As Graphic Art's student, I'm curious if there are any developers with art history here - what's your stories, and how do you apply your artistic knowledge and skills to IT work?
I have an art degree -- sculpture. I graduated, couldn't find good work, and went to a community college to learn programming. I wouldn't say my art background has much application to my current job.
Went to Academy of Art University in SF. Dropped out in 2011. Got a job as a Graphic Designer but switched it up and became a Software Engineer this last year. Honestly LOVE design, but not worth it to go to school. Same with Computer Science... everything is online for both of those disciplines and I wish it were for other disciplines as well.
There was another post about what you would do differently if you could and it would be more creativity but with a scientific twist to it, I don't know... maybe science fiction? Maybe teaching. Maybe sailing like those kids 'la vagabonde'. So inspiring.
The way I see it, school is like Ruby on Rails while learning yourself is like PHP. The first one gives you the current best practices while the latter is open for you to explore and most likely mess up in the beginning, especially when it comes to architecture.
Having a solid computer science base is not impossible to achieve without a degree, but it is pretty easy to tell when a system has been architected by somebody with masters or PhD in computer science as opposed to a self taught guy.
Disclaimer: I'm a mix of both, but no PhD here. I had to work with some and they were amazing for architecture, probably not so much for the practical side of things of doing commercial software.
I have a degree in studio art. My thesis was a mixed media triptych oil on canvas and digital art printed on canvas.
I started out as a graphic designer, moved into web design and then into programming.
My degree, and study of lithography, painting, sculpture, etching and more has made me the professional I am today. Studying art is all about the need for rigorous process and attention to detail in a creative workflow. This is what programming is. I have no doubt that my education and experience as an artist has improved my ability to think critically and solve problems as a programmer.
Attention to detail was definitely my number one gain from an art / creative background. Can't overstate the importance of a good critical eye for detail.
I'm a self taught designer / photographer / developer. Worked in design and photography for about 7 years before slowly transitioning into dev work. I feel like my background in design and photography has helped tremendously in my front end dev work, especially on freelance projects. Good aesthetic sense always stands out!
So not exactly what you're after but I studied Law at university and was surprised to find the way I could use those skills in a programming context. I wrote it up as I thought other people might be interested to see there are transferable skills from non-tech degree disciplines - https://hackernoon.com/how-studying-law-helped-me-with-progr...
I really like your stuff. I've also discovered a new film that I can watch: "Capture The Flag". Seems like a good film. I'm surprised that I knew nothing about it, even though I'm an avid film consumer. I guess marketing really is important.
It would be great if you could write a blog post of how you create one of your pieces from scratch. It doesn't have to go into every single detail. At least enough so that those of us that would like to imitate you can learn from you. Something like this would be useful [1]. It doesn't have to be a film tutorial, just a blog post would be enough. Thanks.
Sorry but I don't have time for something like that.. I guess general illustration and painting rules apply to matte painting as well. Realistic illumination, good perspective and nice composition.. Start from sketch and big strokes with no detail, keep refining and detailing later.. etc.
I have to ask this: When you watch the spanish "Capture the Flag" trailer (2014) on the website it seems to be based on a different story than the actual movie and trailer released in 2015. It's basically the same two kids and the grandpa flying to the moon. But in the movie they sneak into the rocket (at night). In the 2014 trailer it's actually daylight and it looks like they ended up there by accident (the bike). How did that happen? ;-)
I don't know what happened really, but normally to get financial partners and raise the large amount of money needed for doing an animated movie you prepare a kind of trailer or short clips to show and convince them, usually way before the script is finished, and probably not for the general public. I guess that in this case that "trailer" was good enough for showing as a first public teaser trailer, even if it was not entirely faithful to the final script.
This is the correct way to do it. Being taught art would kill one's creativity and dull one's ideas. Therefore study maths, physics, computer science and all those tech things that underpin true art, i.e. the new stuff made in new(er) mediums.
I graduated with a tech degree and was able to freely move around the broadcast television and animation world, with a huge amount of creative input because I understood the problem space and the underlying tools.
