I always wondered how seating was arranged. By importance? Size of your constituent population? What about the poor shmoe senators at the very, very top or very, very bottom? What a crappy seat.
And the way to do this is look for co-op or internship work while doing your undergrad and Master's. Then you end up with work experience and academic credentials on your resume.
Alternatively, after you get your bachelor's and get a job see if your company will pay for your master's. Many companies will do "tuition reimbursement" as long as its a relevant degree field and you make good grades. Its a lot of work but trust me, its worth it, and you should get it done now before you get married and have kids.
Then, some day, if you put in a hero's effort, you might be able to be an entry-level programmer.
Peter, I understand why you are being negative (as with most of the replies here). Programming is not an easy field to succeed in. But neither is any other field. And besides, why are we discouraging someone to do what he loves?
You probably already know more about that domain than most programmers already working in it
This advice you give in the beginning is very good, and something that I tell all wanna-be programmers, whether they are CS grads or something else. There are very few "pure" programming jobs, maybe just Google, Microsoft, and Apple. But in the world today, every field requires software somewhere in it.
You ask the right question...what is it you are doing now? Because its is 99% likely that his current career has some niche need for software.
Car mechanic - Parts inventory and job tracking Musician - MIDI interfaces Lawn mower - Job scheduling and business backend (bookkeeping) Restaurant manager - Server scheduling, inventory, POS, (wireless handheld order entry?) Truck driver - Log management
and so forth.
I've always thought, its easier to get an expert in some knowledge domain and teach them to program, than it is to take a programmer and try to teach them some knowledge domain.
That's a neat idea. It kind of blew my mind for a second. Members that don't even exist. I see what you mean by this being a paradox. Not sure how this could be addressed in the typical "C-family" of compiled languages. Maybe in some other programming paradigm. Seems like Perl does stuff like this, being able to dynamically modify the structure of classes and objects at runtime. One one hand you fall back on the crutch of doing the same type of existence checking with "if defined()" instead of "if NULL", but on the other hand if you are using iterators then it falls neatly into place.
Null is a piece of data that represents the absence of data. The paradox here should be obvious. If the data doesn't exist, why do we create data about it not existing? If I have no apples, do I have an object that represents my lack of apples? No, I simply have no apples. At best, I might have a special container for apples. If it's empty, then I can infer that I have no apples.
I've always thought of it a little differently, but then again maybe that's a Java background. I have a bunch of named cardboard boxes, and a paper list with the names of the boxes written on it.
If the box on the list exists and has something in it, then the pointer is not null and the referenced thingy has a value.
If the box on the list exists and is empty, then the pointer is not null and the referenced thingy has no value.
If the box on the list does not exist, then the pointer is null.
This, for me, was very useful in XML parsing. A zero-length string means an element "foo" exists as thus: <foo/> A NULL reference means that the element does not exist at all in the XML fragment.
Couldn't find a lot of articles on this, but this article seems to contradict the one you posted. What is the current interpretation now? I'm honestly curious.
Can't get to the wikileaks site, but if the summary is correct, then this is interesting because in Florida, with the Sunshine Law, this could result in her prosecution. In Florida you cannot conduct, or even discuss, government business in private.
I have no idea how well DRM or copy protection works against piracy, but I don't give a damn. If your non-DRM'ed game gets pirated so much that you can't make a living, go figure out a different business model. The world doesn't owe you a living as an independent developer or musician.
This is actually one of the best approaches to the DRM/piracy issue I've heard.
The funny thing to me has always been that the ability to "unlawfully copy" (or whatever the proper term is) has existed since the printing press, the cassette tape, etc. And yet plenty of people and business have managed to make their living just fine.
What it comes down to is, pirates will pirate regardless of whether there's DRM or not. DRM is only an inconvenience for paying customers.
Yeah, I know. Its sad. Its kinda like the SPAM problem. Sucks but there does not seem to be any easy, feasible way to fix it. I hate DRM but I also think that piracy is unethical.
And I suppose he has proof that people pirating his games are the same people who claimed they only pirate to stick it to the man?
Good point. There's more than one flavor of pirate out there.
Yeah, because wanting to use your payed-for product however you want is "being cheap."
