I bow to your impressive powers of highschoolish rhetoric. I'll let you sit behind the comfort of your keyboard as you feel all mighty and witty. If insulting gives you comfort from the fact that you cannot elaborate a logical counter-argument, more power to you. After all, if you cannot defend your point of view logically and methodically, then you never had a valid point of view to begin with.
Please pray tell. How should the internet interoperate, and how precisely is it that M$ glop stops it from doing so?
Last time I checked SNMP worked fine, and so did SMTP. I haven't seen a single thing on M$ that is stopping me from invoking web services from one client (be it.NET, Java, Perl or whatever) to the provider (be it.NET, Java, Perl or whatever.)
You were able to reply to my post, just as I'm able to reply to yours. So where is the breakdown in interoperability, my dear young buck.
Bullshit. Your company is not representative of the industry as a whole. A masters is what you make it up to be. You can make your masters in esoteric theoretical crap, or, say, in enterprise computing in close colaboration with a local company (.ie. a large financial company or hospital) that is funding your research.
As I've said it many times, it's been my graduate studies (funded in part by a large local hospital on advanced security topics on distributed systems for medical records) that got me two of my jobs (one in a medical-related start up, and another one in a large multinational bank.)
It was also the fact that had grad studies that I got hired for a job to implement a custom network protocol from scratch (which wasn't really rocket science, but it was my credentials that got me the gig.)
Again and again for the last decade, it's been my grad studies that have helped me 1) get a job, and 2) apply my grad studies to the job at hand.
A masters is what you make it out to be. You are a good or terrible software developer with or without it.
Do you have anything original to say, or does talking about shit you don't know make you feel good?
I've been doing Java for almost a decade, and I can tell you that C# is not Java, nor it resembles it beyond being having a C-like syntax.
Tards keep thinking C# is J++ of infamy, while in reality it is not. The CLR is a VM written from scratch just as C# is. Leveling the accusation the C# is stolen from Java has as much merit as accusing Java of stealing, I dunno, C++.
I would actually say that, in many aspects C# got it right and that Java has flunked it very bad in others.
The concept of an object oriented language did not start with Java. The concept of a virtual machine didn't start with it either.
The JVM is the finest virtual machine in production today, but Java, as a language has flunked in several aspects. And the JVM as a platform for other languages is an opportunity that is not being pursued at all.
As much as a fan and professional of Java and Linux that I am, one has to admit that the M$ folks and its developer community are doing a much better job at researching programming languages that the developing communities around the JVM.
Feel free to use my last paragraph to add a quasi-witty comment about M$ failures and what not.
I mean, if a customer wants to hire you to do some coding on.NET using Axum, and if after careful evaluation, you find that it makes sense for what the customer wants, what are you going to say? *unintelligible grunts* I don't do proprietary stuff?.
More power to you if you want to be highschoolishly dogmatic. I for one would do whatever, so long as it is interesting and well-paid.
And you know this because your vast professional experience tells you so? Or are you still in school, or programming in some obscure niche?
Last time I checked real developers get paid to solve real-world problems for real-world customers, not to use some company's computing facilities as dogmatic playing grounds.
Be it for writing a web page for a company or doing some complicated shit, you use the tools that get the job done, and to program against the platform that is being used by the customer whose paying your fucking paycheck.
I use a Windows XP workstation to do my coding, design and use tools like Rose, Clearcase and a requirement tracking tool, with JBuilder on one monitor, and VI (and cygwin) in another monitor.
Then I used it to compile the stuff that is going to be deployed in a heterogeneous, distributed environment that runs mostly in Linux.
At the end of the day, what we care for is the technical challenge and the HUMAN development environment, and most important of all, the knowledge that you are producing something as requested by our employers.
That is, we are earning the bread instead of being uselessly dogmatic.
Thank God that I grew up the naive college student, anti-M$ stage long time ago. I suggest you do, too.
Real professionals use what they need to do to get the job done at a customer's behest.
Little punks in geek niches use whatever platform they like best to feel good at themselves while pointing the finger at others (while not producing anything.)
>> I'm a little confused. "The experience of focusing on one problem and becoming a world expert on" would seem to apply to a PhD program and not a Masters program. The Masters is basically just a bunch of classes generally not that different from undergrad classes except that they tend to have bigger projects in each class.
