WTF 2007
January 9th, 2007
I was almost finished with Phoenix Wright and my DS fell out of my pocket on the train. I didn’t realize until the moment the train started to pull away and saw it slip away right before my eyes. I called the CTA and supposedly they stopped two trains looking for it, but by then it was probably long gone. If the security guard could have contacted the train operator I probably could have gotten it back… but he told me it was impossible. I know a lost DS is not even in the same category, but what if someone was getting mugged or raped on the train, then could he contact the driver? Anyway now its gone and I’ll probably never see it again. I would be less annoyed if it didn’t mean I had to replay ALL of Phoenix Wright just to finish the last section of the last case. Losing $150 worth of stuff really sucks, I guess it gives me an excuse to buy a DS Lite…
Oh yeah, that and some developers that reviewed my code for a job application think its shit and I don’t know C++. Maybe I should quit coding the same way I decided to quit art? If my code samples were signicantly worse than most people considered for a junior programmer job there is no way I can get hired anywhere in the industry. I know its not their job to do code critiques for you, but it would be nice to have some idea of what they didn’t like. Right now I don’t know if they just thought the demos sucked, if they crashed (afaik code samples like this are rarely run…), if they didn’t like the way the code was architectured or it was just because I didn’t comment or document my code thoroughly. Anyone who knows the quality, amount and style of code most developers are looking for please comment.
The code I sent wasn’t beautiful by any means, but it definitely wasn’t representative of someone that had no idea what he was doing. Links to a variety of low quality, buggy and unimpressive code here (crappy shaders), here (bad collision, math and raycasting), here(bad multithreading) and here(very bad OO graphics class design.) I can easily clean these up and write more… eh.. release worthy code, but is it worth it? I have some jobs in the pipeline and if this is all I have to send I imagine I’m just screwed.
Its been a great week.
5 Comments Add your own
1. RohoMech | January 9th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
yesh, isn’t one of your 2007 resolutions to stop whining you jackass?
2. Impossible | January 9th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Hell no. My resolutions are:
1) Make multiplayer frogger with guns (done).
2) Stop playing DS (done).
3) Fuck EA (done).
4) Make at least $100 (unfortunately not done yet)
5) Post at least one thing on the blog (done.)
I’m good for 2K7.
3. Busbeytheelder | May 2nd, 2007 at 2:09 pm
It’s much easier to give feedback on code if you link to source (or better source that is html formatted for syntax highlighting) than if you make me unzip something.
Having the full project to look at for reference is nice, but I don’t want to have to look at everything to see something.
I deal mostly with C coding rather than C++, and I don’t know what kind of jobs you were looking at, but the lack of documentation is the first large flag, FYI.
4. RohoMech | May 2nd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Mr. Busbey,
Trust me, you don’t wanna see this guys code
I stole some of it, he had a few classes…all living in the same file. But it was Java, I bet that’s how all Java programs are.
5. Impossible | May 4th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Thanks for the feedback Busbey. I’ve been in a new position for about a month and so far I am enjoying it. I could give links to the source, but half of the feedback I wanted was on the quality and complexity of the demos themselves, not just on code architecture\style\organization.
The code could be better documented, but as far as I’m concerned most of it is pretty straightforward. This is stuff that I did in my spare time as quick tests and is largely to demonstrate basic knowledge of C++, graphics programming and Math. My primary reason for rejection at EA was probably not these code samples.
As for my Java\Processing stuff, the code is all prototype code, I write it in a way that is as agile as possible. If the code starts to become unmanageable I move it into multiple PDEs, but at the average 500-1000 lines per processing sketch its usually not a big deal to have everything in one file, although it does hurt readability for you
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