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Does anyone know ways to use GML programming skills to find or make work, such as freelance work using Game Maker?
I was thinking of doing freelance game prototyping work for people looking for a quick mock-up and getting the feel for their game, that can be done within a week or a few days.
If anyone has an idea, could someone please help me out? Thank you.
Personally, I started out using GameMaker as a hobby, and I've worked on some small projects for other people, but I eventually got hired as a website and database programmer rather than as a game programmer.
Unless you find a team that is already using GameMaker for its project(s), your experience with GML may not count for much on its own, as the language is only useful inside GameMaker itself. However, understanding GML means that you also have basic programming skills, and once you know one way of programming it goes much quicker to learn another.
GameMaker made programming easy and interesting for me, but other languages gave me the tools needed for non-game projects.
A company may not hire you based on the fact that you know GameMaker specifically, but it may hire you because you know programming. It could be wise to research other programming languages and learn the basics of how they work.
If you are to sell your skills to a client, they will likely care more about the end result than the exact road you took to get there. For example, if the job is to make a game that works on Android phones, that is something GameMaker can do, and by extension it is something you could do.
If GameMaker doesn't seem like the tool for the job, use what you learned from GameMaker to help you understand a different program/framework. Even if you focus on GameMaker, you may need other languages if you are to set up an online game server or scoreboard.
A lot of successful games have been made with GameMaker, so it's definitely possible to make a living by using it. The Showcase section on the official homepage shows us games like Hotline Miami and Undertale - big hits in the Steam store.
This article from GameMakerBlog.com lists a few people who's made it big. Most important, I would say, is "True Valhalla", who gives the community running updates on how his business is going. You can find his blog linked in the article. He has written a book about how to make money by selling apps and games, which could be well worth checking out.
If you wish to focus on freelance work using GameMaker alone, then make sure to understand the ins and outs of the program so that you can be as flexible as possible. Make sure that you understand how the movement functions work, how to do collision checking, how to work with data structures, how to work with views and surfaces, and so on.
The technical skill doesn't need to be perfect, but you need to have an idea of what to do and how in order to realize your ideas within a reasonable time frame. Practice until you feel comfortable taking a game from concept to demo in a short time, and build a collection of examples and engines that could be useful to you. If you can reuse a script, that's a lot better than writing it from scratch for every new game you make.
Finally: Marketing yourself. In order to become attractive to potential clients, it helps to demonstrate your expertise by publishing your work online. Make yourself visible. Post screenshots, videos, and playable versions of games you've made. You could blog about game development, or build up a small profile by helping people online and getting credit for it.
Any project you can point to and say "I worked on this" makes you a more credible developer. If you are just starting out you may not have any projects yet, so one suggestion would be to make a small mini-game and publish it in an app store. You may even publish it for free. For your first games, exposure could be as valuable as sales.
I bet many of you were in such situations in the past.
I'm currently working on huge ASP.NET web project. Ad management system of some kind. My boss doesn't want to get more professionals to help me but gives me inexperienced staff that don't even know to program on ASP.NET and think it is an easy task. I deal with programming and design
What advices do you have to handle the boss ?
What tools can help me to ease with this task ( except usage of this very website )?
Thanks
I would hope good source control is something you already haev on your list but I think its always the best thing for any big project. Keeps your code safe and has the added advantage of allowing easy review of what your team are checking in if you feel the need for oversight.
Other than that just make sure you give your boss a realistic understanding of the time taken for various tasks and if he complains make it clear that your team needs more training if he wants stuff done faster.
P.S. [Edit: removed as no longer relevant]
You could ask him for a raise from getting rid of the people who are not helpful. that might actually save him money and make your time more worthwhile.
What advices do you have to handle the boss ?
First make sure you have a good analysis document and that you have for every dependency a spoc (single point of contact). Make sure the people who you're making this application for are integrated into the process. I suggest using something like scrum but certainly daily standup meetings.
Use a good system to follow up on everyone like for example TFS2010 which has also testing capabilities integrated so your testing team can be better integrated.
Have a bug tracking tool and source safe handy. Continuous integration is also an asset.
but gives me inexperienced staff that don't even know to program on ASP.NET
It's your boss intention to upgrade his people to a level where they are capable of programming ASP.NET applications in the end. What way to better learn it than hands on experience from a dedicated professional like you?