I also had the confidence to branch out from 'engineer' to 'creative professional' able to be earning money for the companies I worked for due to this creative/tech crossover skillset, an 'engineer' is an expense, not a revenue earner under normal circumstances.
If I had wanted to work on the shows I worked on but had taken a traditional approach to getting there, then I would have had to have done an eternity of 'runner' jobs or have been born with the 'right' parents for nepotism to do it for me. But I found the tech avenue to be wide open, back then it was SGI machines and none of the runners were clamouring to read the SGI manuals. It wasn't important for me to 'mix with the stars' but I did very much enjoy working with a lot of different specialists all at the top of their game.
BFA in illustration. Started off designing web sites, then moved to programming to make them dynamic. It seemed like a natural step. Now I work with some pretty large data sets and have gone back to school part time to study math and machine learning so I can get more out of them.
I didn't go to art school, but since my first invention was a new medium with new modes of expression that no one else understood like I did, I couldn't help myself making art with it despite my PhD being in physics. I had several solo gallery shows in New York City, pieces in museums and shown across the U.S. and some internationally, a couple big public pieces in Manhattan, and I taught a couple classes in art/design (at NYU's ITP and at Parsons).
Now that I teach and coach leadership (not IT work, so different than the question asked), I find art training tremendously valuable. Our educational system is strong on intellectually challenging people, but socially and emotionally teaches more passivity and compliance.
Creating art forces you to express your emotions, be sensitive to others', to face criticism on what you consider beautiful, to face vulnerabilities, to grow and learn in ways that lecture, problem sets, case studies, reading, and writing papers don't promote.
I also took some acting classes. Their structure has become the structure of how I teach, which gets very positive reviews from my students. They commonly comment that they never learned this way before, that they didn't know they could learn what they do in my courses, that they value it deeply, that it's immediately practical, and they wish they had more of it.
We teach fields that are active, social, expressive, emotional, and performance-based differently than academic subjects and that training teaches genuineness, authenticity, self-awareness, and other things that traditional academic education doesn't.
I have a BFA in Illustration. I worked as a graphic designer out of school and did the freelance thing for a while before settling into a full-time design job doing ads for porn sites. I picked up jQuery and taught myself programming fundamentals. Now I'm a senior full-stack engineer (no longer in porn).
My design background informs a lot of what I do now especially in the UI/UX realm. I feel that it's an asset and sets me apart from other devs who might have taken a more traditional path.
It was about a decade ago or so. I was finishing high school and contemplating studying graphic design or animation in a renowned school in my hometown (Les Gobelins, Paris). I befriended freshmen who were being sucked up into Flash animation trend and we started working for short-lived startups as Flash animators.
Then I discovered the works of Joshua Davis', Erik Natzke's, Robert Hodgin's (aka flight404) and it was the first epiphany — I started coding. It became a part-time job and a time-consuming intellectual pursuit up till now.
I knew nothing about it, but chose Fashion Design out of curiosity and because it's an interest I could share with my sister, but kept programming everyday. I never regretted it. In some way, it's very much like architecture (technical + philosophical + social impact). I even worked as a fashion designer for a short period right after, but it was not for me.
I learned HTML, CSS and PHP, then AS3, all thanks to the massive amount of literature available. I worked part time, paying part of my school tuition. When I graduated, I used my connections within the fashion industry to work as a Flash dev in a creative agency specialized in luxury brands.
Today I'm a full-stack web dev doing mostly JS, Python and studying Lispy dialects. I currently hold a position in an academic lab, where we blend design, research and engineering to study social sciences-related question within large data sets.
I'm studying math and algorithms to make a transition for the web to other scope of interest.
> I currently hold a position in an academic lab, where we blend design, research and engineering to study social sciences-related question within large data sets.
Sure! It's Sciences Po médialab, in Paris.
https://github.com/medialab (linking Github, as it's much more relevant than the actual site).
The tenets of the lab have (more or less) to do with exploring Gabriel Tarde's theories of "Actor-Network" and monads (nothing to do with FP, mind you).
One of the fundamental idea behind this being that everyone now generates traces on the web, and anthropologist/social sciences researchers may use them as a new "terrain" of research.
