Maybe CS degrees have change since most of the people I work with got their degrees, but I don't think they got much in the way of data modeling theory.
I see this with people my own age, and people just getting out of college. There are programmers who keep up with new technologies. Who are always experimenting in their free time. These people are always employed. Then there are people who learn one technology and then begin their slow descent into obsolescence. This seems to be the majority in computer science unfortunately and I've actually seen a few programmers whose refusal to learn new technologies had them exiting the profession before they hit thirty.
I worked with a programmer in his sixties two years ago who was doing all the latest Ajax/CSS/Java stuff. Sure he'd been a cobol programmer, and a C programmer, but he had learned the new dominant technologies and still had a job. I've seen plenty of discrimination in job interviews, but it's generally snobbery about preferring one degree over another, or one company over another. I've never seen "old" used as a reason. That said, we don't call Cobol programmers in for interviews for Java jobs. I don't really think that's discrimination though.
Requiring everyone in the US buy insurance is in both the House and Senate bills.
>>but I haven't seen where Obama has done all that much either. Well I'd recommend paying a bit more attention, you obviously haven't been following the health care bill very closely, either. Obama has already implemented one tax cut and is working on another and has several proposals setup to balance the budget. Those are traditionally Republican issues that Obama has taken over. It appears that Obama is going to win the war in Iraq. He appears to be doing a great job of managing the military. And he's opened a massive amount of government data up to the public (obviously there's a huge way to go, but you have to factor in cost). He's added tooth back to a lot of regulatory agencies that Bush de-fanged. So from the perspective of "things he can do without Republicans blocking him", he's been very productive.
I'm also a programmer and while small changes are a good way to deal with working systems, if a system is horribly broken you sometimes have to rebuild it from scratch.
While, I don't agree with what Democrats are doing (I want socialized medicine), I do think there are actual pieces of the reform bill that have the potential to make a difference. Actually it's just one. It'll be hugely unpopular, but requiring insurance of all citizens is really the only way to equalize costs. Well, aside from full-blown socializing. Of course, that's socialism too. Really insurance is socialism, so it's all bound up together.
I can't see being anti-incumbent though unless you have something like a green party candidate. Republicans truly are ideologically bereft. All of their good ideas are being implemented by Obama. They've been unaplogetic in their quest to run up more debt, create more bubbles, and generally run the country into the ground in pursuit of short term profits. So while the Democrats are far too right of center for my taste. There's no way I could vote for a Republican. Well, unless there's a pragmatist, and the current "purity trials" insure that won't happen.
Iraq was still not a law. Going to war is still far easier than getting a law passed. Especially if one makes everything up.
The Majority of the country is not independent. Independents are just partisans pretending to be open-minded. You're not so much independent as ashamed to be a Republican. There's a difference.
I have no interest in a straight Democracy, no. The rhetoric that "a majority of americans are conservative" based upon the fact that the senate is weighted towards conservative low-population states is what irritates me.
Obviously the civil war was wrapped around this very issue, so it's not new.
Bush made a case for attacking Iraq? Bush tried to get others to go along with him, and when all alliances failed he attacked anyway. What Bush did was to not build a consensus and then do something anyway. War is a horrible example because it's something the commander in chief can do anytime for any reason, and then congress feels like they need to fund it because people's lives are on the line. It would be more appropriate to correlate this with Bush's prescription drug bill. Which if proposed by a Democrat would have been socialism.
The problem is that we have a Republic. Obama can do what the majority wants and still be defeated in the Senate because a bunch of small states get equal representation. Slate just did an interesting article on filibusters. It turns out that 60% of the time when Democrats have filibustered they've represented the majority of Americans. When Republicans have filibustered they represented the majority only 3% of the time. Repbulicans are better at playing politics because they rarely represent a majority.
Let's look at Gingrich's stupid ideas:
Make insurance affordable - In bill
Make health insurance portable - Already exists. Called HSA. I have one. Only saves you money if you stay well. People don't like them.
Meet the needs of the chronically ill - He seems to be in the weeds. Smells like socialism though.
Allow doctors and patients to control costs - Really? We lower prices by letting doctors charge medicare whatever they want? He obviously thinks we're morons. So doctors can charge whatever they want as long as cost to the government doesn't rise. Ok, government costs are rising currently, how does this help?
Don't cut Medicare - Really going out on a limb by saying not to cut Medicare. Also advocating Socialism. But hey, it's ok when Republicans do it.
