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The importance of admitting what you don't know

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them." - Albert Einstein

"I know that I know nothing" - Socrates

Two of the smartest men to ever live, Albert Einstein and Socrates (actual existence may be debatable). They both hit on a very important concept:  we are human and we have limits. It's important to know what you know, but I feel it's more important to identify what you don't know. Stealing from Einstein, once we identify our limits we can then work some way towards going beyond them. Maybe you end up having to bring external help, or even better you end up having to research the topic yourself.

Not only should you research, but try to apply it in some way. Find a way to use it. It helps get it into your head. In my case, I just get hungry for more. 

I'm not afraid to accept the fact that someone knows more than I do. There are plenty of people that know more than I do. There are plenty of things I know more about than others. It's a great opportunity to learn and teach. Learn from those that know more, and teach those that know less.

I'm extremely green in anything game programming. I like doing my research, so naturally I researched an issue that seems controversial based on some other readings I've done regarding game dev. On my walk home from work I read this article. I was researching C vs C++ game development. I'm one of the new kids on the block, so I didn't even know the real arguements on this battlefront. That article covered most of those. It is also spurring a little discussion with my partner in development crime, Mr. Bond.

I think that I really argee with the article. I may be biased because of my experience with C++, but using C++ as the engine seems like a good idea. Abstraction is good because it's good to let the magic happen in the background. Just know how to use the libraries that you need. Do I really need to know the deep down data? Probably not. Keeping me from screwing up the engine is probably a smart thing to do. I'm human, I'm going to make errors. Let the smarter people handle the other stuff.

Last night, before going to bed, I decided to look into Lua. At first glance, it felt very comfortable. It reminded me a little of Ruby, Perl, PHP, etc... I was excited to play around with it. It was an easy setup, and it was easy to get a "Hello, world!" going; print("Hello, World!"). Woohoo! Anyway... looking through a tutorial and some of the code documentation showed helped me see what the article was talking about. Screw having to do garbage collection. I can set my variable to nil? SWEET!

Will I necessarily use this now? No, not necessarily, but I'm slightly more knowledgable about game dev. That's what's important. I need to keep pushing myself. Find those boundaries, then take a jackhammer to them.

One last quote: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." - Albert Einstein

I am Boris

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