Entries for Clint Rutkas

Ruby with some Iron mixed in.

Clint — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:18:00 GMT

Like Ruby but still want the power of .Net? IronRuby allows you to do both!

John Lam spent a few minutes with me at Mix 2008 talking about the DLR, Ruby and how to get started.

Imagine Cup 2008 - Lessons learned. [Imagine Cup 2008 - Lessons learned.]

Clint — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:20:00 GMT

I managed to get the Imagine Cup Gaming and SDI challengers to spend a brief second with me and talk to me about what they learned this year about the contest.

First lesson learned for me was be hungry for competition. Only 9 pounds this year?

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Getting a Gaming Job, Round Table Edition [Getting a Gaming Job, Round Table Edition]

Clint — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:57:00 GMT

After spending hours attempting to get as many game developers in a room as possible, I managed to track down Ian Lewis from the XNA team at Microsoft, Andrew Brownsword from EA, Kent Quirk from Linden Labs which make Second Life. I may or may not have used an Xbox 360 with Rockband primed as bait.

As usual, I asked them what a student should know. They talked about figuring out how to solve problems, working in teams, writing good code, the coding or testing hat, and a bunch more.

While these are game developers, almost everything they mention directly translates to normal development.

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Pitching Your Idea [Pitching Your Idea]

Clint — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:03:00 GMT

Perry Lowe, a professor at Bentley College and Philip DesAutels, an uber-microsoftie, were giving students advice on how to pitch your ideas and some presentation skills at the Imagine Cup US Finals.

Perry and Philip talk about telling a good story, rehearsing, does bleeding edge technology sell the product, and knowing your audience. Perry and Philip also were nice enough to give out their slides. One deck is on innovation and entrepreneurship and the other is on giving the killer presentation.

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Getting a Job - Blizzard Edition [Getting a Job - Blizzard Edition]

Clint — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:51:00 GMT

John Cash from Blizzard Entertainment gave me a chance to sit down and chat with him during the Academic Days Gaming Conference.

We talked about “hard skills” such as math, namely algebra and calculus. If plan on taking advanced mathematics and plan to do game development, he recommends linear algebra and advance calculus. With Computer Science, John recommends C++ since nothing has really passed it yet in the industry as the primary programming language. He also talks about data structures and algorithms.

He talks about doing projects and about how the art doesn’t matter for your games. People understand you're not an artist. In addition, finish your work! Having half finished projects isn’t a way to impress people. Have a polished game!

On top of all these “hard skills”, John goes in about “soft skills” like talking to people.

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Getting a job in the Video Game Industry - XNA Team [Getting a job in the Video Game Industry - XNA Team]

Clint — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:00:00 GMT

Frank Savage from Microsoft Gaming Studios chatted with myself (Clint Rutkas) and Dan Waters regarding students developing with Hardware, games he worked on such as Wing Commander, Shaders, and as always, how to get a job (in gaming).

On top of Frank Savage, I have additional interviews with individuals from Blizzard, EA, Midway, and Linden Labs (makers of Second Life) that I'll be posting in the future.

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Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 4 of 4 [Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 4 of 4]

Clint — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Update: Fixed video link.

The last and final part in adding in some new functionality into a complex project! I'll be adding in a new control and finally after about an hour of work, I'll finally be able to test out the work I've done. As you'll witness, even the pro's make mistakes and need to debug.

For a side project I've been working on for Coding4Fun, I needed to use the Facebook Developer Toolkit, however it didn't have the Facebook API integrated that I needed in it.

In this 4 part series, you'll see me track down add in the Set Status ability into the toolkit, track down everything needed to add in that functionality, debug, create a test application, and finally getting it working.

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Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 3 of 4 [Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 3 of 4]

Clint — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:00:00 GMT

In part 3, I'll be adding in the new methods I need to set your status in Facebook. Here is where you'll see me go in and attempt to get stuff working. To get it fully working, you'll have to wait to part 4!

For a side project I've been working on for Coding4Fun, I needed to use the Facebook Developer Toolkit, however it didn't have the Facebook API integrated that I needed in it.

In this 4 part series, you'll see me track down add in the Set Status ability into the toolkit, track down everything needed to add in that functionality, debug, create a test application, and finally getting it working.

in reply to Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 3 of 4

Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 2 of 4 [Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 2 of 4]

Clint — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:00:00 GMT

In part 2, I'll show how to compile the solution, finding out where a starting point would be, reading the source code, starting a new project with the FacebookService object.

For a side project I've been working on for Coding4Fun, I needed to use the Facebook Developer Toolkit, however it didn't have the Facebook API integrated that I needed in it.

In this 4 part series, you'll see me track down add in the Set Status ability into the toolkit, track down everything needed to add in that functionality, debug, create a test application, and finally getting it working.

in reply to Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 2 of 4

Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 1 of 4 [Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 1 of 4]

Clint — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:00:00 GMT

For a side project I've been working on for Coding4Fun, I needed to use the Facebook Developer Toolkit, however it didn't have the Facebook API integrated that I needed in it.

In this 4 part series, you'll see me track down add in the Set Status ability into the toolkit, track down everything needed to add in that functionality, debug, create a test application, and finally getting it working.

In this part, we'll look at how the Facebook method's we'll need to add in, get the source code, and get an API key.

in reply to Don't get lost! Altering a large project - Part 1 of 4

Mono, the other .Net, that runs on Linux [Mono, the other .Net, that runs on Linux]

Clint — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:23:00 GMT

At Mix '08, I had the privilege to interview Miguel de Icaza. He is the Vice President of the Developer Platform at Novell and does the Mono Project. Now what exactly is the Mono Project and why is it a big deal? It is an open source version of .Net that runs on Linux and they are even creating a version of Silverlight called moonlight.

And as always, we chat about what he thinks a student should do to get a job in the industry.

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Want a job? See what industry wants! Part 2 of 2 [Want a job? See what industry wants! Part 2 of 2]

Clint — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:00:00 GMT

During the Visual Studio 2008 installfest in Des Moines, Iowa, I managed to get some of the programmers to take a few minutes and tell me what they would like to see in students. You'll notice a few reoccurring themes that everyone wants in a new hire. I managed to get two Evangelists from Microsoft to also be part of the interview.

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Want a job? See what industry wants! Part 1 of 2 [Want a job? See what industry wants! Part 1 of 2]

Clint — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:33:00 GMT

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