Gabe Newell: I learned more in three months at Microsoft than entire time at Harvard - Polidicks

[QUOTE] Valve co-founder, Gabe Newell, has been highly critical of Microsoft in the past year, famously calling Windows 8 "this giant sadness," but he clearly still has a lot of respect for his former employer – or at least his former co-workers. [I] The most valuable educational experience for me was sort of the nontraditional one. I was going to university and went out to visit my brother – he just started at this new software company, which was the third-largest software company on the east side of Lake Washington, and I was going out to visit him, and all of a sudden he was working all the time. So rather than hanging out with me and seeing the Space Needle, I was just hanging out with him at work.[/I] [I]Steve Ballmer, who's currently the president, got mad that I was distracting him and said, 'Well, if you're going to be spending all your time hanging out here, you need to do something useful.'[/I] [I]Those first three months when I was working with people like Tom Corbett and Neil Konzen and Steve Wood, was probably the most intense and valuable educational experience I've ever had. They sort of showed me how to be a professional software developer, you know, [so] it was an incredibly vast and really significant set of lessons that I learned. [/I] [video=youtube;1R3OI3Ocylg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R3OI3Ocylg[/video][/QUOTE] [editline]13th December 2013[/editline] The sauce: [url]http://www.neowin.net/news/gabe-newell-i-learned-more-in-three-months-at-microsoft-than-entire-time-at-harvard[/url]

He looks like such an old man now.

[QUOTE=A big fat ass;43169475]He looks like such an wise old man now.[/QUOTE] Fixed.

I wish He'd learnt to count there, Microsoft can count to 8...

[QUOTE=Bradyns;43169484]But.. Microsoft can count to 8 though..[/QUOTE] ...... ya know, not that i hate those jokes, but they are getting annoying every time.

[QUOTE=A big fat ass;43169475]He looks like such an old man now.[/QUOTE] That's what coding for linux does to everybody.

[QUOTE=Bradyns;43169484]I wish He'd learnt to count there, Microsoft can count to 8...[/QUOTE] Yeah yeah, we get it. Valve knows no 3 etc etc. Can we stop using the same old jokes again and again?

This seems like the case for a very large amount of fields. When I joined this software company they put a batch of 30 of us through a 10 week intensive training thing at a university with a third party training company that uses industry professionals to teach, and paid for our accomodation + breakfast/lunch/dinner and also paid us at the same time. The course was usually 2 weeks of doing a subject then an exam on it (Did intro to programming, Java, SQL, PLSQL, project management etc) The fact is if I didnt know most of it already I could have learned much more in those 10 weeks than the previous year I spent in university and the 2 years in college before that, doing computer related courses. Then my first role straight after the training was doing C# under a really talented programmer, and with her mentoring + just learning as I went along I probably learned more again than the entire 3 previous years in college/uni. You learn a heck of a lot in a short time being around people who are good at their field and have been doing it a long time, the last few months I have been spending a lot of time with some senior management type people who are waaaaay up there in terms of paygrade, and I learn a lot just by being in the same room to them and half listening to what they are doing.

[QUOTE=Bradyns;43169484]I wish He'd learnt to count there, Microsoft can count to 8...[/QUOTE] Microsoft employee here, can confirm. It goes like 1.0, 2.3, 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, Me, XP, Vista, 7, 8. We tried to teach him to count like this, alas, he refused to understand.

[QUOTE=Bradyns;43169484]I wish He'd learnt to count there, Microsoft can count to 8...[/QUOTE] Microsoft is pretty bad at counting through, fourth Windows was numbered as 95

