[gameprogrammer] Re: [Fwd: [atxgpsig] ACC Programming Courses]

On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 13:15 +1300, Jake Briggs wrote:
> 
> Alan Wolfe wrote:
> > Ive heard from many people that if you want to succeed at something a
> > really good way is to surround yourself with like minded individuals
> > and to find a good mentor.
> 
> Well, I think this mailing list is probably a good start :D
> 
> >
> > It's difficult learning on your own because alot of times, you have to
> > reinvent the wheel that was invented by minds much greater than
> > ourselves (i have personal experience with that one haha).
> 
> Good point, sometimes its good to reinvent the wheel to get a good base 
> understanding of any issues though - using libraries can make one feel a 
> bit out of the loop. But, I think its probably worth keeping the 
> re-inventing the wheel brief and proof of concept-ish.

Yeah, my experience is that if you really want to understand something,
you need to either implement it yourself, or do a detailed reading of
the source code of an implementation or two. Seriously, reading and
understanding other people's code is a great way to learn. Sometimes,
you do have to reimplement something to be gain the deepest level of
understanding. 

There is an old saying in the scientific world that says "sometimes a
couple of months in the lab can save you a whole afternoon in the
library". In software you can learn a lot from reading the libraries you
are using.

                Bob Pendleton

> 
> >
> 
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