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Who Wants To Be a Billionaire Coder?
theodp writes "Computerworld reports that 60-year-old billionaire John Sall still enjoys cranking out code as the chief architect of JMP ('John's Macintosh Project'), the less-profitable-but-more-fun software from SAS that's used primarily by research scientists, engineers, and Six Sigma manufacturing types. 'It's always been my job to be a statistical software developer,' explains SAS co-founder Sall. So if you didn't have to work — and had more money than George Lucas and Steven Spielberg — would you be like Sall and continue to program? And if so, what type of projects would you work on?"
PulseAudio.
I would work on open source alternatives to software which currently only has good commercial options. Anything which I didn't have the knowledge to work on myself (artwork, interface design, low level algorithms, security...), I would hire experts to work on.
I quit my 100 hour a week job and picked something a little bit less stressful. Now I'm only working 35 hours a week and don't program for a living. I live 5 minutes from work. I have plenty of time to do whatever I want including coding. I hate this attitude that you need to have more money that many small countries in order to do what you want. There are many routes to happiness. Programmers are supposed to be good problem solvers -- find a solution that works for you!
I don't know about what project I'd do, but yeah. I'd keep working for sure. Yes, sometimes it's a big pain, but ultimately there's just so much of not doing anything valuable that one can take. It's why a job where you go in and browse the internet for 8 hours totally suck. You need to do something. Might as well do something you know or you like.
Though, it would be nice just to take any job offered and not have to worry about how much it makes. Likewise, doing some community projects would be equally rewarding.
The man's 60, and the clock is ticking. The number of good years he has left could be 10 or 20, or it could be 1. If you could do anything you wanted, but were sure to die in a decade or two, would you really spend time programming computers? Programming can be fun, but there's more interesting things to do in life.
No, I would buy a nice, quiet island out in the middle of nowhere. And blow it up.
I've been programming for, like, uh.... about 27 or 28 years. Arguably longer if you wanna go back to really little kid stuff.
If I had that much money - was basically (if I wanted to be) in the leisure class - what I would like to believe about myself is that I would try to secure my family's material conditions really well, try to make as efficient as possible my wealth management program, and, as to hacking.....
There are *so many* really great and valuable potential projects that (a) nobody is investing in; (b) have an investment horizon that is tough because these are projects that will take a good 5 years, let's say, to get to where seeing a return is on the table. A good 10 years before you start to see the possibility of "done".
I would start an R&D lab but a very small one - perhaps 10 people - and while we'd try to have some positive income spin-offs each year from 0 onward, the goal would be to create the kind of environment where we can take off some of the bigger, long-neglected problems.
You kids these days don't know what's possible in a GUI framework. You don't know how to do language design, systems software generally, databases, file systems, or a whole lot of other basics. You've inherited really mediocre crap and you take for granted that that's where things are at. And the industry has ceased production of grey-beards. (Also: get off my lawn!)
"like tears in the rain", -t
If he does, he's one sick masochistic sonofabitch. Gawd, SAS is some nasty ass looking code. I once had to replace a SAS program with a much more efficient (and infinitely easier to read) COBOL program. Yes, you heard that right, C-O-B-O-L. COBOL kicks SAS's ass. BAM! Take that, John Sall!
Now, where'd I leave my beer...
No Jail For Pot
I retired eight years ago. I write code almost every day. Being ultimately lazy, I try to automate everything that I see. If it's a function that has to be performed more than once, and some aspect can be simplified with software, I write the code.
Most everything is for my own use, and not generally applicable. A few things are more broadly useful, and those I've released under the GPL. Even those only get a few hundred interested people with the same niche interests.
Some people are carpenters, and they work in their shops. Some people are artists, and they work with their medium. People that are really programmers must write code.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Sure, I would spend time programming my robotic sex slave OR my predator drone to hunt convicts I have brought to my private island OR my self aware blender to make me drinks.
It's every programmer's fantasy.
If I was financially independent, I'd probably be working on flight control systems for UAVs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I believe production engineering would be a natural next step, and from there implementing earth fortifying resources, and then social art and culture advancement, and than time machines, in no particular order.
