I bailed out of a "mo - bi" PhD as an ABD and it wasn't about the money. Working long hours with dangerous chemicals in ventilation/filtration hoods and lab coats is not easier than installing toilets and repairing leaking pipes. Maybe it was just a quality of life decision. I became a web developer during the golden years and I've never looked back. I just hope 20 years from now that nitrosoquanidine doesn't come back to haunt me (ie cancer). I don't see how anyone could stay in that career for long except for egomaniacs with indentured servants (graduate students) do the heavy lifting.
Hackers by Stephen Levy is a classic (sadly out of print) non-fiction accounting of the origins of the computer culture at MIT (mainly) and other places. His first (and best) book really captures the ways and means of the hacker pioneers. You can still find it in many libraries. Takes you back to when a "hack" meant more than running port scans using other's code.
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I bailed out of a "mo - bi" PhD as an ABD and it wasn't about the money. Working long hours with dangerous chemicals in ventilation/filtration hoods and lab coats is not easier than installing toilets and repairing leaking pipes. Maybe it was just a quality of life decision. I became a web developer during the golden years and I've never looked back. I just hope 20 years from now that nitrosoquanidine doesn't come back to haunt me (ie cancer). I don't see how anyone could stay in that career for long except for egomaniacs with indentured servants (graduate students) do the heavy lifting.
Hackers by Stephen Levy is a classic (sadly out of print) non-fiction accounting of the origins of the computer culture at MIT (mainly) and other places. His first (and best) book really captures the ways and means of the hacker pioneers. You can still find it in many libraries. Takes you back to when a "hack" meant more than running port scans using other's code.