the one and probably the only time I will ever post a reply to a slashdot forum.
Okay when I was in High School, I was in a sort of similiar situation. I was 18 years old, I had a job as head sys admin for a medium sized ISP (~2500 dialup customers, hosting accounts, e-commerce/design clients all that crap).
Anyways the end of high school came and I had to decide wether or not to go away to college. The company I was working for made me a really lucrative offer to stay and I had an offer at MCI.
I didn't do so well in high school and never had much respect for the educational system so that was a count against my deciding to go away.
However when I was in high school granted I was a good admin and a good code hacker but I wasn't making much money. Plus with the trouble finding good qualified help I was always overloaded. I couldn't get a week off to save my life plus being on call 24x7 yada yada yada. Suck.
For some reason I kind of ignored the money and took a gamble on getting a Computer Science degree. Well here I am 3 years later, I have another year left before I am a umm computer scientist(?).
College presented me with a few years to grow up and be normal and do normal things. My working experience burnt me out to nothing. College gave me the chance to go away from home, meet new people (some much smarter than me, college can be very humbling:)), and just do new things. College also presented many opportunities that I never would have gotten into unless I had gone.
My life right now sits like this, I'm a year away from a commission as a 2Lt in the US Air Force, a year away from a CS degree were I got to learn lots of cool stuff, I'm spending the summer (and possibly the Fall) doing an internship were I'll be making almost as much money as one of those great job offers (but its only temporary.. I get to try it at least eh?).
I picked up alot of hobbies (and some women to) during my time in school.
On the flip side of all that. I did get burnt out being the jack of all trades doing technical work. I factored into my decision the fact that I didn't want to do that stuff for the rest of my life and what better place to start working on what would be the rest of my life than school.
If your not the type who gets burnt out on that stuff and tuning routers, keeping servers running, and writing perl scripts is enough to keep you engaged forever well then I can tell the other side of the story.
Their was a guy who replaced me. A year older, same types of interests, etc. A cool guy.
I left my job to go away to school (500 miles north whee), he left the same school to go take over my job. We kind of did a switcheroo.
He was making good money, enjoying what he was doing. Got to buy some of the material things (new jimmy, a used corvette). Met himself a nice woman got married. So that can work out to.
I really think that college has given me more growth opportunities though and more of a chance to find myself (still looking) while working more or less gives you stuff.
Hope the helps, good luck with your decision. I have never regretted mine.
I find Essential System Administration (also from ORA) is the absolute bomb.
If your looking for a good UNIX reference that is a great book.
its a great 'practical' reference and worth every penny.
figured I would throw that out if your planning to buy a book on system administration to act as a UNIX reference this is definetly what you should get.
your right:) but theres still good people there, doesn't mean there isn't a ton of clueless ones, or wannabes or anything like that but it is still a cool medium and I was just defending it a little..
I didn't dig the comment about IRC.. I think IRC is one of the few places on the net that hasn't become dominated by commercialism. Its also a great spot to get into a community for just about anything computer related.
Not to mention many great coders (and authors of my favorite ORA books) lurk about on IRC and I am at times overwhelemed that I can so easily interact with them its like being able to talk to your favorite celebrity when you have the guts to just approach them.
as for the article itself *bleh*, kids if you want to be a hacker go out to your mailbox... depending on how many days its been since you'll find a number of AOL disks, install it and then visit your favorite video store and rent Hackers: The Movie... you'll do alright.
Slashdot Mirror
the one and probably the only time I will ever post a reply to a slashdot forum.
:)), and just do new things. College also presented many opportunities that I never would have gotten into unless I had gone.
Okay when I was in High School, I was in a sort of similiar situation. I was 18 years old, I had a job as head sys admin for a medium sized ISP (~2500 dialup customers, hosting accounts, e-commerce/design clients all that crap).
Anyways the end of high school came and I had to decide wether or not to go away to college. The company I was working for made me a really lucrative offer to stay and I had an offer at MCI.
I didn't do so well in high school and never had much respect for the educational system so that was a count against my deciding to go away.
However when I was in high school granted I was a good admin and a good code hacker but I wasn't making much money. Plus with the trouble finding good qualified help I was always overloaded. I couldn't get a week off to save my life plus being on call 24x7 yada yada yada. Suck.
For some reason I kind of ignored the money and took a gamble on getting a Computer Science degree. Well here I am 3 years later, I have another year left before I am a umm computer scientist(?).
College presented me with a few years to grow up and be normal and do normal things. My working experience burnt me out to nothing. College gave me the chance to go away from home, meet new people (some much smarter than me, college can be very humbling
My life right now sits like this, I'm a year away from a commission as a 2Lt in the US Air Force, a year away from a CS degree were I got to learn lots of cool stuff, I'm spending the summer (and possibly the Fall) doing an internship were I'll be making almost as much money as one of those great job offers (but its only temporary.. I get to try it at least eh?).
I picked up alot of hobbies (and some women to) during my time in school.
On the flip side of all that. I did get burnt out being the jack of all trades doing technical work.
I factored into my decision the fact that I didn't want to do that stuff for the rest of my life and what better place to start working on what would be the rest of my life than school.
If your not the type who gets burnt out on that stuff and tuning routers, keeping servers running, and writing perl scripts is enough to keep you engaged forever well then I can tell the other side of the story.
Their was a guy who replaced me. A year older, same types of interests, etc. A cool guy.
I left my job to go away to school (500 miles north whee), he left the same school to go take over my job. We kind of did a switcheroo.
He was making good money, enjoying what he was doing. Got to buy some of the material things (new jimmy, a used corvette). Met himself a nice woman got married. So that can work out to.
I really think that college has given me more growth opportunities though and more of a chance to find myself (still looking) while working more or less gives you stuff.
Hope the helps, good luck with your decision. I have never regretted mine.
Steve Byrne is a Sun employee.
java fully has my acceptance open source or not.
I find Essential System Administration (also from ORA) is the absolute bomb.
If your looking for a good UNIX reference that is a great book.
its a great 'practical' reference and worth every penny.
figured I would throw that out if your planning to buy a book on system administration to act as a UNIX reference this is definetly what you should get.
your right :) but theres still good people there, doesn't mean there isn't a ton of clueless ones, or wannabes or anything like that but it is still a cool medium and I was just defending it a little..
I didn't dig the comment about IRC.. I think IRC is one of the few places on the net that hasn't become dominated by commercialism. Its also a great spot to get into a community for just about anything computer related.
Not to mention many great coders (and authors of my favorite ORA books) lurk about on IRC and I am at times overwhelemed that I can so easily interact with them its like being able to talk to your favorite celebrity when you have the guts to just approach them.
as for the article itself *bleh*, kids if you want to be a hacker go out to your mailbox... depending on how many days its been since you'll find a number of AOL disks, install it and then visit your favorite video store and rent Hackers: The Movie... you'll do alright.