Thanks for all the replys, they definitely are a help in sorting out my thoughts on this. I'm still unsure, but I do think Business Informatics is my way to go for a degree. It's a mix of achieving cred / a degree, doing stuff I'm interested in, learning new stuff I want to know (anything bean-counting related), dealing with stuff I can do with ease like English & Programming - thus taking the edge of the tough stuff I'll have to learn for - and gaining in future perspective in terms of salary / overall late career.
I'm still hesitant - i.e. f*cking scared shittless - to make the move because if I do the next 4 years are going to be *very* tough. But if I do it I'll be doing it for the long hawl and will get started right away in specialising in related technologies and products. I'll be asking some friends to show me around SAP and ABAP in the next few weeks, for instance - maybe that's my ticket and I can deal with the downsides. And I'll go and see if I can sneek into some math classes and see how extreme it's going to be. I still have two months before enrollment for the winter semester 2012/2013 closes. Maybe I'll add another few months of working to save some money for a hassle free first two semesters or something and enroll next year.
Dunno yet. It's all up in the air. Wish me luck!
Thanks for all the feedback and take care. One way or the other, I probably will soon be seriously cutting down on slashdot time for the first time in 11 years:-) .
Seriously, is this a joke? The very first thing I'd chuck away when building a star ship inspired by Star Trek is the design of the Enterprise. There are countless way better, suitable and even more realistic space ship designs than that fragile contraption.
In all honesty, I don't get all this AGW/Non-AGW racket. Is this an US thing?
AGW by caused by humans using fossil fuels for cooking, heating and driving their cars does sound resonable to me. But even if details need to be debated, I personally do not need any further hypothesis about how and in what speed AGW is going to come into effect. I believe it allready has, but that's just belief.
What I *do* know however is this:
1) We have 7,2 Billion people on this planet, the number is growing and the growth rate is increasing.
2) Most of these people heat and cook with fossil fuels. This is a problem that would be next to trivial to solve, somewhat in the way the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving toilets to a bazillion people and doctors going around asking the villagers in 3rd world countries to store their drinking water in PET Bottles on the roof in the sun for three days as to eliminate 99,999% of all patogens in it before drinking it. Along that alley solar cookers and basic tips on isolation could case simular changes on a huge scale in the 'fossil fuel wasting dept. - and people would be glad not having to scavange for wood or burn poisinous plastics. And even if it only is to improve local climate and save some woodlands. That's a reason more than good enough - AGW one way or the other.
3) Germans spend 4.7 Billion man-hours per year in traffic jams. 4 point 7 fucking Billion man-hours per year! Sorry folks, I do not know about you, but I do not need any more info on AGW or cartraffic CO2 output in Germany to know that that number adds an entire new level to 'insane' and it would be best for all Germans and their quality of living to invest 20 - 40 Billion Euros in further ICEs even better public transport and - if we so desire (i think'd be tres cool) - a Transrapid (German Maglev) loop throughout the republik. Quality of life would get another boost, Germans would have time to have kids again and we could quit subsidizing cartraffic via tax-breaks (yeah, some real shit going on in that dept. over here... don't even get me started) and we could quit plastering our already scarce untouched countrysides with more 6-track Autobahnen.
Bottom line: This AGW/Non-AGW racket is a silly roadshow to distract from clear issues at hand that need no scientific debate to be recongised as problems that need solving. Now. But I guess officials just want a heated debate to happen and nothing to be done. It's called Mass Distraction.
The sad part is neither is the Macbook. It's a bloody computer and an obsolete one at that.
I still constantly hear and read this. I'd go as far and say ever since Jobs rejoined Apple and introduced OS X this isn't the case anymore. I'm a die hard nerd/geek with 13 years of Linux experience, and I love nothing more than a well-configured x86-Linux driven piece of hardware *and* ever since I stopped buying the most recent windows games - sometime back in 2001 or so - I allways go for the most bang for buck.
Why then is it that I'm typing this on a MB Air?
Quite frankly, because there is no alternative. It's Unix with most of the Bash & CLI toolstack preinstalled. It has a touchpad that for once isn't built by the techstandards of 1995 - i.e. doesn't suck like an industry-grade vacuum cleaner. It has a 64bit core 2 duo CPU and a battery life management built into the OS that was built by the exact same people that built the battery and the motherboard and everthing else inside it 1,3kg light aluminum enclosure. Ok, there are, as of now, Ultrabooks out there that don't come with MS tax and cost less with simular performance. But when I bought this one, after long and carefull consideration, there wasn't an alternative. A PC that doesn't even come close to the current cheapest Mac Mini in size, noise, ease of handling and performance costs upwards of 1000$ at least. The cheapest mac mini costs 600$. Even if I replace the HDD with an SSD it will still be no more expensive or even cheaper than a PC equivalent.
A different example: I recently got myself an HTC Flyer tablet - also after long and carefull consideration. The upsides were: Cheap (bargain offer), precisely the right size and no Apple AppStore / X-Code ADC lock-in. And it was the only one that could compete with Apple quality wise. Actually, i I find the HTC Flyer to have a more pristine enclosure than the iPads. Yet again, I'm a computer expert and have very specific considerations to make when buying such a device. The newest iPad comes at 479 Euros and is at least a generation ahead of everything else in the tablet world - if I were a mere consumer that would be a very attractive prospect and anyone would be hard pressed to find a better offer price wise.
Bottom line: Apple is loosing karma by the minute with a lot of experts, for the reasons we all know - but the legend that their hardware is overpriced is simply that: A legend. Within the spec-range they choose to deliver and cater to, they are, in fact, quite a good value. Denying that is just being silly.
Lens manufacturers in the 60ies and 70ies and the entire film industry bent over backwards to get rid of the bokeh effect, or at least dimish it. Lenses that reduced or dimished bokeh were way up there in terms of cost and quality. Today compositor and 3D software vendors are struggling to offer the most realistic bokeh effects, and in variations too. People have gotten so used to it that scenes in which bokeh would occur but doesn't (due to digital effects) consider it unreal and 'somehow not fitting' i.e. good looking.
A simular thing happend in the Fashion industry when fashion fotographers would skip the bleach to preview prints before moving them into print production when they were in a hurry. Then the designers and fotographers got used to the look and started printing them in ads, unbleached. Nowadays 'bleach-bypass' is a regular set of digital post production effects and when you want to present and sell hip fashion in an ad, it's just about the only way to go.
I bet this bickering about 48fps movies falls in the very same category.
