Engine Programming course

[2d-chris]

I agree with everyone! However, teaching is often more about how well you get on with your students than your respective skill in a subject. If you are one step ahead as a teacher thats ok. Of course keeping one step ahead of a few private individuals isnt so tough, but entire groups might be ... you'll always get a few whippersnappers who race ahead, they need special attention outside of the group and always feel like everyone else is holding them back.

Like John Carmak said, if you want a job as a game/engine programmer join a mod team. The chances of a junior being trusted to write core engine components from scratch is no doubt rare. Get used to surfing around code and "hacking" features with seemingly impossible deadlines

Oh yeah and I don’t really agree with a course that generalizes, if you can't make up your own mind what interests you about games early on your either being lazy or constantly in need somebody to hold your hand. Of course thats the first thing that comes to my mind and not always the case. There are LOTS of skilled professionals who went to Uni, but most of them that I know did a specialized course.

To do a full run at Uni/college you'd need about 5-8 years! What a giant waste of time considering you'd enter industry as a Junior ... while spending the next two years or more paying back your loan and eating baked beans on toast

[Defrag]

I'm split between Hessi + Hourences' views.

The biggest disappointment I had at university was that many of the lecturers appeared to know little more than the students. That may sound harsh and I'm sure most of them did know a fair bit, but it didn't come out in the teaching. Yes, we got a broad overview of many subjects and the lecturers were useful in other capacities (e.g. project management advice), but most of the bread and butter stuff was a waste of time -- there was nothing I haven't already seen covered on forums (gamedev.net) and in books. It's not like we had John Carmack waiting in the wings, working on mad crazy technology and pushing us on to do great things. We had a fairly basic syllabus and plenty of time to do the hand-ins.

The best thing was that I had time to find my own way and learn about the things that interested me, but you can do that without going to university! I guess what I'm saying is that, when taught by folk who do not have industry experience and/or a deep understanding of the material, university could be a lot better.

[Skjalg]

I think Hessi got a good point, but he forgets that an Engine Programming course is not a generic class. The course is for those few select individuals that has gone through a programming course, decided that they want to be an engine programmer and then taken this course. I expect this is a final year course, since engine programming is such an in depth and hard subject to master, thus a good lecturer that has some years behind him as an engine programmer is a must.

Ask yourself this; would you be pleased with your math course if your math teacher learned how to multiply the week before he taught you how to multiply? Or would you rather have your math teacher having multiplied for nearly 10 years before he taught you how to do it?

Which reminds me, here in norway a teacher needs at least 5 years of studying math at a university to be able to teach students in high school, and you'd need to be a professor (have something published and have the professors title given to him) if you want to teach at the level Zacker here is going to teach. There is a reason why this system is implemented. And this would in programming terms would mean that you should at least have worked on a game as a lead engine programmer before you can teach others how to do it.

I can see the reason why the school is giving Zacker this opportunity, given the lack of people that are willing to do it, (since an engine programmer could potentially earn a lot of cash, compared to a teacher) and I cant fault him for saying yes to it. And I believe that, with time, these things will sort themselves out as Hourences pointed out.

[st0lve]

The whole "read the book 1 week before teaching it" works fine until a certain level.

The problem will rise when someone get to the point when they want more, and get up on your level and maybe past. How will you help them with their problems if you haven't got a clue on what to do yourself? Go read a book isn't an option, because then the student could have dropped the entire course and rather have read a book by himself.

You need to make sure that you are on a level MUCH higher than what you are teaching, so that questions related to your course isn't going to be over your head.

I had a teacher in design 1 year, after 2 weeks I passed his skill in Illustrator (never touched it before) and my PS skills was waaay above him. I even had to help him out sometimes. Now that was embarrassing both for me and him, because I could have stayed at home, and he showed everyone that he wasn't really that capable. Once when I asked about a problem, I got a full copy of "Illustrator for Dummies", and IMO that was the worst answer, even though I solved the problem after a couple of hours of trail and error (screw the book!)...

[2d-chris]

Group teaching is always fail.

[Ginger Lord]

Over the course of my degree we had 3 animation tutors. The first one was a great guy, tons of experience, worked on a few commerical games and was generally amazing. His work was beyond anything we could do and for that we respected him, his advice was always consistent and sensible.

At the start of the degree his friend and sadly the course leader got fired for bullying another member of staff on the course and that set a lot of things in motion as the ex course leader was a highly respected guy and the 'victim' became course leader. He was totally inept and we were getting feedback for modules, after the next modules hand in date where the module we handed in was supposed to be a progression of an earlier one. Hard to progress when you get feedback after the deadline!

Tutor A eventually left after he made sure we had got enough done for our final projects and were self sufficient. He now works for Bizarre games doing Project Gotham stuff. Cue Tutor B, the victim. Totally inept, hadn't used 3D software for years and was totally off the mark. Any questions we had he couldn't answer and referred us to the help files and Tutor A's video lessons. He got someone else in within a month as we had all threatened to leave (and without students, no funding. No funding no course, no course no job) and on the scene came Tutor C, an ex student.

He was ok, but his level wasn't much higher than what we we're getting too and it was hard to talk to him as he had barely any experience outside of the degree.

So in short, I think you really need a lot of experience in the given field to teach stuff competently. That experience could come from being on the course for years and picking it up or industry experience but I reckon you need a good 5+ years of it to get to a good standard unfortunately.

Group teaching is always fail.

QFT. It's ok for explaining the basics of stuff briefly on a projector etc, but once the first hand goes up of "can you show that again?" it's game over.