With the wide adoption of WebGL, it's a good time to get involved in graphics. Furthermore, GPUs are taking over esp. with the advent of machine learning (nvidia stock grew ~3x, amd ~5x last year). The stuff nvidia has been recently doing is kinda crazy. I wouldn't be surprised if in 15 years, instead of AWS, we are using geforce cloud or smth, just because nvidia will have an easier time building a cloud offering than amazon will have building a gpu.
These are some good resources to get started with graphics/games
# WebGL Programming Guide: Interactive 3D Graphics Programming with WebGL
Historically, C++ has definitely been THE language for doing graphics but if you are starting these these, you would have to have really compelling reasons to start with C++ and not JavaScript and WebGL. And that's coming from someone who actually likes C++ and used to write it professionally.
This is more of college textbook if you'd prefer that but the WebGL one is more accessible and less dry.
# Physically Based Rendering & Real-Time Rendering
These discuss some state of the art techniques in computer graphics. I'm not going to claim to have really read them but from what I've seen they are very solid.
https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dfGzS (or basically anything on that site)
How is that 400 lines of code.
Or this one which even generates the sound on the GPU
https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ts3z2
With the wide adoption of WebGL, it's a good time to get involved in graphics. Furthermore, GPUs are taking over esp. with the advent of machine learning (nvidia stock grew ~3x, amd ~5x last year). The stuff nvidia has been recently doing is kinda crazy. I wouldn't be surprised if in 15 years, instead of AWS, we are using geforce cloud or smth, just because nvidia will have an easier time building a cloud offering than amazon will have building a gpu.
These are some good resources to get started with graphics/games
# WebGL Programming Guide: Interactive 3D Graphics Programming with WebGL
https://www.amazon.com/WebGL-Programming-Guide-Interactive-G...
Historically, C++ has definitely been THE language for doing graphics but if you are starting these these, you would have to have really compelling reasons to start with C++ and not JavaScript and WebGL. And that's coming from someone who actually likes C++ and used to write it professionally.
# Book of Shaders
https://thebookofshaders.com/
# Game Programming Patterns
http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html
https://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Patterns-Robert-Nyst...
HN's own @munificent wrote a book discussing the most important design patterns in game design. Good book applicable beyond games.
# Game engine architecture
https://www.amazon.com/Engine-Architecture-Second-Jason-Greg...
# Computer graphics: Principles and Practice
https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice...
This is more of college textbook if you'd prefer that but the WebGL one is more accessible and less dry.
# Physically Based Rendering & Real-Time Rendering
These discuss some state of the art techniques in computer graphics. I'm not going to claim to have really read them but from what I've seen they are very solid.
https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice...
https://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-Rendering-Third-Impl...