I once had a graphics design teacher get mad and call me out in front of the class because I was working ahead, said I thought I was better than everybody. I mean, I was, I was probably better than him at Photoshop, but it still cut pretty deep and I never took another design class the rest of my time there.

In the realm of Computer Aided Drafting, I have found that formal schooling often installed the "best practices" into Drafters. While self-taught Drafters I worked with were often fast and good, they did not know these systematic workflow practices designed to prevent problems. But the better self-taught Drafters could easily and quickly be taught these workflows improvements, so it was a non-issue with the quality employees.

As a former academic and briefly a professor, the reason bad teachers get tenure because most universities don't value teaching skill for tenure applications and approval, but rather value volume/prestige of research produced and amount of grant money pulled in. Teaching well and providing/grading robust assignments is very time consuming, and professors are already working 60, 80+ hour weeks on research and other professional pursuits to bolster their tenure chances, so something has to give, and often it's teaching.

My absolute worst professor of all time was my professor for "Object Oriented Programming Languages" which was meant to be essentially a more advanced level C++ course. On the first day of class he told us that we were not allowed to use IDEs period and had to write all of our code out by hand on sheets of paper. On the second day of class he started attempting to teach the class base C Language, once again barred from utilizing IDEs, by making the class write out linked lists by hand on sheets of paper. This was a 6 week Summer course. After 2 weeks he had been removed from the classroom, and replaced by a really good professor that I meshed with and we constantly bounced around explaining subjects like polymorphism without a hitch, and our class was performing decently. On the day of the final exam, the original professor suddenly returned without warning and handed us a massive packet of papers in which we once again were forced to handwrite all of our code, using concepts that went out of date before the new millenium had even arrived. He failed the entire class.

As a self taught unreal programmer I would say that at first I did lack a lot of fundamental stuff (probably still do), but the fact that I was busting through everything myself and had that genuine interest in what I chose to learn were good enough for my first employer to believe in me. Plus, as Tim mentioned, I did start a personal project, and I even won a few indie competitions with it. So yes. But learning myself took a lot of my spare time, that I might have otherwise spent with friends or playing games. So it really was a life style choice as well.

We had a teacher that was so bad, that the students started chanting "teach us!, teach us!, teach us!" lol.

The main benefit is that it gives you years of free time to teach yourself real skills and after you get the paper you can get hired. Of 50ish classes I had to take to graduate, there was maybe one or two that was worth my time.

The biggest pro for me was meeting other like-minded people close to the same level as I was (some had more experience in game dev than me, others had less or none), and working with them. We didn't get any practical lessons though, so I'm still mostly self-taught, which is good because I had to learn problem-solving.

Thank you for making this video. I moved to Germany from Moscow to study game design at a University. It is surprizing how little we study Game-Design and making games in general. We mostly study completely unrelated subjects and it is pretty frustrating. Our professors are capable in making games in unity to some extent but I am learning unreal engine and noone here has any idea about UE, so I resort to online courses and videos. My co-students are not motivated to make games and it feels very isolating. I am not sure why I am even here and dont know how to move forward

As somebody who is working full time and looking to career switch to the games industry - This insight has been very valuable.

Totally agree with everything you've said. One caveat I would add though is you cannot learn game design in one year, and almost every game design school is a ridiculously overpriced 1 year program. So, if you're going to go to school, make sure it's a multi-year program that doesn't cost you $35K per year!

I had always done programming as a hobbyist since I was pre-teen. But I wasn't a good student just because of my ADHD and it was tough for me to do assignments I had no interest in. Eventually when I got to the University level, I had a programming professor that was just on another level. His assignments were incredibly challenging and when people struggled with the assignments he simply said "Oh you're not trying hard enough". Eventually I went to his office hours to share my grievance with the assignments and showed him that I knew enough programming to setup basic things like for loops, nested loops and 3d arrays. And he simply said to me "For someone like you, University just isn't for you" At the time I was offended by that comment. I ended up leaving the university and got my Bachelors at a Technical College in Information Technology. It wasn't until YEARS later, after doing my first programming job as a back-end stack developer, I realized that professor that I initially thought was just a egotistical jerk was actually told me the thing I needed to hear. I was self-taught, I wasn't flourishing in a school environment and I was finding the assignments dull and boring. He knew that I just needed to leave the school environment and start getting work experience. Albeit, he could of been nicer and I carried a grudge against him for a long time. But now that i'm in my mid-thirties and looking back at this, I realize there really wasn't anything else he could of said.

As a dev who didn't stick with CS before working in the industry, only to go back later to finish my degree, I can attest that one big drawback to being semi-self-taught or learning on the job is that sometimes you don't know what you need to know. Your deficiencies will inevitably come up in interviews or on a particular task. Sure, those aren't always strict requirements and you can often work around it. That does come up though and sometimes you won't even realize it, but your coworkers/manager/interviewer will. So whether you're school or self-taught, always be learning.

