you know, i love my wife dearly and look forward to 50 years or so of the standard ups and downs of marriage... but 500??!?! 750?!? ETERNITY?
BAH!
stick a fork in me already.
m.
dude, did anyone else spend hours using ray-tracing programs? well, actually, you used the program for about 5 minutes, and then waited about 40, and then used it for another 5, and then waited 40...
This is why the browser wars were a good thing. Sure, web development was annoying because of all the versioning nightmares, but at least there were safe alternatives. At least there was competition driving the products to be better and better.
Payback is a bitch no? Sure they got a little paddle on the backside and a, "Don't do that again" over their monopolistic practices, but here we are, seeing the karma swing around to bite them in the ass.
Hopefully this stuff will continue to the point where we can get the ball rolling again. Yet another big moment for open source software to try to swing in and become a viable alternative. Especially considering the fact that firefox is just an application and not a whole OS, which can be a scary leap for many to attempt an install, it might really open some eyes to what could be.
Seriously, if you pigeon hole yourself as the [BLAH] guy and in 5-10 years [BLAH] is only for legacy apps, you may likely find yourself without a job. Sure, that can vary. Some legacy skills can turn into a gold mine when no one wants to touch that technology with a ten foot pool and the company has too much invested in the existing code base to start over. But that's a niche market and most developers of [BLAH] will have to move on to [.BLAH] or [pBLAH] to survive as programmers.
You could at that 5-10 point become a manager, but I know that's not always a very comfortable option.
You have to constantly be playing with another technology that interests you. And often that means doing it in your free time. Work projects often are cemented in previous technologies depending on your situation.
As a contractor, I have had to constantly be versed in new technologies. In fact, maybe someone could argue that THAT becomes your specialty over time. You have to know the languages being paid for which means being less of a master and more of a jack of all trades. Another thing to remember is that most languages solve a lot of the same problems in fairly similar ways. You can do Web, SOAP, XML, Graphics, Threading, Crypto, Network, SQL stuff in any of the languages we all love. Being a [BLAH] guru puts too much of your knowledge base in mindless details that might go away in 2 or 3 years when the next version comes out. Black box/Abstraction is supposed to help us. We shouldn't have to know the nastiest end details.
Also remember that personal experience can count just as much as job experience. Get your nose out of the books and write software that you're interested in. Pick and project and prove that you actually DO have the skills on that resume. Put the project on your personal website. (Or link to it's code at sourceforge. Whatever works.) Putting your software out there let's them take a look at your work and that can go even further that certifications in impressing them if you've truly got skills. It also proves that you have a genuine interest in the work because you invest time in it as a hobby.
i wouldn't stay at $25K for more than 2 or 3 years though. it depends where you live, but if you stay too long in the upper $20Ks you'll regret it. you aren't being paid enough.
people, this is why you need to get experience while you're in college. find internships. get any kind of programming/IT work you can find.
and you definitely have to learn more than what your curriculum offers. if you want to earn, you have to come out of the gates with more than just the crap colleges teach you cause most schools are sorta clueless in some ways. their agenda doesn't always match business reality. and these days, that's only more true. with out-sourcing you have to cross-train in other disciplines and create yourself as this new breed. become a guru on ADA compliance. know a foreign language. have a math minor and be up on actuarial science. be a tech writer too. get a security clearance. have paralegal skills. get certificates to be a trainer. go back and get biology training and get into biotech.
you have to elbow, kick, and grep | uniq | sort your way to higher salaries and even then you'll constantly fight for that. m.
Get a minor or double major or masters in another area.
Every field under the overarching banners of science and engineering can benefit from programming. From visualization and modeling to calculation, there's a need for people like us with the ability to bridge the gaps between computation and the theory of a particular discipline.
Become very proficient in a foreign language. International business can benefit from multilingual development teams for international sites and software. Sure, there are plenty of foreign developers who speak english, but I'd argue there's just as much demand for the opposite.
Study art or writing. User Interface is always going to be a regional problem. Being that person whose great at design and programming is gonna give you the edge. Likewise, there's always a lack of documentation and people will need english fluency and actual technical aptitude. And you could branch out and start writing books on programming.
Get a teaching certificate. "those who can't, teach." Well, "can't" doesn't always mean lacking the ability, but lacking the opportunity. Training is still huge and like writing, you have to be technically adept. You still get to code, you just code for fun and learning instead of under someone's deadline.
Perhaps it's time for computer science to become a core part of education like mathematics? It's a specilized tool that can take you into highly important jobs in other fields.
