My point is that the average programmers did not have the business connections and the financial comfort to miss out out on a few pay checks in order to MAYBE make some money on a contract with what was essentially a toy at the time. I'm not arguing that he had great business sense, but I am arguing that business sense is not the same thing as coding ability.
Any decent 3rd year undergrad could write a BASIC interpreter. It was more of a pain in the ass back then since computer time was hard to come by, and code needed to be optimized more, but it was no more intellectually challenging then than it is today.
You'll notice on all those charts that we American's get our asses handed to us by northern Europe. House size is more an indicator of how much debt we're willing to take on (many people willing to pay over 50% of their income for a home now). Then factor in universal health care, minimum of 3-5 weeks vacation per year, and working condiditions that have actually improved since the early 1900s. Our empire is over, friend. And all the nationalism in the world won't improve our roads, our schools, our economy, or our life expectancy.
He was doing well, and that's exactly my point. It's tough to risk your entire business, your reputation, and your family's well-being when you don't have something to fall back on. Gates had a family fortune. Nothing compared to what he has now, but enough that the consequences of failure were much less dire than they would be for me, or most other programmers out there.
I could probably start a successful company even today, but I can't afford the risk.
I'm not upset that it's not fair. Nothing is. I'm better off than many, so its not a "poor me" thing. But please, please stop acting like Bill Gates got where he is today purely on his uber-leet coding skills. He was a mediocre coder and a great opportunist.
Most programmers at that time were happy to keep working for large institutions or corporate giants. Imagine where the PC industry would be today if Woz had decided it was easier to just keep working at HP? Or if Jobs had not been persuasive enough to get venture capital?
Most programmers at the time (and at this time, too), didn't have a trust fund to fall back on if their business venture failed.
Wait, so you're saying full C compiler implementation is approximately equivalent to a BASIC interpreter? I implemented more features than BASIC supports, and in compiler form rather than the much easier interpreter form. The only difference in BG's favor is a.) he did his in assembly, whereas I did mine in C, and b.) he did it before I was born.
I had a prof in college who wrote a basic interpreter back in the 70s too. The difference? He didn't market it. BG was nothing special as far as coders go.
So what you're saying is that we're not getting poorer, just that the rate at which our increase in wealth is negative in terms of the overall wealth of the country? Seriously, you posted a link which shows that the wealthy are becoming super-wealthy, and the middle class have not improved significantly in wealth since 1979. Given the technological advances in that period of time, that would be like having the middle class of medieval Europe not have any improvement until the Industrial age. Which, actually, is the case.
all the hard (and cool) stuff has already been done
, then you are not as good a programmer as you think you are.
If you're so brilliant, you would see the problems that are out there waiting to be solved, or have crappy solutions and need better solutions, or have solutions but need implementation.
There's more to being a great programmer than just knowing how to write printf or whatever.
I never said I was brialliant, just that I'm probably a better coder than BG ever was. Don't infer more than is implied.
As for the problems out there that need solving... Not very many of them are very interesting, at least not the ones that don't also require a PhD level mathematics education. Sorry, but web-based programming (at whatever level in the chain, from the web OS all the way down to the PHP code monkey) is just not that interesting, and that's about the only place you can make a living working in the programming field these days. It's like mainframes all over again.
No, but I wrote a C-subset compiler that used less memory than that. I have no doubt I *could* write an interpreter specced to 64KB memory, but what would be the point?
I'd argue that there are more of them than you think.. It's just that all the hard (and cool) stuff has already been done. So the guy who 30 years ago might have developed the first viable JIT compiler is now working on some esoteric feature of some esoteric codebase that you've probably never heard of. There's a lot more programmers now than there were when those guys got their start,
And for the record, I'm probably a better coder than Bill Gates ever was (as for a business-man, not so much).
It is Vista. It's built from the same source tree. The Aero user interface is a bolt-on feature that you can turn off if you don't like it. Server 2003 was built from the same source tree as Windows XP (or at least started there before branching). Server 2008 R2 is built from the same source tree as Windows 7 (which begs the question, why aren't they changing the version name). That's just how it is.
Then the person who is tied to the phone needs to listen to a recording of himself talking on the phone (local end only) while trying to do intermediate calculus.