Does this mean his code only probably runs correctly?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I am jobless at the moment, and the most difficult thing about that is keeping yourself busy. In today's crisis, job-searching isn't a full-time occupation, so there is plenty of time to do other things. The problem is: most of these things can be done tomorrow. So I really have to force myself to do them today. When you work, most of the time someone is waiting for the results of your labour, which is very motivating. So I'd rather work on than 'enjoy' my pension when I'm 65 and still healthy enough to work.
-- Cheers!
I'm a poor guy. I come home from the coal mines every night and write code for stress relief. As a billionaire, I might have trouble finding time for things like travel, dining, or whatever billionaires do. I'd rather write code in a dark room.
Of course I'd program if I didn't have to work for a living. I mean, I didn't get into this business because I thought it would be profitable. I got into it because it's want I enjoy doing. The fact that I happen to get paid fairly well for it is just bloody awesome, but if it wasn't profitable, I'd have some crappy day job I hate and would code in my spare time. Likewise, if I simply didn't need the money, then I wouldn't need the crappy day job, but I'd still code in my (much more significant) spare time — in addition to all the other things that I enjoy doing.
The tougher question is what projects I'd work on. I suppose I could do anything I want, so I'd probably do less useful coding. I'd build things that have already been built just because I want to see how I would do it. I'd build things that are silly just because the idea popped into my head. I'd probably start tons of projects that I'd never get around to finishing.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
>So if you didn't have to work....would you be like Sall and continue to program?
One aspect of programming that has gone unacknowledged (except in Extreme Programming) is that programming is inherently a social activity. Coding is both a form of authorship (which requires an audience) as well as a hobby (which requires collaborators).
Thus, to ask if I'll be coding in old age, is like asking if I'm going to be restoring old Chevy big-blocks. If I'm the only one doing it, then no. There are an infinite number of creative activities that can be performed alone, and all of them are equally tepid under that restriction.
Of course, the OP did not specify 'alone,' but I would say the rest of society has a lot of catching up to do before computer programmers can be considered anything other than the rarest breed. How many Hemingways were there? And did his books feature occlusion and specular highlight?
So where do I apply?
Familiar with XHTML strict, PHP, some Python and MS/DOS command-lvl.
Plus a buncha even older mainframe languages! Hey, big bucks there!
I expect the first $billion up front.
I guarantee results. Or (most of) your money back.
.
- aqk
F U
Money buys one the freedom to do what makes one happy.
Given effectively unlimited resources and time, I'd love to buy up the rights and source to the release version of Planetside, before SOE patched it into the dirt and released horrible expansions. Setup a free server with a generous population cap, and sponsor a few pro gamer teams (how hard could it be to find 100 high school gamers willing to play for minimum wage?) to keep the server active. Hire a small team of coders to help me debug what Sony should have, and tinker with whatever gameplay aspects seem promising.
It might be easy to screw up just like Sony did, (giant bipedal mechs?! how could it go wrong!) but then i could just dump the project and switch everything over to another forgotten video game. A modern X-Com remake or a Tribes2 MMO port could be interesting, and possibly even done right with no deadlines getting in the way
At my day job in the software industry, I often feel like a musician who has to make a living writing advertising jingles. At least I get do use my talent, but it's not what I'd create if I had complete freedom.
I often dream about having the freedom and unlimited time to code whatever I want, on my own schedule, to my own standards, without any concern about whether the product could make money or not. One lifetime would not be long enough to code all of the cool ideas which I'm constantly thinking up.
It's not as bad as YouTube. You weren't a spam bot 15 seconds ago, but let's double check..
And the captchas are inscrutable. Someone should write some automated software that can solve captchas for you.
I think that there's a big difference between loving your job, and loving your work. I quite enjoy coding, maintaining servers, and all sorts of things technical. In my last job (Sr SysAdmin position), I found that the days could fly by when I was engaged in a complex task, whether it was coding or re-optimizing a server. However, being woken up to fix a downed server (often because somebody uploaded improperly tested code etc) or having to continually cancel my weekend plans due to unforeseen "issues" really sucked.
My current job leaves me with a lot more free time, and isn't often as exciting as the last. With more free time, I have more time to work on learning/re-learning coding. I'd imagine if I had enough money to not need a "day job" I'd continue along the same path, although I'd probably be buying a few books, dev-kits, or course-hours as well.