Cross-training at least provides us all with an out. If programming really does continue to fall out, we have a direction to go in.
Frankly, I'd much rather be knowledgeable about Apache's internals than my Subaru.
There's only so much brain! The car just gets me to where I use it. Ideally, I would use as little brain as possible in the transportation process. I'd love autopilot for monotonous highway driving.
engineers get paid. all the great inventors and scientists do get the culture and notice.
einstein? hawking? edison? linus? wozniac?
for every michelango, there is a newton.
if you were an artist you'd know we don't get paid shit for any of the work we care about. most of it goes un-noticed until after we die, and that's only if we were truly ahead of our time and actually a master.
there is no recognition. only authors and musicians and film-makers ever get theirs, and that's partly due to the money making machine pushing them out to profit.
near as i can figure, those of us who wear both hats want to be artists because that's our true love. art has a romanticism that science can definitely match, but oh, the girls in the art deparment! we don't have so many of those in grad level cryptanalysis courses.
many feel like being an artist would make them love their work, and it might, but it's all pretty random tho. it's just as easy to fall astray in either field. the grass looks greener, but it's all the same grass. art can often appear to be this "anything goes!" charade that appeals to engineers designing very specific, limited nuggets of their internal abstractions.
at least engineers can pay the bills. that's ultimately what it comes down to... do you want to have the money to have a family and be secure? then science and engineering. or can you can ride on the wind and eat ramen, getting regularly kicked out of a shoebox? then art.
there are systems being developed by various folks in various states to process corporate tax data to track down money owed to the state. there's all kinds of tricks they can pull that take place over several years.
i'm all for privacy just as much as anyone, but there's something to realize, generally speaking the only people who really cheat on their taxes are rich people who can afford to get accountants to squeak them through. i say, screw them! they're the ones who need to pay up.
m.
no more closed captioning for the simpsons....
on
The Simpsons Movie
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
get him to investigate the death of clippy but make sure you can do it with a straight face. you know you did it. get him to blame the dude in sales.
m.
and the only problem is that the outlook client implementing this infrastructure will be buggy enough that worm virii will be able send email as the owner of the infected machine to a guy in nigeria who sits back and reaps the $10 a pop and meanwhile making everyone infeced in the system look like spammer.
and what happens when the guy in nigeria jacks his required escrow value up to $500... ?
well hey, at least the guy will be able to help out his buddies that keep sending me emails asking for help. m.
it varies... but... CS would be a liberal arts degree... where as CE would be from the engineering college. so that affects your undergrad reqs largely.
also... as you do upper division... CE typically is a balance between hardware and software... ECE is more of an EE degree with a computer hardware track... but some schools have a CS dept and EE dept... both offering CE degrees.... one being more EE-oriented than the other... it's nuts. you really can get lost in the tiny details. at the time, the school also offered CS through the business school as well as DIS through the business school... AND a math degree with CS applications... oh god.
what a mess.
the real question is... what do you know that's actually gonna get you the job you want? m.
Graduates generally have an easier time finding work because companies see them as putty to be molded and generally cheaper to acquire. Hell, newly graduated kids usually are less cynical, frequently aren't married or have kids, etc etc etc. ie they have more free time, more energy, and so on.
As a new grad, you better have co-op or intern experience or at least have a buttload of relevant knowledge XP. If your school didn't teach you.NET or php/mysql or whatever, you better learn it on your own.
All that that aside, fresh facers are more likely to get hired because they've got less qualifications. They say for every $10K you expect to make, you'll have to look for 1 month. Someone who's a senior developer with very specific skills is gonna be unemployed for a while trying to find a job matching their exact skill set unless they drop back and punt for a more junior level job. That may still put you in an alienated position because you'll either have to pretend like you don't know shit or you'll have to get over the hurdle of convincing the senior guy that you're not gunning for their job... even if you really ARE!
Slashdot Mirror
you know, i love my wife dearly and look forward to 50 years or so of the standard ups and downs of marriage... but 500??!?! 750?!? ETERNITY? BAH! stick a fork in me already. m.
dude, did anyone else spend hours using ray-tracing programs? well, actually, you used the program for about 5 minutes, and then waited about 40, and then used it for another 5, and then waited 40...
ah, the 1980s!
m.
i can't even get to the blog.
usually there's a su ic ide gurls ad is all. but yeah, many companies might not even have the patience to acknowledge that an ad is just an ad.
it's too bad SG couldn't provide a totally safe for work ad from a safe domain name.
hmm.
m.