I personally am starting to suspect that a little grain of truth is in there.
While I'm pretty sure that inside the field age, among software developers and engineers discrimination towards different age-groups is near non-existant and any claim to the contrary is mostly hysteria, I'm beginning to suspect there might be a hidded sort-of age discrimination at intersections with other fields not related to out nerdy fields of expertise such as HR and Management.
I've sent in my resume to job descriptions that fit my skillset as if it were written with me in mind and recieved answers such as 'you are overqualified' while at the same time suspect in more than one instance that it would be damaging to apply for a lesser position at other gigs, simply because people would become suspicious of why I'm applying this low at my age and with the project portfolio I have.
Companies, especially recruiters and b2b contractor shops, want fresh graduates with an academic degree that they can pay low and sell high for the shittiest of non-rewarding dead-end jobs. They certainly do not want seasoned developers that smell a rotten project 10 kilometers against the wind. They want young, cheap people who can start being productive on a dime in a very specific field of expertise and they don't want to pay more than 40K Euros/Year for them. That's a fact for many shops in our very vivid and un-traditional field.
I'm in my early 40ies with 25 years of progamming under my belt and up to almost any development job you'd throw at me, but the usual barrier of getting that across to the beancounters who know zilch about computers gets another one added which is what I presume to be an intimidating self confidence in my skills as a seasoned developer. This actually *is* a solid disadvantage if you insist in staying in regular software development.
However, there's an upside to it, which is a notably stupid yet simple age cliche which I like to call the 'Grey Hair Bonus'. It's for this very that I have in recent years pondered and finally decided to invest my next extra cash not in the newest hardware but something I've never owned before: A business suit, a set of business shirts and some ties.... I'm pretty sure it's for the first time ever that today I'm sitting at my desk coding while wearing a shirt.
If all else fails I'll move further away from the keyboard and stronger into CR and consulting. And I'll up my rates according to the pain I endure. Most people are dumb that way and ask for nothing else, although I'd really rather continue coding for lesser pay. Coding will either become a hobby of mine or a part-time end-customer product building of some sort.
Bottom line: General society - which, lets face it, is mostly made up of people dumber than you if you are a developer - asks for grey-haired seniors to be wearing ties, talking smart and asking insane rates for long-winded papers, analysis, software contract consulting and whatnot. Not grey-haired coders. Might as well give it to them.
Sorry, but, the over-the-top story aside, I find the diamond age to be rather an utopia than anything else. I wouldn't care to much if the world went that way. Just give me my matter compiler.:-)
Luckily, my "IDE" is vim. Works great, about 50x more useful and faster than anything else I've tried and is available to me no matter where I am or what operating system I'm on at a given time.
Psst: You should try Emacs. Your productivity will skyrocket. Just saying.
I call bullshit. Gender barriers are either low or non-existant in our field. Racisim? Maybe in related fields. Probably there'd be a bias towards an indian entreperneur vs. a afro-american one, but that's just historically grown sillyness that can easily be exposed. Techcrunch had an interview a week or two ago, where some guy said that there's this sort of racisim is measurable in high-level VC funding. Dunno. Can't say. Could be.
But measurable gender discrimination in coding? I call bullshit. If anything, there's a bias *towards* women. Especially in FOSS or the modding/gamedev community, anybody can gain a rock-solid reputation as a developer, before anybody even will know what gender that person is. I've said it before, just a few weeks ago.
There may be a tad of mostly unintentional sexism in the first phases of normal interaction, simply because awkward technerds aren't used to having good-looking girls who know code around - (happend to me at more that one occassion... like automatically treating a young female PhD in CS with solid Java experience like an outsider... I noticed 10 seconds in and inmediately appologized all the while she was letting of a little wisecrack to let me know how silly I was being... quite embarassing actually) - but such stories aside, I'd say this stuff is urban legend. Once you've discussed design patterns with the lady or she's shown you about the projects toolstack or had been babysitting you with solving a problem, the last remaining of such belittling behaviour vanishes instantly and turns into genuine professional respect.
If you have a degree and/or a solid list of projects to show, nobody gives a hoot if you're a girl, guy, hermaphrodite or a giant genderless amobea - main thing is you can code and get the job done.
As far as I can tell, MS has by far the longest record of illegal activies, even if only for the fact that they are the oldest company (which I don't believe). The face of IT is mared forever by severe and serious illegal pratices on behalf of MS, especially in the anti-trust dept.
They actually got - and still get - away pretty cheap, if you ask me. The antitrust cases in the 90ies didn't harm them much and outside of their evil grip on PC computing they have a relatively untarnished reputation, like, for instance, in peripheral hardware and gaming consoles. People were actually cheering them on for spending 6 billion $ to take on Sony and Nintendo in the console market and spice things up with a little extra competition. The XBox is actually the only MS product I've actually considered buying in the last 15 years - aside from maybe my first optical mouse and ergo-keyboard.
But back to the issue at hand: MS deserves all the bashing they get, and more so. For example, just imagine Beos having a fair chance and gaining foothold in the PC market. How much different would the world look today? Just one of the countless examples of damage done by MS crimes in the last 2 decades.
The negative press wouldn't be half as bad if MS had been split into Windows and MS Office by the courts back then - which would've been the exact right thing to do.
Most people (FOSS fans included) don't give a shit wether a piece of software is FOSS or not. They just want to be able to get it fast and not get in their way when I try to buy or use it. If you have a piece of software that I can use and that solves a problem, I'll, and most other people, will shell out money. However, if your checkout gets pissy with me just because I live in a different country or continent, or if you add pointless obsticles (for instance obfuscating script code like some PHP web system or so) I will move to an inferior FOSS solution if that is the one that doesn't waste my time.
If you're product is scripted (server side web stuff or such), don't obfustcate and give me a fair licence. If your software is compiled, offer me a zero fuss update process (i.e. automatic) and don't get pissy with me just because I'd like to install it on my Laptop, Desktop and on my workbox at the office at the same time. Or live on the other side of the pond. You can add in a 'if this company dies, the produkt goes OSI-compliant FOSS, sourcecode and all' clause - that is perfectly fine and a nice touch to prove your spirit to non-fanatics, i.e. 99.9999% of your potential customers.
Bottom line: Build a good product and ask for fair money. If it solves the problem and your service isn't shit, people will buy it. Then what licence it has, most actual customers will care squat about.