I do agree that DRM frequently hurts the person who paid for the product legitimately. Personally, I'm very annoyed by the fact that I can't buy a physical thing (such as a DVD player) and then do to it whatever I want. If I solder in some new chip somehow I've broken the law; that is just WRONG. Same with a CD...if I pay for this physical piece of plastic I should be able to do whatever I want with the bits that are encoded on it.
I see your point, but that's not the point I was trying to make. The people I'm talking to just don't want to pay for stuff so they come up with lame arguments to justify playing a game without paying for it.
About 2 years ago I pirated Gumboy: Crazy Adventures (I have since bought it on Steam) because I liked it so much, but didn't have a credit card to buy it.
Interesting dilemma. I'm not sure what I would do if I really wanted a game without being able to buy it but pirating it in the first place sets off my ethical alarm. However, you did pay for it later so maybe it was just a "delayed purchase".:-)
"Some of them cloak it all with this thin veneer of 'sticking it to the man' and being 'anti-DRM' and 'anti-big corporations.' Despite me giving a free demo, no DRM, innovative games, at reasonable prices with great tech support from a one-man company, the bastards still rip me off and take my stuff anyway."
So in other words, this guy releases his game with no anti-piracy DRM measures and people still play his game without paying him.
I get into piracy arguments with other folks all the time. They talk about how they want "DRM-free" music, information wants to be free, most modern music is crap anyways, etc. But when it comes down to it, they're just being cheap.
This is my number one peet peeve...lack of public transportation infrastructure in the majority of the US.
Whenever I travel to Atlanta, or San Jose, or whatever, I always take the bus and subway (Caltrain!) around. Its awesome. But I live in a semi-major metropolitan area (Orlando) and the bus system sucks. I would take the bus to work but the closest stop if 4 miles from my house. And I don't live in the boondocks...I live right in the middle of one of the largest suburbs.
I must have been having a bad day or something yesterday, because this morning when I re-read my post even I thought it was awfully harsh.
Its just that at first glance this question struck a personal pet peeve. My frustration comes from being a college teacher. I have many, many students who don't take any of their own initiative to learn anything. I can provide them books, articles, methods, lectures, tutoring, and yet they just want me to hand it to them on a platter. For example, if I teach them the step-by-step process for calculating the 95% or 99% confidence interval they have no problem if I just give them N, u, Z, etc. But if I give a word problem to calculate the CI for the average bowling scores in a league, they are stumped. Remember the article on Slashdot about this the other day?
I did not take the initiative to read the poster's background. He is definately not some "wet-behind-the-ears" grad student. But I'm still intrigued by this question. My experience working at graduate-level computer science is that a professor would chew me out for using something like Slashdot as a research point. (Although I can see why the editors would post this story, if only because the answers from people experienced in the field would be interesting.) My education is from public southern universities...looking at Tufts' background its a different "flavor" of school.
I'm intrigued by this question, because I would assume that by the time you've reached this level (i.e. have a Master's in CS or something related) you would already have an idea as a starting point. Furthermore, I thought that the first part of any PhD-level research was an intensive Literature Review.
So, in other words, you should search LexisNexis, EBSCO, etc., and find some journal articles that talk about this. Read some books like Gang of Four or Mythical Man Month. Lastly, do your own data gathering. Find a bunch of Post-Mortems and start to put your own patterns together.
Oh, wait, all that would require work.
Seriously...I teach college-level courses and have multiple graduate degrees...and I'm continuously amazed at the quality that schools put out nowadays.
I'm in the same boat as you...hardcore fan of the old school, the new ones not so much. I think part of it is that Sakaguchi is no longer with Squeenix. If you've got a 360 try picking up his game "Lost Odyssey". It actually feels more like "Final Fantasy" than FF12 did.
I absolutely second this. There are plenty of charities that could use this. Drop a lightweight Linux on it (xubuntu, edubuntu, etc) and many people who don't have a computer would love to have it. Plus, it builds a little bit of Linux momentum!
For example, I live in Orlando, Florida and there is a great foundation here called the Gift From God Computer Foundation. They take old computers, slap Linux on them, and give them to charities, schoolchildren, etc. A great way to give new life to your old laptops.