It was founded by anthropologist and philosopher Bruno Latour, and a group of engineers (who knew each other from school, where they were dabbling with programming for networks/exploration of the web early on).
By network, I mean graphs (math).
Projects usually involves triumvirates of designers (usually specializing in information, sometimes students/researchers themselves), engineers, and politics or social sciences academics. Often being two things at a time.
We have regular hackathon-like sessions called "datascapes" where we explore (sometimes, dormant) data sets, either from the web, or digitized (i.e. scanned historical archives, etc...) to make sense of it, and come up with relevant research questions.
(We also do boring stuff to pay the bills, so that we have enough freedom to work on project we like afterwards).
I took a lot of photo courses during college as well as some art history. The photo courses were great, learning about view camera operations and processing film, but more importantly were the critiques of your projects given by the professors and the other students. This feedback I used to develop my own photo portfolio and shaped my interest in fashion photography, which includes production details.
Actually, probably most useful were the presentation techniques, including matting & mounting techniques we had to learn to properly present photos as used by galleries. This translated directly to my web presentation techniques.
English degree with focus on "modernism/postmodernism" literature, literary criticism, and philosophy. University of Washington, Seattle, 2006.
I never expected to go back to school after high school because it was so boring. It wasn't traumatic, I had lots of friends and many good times and learned one or two things, but it was mostly just a poor use of time. And they made me wake up so damn early.
I got my first full time job in IT at 17 and had almost 5 years of experience (tech support -> jr. sysadmin/datacenter stuff) before taking my first sociology class on a whim with a friend, expecting to hate it. Much to my surprise, they treated me like an adult, and I had a great time. Seattle Central Community College was a very good school for me.
I got an AA in a 7 quarters (1 calendar year = 4 quarters, by the seasons, more or less...) and had a high enough GPA that I was automatically accepted into a BA program at UW in the math department. Shortly after, I switched to modular logic. Shortly after, I switched to philosophy. Shortly after, I switched to and settled on English, and spent almost 3 years completing it (while working part time) and took it pretty seriously. I did all of my homework and went to the vast majority of my classes and even took notes and went to office hours and study groups.
5 years of full time work in a 100% OSS datacenter/ISP (with root) left me with (significantly?) more skills than your average BA CS/CE grad (and having interviewed a lot of them, I am pretty confident in this). One big exception being algorithms and not as much programming experience. But I had a lot of practical "real-world day to day stuff" knowledge.
For that reason, I purposefully only took the one required "computer" credit I needed as part of my humanities degree. I was able to talk a nice CS teacher into letting me into a 3rd-year level Java class to improve my OO skills. I met none of the prereqs (like, not even remotely close), but within 10 minutes of talking to him in his office, he waived them all and let me take it. I think I got a 3.2.
The English dept. was great and I had a great advisor and so many great teachers and fellow classmates. I ended up taking mostly night classes because they had more adults and were a significantly more interesting group to me. I drifted toward English because "I like books" and, for some reason, really enjoyed reading all of those painful literary tomes and busting out all of the essays. So many essays. I did well and was dean's list almost every quarter. I stayed 2 quarters longer than I needed to, on purpose.
After graduating I immediately went back to IT and have been doing ops (OSS system/network engineering) ever since -- about 10 years of it. Still working on our own hardware in datacenters across the world, complimented by cloud services here and there. Stuff I was doing as a 12 year old (ie: minicom to talk to stuff via serial) is still stuff I do at least once or twice a year.
I mean, I guess I briefly looked into the job market that an English degree usually veers towards. Teaching? Writing? Journalism? Technical writing? Manage a bookstore? IDK. But realistically, since I was planning on staying in (expensive) Seattle, the choice to go back to IT-land was pretty obvious.
The last thing I'll say is, you'd be surprised how useful an English degree is in the IT world. I mean, English is basically taking this big pile of words, trying to make sense of it all, and then trying to use them to state interesting things about people or objects or whatever. Software, on the other hand, is often about sifting through a lot of documentation, working with a lot of different APIs and config syntaxes and databases and init systems and revision control and centralized configurations and dynamic scaled platforms. Then putting it all together into something useful for some developer for some company (ie: their platform!). Or something terrible -- like an ad server.