This is only true if the master program sucks. A good master programs gets you started to be a domain specialist (specially true if you do your grad work in CLOSE collaboration with a funding industry/company in a subject that has real ROI for it.)
You can treat a MS as a bunch of classes, or dibble into the elegant mysteries of finite state autama. Or you can use it to get internships, do independent studies in the latest technology (.ie. a survey of current Java-based tools for enterprise computing), network with point of contacts with the companies and industries funding your (or your advising professor's) research program, and taylor your master thesis to something of immediate applicability to some current slice in the industry pie.
It's all about what you are capable and willing to make out of it.
It won't guarantee you are a good developer, but it will increase your chances of getting a better salary.
I've been in the IT sector for over 14 years, and it's the education at the master's level that really helped me in my career. But then again, I never sat idle when I was in school - I got my first developing job at a large insurance company when I got my AA degree, and I continued studying till I got my B.S. and then I went for my masters.
I've worked from financial companies to, currently, with a large contractor for the defense sector, from pure development to IT operations, and, overwhelmingly, every almost single person I've worked with THAT IS REALLY GOOD AT WHAT THEY ARE DOING either had a masters or at least had pursued a good amount of graduate studies.
Graduate studies, that is, good graduate studies teach you how to research and troubleshoot things - in particular if you focus your grad studies to practical research in software engineer, distributed systems, embedded systems, enterprise computing, or biometrics/robotics.
It won't help you for making web apps, but one doesn't need a B.S for that either.
Some of the best programmers I've known didn't even had a degree in computer science, and OTH, some of the worst I've known where Ph.D. candidates.
So it depends on the individual. If you are the type of student who thinkers with stuff, who isn't afraid of working from the command line, or doing C or Assembly, who knows how to work with pointers and who had a really good grasp of algorithms, theory of automata and software engineer, then by all means, go for the masters and then get a job.
Depending on where you are, having a masters will open more doors than just a BS. But that depends on the location.
On the other hand,if you suck as a programmer while being a student, and by this I mean that you suck not because of inexperience, but because you suck at a very fundamental level, and all you do is point-and-click programming, then you'll suck whether you have a BS or a MS.
My suggestion is to go for it immediately after you get your B.S. degree. Use that opportunity to contact potential companies that might hire you after graduation. See if they can give you an internship during summers or work on a master thesis related to some industry-funded project or topic.
For example: when I was in grad school, I was working on a project that dealt with security on distributed systems for medical records funded by a large hospital network.
When used wisely, a grad education will open far more doors than just a B.S. degree.
Dude, you missed the point. Plan 8 is, in theory, for people with low income... and it is funded with our taxes.
How does a person who can afford regular vacations to the Caribbean and have a better car than most engineers qualify for this tax-funded benefit? Hint: his case is not as rare as some might thing.
Those are the cases that are draining our public coffers, not multinationals.
... to worry. Internal tax evasion and fraud, those are the things that are eating us, not US multinationals on tax havens.
Jesus Christ, I knew a fucker who was renting a place with the infamous "plan 8" who had a better car than I and who went to the Caribbean on vacation twice a year.
For those who don't know, "plan 8" is a federal housing assistance program for families with low income...
... and it is perhaps one of the most abused programs ever.
Who is stupid enough to believe that making US companies pay taxes for overseas revenue WHEN IN COMPETITION with other non-US companies that do not pay taxes for overseas revenue is a good idea, specially now?
That's what this will be (a mandated OS). And it will go the way of Ada. Not that Ada was bad - it is a fine language, but something of that nature done by a mandate, it might not be economical on the long run.
Don't study something cuz it *might* look good in a resume. That's a horrible way of thinking.
Ask yourself "what am I good at?" "What are my professional passions?".
Having said that, a double masters in Computer Science (or Software Engineering) and MIS (or MBA) will do well. Computer Science is not as theoretical as you think. It will be as theoretical as you would wish it to be.
By that I mean that you have choices on what to concentrate. You could do your thesis in Automata Theory or Compilers... or you could do it in, say, Cost Estimations in Software Engineering projects, or Enterprise Architecture. The later two are also theoretical, BUT with immediate applications to enterprise computing and IT.
Other combinations could be Computer Science and Systems Engineering, with a grad certificate in Business (or at the very least, some courses/seminars in Finances, Project Management and Risk Assessment.)