[QUOTE=Cushie;43169521]This seems like the case for a very large amount of fields. When I joined this software company they put a batch of 30 of us through a 10 week intensive training thing at a university with a third party training company that uses industry professionals to teach, and paid for our accomodation + breakfast/lunch/dinner and also paid us at the same time. The course was usually 2 weeks of doing a subject then an exam on it (Did intro to programming, Java, SQL, PLSQL, project management etc) The fact is if I didnt know most of it already I could have learned much more in those 10 weeks than the previous year I spent in university and the 2 years in college before that, doing computer related courses. Then my first role straight after the training was doing C# under a really talented programmer, and with her mentoring + just learning as I went along I probably learned more again than the entire 3 previous years in college/uni. You learn a heck of a lot in a short time being around people who are good at their field and have been doing it a long time, the last few months I have been spending a lot of time with some senior management type people who are waaaaay up there in terms of paygrade, and I learn a lot just by being in the same room to them and half listening to what they are doing.[/QUOTE] What I notice is the problem at my university is that it's very little practical programming related work or programming tasks that are close to what you do on the workplace. You get to learn a bunch of theory, apply it on a few assignments, and then that's it, you take the finals on that course and WOHO you now "know" the subject. If I didn't program on the side, I'd probably be clueless at working place.

[QUOTE=Bradyns;43169484]I wish He'd learnt to count there, Microsoft can count to 8...[/QUOTE] Are you sure? They went from 3 to 95, then 98, 2000, then just letters until 7.

The problem with university programming classes is that the first 2 semesters of every language pretty much reviews "okay everyone, what is a string" and stupid shit that people probably already know, but the bare-basics intro programmers have never heard of before. I made the mistake of taking a year of C++ and learning essentially nothing (having already worked with a scripting language that was very similarly formatted for ~6 years) which I feel was really a waste of time. By the end of the year we had only just learned about pointers, which was new to me at the time, but by then I had practically given up and was just playing games during our 4-hour lectures. Then I took Java and failed the first semester because although I knew all of the material, I simply didn't care to go to a 7:30 AM class to listen to the teacher explain the difference between an int and a float. Turns out attendance was mandatory (something that wasn't mentioned in the syllabus). Since then it's taken me about a year to learn HTML/JS/PHP/SQL and do some pretty decent web development (something that wasn't offered at the university since the "programming facebook and iphone games" course for idiots had taken its place).

[QUOTE=Snowmew;43169566]The problem with university programming classes is that the first 2 semesters of every language pretty much reviews "okay everyone, what is a string" and stupid shit that people probably already know, but the bare-basics intro programmers have never heard of before. I made the mistake of taking a year of C++ and learning essentially nothing (having already worked with a scripting language that was very similarly formatted for ~6 years) which I feel was really a waste of time. By the end of the year we had only just learned about pointers, which was new to me at the time, but by then I had practically given up and was just playing games during our 4-hour lectures. Then I took Java and failed the first semester because although I knew all of the material, I simply didn't care to go to a 7:30 AM class to listen to the teacher explain the difference between an int and a float. Turns out attendance was mandatory (something that wasn't mentioned in the syllabus). Since then it's taken me about a year to learn HTML/JS/PHP/SQL and do some pretty decent web development (something that wasn't offered at the university since the "programming facebook and iphone games" course for idiots had taken its place).[/QUOTE] Yeah that's how it is, since the university expects the student to know nothing about programming. Shame about the attendance thing, we have no mandatory attendance, so I usually just do other stuff when I'm there.

[QUOTE=Swebonny;43169561]What I notice is the problem at my university is that it's very little practical programming related work or programming tasks that are close to what you do on the workplace. You get to learn a bunch of theory, apply it on a few assignments, and then that's it, you take the finals on that course and WOHO you now "know" the subject. If I didn't program on the side, I'd probably be clueless at working place.[/QUOTE] It was like this in the first year for me but I kinda am learning new things second year, but the time you work on a project is so short (10 weeks each for me), and there's so much extra shit like documentation you have to do, you can't really work on a large project in that time, and everything I get in class is explained using small examples which don't even apply to my 10 week projects let alone a large project. It's frustrating. [editline]13th December 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Swebonny;43169575]Yeah that's how it is, since the university expects the student to know nothing about programming. Shame about the attendance thing, we have no mandatory attendance, so I usually just do other stuff when I'm there.[/QUOTE] For my project this quarter my teacher has decided we'll have to use php, and we won't get any classes in it at all, which is an interesting change I guess. We'll have to familiarize with OO-PHP all by ourselves.

