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by deepaksurti·11y ago·view on hn ↗
> Let me explain. You'll probably get much better with at least one thing once you ship a real project to the end, and this is where you'll get better.

+100. I did exactly this. After working for 12 years, took a break, learnt 3D game programming and actually shipped a playable 3D sport simulation game on iOS. Enjoyed graphics programming a ton. Also prototyped the game in Common Lisp before porting it to iOS.

End result: I now work as a scientific software developer specializing in 3D visualization all thanks to the graphics knowledge gained in the process of shipping the game.

So I would say once you have covered enough fundamentals, you must ship something you think is hard but just harder and not completely beyond you.

For me the fundamentals are: 1. Multiple programming paradigms 2. Algorithms 3. Data Structures 4. Digital Electronics 5. OS 6. Networking and 7. Math for CS. This will take a lot of time. I invested a lot in 1 - 4, skimmed 5,6,7; shipped a game and things unfolded.

1 comments
This sounds very inspiring and it's one of the paths I'm seriously considering for my own future.

Do you mind asking you a couple questions? Where are you based? How does the market look like and what kind of pay can you expect as entry-level/experienced scientific programmer (i.e. is it a significant hit pay-wise when compared to standard enterprise/finance/google developer career track)?

I am based out of India. Irrespective of the location, being in this domain for 2+ years now, I can tell you that while there may be comparatively few open positions, the pay (irrespective of location again) is above par if compared to enterprise but on par otherwise, for experienced programmer!

If you are at entry level, I can think of having a related self project or contributing to any of the numerous open source projects in the scientific stack will do the trick. Hope this helps.

Regarding the pay, I'm a bit worried that it might not be the case in UK. For example, when working in Big Data positions (my current area), it's not hard to get 100k pounds per year or more, while I ads for scientific or graphic programmer (or anything non-enterprise for that matter) rarely exceed even 50k. The difference is that on 100k I can retire before 40 and on 50k I'll probably work forever... If that's indeed the situation I'll probably try getting into the US as H1-B as I hope the situation should be better there.

As for getting a self project - I'm thinking of doing a physics engine focused on static forces - something inspired by structure engineering methods (solving with finite element analysis for example). I have no idea if I can make things bend or break believably in real time but it seems like a cool idea to pursue.