As an experienced systems engineer that has worked since graduating a traditional 4 year CS program, I noticed that self-taught and bootcamp graduates tend to want to skip directly to just seeking out a solution without fully wanting to understanding the underlying problem. There is a greater focus on specific latest technologies and stacks. One thing I try to point out to motivated junior devs is that their senior colleagues started working way before anything like docker, angular, and AWS existed - all of this tech can be deconstructed to basic data structures which they skipped learning entirely.

Being initially self-taught I took some college programming classes about 10-years into my career just to see what I missed. I found that they were good for rounding out my knowledge and skillset. Being self-taught I realized that there were parts of programming I just never dealt with because they don't get used that often in the wild. Polymorphism for example. I can also see how college prepares you more for collaboration then being self-taught. You have a more immediate appreciation for coding guidelines since there's 30+ people who might be reviewing your code. Those neat trick one-liners might make me feel good but the guy next to you can't even read it let alone understand it.

I took CAD for 3 years and in those three years I had found workarounds and methods of achieving what the textbooks wanted without following the steps in the books. The textbook I used for those 3 years was full of sticky notes and personal notes laying out what I had done to achieve the assignment. I kept in touch with the teacher of that course after graduating and he had kept my textbook as a personal keepsake even after the course had changed the program they used.

You are a really good person. Thank you for your honest videos. I wish you were my neighbor.

One think that you didn't fully talk about but really made the difference for me in school: Sometimes you need to spend a long time learn boring stuffs that will tremendously help you. Those subjects are not always boring, but they require understandings in math, engineering that aren't directly necessary to code and will often be ignore by a lot of tutorials. Because tutorials have a bigger need to be entertaining so people don't give up, they may gloss over fundamentals that aren't strictly needed but give a better over view of the how and why things are done a certain way. We actually had an optimization class last year of university, and the other class about circuits engineering helped understand the importance of CPU cache and how it works.

You're a treasure, Tim. I love these daily videos.

I think the two most serious cons to look for (out of what you list) are going at the speed of the class, and bad teachers. It's a kind of catch-22, where the only way you can identify that it's not working out is after having sufficient experience. As an undergrad you don't have that, and I've certainly been burned by both. I'm not aware of an easy solution, either. Whether it's too fast or too slow, if it's not an elective you just need to sit through it for the Uni credits. And all the alternative classes are booked out, so no dodging that bad teacher. I suppose I'm a little saddened at the number of comments I've seen on your school videos with bad experiences, but I can't deny I've had a few.

Thanks Tim for the very accurate and honest advice. I spent a lot of time deep in academia. All the bad parts you mention about school, and more, definitely happened to me and soured my view on academia for a long time. However, you're right- you have to compartmentalize that stuff and stay focused on your own goals and your own personal drives. All the issues with academia today, and there are many, can be a separate subject. What I really want to say is, now that I have more experience, one of the worst things you can encounter is a person who brags about being "self taught" and holds it up like some kind of badge of honor, and has some kind of toxic mentality that "school is for suckers." First of all, and I've spent a lot of time too teaching myself skills and disciplines- no one, not one human being, is truly "self taught." You may be learning in isolation, but I guarantee you you are studying methods and using tools that were offered by others. And second of all, it's not that there's anything wrong with not having a formal education- but these kinds of people I'm mentioning tend to have a lot of personality issues, block out information, and can be very unconscientious. Sure, the stereotype people want to push is that school makes you a perpetual learner, obsessed with theory, and afraid to do projects, and the "self taught" individual is a doer, a true cowboy, someone who pushes boundaries and can get results. Well, let me tell you, what's really important here that people can miss is that the first person tends to at least be disciplined, conscientious, and truthful, and the second person will not be. Nor can the second person work in groups, nor can they self regulate very well. You need those qualities to be an exceptional person, and school will help you develop those things, even if you have a few bad teachers along the way. Sure, if all you want to do is put your stuff on GitHub and tell everyone who reports a bug in your sloppy unfinished projects that they're stupid and wrong, by all means go ahead and avoid "classes," or whatever you think makes you look cool. But that's not all there is to software, or any other discipline for that matter. Yes, I'm definitely just telling empirical findings from personal experiences, this is definitely not everyone who identifies as "self taught." I'm only saying it's easy to lose sight of what formal education can offer you.

one pro about school is meeting people! loads of them were def a blessing.

Loved the video. I went to university for something completely unrelated to gamedev, and instead came up through game modding and learned by taking apart other games, so I definitely relate to both sides. When people ask for themselves (or their children) how they can get into the industry, I explain the benefits and pitfalls of a formal education versus self-directed learning, and the importance of demos. (And lately I've been sending your videos to a lot of these people. 😄) Since I came up through modding, I often recommend modding for less-technically-inclined people, because you can try your ideas and learn coding and data structures and asset formats, et cetera, without needing to make the entire rest of the game around it. Start making something, embrace spectacular failures and crashes, jump in - doing anything will be more educational and empowering than waiting until you feel like you're ready.