Protect early retirees - HSA again! Hey, look we can save health insurance with an unpopular program that already exists! Because the free market is always right, unless you're talking about why no one's buying our HSAs. The best part about HSAs? You can lose it all in the stock market and then have the government either bail out millions of retirees or add them to Social Security during what would assume would be an economic downturn! How can people resist?!? I mean think about what would have happened if you had an HSA and contracted cancer during 2008! Good times!
Inform consumers - Sure. Sounds good. Might save money in the long term, but not in the short term.
Eliminate junk lawsuits - In the current health care bill. Also implemented in Texas and not doing jack, shit. But hey, just because Republican policies have failed repeatedly doesn't mean shouldn't keep trying to ram them through. Because when you're wrong you're right. Am I right? Oh, I'm a Democrat. I'm wrong. Sorry, I forgot. Which is why even though Obama put this in the bill as a concession to Republicans they're all still pretending it's not in the bill. If the bill passes they'll then say that the fact that it doesn't work is because Obama passed it. Way ahead of you guys.
Stop health-care fraud - Fraud and Waste. Waste and Fraud. Yeah. That's the problem. I'm all for this. But so is everybody. Also we should get people to stop doing drugs and to not cheat on their taxes...
Make medical breakthroughs accessible to patients - No. We're not getting rid of the FDA. They're pathetically toothless as it is. This is a horrible idea. Great idea for selling untested snake oil to the public and artificially inflating stock prices. When coupled with Bullet 8 you can bring untested treatments to market, sell them for top dollar, and cash out without any risk of monetary damages. I've got to hand it to you Republicans. You're fantastic at creating bubbles that harm the public.
Republicans have jack that is not available on the market today. And you know what the market has said? Republicans your ideas suck. Why do your ideas suck? Because they don't work.
Obama does this every day from the highest bullypullpit in the land. You know why you can't do it? Because they're not "for" anything, they're only against Democrats. Every time he concedes a point. Every time he gives Republicans what they want. Suddenly it's not what they want anymore. You wanht lower taxes? You want balanced budgets? Well, sure, but not if a Democrat's doing it. If a Democrat's doing it, it's going to destroy the very fabric of our nation.
The reason that you can't reason with the textbook manufacturers is that they honestly believe that if they somehow "fix" the textbooks there won't be any more Democrats in the United States and it will be one homogenous white Christian nation. The failure of reality to match up with that expectation means they have not gone far enough and must keep going. It's not a matter of reality. It's a matter of frustration at not being able to fix the world using the ideals they have faith in.
Most Christians in Texas who are aware of the situation think these people are ridiculously extreme, but it's nearly impossible to get rid of them.
It's very pertinent. The parent said that justification for pay was that the actions of one employee could impact the entire corporation far more than any other. My point was that isn't in and of itself a valid reason to pay one employee more than another, since their are many employees whom through inaction or action could cost a company money and reputation.
Let's see if I can explain this so you "free marketeers" can understand the "free market":
1) In the free market, while you are making lots of money for your company you get lots of money in return. 2) In the free market, while you are losing lots of money you are losing your job and drawing unemployment. 3) In the free market, there is top talent to take CEO jobs with no salary to try to turn companies around because the risk/reward potential is so high.
Any market in which top executives get paid regardless of the performance of their company is not a free market.
Let's take your case:
1) Because of this guy 1000s of jobs and probably $ billions have been paid out to employees in salary - during this time period executive should be making lots of money 2) Because of this guy 1000s of jobs and billions of dollars in equity have been lost - during this time period executive should have been fired with no parachute and hungry eager new executive brought in.
I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. There's all this talk about "the goal of a company should be to maximize shareholder equity" when we're talking about the job status of normal employees, but when we're talking about the job status of high level executives suddenly they deserve some sort of communist employment status where job performance takes a back seat to who they know and how long they've been there.
So that last reply was flip. But I did want to point out an important point. The value of CEOs is grossly overvalued. And it seems to be people who tout the power of the market most who are defending them. But why do you never see one of these jobs on Craiglist? It would be easy enough to prove you had what it takes. Your resume would look something like this:
started company - grew to couple hundred thousand in revenue appointed CEO of new company took it to $5 million in revenue, continued to increase revenue for 10 years after departure appointed CEO of new company took it to $20 million in revenue, continued to increase revenue for 5 years after departure etc.
