.

Also, people have niches. I'm guessing you're knowledgeable in your particular niche, and so is everyone else in theirs. HN is a broad church and you can find biologists and people who write optimising compilers, and either are going to look at the other's field with some bafflement.

Also, remember how it goes with learning things:

* Beginner: I have so much to learn ...

* Intermediate: I know everything!

* Expert: I have so much to learn ...

You might know more than you think you know.

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I have no idea if this applies to the OP, but I see a ton of people in game development communities who just jump in with minimal programming experience and try to muddle their way through by watching tutorial videos and stuff. It's particularly terrifying when they're trying to use C++ that way.

If you want to take this stuff seriously, absolutely study computer science, and a little computer engineering as well. When you really understand the fundamentals, you can pick up the rest.

Game development is a lot more than programming. If someone is just making projects on their own, it really doesn't matter much if the code is "good" or not. You just gotta have a game that works.

If you want to get hired as programmer in AAA game development, then your job role starts to become more specialized as you move up, but that's true in a lot of environments. And jobs for AAA game development are admittedly competitive, so the more value your bring, the more likely you are to be hired. Sometimes that means being an uber elite coding ninja, but it also might mean that you are able to wear a lot of different hats, including skills that aren't programming.

Anyway, I just want to say that jumping "in with minimal programming experience and try to muddle their way through by watching tutorial videos and stuff" is awesome, actually, especially if your end goal is making games itself. Just do it!

> Game development is a lot more than programming. If someone is just making projects on their own, it really doesn't matter much if the code is "good" or not. You just gotta have a game that works.

Balatro, a recently-released solo-dev indie game, is a great example of this. I saw two tweets the other day that, together, support your point: "Balatro has a 5000 line if-else chain"[0] and "in the 3 months since Balatro has launched, it has been collectively played for a total of 6200 years"[1].

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1cbcmr0/how_is_it_... (couldn't find the twitter link directly but summarized it from this reddit post)

[1]: https://x.com/LocalThunk/status/1794876280997036443

I question why "terrifying" applies given that they're writing games.

Because of the memory unsafety of languages such as C++.

"Here's an obscure indie game, let's create a save file that exploits a buffer overflow and socially engineer people into opening it," just barely conceivably.

There are a lot of great self-study resources for computer science. I've seen https://github.com/ossu/computer-science before and thought it looked like a good way to slowly make your way though a typical CS curriculum.

> Intermediate: I know everything

I was in this phase about a decade ago, which was just a few years into my professional life. I knew nothing back then and I know very little now.

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