[sillysaurus3]

Sure, it did for me. I think mental models are important, and that it's kind of dopey to call something by a confusing name. (I'm looking at you, physics!) But on the other hand, I'm not very smart, and I had to spend most of my time on gradeschool instead of learning shaders. It was also before wonderful resources like stackoverflow/HN/reddit/etc, so there weren't a lot of people to help clarify my mental model.

As I've gotten older it's become easier to think abstractly and accept that names sometimes have nothing to do with what things are. But when you're first starting out, it's natural to want to visualize everything you learn as what it sounds like.

[lexis]

If shaders are hard, it's mostly because they require a full understanding of 3D math, the complete graphic pipeline, texture sampling, image manipulation techniques and how it all comes together before you can actually start doing anything useful; so the learning curve has a slope of 'wat' to almost all newcomers. If anything, naming is just a nuisance.

[sillysaurus3]

they require a full understanding of 3D math, the complete graphic pipeline, texture sampling, image manipulation techniques and how it all comes together before you can actually start doing anything useful

Hm, not really. I learned more from messing with working demos and prototypes than studying theory. But YMMV.

It's absolutely true that the whole pipeline is very intimidating for newcomers, though.

I love that phrase... "the learning curve has a slope of 'wat'."