Tomorrow (December 20) we'll be at METU/Ankara

atilim · December 2012

Hi all,

Most probably there are only a few people in this forum living in Ankara. But anyway here is the announcement:

Tomorrow we'll be hosting Atilim and Deniz from Gideros Mobile to present us "How to develop Mobile games using Gideros Studio!" at our GATE 541 Course. It will at 18:00 in II Computer Lab (Informatics Institute). I would like to announce that it will be an open session for all GATE Instructors and Students.

see you there!

GregBUG · December 2012

:-((
shame that I live about 2145km away from Ankara!

1dot44mb · December 2012

If a webcast is available, i will be happy to attend from my office (As i am in Istanbul). And i am sure it will be great. Wish you success.

ar2rsawseen · December 2012

Just when I've tied up the announcement area, here you go and pollute it again.

Congrats!

But ...
What do you know about developing a mobile games? All you do is developing sophisticated framework, tools, platform and IDE. You don't do games

)

Kidding, you've probably have more experience than half of forum members here.

atilim · December 2012

) I always wanted to develop games but I can't because of endless feature requests.

Maybe I can develop games at nights after my day job. And I know somebody wrote an AdMob plugin. I can put some ads and make great money. So that I can leave my day job

atilim · December 2012

@1dot44mb I'll ask if webcast is available or not.

plamen · December 2012

@atilim: Are you saying you don't work at nights after your day job at the moment? @-)

ar2rsawseen · December 2012

@atilim I was laughing so hard, I couldn't type anymore

)

You now what they say: "Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week."

Scouser · December 2012

@Arturs: Been there, done that

1dot44mb · December 2012

It is about to start. Any webcasts possible?

Dikkesnoek · December 2012

Can you plan a session in The Netherlands?

Marc :-*

DRS · December 2012

Yes pretty please

gorkem · December 2012

Session was a success. They are coming back to Istanbul in 2 hours

OZApps · December 2012

I was looking up on METU which I think is called ODTU in Turkish is the equivalent of the best universities in a specific country. THE (Times Higher Education) ranks universities across the world based on the Research, the Papers published etc. I was surprised, (pleasantly of course) to know that METU is the Turkish Equivalent of MIT/Harvard (@Atilim is that analogy correct?) So we have a very good team of developers working on Gideros, practically the best. I believe Deniz is also from METU.

Happy Holidays and I am sure we all will find a lot of goodies in the coming year

GTG (Go Team Gideros)

gorkem · December 2012

Just FYI: Anyone should make roughly top 1000 to enter METU EEE & CENG departments during entrance exams (out of around 1.5M each year). Deniz is from METU EEE, and Atilim from CENG. One could say METU is best, but others might claim that universities like Bogazici or Bilkent are at least better. Matter of taste. I'm proud of my uni, too (again, METU).

Btw, I had the rank 13 out of 1.200.000 during entrance examinations (almost 19 years ago). I still solve some of the questions in my dreams that I couldnt that day. ~X(

1dot44mb · December 2012

METU is cool, and most of their EEE and CE graduates are clever and professional people.

Wow, congrats man, that's helluva good degree

I was 3600th nearly 10 years ago

mertocan · December 2012

I think , it doesn't matter which uni you studied. The matter is how much you improved yourself during you making degree. However , METU presents more facilities to students to improve themself. This is why succesful students chose METU.

OZApps · December 2012

One could say METU is best, but others might claim that universities like Bogazici or Bilkent are at least better.

I would not understand the differences between the different unis in Turkey. Another thing that I do understand is that mostly people prefer a uni that is closer to where they live or choose a university because it is the best. While in the world rakings, universities in US and UK are in the top followed by some European and Japanese unis. So everyone would have heard of Stanford, Harvard and MIT or Oxford and Cambridge but when it comes to unis in other countries, it is for the locals to know them better.

@metrocan, you are correct in the sense that what you make of yourself during the term of education is what matters, but it is very rare that students that make it to the top unis would not do good in life.

Since I used to teach at a local university in Australia, I was interested to know a bit more about METU/ODTU when it was mentioned and what I found was quite interesting.

plamen · December 2012

universities are overrated. self education driven by self motivation is far better. It makes people to keep reading and learning until the end of their life :-)

OZApps · December 2012

@planem, a lot of "old-timers" call it the "University of Hard Knocks", what life teaches them

1dot44mb · December 2012

Yes, university does not 'give' you experience of life or your profession. And what makes you a professional is your curiosity for your profession. If you are curious, you are probably going to end up learning most of the things about your profession when you graduate. University helps you find answers to your curiosities in a systematic and academic way (which is the best and shortest way to learn a topic).

Secondly if you have the inner motivation about how good your profession is, and how you are happy to be working on it, then you will have experience too. Which makes you almost a complete professional.

Let's come to our interest, software. I suggest you read how Joel Spolsky(CEO of StackExchange) makes job interviews: Just read it (if you didn't already, of course), and you will have great vision about software profession. Here:
The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html

Another two articles i want to share:
Advice For Computer Science College Students
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CollegeAdvice.html

This one motivates me to do something even if it is one line of code
Fire and Motion
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html

plamen · December 2012

OZApps: In 1993 I was 3rd year in university having classes about computers on IBM286 and just arrived 386 machines ... boring , boring, boring ... and after school i had a job at a CG production company working on 64bit RISC SGI platforms - interesting , interesting, interesting... the university didn't changed anything but the job for this company defined my life until this day. What can i say.

ar2rsawseen · December 2012

@plamen would you have gotten the job without university education in the first place?