I would say the biggest pro of university is that it’s fun and unique. It’s going to be an experience you remember your whole life and a good way to make friends. You also have freedom to explore without as much pressure. In terms of pure learning self teaching is clearly more efficient.

My experience was: example programs that didn't run because the language or IDE had updated but the program was from an old lesson plan, having to learn languages that were dead or dying because that's all they knew and they didn't want to learn modern languages, and having to buy new versions of the same text book because 5% of it was "updated."

Man, you are like a gold mine, I am glad I run into you from youtube recommendations. Keep up doing all those videos, i'll keep watching

I’m doing a 3D modelling class at the moment and it really puts into context how good school can be. I had done a fair amount in my free time before the class but just with a few weeks of structured learning I filled in massive gaps in my knowledge and it improved the quality of my modelling massively. You can definitely get a lot more from a dedicated class than videos, at least in my experience.

I discovered this video of yours randomly, and I must say very well delivered, your opinions are well balanced and reasonable. Thank u Sir

I really appreciate the generalist talk you gave in another of your videos :D Awesome discussions

One of the greatest channels i have seen, love the inside

This is also an issue of country, industry size (and subsequently studio size) and the schools that exist. In Germany there are some universities that will teach in that broader cg artist direction but the public ones are usually a decade behind. They do however teach more of the core skills that people need - like persistence, how to finish a project etc. I'm in a position where I train new hires and interns and most of the applications we get are from people coming from private schools. Generally, with few exceptions, the quality and skills these people graduate with are absolutely abysmal. They get a degree and are sent out in the world and will never get a job. I can't even consider most of them for an internship. These "schools" have very different goals than the students and it rarely is in favour of the student. My boss recently gave advice to one applicant to sue the school because of the work the person was trying to apply with. In most cases, if people are self-driven and keep pushing forward, they will make it with or without school (usually with a lot more money in their pockets if they skip school. These types usually drop out rather quick any ways). The most brilliant generalists I know are all self-taught - but this is of course specific to this country and the kind of business I am in. For Germany, I would only recommend very few schools, and most of them only to make it easier to get a visa later for working abroad. I know it's different in different countries.

I think education is better if you want a job, self taught is better if you are going it alone. You'll be more motivated and creative, and debt free, which is important if you want to start a business. I am self taught and applied for a job once with a game demo. They didn't really believe that I made it all myself and I didn't get the job. In the years to come they went bust and I ended up employing one of their ex employees, haha.

One undervalued part of going to school is not even the skill accrued, nor the experienced accrued. The reason why I went for school had nothing to do with either of those it was simply the networking accrued, there is probably no more effective way to establish a solid network of people that you will have benefits from for your entire career. (If that is your focus while going school)

Big fan Timothy, great stuff. I went to school but not for software development. My degree was as far as you could be from development. But I always had an interest in games and computers growing up with my trusty C-64 and later CBM products. I now am a developer, not only games but other exciting areas as well. I feel comfortable with calling myself a developer now after 10 years of learning on the job making games and applications for a simulation company. Prior to development I was one of those always wearing lots of hats - art, UI, QA, customer service, installation, sales, you name it. I was lucky enough to have an employer comfortable enough with me learning how to develop while producing products for the company. I would say the one thing I lag behind in being self-taught is around the area best practices, conventions, and such. I think school would have helped me with that. But no regrets, over 50 and still making games!

the experience of hating math because of a professor who ruins it for you is so relatable. in my lin alg class my sophomore year i went to office hours to discuss a proof i was marked incorrect on, even though it was identical to a classmates who got full credit. I showed him her solution versus mine and asked why, and if i could get points back i will never forget his reponse- "if you want me to change your grade on this test- you're going to have to put a gun up to my head." like buddy. what in your brain made you think for a second that was even moderately appropriate to say to me? some professors take pride in being as obtuse and difficult as possible. my background is in mechanical engineering, im grateful i really "learned to learn" which is the absolute greatest takeaway from school. if something needs to be done, that skill allows me to abstract the way to get it done, regardless if i've seen it before, which i think is the benefit of a formal education that you're speaking to. i found the same frustrations in my curriculum that were referred to as "trade school" things that weren't of importance to us. i accepted that colleges function was to provide a sturdy theoretical basis, and allow me to develop a learning framework i can apply everywhere. those gaps that i was frustrated by i was able to fill in according to my own discretion and interest with ease, because I was able to navigate the information easily. being self taught i imagine is much more difficult in any field. the environment/framework, everything that you're missing out in college, i just cant imagine doing it without it being there.