My solutions, ordered by feasibility, best solution first:
1.) Pen & Paper still rules. You might want to go with technical pencil and a luxury eraser. I have three pens, a Lamy Swift Rollerball ( http://www.lamyusa.com/lamy_rollerball_L334GE_swift.php ) with black ink for writing, a clear acrylic Lamy Vista Rollerball with red ink for highlighting and anotations ( http://www.lamyusa.com/lamy_rollerball_L312_vista.php ) and a black Faber-Castell Grip Plus ( http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Faber-Castell-Grip-Plus-Pencil-07mm.html ) mechanical pencil for drawings or writing on surfaces where the Swift won't do. All three are nicely tucked away in a premium pen pouch that keeps them from bouncing around in my bag. I write in a Moleskine or a Leuchtturm notebook ( http://journalingarts.com/manufacturer/leuchtturm ). I think I can say I prefer Leuchtturm over Moleskine, because Leuchtturm has numbered pages and the quality appears to be even a tad better than a Moleskine. YMMV
2.) Lightscribe solution in conjunction with Evernote or a simular solution. The reason I don't use a smartpen setup (i've looked into various solutions in the past) is, that the pens allways suck. At least in handling. Not worth the trouble.
3.) HTC Flyer Android Tablet with Evernote. The HTC Flyer comes with a pen which is pretty good. And it has a custom built-in evernote solution that enables you to store notes written with the Flyer stylus in evernote and to make annotations on existing notes. And it has a recording function integrated. And quite a bit more. I do recommend getting a protective foil for the screen before you start writing stuff on it, the HTC Flyers stylus has a hard tip and can scratch the display a little.
I'd like to emphasise that, in my experience, solutions 2 & 3 are notably inferior to solution #1, aside from Evernotes capability of backup and audio-recording. But you can use that on top of the pen & paper solution.
Bottom line: Don't fall into a gadget spending binge just because you have a 3-day conference brewing. And if you go with pen & paper, don't pinch. A good pen and a good notebook are what puts the fun in taking notes. And they are still way cheaper than any gadget.
1st: I'm a total n00b in physics, nuclear and fusion and all that stuff, so excuse if I'm being overly general and simplistic.
The current state of fusion:
Throughout the last decades humanity has spent upwards of 25 billion Euros on building Tokamaks, the most recent being the budget sinkhole JET which appears to constantly push back its schedule without even getting the most basic things of feasible fusion squared away - I recall JETs bill is somewhere around 17 Billion Euros now.
Here's my question(s):
Wouldn't this money be better spent in putting some serious scientific brains and research behind cold fusion concepts? Or is it that Cold Fusion is totally dismissed in the serious science community for obvious reasons that escape a novice like me.... Or is there a peer pressure and the danger of looking silly when getting into cold fusion, despite it maybe being just as feasible and much cheaper than the Tokamak approach? Have to many scams and frauds spoiled the waters for scientists who could offer serious contribution in this field but don't dare to at the danger of being ridiculed?
Please enlighten a layman on these issues, of which some may be political. Thanks.
The peer review was not a double-blind study. Ergo: No scientific evidence, any finite conclusion is worthless. You fail. Thank you very much. End of discussion.... Then again, as far as I can read out of the article, the initial experiment wasn't a double blind test either.
However, the experiments setup looks interesting and - in a fully controlled environment - could statistically prove the existence of clairvoyance.
Iran, after just yesterday celebrating the aniversary of being 'very extremely close to building the bomb now' for 20 years, now announced that the Iranian gouvernment has ordered to cease all of the countries nuclear operations and research and inmediately focus all resources in building a rating agency. The rating agency is being constructed in downtown Teheran as we speak and is due to be finished in 8 weeks, when offices will be furnished and the first analysist - fresh graduates from the Abda-alla-hap Business School - will move in. Stockmarkets throughout the western hemisphere plumeted as the news struck and the UN has summoned an emergency security concil meeting for tomorrow morning. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinedschad, in a speech this morning, threatened western powers with saying 'we will rate all infidels with B- or lower'. His word could hardly be heard through thousands and thousands of bearded and veiled muslim ultrafanatics cheering in the streets and in parliament. Israeli gouvernment and military officials have declared Defcon 3.
His website is truly the handywork of an especially evil sith. I wouldn't trust this Jedi whom apparently enjoys inflicting pain simply by publishing stuff online. Watch out for the dark side, would be my advice... traitor!
I'm a thouroughbreed Flash/ActionScript developer currently bemoaning the slow demise of Flash and diving into other technologies as a replacement - which, on a sidenote, are *all* a *big* step backwards in terms of development workflow and deployment for end-user applikations. Even something like Qt wether with some neat PL like Python or just the pure C++ feels like going back 20 years in time. Thus I have to say the following:
If you want to do this project for yourself and your close friends, for fun and games with no business considerations as to wether it will run on future mobile devices - which rules out Flash a little - I cannot emphasise enough that I strongly recommend you actually use Flash for this project!
Just dive in and see to it that your library tree stays just as clean and well ordered as your object model.
If you are a programmer with OOP experience - which I gather you are from your descripion - you *want* to use Flash. For the simple reason that visual objects in Flash follow the exact same herarchical behaviour as programming objects in Java, AS or C++. If you plan and build you asset tree inside the Flash projects library carefully and name everything consistently, moving a load status bar is as simple as [code]
The visual objects translate directly into the programming world and vice-versa. And drawing your objects with the Flash vector tools, grouping, instancing, ordering them into your object herarchy and naming them is second only to awesome sex. You have the worlds leading visual designer for the visual stuff and the most crappy editor for AS code - which is why the first thing you do is write "include 'mycode.as" in the first root movie frame and start writing you code with jEdit or some other editor that has simular top-grade AS support and patterns.
Some tips to get you started without doing the mistakes everybody does: Don't animate your root timeline. Keep root as clean as possible. Best: Use a stage clip (object) where all the stuff happens.... If you animate something in the timeline, put it in a seperate timeline. If in doubt wether you should turn something into a symbol (visual class), do it. Instance it and give it a fitting name. ProgressBar is the symbol, progressBar is the instance... exactly like in code. Keep your library clean, use clearly namedfolders to stow away tweens, fonts and stuff. Name everything in use - you should be able to program, build and compile your projects entirely with only the lib and a CLI compiler. Use the Flash IDE mostly for drawing and assembly of the layout.