Don't forget, though, that the Computing/Software industry is partitioned only between the theoretical and business-oriented enterprise computing. There is software manufacturing (with software as a product), hardware-oriented software manufacturing, scientific computing, stuff like that.
Decide what you want to do and train yourself accordingly (while making sure you get additional training in business, or at least the minimal on finances and project management.)
Before someone flames me for the title of my post, let me start with this:
If I had a chance to turn the clock backwards when I left grad school to look for a job, I would have accepted a job as a C++ instead of chasing the Java dream during the dot-com era. I've been unemployed for 3 months, and if I had at least a year of working experience in C or C++, I would be employed and making much more money now.
But that was then, this is the now, so I'll keep my suggestions generic:
In addition to learning C, C++ and Java (but learning their fundamentals really well), learn C# and get proficient with Unix tools (vi, awk, sed, perl, make). If you don't have access to a Linux/Unix box, install the cygwin stuff on your PC.
On the four languages mentioned above, get really good at (or at least acquainted with) multithreading, resource allocation and de-allocation, error logging, sockets. It is horrendously surprising how bad Java programmers tend to be. I've made a living rewriting f-horrible Java code that tanks because the retards that wrote them don't know they need to close connection pools or avoid creating a kazillion objects that bring the gc to its knees under heavy load.
Never assume you have infinite memory, CPU or shit like that. This applies to any platform you wish to pursue.
Since my experience is with Java, if you were to go that way, I'd suggest you immediately train for the Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) exam.
People are going to say that certs don't mean anything, and they are usually right. But you need to stand out as a green horn, plus the certs help you verify if you really know what you think you know.
Then pursue the SCJWCD (Web Components) and SCJBCD (Business Components) certs - leave the certs for web services and enterprise architecture for later. These three certs will truly prepare you to talk intelligently about the J2EE stack - obviously this will only work if you are a decent programmer. You might have only the basics of programming, but there are principles by which you can abide and be a good programmer.
Then learn the basics of the Spring Framework, Hibernate and iBatis. This is pretty much the training path I would suggest for anyone trying to get into the Java market with some solid footing.
Webucator.com has e-learning classes that you can take at your leasure in basic web services, ejb components and J2EE architecture, for $100 each course. Now with the new EJB 3.x being available, now it's a good time to really learn J2EE (which wasn't the case with the monstrosities that were EJB 1.x and EJB 2.x.) There are different vendors that provide professional training in 5-day long seminars that cost between $2 and $4 (training ain't cheap, but it's a good way to go.)
If you don't feel like working towards those certs (which I think it will be a shame), then get 'EJB 3 In Action', 'Head First Servlets & JSP' and 'Spring Recipes'. Take 3 months to learn that stuff inside out, download WebLogic and JBoss and learn how to configure those containers, and how to deploy stuff. Learn how to use log4j (this is very important!), Maven and Ant.
You could also go the C# way - there are more jobs in C# than Java, but they pay less. And also, don't ever be dogmatic or fall for religious wars. A tool is a tool, and to be honest, C# and.NET are not bad technically speaking. I prefer to work on non-MS platforms, but I'm not a dogmatic idiot - don't be one of those.
For the C# platform, Microsoft has a series of free training lessons available, all laid out according to the specialization path you wish to follow:
For C or C++ I can't say anything. I had my chance when fresh out of college. If you get a chance to get a junior position, get it, even if you don't have a clue. Just do it and go the extra mil
Not using linkedin for professional networking is very risky.
You don't have to live in it, but by simply stating your professional resume, some trusted professional contacts as well as several recommendations visible in your profile would help you network with head hunters when and if times get though (which are right now.)
As for facebook, it depends. I keep one with discrete pics of me and my family, mostly to keep in touch with friends and family oversea. And it is linked to my linkedin profile. Plus I have a hi5 strictly for family.
I also have a myspace account, but that one will never, ever be linked to my professional career, at least not on purpose.
Fact is, it was through linkedin that I've been able to network with the main head hunter I'm using now as well as establish relations with other professionals and join several developer groups that I was not aware of until now. So the experience has been quite positive.
If you keep your linkedin and facebook presence discrete and with class, it should not hurt. Mind you, you should never accept invites from "Hi I'm Wendy and I'm horny lol, u want me tonite?", and you should never have a trace of facebook or whatever on your online PROFESSIONAL presence if it has pics of you in all types of questionable debauchery (not that it is a bad thing, but you know what I mean you dawg.)