Be aware: you're dealing with people now, not just code. They get sick, have their strenghts and weaknesses just like you. And believe me, it can be a challenge sometimes to deal with the human part of a project. Especially when there's pressure due to release dates.
Perhaps you can convince him to distribute some (technical...) parts of the project to RentAcoder.com or getAfreelancer.com? It will be cheaper than getting more manpower..
Use a decent workitem/bugtracking system. This won't turn your 'inexperienced devs' into experts but at least you'll be able to see what progress they are making(or not making as the case may be)
I want to learn ASP.net 3.5 effectively, but I have no fluent knowledge of any other languages.
Now the scenario is that span of time is very less and in short time I have to be upgraded with ASP.net skills.
So I am interested in fast and effective way to learn ASP.net 3.5.
I have to start from scratch.
Please..please........I want solution as soon as possible.........
And please mention good books and online material.
Thanks.Waiting for reply.
First thing is to drop statements like: "I want solution as soon as possible". To learn something new takes time and you'll need to cool down before getting results.
I strongly recommend you to build something for yourself. This way you can deal with new requirements and schedule pressure. During this process, you'll need to see how other people do same thing, and then to download some sample codes.
EDIT: I think you should start doing that every application does: trying to access a database and changing data. This path will lead you to know more about Entity Data Model and LINQ. So you can go to code your front-end. You can take a look at NerdDinner website for MVC samples.
There are plenty of good tutorials at asp.net/learn.
If you're interested in ASP.NET MVC (Microsoft's latest web UI framework) then there's a good set of tutorials at asp.net/learn/mvc/#MVC_Overview
It might be worth mentioning that you have a choice of programming languages to use; VB.NET or C#. If you are new to programming then you might want to spend some time getting comfortable with one of these initially, as well as familiarising yourself with the underlying .NET Framework.
If you can provide more details about what you need to achieve, as well as your programming background then people will be able to provide advice that is more specific to your situation.
It takes about ten years, as does learning anything worthwhile.
The best way to learn a new set of development skills is total immersion in a project. Build your own website and follow along with a book or two, make some mistakes and fix them, and in general endure all the rough-and-tumble that development involves. Along the way, make sure you're investing good time in writing solid unit tests, so that you understand what they're for and why you should be writing them.
If you've never programmed before, this is going to be rather challenging as a first project. ASP.NET MVC requires understanding, if not fluency, of many different pieces of web development. But dedication, persistence, and curiosity will be enough to win out here.
I think reading a good book while implementing some basic website will be your best approach.
My personal favorite, with good inside examples and good practices is Pro ASP.NET MVC
Get a book like ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming from Wrox Press and work your way through it from beginning to end. Immerse yourself this this project, follow all the steps and understand every step along the way.
Microsoft offers 2 distinct Web development systems - "Classic" ASP.NET WebForms, and MVC. In my opinion MVC is more "pure" to the web philosophy but is trickier to learn, the controls aren't as rich and varied, and there are fewer resources to help you. WebForms have been around much longer, there are thousands of books and helpful sites, and there are probably more job opportunities.
Good luck. If you're smart and work really hard, you should have no trouble.
Saying you want to learn ASP.NET from scratch is like saying you want to learn to build a house. You can get a book that shows you how to saw lumber or nail boards together -- but there's a lot more to building a house than any book can effectively communicate.
Learning a specific control or a narrow skill can be done in a few days, but really learning ASP.NET from beginning to end is a multi-year project -- particularly if you have to learn the language too. Learning C# well could take a year by itself.
Experience is the best teacher. If you can get a mentor of some kind involved, that's even better (just like how carpenters need to apprentice for some time before they're ready to build a house by themselves).
In all seriousness, start with at least 3 years at university doing a computer science/engineering course of some description.
There is no fast and "effective" way of learning to program and being any good at it. There's a lot, lot more to software development than just the code as anyone who has been doing it for any length of time (and cares about their craft) will attest to.
Can you define what exactly do you mean by "learn effectively"? Do you mean that you want to be able to write code like Jon Skeet at the end? Or do you mean that you should be able to handle the job of a junior developer? There is a lot of room between those, to say nothing of you not stating how you learn best: Do you absorb information best from reading, seeing, doing, or some other format of data? How good are your Google skills? How well do you know of MSDN and the massive amount of information contained within?