I wasn't going to respond to such an obvious troll but on my drive home from work I was thinking about this and how it parallels with cgh4be's dilemma.
If you have a broken codebase, there are two choices to fix it. 1) Rewrite from scratch or 2) Take the broken thing and fix it. Joel typically advocates #2. Netscape did #1.
Choice #1: Rewriting from scratch can be expensive, risky, it may work out awesomely or it may destroy all you are trying to accomplish.
Choice #2: Fixing things is difficult, time-consuming, tedious, but tends to be lower risk.
You can take the same approach to this. This dude's work life is "broken" in that he is unhappy and burnt out. So he has two choices:
1) Start over his entire career. Risky. Expensive. May destory his life. Or may be the best thing he ever did.
2) "Fix" his existing career with additional education, one-off career broadening, or taking up a hobby to maintain sanity. Lower risk, tedious, maybe not as exciting but safer.
As I said in my original post, a lot depends on his life situation. If you're paying a $250,000 mortgage, two cars, and have two college tuitions you're saving for, then maybe low-risk is the only reasonable option.
Or, alternatively, I have an uncle who kept starting his own businesses. Went bankrupt four or five times. His wife and kids were miserable and poor. But eventually he succeeded and now they are very wealthy.
Life is all about choices. You have to decide on your own personal ethics/morals and determine your own responsibilities and priorities.
I feel the same way - Here's what I did...
on
Disillusioned With IT?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I am in a similar situation as you...15 years in the industry and burnt out. I try and try to put myself in the mindset of "just work your 8 hours and collect your paycheck" but I can't. I WANT to have passion and excitement for my work, but just can't seem to find that anymore.
So what can we do about it?:-)
A lot of this depends on your life circumstances. Since you're married with kids the career change can be a scary challenge. However, perhaps you and your wife have an excellent financial position (i.e. low debt) and can afford to scale down your quality-of-life a teeny bit and you can take a pay cut. Or, if you're totally insane you can start your own company. Start a Subway franchise or something.
So here's some of the options as I saw them:
-Complete career change: The problem here is that this is kind of the same solution as "rewrite all the code from scratch". Read this to realize why this is a bad idea. You are throwing away *TONS* of sunk costs in experience and education.
-Go back to school (maybe at night) and learn another trade, then transition to that. Safe, but slow. Initially expensive.
-Get a hobby, part-time night job, or something that peaks your interest. I started teaching adult algebra classes at night and I love it! Yes, IT during the day still sucks but teaching at night makes it way more bearable.
-One-off career change...can be difficult but doable. Maybe hire a professional career counselor or resume writer.
The closest I've come to solving this dilemma is getting hobbies and part-time night jobs that scratch my itch. Also, I try to force some of the fun back into my day job. For example, once a week I'll take a few hours and just play with a new language or tool just for fun (although my boss would probably get mad if he found out I was on-the-clock).
Unfortunately, its hard to find a practical solution to career burnout. I believe in a lot of ways this is a spritual problem. i.e. "true happiness is wanting what you have not having what you want", etc. See if you can find satisfaction in your family, in making a salary to feed and care for them, and in focusing on fun stuff outside of work (camping, sports, gaming, arts&crafts, reading, whatever...). Difficult, I know. But be happy that your job is Mon-Fri 9-5 and you're not roofing houses or something REALLY sucky.
Let me tell you a quick story from my U.S. university days, and maybe it will help you understand.
When I was 18, and visiting a university campus getting ready to start, my father came along with me. Along with the group were several other 18-year-olds and their parents. During the tour, the guide mentioned that report cards were sent to the students' addresses (not the parents), and also that the students' cafeteria account was not accessible by the parents. Several of the parents expressed concern and surprise that they would not be able to monitor their childrens' grades or spending. The tour guide said, "Well, they are 18 and adults after all." I remember one or two parents actually getting angry that they would have to ASK THEIR CHILDREN to see their report cards.
My father chuckled at this, and later on he said to me, "Son, you're 18 now, so this is YOUR life. Your report grades, your money, your responsibility. Don't screw it up and then come whining to me."
Obviously, my father's attitude is in the minority nowadays.
Slashdot Mirror
Go look for Terminus.
You were very, very lucky, in an awesome way. None of my programming teachers were EVER that savvy.