But the way our corporate boardrooms works looks the most like communism of any part of of financial system. The typical CEO position looks like this:
got job at huge company as junior ass kisser got promotion to cushy job in highly profitable department where I kissed some more ass. Did not lose huge amounts of money got promotion to a bigger highly profitable department. made decision that ran it into group, but my all those golf games with senior management made them see me as a "ballsy risktaker" rather than an "out of control failure". etc.
It would be very easy for the market to actually pick who would be CEOs. Sports team coaches are highly accountable. A few losing seasons and they're on their way back down to coaching little league games. There's some ridiculousness in there, but there's a much stronger correlation between performance and pay. And it actually appears that the market is involved.
I can see no sign of the free market in the pay packages or employment status of most of the leaders of large banking firms in the US right now.
Hmmm... so to distill your point - a sick Taco Bell employee who washes his hands and by doing so, doesn't cause E. Coli contamination resulting in millions of dollars of losses for his parent company should be paid like a CEO?
And if another sick Taco Bell employee doesn't was his hands and does cost the company millions of dollars, he should also be paid like a CEO?
The US Patent Office is inundated with patents. If you can't follow directions I see no reason why they should have to work harder to fix your mistake. This sounds like an efficient use of government time and funds. Sure they COULD put in software to rotate the documents, but why?
As I ponder cooking dinner tonight I wonder - Why has no made a truly great gaming over/stovetop combination? It's certainly not for lack of knobs, buttons or displays.
In defense of HTML and CSS, MySpace was not really what I'd imagine the web would look like. MySpace only lets you insert HTML and CSS via what is essentially an injection attack. Tumblr let's you rewrite the entire page and I see plenty of tumblr blogs that look just fine.
There are some benefits. If a driver slams into me talking on a cellphone and there's a ban in my area, it's going to immediately move to a ticketable offense and therefore their insurance is going to pay to fix my car.
Whereas if they're talking on a cellphone and there's no law banning it then I have to prove they couldn't drive before I get my insurance money.
I apologize for using a rhetoric in a conversation for someone who clearly cannot handle it. Let me be as plain as possible:
Home Schools and Private Schools do not have students assigned to them.
Public schools have students assigned to them.
Therefore you can not draw direct comparisons between these school types. Public schools have to educate all students and Home and Private schools get to chose their students.
Try to follow along here. I am not saying something ludicrous like parents can pick their children. I'm saying that home school parents DO have a choice whether to home school their children or not. In that sense they are choosing which students they teach, just like a private school. In their case they would opt NOT to teach their children, in the case of private schools the would opt TO teach your child, but in both cases they have a choice, which public schools do not.
I'm saying home schooling parents chose to educate their children. Thus they are picking the children they educate. They could choose to send their children to a public school. They could decide that one of their children is dumber than the rest and send that child to public school. In this way home schools are more like private schools than public schools that have no discretion over what children they teach.
Because their kids are smarter than the average public school student.
Hence my comment about private schools. Private schools can easily ensure that all their students graduate by picking only the smartest students for their schools. Home schooling parents can ensure their kids succeed by only picking their above-average children.
To do a proper control you would need each home schooling parent to be teaching their child and three children of parents without college degrees.
Why do private schools send more kids to college? Why do elite suburbs? You shouldn't really pat yourself on the back for taking bright kids with involved parents and getting them into college. If the majority of homeschoolers are schooled by parents with college degrees (using Wikipedia article here), and the majority of public school kids do not have parents with college degrees. Then it's not really much of an achievement to have higher test scores than public schools is it?
Caveat: I did one year of homeschooling and one of correspondance. I personally do not recommend it.
Yeah, and even harder after an almost trillion dollar military stimulus every year for the past 8 years. The economic stimulus package is a very small part of the enormous amount of spending necessitated by Republicans.
We are in debt exclusively because of Republicans and if Republicans were back in power they'd drive us further into debt. Someone has to be an adult, and as much as I disagree with much of what Obama is doing, it could be (and has been) so much worse.
It's a great job if you love it. But I program in my free time I love it so much.
That said there's a big difference in ability level with programmers. There are programmers who need a week to implement a button. These people usually end up at large corporations and find their careers go nowhere. Then there are the people who can develop an entirely new application (or three) in a week. Those are the people making 6 figures and the ones Bill Gates always bemoans we don't have enough of. But I don't know that we can educate people to achieve that, which probably explains the salaries.
I actually find a lot of self-producing theater professionals make great programmers because they're good at taking huge problems, breaking them down into component parts and making sure they get done on schedule.
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Maybe CS degrees have change since most of the people I work with got their degrees, but I don't think they got much in the way of data modeling theory.