Scott Gutherie's blog may not be a bad idea for another resource to consider. Another point to consider is however fast you want to learn 3.5, there will soon be a 4.0 that may be out sometime this year as part of Visual Studio 2010.
I've been working in ASP.NET for several years now (since the 1.0 days!), but I've never been formally instructed. I'm fully capable of doing pretty much anything I want and I've built several production-level, data-driven sites, including one that does over a million in sales a year (according to the owner). But I'm starting to get the feeling that the holes in my knowlege are dragging my productivity down. I read a lot and try to learn wherever I can to try to stay up with all the new technologies, but sometimes I just don't get it, and I think it's because of my lack of formal training.
Does anyone have any ideas on the best way to fill in these gaps without having to rehash the fundamentals?
Thanks
1) Read the Code of popular Open Source Projects. There are a few that have some really good practices in place.
I recommend checking out BlogEngine.NET. Also if you're more ambitious, I'd suggest looking at the code for ASP.NET MVC 1.0.
2) Sometimes you need to "get back to the basics" when you've been working with a particular framework since a much earlier version. In this case, it can be really useful to pick up a book that covers some of the newer features.
Here's a good book that shows of some of the new features in C# 3.0:
C# 3.0 Design Patterns
3) It may seem odd, but reading up on other languages/platforms (such as Ruby on Rails) will help you in the way you design your classes and code by taking tips of the good and bad of different platforms and combining them.
4) Read some books on general best practices and development methodologies.
Some of these books I recommend are:
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World
Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
I'm in the same boat; been a .Net developer for 6 years. While I do have a CS degree, I don't have any formal training in ASP.Net; I learn it on the job as projects come up.
I found the best way to figure out what to learn is to keep your eye on .Net developer blogs. Some I follow:
David Hayden http://www.davidhayden.com/blog.aspx
CodingHorror.com (you might be familiar with it ;-)
Scott Hanselman http://www.hanselman.com/blog/
Usually from reading their blogs, I pick up on what the latest .Net solutions that are out there and point me in the direction of new tech I should look into further.
Overall though, I can only give you the advice I give junior devs at my company; realize you can't possibly be expected to know everything but always be eager to learn. Good luck!
I can absolutely identify. I've been programming since 1997 and really don't have any formal training to speak of. With regards to ASP.NET, everything I've learned has been through open code (Community Server, BlogEngine.NET, the other ASP.NET Starter Kits), books, LearnVisualStudio.net, and constantly being thrown in the fire.
I have a MASSIVE inferiority complex as I'm always wondering "did I do this the smart way or the inexperienced way". All I know is that my customers are happy, the errors that occur are few and are fixed quickly, and I keep getting work.
Luckily I have a passion for my work and that's what drives me to keep improving (slow though it may be).
If you're a "people person" then I think user group meetings are a great resource. I'm a bit of an introvert and unless someone who's smart reaches across and shakes my hand, I pretty much rely on the speaker's presentation to teach me something new. Probably not the best way to go and also probably why I don't go that much.
But again, I would stress the open projects, especially Community Server.
Seek out people better than you and learn from them.
Take some classes or join a user group.
If you are looking at conferences, consider finding a local Code Camp. These conferences are often very low key, but have excellent information content. They involve local presenters and attendees so you can build up your contacts and a set of people you can run things past when you need help. In addition, you might want to find (or start) a local .NET group where you can learn together. These can be hard to get off the ground, but when done well can be an excellent source of community learning.
Look for interesting ways to break your established patters - even at a loss of productivity.
Otherwise, it sounds like you are already in a pretty good spot. You can deliver on current requirements and sound like you can pick up new tricks when needed.
Really, the best way to learn new techniques is to work on a different project - even if that means changing jobs. If you have relevant and continuous experience since 2001, you should be able to pick your projects.
I've been coding PHP on a current project and it's been an interesting break from webforms. If anything, I'm getting good perspective on both models and really looking forward to doing some work in MVC.
I'll probably get some -1's for this, but as a fellow ASP.NET developer I don't think you really need to learn ALL that the framework has to offer. The reason I say that is that over the years my LACK of knowledge of all the cute little conveniences of ASP.NET has caused me to write better performing and more robust web apps for Windows. Balanced design patterns (separation of concerns) WITHOUT OVERDOING IT will make more of a "better" ASP.NET web app than using all of the controls and tools that come with the framework.