BFA in film and video production, and I've worked full time as a programmer for more than 20 years (game design and interactive educational software).
The greatest mistake people make about computer programming is that they believe it's an engineering discipline. It's not at all: It creative fine art - just like drawing or painting.
Hi, I'm very curious about how you made the transition. Mainly, what was your response to the interviewers' questions about your film degree on the CV when you are first making your transition. Did they just willingly accept you as a candidate without a CS degree? How did you convince them that you are the guy for the job? Thanks
I don't, but my co-founder does (VC backed startup). In many ways, he made me realize true design talent is one of the rarest and most valuable skills in tech, more than engineering. Everything we create looks awesome solely because of him, whether that's branding, marketing, web and web app design, or mobile UI. It's had a huge impact on our value as a company. This might be a relatively recent phenomenon, so timing seems really good for you and the field as a whole.
The downside for people in this field is that we need just one for a team of 25, whereas we have nearly 18 engineers. Competition could be fierce for these jobs, but I'll never start another company without a design co-founder.
Cannot agree more on design talent. In my experience, good back end developers (not just adequate, good) are a dime a dozen comparatively. Developers love to think that code is everything, but as many have learned, it's the business that matters. What makes the biggest difference often is the UX and design.
I'm a graphic design minor - it would be major, but after being rejected from my program, I decided to reevaluate my life instaed of reapplying for the program. That was one of the best decisions I've made.
I realized that it is more important to have width than depth in many circumstances. That is to say, knowing a little about a lot of things instead of knowing a lot about one thing.
For example, in my web dev work, I need to be able to cooperate with the graphic designers who provide the designs for the product to me. Being able to talk their language and understand the tools they use is tremendously helpful. I'm also able to apply the principles of visual design in my own projects instead of needing a designer to review all my work.
And I still try to do art on the side. After I changed my major, I took a printmaking class and discovered my favorite kind of art. I'm planning on doing more of that after I graduate.
Minor in art history undergrad, and BFA/MFA studio art. After moving to New York in 2000 I eventually realized that the people with the greatest autonomy and creative freedom were coders. I bought a Teach Yourself LAMP in 24 hours book. Probably the best decision I ever made was to stop trying to sell myself off as a designer (probably because I was not one) and selling myself off as a coder instead. My art background is related to my product (prefer to stay anon on this) and am happy with my decision to attend art school instead of studying computer science. Been self-employed seven years.
I have art degree in graphic design (visual communication).
After studies I was working very seriously, created a strong portfolio, was specializing in branding.
But design (and other types of (applied) arts) is very uncertain thing. In design for you 2+2=4, but for your client 2+2=7 and for the target audience 2+2=46. There are no objective criteria how to measure graphic design.
In programming 2+2=4.
Another bad thing about design is that non-designers are able to create design. Yes, their design is bad, but still they can do it by themselves.
In programming there is a big entrance barrier. That is why clients never DIY. That is why clients have bigger respect for programmers.
Before studying arts, I was in tech (when I was 11-14 years old). I did some linux, tried C++, web design etc.
Now I am 31. The last 3 years I'm mostly in development. Now I also do front end coding.
Arts can be very hard. Artists lack money, lack respect...
Yeah, you can do web design and get some decent money for it, but it is so mechanical and superficial. Once you learn it, there is nothing new to learn anymore. Just repeat the same. Follow some trends, that's it.
I like programming because there is a lot to learn. There will always be something new and exciting to learn. That's not the case with design.
Anyways, I really don't want to go back to graphic design and work with clients. But good that I got these skills. Now I can create an app (idea, design, development) completely on my own.
The concept of client's respect is rather interesting! And no other answers seemed to have mentioned it before yours. And I can only second that point.
When i was Designing i would consistently have to argue and haggle over pointless details that would make working just so tedious. Clients bossing you around because their favorite color is pink, and that they love gradients and wordart-like flowery designs, but wanting a corporate and trustworthy looking outcome.. When coding, really that changes, people start thinking you are a genius/mathematician/geek whatever else.. And to be honest, it's so not true, but that does feel great.
