hi ho hi ho it's back to school I go

Keg

last week I received an acceptance letter into BCIT for their Computer Systems Technology course (basically a programming course). I've hade more of an art based school so far with a drawing course and a digital animation course. sadly with my muscular dystrophy drawing is near impossible these days and I am unable to do textures for the same reason. I've been unable to find work in the past 2 years since I graduated the digital animation course. found some freelance stuff but nothing that would lead to a solid job.

Took a course back in high school for pascal programming, which I enjoyed and was challenged. Basically wanting to pursue programming and see where it leads me. getting tired of sitting on my ass and doing nothing.

gauss

haha well going back to school--if you've got the money and if you've got the stomach for it--is always a good idea. best of luck with programming, i think with that under your belt you'll have an enviable skillset. even if you're not producing art as a programmer, it always helps to know "how the other half lives".

PaK

technical artists get paid well in this business...so you might be making a brilliant move here.

-R

Keg

first full week of classes has been completed. so far not too much homework, but that's easily going to change in the coming weeks as the first term is only 12 weeks long. it's an accelerated program for the january intake. we get 3 one week branks between now and the start of the september term. term 1 normally takes 15 weeks for the september intakes. and 20 for term 2. my term 2 is 20 weeks (april until august) so that's fine. come third term we'll be caught up and in the same classes as those that started back in september.

courses i'm taking are related to java programing, visual tools (html at the moment and moving into c# later in the term), systems analysis and design, accounting, mathematics, business communications, a gym class, and a open lab.

the gym is to give us at least some exercise as we're basically sitting in front of computers the rest of the time. courses as basically 8:30 am until 5:30pm each day except wednesday which we get off at 2:30pm.

One thing we've learned that's somewhat interesting is that on average about 30% of all projects are considered successful. that is completed on time, on budget and with the requirements defined at the start of the project. about 20% were canceled. and the remaining 50% were considered failures for going over budget, going longer than planned or not having a complete set of the requirements that were layed out at the start. this is all info from the standish group (http://www.standishgroup.com/) which gathers information from various companies both large and small.

now if you relate that to gaming it can explain games such as bf2. generally a solid project manager can be the difference between a successful product and a so-so one. what seems to be a key to a successful product is alot of key involvement of the end users throughout the life of the development.