Video Game Skills

One of the biggest motivators for me getting into programming was my interest in video games. I've had an affinity for all things computer related, but I had a true passion for computer games through my entire childhood.

I like to joke that the one time that all of my gaming became a viable job skill was operating high speed video equipment for my previous job. On some of the tests I had a half a second margin of error to press the button, no automatic trigger, and no reliable countdown. I had less than a 1% miss rate when I was working the camera trigger.

I recently replayed Megaman X2 on virtual console and it reminded me of the other very useful skill that gaming has helped me hone: Pattern Recognition. One of my favorite things to do when playing a game is to figure out how the system works. I enjoy not just beating the game, but trying to see how it ticks. It's a much more fun version of the same problem solving that goes into debugging code, look at how it runs, see when it's doing something you don't want it to, find out how to stop it or work around it, repeat.