If you want to be independant of an IDE for large chunks of code, get the free Flex/AS compiler for your OS of choice (OS X, Linux or Windows) and dive into CLI and bash automated compiling fun. OReilly has a stack of books on Flash/AS development, most of which are quite usefull.... The AS3 Cookbook is a bit of a backstep though - you might consider deving in AS2 and getting a used copy of the OReilly AS2 Cookbook and using the FOSS Motion Twin ActionScript Compiler (MTASC) - an AS2 compiler that actually is *better* than the Adobe AS2 compiler and started the whole 'Flash for free and seperate compilers for serious developers' movement a few years back. You can use an older copy of the Flash IDE for building your asset lib against AS2 - comes cheaper.
Bottom line: That sort of game? For fun? Flash/ActionScript and an old student edition of the Flash IDE for assembling your visual and audio assets. It's a technology on the slow move out - sadly - but you'll have loads of fun. Promise.
P.S.: If for some reason Flash is a no-go, try FOSS Pygame (Python, SDL, etc. - neat package), FOSS Sqeak (Smaltalk galore!), Corona for x-platform mobile, Torque Game Engine or Unity3D.... Beyond that you're into serious development pain with some C-language and bizarely sized libs and development pipelines. Not fun. Steer clear.
I've rarely seen such an obviously über-egocentric perpetualy mischief touting fraud get away with so much in such a succession. Ever since he appeared as the poster boy of the 2000s dotCom Bubble he's been continuosly rubbing his IT business non-sense and fraudulent practices into peoples faces and always has gotten away with it. To this very day. In a strange way, I'm actually impressed.
Most people haven't fully gauged their inert moral capabilities, I'd suspect. Most of it is adapted and constructed, and once people get rich and have access to power and independace from others, it's these flaky concepts of morality that disintegrate.
Someone with real character and moral concepts that one does not neccesarly derive from the need to be nice to other people due to scarce resources is more likely to maintain his values, wether he is rich or not.
It's for this reason that I'm very curious about what would happen with my behaviour if I, for whatever reason, should someday turn rich. I like to believe that only little of my character and my behaviour towards other people would change, but never the less I'd be curious to know if that actually is the case.
However I do believe that most people reveal an underdeveloped character when exposed to certain amounts of wealth over longer periods of time. Today education througout the world rarely focuses on values independant of economic wealth - which shows how poor humanity actually is.
What does this have to do with digital distribution?
The description sounds either like a classic case of fraud or abysmal business pratices. Ergo: Sue the vendor into next wednesday or mod them into next wednesday, spread the word and never buy a product from them again.
Stuff like this has happened way before digital distribution - although I have to admit, the naughtyness in this one does have exceptional qualities.
I've been doing rich client development in Flash ever since 2000 and to me the Flash Player for x86/Linux was a big selling point. True x-platform RTE with a huge amount of awesome features and a very good programming language with AS2 and AS3. A free cli compiler for all major platforms including Linux and an awesome workflow for building custom UIs with the Flash IDE.
I don't think there will be such a widespread and powerfull platform again in the future - it's a shame Adobe missed out on the whole touch revolution in the Flash dept. Just last year I bought my last stack of OReillys for Flex and AS development for a project I had.... Guess that will have been my last. Just this morning I though of stashing them away to make room for my new C++ stack.
For me, one thing is for sure: As awesome as Flash was, it is the one and only proprietary platform and technology I will ever have invested significant time in. From here on out it's only truely OSI compliant FOSS technologies and PLs for me. That was also the main reason I didn't move into Unity3D when I was doing game development a while back.
Flash/AS it was a great 11 years. You will be missed.
Before we get to the details, an important sidenote: That 'constantly correcting mistakes' part that has you frustrated has a name: It's called consulting, and it pays thrice the rates of a developer. For that exact reason.
I do development for a living and am trying to push into consulting. However, I do also have a diploma in performing arts, and actually consider myself quite talented in that field aswell.... It doesn't pay as well as software development, but it *is* a very good contrast programm. It can be a serious drag if you do it fulltime though, just as with every other profession on the planet. I don't perform on stage anymore, but I am a regular argentine Tango dancer, for the fun and alternative lifestyle that come with spending your spare time on tango marathons throughout central europe.
Here is my advice, from a performing arts backround and freelance software development:
I know the pain of constantly running into the same mistakes people do with every new customer. You have to make it worthwhile. Since you seem to be an experienced DB guy, I'd just start upping your rates until
a) the money you get is sufficient enough to bear the pain that comes with the profession or b) your customers start dropping away and the workload becomes more bareable.
At the same time you should make the consulting part more of a profession of yours. If people don't pay for your time, they won't listen to you. What doesn't cost anything isn't worth anything and the customer who isn't willing to pay what your advice is worth, isn't worthwhile your time anyway. It would be a waste.
Now for the interesting part: While you gradually shift your career in the above mentioned ways - without dumping the baby with the bathwater - you should definitely get yourself what I call a constrast programm. Learn an entirely different skill, preferably something you admire but never really dreamt of of mastering. Think breakdancing or parcour is cool? Get into it. Im serious. Go out there and find an artform totally away from the screen and keyboard that will give a whole new meaning to your life. I discovered Tango 4,5 years ago and it changed my life radically in many ways benefitial to me and the people around me. Granted, I have dance training, but I've never experienced anything like the social and erotic aspects of Tango before. Definitely changed my life for the better. And my relation to the opposite sex... which is kinda the same thing in this case. Maybe for you it's Paragliding, Kung Fu, a Religious Community, writing poetry or something else. What ever you do of the above, definitely start looking for your contrast programm now.
When you've found it you can still change your life around it and drop development if it still is a drag. I'm still in development and I'm staying for now - for the realtively safe cash and the fexibility it offers, but I know I can stop on a dime as soon as I'm fed up or simply focus on the fun parts and ignore customers or recruiters that are a PITA.... If they don't pay the 650 Euro / day rate I ask from them that is. To give you an impression: I'm writing this on my MB Air from Berlin, where I'm staying for the Berlinale Film Festival, some nights of argentine Tango and doing some webwork for my customers back home, all the while being together with my girlfriend I met in Tango... you get the picture:-)
Got out there and do some exploring again, you won't regret it.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for all the replys, they definitely are a help in sorting out my thoughts on this. I'm still unsure, but I do think Business Informatics is my way to go for a degree. It's a mix of achieving cred / a degree, doing stuff I'm interested in, learning new stuff I want to know (anything bean-counting related), dealing with stuff I can do with ease like English & Programming - thus taking the edge of the tough stuff I'll have to learn for - and gaining in future perspective in terms of salary / overall late career.
