I have a dual degree with French Horn Performance and Computer Engineering. I spent a decent amount of time understanding audio signals in college and as a result I feel I can intuit a lot about audio signals wrt to capture/processing etc. It also conceptual overlaps with common effects in the RF design world which is cool. Lots of other things that it gets used for but thats maybe one of the more direct/interesting.
Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
151–160 of 175 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#152I was headed towards a BFA in Fine Art/Computer Graphics in the early 2000's. I dropped out during my second year, mainly for monetary reasons. I also wasn't focused enough on my studies. During High School, I loved 3D Modelling, Computer Music Creation, and Web Development. I thought about the possibility of majoring in CS, but like many, was discouraged by the amount of Math. After my stint in College, it wasn't di…
How did you get the employer to take the chance on you?
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#153I have a degree on graphic design and now work as a senior designer and developer. I work on a lot of digital projects but also design books (mostly artist books), identities and typefaces.
My job is quite interesting because I lead both design and development for most of the projects I work on. Each process informs the other, for example being aware of what's going on in the development world can help establish and hopefully push limitations in the design process.
I've found clients really appreciate someone who understands why design decisions have been made as well as how that design will function and the process of implementation. I can usually talk a client through an entire project without having to check in with a different department to see if x is possible or how long y will take.
However it is very difficult to find employers who are looking for someone like me, everyone seems to want one or the other. So I can't hop between companies so easily and my salary has pretty much stagnated as a result.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#154Note the longer and yet not rambling replies to this. See the better use of paragraphs. The art school grads are a touch more well-spoken than the average hn commenter. Every startup i work with could use more such people.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#155I have a bachelor of arts degree in mathematics because I didn't want to take a biology course required for the bachelor of science. Works for me, as I consider mathematics more art than science (i.e. it's mostly useless), but this is probably not what you had in mind by "arts degree". I don't apply my mathematical artistic knowledge at work. I mostly used my degree to impress employers to get programming jobs ("ooh,…
I am same. But I am yet to find a job. Can't seem to look impressive enough.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#156Have a degree in Visual Communication, with an Illustration major. I'd already been programming since I was 14 when I started it, and was going into Software Engineering, but at the behest of my best friend, changed at the last minute. I have never regretted the decision, because it opened me up to new thinking. In particular I've learnt to apply the many of the concepts I learned from graphic design/illustration to…
As a game designer, I've been trying to get better at vis comm. Are there any books you might recommend? Thanks.
Not off the top of my head, but I can do some research and send you an e-mail if you like.
Side note, used to game design as well (though not much professionally).
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#157My wife has art history and philosophy undergrad degrees, from Duke. She then went and got an architecture degree from Columbia, and now she's a practicing architect. This was actually a somewhat reasonable progression, although if she had known for sure she wanted to do architecture when she was applying to colleges, she could have saved two years of her life and gotten a five-year undergrad bachelors of architectur…
Good deal! I think any architect should have a formal background in the humanities or the fine arts. The utilitarian engineering mindset should never have taken over the profession.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
To a degree, the same goes for scientists. Having anonymous peer reviewers telling you the past six months of your professional life has been a waste, because this was done by a Czhechoslovakian in '73 (paper never translated) and turns out to be uninteresting, can be quite demoralising. Or like one of my first papers, when sending it to a very good journal, having one reviewer say "this is all wrong" and the other s…
Don't professional software developers feel the same way about crafting a masterful function, only to find their feature had already been implemented years ago? Somehow, this industry thrives in reinventing the wheel in slightly different ways - once a process is implemented mathematically (in code), it has to be reimplemented again, in slightly different terms (another programming language). We bikeshed in that it's…
I'm not sure why software developers should care about originality at the function level? If it's been implemented before, that just makes it easier to implement it again. (I assume there's a reason you can't just reuse or copy-and-paste the code - if you can, just do that.)
There is plenty of work to be done that's essentially translating an idea from one situation to another. The satisfaction is from solving the user's problem.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#159I have wanted to go into moviemaking since I was 13, and I got my Bachelor of Arts in it. I am not sure how much of it applies to programming. But trying to make a good movie is the hardest thing I have ever tried. So all work since then feels like a piece of cake.
More applicable to programming has been my minor, English. I think English composition, the particular kind taught in The Elements of Style and On Writing Well, is very similar to programming. This school of writing is neither The Chicago Manual of Style (put a comma here) nor free, self-expressive, creative writing that I was mostly taught. It's all about economy of words (which maps directly to economy of code), making every word count, and putting yourself in the background as you work to serve the reader (or the user).
I also loved drawing and have studied graphic design. This of course helps in the design of user interfaces. Although, like my writing, it's not about creative self-expression but being clear and direct and getting out of the way.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#160I'm a developer and I studied history. Not art history, mind you, but I did take a course in medieval fresco paintings. I never really completed my degree, because I got too busy with a startup, but I got most way through. I also took a shorter computer science degree. I'm only half joking when I say the skills I obtained studying history is more applicable in my work as a developer, than what I learned studying comp…
What kind of skills?