Software Styles (was: Re: [MUD-Dev] Is database access a bottleneck)

Kebernet kebernet at kebernet.net
Thu Dec 12 21:03:26 CET 2002


Koster, Raph wrote: 
> From: bradley newton haug

>>  "Database Engineer": Oh my mistake.  Carry on.  I have to finish
>>  "Military Simulation Engineer": You get used to it.  They're
>>  "Artificial Intelligence Researcher": Well at least someone

> It cuts both ways; people on both sides of the fence need to gain
> more respect for what the other does and does well. It's the
> insularity and automatic assumption that "we know better" that is
> the problem across the board.

As someone who has spent time working in "Academia" who now does
"Enterprise" banking software, one thing I feel compelled to note is
the simple payrate discrepency between the game industry and the
rest of the computing world too. I went to school studying Graphics
Visualization and Usability fully intending to go into the game
world full time even working and internship at a game company as a
student. Once I finished my stint in a research role in the academia
world, I sort of game up on the idea of working in the game industry
for one main reason:

Greed.

Especially through the bubble years, the barrier to entry and the
pay curve outside was just too great. Most of the people I went to
school with found similar experiences. While the glam factor in the
games world is generally pretty high, I would imagine it's hard to
attract high end database engineers or distributed systems people
when datacenters for companies like Bellsouth or Bank of America or
UPS (in my local market) can to offer these people career paths that
hit well into the 6 figures within 5 or 10 years of graduation.

I definitely think the 'Conversations' paints one side of the fence,
but it seems to me the games market is going to struggle with those
sorts of things until it move more away from the self taught hackers
and more into the traditional Computer Sciences world.
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