I'm still hesitant - i.e. f*cking scared shittless - to make the move because if I do the next 4 years are going to be *very* tough. But if I do it I'll be doing it for the long hawl and will get started right away in specialising in related technologies and products. I'll be asking some friends to show me around SAP and ABAP in the next few weeks, for instance - maybe that's my ticket and I can deal with the downsides. And I'll go and see if I can sneek into some math classes and see how extreme it's going to be. I still have two months before enrollment for the winter semester 2012/2013 closes. Maybe I'll add another few months of working to save some money for a hassle free first two semesters or something and enroll next year.
Dunno yet. It's all up in the air. Wish me luck!
Thanks for all the feedback and take care. One way or the other, I probably will soon be seriously cutting down on slashdot time for the first time in 11 years :-) .
Seriously, is this a joke? The very first thing I'd chuck away when building a star ship inspired by Star Trek is the design of the Enterprise. There are countless way better, suitable and even more realistic space ship designs than that fragile contraption.
In all honesty, I don't get all this AGW/Non-AGW racket. Is this an US thing?
AGW by caused by humans using fossil fuels for cooking, heating and driving their cars does sound resonable to me. But even if details need to be debated, I personally do not need any further hypothesis about how and in what speed AGW is going to come into effect. I believe it allready has, but that's just belief.
What I *do* know however is this:
1) We have 7,2 Billion people on this planet, the number is growing and the growth rate is increasing.
2) Most of these people heat and cook with fossil fuels. This is a problem that would be next to trivial to solve, somewhat in the way the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving toilets to a bazillion people and doctors going around asking the villagers in 3rd world countries to store their drinking water in PET Bottles on the roof in the sun for three days as to eliminate 99,999% of all patogens in it before drinking it. Along that alley solar cookers and basic tips on isolation could case simular changes on a huge scale in the 'fossil fuel wasting dept. - and people would be glad not having to scavange for wood or burn poisinous plastics. And even if it only is to improve local climate and save some woodlands. That's a reason more than good enough - AGW one way or the other.
3) Germans spend 4.7 Billion man-hours per year in traffic jams. 4 point 7 fucking Billion man-hours per year! Sorry folks, I do not know about you, but I do not need any more info on AGW or cartraffic CO2 output in Germany to know that that number adds an entire new level to 'insane' and it would be best for all Germans and their quality of living to invest 20 - 40 Billion Euros in further ICEs even better public transport and - if we so desire (i think'd be tres cool) - a Transrapid (German Maglev) loop throughout the republik. Quality of life would get another boost, Germans would have time to have kids again and we could quit subsidizing cartraffic via tax-breaks (yeah, some real shit going on in that dept. over here ... don't even get me started) and we could quit plastering our already scarce untouched countrysides with more 6-track Autobahnen.
Bottom line: This AGW/Non-AGW racket is a silly roadshow to distract from clear issues at hand that need no scientific debate to be recongised as problems that need solving. Now. But I guess officials just want a heated debate to happen and nothing to be done. It's called Mass Distraction.
My 2 cents.
The sad part is neither is the Macbook. It's a bloody computer and an obsolete one at that.
I still constantly hear and read this. I'd go as far and say ever since Jobs rejoined Apple and introduced OS X this isn't the case anymore.
I'm a die hard nerd/geek with 13 years of Linux experience, and I love nothing more than a well-configured x86-Linux driven piece of hardware *and* ever since I stopped buying the most recent windows games - sometime back in 2001 or so - I allways go for the most bang for buck.
Why then is it that I'm typing this on a MB Air?
Quite frankly, because there is no alternative. It's Unix with most of the Bash & CLI toolstack preinstalled. It has a touchpad that for once isn't built by the techstandards of 1995 - i.e. doesn't suck like an industry-grade vacuum cleaner. It has a 64bit core 2 duo CPU and a battery life management built into the OS that was built by the exact same people that built the battery and the motherboard and everthing else inside it 1,3kg light aluminum enclosure.
Ok, there are, as of now, Ultrabooks out there that don't come with MS tax and cost less with simular performance. But when I bought this one, after long and carefull consideration, there wasn't an alternative.
A PC that doesn't even come close to the current cheapest Mac Mini in size, noise, ease of handling and performance costs upwards of 1000$ at least. The cheapest mac mini costs 600$. Even if I replace the HDD with an SSD it will still be no more expensive or even cheaper than a PC equivalent.
A different example: I recently got myself an HTC Flyer tablet - also after long and carefull consideration. The upsides were: Cheap (bargain offer), precisely the right size and no Apple AppStore / X-Code ADC lock-in. And it was the only one that could compete with Apple quality wise. Actually, i I find the HTC Flyer to have a more pristine enclosure than the iPads.
Yet again, I'm a computer expert and have very specific considerations to make when buying such a device.
The newest iPad comes at 479 Euros and is at least a generation ahead of everything else in the tablet world - if I were a mere consumer that would be a very attractive prospect and anyone would be hard pressed to find a better offer price wise.
Bottom line:
Apple is loosing karma by the minute with a lot of experts, for the reasons we all know - but the legend that their hardware is overpriced is simply that: A legend. Within the spec-range they choose to deliver and cater to, they are, in fact, quite a good value. Denying that is just being silly.
My 2 cents.
... will US Americans finally get it that superhero comics =! comics ... but only a tiny, tiny subgenre of comics.
Lens manufacturers in the 60ies and 70ies and the entire film industry bent over backwards to get rid of the bokeh effect, or at least dimish it. Lenses that reduced or dimished bokeh were way up there in terms of cost and quality. Today compositor and 3D software vendors are struggling to offer the most realistic bokeh effects, and in variations too. People have gotten so used to it that scenes in which bokeh would occur but doesn't (due to digital effects) consider it unreal and 'somehow not fitting' i.e. good looking.
A simular thing happend in the Fashion industry when fashion fotographers would skip the bleach to preview prints before moving them into print production when they were in a hurry. Then the designers and fotographers got used to the look and started printing them in ads, unbleached. Nowadays 'bleach-bypass' is a regular set of digital post production effects and when you want to present and sell hip fashion in an ad, it's just about the only way to go.
I bet this bickering about 48fps movies falls in the very same category.
My 2 cents.
... such as the newer Java, which combines the clean, easy and manageable syntax of C with the blazing speed of Smalltalk.
*Tadum* *Crash* *Thud*
Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. Try the fish and tip your waitor.
I personally am starting to suspect that a little grain of truth is in there.