For those that entered tech/coding, I'd imagine it would be a similar situation (it is for those I know). There are those who entered the market more the cash, or no longer like what they do, but there must be some who feel the same.
If I had a huge fortune I would continue to develop software, but I'd probably pay younger folks to code. After you've written a few zillion lines of code the practice becomes trivial and modern tools are just boring to use. It's the design and the creative aspects that really light me up these days. I think it is also wise for people to share their wealth with open source developers. A lot of these cats get very little reward for their work. I make it a point to click the PayPal donate button whenever I download something useful. If I had a billion quid I would donate a whole lot more to the open source community.
Would I continue to code? Of course, but I'd be quite happy to be back to more like my teenage years where I coded things because I simply had an idea, whether I felt the idea could pay bills or not.
'Nuff said.
If I had enough money that I didn't need to work, I'd spend my time working on my oft and long delayed AI project. My goal would be to create a benevolent AI so that humanity has a fighting chance against SkyNET.
OK, that last part was a lame joke but that's exactly what I'd do.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
... from my cold dead fingers.
If I were a billionaire, though, I wouldn't just be hacking visualization software -- I'd have an AI/quantum computing research lab.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
two chicks at the same time.
I'll tell you what I'll do if I had a billion dollars...two chicks at the same time...always wanted to do that, and I think with a billion dollars, I could pull that off.
'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come round right
'Tis the gift to be loved and that love to return,
'Tis the gift to be taught and a richer gift to learn,
And when we expect of others what we try to live each day,
Then we'll all live together and we'll all learn to say,
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come round right
'Tis the gift to have friends and a true friend to be,
'Tis the gift to think of others not to only think of "me",
And when we hear what others really think and really feel,
Then we'll all live together with a love that is real.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come round right
Sometimes it is of value to just push the stone a few feet forward for humanity. This man enables other people to advance their science and correct errors. Could there be any more valuable endeavor. I salute my friend.
I like what I do (programming) and have loved it since I first discovered computers in 1970. It has never grown old and I would enjoy continuing to do it even if I didn't have to.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If Sall is such an ace at programming, why are we still typing on our archaic pads of keys instead of walking around the internet in perfect virtual reality?
I feel you are deliberately misinterpreting the vision in my head: of an eternal glorious thing that could code people, Like many slashdotters I'm not.
Say what Hamlet?
A Billion super lotto scratchers and the important question is "To code or not to code?"
"Is there a pulse?" Great Dork from York!
Big blue balls for wee willy winky's tiny slinky? It comes to this?
Over achievers? Or just under developed?
No wonder they have so little...time...on their hands...
"Alas poor, (your dick) I knew him swell!"
You can do that without a billion dollars. Which goes to show you, there's nothing more useless than a billion dollars.
Now, 10 million dollars, that's PLENTY useful. All kinds of shit you can do with 10 million dollars. None of them worth doing more than once though.
But growing weed is free, and it will always be free.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I'd still do this stuff, but I'd focus on new platforms, new gadgets, expert systems, and other things that don't immediately make me a reliable salary but are fun and engaging to work on. Either that, or I'd get a degree in something more personally rewarding and go that route. No more working on some business app that has been done a hundred times over that I'm only developing because they figured it was cheaper to do in house, or they needed like 3 features they couldn't get elsewhere.
If I were him I would fix SAS. Seriously. It has a nice set of serious, I really mean *serious* statistical and numerical method and simulation packages but boy is it butt ugly. JCL ugly. Punch card ugly. You can still really see the punchcard/mainframe/JCL roots in the basic package roots of the sftware which is sad.
Why is it sad? It is sad because it causes people to reach for Excel which has some serious problems with it when used for statistical purposes. I esp. wouldn't rely on it for medical or any sort of life critical statistical functions, e.g. aeronautical.
reference:
http://www.graphpad.com/faq/viewfaq.cfm?faq=1406
And for large scale number crunching, there are easier to use FOSS packages to use such as R.
So basically, build on its strengths and entice in a new user base. Make it friendlier. Develop some depth of expertise and consulting I'm sure there are institutions who would pay for high end statisticians, programmers, mathematicians, etc. on the SAS payroll to do consult and come in to work for them.
But just fix the basic interface paradigm first and make it more accessible.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If you're a developer and you don't enjoy developing software you should do something else. If I had $2 mil (that would be enough) I'd be doing all sorts of dev projects! I've been doing this for 20 years and I wouldn't give it up for anything! I'd work on the blue sky projects - the ones that have huge potential and would take an eternity to do but the pay off for society would be huge, eg. decent AI.
I completely agree with you. The reason why I started coding 20 years ago, when I was 10 years old, had nothing to do with the fact that I thought I'd some day be able to make money out of it. I probably didn't even know you could do it as a profession. I'm so tired of hearing how some people got into this business just because it pays well. I think I can easily tell if a piece of code was written by someone that just did it for the money or by someone that truly liked what they were doing.
So yes, if I had all the money in the world, I'd still code. But on what project is another issue, probably on something in a company that I own.
What a nerd.
Have you seen his blog?
It's full of charts and graphs. Not ones like this. Real ones.
My page.
of the troupe
Sall or SAS?
He's 60 so maybe 20 years. SAS is a huge, expensive, and in these days anachronistic package - or rather big mess of packages. It really has not moved on from punch cards. How long has it got?
If he wanted to provide a legacy he could give some money to open source development - R could do a lot with a million, look what it does with pretty much nothing (www.r-project.org).
How expensive is SAS? Someone on the R mailing list asked about whether to use R or SAS for a web-based stats server. Someone commented that the last time he checked the price of a web-enabled SAS it was $25,000. R is free.
I had to use SAS once to get some data out of it. After two days I literally had nightmares about it. I was flying inside a huge warehouse full of SAS windows....
"Who Wants To Be a Billionaire Coder?" would be a good game show for computer geeks and nerds, especially if it was hosted by Regis Philbin.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
So if you didn't have to work -- and had more money than George Lucas and Steven Spielberg
You don't have to be reach to be able to do what you want. The idea of Basic Income is getting widespread support and the movement has been growing for some years. What if you didn't have to work? I have a flyer on my desk right now with the exact same question (in german).
Indeed, most of us would probably pursue their hobby projects, and find out that people are willing to pay for them. I make money with hobby stuff. Not enough for a living, but some here and some there. It's surprising what people are willing to pay for if they don't need every cent for the rent.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Even if there's a lot of R&D already done in chess, I'll try to improve them. And I 'll like to code about AI. I'm not rich, but I still code in my spare-time, for now I work on a chess variant ( Suicide chess), I hope to be able to solve the game.(see my progress on http://suicidechess.ca/ So if I'm richer than George Lucas, I'll try to solve chess.
I thought I would, but I found there is really a lot of good things to do out here in the world that capture my passion. I still love to code, but after working on statistical and scientific codes for years and then being forced to do Java plumbing sort of numbed my enthusiasm.
I had the opportunity to do something I would consider a 'dream job' for a couple of years. I was living at home, and accepted a job as a Martial Arts instructor, something I had been doing in my spare time for a while, anyway.
What I learned in the process is that when you take on your hobby as a job, you find that you end up doing a lot of work you wouldn't have originally considered fun. Teaching was great, and I'm proud of it. It could also be tiring. But sales, and accounting? You don't think of that when you accept a job at a martial arts school.
The same is true of open source projects. How many guys really want to run the entire project themselves -- writing documentation, offering customer support. Even when you're just a coder, you're eventually put in the position of taking on responsibilities that you might not want.
Personally, I like to work on cars. There's no way in hell I'd do it professionally.
Conversely... I'd like to be the billionaire, but I absolutely could not stand having an eternal weekend. I'd need pursuits. The money would free me to choose my own work, and hire people to do the stuff I wasn't particularly interested in.
Like, buying out MS and shutting it down. Just to see how company exec starts sweating who lived by the mantra "buy MS, they'll never go away".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I would do what I like most, do coke and code.
Don't recommend trying it though.
A home automation system with a voice and a personality. A whole home electronic butler, if you will. Think the computer from Star Trek or the "AI" systems from Jack McDevitt's novels. And yes, I have both a family and a life. :)
A lofty goal to be sure. I probably wouldn't make much of a dent in the field. But, if I didn't have to work for someone else, this is what I would work on.
Yes. Coding, and partying. With occastional vacations to nice spots like Thailand or Greece. Kind of like how I spent my 20's ;).
I would do visualization projects of various kinds - all with some heavy math component.
1) I would built my own computer platform - hardware, operating system and software that would be state of the art; a quantum leap in programmability, usability, reliability and performance.
2) try to solve the AI problem.
3) help alternative physics models research, cold fusion, antigravity, zero point energy etc
Me!
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I'll tell you what I'd do, man: program two chicks at the same time, man.
Yes, I would.
I would work on all the projects I don't have time for between 10-hour workdays and 24-hour take-care-of-the-children-make-sure-wife-is-happy life.
I would be busier than ever. And I would love every minute of it.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I'd build my own theme park. With blackjack and hookers.
In fact, forget the theme park.
I would only ask for a more succinct statement that sums it up as this.
As an end user of JMP, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for his ultra-cool program. There are times when you need to do something simple, such as graph X vs Y while color coding each point by Z. Try doing that in Excel, and experience frustration (it can be done with macros, but not elegantly). In JMP, such graphs are easily done using the COLOR BY function on the menu. So simple, yet so powerful. JMP is my favorite graphing program, even more than being my favorite stats program.
I'm an individual! Just like everyone else!
I'm in the position of not having to work, though I certainly don't have billions. I've found coding to still be fun. For example I worked on a Web site for dog rescue as a volunteer. I'd like to help with computer projects for environmental or wildlife groups. I completely agree with the post above that talks about needing to find purpose. I was surprised at how not working at something made me feel empty very quickly. I think most good coders are driven to create and its hard to lose that, even if its not actually programming in the end.
If you are a programmer and you call programming that you get paid for work, you are a Nerd.
If you are a programmer and you call programming that you get paid for fun, you are a Geek.
Nerds get paid better, Geeks get more chicks. In nature everything is balanced. I love to code, I think it's great to get paid for it and I'm humbled by such good fortune. I was a billionaire I would still code, hopefully on something useful.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I would work part-time, say 20 hours a week. That way I could keep programming and keep busy, but have more time to spend as I wish.
It would be cool to port apps to lesser-known operating systems that competed against Microsft and lost: OS/2, BeOS, etc. Would be nice to have a 64-bit version of DR-DOS (Digital Research DOS) that had true multitasking. I would also like to see 64-bit MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. :-D
Subject says all ... but wait a moment, that's not anything different, :-D
I don't program because I have to - I do it because I want to. Sure, I'm a professional programmer too, but that came second, and doesn't diminish my desire to also do it on my own time. I've been doing this as a hobby since 1978, professionally since 1982.
One of my other hobbies, and primary lifetime goal, is understanding how the brain works, and the two hobbies complement each other. My hobbyist programming nowadays is directed towards implementing an artificial human-level brain (necessarily embodied) that will learn for itself like a newborn child. I've been thinking about this, on and off, for 20-25 years, and began programming on it about 5 years ago.
...one of the perks of angling for one of 20 developer positions in the entire division, and having a buddy who was already in. He's pretty intense.
I'd go a little bit beyond the "billionaire coder" characterization, though. He and Goodnight started the company decades ago, and grew it to the giant that it is today. But at some point, Sall started spending more time on "his little project", and because of the way things grew, Goodnight couldn't make him stop. Goodnight continued to turn SAS into a juggernaut, and Sall was able to keep pushing JMP with the full backing of the company -- essentially, he ran a tiny boutique software house, with the resources to support a hundred-person sales force. In some sense, that's better than just being a billionaire coder.
I don't know what the personal relationship between Sall and Goodnight is like these days. I do know that Sall is a big contributor to Democratic causes and campaigns, and Goodnight is a big contributor to Republicans, at local, state and national levels. But Sall has the power to stay where he is, and he's obviously got the motivation, too. From the comments I've seen here and elsewhere, it seems like this is a good thing for the community of statistical-software users.
The article says he is chief architect. That's not really a coder, is it.
Despite the fact that I've been programming avidly since I unwrapped my big shiny C64 on my 5th birthday (I'm nearly 32 now), it only took me three jobs over two years in industry to realize that there was nothing I wanted to do less than work as a programmer.
I got turned onto CS research by an amazing professor who works in combinatorial design theory and combinatorial optimization during my undergrad studies, and now I'm hooked. I'm working on my PhD in CS and I get to work on the problems that I want to, make the hours that I like, and work from home. I can't think of a better setup. Furthermore, I get to use the technologies that I want, so I'm free to choose higher level programming languages (Python has made me love programming again after years of slowly growing to loathe the tedium of C/C++ and Java) and select open source alternatives when I want them. (Interestingly, when using CPLEX to find all solutions to an integer linear program, I was missing one - probably due to internal rounding of floating point arithmetic - but GLPK gave me the correct number of answers and was just as pleasant to work with, free, and I could use it at home.)
The pay is crap, but my happiness and job satisfaction has never been higher, and I don't care. I found when I was working in industry that I was so unhappy and unsatisfied with the long hours and unrewarding work that despite the fact that I was making an amazing living, I couldn't help but blow big chunks of my salary on material possessions that were ultimately unnecessary and not all that gratifying to justify what I was doing with my life and to artificially offset my dissatisfaction. Now that I'm loving my career choice, I find I no longer feel the need to surround myself with things to try to make myself feel good, and even though I'm earning less than a third of my previous salary, it's more than enough.
After my Master's and before my PhD, I toyed with the idea of going back to work for a couple years, but every job I applied for in the US, despite the great salary and benefits packages, required 50 hour work weeks. Life is way too short for 50 hour work weeks. There is no way I'm putting myself through that hell ever again. Why programmers take it is beyond me; very few other jobs have such requirements.
Let's ask Bill Gates when the last time he wrote code was.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods
because its like a miracle hobby - you do some stuff, in the end you create some stuff, and what you create actually DOES stuff. AND on top of that you can always modify what you have later, after you created it. that beats out all kinds of hobbies that are currently on the face of planet.
Read radical news here
you don't need a billion dollars to do nothing, man. just take a look at my cousin, he's broke, don't do shit.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Of course I'd still be coding. Instead of spending my time on projects that are more likely to produce a profit I'd spend all my time on more research based projects that are not likely to produce any profit anytime soon...or have a much more meaningful application to all of humanity instead of just a select few.
Just like in every field there are those of us that do this because we must put food on the table and we hate it...even if we love to code we may hate our boss or hate what mundane stuff they have us doing. If you can ignore the code monkey work and do things you find interesting then hopefully you'll never stop coding. Some people are made to do this stuff...just like a relative of mine that loves to carve wood...if it doesn't relax you or give you something in return then you're sure to find nothing of value in it.
For me, seeing a complex system I designed work in harmony just as I envisioned it in my head...is my gold little star for the day. Even after a decade of coding I still find myself looking for more complex systems to create that little spark in my head after everything is said and done. I hope when I'm 60...30 years from now...I'll still be able to find that spark at the end of a project. I think for most of us we have developed system far more complex than anything they maybe willing to allow us to do at our jobs...so you kinda need to have side projects that give you that outlet...otherwise you'll wind up hating your work. Most people though can't devote that much time to coding without going completely insane though!
So yeah, if I was made of money, I'd still be coding.
All my life I've enjoyed building things: blocks and legos as a child, chemistry in college, jewelry as a hobby in my 20's, wrenching on my car or my bicycles. When I got into programming in my early 30's it was the best thing that happened to me. Now I get *paid* to build things. I wouldn't want to give up something so satisfying just because I didn't need the money.
George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg and James Cameron are either all billionairres or close to it and they continue to do the thing that made them rich to begin with. I picture someone like John Carmack programming til the day he dies regardless of his net worth. I love to code...it's helped me to earn a pretty nice living and even when I come home at night after a long day of work I code little projects on the side. To me it's like painting or any other creative pursuit. I enjoy doing it and I don't see myself ever being to wealthy to want to stop doing it.
Any woman who had my children would get $1e6 for themselves and each child would get a $1e6 trust fund. The remaining money would fund a medical team that would receive $1e6 every year that I lived, but when I died my remaining estate would go to support Linux or stray cats or something. That way, the doctors would have an incentive to keep me alive as long as possible.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I used to think I enjoyed coding. I was working on a version of ports for Linux, but stopped, because every time I ever mentioned it to anyone, I immediately got screamed at about how supposedly retarded that was, and about how it was a waste of effort, and nobody would care, and apt/rpm had already solved that problem, etc. (Even though they haven't)
Although I will admit it; if I was a billionaire, I'd do a lot of things, but the very first thing I'd do would be to assemble a harem consisting of Faith Nelson, Rachel Aldana, Eden Mor, and maybe one or two other similarly built women, have them live with me, and actually breed them; not just have sex with them, but reproduce with all of them. The goal would be to produce as many other women with similar physical characteristics to them as possible, and then turn them loose upon the world. ;)
Yes, I'm a sick, sick, perverted, disgusting human being. Good thing I don't have virtually any money at all, isn't it? ;)
Sure! I am doing it now! Although I am not as rich as you imply that one must be... I am having good paid job that allows me to work only few hours a day to cover my expenses... And the rest is dedicated... wait... to programming of the project of my choice! Which is Web CMS written in XUL. :-) :-) Simply put. One does not need to be that rich to be able to afford the same comfort as the aforementioned people do! Sure, I don't have 4 Boings and 3 yachts and 7 financial advisers.... but still I get as big satisfaction from my project as they do. As my sister says: How much of a ham can you eat every day? If you are rich (very relative term) you can eat 0.5Kg of ham a day. If you are superrich, can you eat more? No, you cannot. So why to hassle to be superrich?
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
Seriously, let MS be as it is; a giant monolith trashpile of self-sterilizing plastic floating out in the middle of the ocean. Would you destroy Hell if you knew where the front gates were to enter? Corporations exist only on paper, but the people that use them for evil make themselves known in their association with a corporation to do things they wouldn't have otherwise done in their unlimited-liability given/true name. Corporations only live and die at the friction from another corporation out-competing it, and it's a shame that people would throw the pearls of a great name and style onto a corporation just to induce societal decay. We'll call that corporation United States and it will be implemented as an international chapter upon every estate that incorporates the Style to it's foundation as State of **; everyone we'll screw the life of will think they were just doing their civic duty in EXCHANGING funds with that corporation State of ** and in effect the **** Republic will just get a little weaker every year from so much push and pull being dedicated to State of **. Nobody will suspect a thing, and they'll waive their flags and salute, go to foreign countries and shoot their citizenry under a misconception of Title that never directly declared "war" and it'll drive stock prices wild! It'll be a great show, and all the problems we've had before with inhabitants and those nasty freemen using land for farm usage and non-associated work well we can just push our weight around every once in a while with a little justified trespass to take their property with only a mere accusation that the masses might think was politicaly justified to anyone that dabbles in herbal remedies or bigamy or firearms et al. We can't lose! Now all we need to do is go to the enimies of the **** Republic to ask them for help to do here as they did to their territories. Let's start at the United Nations and the European Union.
I don't think I would do much direct coding, but perhaps direct a paid employee or two to work on a pet project. For example, I believe the industry needs an open-source "GUI Browser" that allows one via markup to easily build internal and B-to-B biz apps with all the common widgets we expect from desktops such as trees (like Windows Explorer), combo boxes, editable data grids that support check-boxes, tabbed and MDI windowing, etc. Current browsers are meant for e-brochures, not C.R.U.D. screens, and force-fitting them has been ugly. It's a niche I want to itch.
Table-ized A.I.
I would work on and pay others to work on:
1) Artificial General Intelligence;
2) AI programmers;
3) automatic code refactoring and retargeting software;
4) Intelligence Augmentation via new software and systems.
5) Making lisp (or lisp like) language and environment so obviously and unquestionably superior and easy to use that no one would wish to use a lesser language. :)
...it takes away the things that make you unhappy.
I'd have a chance to do some of the projects I've put aside over my career.
[] AI research
[] Robotics (I did that at my third job and loved it)
[] Writing my very own full screen editor (reinventing a wheel, but it intrigues me)
[] Music notation software
[] A few device drivers (because writing assembler is hard, but great fun when it works)
What a blast that would be.
Duke Nukem Forever... (The Eternity Edition)
Your Moon, Your Mission, Get involved! http://www.openluna.org
I will invite you guys for a meeting where you can discuss and narrow down to 5-6 plans. #And then present it before me.