I always wondered how seating was arranged. By importance? Size of your constituent population? What about the poor shmoe senators at the very, very top or very, very bottom? What a crappy seat.
So THAT'S why Zerg always beats Protoss... ...oh wait...
And the way to do this is look for co-op or internship work while doing your undergrad and Master's. Then you end up with work experience and academic credentials on your resume.
Alternatively, after you get your bachelor's and get a job see if your company will pay for your master's. Many companies will do "tuition reimbursement" as long as its a relevant degree field and you make good grades. Its a lot of work but trust me, its worth it, and you should get it done now before you get married and have kids.
Sometimes its labeled "Non-Aspirin Pain Reliever"
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10324473
Then, some day, if you put in a hero's effort, you might be able to be an entry-level programmer.
Peter, I understand why you are being negative (as with most of the replies here). Programming is not an easy field to succeed in. But neither is any other field. And besides, why are we discouraging someone to do what he loves?
You probably already know more about that domain than most programmers already working in it
This advice you give in the beginning is very good, and something that I tell all wanna-be programmers, whether they are CS grads or something else. There are very few "pure" programming jobs, maybe just Google, Microsoft, and Apple. But in the world today, every field requires software somewhere in it.
You ask the right question...what is it you are doing now? Because its is 99% likely that his current career has some niche need for software.
Car mechanic - Parts inventory and job tracking
Musician - MIDI interfaces
Lawn mower - Job scheduling and business backend (bookkeeping)
Restaurant manager - Server scheduling, inventory, POS, (wireless handheld order entry?)
Truck driver - Log management
and so forth.
I've always thought, its easier to get an expert in some knowledge domain and teach them to program, than it is to take a programmer and try to teach them some knowledge domain.
That's a neat idea. It kind of blew my mind for a second. Members that don't even exist. I see what you mean by this being a paradox. Not sure how this could be addressed in the typical "C-family" of compiled languages. Maybe in some other programming paradigm. Seems like Perl does stuff like this, being able to dynamically modify the structure of classes and objects at runtime. One one hand you fall back on the crutch of doing the same type of existence checking with "if defined()" instead of "if NULL", but on the other hand if you are using iterators then it falls neatly into place.
Null is a piece of data that represents the absence of data. The paradox here should be obvious. If the data doesn't exist, why do we create data about it not existing? If I have no apples, do I have an object that represents my lack of apples? No, I simply have no apples. At best, I might have a special container for apples. If it's empty, then I can infer that I have no apples.
I've always thought of it a little differently, but then again maybe that's a Java background. I have a bunch of named cardboard boxes, and a paper list with the names of the boxes written on it.
If the box on the list exists and has something in it, then the pointer is not null and the referenced thingy has a value.
If the box on the list exists and is empty, then the pointer is not null and the referenced thingy has no value.
If the box on the list does not exist, then the pointer is null.
This, for me, was very useful in XML parsing. A zero-length string means an element "foo" exists as thus: <foo/> A NULL reference means that the element does not exist at all in the XML fragment.
Couldn't find a lot of articles on this, but this article seems to contradict the one you posted. What is the current interpretation now? I'm honestly curious.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/07/california-court-reverses-decision/
Can't get to the wikileaks site, but if the summary is correct, then this is interesting because in Florida, with the Sunshine Law, this could result in her prosecution. In Florida you cannot conduct, or even discuss, government business in private.
http://www.fsne.org/sunshine2005/news/history/index.shtml
For example, W. D. Childers went to jail for discussing government business in private.
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/08/State/Ex_Florida_Senate_pre.shtml
Not sure if Alaska has something similar.
This is actually one of the best approaches to the DRM/piracy issue I've heard.
The funny thing to me has always been that the ability to "unlawfully copy" (or whatever the proper term is) has existed since the printing press, the cassette tape, etc. And yet plenty of people and business have managed to make their living just fine.
Yeah, I know. Its sad. Its kinda like the SPAM problem. Sucks but there does not seem to be any easy, feasible way to fix it. I hate DRM but I also think that piracy is unethical.
Good point. There's more than one flavor of pirate out there.
Yeah, because wanting to use your payed-for product however you want is "being cheap."
