[codingdave]

You are already on the right track. Fundamentals are far more important that trying to teach them whatever is current in the industry, whether that is a popular language or using AI. Those things change over time. Fundamentals do not. So keep on teaching those basics, and he'll figure out whatever the current toolkits are, as needed, just like we do.

[paulryanrogers]

Which fundamentals may vary. College insisted I learn binary and bit shifting, which I've never had to use without libraries doing most of the heavy lifting. Data structures was more useful, though the business focus was at odds with where game dev was at the time.

Games in particular are such a vast mix of skills, techniques, and ever shifting market demand. I left game modding and went full time into biz software as my pixel painting and low-poly modeling skills were falling out of favor. Art fundamentals served me well enough, but I was far too slow an artist to put out high fidelity work at the new pace.

When my dad gave me QBasic, I bounced off it hard and thought I hated programming. Meanwhile I was programming games with tools like Klik-n-Play, Con, and batch files. Later in university I had to learn several programming languages and finally it clicked.