Case in point is the ajax stuff you get with ASP.NET, and also data binding. Since ASP.NET was late in the game with Ajax, I started off with my own ajax wrapper (based on an early ajax book) and then moving to jQuery. My co-workers all swear by the UpdatePanels and 3rd party controls, and quite often the user experience ends up worse and more confusing than a regular post back (and then we have to inject javascript to make it perform better and more seemlessly). As far as data binding, I've yet to find a canned control (from Microsoft or any 3rd party) that handles 2-way binding better than the framework Rick Strahl came up with back in the 1.1 days. We built a framework on top of a paper and some base classes he released, and I've yet to see something that I think handles data binding any better in ASP.NET (well...besides WPF/Silverlight...those frameworks really nailed it IMO).
So, to me, the path to upgrading your ASP.NET skills is to come up with some good ways to separate your business logic into logical components in the cleanest possible way, and learn the hell out of C# and JavaScript (and/or a JS wrapper library like jQuery). For me, coming from a LAMP background before learning ASP.NET, I absolutely love C# and Visual Studio, but I'm not such a huge fan of the high level ASP.NET controls.
This is a pretty broad question, and hard to address. I perceive myself in a similar space to you, so I guess I can elaborate on what I've been focusing on to improve as a developer which might be of some help.
I mostly write business and commerce related web apps, and my focus has been on a developing a solid understanding of separation of concerns, domain driven design, and enterprise design patterns.
Some books on general software design which I found revelatory were Code Complete by Steve McConnell and Head First Design Patterns by Freeman & Freeman.
I read SO, Code Better, DDD Step by Step, and a number of other blogs regularly.
Dissect well written code from others, and learn from them. Learn from your peers. If you're in a stifling work environment that doesn't give you the opportunity to grow as a developer, consider looking for a new job.
Learn a new language in a completely different framework - I've been teaching myself Ruby on Rails at home and it has given me an interesting perspective on the ASP.NET work that I do commercially.
Given that you're an ASP.NET web developer, learning MVC.NET will certainly help you to think about front-end development in a new, refreshing way.
If you can afford the money and time (or can get your company to pay for it), take a course at DevelopMentor. They have courses across the country and all year round. They are generally a week long and are in depth.
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Closed 11 years ago.
In my work experience, most fresh out of school programmers are set right to creating reports for 6-12 months or so. While I see the benefit of doing something non-crucial, it seems to really discourage them.
So my question is, should organizations allow newbies to work with someone experienced right off the bat, obviously doing non-critical phases of a project, do get a real feel for what their career choice has in stock, or throw them on reports out of the gate?
Ah, there really is nothing like exploiting interns for remedial jobs...
Seriously though, you get back what you put in. Forcing them to do a thoughtless, thankless job for a long period of time is a quick way to build up a useless team member.
Perhaps they should be looking for a job at different companies? Maybe they shouldn't settle?
I was once a fresh-grad, and I have never been asked to work on a report. I had a programming check-in within the first 5 days of my job.
Maybe I am confused about the question. We are talking about folks who apply for programming positions and are sent to doing "reports" related job?!
I didn't start in "reports". I started on a conversion -- just get stuff to run on the new platform. Relatively safe, minor programming changes.
Then I did some new development for a while.
Then another conversion.
Then -- 2 years into my career -- no longer a complete n00b -- I wound up in "Reports". They wanted something like a dozen dumb-as-dirt accounting reports. Each was a "pull from the general ledger", "do some quick math" and "write a columnar report". [It was 1980, that's how stuff was done.]
I couldn't stand to do copy-and-paste programming. So I wrote a thing that extracted from the ledger into an array of values. It used a flexible notation for doing calculations on values in that array, then it wrote out the results of the calculations.
It could add, subtract, multiply and divide. You could use multiple operations on a series of "cells" to compute wonderfully complex things. To a limit.
I had invented the spreadsheet, built as a COBOL batch program. Seriously. That's what putting someone on reports can lead to. A single program that produced the dozen dumb-as-dirt financial reports. And a large number of additional reports, too.
Bonus. It was built in an Agile, incremental fashion. The first version did a half-dozen of the really easy reports. The next one did two or three more.
I don't think "reports" is a bad gig. What's bad is forcing people to copy and paste yet another dumb-as-dirt report program from a cookie-cutter template.
I believe it to be beneficial. It's what happened to me long ago and it provided me an opportunity to learn the database schema, the domain, and how the data is being used.