Very Insightful, Tim! :D-- Thank you for the wisdom.

Great video as always! Thank you so much for this kind of insights. I would appreciate a video about what you would usually look for when employing someone.

A student in my "intro to java" class took out a paid professional review of our professor due to his style of teaching an "intro" class being 'walk in, assignment is on the board, teacher has headphones on, complete the assignment by the end and learn on your own.' He was planning to change to teaching out of a school in FL at end of semester and told us that day 1, but that fell through the month before semester end. During that class we all shared our grades and realized literally nobody had higher than a C-. The dean said "weve never had complaints about him before" and chose to let it play out. So he ended up getting bad reviews all around and not getting the job he wanted, we ended up getting not actually taught what we were paying to learn.

Thank you Tim !

You made a good teacher Mr. Cain. I wish I graduated with computer science degree from UCI. I graduated from UCI with B.A of Philosophy.

It is much better to bring proof of your skills than just play appeal to authority and blind trust into words. Here's a project I created on my own, using this, this, this, and this was a difficult part of it, let me tell you about its challenges and how I solved it. Or: I was a student playtoy in some named university, and I can solve some hyper-theoretical programming puzzles, therefore pick me. No matter who I'd hire, I want to be sure about his skills, so I'd want some kind of demo I can look into, which is much more telling than some credentials which are on par with "trust me bro."

Speaking as a self-employed coder here (outside of game development for now), I started in school but because I loved coding so much I quickly ran through all the things that pre-university degree could teach us and mostly helped others in that class. I think for coding (and game design) it comes down to if you really want it and if you have any talent for it at all, if yes then you will not wait for school to get you there.

The pros and "the great Khans"!!

I think the best teams involve members with formal education and self-taught members both exchanging ideas that are new to the other. Might sound diplomatic, but they’re two very different perspectives that it’s great to dig in on

Thank you for covering this topic. I went to school to study other subjects because I had learned how to program from a young age. I've been making RPGs since 2003ish. One of my all-time favorites is Fallout. It's refreshing to hear your insights!

I find uni can really vary based on what you are studying or what the degree is. The overall checkpoint apporach, where it makes sure every person has gone through a certain set of classes and topics, and so when you get hired you won't need to worry about them not having any experience with a specific thing, is extremely useful and crucial with some subjects, some fields like medical fields there's no flexibility with that whatsoever really. I suspect, with most game desing related subjects, that is applicable. But the same system applied to every subject can also such a hindrance at times. To many, especially self-taught people or people with experience, it can feel like you are just going through the motions to tick a box and are stuck with completely irrelevant stuff or perhaps things you already learnt years and years ago. And with some, less rigid and more creative fields especially, the checkpoint approach can completely fall apart and you'd be much better off spending all the time and money actually just working towards the job and taking strictly relevant courses independently. There is simply no good, solid list of things to teach on every subject. It's just too subjective, individual even. Furthermore, with uni you have so little control over who is teaching you. The first few times you hear them with full confidence talking about some topic while being entirely wrong or just clearly not knowing what they are saying, you lose trust in a lot of it. You can only pick up on that with some things you are knowledgeable in yourself, but what's to say it's not happening with the rest too? And then there are those who are simply bad at teaching and with people. All that said, you cannot very easily replace the human experiece. The social experience. It lowers the bar for projects, finding likeminded people, etc. It helps gain access to industry tools and resources. It can also work as quite the confidence boost to have gone through the whole thing, which can be helpful when applying for jobs etc. And it gives you structure that you are not in control of. For some, that is crucially important. I find it's also definitely easier to make some solid connections and friends during that time, which can be more challenging when not sharing an experience in such a way. And as you mention, you are forced to make some things for your portfolio, essentially. So there's no real one correct way, even if you remove individual preferences and individual personality, etc. Some subjects simply suit that system better than others.

Such a great relatable video. I recall one project group in school that had a guy even the teacher knew was difficult to work with and we were able to get him out of the group. However another guy just ghosted so we were severely down work force for the class. Thankfully I and the only other original member of the team passed that class. Unfortunately the one added on member did not

Its important to remember some of the biggest things in gaming started as mods or standalone games from self-taught programmers (DOTA/League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Minecraft, Garrys Mod...). The industries biggest titles were built by these self-taught passionate people. I've worked with great self-taught programmers, great ones who went to school, and bad ones from both. Its just about the individuals passion and that attitude of never being done learning. Many people who went to school think they never need to learn again after it and it shows, or they just picked programming because its a lucrative popular thing but aren't that good at it. More often than not though a good self-taught programmer is usually more passionate, detail oriented, and driven in my experience, but thats generalizing and is not an absolute. Just my experience. The only thing self-taught programmers have to watch out for is not understanding the core/fundamentals. You can jump in, learn on the fly, get work done, but it might not be scalable or easily workable by others in the future. You have to put in the work to learn those fundamentals and best practices. You can do that without school, the content is online but you have to have that learning attitude. I have to say AI is a very very powerful learning tool. It is a personal tutor that you can ask for examples, simulations, follow ups on terms and fleshing out concepts. It does it in such a perfect way. A BIG part of learning is having the info presented in the right way, and AI does this amazingly well. If you're looking to learn understand how to prompt correctly to get the best results and use ChatGPT.