Yes, with regard to the respect angle, I can certainly corroborate the experience of the GP. Artists are treated like absolute crap. Not only are you constantly browbeaten by art directors (the people you work for) but you are also ground down by the people they work for--who know even less. It can be a very, very miserable work environment. Freelancers are a little more immune to this, but not completely.
The increase in respect and money that i was earning as even an entry-level developer was mind blowing to me. And since i enjoyed the actually act of coding so much, the choice was such an easy one to make.
Similar path here. I'd just add that visual design (and to a lesser extent, interaction design and ux design) is becoming commoditized due to common CSS libraries and patterns, WYSIWYG website building tools, more accessible design tools like Sketch, and a general convergence and consensus on best practices.
I switched to web development from product/digital design, then more recently to iOS development. I'm really glad I have a design background, especially with iOS/mobile where users have a higher experience bar, and where pretty much any interaction is not just achievable but easy.
Heather Miller, who is a very accomplished computer scientist, started her education studying art at the Cooper Union in NYC. Her personal site is http://heather.miller.am/
Her slides always look amazing. I can't comment on how else her artistic background has influenced her work.
I'm a developer and I studied history. Not art history, mind you, but I did take a course in medieval fresco paintings. I never really completed my degree, because I got too busy with a startup, but I got most way through.
I also took a shorter computer science degree. I'm only half joking when I say the skills I obtained studying history is more applicable in my work as a developer, than what I learned studying computer science.
I have a degree in painting. A couple of years after graduating, I decided that I needed a portfolio website. I had no money, so I figured I would try building it myself.
I knew literally nothing about code at this point. But I struggled through it with W3schools (this was 2011, before the fancy learning platforms). The hardest part was fighting my own lack of confidence, because I had been made to believe that I was artistic and therefore bad at math and science. I never realized until that point how deeply I had absorbed this idea. Pushing past it has been a marvelous experience.
Anyways, I realized that I really enjoyed writing code. The next year, in 2012, I started learning JavaScript. About a year and a half later, I met someone who got me a junior dev job at a startup in NYC. Been doing the startup thing ever since.
As far as applying my artistic knowledge to IT work, I'd say it's been a struggle to stop applying it. At first, my approach was very creative, and I quickly saw how disastrous that is when you're working in a team. I would catch myself trying to find some other way of solving a problem than my co-workers, because I didn't want to "copy" their work. Solving artistic problems means finding your own unique solution, but solving programming problems means almost the exact opposite.
There are other areas in which my creative side does come out though. I recently had a job where we had to reverse engineer a financial API that was not public. This sort of quasi-hacking is kind of perfect for creative people because it forces you to think outside the box.
I moved to an out of state university and began a 4 year comp-Sci program. Flunked out in year two due to partying. Moved back home, enrolled in community college and finished a fast track AA in Graphic Design. Then, a semiconductor company came to our town to recruit technicians. I tried out and aced all the tests. Now I'm a 16 year fab veteran, and I enjoy programming and graphics stuff in my time off. Weird path but I couldn't be happier with the results.
Regarding the impact of my art background on the job: im recognized as the team expert on making charts, visualizations, and documentation. I have been able to improve our processes by applying a clean visual approach to describe and document our work.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadThere was another post about what you would do differently if you could and it would be more creativity but with a scientific twist to it, I don't know... maybe science fiction? Maybe teaching. Maybe sailing like those kids 'la vagabonde'. So inspiring.
Having a solid computer science base is not impossible to achieve without a degree, but it is pretty easy to tell when a system has been architected by somebody with masters or PhD in computer science as opposed to a self taught guy.
Disclaimer: I'm a mix of both, but no PhD here. I had to work with some and they were amazing for architecture, probably not so much for the practical side of things of doing commercial software.
I started out as a graphic designer, moved into web design and then into programming.
My degree, and study of lithography, painting, sculpture, etching and more has made me the professional I am today. Studying art is all about the need for rigorous process and attention to detail in a creative workflow. This is what programming is. I have no doubt that my education and experience as an artist has improved my ability to think critically and solve problems as a programmer.
The funny part is that I have a computer engineering degree though..
