I took the Information Technology route and graduated ten years ago. My career has been business focussed, in that I've been immersed in solving business problems using IT.
I've been working directly with clients for most of that time, starting in support (for an accounting system company), programming (maintenance & bespoke work on said accounting system) and project management / application delivery work.
I'm now an IT consultant who delivers systems for clients.
A friend of mine at university (A+ student) took the Computer Science route and has worked on medical device programmming, a sports betting company's java architecture and associated bespoke engineering for large clients of said sports betting company; visual image interpretation using C++ and a whole host of other more "sciency" roles.
I've programmed in C, a custom language called C-L, perl, VBA, a little java; sys admined, lead meetings and written project plans and co-authored board papers.
My friend has done much the same, minus the project plans and board papers.
FWIW, I earn about twice what he does; but we both very much like what we do. Neither of us would be doing what we didn't like for 10 years straight, so make sure your choice is based on your passion.
I've always liked business applications and systems; my friend has always liked solving sciency problems....
I like working. But I work at something that doesn't make a difference.
I liked bitgeek's thoughts on running your own business.. something I desperately want to achieve - for the sake of doing a job well and reaping the rewards financial or otherwise.
If I could put in a full working day, I would get a team together to work on a community/open virtual environment system.
I'm thinking of VR done right. A team developing these kinds of technologies:
- 3D display and rendering in real-time
- advanced facial expresssion interfaces
- community based environments
The idea isn't to make the next killer first-person shooter, but an environent where groups of people can interact NATURALLY in the virtual environment.
Everyone has postulated about this, but people seem to tend to develop quirky toy-like characters that jolt around and need a keyboard.
My focus would be on spending those CPU cycles on presenting a realistic environment for face-to-face communication.. not smoke-trails on rockets.
Imagine the business benefits of realistic on-line meetings where you can see an accurate rendering of your correspondant's facial expression.
You don't actually know this do you? You've never run Linux, hence can't appreciate the fact that the only time it crashes is... dunno. I've only locked it up when playing with accelerated X drivers (closed source NVidia drivers at that.. ha!)
> My windows box uses about 40 megs of ram
Mate, you're confusing Windows with Office.. Office takes 40Mb to boot, Windows 2000 and XP both take approx 100 - 170Mb after logging in. I know, I run the both. For those who care, OpenBSD/FreeBSD uses about 30Mb.. cool, eh?
> Installing software on a Linux system is badly broken
I agree with installs being a pain in the arse..
I've used Slackware, RH and Mandrake (and stints on Turbolinux and SuSe).. but Gentoo Linux gets my nod due to its excellent portage tree.
Portage is basically a rip of what BSD has had for ages.. if the app u want is in the ports area, cd into the dir, type make and let your machine handle dependency checks, downloading all relevant apps/libs, building dependant programs, installing etc. And guess what.. it works.
I've cd'd into the 'gnome' dir and typed 'make'. Come back an hour or two later and you've got a complete gnome system, optimised for your machine - the dependancy checks ensured the X was downloaded, built and installed.. tip of the hat to the Gentoo team.
You can't get any easier than that.. 'make install'.. coffee time. Don't even have to reboot afterwards (or every day..hehe).
Hmm.. I was one of the 130 that RSVP'ed.. unfortunately arrived 10 minutes late (wonders of the tube) and stood around for 20 minutes trying to spot the/. team. No joy, so left.
Agree that the next venue should be a little more 'geek-find' friendly.
Will be on time for next one... where was everyone though??
Slashdot Mirror
I took the Information Technology route and graduated ten years ago. My career has been business focussed, in that I've been immersed in solving business problems using IT.
I've been working directly with clients for most of that time, starting in support (for an accounting system company), programming (maintenance & bespoke work on said accounting system) and project management / application delivery work.
I'm now an IT consultant who delivers systems for clients.
A friend of mine at university (A+ student) took the Computer Science route and has worked on medical device programmming, a sports betting company's java architecture and associated bespoke engineering for large clients of said sports betting company; visual image interpretation using C++ and a whole host of other more "sciency" roles.
I've programmed in C, a custom language called C-L, perl, VBA, a little java; sys admined, lead meetings and written project plans and co-authored board papers.
My friend has done much the same, minus the project plans and board papers.
FWIW, I earn about twice what he does; but we both very much like what we do. Neither of us would be doing what we didn't like for 10 years straight, so make sure your choice is based on your passion.
I've always liked business applications and systems; my friend has always liked solving sciency problems....
HTH,
Baked.
I don't see what all the flap is about....
Hm.. these guys are eating 3,000 calories a day?? That's actually a lot of food intake for what are fit people in a minimal-effort environment.
Dropping that to 2,500 would be achievable if done in steps; say 100 calories a day.
I like working. But I work at something that doesn't make a difference.
I liked bitgeek's thoughts on running your own business.. something I desperately want to achieve - for the sake of doing a job well and reaping the rewards financial or otherwise.
If I could put in a full working day, I would get a team together to work on a community/open virtual environment system.
I'm thinking of VR done right. A team developing these kinds of technologies:
- 3D display and rendering in real-time
- advanced facial expresssion interfaces
- community based environments
The idea isn't to make the next killer first-person shooter, but an environent where groups of people can interact NATURALLY in the virtual environment.
Everyone has postulated about this, but people seem to tend to develop quirky toy-like characters that jolt around and need a keyboard.
My focus would be on spending those CPU cycles on presenting a realistic environment for face-to-face communication.. not smoke-trails on rockets.
Imagine the business benefits of realistic on-line meetings where you can see an accurate rendering of your correspondant's facial expression.
Just a thought.
> Linux is slower and less stable than windows
.. coffee time. Don't even have to reboot afterwards (or every day..hehe).
You don't actually know this do you? You've never run Linux, hence can't appreciate the fact that the only time it crashes is... dunno. I've only locked it up when playing with accelerated X drivers (closed source NVidia drivers at that.. ha!)
> My windows box uses about 40 megs of ram
Mate, you're confusing Windows with Office.. Office takes 40Mb to boot, Windows 2000 and XP both take approx 100 - 170Mb after logging in. I know, I run the both.
For those who care, OpenBSD/FreeBSD uses about 30Mb.. cool, eh?
> Installing software on a Linux system is badly broken
I agree with installs being a pain in the arse..
I've used Slackware, RH and Mandrake (and stints on Turbolinux and SuSe).. but Gentoo Linux gets my nod due to its excellent portage tree.
Portage is basically a rip of what BSD has had for ages.. if the app u want is in the ports area, cd into the dir, type make and let your machine handle dependency checks, downloading all relevant apps/libs, building dependant programs, installing etc.
And guess what.. it works.
I've cd'd into the 'gnome' dir and typed 'make'. Come back an hour or two later and you've got a complete gnome system, optimised for your machine - the dependancy checks ensured the X was downloaded, built and installed.. tip of the hat to the Gentoo team.
You can't get any easier than that.. 'make install'
Hmm.. I was one of the 130 that RSVP'ed.. unfortunately arrived 10 minutes late (wonders of the tube) and stood around for 20 minutes trying to spot the /. team. No joy, so left.
Agree that the next venue should be a little more 'geek-find' friendly.
Will be on time for next one... where was everyone though??