This is why the browser wars were a good thing. Sure, web development was annoying because of all the versioning nightmares, but at least there were safe alternatives. At least there was competition driving the products to be better and better.
Payback is a bitch no? Sure they got a little paddle on the backside and a, "Don't do that again" over their monopolistic practices, but here we are, seeing the karma swing around to bite them in the ass.
Hopefully this stuff will continue to the point where we can get the ball rolling again. Yet another big moment for open source software to try to swing in and become a viable alternative. Especially considering the fact that firefox is just an application and not a whole OS, which can be a scary leap for many to attempt an install, it might really open some eyes to what could be.
RALLY!
m.
Seriously, if you pigeon hole yourself as the [BLAH] guy and in 5-10 years [BLAH] is only for legacy apps, you may likely find yourself without a job. Sure, that can vary. Some legacy skills can turn into a gold mine when no one wants to touch that technology with a ten foot pool and the company has too much invested in the existing code base to start over. But that's a niche market and most developers of [BLAH] will have to move on to [.BLAH] or [pBLAH] to survive as programmers.
You could at that 5-10 point become a manager, but I know that's not always a very comfortable option.
You have to constantly be playing with another technology that interests you. And often that means doing it in your free time. Work projects often are cemented in previous technologies depending on your situation.
As a contractor, I have had to constantly be versed in new technologies. In fact, maybe someone could argue that THAT becomes your specialty over time. You have to know the languages being paid for which means being less of a master and more of a jack of all trades. Another thing to remember is that most languages solve a lot of the same problems in fairly similar ways. You can do Web, SOAP, XML, Graphics, Threading, Crypto, Network, SQL stuff in any of the languages we all love. Being a [BLAH] guru puts too much of your knowledge base in mindless details that might go away in 2 or 3 years when the next version comes out. Black box/Abstraction is supposed to help us. We shouldn't have to know the nastiest end details.
Also remember that personal experience can count just as much as job experience. Get your nose out of the books and write software that you're interested in. Pick and project and prove that you actually DO have the skills on that resume. Put the project on your personal website. (Or link to it's code at sourceforge. Whatever works.) Putting your software out there let's them take a look at your work and that can go even further that certifications in impressing them if you've truly got skills. It also proves that you have a genuine interest in the work because you invest time in it as a hobby.
i wouldn't stay at $25K for more than 2 or 3 years though. it depends where you live, but if you stay too long in the upper $20Ks you'll regret it. you aren't being paid enough.
people, this is why you need to get experience while you're in college. find internships. get any kind of programming/IT work you can find.
and you definitely have to learn more than what your curriculum offers. if you want to earn, you have to come out of the gates with more than just the crap colleges teach you cause most schools are sorta clueless in some ways. their agenda doesn't always match business reality. and these days, that's only more true. with out-sourcing you have to cross-train in other disciplines and create yourself as this new breed. become a guru on ADA compliance. know a foreign language. have a math minor and be up on actuarial science. be a tech writer too. get a security clearance. have paralegal skills. get certificates to be a trainer. go back and get biology training and get into biotech.
you have to elbow, kick, and grep | uniq | sort your way to higher salaries and even then you'll constantly fight for that.
m.
Get a minor or double major or masters in another area.
Every field under the overarching banners of science and engineering can benefit from programming. From visualization and modeling to calculation, there's a need for people like us with the ability to bridge the gaps between computation and the theory of a particular discipline.
Become very proficient in a foreign language. International business can benefit from multilingual development teams for international sites and software. Sure, there are plenty of foreign developers who speak english, but I'd argue there's just as much demand for the opposite.
Study art or writing. User Interface is always going to be a regional problem. Being that person whose great at design and programming is gonna give you the edge. Likewise, there's always a lack of documentation and people will need english fluency and actual technical aptitude. And you could branch out and start writing books on programming.
Get a teaching certificate. "those who can't, teach." Well, "can't" doesn't always mean lacking the ability, but lacking the opportunity. Training is still huge and like writing, you have to be technically adept. You still get to code, you just code for fun and learning instead of under someone's deadline.
Perhaps it's time for computer science to become a core part of education like mathematics? It's a specilized tool that can take you into highly important jobs in other fields.
Cross-training at least provides us all with an out. If programming really does continue to fall out, we have a direction to go in.
?
m.
not a very thorough test... can we get a double running benchmark?
m.
too true! doh! :)
m.
So I'm not a real geek because I don't want to screw around with my mobile polluting death machine?
:) [insert salt grains here]
Fuck me, but I HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO. If that negates my geekness, then I guess I'll retreat to baseless dorkiness or something.