I do agree that DRM frequently hurts the person who paid for the product legitimately. Personally, I'm very annoyed by the fact that I can't buy a physical thing (such as a DVD player) and then do to it whatever I want. If I solder in some new chip somehow I've broken the law; that is just WRONG. Same with a CD...if I pay for this physical piece of plastic I should be able to do whatever I want with the bits that are encoded on it.
I see your point, but that's not the point I was trying to make. The people I'm talking to just don't want to pay for stuff so they come up with lame arguments to justify playing a game without paying for it.
About 2 years ago I pirated Gumboy: Crazy Adventures (I have since bought it on Steam) because I liked it so much, but didn't have a credit card to buy it.
Interesting dilemma. I'm not sure what I would do if I really wanted a game without being able to buy it but pirating it in the first place sets off my ethical alarm. However, you did pay for it later so maybe it was just a "delayed purchase". :-)
Interesting quote from the article:
"Some of them cloak it all with this thin veneer of 'sticking it to the man' and being 'anti-DRM' and 'anti-big corporations.' Despite me giving a free demo, no DRM, innovative games, at reasonable prices with great tech support from a one-man company, the bastards still rip me off and take my stuff anyway."
So in other words, this guy releases his game with no anti-piracy DRM measures and people still play his game without paying him.
I get into piracy arguments with other folks all the time. They talk about how they want "DRM-free" music, information wants to be free, most modern music is crap anyways, etc. But when it comes down to it, they're just being cheap.
This is my number one peet peeve...lack of public transportation infrastructure in the majority of the US.
Whenever I travel to Atlanta, or San Jose, or whatever, I always take the bus and subway (Caltrain!) around. Its awesome. But I live in a semi-major metropolitan area (Orlando) and the bus system sucks. I would take the bus to work but the closest stop if 4 miles from my house. And I don't live in the boondocks...I live right in the middle of one of the largest suburbs.
I must have been having a bad day or something yesterday, because this morning when I re-read my post even I thought it was awfully harsh.
Its just that at first glance this question struck a personal pet peeve. My frustration comes from being a college teacher. I have many, many students who don't take any of their own initiative to learn anything. I can provide them books, articles, methods, lectures, tutoring, and yet they just want me to hand it to them on a platter. For example, if I teach them the step-by-step process for calculating the 95% or 99% confidence interval they have no problem if I just give them N, u, Z, etc. But if I give a word problem to calculate the CI for the average bowling scores in a league, they are stumped. Remember the article on Slashdot about this the other day?
I did not take the initiative to read the poster's background. He is definately not some "wet-behind-the-ears" grad student. But I'm still intrigued by this question. My experience working at graduate-level computer science is that a professor would chew me out for using something like Slashdot as a research point. (Although I can see why the editors would post this story, if only because the answers from people experienced in the field would be interesting.) My education is from public southern universities...looking at Tufts' background its a different "flavor" of school.
I'm intrigued by this question, because I would assume that by the time you've reached this level (i.e. have a Master's in CS or something related) you would already have an idea as a starting point. Furthermore, I thought that the first part of any PhD-level research was an intensive Literature Review.
So, in other words, you should search LexisNexis, EBSCO, etc., and find some journal articles that talk about this. Read some books like Gang of Four or Mythical Man Month. Lastly, do your own data gathering. Find a bunch of Post-Mortems and start to put your own patterns together.
Oh, wait, all that would require work.
Seriously...I teach college-level courses and have multiple graduate degrees...and I'm continuously amazed at the quality that schools put out nowadays.
I'm in the same boat as you...hardcore fan of the old school, the new ones not so much. I think part of it is that Sakaguchi is no longer with Squeenix. If you've got a 360 try picking up his game "Lost Odyssey". It actually feels more like "Final Fantasy" than FF12 did.
Bravo! Good Sir! Nicely done. Subtle, and only a true fan will catch that awesome reference.
I absolutely second this. There are plenty of charities that could use this. Drop a lightweight Linux on it (xubuntu, edubuntu, etc) and many people who don't have a computer would love to have it. Plus, it builds a little bit of Linux momentum!
For example, I live in Orlando, Florida and there is a great foundation here called the Gift From God Computer Foundation. They take old computers, slap Linux on them, and give them to charities, schoolchildren, etc. A great way to give new life to your old laptops.