One thing to consider - it's increasingly common to be auto-rejected by software before a real person ever sees your application if you don't meet strict degree requirements. I went to a trade school for programming, and had to scrape by with very niche contracts for a long time before I bit the bullet and paid for 5 years of (mostly repeat) uni. It's harder and harder to get your foot in at established companies without that piece of paper. Experience only matters once you get over the software hurdle.

My first math teacher hated teaching, loved berating and bullying students instead... Fast forward 11 years, I tutor math now. I want people to have better experience with math

Hi Tim! Just a small question: would you be able to add info cards (those little pop-ups during the video that show other videos on KZfaq or certain links) to the points in the video where you mention previous videos? Or, if you want, just throw 'em into the description, which is more than fine.

Great point of view!

One of the big benefits of school is that you learn things about the industry that you wouldn't have found out on your own from your lecturers. One of my lecturers when he was a junior producer was partly responsible for hiring and the senior producers told him to put out a job offor for an entry level job and put that it needed 1-2 years experience. He didn't do that because he thought it was unfair and he put out the job and what he got back was hundreds of applications many of which didn't have a portfolio. The senior producers made him go through every one of those applications. It turns out they don't actually care if you have how many years of experience, they just do it to limit the number of applications that aren't up to snuff. You could apply and not have 1-2 years of experience and your portfolio was good, you could still get the job. A lot of people felt more confident about applying for jobs after that.

Tim, I love your videos and hearing you talk about D&D, which I've never played. Do you think there's a computer game that lives up to the fun of D&D? When I hear you talk about some of the in-person D&D you've played, it sounds way more fun and interactive than any CRPG I've every played or heard of.

I needed school for the focus, structure, deadlines, and accountability. I also had many opportunities to work on various teams. Some people don't need that structure. Having been involved in hiring artists, I go straight to the art. I don't care if anyone has a degree, especially given how much I knew coming out of school vs how much I know now. On top of that, each company has its own culture and pipelines, and school can't teach that.

Hey Tim! Simple question! Do you ever go to cons or meetups? I'm a fellow programmer from Canada and a long time Fallout fan and would love to shake hands one day! The daily uploads are a real treat while I work on my degree, and are a nice fuel to keep the passion for game development alive. So thanks for that. Cheers!

I'd be curious how these pros and cons differ or echo across other dev positions (i.e., writing MFA for narrative designers, management MA for directors, etc.) -- anyone have any other points of reference on it?

The problem with self teaching is discipline and time management, lots of people don't have the ability to work freely on their hobby 24/7, they have to work and pay rent etc where as loans usually cover for everything and being able to study your passion for 4+ years unfettered is extremely conducive to improvement- that's why I'm going to digipen even though it is so expense ;_;

I failed a bachelors in computer science for reasons that took me over 7 years to understand. I was neither physically or mentally fit to actually do the things they asked me amd I didnt even want to do them. I literaly had no idea what discipline or productive habits were, never had any friends or contacts, and if that wasnt enough lived out of town. And I was so tired all day I yawned mutiple times during each class(usually silent). There was that one time it took me long to realize how Xor works despite looking at the fucking boolean table multiple times. That was the most dense I felt in my life.

I had a couple lousy programming teachers in college, one spent most of his time rambling about completely irrelevant stuff and the other was really harsh about a lot of things and made me feel incompetent and uncomfortable as someone who wanted to program to get into game development. Both of them taught very simple, basic and boring lessons and then gave assignments that required far, far more expertise that you were assumed to have learned on your own. This was just in a small local community college, no big money was spent but I did feel like I wasted a lot of time sitting around and feeling lost and confused. Ironically enough, one of the most important lessons I learned from the latter teacher was that if you wanted to learn how to do something, just learn it yourself on your own time.

I think about this all the time. I got roped into one of those early 2000's game art colleges. I wish with all my heart that id stayed with my friends before college but without the college i wouldnt have considered our efforts valuable.

Had a Physics lecturer (post doc teaching grad course) who failed 5/11 people, we all complained, got told "you're the boy crying wolf". Two of those five people left the school because our complaints were being entirely ignored and belittled. Then the next year he taught the course again. I spent 45 hours per week on that class, on average. For finals week I spent 80 studying for that one class. Completely ignored my other class because I was terrified I'd be kicked out of grad school (if you fail a class twice, the rules dictate you're out). 7 out of 14 people failed the course this time around, including myself. After we had collectively complained to every individual with any power in the department, and two of the deans of separate tiers in the schools hierarchy, only then did we get action taken. We had to practically strangle the department from every angle available and it all ended up being just for a letter that said "the grad committee has met and decided not to boot you" with no acknowledgement or mention of an apology or explanation or anything. So when you recommend that people in a similar situation try to compartmentalize, I can only say you're dead right. That's the only way through a situation like this. You really do gotta reduce yourself to a simpler creature emotionally to survive society, sometimes.