And you get modded up! Oh slashdot, where is the sense? If you only promote a monoculture, you will be irrelevant.
m.
ps wah wah wah, nobody likes me!
Frankly, I'd much rather be knowledgeable about Apache's internals than my Subaru.
There's only so much brain! The car just gets me to where I use it. Ideally, I would use as little brain as possible in the transportation process. I'd love autopilot for monotonous highway driving.
m.
i think we live in different worlds then. (especially since you're getting modded up.)
m.
because you sure don't sound like one.
engineers get paid. all the great inventors and scientists do get the culture and notice.
einstein? hawking? edison? linus? wozniac?
for every michelango, there is a newton.
if you were an artist you'd know we don't get paid shit for any of the work we care about. most of it goes un-noticed until after we die, and that's only if we were truly ahead of our time and actually a master.
there is no recognition. only authors and musicians and film-makers ever get theirs, and that's partly due to the money making machine pushing them out to profit.
near as i can figure, those of us who wear both hats want to be artists because that's our true love. art has a romanticism that science can definitely match, but oh, the girls in the art deparment! we don't have so many of those in grad level cryptanalysis courses.
many feel like being an artist would make them love their work, and it might, but it's all pretty random tho. it's just as easy to fall astray in either field. the grass looks greener, but it's all the same grass. art can often appear to be this "anything goes!" charade that appeals to engineers designing very specific, limited nuggets of their internal abstractions.
at least engineers can pay the bills. that's ultimately what it comes down to... do you want to have the money to have a family and be secure? then science and engineering. or can you can ride on the wind and eat ramen, getting regularly kicked out of a shoebox? then art.
m.
a) is any science really hard?
b) wow, you're mean.
m.
suta dumping for example:u ipl2k2/uipl_3402.htm
http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/dmstree/uipl/
i'm all for privacy just as much as anyone, but there's something to realize, generally speaking the only people who really cheat on their taxes are rich people who can afford to get accountants to squeak them through. i say, screw them! they're the ones who need to pay up.
m.
doh!!!
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/au
i know it's off-topic... but...
m.
ah but with a handlebar mustache, is it really the chicks he's after?
m.
ps i'm high on this: http://turnpikefilms.com/spots/nutrigrain.html
disney has the wiggles though. we can't get our kid away from the wiggles right now.
i wish we could though because from our perspective as parents, disney sux. tivo or vhs will hopefully save us.
m.
and the only problem is that the outlook client implementing this infrastructure will be buggy enough that worm virii will be able send email as the owner of the infected machine to a guy in nigeria who sits back and reaps the $10 a pop and meanwhile making everyone infeced in the system look like spammer.
and what happens when the guy in nigeria jacks his required escrow value up to $500... ?
well hey, at least the guy will be able to help out his buddies that keep sending me emails asking for help.
m.
it varies... but... CS would be a liberal arts degree... where as CE would be from the engineering college. so that affects your undergrad reqs largely.
also... as you do upper division... CE typically is a balance between hardware and software... ECE is more of an EE degree with a computer hardware track... but some schools have a CS dept and EE dept... both offering CE degrees.... one being more EE-oriented than the other... it's nuts. you really can get lost in the tiny details. at the time, the school also offered CS through the business school as well as DIS through the business school... AND a math degree with CS applications... oh god.
what a mess.
the real question is... what do you know that's actually gonna get you the job you want?
m.
Graduates generally have an easier time finding work because companies see them as putty to be molded and generally cheaper to acquire. Hell, newly graduated kids usually are less cynical, frequently aren't married or have kids, etc etc etc. ie they have more free time, more energy, and so on.
.NET or php/mysql or whatever, you better learn it on your own.
As a new grad, you better have co-op or intern experience or at least have a buttload of relevant knowledge XP. If your school didn't teach you
All that that aside, fresh facers are more likely to get hired because they've got less qualifications. They say for every $10K you expect to make, you'll have to look for 1 month. Someone who's a senior developer with very specific skills is gonna be unemployed for a while trying to find a job matching their exact skill set unless they drop back and punt for a more junior level job. That may still put you in an alienated position because you'll either have to pretend like you don't know shit or you'll have to get over the hurdle of convincing the senior guy that you're not gunning for their job... even if you really ARE!
m.
a. comment how big that monitor is. ...?
b. comment about how much light that must output.
c. comment on how close most of us sit to monitors.
d.
sorry, i've been wearing my tinfoil hat.... but monitor emissions scare me. i thought that was on topic. response noted.
m.
??
m.
same difference.
m.