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[Gentlefish]

You might get lucky and find a professor who actually cares as well. I've got several books (in his words, they're not textbooks) that are relevant to this day and will remain relevant.

Oh yes it was actually his "class required" book even though we never used it simply because he thought it was so important for us to have. I have another class with him this year thankfully, even though other students don't like him.

[Reelya]

Have two monitors helps!

The main disadvantage of books is the lack of search. Sure, they have indexes, but computer's find is much more powerful.

I looked for this detailed OpenGL stuff on the web, though, and it was impossible to find authoritative sources, at least at the time I needed the books. Plus, the explanations of every possible parameter of every possible OpenGL command is invaluable. it wasn't just ease of use, this material literally wasn't searchable on Google. This was about 2006-2007 though, maybe it's better now, but not everything can be googled. And I'm not talking crappy OpenGL tutorials, I have the full spec here.

Flicking to bookmarks in an actual textbook is also quicker than dicking around with a mouse and windows.

[Skyrunner]

Eh? I'm pretty sure all Open* projects have their full specs online now. At least openCL does, with full parameters and every single type or function described.

[Reelya]

I still find it quicker reading a book than using a browser to get tables of data and stuff. No mouse wheel, scrolling, page clicking. That stuff is tedious, especially for a big "man" file. With search features etc you have to actually type and shit, which is just not as fast as flicking a page. I just bookmark all the important pages of the text.

A web browser is definitely not always the fastest way to get information.

[Reelya]

<snip>

Meant to hit "edit" rather than "quote" and only just noticed.

[Sheb]

Did you just quote yourself to show agreement with yourself?

[Gentlefish]

May have been a botched edit?

[alway]

So apparently developing for the Oculus Rift is pretty much the best thing ever. Here's how you do motion tracking.

Code: [Select]

// Initialize and OVR and create a handle to the HMD, then configure motion tracking for rotation and position
Init()
{
  ovr_Initialize();
  ovrHmd hmd = ovrHmd_Create(0);
  ovrHmd_ConfigureTracking(hmd,
     ovrTrackingCap_Orientation |
     ovrTrackingCap_Position, 0);
}
// Poll the current state
Update()
{
  TrackingState = ovrHmd_GetTrackingState(hmd, ovr_GetTimeInSeconds())
}
That's literally it. TrackingState is a struct containing position, rotation, angular and linear velocities and accelerations, and a bunch of info about the camera. I then fed that data into my previously existing 3d camera class's position vec3 and rotation quaternion and it just works. It even gives the position as a vec3 and rotation as a quaternion, so no conversion necessary. This API is amazing.

[hops]

Watch as that code get turned into an incomprehensible Rl'yehian horror once the Rift becomes mainstream.

[Mephisto]

Professional developers, what's your take on this?

I desperately need a change of career. One of the places that responded to my application was Oracle.

On one hand, it's a change. On the other, Oracle.
It uses technology I haven't accumulated a lot of experience with as well as some that I have, so I get to learn and advance. Again, Oracle.
They want someone who enjoys fine bourbon. But I would be drinking bourbon at Oracle.

You can see my predicament. Maybe the bourbon is the solution to this issue.

[Parsely]

Drink lots of bourbon.

[Telgin]

Hey, you might end up on anti anxiety meds instead, like me!  The current project I'm working on at this ISP has literally caused me to start having anxiety attacks, and I got my first prescription filled today.  Lovely.

Really though, working at Oracle might not be so bad.  You don't say what you're changing career from.  Is it a small dev studio or another big one?

[Mephisto]

Really though, working at Oracle might not be so bad.  You don't say what you're changing career from.  Is it a small dev studio or another big one?

Small (read: we were keeping ourselves sub-50 to keep down on insurance). ~13 people in development, 5 on my team specifically.

[Telgin]

Wow, and our company of about 100 employees (including field techs) has only 4 developers.

Still, I bet the environment won't be as different as you might fear.  I doubt you'd be working directly with many more people.  The company culture might be more complicated, but without working there you unfortunately can't really know how that will be.

If the pay and / or benefits are good, and I suspect that for a company like Oracle that they are, I'd probably look into it.

[alway]

Really though, working at Oracle might not be so bad.  You don't say what you're changing career from.  Is it a small dev studio or another big one?

Small (read: we were keeping ourselves sub-50 to keep down on insurance). ~13 people in development, 5 on my team specifically.

So here's the reality of things: If you're working in tech, you will almost certainly be making much less over your career if you stay at the same job for longer than about 2 years. Loyalty means nothing, and will only hurt you. If the company you are currently at can match the offer of the other place or has other benefits that make up for it, stay if you want to. Otherwise, leave. Even if you get decent annual raise, it won't be nearly as much as the step up if you switched jobs for most places.

If the place you're working at isn't willing to make a counteroffer? Oh well, their loss. If they want to squeeze your pay for profits, they can feel free to spend several thousand dollars recruiting someone new to replace you, who will likely demand more than you were making and know less about the things they're working with.