Same in art. I make demos non stop sometimes to show intrest, understanding and drive for topics/game subjects I am really passionate about.

I'm a beginning self-taught programmer and game designer- I've been having such a rough time with it. I've written games for tabletop for years, but I've never touched programming.

In my C++ programming class in college, the first class I had taken as a freshman for my major in computer science, the teacher marked my code wrong for putting a "f" at the end the number when assigning a value to a float. I was already self-taught since I was a young lad with the book "Type and Learn C" by Tom Swanson (I think as the author). Came with a Borland Turbo C++ compiler that ran on DOS. Well, I calmly, in the professor's office with no one around, attempted to demonstrate that the program crashed when compiled in Release mode without the f on the float, because back then the compiler went ahead and assumed I was assigning a double value to a 32 bit float. But he wasn't going to hear it. He was adamant that I should not have put the f after the constant value in this assignment program that did something stupid like calculate a circle or something. Probably the constant was PI. Imagine if I had dared to use some sort of standard math library with PI already defined. Well that was years ago. I dropped out of college since it was clearly a waste of time, got a job I hated at walmart corporate office, then entered a bad marriage, got washed up on pot and became an alcoholic. Now I've been jobless for three years living off savings and to dejected and depressed and isolated to feel I can do anything for a job and simply wait to become homeless and die in the freezing weather. Well at least I can say that I had to quit drinking after end-stage liver disease set in due to 25 years drinking 20-30 units a day... And miraculously, the entire liver healed due to keto and intermittent fasting. Which is why I quit my old job and sold my house. Since the doctors told me I had six months to live. Which was a total lie since it appears I have no sign of liver disease or cirrhosis. Which is impossible. Rather than become a programmer, I became a computer janitor at a managed services IT company after being fired from walmart. An industry I cannot and shall not return to. Yeah, so these "teachers" have an impact on kids when they shit all over their self-taught knowledge. I sit here without focus or purpose with loads of useless self-taught knowledge and undiagnosed schizophrenia. Which does not help me get disability assistance if there is no one to diagnose it. Well, my middle finger extends to that clown at that community college. I forgot his name, but he doesn't understand that "float derp = 3.14" produces a bug and is against the C language spec because 3.14 is a double in this case. The proper declaration and assignment is "float derp = 3.14f" Why were we even using single precision when calculating a circle? How can we even consider the program to be adequate if it can only calculate a single precision circle? This was back in 2002, so the computers had enough RAM for such a feat. This was Crowder College. A community college. Probably the first mistake was in fact not going to a university and rather wanted to stay close to home.

Howdy Tim, Are there any interesting insights to share about the "Tell me about ..." feature of Fallout? I never ended up using it much (in part because I was just bad at thinking of valid keywords), but looked up dialogue of it recently, and was surprised at how much there was to ask about. The idea of an extended "invisible" dialogue tree, that you have to intentionally invoke is interesting to me and tickles the TTRPG bone a little.

Great video, I think a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to learn self-taught, it's just not doable for a lot of people.

I really enjoyed your perspective on this topic! As a self-taught programmer who is considering attending university to better round out my skills. Thanks so much Tim!

Jay was one of my favorite people to work with.

Tim's videos are best thing since sliced bread

Everyone needs to understand that self-teaching is going to happen regardless of which path you take. You definitely don't know everything once you finish school, and you're going to continue learning long after you leave. It seems popular to bag on university education as "completely worthless". I strongly disagree. I am very grateful for my college education. I feel that school is good at exposing you to ideas and concepts you would not have known to seek out on your own. On the flip side, it *is* frustrating learning certain concepts out of context. In other words, concepts stick much better when you learn them as part of a need rather than as part of an assignment. There is no silver bullet either way. If you want to go to college, do it! If you wanna skip college, do it! It's gonna be hard work either way, but don't buy into this culture that one way is inherently superior to the other. I've met self-taught engineers who were brilliant. I've met college-taught engineers who were complete idiots. However... I've also met college-taught engineers who were amazing... and I've met self-taught engineers who were both stupid and impossible to work with.