Pitfalls of Object Oriented Development by Bruce F. Webster. Too bad it's no longer being printed, BUT you can buy it used in Amazon for pennies. If you are serious at becoming not just a coder, but a good engineer, you must buy this book.
Software Project Survival Guide by Steve McConnell.
Affinity: Managing Java Application Servers
by John M Hawkins - a must if you are a J2EE container admin.
Unix for the Impatient by Paul W. Abrahams, Bruce R. Larson - nuff said.
AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis
by William J. Brown
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series)
by the GoF.
This is one of those hard cases which is going to make bad law. There was nothing legitimate to charge Lori Drew with, so they went reaching for any tool available -- in this case, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which has already been pretty badly stretched. If Drew is found guilty (and she will be, on the emotional factor), that sets the precedent that violation of Terms of Service is now a criminal act. Talk about a big stick for ISPs to beat customers with... (share your wifi, go to jail...)
A violation of a TOS should be a criminal act... so long as it was done to commit a crime, specially if it leads to death or injury. In fact, any questionable act (even if its barely questionable by the most lenient of interpretations) that has been done (and lead to) with full premeditation to commit (or intent to commit) a criminal act, it should be prosecuted (read "burn the bitch".)
Slashdot Mirror
I bow to your impressive powers of highschoolish rhetoric. I'll let you sit behind the comfort of your keyboard as you feel all mighty and witty. If insulting gives you comfort from the fact that you cannot elaborate a logical counter-argument, more power to you. After all, if you cannot defend your point of view logically and methodically, then you never had a valid point of view to begin with.
Last time I checked SNMP worked fine, and so did SMTP. I haven't seen a single thing on M$ that is stopping me from invoking web services from one client (be it .NET, Java, Perl or whatever) to the provider (be it .NET, Java, Perl or whatever.)
You were able to reply to my post, just as I'm able to reply to yours. So where is the breakdown in interoperability, my dear young buck.
As I've said it many times, it's been my graduate studies (funded in part by a large local hospital on advanced security topics on distributed systems for medical records) that got me two of my jobs (one in a medical-related start up, and another one in a large multinational bank.)
It was also the fact that had grad studies that I got hired for a job to implement a custom network protocol from scratch (which wasn't really rocket science, but it was my credentials that got me the gig.)
Again and again for the last decade, it's been my grad studies that have helped me 1) get a job, and 2) apply my grad studies to the job at hand.
A masters is what you make it out to be. You are a good or terrible software developer with or without it.
And you know this is a hacky workaround because?
A lot of brilliant people work at Microsoft Research, to the chagrin of the young bucks looking for a cause to rally for.
I've been doing Java for almost a decade, and I can tell you that C# is not Java, nor it resembles it beyond being having a C-like syntax.
Tards keep thinking C# is J++ of infamy, while in reality it is not. The CLR is a VM written from scratch just as C# is. Leveling the accusation the C# is stolen from Java has as much merit as accusing Java of stealing, I dunno, C++.
I would actually say that, in many aspects C# got it right and that Java has flunked it very bad in others.
The concept of an object oriented language did not start with Java. The concept of a virtual machine didn't start with it either.
The JVM is the finest virtual machine in production today, but Java, as a language has flunked in several aspects. And the JVM as a platform for other languages is an opportunity that is not being pursued at all.
As much as a fan and professional of Java and Linux that I am, one has to admit that the M$ folks and its developer community are doing a much better job at researching programming languages that the developing communities around the JVM.
Feel free to use my last paragraph to add a quasi-witty comment about M$ failures and what not.
Don't like it? Don't use it.
I mean, if a customer wants to hire you to do some coding on .NET using Axum, and if after careful evaluation, you find that it makes sense for what the customer wants, what are you going to say? *unintelligible grunts* I don't do proprietary stuff?.
More power to you if you want to be highschoolishly dogmatic. I for one would do whatever, so long as it is interesting and well-paid.
Hahahahaha, good one :)
Last time I checked real developers get paid to solve real-world problems for real-world customers, not to use some company's computing facilities as dogmatic playing grounds.
Be it for writing a web page for a company or doing some complicated shit, you use the tools that get the job done, and to program against the platform that is being used by the customer whose paying your fucking paycheck.
I use a Windows XP workstation to do my coding, design and use tools like Rose, Clearcase and a requirement tracking tool, with JBuilder on one monitor, and VI (and cygwin) in another monitor.