I wasn't going to respond to such an obvious troll but on my drive home from work I was thinking about this and how it parallels with cgh4be's dilemma.
If you have a broken codebase, there are two choices to fix it. 1) Rewrite from scratch or 2) Take the broken thing and fix it. Joel typically advocates #2. Netscape did #1.
Choice #1: Rewriting from scratch can be expensive, risky, it may work out awesomely or it may destroy all you are trying to accomplish.
Choice #2: Fixing things is difficult, time-consuming, tedious, but tends to be lower risk.
You can take the same approach to this. This dude's work life is "broken" in that he is unhappy and burnt out. So he has two choices:
1) Start over his entire career. Risky. Expensive. May destory his life. Or may be the best thing he ever did.
2) "Fix" his existing career with additional education, one-off career broadening, or taking up a hobby to maintain sanity. Lower risk, tedious, maybe not as exciting but safer.
As I said in my original post, a lot depends on his life situation. If you're paying a $250,000 mortgage, two cars, and have two college tuitions you're saving for, then maybe low-risk is the only reasonable option.
Or, alternatively, I have an uncle who kept starting his own businesses. Went bankrupt four or five times. His wife and kids were miserable and poor. But eventually he succeeded and now they are very wealthy.
Life is all about choices. You have to decide on your own personal ethics/morals and determine your own responsibilities and priorities.
I am in a similar situation as you...15 years in the industry and burnt out. I try and try to put myself in the mindset of "just work your 8 hours and collect your paycheck" but I can't. I WANT to have passion and excitement for my work, but just can't seem to find that anymore.
:-)
So what can we do about it?
A lot of this depends on your life circumstances. Since you're married with kids the career change can be a scary challenge. However, perhaps you and your wife have an excellent financial position (i.e. low debt) and can afford to scale down your quality-of-life a teeny bit and you can take a pay cut. Or, if you're totally insane you can start your own company. Start a Subway franchise or something.
So here's some of the options as I saw them:
-Complete career change: The problem here is that this is kind of the same solution as "rewrite all the code from scratch". Read this to realize why this is a bad idea. You are throwing away *TONS* of sunk costs in experience and education.
-Go back to school (maybe at night) and learn another trade, then transition to that. Safe, but slow. Initially expensive.
-Get a hobby, part-time night job, or something that peaks your interest. I started teaching adult algebra classes at night and I love it! Yes, IT during the day still sucks but teaching at night makes it way more bearable.
-One-off career change...can be difficult but doable. Maybe hire a professional career counselor or resume writer.
The closest I've come to solving this dilemma is getting hobbies and part-time night jobs that scratch my itch. Also, I try to force some of the fun back into my day job. For example, once a week I'll take a few hours and just play with a new language or tool just for fun (although my boss would probably get mad if he found out I was on-the-clock).
Unfortunately, its hard to find a practical solution to career burnout. I believe in a lot of ways this is a spritual problem. i.e. "true happiness is wanting what you have not having what you want", etc. See if you can find satisfaction in your family, in making a salary to feed and care for them, and in focusing on fun stuff outside of work (camping, sports, gaming, arts&crafts, reading, whatever...). Difficult, I know. But be happy that your job is Mon-Fri 9-5 and you're not roofing houses or something REALLY sucky.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
Let me tell you a quick story from my U.S. university days, and maybe it will help you understand.
When I was 18, and visiting a university campus getting ready to start, my father came along with me. Along with the group were several other 18-year-olds and their parents. During the tour, the guide mentioned that report cards were sent to the students' addresses (not the parents), and also that the students' cafeteria account was not accessible by the parents. Several of the parents expressed concern and surprise that they would not be able to monitor their childrens' grades or spending. The tour guide said, "Well, they are 18 and adults after all." I remember one or two parents actually getting angry that they would have to ASK THEIR CHILDREN to see their report cards.
My father chuckled at this, and later on he said to me, "Son, you're 18 now, so this is YOUR life. Your report grades, your money, your responsibility. Don't screw it up and then come whining to me."
Obviously, my father's attitude is in the minority nowadays.
Really? I'm moving to Denmark, then.