While I'm pretty sure that inside the field age, among software developers and engineers discrimination towards different age-groups is near non-existant and any claim to the contrary is mostly hysteria, I'm beginning to suspect there might be a hidded sort-of age discrimination at intersections with other fields not related to out nerdy fields of expertise such as HR and Management.
I've sent in my resume to job descriptions that fit my skillset as if it were written with me in mind and recieved answers such as 'you are overqualified' while at the same time suspect in more than one instance that it would be damaging to apply for a lesser position at other gigs, simply because people would become suspicious of why I'm applying this low at my age and with the project portfolio I have.
Companies, especially recruiters and b2b contractor shops, want fresh graduates with an academic degree that they can pay low and sell high for the shittiest of non-rewarding dead-end jobs. They certainly do not want seasoned developers that smell a rotten project 10 kilometers against the wind. They want young, cheap people who can start being productive on a dime in a very specific field of expertise and they don't want to pay more than 40K Euros/Year for them. That's a fact for many shops in our very vivid and un-traditional field.
I'm in my early 40ies with 25 years of progamming under my belt and up to almost any development job you'd throw at me, but the usual barrier of getting that across to the beancounters who know zilch about computers gets another one added which is what I presume to be an intimidating self confidence in my skills as a seasoned developer. This actually *is* a solid disadvantage if you insist in staying in regular software development.
However, there's an upside to it, which is a notably stupid yet simple age cliche which I like to call the 'Grey Hair Bonus'. It's for this very that I have in recent years pondered and finally decided to invest my next extra cash not in the newest hardware but something I've never owned before: A business suit, a set of business shirts and some ties. ... I'm pretty sure it's for the first time ever that today I'm sitting at my desk coding while wearing a shirt.
If all else fails I'll move further away from the keyboard and stronger into CR and consulting. And I'll up my rates according to the pain I endure. Most people are dumb that way and ask for nothing else, although I'd really rather continue coding for lesser pay. Coding will either become a hobby of mine or a part-time end-customer product building of some sort.
Bottom line: General society - which, lets face it, is mostly made up of people dumber than you if you are a developer - asks for grey-haired seniors to be wearing ties, talking smart and asking insane rates for long-winded papers, analysis, software contract consulting and whatnot. Not grey-haired coders. Might as well give it to them.
Sorry, but, the over-the-top story aside, I find the diamond age to be rather an utopia than anything else. :-)
I wouldn't care to much if the world went that way.
Just give me my matter compiler.
Your're right. It's religion in general. Religion posions everything.
Luckily, my "IDE" is vim. Works great, about 50x more useful and faster than anything else I've tried and is available to me no matter where I am or what operating system I'm on at a given time.
Psst: You should try Emacs. Your productivity will skyrocket.
Just saying.
I call bullshit. Gender barriers are either low or non-existant in our field. Racisim? Maybe in related fields. Probably there'd be a bias towards an indian entreperneur vs. a afro-american one, but that's just historically grown sillyness that can easily be exposed. Techcrunch had an interview a week or two ago, where some guy said that there's this sort of racisim is measurable in high-level VC funding. Dunno. Can't say. Could be.
But measurable gender discrimination in coding? I call bullshit. If anything, there's a bias *towards* women. Especially in FOSS or the modding/gamedev community, anybody can gain a rock-solid reputation as a developer, before anybody even will know what gender that person is. I've said it before, just a few weeks ago.
There may be a tad of mostly unintentional sexism in the first phases of normal interaction, simply because awkward technerds aren't used to having good-looking girls who know code around - (happend to me at more that one occassion ... like automatically treating a young female PhD in CS with solid Java experience like an outsider ... I noticed 10 seconds in and inmediately appologized all the while she was letting of a little wisecrack to let me know how silly I was being ... quite embarassing actually) - but such stories aside, I'd say this stuff is urban legend. Once you've discussed design patterns with the lady or she's shown you about the projects toolstack or had been babysitting you with solving a problem, the last remaining of such belittling behaviour vanishes instantly and turns into genuine professional respect.
If you have a degree and/or a solid list of projects to show, nobody gives a hoot if you're a girl, guy, hermaphrodite or a giant genderless amobea - main thing is you can code and get the job done.
My 2 cents.
As far as I can tell, MS has by far the longest record of illegal activies, even if only for the fact that they are the oldest company (which I don't believe). The face of IT is mared forever by severe and serious illegal pratices on behalf of MS, especially in the anti-trust dept.
They actually got - and still get - away pretty cheap, if you ask me. The antitrust cases in the 90ies didn't harm them much and outside of their evil grip on PC computing they have a relatively untarnished reputation, like, for instance, in peripheral hardware and gaming consoles. People were actually cheering them on for spending 6 billion $ to take on Sony and Nintendo in the console market and spice things up with a little extra competition. The XBox is actually the only MS product I've actually considered buying in the last 15 years - aside from maybe my first optical mouse and ergo-keyboard.
But back to the issue at hand: MS deserves all the bashing they get, and more so. For example, just imagine Beos having a fair chance and gaining foothold in the PC market. How much different would the world look today? Just one of the countless examples of damage done by MS crimes in the last 2 decades.
The negative press wouldn't be half as bad if MS had been split into Windows and MS Office by the courts back then - which would've been the exact right thing to do.
My 2 cents.
Most people (FOSS fans included) don't give a shit wether a piece of software is FOSS or not. They just want to be able to get it fast and not get in their way when I try to buy or use it.
If you have a piece of software that I can use and that solves a problem, I'll, and most other people, will shell out money. However, if your checkout gets pissy with me just because I live in a different country or continent, or if you add pointless obsticles (for instance obfuscating script code like some PHP web system or so) I will move to an inferior FOSS solution if that is the one that doesn't waste my time.
If you're product is scripted (server side web stuff or such), don't obfustcate and give me a fair licence. If your software is compiled, offer me a zero fuss update process (i.e. automatic) and don't get pissy with me just because I'd like to install it on my Laptop, Desktop and on my workbox at the office at the same time. Or live on the other side of the pond.
You can add in a 'if this company dies, the produkt goes OSI-compliant FOSS, sourcecode and all' clause - that is perfectly fine and a nice touch to prove your spirit to non-fanatics, i.e. 99.9999% of your potential customers.
Bottom line:
Build a good product and ask for fair money.
If it solves the problem and your service isn't shit, people will buy it.
Then what licence it has, most actual customers will care squat about.
My 2 cents.