I find the same is true of most college educated programmers as well. To a certain extent that's something that has to be learned through experience.
I see this with people my own age, and people just getting out of college. There are programmers who keep up with new technologies. Who are always experimenting in their free time. These people are always employed. Then there are people who learn one technology and then begin their slow descent into obsolescence. This seems to be the majority in computer science unfortunately and I've actually seen a few programmers whose refusal to learn new technologies had them exiting the profession before they hit thirty.
I worked with a programmer in his sixties two years ago who was doing all the latest Ajax/CSS/Java stuff. Sure he'd been a cobol programmer, and a C programmer, but he had learned the new dominant technologies and still had a job. I've seen plenty of discrimination in job interviews, but it's generally snobbery about preferring one degree over another, or one company over another. I've never seen "old" used as a reason. That said, we don't call Cobol programmers in for interviews for Java jobs. I don't really think that's discrimination though.
Requiring everyone in the US buy insurance is in both the House and Senate bills.
>>but I haven't seen where Obama has done all that much either.
Well I'd recommend paying a bit more attention, you obviously haven't been following the health care bill very closely, either. Obama has already implemented one tax cut and is working on another and has several proposals setup to balance the budget. Those are traditionally Republican issues that Obama has taken over. It appears that Obama is going to win the war in Iraq. He appears to be doing a great job of managing the military. And he's opened a massive amount of government data up to the public (obviously there's a huge way to go, but you have to factor in cost). He's added tooth back to a lot of regulatory agencies that Bush de-fanged. So from the perspective of "things he can do without Republicans blocking him", he's been very productive.
I'm also a programmer and while small changes are a good way to deal with working systems, if a system is horribly broken you sometimes have to rebuild it from scratch.
While, I don't agree with what Democrats are doing (I want socialized medicine), I do think there are actual pieces of the reform bill that have the potential to make a difference. Actually it's just one. It'll be hugely unpopular, but requiring insurance of all citizens is really the only way to equalize costs. Well, aside from full-blown socializing. Of course, that's socialism too. Really insurance is socialism, so it's all bound up together.
I can't see being anti-incumbent though unless you have something like a green party candidate. Republicans truly are ideologically bereft. All of their good ideas are being implemented by Obama. They've been unaplogetic in their quest to run up more debt, create more bubbles, and generally run the country into the ground in pursuit of short term profits. So while the Democrats are far too right of center for my taste. There's no way I could vote for a Republican. Well, unless there's a pragmatist, and the current "purity trials" insure that won't happen.
Iraq was still not a law. Going to war is still far easier than getting a law passed. Especially if one makes everything up.
The Majority of the country is not independent. Independents are just partisans pretending to be open-minded. You're not so much independent as ashamed to be a Republican. There's a difference.
I have no interest in a straight Democracy, no. The rhetoric that "a majority of americans are conservative" based upon the fact that the senate is weighted towards conservative low-population states is what irritates me.
Obviously the civil war was wrapped around this very issue, so it's not new.
Bush made a case for attacking Iraq? Bush tried to get others to go along with him, and when all alliances failed he attacked anyway. What Bush did was to not build a consensus and then do something anyway. War is a horrible example because it's something the commander in chief can do anytime for any reason, and then congress feels like they need to fund it because people's lives are on the line. It would be more appropriate to correlate this with Bush's prescription drug bill. Which if proposed by a Democrat would have been socialism.
The problem is that we have a Republic. Obama can do what the majority wants and still be defeated in the Senate because a bunch of small states get equal representation. Slate just did an interesting article on filibusters. It turns out that 60% of the time when Democrats have filibustered they've represented the majority of Americans. When Republicans have filibustered they represented the majority only 3% of the time. Repbulicans are better at playing politics because they rarely represent a majority.
Let's look at Gingrich's stupid ideas:
Make insurance affordable - In bill
Make health insurance portable - Already exists. Called HSA. I have one. Only saves you money if you stay well. People don't like them.
Meet the needs of the chronically ill - He seems to be in the weeds. Smells like socialism though.
Allow doctors and patients to control costs - Really? We lower prices by letting doctors charge medicare whatever they want? He obviously thinks we're morons. So doctors can charge whatever they want as long as cost to the government doesn't rise. Ok, government costs are rising currently, how does this help?
Don't cut Medicare - Really going out on a limb by saying not to cut Medicare. Also advocating Socialism. But hey, it's ok when Republicans do it.
Protect early retirees - HSA again! Hey, look we can save health insurance with an unpopular program that already exists! Because the free market is always right, unless you're talking about why no one's buying our HSAs. The best part about HSAs? You can lose it all in the stock market and then have the government either bail out millions of retirees or add them to Social Security during what would assume would be an economic downturn! How can people resist?!? I mean think about what would have happened if you had an HSA and contracted cancer during 2008! Good times!
Inform consumers - Sure. Sounds good. Might save money in the long term, but not in the short term.
Eliminate junk lawsuits - In the current health care bill. Also implemented in Texas and not doing jack, shit. But hey, just because Republican policies have failed repeatedly doesn't mean shouldn't keep trying to ram them through. Because when you're wrong you're right. Am I right? Oh, I'm a Democrat. I'm wrong. Sorry, I forgot. Which is why even though Obama put this in the bill as a concession to Republicans they're all still pretending it's not in the bill. If the bill passes they'll then say that the fact that it doesn't work is because Obama passed it. Way ahead of you guys.
Stop health-care fraud - Fraud and Waste. Waste and Fraud. Yeah. That's the problem. I'm all for this. But so is everybody. Also we should get people to stop doing drugs and to not cheat on their taxes...
Make medical breakthroughs accessible to patients - No. We're not getting rid of the FDA. They're pathetically toothless as it is. This is a horrible idea. Great idea for selling untested snake oil to the public and artificially inflating stock prices. When coupled with Bullet 8 you can bring untested treatments to market, sell them for top dollar, and cash out without any risk of monetary damages. I've got to hand it to you Republicans. You're fantastic at creating bubbles that harm the public.
Republicans have jack that is not available on the market today. And you know what the market has said? Republicans your ideas suck. Why do your ideas suck? Because they don't work.
Obama does this every day from the highest bullypullpit in the land. You know why you can't do it? Because they're not "for" anything, they're only against Democrats. Every time he concedes a point. Every time he gives Republicans what they want. Suddenly it's not what they want anymore. You wanht lower taxes? You want balanced budgets? Well, sure, but not if a Democrat's doing it. If a Democrat's doing it, it's going to destroy the very fabric of our nation.
The reason that you can't reason with the textbook manufacturers is that they honestly believe that if they somehow "fix" the textbooks there won't be any more Democrats in the United States and it will be one homogenous white Christian nation. The failure of reality to match up with that expectation means they have not gone far enough and must keep going. It's not a matter of reality. It's a matter of frustration at not being able to fix the world using the ideals they have faith in.
Most Christians in Texas who are aware of the situation think these people are ridiculously extreme, but it's nearly impossible to get rid of them.
It's very pertinent. The parent said that justification for pay was that the actions of one employee could impact the entire corporation far more than any other. My point was that isn't in and of itself a valid reason to pay one employee more than another, since their are many employees whom through inaction or action could cost a company money and reputation.
Let's see if I can explain this so you "free marketeers" can understand the "free market":
1) In the free market, while you are making lots of money for your company you get lots of money in return.
2) In the free market, while you are losing lots of money you are losing your job and drawing unemployment.
3) In the free market, there is top talent to take CEO jobs with no salary to try to turn companies around because the risk/reward potential is so high.
Any market in which top executives get paid regardless of the performance of their company is not a free market.
Let's take your case:
1) Because of this guy 1000s of jobs and probably $ billions have been paid out to employees in salary - during this time period executive should be making lots of money
2) Because of this guy 1000s of jobs and billions of dollars in equity have been lost - during this time period executive should have been fired with no parachute and hungry eager new executive brought in.
I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. There's all this talk about "the goal of a company should be to maximize shareholder equity" when we're talking about the job status of normal employees, but when we're talking about the job status of high level executives suddenly they deserve some sort of communist employment status where job performance takes a back seat to who they know and how long they've been there.
So that last reply was flip. But I did want to point out an important point. The value of CEOs is grossly overvalued. And it seems to be people who tout the power of the market most who are defending them. But why do you never see one of these jobs on Craiglist? It would be easy enough to prove you had what it takes. Your resume would look something like this:
started company - grew to couple hundred thousand in revenue
appointed CEO of new company took it to $5 million in revenue, continued to increase revenue for 10 years after departure
appointed CEO of new company took it to $20 million in revenue, continued to increase revenue for 5 years after departure
etc.
