Ada Jobs: Gaming Industry

Ada Jobs: Gaming Industry

[Kenneth Mays]

Greetings,

I posted a message abouthe gaming industry about a month agon and the 
skills they are looking for. The Nintendo 64 seems to be a hot topic, 
as well as Verite/Voodoo Graphics people. Not so much the chipset, 
but the 3D graphics background.

I found out that a particular training company uses the Macintosh to 
train for 3D work. You can use an Amiga, Macintosh, PC, or SGI 
workstation (the best in my opinion) for getting experience with 
tools and development techniques.

As far as the Ada coding, it really depends on you. I should inform 
you that there are a lot of SDKs from companies like SGI/MIPS that 
handle a lot of coding when it comes to games. Most of that code was 
written in C/C++/Assembler. Although I like Ada95, why reinvent the 
wheel? Most games are written in C/C++ and ideas are borrowed from 
that programming language (if not the Pascal used in ColecoVision or 
AmosBasic/AREXX in Amiga systems). I can't see why you wouldn't want 
to use Ada95 over C++ when writing games for any platform. Its a good 
programming language and easier to maintain. Its up to the Software 
Engineer really.

There are many jobs for Ada people, mostly in government type jobs. 
I've seen many companies looking for people to write in Assembler 
(which chip!??) or C/C++, and a few going the Ada path. 

If you want to write games using Ada95, no problem. If you want to 
get a job writing games - stick with C/C++ and Assembly language.

Ken Mays, MIS/Software Engineer
kmays@msn.com
"I research, therefore I am."

Re: Ada Jobs: Gaming Industry

[Robert Dewar]

Kenneth says

"As far as the Ada coding, it really depends on you. I should inform
you that there are a lot of SDKs from companies like SGI/MIPS that
handle a lot of coding when it comes to games. Most of that code was
written in C/C++/Assembler. Although I like Ada95, why reinvent the
wheel? Most games are written in C/C++ and ideas are borrowed from
that programming language (if not the Pascal used in ColecoVision or
AmosBasic/AREXX in Amiga systems). I can't see why you wouldn't want
to use Ada95 over C++ when writing games for any platform. Its a good
programming language and easier to maintain. Its up to the Software
Engineer really."

Note that the Ada 95 product from SGI includes bindings to these SDK's.
SGI has shown some very nice demos of games written in Ada, calling,
for example, Inventor, to provide 3D graphics.

Re: Ada Jobs: Gaming Industry

[Gregory Aharonian]

>Note that the Ada 95 product from SGI includes bindings to these SDK's.
>SGI has shown some very nice demos of games written in Ada, calling,
>for example, Inventor, to provide 3D graphics.

Bindings are absolutely meaningless measures of Ada's non-Mandated health
if they are only marginally adopted.  The DoD blows millions funding the
development of Ada bindings, without ever: measuring whether the commercial
world wants such bindings, determining how to foster and market such
bindings, and measuring who is using these bindings.

But overseeing the funding of Ada bindings is a good way to score promotion
points, so this wasteful practice keeps on going and going and going....
all the while DARPA is funding non-Ada technologies that the non-Mandated
world is adopting.

Ada policy management and review has been plague with dishonesty for ten
years.  Is it any wonder that a majority of even the DoD is rejecting Ada?

Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization