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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?"
No, I would buy a nice, quiet island out in the middle of nowhere. And blow it up.
It's every programmer's fantasy.
Does this mean his code only probably runs correctly?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You should definitely work on the Linux kernel then.
Lots of polite discussion with people of similar interests.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
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Something so easy? With all that time and money, I would expect you to take on an challenge of Olympian difficulty.
Me, I'd offer to fix Slashdot's CSS.
(in before "web design isn't programming")
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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I don't enjoy coding all that much but, there is a great deal of problem solving, expressive creativity in the solutions, intense neural stimulation and satisfaction from a well crafted application. Whilst I would not make it my happy, I certainly wouldn't make a blanket statement that it is undesirable. Things are would rate coding far above in terms of qualitative life experience and contributing to society.
Sticking my penis non-reproductively inside as many people as possible.
Aimless global travel, pretending I'm someone special and, deserve to be waited on hand and foot.
Excessive drug abuse, both legal and illegal.
Politics as a satisfaction of ego.
Strutting around with a charitable foundation that only gives away the absolute legal minimum to sustain it's legal status each year.
I admit I really enjoy learning and using new software applications from games, to office suites, CAD, graphics, databases etc. thanks to all those open source coders who enjoy coding and the value it brings to society and sincerely thank you very much indeed.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I'd build my own theme park. With blackjack and hookers.
In fact, forget the theme park.