My solutions, ordered by feasibility, best solution first:
1.) Pen & Paper still rules. You might want to go with technical pencil and a luxury eraser. I have three pens, a Lamy Swift Rollerball ( http://www.lamyusa.com/lamy_rollerball_L334GE_swift.php ) with black ink for writing, a clear acrylic Lamy Vista Rollerball with red ink for highlighting and anotations ( http://www.lamyusa.com/lamy_rollerball_L312_vista.php ) and a black Faber-Castell Grip Plus ( http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Faber-Castell-Grip-Plus-Pencil-07mm.html ) mechanical pencil for drawings or writing on surfaces where the Swift won't do. All three are nicely tucked away in a premium pen pouch that keeps them from bouncing around in my bag.
I write in a Moleskine or a Leuchtturm notebook ( http://journalingarts.com/manufacturer/leuchtturm ). I think I can say I prefer Leuchtturm over Moleskine, because Leuchtturm has numbered pages and the quality appears to be even a tad better than a Moleskine. YMMV
2.) Lightscribe solution in conjunction with Evernote or a simular solution. The reason I don't use a smartpen setup (i've looked into various solutions in the past) is, that the pens allways suck. At least in handling. Not worth the trouble.
3.) HTC Flyer Android Tablet with Evernote. The HTC Flyer comes with a pen which is pretty good. And it has a custom built-in evernote solution that enables you to store notes written with the Flyer stylus in evernote and to make annotations on existing notes. And it has a recording function integrated. And quite a bit more. I do recommend getting a protective foil for the screen before you start writing stuff on it, the HTC Flyers stylus has a hard tip and can scratch the display a little.
I'd like to emphasise that, in my experience, solutions 2 & 3 are notably inferior to solution #1, aside from Evernotes capability of backup and audio-recording. But you can use that on top of the pen & paper solution.
Bottom line: Don't fall into a gadget spending binge just because you have a 3-day conference brewing. And if you go with pen & paper, don't pinch. A good pen and a good notebook are what puts the fun in taking notes. And they are still way cheaper than any gadget.
My 2 cents.
Hoi.
1st: I'm a total n00b in physics, nuclear and fusion and all that stuff, so excuse if I'm being overly general and simplistic.
The current state of fusion:
Throughout the last decades humanity has spent upwards of 25 billion Euros on building Tokamaks, the most recent being the budget sinkhole JET which appears to constantly push back its schedule without even getting the most basic things of feasible fusion squared away - I recall JETs bill is somewhere around 17 Billion Euros now.
Here's my question(s):
Wouldn't this money be better spent in putting some serious scientific brains and research behind cold fusion concepts? Or is it that Cold Fusion is totally dismissed in the serious science community for obvious reasons that escape a novice like me. ... Or is there a peer pressure and the danger of looking silly when getting into cold fusion, despite it maybe being just as feasible and much cheaper than the Tokamak approach? Have to many scams and frauds spoiled the waters for scientists who could offer serious contribution in this field but don't dare to at the danger of being ridiculed?
Please enlighten a layman on these issues, of which some may be political. Thanks.
The peer review was not a double-blind study. ...
Ergo: No scientific evidence, any finite conclusion is worthless.
You fail. Thank you very much.
End of discussion.
Then again, as far as I can read out of the article, the initial experiment wasn't a double blind test either.
However, the experiments setup looks interesting and - in a fully controlled environment - could statistically prove the existence of clairvoyance.
Bottom line:
We're just as smart as before.
Iran, after just yesterday celebrating the aniversary of being 'very extremely close to building the bomb now' for 20 years, now announced that the Iranian gouvernment has ordered to cease all of the countries nuclear operations and research and inmediately focus all resources in building a rating agency.
The rating agency is being constructed in downtown Teheran as we speak and is due to be finished in 8 weeks, when offices will be furnished and the first analysist - fresh graduates from the Abda-alla-hap Business School - will move in. Stockmarkets throughout the western hemisphere plumeted as the news struck and the UN has summoned an emergency security concil meeting for tomorrow morning.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinedschad, in a speech this morning, threatened western powers with saying 'we will rate all infidels with B- or lower'. His word could hardly be heard through thousands and thousands of bearded and veiled muslim ultrafanatics cheering in the streets and in parliament. Israeli gouvernment and military officials have declared Defcon 3.
His website is truly the handywork of an especially evil sith. ... traitor!
I wouldn't trust this Jedi whom apparently enjoys inflicting pain simply by publishing stuff online.
Watch out for the dark side, would be my advice
I'm a thouroughbreed Flash/ActionScript developer currently bemoaning the slow demise of Flash and diving into other technologies as a replacement - which, on a sidenote, are *all* a *big* step backwards in terms of development workflow and deployment for end-user applikations. Even something like Qt wether with some neat PL like Python or just the pure C++ feels like going back 20 years in time. Thus I have to say the following:
If you want to do this project for yourself and your close friends, for fun and games with no business considerations as to wether it will run on future mobile devices - which rules out Flash a little - I cannot emphasise enough that I strongly recommend you actually use Flash for this project!
Just dive in and see to it that your library tree stays just as clean and well ordered as your object model.
If you are a programmer with OOP experience - which I gather you are from your descripion - you *want* to use Flash. For the simple reason that visual objects in Flash follow the exact same herarchical behaviour as programming objects in Java, AS or C++. If you plan and build you asset tree inside the Flash projects library carefully and name everything consistently, moving a load status bar is as simple as
[code]
progressBar._xscale = Math.round(myObject.bytesLoaded / myObject.bytesTotal * 100);
[/code]
The visual objects translate directly into the programming world and vice-versa. And drawing your objects with the Flash vector tools, grouping, instancing, ordering them into your object herarchy and naming them is second only to awesome sex. You have the worlds leading visual designer for the visual stuff and the most crappy editor for AS code - which is why the first thing you do is write "include 'mycode.as" in the first root movie frame and start writing you code with jEdit or some other editor that has simular top-grade AS support and patterns.
Some tips to get you started without doing the mistakes everybody does: Don't animate your root timeline. Keep root as clean as possible. Best: Use a stage clip (object) where all the stuff happens. ... If you animate something in the timeline, put it in a seperate timeline. If in doubt wether you should turn something into a symbol (visual class), do it. Instance it and give it a fitting name. ProgressBar is the symbol, progressBar is the instance ... exactly like in code. Keep your library clean, use clearly namedfolders to stow away tweens, fonts and stuff. Name everything in use - you should be able to program, build and compile your projects entirely with only the lib and a CLI compiler. Use the Flash IDE mostly for drawing and assembly of the layout.