The only smart thing you said is that pay is not your primary motivator for an internship. I made very little as an intern, but if it were not for my wife and my son, I would gladly go back to the same pay for the work I was doing.
Though before you think about acting on that, you should know that it sounds like you're getting a really raw deal. At my position, I started at $10/hour in 2004 ($12 in 2005), and I got to do some really fun projects. The entire time I was there, I would work about 3 hours a day on reverse-engineering obscure file compression formats and write emulators (all work related). The rest of the day was spent playing video games. And I took paid lunches. It might sound like I was a bad employee, but they were glad to have me because I saved the company $200k/year in perpetuity. I probably got a raw deal on the pay, but I didn't mind because I was doing interesting projects.
Anyway, the point is, don't sacrifice a good normal job for a bad IT job. You don't even want an IT job if you're a CS major -- it's a permenant brand on your reputation. Look for a development job instead.
If there is a statistically significant preference for MP3, then I would guess people can tell the difference. I would guess they have become so accustomed to lossy compression that they expect it, and even have grown to like it.
They do have teamwork and source control classes -- at least at the school I went to -- but those are somewhat beside the point. CS stands for computer science, and for computer science, you ABSOLUTELY need to understand calculus. If you don't understand calculus, you'll never understand what the big O notation really means, you'll have problems finding the optimal solution, and you won't really get the reasoning behind true CS problems. For your average programmer, that's not a problem. But your average programmer isn't really a computer scientist.
Sometimes the lecturers are forced to do this kind of inane crap, especially if they're new. My wife's friend has been teaching at a community college for a couple years, and apparently the school mandated that, since they installed these fancy computers in all the classrooms, the lecturers better either get tenure or start using the computers for all their teaching aides.
That's why I should be appointed supreme dictator. I'm not saying I could do the best job possible... but I'd do better than any government currently in existence.
Slashdot Mirror
My point is that the average programmers did not have the business connections and the financial comfort to miss out out on a few pay checks in order to MAYBE make some money on a contract with what was essentially a toy at the time. I'm not arguing that he had great business sense, but I am arguing that business sense is not the same thing as coding ability.
Any decent 3rd year undergrad could write a BASIC interpreter. It was more of a pain in the ass back then since computer time was hard to come by, and code needed to be optimized more, but it was no more intellectually challenging then than it is today.
*whoosh*
You'll notice on all those charts that we American's get our asses handed to us by northern Europe. House size is more an indicator of how much debt we're willing to take on (many people willing to pay over 50% of their income for a home now). Then factor in universal health care, minimum of 3-5 weeks vacation per year, and working condiditions that have actually improved since the early 1900s. Our empire is over, friend. And all the nationalism in the world won't improve our roads, our schools, our economy, or our life expectancy.
He was doing well, and that's exactly my point. It's tough to risk your entire business, your reputation, and your family's well-being when you don't have something to fall back on. Gates had a family fortune. Nothing compared to what he has now, but enough that the consequences of failure were much less dire than they would be for me, or most other programmers out there. I could probably start a successful company even today, but I can't afford the risk.
I'm not upset that it's not fair. Nothing is. I'm better off than many, so its not a "poor me" thing. But please, please stop acting like Bill Gates got where he is today purely on his uber-leet coding skills. He was a mediocre coder and a great opportunist.
What's wrong with socialism? Most of the countries in western Europe are socialist, and they have a much higher quality of life.
Modern tools.. You mean vi, gcc, and make?
Most programmers at that time were happy to keep working for large institutions or corporate giants. Imagine where the PC industry would be today if Woz had decided it was easier to just keep working at HP? Or if Jobs had not been persuasive enough to get venture capital?
Most programmers at the time (and at this time, too), didn't have a trust fund to fall back on if their business venture failed.
Wait, so you're saying full C compiler implementation is approximately equivalent to a BASIC interpreter? I implemented more features than BASIC supports, and in compiler form rather than the much easier interpreter form. The only difference in BG's favor is a.) he did his in assembly, whereas I did mine in C, and b.) he did it before I was born.
I had a prof in college who wrote a basic interpreter back in the 70s too. The difference? He didn't market it. BG was nothing special as far as coders go.