I tried college out at two different universities and was not impressed. I started out at an Art Institute back when they had a Game Art Design degree. I would say that the majority of the coursework involved things I would never use. One year in, they told us they were ditching the major and our degrees would be converted into some other degree they had, or something like that. A complete switch, which just told me even they knew their Game Art Design degree was a joke. I guess I can give them credit for wanting to change it. The whole school was way over-priced too. I changed to a regular university for a while, but the professors were just horrible in my opinion. From having to correct teachers on things they were just flat out incorrect about, to them forcing me to drive in 30 minutes just so I could ask a question in their office hours because they were too good to respond with an email, to a professor lambasting me for DARING to ask if a particular subject matter was something I should focus on for the upcoming exam: "WHY?! Are you making your own test or something?!?!?!?!" causing the whole class to lift their head and stare at me. It was a circus. I also remember what I consider to be the worst piece of advice I ever got that came from a professor: "Focus on one thing - be an artist, a 3D modeler, a musician, or a programmer, but don't try to be a jack of all trades." Fast-forward to the present and I am quite literally doing all of those things to make my own video game. I am my own programmer, I have a tablet to do art and I practiced enough to learn how to be good at it, I've invested hundreds of dollars in sound libraries to make my own music - one of my favorite things to do, and am churning out 3D models in Blender every week. This will be my road to success and I just think it's ironic that I was told not to do it this way. Lastly, being that I do have my toe stuck in the water in a number of different professions, I can't imagine a game designer leading a team of people without having knowledge of programming, art, and 3D modeling. You need to have perspective as to how long it's going to take to do certain artwork or program a new feature. You need to understand polycounts, UVs, lighting, and animation. At least at a basic level. Building a castle just doesn't seem like a good idea when you've never chiseled out a stone.

When I was still at college I used to complain about my professors to my dad (who at the time still taught at the place I was going). He stated: "Professors are great at what they do, but they will never be professional educators."

pretty much sums up my experience too

i think the quality of university education has dropped a lot since 2010 and continues to drop. me and many of my friends had the overall experience that you're being rushed from exam to exam so they can get you the hell out of there ASAP. too many professors just parrot textbook chapters and sit in for some office hours and then call it a day as far as providing education after graduating, when i return to these topics i'm having a lot more fun and actually internalizing stuff without even trying, compared to my uni days. maybe im just not built for uni

I think generally speaking knowing how to teach yourself is one of most valuable skills a person can have, especially in a world that rapidly evolving and moving forward.

Hi Tim, unsure if its something you've covered before but could you tell us about some of the ways you keep motivated to learn more impenetrable subjects? I'm a computer science major and I'm studying heuristics and machine learning ahead of a module next semester, it'd be interesting to hear your insights on how you approach and prepare to learn something completely new, and anything you've learnt recently. It's something I'm working on but I still struggle sometimes with the motivation to learn more difficult subjects, regardless of how much interest I have in the area.

What's even greater nowadays is that you can take a KZfaq video, feed its contents into AI, and direct questions to AI instead. Self-teaching becomes easier by the day.

As an ADD person, speed of the class has always been my showstopper and is exactly why I prefer online learning, where I can just manipulate the video speed. I also found that people say you can talk to the teachers if you have questions, but I found this to be false in 95% of the time. Sure if it's about the exact theory they're explaining, but if you come up with a usecase/project you're working on, most of them will take no time/effort to help with anything that goes beyond the base curriculum.

Hey Tim, I'm trying to create a training tool for customer service using very simple if then statements using smartsheet. I'm having trouble mapping out and keeping track of the speech tree. Do you have any tips for organizing this, and yes I'm essentially making a choose your own adventure but for customer service.

Problem with being self taught is that people don't point out that you NEED to hire a mentor, someone patient you can ask questions to and get a detailed reply within a few hours...

I knew programming, my dad taught me then I went to school to get direction/mentorship, what's the next step/level or future path to take. That's what I valued. The actual courses, nope. I dropped out at uni and continued on my own, as at that point, i knew i could study online for 10 months on my own self-discipline than 4 years in uni and going out with a bunch of debt. Sure first year it was hard to find a job, but show them your projects and what u did.

I met some amazing artist and people at my school. And being able to work with the leastest softwear that i couldnt afford if i was learning on my own not going to school. For me, learning 3d modeling on Autodesk 3d Max was amazing, but couldnt afford it if i wasnt in school. Though, Pirate Bay was an option back then 😂...not endorsing it though🙃

I like that this is aim towards programming, but I have one question: Regarding game design, do you think it is something that could be made into a college or course? Cause for what I see, specially with game developers that started around the 80-90s (you included), is that no one taught most of them how a game is designed. I ask because personally I am studying computer engineering at my country's public university since I think programming is the bare essence of game development and its what game developers from my country adviced me to do.

Hi Tim, I was wondering if you had any opinions or experience with coding bootcamps. I myself have been thinking of broadening my skills into coding at an introductory level. School is too expensive for me, and I didnt do well with my prior years of schooling, but if I just had one thing to focus on I could do it for sure. Bootcamps just seem to appeal to me in that way. Anywho, I would love to hear any insight that you'd have to offer and I enjoy the daily uploads :)

Hi Tim! Do you think you'll ever teach C++ (in short form videos) to us aspiring game devs?