If you want to be independant of an IDE for large chunks of code, get the free Flex/AS compiler for your OS of choice (OS X, Linux or Windows) and dive into CLI and bash automated compiling fun. ... The AS3 Cookbook is a bit of a backstep though - you might consider deving in AS2 and getting a used copy of the OReilly AS2 Cookbook and using the FOSS Motion Twin ActionScript Compiler (MTASC) - an AS2 compiler that actually is *better* than the Adobe AS2 compiler and started the whole 'Flash for free and seperate compilers for serious developers' movement a few years back. You can use an older copy of the Flash IDE for building your asset lib against AS2 - comes cheaper.
OReilly has a stack of books on Flash/AS development, most of which are quite usefull.
Bottom line:
That sort of game? For fun? Flash/ActionScript and an old student edition of the Flash IDE for assembling your visual and audio assets. It's a technology on the slow move out - sadly - but you'll have loads of fun. Promise.
P.S.: If for some reason Flash is a no-go, try FOSS Pygame (Python, SDL, etc. - neat package), FOSS Sqeak (Smaltalk galore!), Corona for x-platform mobile, Torque Game Engine or Unity3D. ... Beyond that you're into serious development pain with some C-language and bizarely sized libs and development pipelines. Not fun. Steer clear.
You have to hand it to Kimble: He sure has balls.
I've rarely seen such an obviously über-egocentric perpetualy mischief touting fraud get away with so much in such a succession. Ever since he appeared as the poster boy of the 2000s dotCom Bubble he's been continuosly rubbing his IT business non-sense and fraudulent practices into peoples faces and always has gotten away with it. To this very day. In a strange way, I'm actually impressed.
Money doesn't spoil character, money reveals character.
Most people haven't fully gauged their inert moral capabilities, I'd suspect. Most of it is adapted and constructed, and once people get rich and have access to power and independace from others, it's these flaky concepts of morality that disintegrate.
Someone with real character and moral concepts that one does not neccesarly derive from the need to be nice to other people due to scarce resources is more likely to maintain his values, wether he is rich or not.
It's for this reason that I'm very curious about what would happen with my behaviour if I, for whatever reason, should someday turn rich. I like to believe that only little of my character and my behaviour towards other people would change, but never the less I'd be curious to know if that actually is the case.
However I do believe that most people reveal an underdeveloped character when exposed to certain amounts of wealth over longer periods of time. Today education througout the world rarely focuses on values independant of economic wealth - which shows how poor humanity actually is.
My 2 cents.
What does this have to do with digital distribution?
The description sounds either like a classic case of fraud or abysmal business pratices.
Ergo: Sue the vendor into next wednesday or mod them into next wednesday, spread the word and never buy a product from them again.
Stuff like this has happened way before digital distribution - although I have to admit, the naughtyness in this one does have exceptional qualities.
I've been doing rich client development in Flash ever since 2000 and to me the Flash Player for x86/Linux was a big selling point. True x-platform RTE with a huge amount of awesome features and a very good programming language with AS2 and AS3. A free cli compiler for all major platforms including Linux and an awesome workflow for building custom UIs with the Flash IDE.
I don't think there will be such a widespread and powerfull platform again in the future - it's a shame Adobe missed out on the whole touch revolution in the Flash dept. Just last year I bought my last stack of OReillys for Flex and AS development for a project I had. ... Guess that will have been my last. Just this morning I though of stashing them away to make room for my new C++ stack.
For me, one thing is for sure: As awesome as Flash was, it is the one and only proprietary platform and technology I will ever have invested significant time in. From here on out it's only truely OSI compliant FOSS technologies and PLs for me. That was also the main reason I didn't move into Unity3D when I was doing game development a while back.
Flash/AS it was a great 11 years. You will be missed.
My 2 cents.
Before we get to the details, an important sidenote: That 'constantly correcting mistakes' part that has you frustrated has a name: It's called consulting, and it pays thrice the rates of a developer. For that exact reason.
I do development for a living and am trying to push into consulting. However, I do also have a diploma in performing arts, and actually consider myself quite talented in that field aswell. ... It doesn't pay as well as software development, but it *is* a very good contrast programm. It can be a serious drag if you do it fulltime though, just as with every other profession on the planet. I don't perform on stage anymore, but I am a regular argentine Tango dancer, for the fun and alternative lifestyle that come with spending your spare time on tango marathons throughout central europe.
Here is my advice, from a performing arts backround and freelance software development:
I know the pain of constantly running into the same mistakes people do with every new customer. You have to make it worthwhile. Since you seem to be an experienced DB guy, I'd just start upping your rates until
a) the money you get is sufficient enough to bear the pain that comes with the profession or
b) your customers start dropping away and the workload becomes more bareable.
At the same time you should make the consulting part more of a profession of yours. If people don't pay for your time, they won't listen to you. What doesn't cost anything isn't worth anything and the customer who isn't willing to pay what your advice is worth, isn't worthwhile your time anyway. It would be a waste.
Now for the interesting part: ... which is kinda the same thing in this case.
While you gradually shift your career in the above mentioned ways - without dumping the baby with the bathwater - you should definitely get yourself what I call a constrast programm. Learn an entirely different skill, preferably something you admire but never really dreamt of of mastering. Think breakdancing or parcour is cool? Get into it. Im serious. Go out there and find an artform totally away from the screen and keyboard that will give a whole new meaning to your life. I discovered Tango 4,5 years ago and it changed my life radically in many ways benefitial to me and the people around me. Granted, I have dance training, but I've never experienced anything like the social and erotic aspects of Tango before. Definitely changed my life for the better. And my relation to the opposite sex
Maybe for you it's Paragliding, Kung Fu, a Religious Community, writing poetry or something else. What ever you do of the above, definitely start looking for your contrast programm now.
When you've found it you can still change your life around it and drop development if it still is a drag. I'm still in development and I'm staying for now - for the realtively safe cash and the fexibility it offers, but I know I can stop on a dime as soon as I'm fed up or simply focus on the fun parts and ignore customers or recruiters that are a PITA. ... If they don't pay the 650 Euro / day rate I ask from them that is. To give you an impression: I'm writing this on my MB Air from Berlin, where I'm staying for the Berlinale Film Festival, some nights of argentine Tango and doing some webwork for my customers back home, all the while being together with my girlfriend I met in Tango ... you get the picture :-)
Got out there and do some exploring again, you won't regret it.
My 2 cents.