I've been coding since 1973 (jr. high school). I've written a lot of programs, including one that has been in constant use since 1991 (soon to be replaced, alas).
In all this time, all I've ever done is design software to count someone's beans (money). Nobody ever asked me "write a program to save the rain forest; write a program to help save the whales". (Ok, in junior high and high school we wrote computer games.)
If someone paid me to, I would, but all I've ever done is count other people's money.
So, in answer to the question posed here, I'd write a program to do something universally beneficial for mankind that did NOT involve counting money.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Yeah, I'd still code. I'd work on the code for BSG-like sexbot.
I would program just as much. But it would be all fun projects. Some would be useful like maybe contributing to Ruby/Rails projects. Others, would be for total fun. I would start my own gaming company but would focus on dead platforms (dead being a relative term). I would contract out art and music and code games for the Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari 8/16bit, etc. I wouldn't care if I made a profit or not. I would then give the games away for free via disk images. Some games would be released on cart or disk at my expense. That would rock.
Remember, licking doorknobs is illegal on other planets.
There's no need to be rich to work on what you enjoy. My preference is a sit-down security job that lets me code w/e I want to all night and day for a whopping $8/hr. I'm currently in the process of marrying Open-Inventor and Csound into a uber-cool FOSS 3d music sequencer. Check out "AudioCarver" on SourceForge.net some time (it's far from any kind of beta release --still working out the design--, but it may be use-able for some as-is).
Steve Wozniak doesn't wonder around in private jets or live in million dollar houses not because the evil Steve stole all his money, he simply doesn't care that much about money or luxury living.
He spends money&time to educating children http://www.woz.org/education/index.html
I have gotten to meet Jim Goodnight and John Sall on several occasions doing work on an application that SAS sells to schools to statistically help them track kids into different classes. They seem very happy doing what they do, particularly Sall.
GFA/M/S d-- s: a--- C++++ UBL++$ P+ L+++ !E- W++ N+ !o K- w--- !O !M !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP+ t+++ 5- X+ R tv@ b++ DI++++ D+ G
Wilderness policy analysis is what I'm doing, on my own,,, I'd use MySQL and R. I think the JMP is rich because it is exploitative.
I would spend my time and my money researching, creating and standardizing open media codecs. There should be enough prior art to invalidate many existing codec patents, but it takes time and money. Researching prior art, engineering workarounds, and persistent litigation might ensure that our children have access to the digital content we create today. A decade ago, my friend wrote poetry and saved it in Word. Now, he could only access it through Open Office. It's completely ridiculous that we save documents in a proprietary format and then lose the ability to retrieve the files. Paper has the grace to be read after hundreds of years--why doesn't code?
Step 1: Go to space Step 2: Start a free software company Step 3: Profit Step 4: Repeat!
probably a better, easier interface to control manufacturing machines like CNC, etc.
I would probably code in R, or bring back APL-360, the language developed by the late Dr. Ken Iverson, but with an upgrade different from the J language introduced by his son. ( http://www.jsoftware.com/ ).
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Since I continue to program even though I have to work, and in a non-programming job (though I occasionally find ways to bring programming into it), I can't imagine that I would program less if all the mandatory non-programming time was taken away.
I would try to elaborate something similar to:
echo "42"
I'd still keep programming, though certainly not 40 hours a week since I lose focus after about 5 or 6 hours of programming. I'd probably cook massive amounts - there are so many recipes I'd love to try but simply don't have the money for the ingredients, or they're incredibly time consuming.
Programming wise, what I'd really love to contribute to is either Linux driver development or to ReactOS. (And, if I were a billionaire, I could help back them financially when they became successful and Microsoft tried to sue them out of existence. )
It's turtles all the way down!
I remember in an interview of JC that he said he was feeling sorry about some good programmers who in their older age they quit programming and became software managers or something similar. Of course for people like JC, programming is something like reaching new frontiers, not just a regular boring job. I like such people in the industry who find a deeper meaning in their programming job. In the past I thought I would be programming till the end of times. But things change and recently I feel like the mid-life crisis is near. I adore people who can still program for fun and excel in their discipline at later age. Because it's harder for the rest of us.
The "H-Word" has died for me.