But, if they were hired as a Software Engineer they shouldn't be a report writer indefinitely. Programmer/Analyst however...
It's beneficial to the company in the short run, because then you can get useful work out of new graduates. It's harmful to everyone in the long run, because creating reports isn't really that hard, so the newbies don't learn much from doing it.
That being said, 6-12 months is a really long time to stick anybody on doing reports (unless they enjoy it, which most people don't). Maybe a shorter time period would be better training for a new employee.
I've worked in shops that threw a lot at the new hires where the results were mixed and I've worked at shops where they did pointless monkey-business exercises such as writing reports that nobody would read, attending 'process' meetings and open-ended tasks like "read a book about C++" or "learn something about this technology or that one. Both of these approaches were a waste of effort and time.
At my shop, if you are the new guy you aren't going to get left to your own devices to figure out X or to create busy work for yourself. Typically, we'll run you through our products so you are familiar with them as a user, then we'll talk through whatever task it is we need you to do, do the "I'm right over here, tell me if you need assistance" thing and then check up on them during the morning "what are you working on?" meeting. The goal at my shop is to get a developer up to speed as quickly as possible without skipping over the important stuff.
I think the key to successfully developing the new employee, particularly one who may be right out of school is to challenge them, provide them with interesting tasking that will make them not dread coming to work. If you get them interested in the work, you get an employee who becomes valuable. There are some tasks that just aren't interesting, and we all do them at my place. For me, I dread getting anywhere near MS Word to write formal documentation, but that comes with the territory sometimes. The 'new guy' needs to realize it won't always be code slinging or new development. Sometimes it is maintenance coding - much of the time it is. Sometimes it is 'turn the crank' type work. Sometimes it is report writing.
A good manager or senior developer will mentor the new hire. If a shop doesn't do that, I'd probably not want to work there myself.
They should be pair programming (or spectator programming) with different people from their department for a few weeks. Then they get to know all the people, the structure, the code and useful tips.
Reports are a wonderful introduction.
They tend to have very specific specifications, unlike many other projects. They're a good "stand alone" task. They also give the developer a good introduction to the domain model, which they must use to actually get the data out for the report.
Finally, they're (typically) reasonably simple with some reporting framework doing most of the heavy lifting for them. So they need to focus on learning the tools of the trade, deployment, and the data model.
They're a nice gradual introduction to the larger domain and application.
I've never been put on a non-important job as a safety function. Even when I didn't know exactly what I was doing I got put on important projects people wanted yesterday, and then paired with someone who had specific development he/she wanted to offload onto the new-hire.
It works pretty well that way.
If you put a college grad on report-writing duty for a long time, he's going to bail on you. Bad management and a waste of money...
I have two contrasting experiences with Crystal Reports in two different companies:
With my first employer (fresh out of University), our Crystal Reports expert was leaving, so I was asked to take over the role. No actual training was provided, so I had to learn everything on-the-job, with no support from either the Vendor or the Employer. Although my position description was as an IT Developer, I eventually spent 100% of my time working on Crystal Reports. It was an unproductive experience for me, and a waste of manpower and resources.
My current employer asked me to assist another Developer in creating and maintaining their Crystal Reports setup. Because they provided adequate training, and I was mentored in the role, I gained knowledge on multiple systems and databases. I even a little experience at administrating and maintaining SQL Server. And I also got the chance to interact with many different clients in the company, as many different sections of the company needed these reports.
So my answer to the original question is that it really depends on the organization, rather than the central concept. If your employer is intending to use it as a way of familiarizing new employees with multiple systems, then I think it's a great idea. If it's just a short-term way of foisting a thankless (and rotten) job on a hapless new employee, then I think it's a waste of manpower and resources.
The good thing about reports is that they are not updating information so there's no chance that any data will be lost.
Depending on what the tools are for reporting too. When I did reporting, I learned tons about SQL, and stored procedures. Of course that is probably not the norm for reporting.
It depends on the report, and it depends on the job. Many reports are anything but trivial, and excellent SQL skills are needed to create a performant and properly maintainable back-end. If your newbies are good with SQL, let them cut their teeth on the queries. It will be a good way for them to learn the schema of your database.
However, if "putting them on reports" is just a euphamism for them trying in vain for hours without direction or inspiration to format a table in Crystal reports 25 (or whatever the current version is), well, I think you probably already know my answer to that question...