Chris Hecker

Depends on what you want to learn about, a degree in astrophysics or aeronautial engineering prepares you for many different possible jobs. I'm in a somewhat similar situation, maybe this will help:

(DISCLAIMER: I am not an aerospace engineer by training)

Calculus:

You'll definitely need to be very comfortable with single variable calculus and vector calculus up to partial derivatives, vector calculus integrals (Green, Stokes, Gauss) will definitely help. I wouldn't learn that from a book, try MIT's OCW, there is a calculus course covering all that. Learn the basic about ODEs, and be comfortable around PDE notation.

Linear Algebra:

In some sub-disciplines such as control and signal processing you'll also need to be very comfortable with linear algebra, so that all those matrices and stuff don't get in the way when learning modern control/DSP. I definitely recommend Prof. Strang's course in OCW for this. Try to at least be comfortable with simple ODEs before starting it. Linear algebra also helps a lot with Physics.

To get more into lineal algebra maybe you can read Linear Algebra Done Right if you want to learn more about Hilbert Spaces, and then maybe Shilov for tensors... those two books should be optional...

Software:

You don't need to be fast or maybe even know how to solve complex integrals in pen and paper. Try to complement learning calculus, differential equations and linear algebra with learning Matlab/Simulink and Mathematica. I can't even find a word to…

>>book or a tool that will help you to learn better and become

I've tried that before, many times. Unfortunately when you are trying to do real work those books are many times useless. Example, I kept trying to build a newtonian physics simulator so I got a Statics and Dynamics mechanical engineering book. The book was a text book for Mechanical engineering students and yet the examples they teach you are for toy problems. I could not generalize them to real world scenarios. To actually build the physics simulator I had to scour the internet until I found something that actually explained what I needed in an easy to understand manner [1]. And that still was not enough. I still had to use more online sources to find out all the other pieces, like the separating axes theorem for collision detection.

So no, I would not rely on books anymore, at least not exclusively since they often do not provide a full picture. One last thing, books seem to be getting progressively worse in my experience. All of this is anecdotal of course.

[1]http://chrishecker.com/Rigid_Body_Dynamics

Reminded me of this classic:

>A group of friends and I used to do dramatic readings of the About the Author text from the Mathematica Book, which begins thusly:

>About the Author

>Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica and is widely regarded as the most important innovator in scientific and technical computing today.

>The guy wrote that himself.

>Wait, while searching for that, I see he updated it slightly in later versions:

>About the Author

>Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, and a well-known scientist. He is widely regarded as the most important innovator in technical computing today, as well as one of the world's most original research scientists.

>I guess the original didn't fully express the boundless expanse of his awesomeness.

>"Does anyone want to bet as to which will gain self-awareness first: Wolfram Alpha or Wolfram, Stephen?"

http://chrishecker.com/Kurt_G%C3%B6del_is_Laughing_His_Ass_Off_Right_Now

I never worked for EA, but I know people.

1993 EA has nothing to do with EA from 1996 onwards...

EA screwed Origin (that then they already owned, just read stuff about development of Ultima 8 and 9... there are lots of documents about how executive meddling made U8 a meh game, and U9 a totally ruined game), then bought and ruined Westwood, and so on.

Also as the time passed they got more and more problems with employees. Then we had crazy shit, like when EA closed a studio in LA, and people found out that the studio had more middle managers than grunts, and this is why the studio could not decide what to do, it simply had so much people giving orders and so few people doing, that doing stuff was impossible.

The EA that wrote this: http://chrishecker.com/Can_a_Computer_Make_You_Cry%3F doesn't exist anymore.

And the reason for this is because back in the day, in 2003, Microsoft ran a Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt (FUD for short) campaign mostly based on false claims, such as that OpenGL would be put behind a compatibility layer with a significant performance cost. Simultaneously, Microsoft left the OpenGL Architecture Review Board giving a strong signal they were not supporting OpenGL anymore. Everyone freaked out and moved to Direct3D.

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX

http://chrishecker.com/images/3/33/Gdmogl.pdf

Despite the technical differences, if you think this is morable acceptable, by all means do you all your development on Windows. Allow someone else to build a monopoly with no real gain for you.

Start here. Work through all 5 parts. http://chrishecker.com/Miscellaneous_Technical_Articles

You'll have to implement each part yourself to understand them. It's not something that can be skimmed. But it's so worth it.

After that, most of the mystery of graphics will be gone. (But not the thrill.)

One of the most frustrating aspects of learning graphics programming was that most resources immediately start talking about theory. Partial derivatives of uv's and xy's, gradient values and mipmap selection, and you're just trying to draw a damn picture on a triangle. Learning from working code and implementing it yourself is a better teacher.