…anymore. Specifically, I’m not teaching the game programming course again this autumn, as I had hoped. I was interested to do it, but Mohawk was a bit tight on funding for sessional instructors this year, so one of the regular professors took over.
It is unfortunate for me, as I had a number of ideas for improving the course and my framework that I wanted to try. On the other hand, it means I still have my free time—teaching required me to go to Mohawk twice a week for 4 hours in total (and transportation and preparation time on top of that) while still maintaining full hours at my primary job at Mac, which was draining. Not that I’m making much productive use of my free time, but still… it’s nice to have.
I think this may be the last time this course is taught at Mohawk, at least using the current platform (OpenGL via C++). I know that Mohawk is restructuring its Software Engineering program (for one thing I believe it’s going to be renamed to “Software Development” which is just as well; I don’t think we had much actual engineering discipline taught) and as part of that C++ is being phased out. Depending on when that happens (or happened) this course may yet be taught once more, but once only. After that, it will either have to change (perhaps to C#/XNA?) or be retired.
Incidentally, I taught Assembly Language the previous year and that too was phased out. I’m not sure if these changes are good or not. Although I feel C++ and even Assembly are important and worthwhile to learn (and I’m sure quality university programs will continue to teach them), Mohawk is focused very much on catering to the broad needs of Industry, and getting their graduates jobs. And the bulk of the jobs these days seem to be in Java or C#, and typically on a web platform. So perhaps overall it is the correct direction for the college.