But the way our corporate boardrooms works looks the most like communism of any part of of financial system. The typical CEO position looks like this:
got job at huge company as junior ass kisser
got promotion to cushy job in highly profitable department where I kissed some more ass. Did not lose huge amounts of money
got promotion to a bigger highly profitable department. made decision that ran it into group, but my all those golf games with senior management made them see me as a "ballsy risktaker" rather than an "out of control failure".
etc.
It would be very easy for the market to actually pick who would be CEOs. Sports team coaches are highly accountable. A few losing seasons and they're on their way back down to coaching little league games. There's some ridiculousness in there, but there's a much stronger correlation between performance and pay. And it actually appears that the market is involved.
I can see no sign of the free market in the pay packages or employment status of most of the leaders of large banking firms in the US right now.
Hmmm... so to distill your point - a sick Taco Bell employee who washes his hands and by doing so, doesn't cause E. Coli contamination resulting in millions of dollars of losses for his parent company should be paid like a CEO?
And if another sick Taco Bell employee doesn't was his hands and does cost the company millions of dollars, he should also be paid like a CEO?
You're completely right. And that is why Bernie Madoff is a god!
Sure, I'll do that if you can explain how he's doing the work of 1000 employees.
The US Patent Office is inundated with patents. If you can't follow directions I see no reason why they should have to work harder to fix your mistake. This sounds like an efficient use of government time and funds. Sure they COULD put in software to rotate the documents, but why?
As I ponder cooking dinner tonight I wonder - Why has no made a truly great gaming over/stovetop combination? It's certainly not for lack of knobs, buttons or displays.
In defense of HTML and CSS, MySpace was not really what I'd imagine the web would look like. MySpace only lets you insert HTML and CSS via what is essentially an injection attack. Tumblr let's you rewrite the entire page and I see plenty of tumblr blogs that look just fine.
There are some benefits. If a driver slams into me talking on a cellphone and there's a ban in my area, it's going to immediately move to a ticketable offense and therefore their insurance is going to pay to fix my car.
Whereas if they're talking on a cellphone and there's no law banning it then I have to prove they couldn't drive before I get my insurance money.
I apologize for using a rhetoric in a conversation for someone who clearly cannot handle it. Let me be as plain as possible:
Home Schools and Private Schools do not have students assigned to them.
Public schools have students assigned to them.
Therefore you can not draw direct comparisons between these school types. Public schools have to educate all students and Home and Private schools get to chose their students.
Try to follow along here. I am not saying something ludicrous like parents can pick their children. I'm saying that home school parents DO have a choice whether to home school their children or not. In that sense they are choosing which students they teach, just like a private school. In their case they would opt NOT to teach their children, in the case of private schools the would opt TO teach your child, but in both cases they have a choice, which public schools do not.
I'm saying home schooling parents chose to educate their children. Thus they are picking the children they educate. They could choose to send their children to a public school. They could decide that one of their children is dumber than the rest and send that child to public school. In this way home schools are more like private schools than public schools that have no discretion over what children they teach.
Because their kids are smarter than the average public school student.
Hence my comment about private schools. Private schools can easily ensure that all their students graduate by picking only the smartest students for their schools. Home schooling parents can ensure their kids succeed by only picking their above-average children.
To do a proper control you would need each home schooling parent to be teaching their child and three children of parents without college degrees.
Why do private schools send more kids to college? Why do elite suburbs? You shouldn't really pat yourself on the back for taking bright kids with involved parents and getting them into college. If the majority of homeschoolers are schooled by parents with college degrees (using Wikipedia article here), and the majority of public school kids do not have parents with college degrees. Then it's not really much of an achievement to have higher test scores than public schools is it?
Caveat: I did one year of homeschooling and one of correspondance. I personally do not recommend it.
Yeah, and even harder after an almost trillion dollar military stimulus every year for the past 8 years. The economic stimulus package is a very small part of the enormous amount of spending necessitated by Republicans.
We are in debt exclusively because of Republicans and if Republicans were back in power they'd drive us further into debt. Someone has to be an adult, and as much as I disagree with much of what Obama is doing, it could be (and has been) so much worse.
It's a great job if you love it. But I program in my free time I love it so much.
That said there's a big difference in ability level with programmers. There are programmers who need a week to implement a button. These people usually end up at large corporations and find their careers go nowhere. Then there are the people who can develop an entirely new application (or three) in a week. Those are the people making 6 figures and the ones Bill Gates always bemoans we don't have enough of. But I don't know that we can educate people to achieve that, which probably explains the salaries.
I actually find a lot of self-producing theater professionals make great programmers because they're good at taking huge problems, breaking them down into component parts and making sure they get done on schedule.