On quality of products

[gravaera]

Hmm...I'm not here to crash the recruiting party, but you'll find that most of the people who will come and advertise here are 13 year olds (or chronological equivalents) with big goals and nothing much to show for it. I would advise you to try someone serious like Dex, or JamesM (Pedigree looks productive) or Tommy. I never really looked at Solar's project, but if he was interested in partnering, you should probably check him out, too.

I'm sure they'll be happy to give you something to work on that would be fulfilling.

This is purely guessing, (I honestly haven't read any of the posts in the thread except for Nick and Combuster), but I want to bet that someone will come saying that he wants you on his project, and refer to himself in the plural. "We could use someone like you...". It's basic psychological profiling.

[NickJohnson]

This is purely guessing, (I honestly haven't read any of the posts in the thread except for Nick and Combuster), but I want to bet that someone will come saying that he wants you on his project, and refer to himself in the plural. "We could use someone like you...". It's basic psychological profiling.

Except that the only person who has used "we" is the one who probably has the best project for the OP to help with. MOSA, as far as I can tell based on others' reactions (I don't have windows, so I haven't built it myself), is definitely a serious project, and almost exactly fits the OP's resume. Don't judge a book by the covers of other books.

[gravaera]

Nah. I never offer any help on programming projects anymore: My coworkers have shown me that there more than enough talkers out there to suffice. The company where I have a part-time job doing skill-renting is full of people who lack the skill and want to recruit someone to pick up their slack.

One of the most amazing things about people who are lazy, or sub standard is that they somehow know a flexible array of technical words, and are good at choosing the right ones in a lyrical composition of sorts that convinces you that "Yes: this guy is serious material."

During the first 1 1/2 weeks I saw four examples of those, and now I'm cautious whom I decide to help out. Otherwise I end up making promises and burdening myself.

It's sort of disheartening to see the number of absolutely selfish, inconsiderate people out there who are not afraid to lie, or try to draw sympathy so that they could look good in front of the manager, or something really petty.

I don't know: Were full-grown adults always this ... childish? And they smile and try to drag you along until they realize that you're just not taking them on anymore. Then, boom. All of a sudden, you don't exist. Cos if it comes out that Mr. X really doesn't know squat, then hey: he could lose his job.

But thank god for those flashy GUI generation programs and those huge books they're always consulting, and code generators, and yahoo answers, and good lord, code.google.com+copy+paste. I was always wondering how it is that in programming, which is a job where you shouldn't be able to fake your way through, since someday you'll have to actually write code, you could have so many people who aren't actually good at what they do. But guess what? The IT manager doesn't know what HE'S doing either.

The project manager actively encourages them to just get it to work. I really hate this job so far. I want to see if maybe abroad there are better, more inspiring environments for a programmer. It doesn't seem like the job is about delivering quality at all. I'm actually irritated when I see one of them walking up to me now.

The amazing part is that they're satisfied with their work: "Once I get the money at the end of the month, I'm good." I just hate hearing that. What about pride in your work? But then, there's no point in building a quality, well-done library, or a proper anything. Because you'll like your work, but after it's given up, you KNOW that even though your work is good, the other two guys have submitted CRAP, and it's like...you've wasted your time.

[54616E6E6572]

But then, there's no point in building a quality, well-done library, or a proper anything. Because you'll like your work, but after it's given up, you KNOW that even though your work is good, the other two guys have submitted CRAP, and it's like...you've wasted your time.

I agree with you (somewhat). I say in certain places 1 person giving out crap can actually be beneficial (bad practice, always give in your best). Nintendo (a already prominent company) gave out the N64 on absolute crap hardware (texture cache 4KB, 100,000 polygon per second, very high latency memory, etc...) but if you look and any list that shows the best games of all time, I can almost guarantee you that you'll find at leat 3 N64 games (Ocarina of Time ). Because, they were already established, users were going to buy it b/c they didn't really know what was and wasn't crap. It made the other developers thing about a million times harder and the outcome was some of the greatest games of all time. Yes it was off topic, but the same basic rules can be applied to any kind of development.

[NickJohnson]

@54616E6E6572:

Yeah, but there's a big difference between slow hardware and bad software. Slow hardware at least works correctly, and the only limitation it imposes is on execution speed. Bad software, on the other hand, can poison any effort to build a good piece of software upon it. Also, I wouldn't attribute the success of OoT to flaws in the N64's design... it at best shows that game quality and hardware capability (i.e. graphics) are not very correlated. Having good hardware and software at your disposal is always a good thing.

[Combuster]

I wouldn't want to correlate Nintendo with giving out crap hardware - they give out cheap hardware. They give out the cheapest consoles on the list, and still give you the same level of entertainment as you would have on a high-end console (like Sony). And they make absolutely sure that whatever they give out meets strict quality requirements.

And there's one other thing: limitations force creativity.

Edit: Split due to obvious offtopicness

[Firestryke31]

And there's one other thing: limitations force creativity.

Exactly. Think of all of the neato optimizations people use because for a while, they had to. Fixed point math, or the famous inverse square root magic number. I'm sure there are many more but ATM I can't think of any...

[JackScott]

The Atari 2600 was a classic example. It's "video generation chip" was basically an interface that allowed you to bit-bang the coaxial cable output. The only clever thing the chip did was modulate the signal onto an actual UHF/VHF channel. The fact that you had to do this meant that programmers were very limited, yet still came out with some absolutely classic games. What's more, the programmers used this chip in ways that Atari hadn't even thought of.

[gravaera]

I wouldn't want to correlate Nintendo with giving out crap hardware - they give out cheap hardware. They give out the cheapest consoles on the list, and still give you the same level of entertainment as you would have on a high-end console (like Sony). And they make absolutely sure that whatever they give out meets strict quality requirements.

And there's one other thing: limitations force creativity.

True true true. Nintendo's forte is pure fun. You know one game I really loved, by the way, is Spyro. Spyro was the ultimate game for fun and just enough challenge. I almost hate that company...what was it, that went and bought Spyro from Insomniac, and then destroyed it for the PS2. I mean: Spyro was one the BEST series I ever knew.

I love serious games for sure, but I ALWAYS make sure that even after I have my PS2 or PS3 (I actually still have my old PS1. The games for that are sooo cool.), I always buy the latest Nintendo handheld. I've owned the GBA, and the SP. I had a borrowed Colour, but well, I was pretty small then . Toy went crack-crash

You know, every time I hear you guys talking about hardware specs, I just wish I was working in embedded... I think there's more room for creativity there. The devices encourage more design, and you're building it practically from the ground up.

What's more, the programmers used this chip in ways that Atari hadn't even thought of.

These are the kinds of challenges I wish I had...

[earlz]

You know, every time I hear you guys talking about hardware specs, I just wish I was working in embedded... I think there's more room for creativity there. The devices encourage more design, and you're building it practically from the ground up.

What's more, the programmers used this chip in ways that Atari hadn't even thought of.

These are the kinds of challenges I wish I had...

Yes.. embedded is a career I wish to pursue, presumably along with a lot of people here because its where you can practically create your own OS, but get paid for it.

Limited [yet, Openly Documented] hardware makes things fun. Overly complicated/closed specs just makes things..well, overly complicated..