It would be great if you could write a blog post of how you create one of your pieces from scratch. It doesn't have to go into every single detail. At least enough so that those of us that would like to imitate you can learn from you. Something like this would be useful [1]. It doesn't have to be a film tutorial, just a blog post would be enough. Thanks.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb4Jd_x3_jg
PS. If you know of any resources that you think would be very helpful to a beginner like me I would be very grateful if you shared them with us.
Sorry but I don't have time for something like that.. I guess general illustration and painting rules apply to matte painting as well. Realistic illumination, good perspective and nice composition.. Start from sketch and big strokes with no detail, keep refining and detailing later.. etc.
I don't know your level, but for general painting tips I love this old tutorial http://www.androidarts.com/art_tut.htm
For any specifics, don't hesitate to ask..
2014 spanish Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc0rUsUjIIo
2015 Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67YfSzkmDgw
I graduated with a tech degree and was able to freely move around the broadcast television and animation world, with a huge amount of creative input because I understood the problem space and the underlying tools.
I also had the confidence to branch out from 'engineer' to 'creative professional' able to be earning money for the companies I worked for due to this creative/tech crossover skillset, an 'engineer' is an expense, not a revenue earner under normal circumstances.
If I had wanted to work on the shows I worked on but had taken a traditional approach to getting there, then I would have had to have done an eternity of 'runner' jobs or have been born with the 'right' parents for nepotism to do it for me. But I found the tech avenue to be wide open, back then it was SGI machines and none of the runners were clamouring to read the SGI manuals. It wasn't important for me to 'mix with the stars' but I did very much enjoy working with a lot of different specialists all at the top of their game.
Now that I teach and coach leadership (not IT work, so different than the question asked), I find art training tremendously valuable. Our educational system is strong on intellectually challenging people, but socially and emotionally teaches more passivity and compliance.
Creating art forces you to express your emotions, be sensitive to others', to face criticism on what you consider beautiful, to face vulnerabilities, to grow and learn in ways that lecture, problem sets, case studies, reading, and writing papers don't promote.
I also took some acting classes. Their structure has become the structure of how I teach, which gets very positive reviews from my students. They commonly comment that they never learned this way before, that they didn't know they could learn what they do in my courses, that they value it deeply, that it's immediately practical, and they wish they had more of it.
We teach fields that are active, social, expressive, emotional, and performance-based differently than academic subjects and that training teaches genuineness, authenticity, self-awareness, and other things that traditional academic education doesn't.
My design background informs a lot of what I do now especially in the UI/UX realm. I feel that it's an asset and sets me apart from other devs who might have taken a more traditional path.
It was about a decade ago or so. I was finishing high school and contemplating studying graphic design or animation in a renowned school in my hometown (Les Gobelins, Paris). I befriended freshmen who were being sucked up into Flash animation trend and we started working for short-lived startups as Flash animators.
Then I discovered the works of Joshua Davis', Erik Natzke's, Robert Hodgin's (aka flight404) and it was the first epiphany — I started coding. It became a part-time job and a time-consuming intellectual pursuit up till now.
I knew nothing about it, but chose Fashion Design out of curiosity and because it's an interest I could share with my sister, but kept programming everyday. I never regretted it. In some way, it's very much like architecture (technical + philosophical + social impact). I even worked as a fashion designer for a short period right after, but it was not for me.
I learned HTML, CSS and PHP, then AS3, all thanks to the massive amount of literature available. I worked part time, paying part of my school tuition. When I graduated, I used my connections within the fashion industry to work as a Flash dev in a creative agency specialized in luxury brands.
Today I'm a full-stack web dev doing mostly JS, Python and studying Lispy dialects. I currently hold a position in an academic lab, where we blend design, research and engineering to study social sciences-related question within large data sets.
I'm studying math and algorithms to make a transition for the web to other scope of interest.
That sounds very interesting! Care to elaborate?
The tenets of the lab have (more or less) to do with exploring Gabriel Tarde's theories of "Actor-Network" and monads (nothing to do with FP, mind you). One of the fundamental idea behind this being that everyone now generates traces on the web, and anthropologist/social sciences researchers may use them as a new "terrain" of research.
