I took computer science because I liked to program, I was confident in my programming abilities, and the pay was pretty good. I also had the dream of writing the next PacMan and making a fortune. That should provide some clue as to my age. I think I chose well. However, I do wonder if I'll be able to continue to make a good living in this field through retirement age. Many posts on this board recommend studying some other field. Almost nobody has suggested fields that might be good alternatives.
Here is the way other fields stack up for me.
Doctor -- This has some appeal to me, but I feel too old to go back to school for another 8+ years.
Lawyer -- This is tempting. I have a friend that just graduated Law School 3 years ago and is now making $120,000 plus bonuses, plus travel mileage reimbursement will pay for his car. Unfortunately, I don't think I would like being a lawyer.
EE -- If I had not chosen CS, I would has chosen EE. Is this field in any better shape than CS?
Civil Engineer -- My dad was a civil engineer. Is this field in any better shape than CS?
Biology or BioChemistry -- Hmmm. Apply programming skills to protein folding problems. Sounds exciting, but whenever I pick up my biology book I fall asleep. I think the distance between learning something and getting to apply the knowledge are just too far removed. I think these fields require a Phd to get anywhere.
Business School/MBA. I don't know how these jobs actually correlate to getting work. I don't want a mid-level management job either.
Accountant. I think I could be an accountant. Seems boring though. And if we ever have a flat tax, kiss this job goodbye. Flat tax will never happen though.
I sometimes think I should have chosen a service oriented field, instead of a product oriented field. Products can be mass produced. This has the potential to greatly reduce the jobs in a field and to reduce the places where you can work. If companies can't innovate new ideas, then there will be no jobs.
A service oriented field though is more dependent on the population, which is ever growing. For example, you could become an accountant, lawyer or doctor in any city USA.
As for the do what you love idea.
I love heavy metal, snow skiing and baseball.
I have no potential to be good enough to make money in any of these fields. Almost in baseball, but not quite. Plus, I am too old now.
The World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel is starting to look interesting:)
Are any DVDs recorded in any resolutions higher than 480p?
Are there movies being broadcast in 720p and if so how are the broadcasters getting the movies in higher resolutions than consumers?
What resolution are football games delivered at?
About a year ago my company chose to use JMS for a project. Our company was writing only publishers, other company's would be writing subscribers. Therefore, I was interested in how well the JMS provider handled flow control. We did not need to persist messages to disk.
There is a simple test everyone should try.
In the onMessage() implementation insert an infinite loop that never returns.
We ended trying about 10 vendors and none of them could handle this problem.
The JMS server did 1 of 2 things.
Either messages were cached for the non-responding client until the server ran out of RAM and crashed or the server stopped publishing messages to all clients.
The JMS specification does not indicate how such a problem should be handled. Eventually, if a client is not responding, messages to that client will have to be dropped. Messages can only be cached for so long. JMS does not have any method of generating a notification that messages are being dropped.
We worked with a couple of big companies to try and resolve this problem and they were completely incompetent in dealing with customer feed back on the issue and getting the problem resolved.
We finally found a company that did fix the problem for us. Fiorano readily verified the problem and quickly turned out a fix.
This test is perhaps a bit extreme. However, you never know how a client will handle the onMessage function. Perhaps they run database query to insert data into a large table. This query could take hours to run. When servers stop publishing messages until onMessage() returns you are going to get big scalability problems.
I also find the JMS API to be sorely lacking from a programmatic administrative view. There is no information on who is connected, how long they have been connected, how much data was sent to a subscriber, no way to examine a subscriber's subscription profile or to set a profile for a subscriber unless you are the subscriber. There is no ability to break a connection. Some of this may be available through a provider user interface, but JMS does not address this from an API.
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I took computer science because I liked to program, I was confident in my programming abilities, and the pay was pretty good. I also had the dream of writing the next PacMan and making a fortune. That should provide some clue as to my age. I think I chose well. However, I do wonder if I'll be able to continue to make a good living in this field through retirement age. Many posts on this board recommend studying some other field. Almost nobody has suggested fields that might be good alternatives. Here is the way other fields stack up for me. Doctor -- This has some appeal to me, but I feel too old to go back to school for another 8+ years. Lawyer -- This is tempting. I have a friend that just graduated Law School 3 years ago and is now making $120,000 plus bonuses, plus travel mileage reimbursement will pay for his car. Unfortunately, I don't think I would like being a lawyer. EE -- If I had not chosen CS, I would has chosen EE. Is this field in any better shape than CS? Civil Engineer -- My dad was a civil engineer. Is this field in any better shape than CS? Biology or BioChemistry -- Hmmm. Apply programming skills to protein folding problems. Sounds exciting, but whenever I pick up my biology book I fall asleep. I think the distance between learning something and getting to apply the knowledge are just too far removed. I think these fields require a Phd to get anywhere. Business School/MBA. I don't know how these jobs actually correlate to getting work. I don't want a mid-level management job either. Accountant. I think I could be an accountant. Seems boring though. And if we ever have a flat tax, kiss this job goodbye. Flat tax will never happen though. I sometimes think I should have chosen a service oriented field, instead of a product oriented field. Products can be mass produced. This has the potential to greatly reduce the jobs in a field and to reduce the places where you can work. If companies can't innovate new ideas, then there will be no jobs. A service oriented field though is more dependent on the population, which is ever growing. For example, you could become an accountant, lawyer or doctor in any city USA. As for the do what you love idea. I love heavy metal, snow skiing and baseball. I have no potential to be good enough to make money in any of these fields. Almost in baseball, but not quite. Plus, I am too old now. The World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel is starting to look interesting :)
Are any DVDs recorded in any resolutions higher than 480p? Are there movies being broadcast in 720p and if so how are the broadcasters getting the movies in higher resolutions than consumers? What resolution are football games delivered at?
About a year ago my company chose to use JMS for a project. Our company was writing only publishers, other company's would be writing subscribers. Therefore, I was interested in how well the JMS provider handled flow control. We did not need to persist messages to disk. There is a simple test everyone should try. In the onMessage() implementation insert an infinite loop that never returns. We ended trying about 10 vendors and none of them could handle this problem. The JMS server did 1 of 2 things. Either messages were cached for the non-responding client until the server ran out of RAM and crashed or the server stopped publishing messages to all clients. The JMS specification does not indicate how such a problem should be handled. Eventually, if a client is not responding, messages to that client will have to be dropped. Messages can only be cached for so long. JMS does not have any method of generating a notification that messages are being dropped. We worked with a couple of big companies to try and resolve this problem and they were completely incompetent in dealing with customer feed back on the issue and getting the problem resolved. We finally found a company that did fix the problem for us. Fiorano readily verified the problem and quickly turned out a fix. This test is perhaps a bit extreme. However, you never know how a client will handle the onMessage function. Perhaps they run database query to insert data into a large table. This query could take hours to run. When servers stop publishing messages until onMessage() returns you are going to get big scalability problems. I also find the JMS API to be sorely lacking from a programmatic administrative view. There is no information on who is connected, how long they have been connected, how much data was sent to a subscriber, no way to examine a subscriber's subscription profile or to set a profile for a subscriber unless you are the subscriber. There is no ability to break a connection. Some of this may be available through a provider user interface, but JMS does not address this from an API.