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What's something difficult programmers make look easy?

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Re: What's something difficult programmers make look easy?

#11

Post by kvdveer »

tomaszs wrote: post #6
armada651 wrote: post #5

> How to workaround too little RAM problem? Let’s load pixel graphics if player is far away and call it mip mapping Hold up, mip mapping is not a way to save RAM in fact it consumes more RAM because not only do you need to have the full-size texture in RAM you also need to keep smaller copies in RAM. What it does save on is memory bandwidth , because you don't need to sample from the full-size texture for objects tha…

in early games it was a metod to save RAM too, for a short time but it did. Because you didn't have to store all mip map parts in the RAM

How does storing more copies of the same texture save ram?

Of course one can drop the higher resolution textures, but AFAIK that technique came long after mipmapping, as it requires high cpu-to-gpu bandwidth, which wasn't there in the earlier days.

Re: What's something difficult programmers make look easy?

#12

Post by LarsDu88 »

First of all ray tracing was invented well before real-time rendering.

Second of all, all these difficult things are difficult things that game ENGINE developers are responsible for tackling nowadays.

In the 90s and early 2000s, most of the people building engines were laying down games at the same time, which is very much akin to building a railroad while running the train. For most folks (like me; I'm developing an indie VR game on the side) this is all handled by Unreal, Unity, or Godot.

I've tried to build a simple game engine in the past... you wind up reinventing the wheel a lot...

Re: What's something difficult programmers make look easy?

#13

Post by jasonpeacock »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #2

Making six figures (by sheer luck of the fact that their work scales better than most jobs, including most harder jobs)

I spent a summer in college working construction as a general laborer, making $20/hr. I was rich!! ...and every person on the jobsite said "stay in school, don't do this full time".

I've never experienced that same end-of-day exhaustion before or since doing construction (and I was a fit & healthy college student).

No matter how bad my day is, sitting at my desk and typing for a LOT of money, I know it's better than many alternatives.

Re: What's something difficult programmers make look easy?

#14

Post by waynesonfire »

danielvaughn wrote: post #4
wly_cdgr wrote: post #2

Making six figures (by sheer luck of the fact that their work scales better than most jobs, including most harder jobs)

This. I feel fortunate that I didn't start out in tech - I didn't become a programmer until I was 30. I'd been working since I was 15 or so, so I'd had about 15 years of experience in various industries. I think a lot of devs who go into comp-sci and land into tech right after college have very little understanding of how hard life can be outside of tech. This isn't an easy industry, but goddamn it's so much better t…

> it's so much better than the vast majority of other options out there.

The journey towards enlightenment or personal growth is highly individualized and subjective, making comparisons with others is not only unhelpful but also irrelevant.

Re: What's something difficult programmers make look easy?

#15

Post by WJW »

Doing anything repetitive with a large amount of data by virtue of knowing about for-loops. There have been so many times where people wanted something done to a million users/objects/whatever and were surprised that I got back in 5 minutes. One of them even muttered the words "I thought that would take you all day", when actually 3 of the 5 minutes were spent getting a cup of coffee.

Re: What's something difficult programmers make look easy?

#16

Post by [deleted] »

tomaszs wrote: post #6
armada651 wrote: post #5

> How to workaround too little RAM problem? Let’s load pixel graphics if player is far away and call it mip mapping Hold up, mip mapping is not a way to save RAM in fact it consumes more RAM because not only do you need to have the full-size texture in RAM you also need to keep smaller copies in RAM. What it does save on is memory bandwidth , because you don't need to sample from the full-size texture for objects tha…

in early games it was a metod to save RAM too, for a short time but it did. Because you didn't have to store all mip map parts in the RAM

[deleted]

Re: What's something difficult programmers make look easy?

#19

Post by ryandrake »

kvdveer wrote: post #11
tomaszs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in early games it was a metod to save RAM too, for a short time but it did. Because you didn't have to store all mip map parts in the RAM

How does storing more copies of the same texture save ram? Of course one can drop the higher resolution textures, but AFAIK that technique came long after mipmapping, as it requires high cpu-to-gpu bandwidth, which wasn't there in the earlier days.

Right. Mipmapping is different than simply using lower levels of detail textures. Mipmapping is when you store the full level of detail plus progressively lower levels of detail (always adding up to 33% more data) so that the correct LOD texel can be looked up depending on the required rendering detail. You're using more memory for higher quality (and sometimes faster) rendering.
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