It was founded by anthropologist and philosopher Bruno Latour, and a group of engineers (who knew each other from school, where they were dabbling with programming for networks/exploration of the web early on). By network, I mean graphs (math).
Projects usually involves triumvirates of designers (usually specializing in information, sometimes students/researchers themselves), engineers, and politics or social sciences academics. Often being two things at a time.
We have regular hackathon-like sessions called "datascapes" where we explore (sometimes, dormant) data sets, either from the web, or digitized (i.e. scanned historical archives, etc...) to make sense of it, and come up with relevant research questions.
(We also do boring stuff to pay the bills, so that we have enough freedom to work on project we like afterwards).
Actually, probably most useful were the presentation techniques, including matting & mounting techniques we had to learn to properly present photos as used by galleries. This translated directly to my web presentation techniques.
I never expected to go back to school after high school because it was so boring. It wasn't traumatic, I had lots of friends and many good times and learned one or two things, but it was mostly just a poor use of time. And they made me wake up so damn early.
I got my first full time job in IT at 17 and had almost 5 years of experience (tech support -> jr. sysadmin/datacenter stuff) before taking my first sociology class on a whim with a friend, expecting to hate it. Much to my surprise, they treated me like an adult, and I had a great time. Seattle Central Community College was a very good school for me.
I got an AA in a 7 quarters (1 calendar year = 4 quarters, by the seasons, more or less...) and had a high enough GPA that I was automatically accepted into a BA program at UW in the math department. Shortly after, I switched to modular logic. Shortly after, I switched to philosophy. Shortly after, I switched to and settled on English, and spent almost 3 years completing it (while working part time) and took it pretty seriously. I did all of my homework and went to the vast majority of my classes and even took notes and went to office hours and study groups.
5 years of full time work in a 100% OSS datacenter/ISP (with root) left me with (significantly?) more skills than your average BA CS/CE grad (and having interviewed a lot of them, I am pretty confident in this). One big exception being algorithms and not as much programming experience. But I had a lot of practical "real-world day to day stuff" knowledge.
For that reason, I purposefully only took the one required "computer" credit I needed as part of my humanities degree. I was able to talk a nice CS teacher into letting me into a 3rd-year level Java class to improve my OO skills. I met none of the prereqs (like, not even remotely close), but within 10 minutes of talking to him in his office, he waived them all and let me take it. I think I got a 3.2.
The English dept. was great and I had a great advisor and so many great teachers and fellow classmates. I ended up taking mostly night classes because they had more adults and were a significantly more interesting group to me. I drifted toward English because "I like books" and, for some reason, really enjoyed reading all of those painful literary tomes and busting out all of the essays. So many essays. I did well and was dean's list almost every quarter. I stayed 2 quarters longer than I needed to, on purpose.
After graduating I immediately went back to IT and have been doing ops (OSS system/network engineering) ever since -- about 10 years of it. Still working on our own hardware in datacenters across the world, complimented by cloud services here and there. Stuff I was doing as a 12 year old (ie: minicom to talk to stuff via serial) is still stuff I do at least once or twice a year.
I mean, I guess I briefly looked into the job market that an English degree usually veers towards. Teaching? Writing? Journalism? Technical writing? Manage a bookstore? IDK. But realistically, since I was planning on staying in (expensive) Seattle, the choice to go back to IT-land was pretty obvious.
The last thing I'll say is, you'd be surprised how useful an English degree is in the IT world. I mean, English is basically taking this big pile of words, trying to make sense of it all, and then trying to use them to state interesting things about people or objects or whatever. Software, on the other hand, is often about sifting through a lot of documentation, working with a lot of different APIs and config syntaxes and databases and init systems and revision control and centralized configurations and dynamic scaled platforms. Then putting it all together into something useful for some developer for some company (ie: their platform!). Or something terrible -- like an ad server.
No regrets wh...
The greatest mistake people make about computer programming is that they believe it's an engineering discipline. It's not at all: It creative fine art - just like drawing or painting.
I taught myself programming (C++) when I was 15 (1995). I made simple puzzle games on my Mac.
The internet got big and I got into HTML and JS.