And, besides, you're wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_gains.jpg
So what you're saying is that we're not getting poorer, just that the rate at which our increase in wealth is negative in terms of the overall wealth of the country? Seriously, you posted a link which shows that the wealthy are becoming super-wealthy, and the middle class have not improved significantly in wealth since 1979. Given the technological advances in that period of time, that would be like having the middle class of medieval Europe not have any improvement until the Industrial age. Which, actually, is the case.
If you truly believe that
all the hard (and cool) stuff has already been done
, then you are not as good a programmer as you think you are.
If you're so brilliant, you would see the problems that are out there waiting to be solved, or have crappy solutions and need better solutions, or have solutions but need implementation.
There's more to being a great programmer than just knowing how to write printf or whatever.
I never said I was brialliant, just that I'm probably a better coder than BG ever was. Don't infer more than is implied.
As for the problems out there that need solving... Not very many of them are very interesting, at least not the ones that don't also require a PhD level mathematics education. Sorry, but web-based programming (at whatever level in the chain, from the web OS all the way down to the PHP code monkey) is just not that interesting, and that's about the only place you can make a living working in the programming field these days. It's like mainframes all over again.
No, but I wrote a C-subset compiler that used less memory than that. I have no doubt I *could* write an interpreter specced to 64KB memory, but what would be the point?
I'd argue that there are more of them than you think.. It's just that all the hard (and cool) stuff has already been done. So the guy who 30 years ago might have developed the first viable JIT compiler is now working on some esoteric feature of some esoteric codebase that you've probably never heard of. There's a lot more programmers now than there were when those guys got their start,
And for the record, I'm probably a better coder than Bill Gates ever was (as for a business-man, not so much).
It is Vista. It's built from the same source tree. The Aero user interface is a bolt-on feature that you can turn off if you don't like it. Server 2003 was built from the same source tree as Windows XP (or at least started there before branching). Server 2008 R2 is built from the same source tree as Windows 7 (which begs the question, why aren't they changing the version name). That's just how it is.
No, it just raises the question...
Have you seen the shit they put out in the last 7 years? Small wonder...
I look like a tard when i code and listen to music, as i tend to do both the typing and the air guitar (or more often drums)
Then the person who is tied to the phone needs to listen to a recording of himself talking on the phone (local end only) while trying to do intermediate calculus.
The only smart thing you said is that pay is not your primary motivator for an internship. I made very little as an intern, but if it were not for my wife and my son, I would gladly go back to the same pay for the work I was doing.
Though before you think about acting on that, you should know that it sounds like you're getting a really raw deal. At my position, I started at $10/hour in 2004 ($12 in 2005), and I got to do some really fun projects. The entire time I was there, I would work about 3 hours a day on reverse-engineering obscure file compression formats and write emulators (all work related). The rest of the day was spent playing video games. And I took paid lunches. It might sound like I was a bad employee, but they were glad to have me because I saved the company $200k/year in perpetuity. I probably got a raw deal on the pay, but I didn't mind because I was doing interesting projects.
Anyway, the point is, don't sacrifice a good normal job for a bad IT job. You don't even want an IT job if you're a CS major -- it's a permenant brand on your reputation. Look for a development job instead.
how did this get modded flamebait?
If there is a statistically significant preference for MP3, then I would guess people can tell the difference. I would guess they have become so accustomed to lossy compression that they expect it, and even have grown to like it.
They do have teamwork and source control classes -- at least at the school I went to -- but those are somewhat beside the point. CS stands for computer science, and for computer science, you ABSOLUTELY need to understand calculus. If you don't understand calculus, you'll never understand what the big O notation really means, you'll have problems finding the optimal solution, and you won't really get the reasoning behind true CS problems. For your average programmer, that's not a problem. But your average programmer isn't really a computer scientist.
My gf doesn't even know that she's using Linux...
And that's why she's still your girlfriend
problem solved.. at least until linux malware becomes prevalent
Sometimes the lecturers are forced to do this kind of inane crap, especially if they're new. My wife's friend has been teaching at a community college for a couple years, and apparently the school mandated that, since they installed these fancy computers in all the classrooms, the lecturers better either get tenure or start using the computers for all their teaching aides.
That's why I should be appointed supreme dictator. I'm not saying I could do the best job possible... but I'd do better than any government currently in existence.