Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by minimalismhuh 1998 days ago
"One needs to have solid fundamentals and one needs to be proficient in ephemeral tools. It's tedious."

Thank you too for your insightful answer! Yep, OpenGL is quite a good example for an "ephermal" API. Now, I saw people either switch to DirectX 11 or they go the Vulkan/DirectX 12 route where it takes ages to render a simple triangle... However, I would still argue that knowing how to implement fundamental rendering algorithms yourself (rasterization or ray tracing) gives you deep insight and hence more power to manipulate things (since you know how it all works under the hood). But to be "production ready"/"job market relevant" you need to learn these "ephermal" tools (APIs, frameworks etc.). At this point I wonder who could render a simple triangle faster. Someone who knows only Vulkan/DirectX 12 or someone who knows the necessary algorithms and the math? What if someone knows both? I don't know, but at the end of the day a little insight on how stuff works under the hood won't hurt you at all.

BTW: The things that prompted me to think this way (i.e. "automation will cause less and less demand for programmers") were HN posts like these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25540583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25540059

"https://www.appgyver.com/ - The world's first professional no-code platform, enabling you to build apps for all form factors, including mobile, desktop, browser, TV and others."