I didn't go to college for Computer Science b/c it sounded like I'd end up wearing a white coat and working at IBM.
I went to Art School b/c it was the closest thing to programming. Programming and Art are the same in that you create something from nothing.
When coding became "cool" (2004 ish) I picked it up again.
The downside for people in this field is that we need just one for a team of 25, whereas we have nearly 18 engineers. Competition could be fierce for these jobs, but I'll never start another company without a design co-founder.
I realized that it is more important to have width than depth in many circumstances. That is to say, knowing a little about a lot of things instead of knowing a lot about one thing.
For example, in my web dev work, I need to be able to cooperate with the graphic designers who provide the designs for the product to me. Being able to talk their language and understand the tools they use is tremendously helpful. I'm also able to apply the principles of visual design in my own projects instead of needing a designer to review all my work.
And I still try to do art on the side. After I changed my major, I took a printmaking class and discovered my favorite kind of art. I'm planning on doing more of that after I graduate.
After studies I was working very seriously, created a strong portfolio, was specializing in branding.
But design (and other types of (applied) arts) is very uncertain thing. In design for you 2+2=4, but for your client 2+2=7 and for the target audience 2+2=46. There are no objective criteria how to measure graphic design.
In programming 2+2=4.
Another bad thing about design is that non-designers are able to create design. Yes, their design is bad, but still they can do it by themselves.
In programming there is a big entrance barrier. That is why clients never DIY. That is why clients have bigger respect for programmers.
Before studying arts, I was in tech (when I was 11-14 years old). I did some linux, tried C++, web design etc.
Now I am 31. The last 3 years I'm mostly in development. Now I also do front end coding.
Arts can be very hard. Artists lack money, lack respect...
Yeah, you can do web design and get some decent money for it, but it is so mechanical and superficial. Once you learn it, there is nothing new to learn anymore. Just repeat the same. Follow some trends, that's it.
I like programming because there is a lot to learn. There will always be something new and exciting to learn. That's not the case with design.
Anyways, I really don't want to go back to graphic design and work with clients. But good that I got these skills. Now I can create an app (idea, design, development) completely on my own.
The increase in respect and money that i was earning as even an entry-level developer was mind blowing to me. And since i enjoyed the actually act of coding so much, the choice was such an easy one to make.
Similar path here. I'd just add that visual design (and to a lesser extent, interaction design and ux design) is becoming commoditized due to common CSS libraries and patterns, WYSIWYG website building tools, more accessible design tools like Sketch, and a general convergence and consensus on best practices.
I switched to web development from product/digital design, then more recently to iOS development. I'm really glad I have a design background, especially with iOS/mobile where users have a higher experience bar, and where pretty much any interaction is not just achievable but easy.
Her slides always look amazing. I can't comment on how else her artistic background has influenced her work.
I also took a shorter computer science degree. I'm only half joking when I say the skills I obtained studying history is more applicable in my work as a developer, than what I learned studying computer science.
I knew literally nothing about code at this point. But I struggled through it with W3schools (this was 2011, before the fancy learning platforms). The hardest part was fighting my own lack of confidence, because I had been made to believe that I was artistic and therefore bad at math and science. I never realized until that point how deeply I had absorbed this idea. Pushing past it has been a marvelous experience.
Anyways, I realized that I really enjoyed writing code. The next year, in 2012, I started learning JavaScript. About a year and a half later, I met someone who got me a junior dev job at a startup in NYC. Been doing the startup thing ever since.
As far as applying my artistic knowledge to IT work, I'd say it's been a struggle to stop applying it. At first, my approach was very creative, and I quickly saw how disastrous that is when you're working in a team. I would catch myself trying to find some other way of solving a problem than my co-workers, because I didn't want to "copy" their work. Solving artistic problems means finding your own unique solution, but solving programming problems means almost the exact opposite.
There are other areas in which my creative side does come out though. I recently had a job where we had to reverse engineer a financial API that was not public. This sort of quasi-hacking is kind of perfect for creative people because it forces you to think outside the box.
Regarding the impact of my art background on the job: im recognized as the team expert on making charts, visualizations, and documentation. I have been able to improve our processes by applying a clean visual approach to describe and document our work.