It's the linux curse, eventually you will end up looking like stallman [IMG]http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/09/29/stallman1.article.jpg[/IMG]

[QUOTE=Rockeiro123;43169671]It's the linux curse, eventually you will end up looking like stallman [IMG]http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/09/29/stallman1.article.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] Instead of install gentoo it'll be Install SteamOS

[QUOTE=Swebonny;43169561]What I notice is the problem at my university is that it's very little practical programming related work or programming tasks that are close to what you do on the workplace. You get to learn a bunch of theory, apply it on a few assignments, and then that's it, you take the finals on that course and WOHO you now "know" the subject. If I didn't program on the side, I'd probably be clueless at working place.[/QUOTE] Somewhat the same here. My school offered some computer course which basically attested that you're capable of handling a computer. Nonsense bullshit. If I wouldn't have to fuck my system up every now and then I'd probably wouldn't have my job right now.

This is the case for pretty much any working environment vs education.

[QUOTE=A big fat ass;43169475]He looks like such an old man now.[/QUOTE] The messiah of PC gaming has revealed himself. All kneel before gaben.

this is exactly why im not going to school. i went to scad for games for two years and had more technical knowledge in some areas than my professors (how can a game art professor not know how to bake a proper normal map). now i'm working full time doing unity stuff and have learned more in that small amount of time than college ever taught me.

Why is half of his beard shaved off?

Oh no, he's wearing new glasses. Just as we got a pair of traditional Gabe glasses for Heavy to wear... [t]http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/c/ce/Gabe_Glasses.png[/t]

[QUOTE=fruxodaily;43169680]Instead of install gentoo it'll be Install SteamOS[/QUOTE] The funny thing is that Stallman doesn't even approve of Gentoo

[QUOTE=Swebonny;43169575]Yeah that's how it is, since the university expects the student to know nothing about programming. Shame about the attendance thing, we have no mandatory attendance, so I usually just do other stuff when I'm there.[/QUOTE] I set up LogMeIn to do things. The computers there were so woefully underpowered that I couldn't even play OpenTTD.

[QUOTE=Bradyns;43169484]I wish He'd learnt to count there, Microsoft can count to 8...[/QUOTE] And the first major version of windows was 3.1 I wonder if gabe newell worked on it

I think his beard is a visual representation of HL3's development.

It's because university teaches you about proper coding techniques and optimization and such. I can give you a list of C functions and ask you to make a program but that doesn't mean that the program you will make will be good. For example, I learned PERL at work over the course of a few weeks, but my PERL programs are terrible compared to those written by people properly trained. As much as you might think you're learning a lot more on the job, university teaches you a lot of subconscious things. With that being said, I still think you learn more on the job.

[QUOTE=Snowmew;43169566]The problem with university programming classes is that the first 2 semesters of every language pretty much reviews "okay everyone, what is a string" and stupid shit that people probably already know, but the bare-basics intro programmers have never heard of before. I made the mistake of taking a year of C++ and learning essentially nothing (having already worked with a scripting language that was very similarly formatted for ~6 years) which I feel was really a waste of time. By the end of the year we had only just learned about pointers, which was new to me at the time, but by then I had practically given up and was just playing games during our 4-hour lectures. Then I took Java and failed the first semester because although I knew all of the material, I simply didn't care to go to a 7:30 AM class to listen to the teacher explain the difference between an int and a float. Turns out attendance was mandatory (something that wasn't mentioned in the syllabus). [/QUOTE] During my 2nd college physics year I took Introductory Programming (C++). We started at Hello world and ended up with polymorphism and abstract classes 3 months later. I honestly don't get why you'd go so slow in a CS course.

[QUOTE=Number-41;43170646]During my 2nd college physics year I took Introductory Programming (C++). We started at Hello world and ended up with polymorphism and abstract classes 3 months later. I honestly don't get why you'd go so slow in a CS course.[/QUOTE] Depends on the course module, the Introduction to programming module I'm on at uni can be taken by anyone, even if they're not taking anything related to CS at all so they have to go a little more slowly than other modules because people there come with literally no background knowledge. Though from the sounds of things my course seems a bit odd compared to everyone else's, we started by looking at classes and inheritance and all that jazz before a more in depth look at types and loops, though probably because it teaches you how to actually create programs better and works better with the other CS modules where you program a shitton anyway.