I wanted to go to school for programming but the debt seems so crippling so now I’m a laborer in my city’s asphalt division.

When it comes to designers and artists, I always prefer those that are self-taught. In my experience, they usually have a different kind of drive, passion and curiosity in their field. When I speak of a new thing they haven't done before, the self-taught people usually jump straight into learning on youtube, forums etc. Whereas those with a degree have a tendency to say things like "that is outside of my job description", "will you buy me a course?", "I don't know that, give it to someone else". It's also quite common that they're used to working with outdated tools, methods and pipelines, which they are reluctant to change. However, I do live in Sweden where degrees are "free" and accessible to everyone, so it could vary greatly compared to countries where you actually have to pay a shitload of money for the degrees.

I completed one year of game development when I left school, I managed to pass the year and then left. I left because the course structure and the teaching was simply awful. I moved the construction industry instead. No regrets.

I'm not in the games industry, but in the IT field. My experience, both as someone hiring and working along side entry level coworkers, has been that people fresh out of University are significantly less prepared for the workplace than people of similar age that decided to work a non-tech job and self-study. It may very well be that the value proposition was better when Tim was a student, but I personally wouldn't recommend it today given the output and cost of attending. This is why one of my long term ambitions is to start a venture that expands the trade school/boot camp structure that works well for developers and security professionals to IT infrastructure and operations.

School and Self taught doesn't work for some people, I find coding so hard and I didn't get help, at college (UK) even though it was known I have learning difficulties, I ended up sitting down and not doing anything. I did find myself more draw to art, except I never did it as a subject, found drawing, cutting things out, to be fun, made things from clay when I was at school back then. Decades later found Blender and I grew to like it so fast, been modelling things for about 2 years.

Man, the american system with predatory student loan givers is so… weird. As an outsider, I look at it and wonder if it's *designed* to make the population not want to get educated. I mean, in most educations you dont really just learn the subjects, you also learn to… learn. You learn to solve problems, structure your time, get a broader perspective. Having a well-educated population is just a pretty objectively good thing. Except for the politicians who need people to be ignorant for them to be re-elected, of course. (Here in sweden, higher education is free. I have some debt, but it's 100% living expenses and books, 0% tuition etc. And since the state is behind the loans, they're able to keep interests really, really low. Getting that education to become a teacher is absolutely the best investment I've ever made.)

I'm a self taught writer who's gonna be going back to school for programming. The best of both worlds is to do university as cheap as possible and then start creating your own stuff for a portfolio and part of that process will force you to learn new things.

For me, university was a huge mistake because we have many subjects that have no connection with video games at all, and some important subjects like level design class were a huge waste of time because the teacher was only interested in teaching us topics with low relevance, such as gamification.

Hey Tim if college was triple the price you paid would you still consider it? Hearing that it was expensive for you back then is very concerning considering the fact that it's triple the cost now after counting inflation.

In university my C++ teacher was bad to the level I once went to the board and in the middle of the class proved that her code is wrong and was asked to attend this classes no more. Out of a sudden once we had a lab to modify assembler dos driver for keyboard ... with no assembly class at all, I was one of the few who succeeded cause coded in assembly a bit. And final punch - I was nervous on my diploma and for this some university head wanted to lower my final grade ... I just wrote my OS for my homebuilt PC and was able to show it. My diploma teacher who just watched what I do without any advices on the project actually protected me in the end cause well ... WTF. In the end I would say - university happened to be entirely useless regarding the future work to do or collaboration. But. It helped me to migrate to other country from the shithole I was born in cause diploma counts when doing migration. The only use case I have found for it.

Can we send fan mail? Please Mr Cain? 🙏🙂

This guy is the Matt Colville of video games.

The ideal would be a bit of both, imo, but university (especially) is completely out of reach for too many people, so I'd definitely be looking for those demos were I in charge of hiring for any kind of project. Also, I find the phrase "self-taught" interesting as no one ever has been 100% "self" taught. (If they have been, they probably "know" absolutely nothing aside from, perhaps, themselves.) Nope. They've learned from all the artists, engineers, authors, programmers, parents, grandparents, teachers, et alia, who've ever come before them, very often imitating them before finding their own voice, so to speak. I recall being praised for being a "self-taught" web developer at one point, but I wasn't in any way self-taught and there were still things I had to fly by the seat of my pants to accomplish, most likely by sheer accident. In fact, I wasn't even a great web developer, though I put my absolute best foot forward. Nope. I was hanging out with other artists and web developers; being blown away by someone's design or what have you and pouring over the code to figure out how they did that particular thing; etc. "Self-taught." Pah.

I'd have some pro-tier scones put together by Timothy Cain!