I wasn't really ever referring to pure academic skill.
I have some graphics programming experience outside of a professional context, and I can say you're not going to get stuff to work by blindly copying other people's code in any complex, new, and non-trivial situation. You've got to understand what's going on to at least some degree. You'll never get the top graphics jobs by copying code; you'll very quickly be identified as someone who doesn't really know what he's doing.
With that said, anybody who's truly got the math and programming know-how for this stuff will be able to easily put together demos. A demo is not a self-published indie title. These are two totally different things. If you've got a new terrain LOD algorithm, for instance, you definitely do not need to build an entire published and profitable game to show that off to the world.
I have some graphics programming experience outside of a professional context, and I can say you're not going to get stuff to work by blindly copying other people's code in any complex, new, and non-trivial situation. You've got to understand what's going on to at least some degree. You'll never get the top graphics jobs by copying code; you'll very quickly be identified as someone who doesn't really know what he's doing.
With that said, anybody who's truly got the math and programming know-how for this stuff will be able to easily put together demos. A demo is not a self-published indie title. These are two totally different things. If you've got a new terrain LOD algorithm, for instance, you definitely do not need to build an entire published and profitable game to show that off to the world.