I'm still a student and I'd say in university I have developed such skills, that I could not in real life. I did not know what coding/programming was before I went to university, and there I have completely changed the way I think, now I think more logically, systematically, I developed the skills to learn and adapt fast, and that reusing your (or other) work is one of the main efficiency sources (which I'm trying to preach by sharing my work).

Basically these are the years I would never want to trade for anything else, because everything I am or will become and everything I achieved come from these years in university.

plamen · December 2012

@ar2rsawseen: I got the job because of what i learned years before university. Its was very odd, and it was my first paid job. I was asked to do specific job with 24 hours deadline and no help from anyone, condition to get the job. It was a bit harsh but i guess it always is... In my case the only good thing i have from years in university is very strong math and physics base. Everything else was obsolete and inadequate for the real world. But this is the way that goes in my country. I know this is not the case in western schools.

1dot44mb · December 2012

@Arturs, i love the way you think about being a student.

OZApps · December 2012

I guess the Uni being not very useful is true with those that studied a couple of decades ago, there was no google and forums etc as there are today. My first job was also based on what I knew before I went to university, my degree at University was in MicroBiology and Chemistry, but I had been programming in Assembly (Z80) even before I went to university and no one at the university could really help as they had not had any exposure to Z80, however at the time there were a few "cutting edge" lecturers that were learning 8085 assembly but they were not up to speed.

Education has changed a lot since them, however in many places/countries it is still based more so on the parrot technique, read and reproduce word for word. Where as in other parts it is more about read and tell me what you think about it.

In either case, despite my first degree being totally unrelated saw me grow in the field of IT where as my MBA and MIT degree did not really help much. That's how it is. The days when college dropouts could make it big are nearly over, a good education is worth specially since there is so much more to learn, schools (not uni) are unable to teach math because of whatever reasons (easier syllabus, untrained teachers, etc -> based off the reports that can be found on schools and math) If you get onto the topic of English, that is another big stink hole, even in western countries (i.e. English Speaking) the levels of english are falling, many do not know the difference between then and than, your and you're, they think a person that cooks is a cooker and one that draws, a drawer.

So a good education is essential but what you can learn in life cannot be replaced, with the way things are now in 201x onwards, a 10 year old can set up a company and be the president and get funding in excess of millions for an idea/code. Universities are no longer just the place to learn, they have become a place for students to learn networking in real life (while most of their lives are virtual/online)

Just my $0.01, coz this is only half of what I had in mind

OZApps · December 2012

I'm still a student and I'd say in university I have developed such skills, that I could not in real life. I did not know what coding/programming was before I went to university, and there I have completely changed the way I think, now I think more logically, systematically, I developed the skills to learn and adapt fast, and that reusing your (or other) work is one of the main efficiency sources (which I'm trying to preach by sharing my work).

@Atrhurs, it all ultimately comes down to how good the faculty at the uni are and the peers. That is perhaps one of the reasons why a good university helps in shaping an individual than an average or not so good one does.

OZApps · December 2012

@Gorkem, what do you think of education and being a student. The word student generally bring to mind young blood, fresh out of school types. You just finished being a student (PhD) I enrolled for one but never got started as haven't yet seen the benefit of spending time on it and also because I haven't yet found a guide in the area of my interests that can actually help.

gorkem · December 2012

@Ozapps PhD is a costly process. You sometimes might end up remembered / mentioned as a person who's smart but not "getting things done" type. I'vent suffered this due to my market experience, however if I didn't have any, people could easily categorize me as having a PhD is sometimes seen as a showstopper when you work with a real customer in a real market.

PhD is simply good when you have time, money and required energy. It's good when you are young, and not working full-time. Only 4-6% of PhD candidates can have their certificates, this is a very low number compared to BS or MS degrees. I was the only one from my term who was working full-time and had a degree at the same time.

OZApps · December 2012

@Gorkem, agreed, the majority of the problem I have seen with some is they burn out (even as full time students) and some do not end up with results that they expected yet others are unable to defend their thesis. All in all it is an interesting journey and difficult for those that are at it full time, writing papers, presenting, etc I can only image how it might have been while working FT.

One of the reasons that I had to deffer was that I could not allocate resources (time mainly) for reading papers while handling my full time job. Plus I could not find a guide under whom I could start the PhD specially if I was interested in Path A and he went on suggesting Path B. However the first 3 months and the plan of action was quite logical and interesting and if I could manage it, I would have had a couple of publications by now.

Let's see I might attempt that again in the New Year...

ahmed · April 2013

hello,i read one of the comments that said it is really difficult to get in EEE deparment for turkish students so could anyone tell me about how much SAT score for international student would be a competitive score for admission in the department?

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

Top Posters

Tomorrow (December 20) we'll be at METU/Ankara

Comments

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

Categories

In this Discussion

Top Posters

Tomorrow (December 20) we'll be at METU/Ankara

Comments