I gave a talk at Becker last night on tools in the game industry, which I called "Tools of the Trade." The talk and its slides are available here, and the entire talk should be in the slide notes. Generally, I'm pretty happy with the talk itself, though if I had to give it again there are a few things I would change, including removing some of the LOLCats. In addition, I think some of the points that I make about the problems with debugging tools actually applies to all tools, but in an attempt to split the talk into three nice sections, I ended up muddling things up a bit.
What I really hope is that the students actually got something from the talk. I'm afraid some of it may have actually gone over their heads, and portions of the talk may need simplification or better explanation. Hopefully they did get something out of it (and if any Becker students have decided to read my blog, I'd love to hear your thoughts!)
I was one of the students that was at your lecture the other day at Becker. I would like to comment on that fact that yes a lot of it did go over my head but I’m also a freshman, so that doesn’t help. What I did take from your lecture is how important time is, not only how to manage it, but how to increase time efficiency by reducing the number of problems that can occur or the time these problem can take up. I have made very few games and done a little coding, but i can already see where problems can occur and i would like to thank you for the tips you gave on how to avoid problems.