Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What to learn to be a graphics programmer

blog.demofox.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 251 posts

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#81

Post by michaelchisari »

dakolli wrote: post #72
michaelchisari wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nepo baby. Joking (sort of). I can't say I know of any in the fields I'm familiar with. I've watched tech get increasingly top-heavy since the covid hiring boom and bust, although it was already trending that way. There are a lot of fields dominated by boomers on the verge of retirement that are the safest bet for people who want to be good and make a good living but don't care to be extraordinary. I've heard that fr…

Nobody who has ambitions of being the top of their field in engineering wants to be a water treatment specialists, arborist or actuary (maybe actuary if you're a stats nerd). What you're saying is go do something on the based on the potential for you to be professionally successful.. What about people doing things they love? I hate these people telling people who love to do a certain thing that they should just becom…

The question I answered was:

Which fields would you say are the best to just be mediocre in

> I actually can't stand you people.

Unnecessary. People who want a basic middle class existence are not greedy and should not receive disdain. Many have responsibilities to their elders or others, have kids or want them, etc. so avowed poverty is not realistic.

Especially when bohemian poverty is an increasingly vanishing option on a practical level.

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#82

Post by nicebyte »

nicebyte wrote: post #76
KellyCriterion wrote: post #15

Today, I would not recommend anybody to go into graphics programming: I started in 2001, when NVidias first Geforce 1 ("the Gigatexl shadercard") was first announced: The field developed since then with so much speed and innovations, it blows my mind of. Compared to what we could do 25years ago, the tech today is just fu*ing impressive. Though, with this impressiveness comes a big "but": The space is developing at a…

Ridiculous justification. "Where is todays Jon Carmack?" Where is the "John Carmack" of ML? Where is the John Carmack of physics? This hero worship crap needs to be left in the past. There isn't a singular active researcher you can point to and say "this person has made the field what it is today". There are very influential papers, but they all have multiple contributors. Is that really a valid reason to not engage…

now, if you said "don't get into it because your primary employment prospects would be games or film industry, which are known to be less than stellar towards their workers" - that would be a different story.

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#83

Post by witos2 »

readme wrote: post #59
michaelchisari wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a great field to get into if you can make it to the top 5-10% skillset. The rapid advances, in a trend replicating throughout society, push out the middle in favor of the top.

Out of curiosity, which fields would you say are the best to just be mediocre in?

[dead]

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#84

Post by OkayPhysicist »

nicebyte wrote: post #76
KellyCriterion wrote: post #15

Today, I would not recommend anybody to go into graphics programming: I started in 2001, when NVidias first Geforce 1 ("the Gigatexl shadercard") was first announced: The field developed since then with so much speed and innovations, it blows my mind of. Compared to what we could do 25years ago, the tech today is just fu*ing impressive. Though, with this impressiveness comes a big "but": The space is developing at a…

Ridiculous justification. "Where is todays Jon Carmack?" Where is the "John Carmack" of ML? Where is the John Carmack of physics? This hero worship crap needs to be left in the past. There isn't a singular active researcher you can point to and say "this person has made the field what it is today". There are very influential papers, but they all have multiple contributors. Is that really a valid reason to not engage…

Physics is a weird one to bring up, because even compared to other fields, it's one where breakthroughs are frequently the result of relatively singular genius. Newton, Faraday, Planck, Einstein, their discoveries were generally not incremental progress along existing lines of inquiry like most physics research is, they made pretty radical changes to our understanding of the world writ large.

In comparison, Carmack is grossly overhyped. He's like the Feynman of CS: A significant contributor to relatively young field, and a pretty influential communicator, but their contributions were moreso being the first to make a certain type of incremental progress than a paradigm shift.

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#85

Post by CrociDB »

sph wrote: post #28
KellyCriterion wrote: post #15

Today, I would not recommend anybody to go into graphics programming: I started in 2001, when NVidias first Geforce 1 ("the Gigatexl shadercard") was first announced: The field developed since then with so much speed and innovations, it blows my mind of. Compared to what we could do 25years ago, the tech today is just fu*ing impressive. Though, with this impressiveness comes a big "but": The space is developing at a…

I really dislike people that got into a thing and then try to discourage others. “Don’t be like me! I wasted my entire life” which is bullshit from a jaded person that lost passion. Telling people to stay away from graphics programming is not how to entice tomorrow’s John Carmack. So here’s another perspective. If all you have done is web apps and Kubernetes, for example, do get into graphics programming. The feedbac…

Chill down. It's just someone who has a lot of experience in the field making an analysis of the current landscape of the career, using their own as an example.

> Telling people to stay away from graphics programming is not how to entice tomorrow’s John Carmack.

John Carmack was one of the _first_ graphics programmer to ever exist. The next John Carmack can't be in the same field. The same way we can't expect the next Beatles to be playing rock music. :)

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#86

Post by bsenftner »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #19
bsenftner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graphics programming has this one very, very useful aspect, exponentially more valuable today: the matrix algebra pipelines, and then the requirement to 'think in matrix transforms' is a wonderful and visually engaging way to get your foundation for machine learning math.

This is like saying being a cashier prepares you for a job in high-finance because both involve arithmetic on dollars and cents. I've been in ML for ~5 years in multiple FAANGs and I have never seen a rotation matrix .

A rotation matrix is but one of dozens and dozens of different types of basic transforms. It gets really fun with jacobian 12x12 matrix operations, and free form deformations. Which maps to ML far better than most imagine.

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#87

Post by bsenftner »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #36
cognoboffin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t RoPE use 2D rotation matrices ?

congrats you've found literally the only example ("the exception that proves the rule").

Your fixation on the rotation matrix == 3D graphics is not right

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#88

Post by moregrist »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #54
cognoboffin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SVD, and PCA are also examples.

there is absolutely no sense in which the SVD/PCA decomposition is just a rotation matrix. you should probably review your linear algebra textbook (hint: scaling is extremely important).

PCA is an orthogonal transformation of the covariance matrix, so like all orthogonal transformations, it’s _literally a rotation_ in N-dimensional space.

SVD is more complex but ultimately it’s just another useful decomposition of a matrix.

I’m not sure why you’re both negative and dismissive. Transformation matrices in graphics are a good and approachable way to get used to linear transformations, which turn out to be useful pretty much everywhere.

Whether or not that helps you with ML depends more on what you’re doing in ML. FAANG doesn’t have a monopoly on ML or on interesting work in ML.

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#89

Post by bsenftner »

kilpikaarna wrote: post #29
mathisfun123 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying being a cashier prepares you for a job in high-finance because both involve arithmetic on dollars and cents. I've been in ML for ~5 years in multiple FAANGs and I have never seen a rotation matrix .

I mainly learned linear algebra via hands-on 3D graphics, and have a hard time thinking about a matrix as anything other than 4x4 and representing a linear transform... How much do you even think about explicit matrix math when doing high-level ML?

3D graphics is so much more than the basic transforms. Add in all the deformation systems blending together, and those often being physics driven off the animation. You all have seen modern VFX, right? That is not basic 4x4 transforms.
Post reply on HN