Then I used it to compile the stuff that is going to be deployed in a heterogeneous, distributed environment that runs mostly in Linux.
At the end of the day, what we care for is the technical challenge and the HUMAN development environment, and most important of all, the knowledge that you are producing something as requested by our employers.
That is, we are earning the bread instead of being uselessly dogmatic.
Thank God that I grew up the naive college student, anti-M$ stage long time ago. I suggest you do, too.
Real professionals use what they need to do to get the job done at a customer's behest.
Little punks in geek niches use whatever platform they like best to feel good at themselves while pointing the finger at others (while not producing anything.)
Yep, and that's pretty much a good thing.
This is only true if the master program sucks. A good master programs gets you started to be a domain specialist (specially true if you do your grad work in CLOSE collaboration with a funding industry/company in a subject that has real ROI for it.)
You can treat a MS as a bunch of classes, or dibble into the elegant mysteries of finite state autama. Or you can use it to get internships, do independent studies in the latest technology (.ie. a survey of current Java-based tools for enterprise computing), network with point of contacts with the companies and industries funding your (or your advising professor's) research program, and taylor your master thesis to something of immediate applicability to some current slice in the industry pie.
It's all about what you are capable and willing to make out of it.
I've been in the IT sector for over 14 years, and it's the education at the master's level that really helped me in my career. But then again, I never sat idle when I was in school - I got my first developing job at a large insurance company when I got my AA degree, and I continued studying till I got my B.S. and then I went for my masters.
I've worked from financial companies to, currently, with a large contractor for the defense sector, from pure development to IT operations, and, overwhelmingly, every almost single person I've worked with THAT IS REALLY GOOD AT WHAT THEY ARE DOING either had a masters or at least had pursued a good amount of graduate studies.
Graduate studies, that is, good graduate studies teach you how to research and troubleshoot things - in particular if you focus your grad studies to practical research in software engineer, distributed systems, embedded systems, enterprise computing, or biometrics/robotics.
It won't help you for making web apps, but one doesn't need a B.S for that either.
Some of the best programmers I've known didn't even had a degree in computer science, and OTH, some of the worst I've known where Ph.D. candidates.
So it depends on the individual. If you are the type of student who thinkers with stuff, who isn't afraid of working from the command line, or doing C or Assembly, who knows how to work with pointers and who had a really good grasp of algorithms, theory of automata and software engineer, then by all means, go for the masters and then get a job.
Depending on where you are, having a masters will open more doors than just a BS. But that depends on the location.
On the other hand,if you suck as a programmer while being a student, and by this I mean that you suck not because of inexperience, but because you suck at a very fundamental level, and all you do is point-and-click programming, then you'll suck whether you have a BS or a MS.
My suggestion is to go for it immediately after you get your B.S. degree. Use that opportunity to contact potential companies that might hire you after graduation. See if they can give you an internship during summers or work on a master thesis related to some industry-funded project or topic.
For example: when I was in grad school, I was working on a project that dealt with security on distributed systems for medical records funded by a large hospital network.
When used wisely, a grad education will open far more doors than just a B.S. degree.
How does a person who can afford regular vacations to the Caribbean and have a better car than most engineers qualify for this tax-funded benefit? Hint: his case is not as rare as some might thing.
Those are the cases that are draining our public coffers, not multinationals.
Jesus Christ, I knew a fucker who was renting a place with the infamous "plan 8" who had a better car than I and who went to the Caribbean on vacation twice a year.
For those who don't know, "plan 8" is a federal housing assistance program for families with low income...
Those are the loop holes that we need to close.
Who is stupid enough to believe that making US companies pay taxes for overseas revenue WHEN IN COMPETITION with other non-US companies that do not pay taxes for overseas revenue is a good idea, specially now?
Do you really want to do that? Do you really want the government to forbid a corporation, any corporation, from doing business?
Do you really think everything is black and white, everything either here XOR there?
That's what this will be (a mandated OS). And it will go the way of Ada. Not that Ada was bad - it is a fine language, but something of that nature done by a mandate, it might not be economical on the long run.
Ask yourself "what am I good at?" "What are my professional passions?".
Having said that, a double masters in Computer Science (or Software Engineering) and MIS (or MBA) will do well. Computer Science is not as theoretical as you think. It will be as theoretical as you would wish it to be.
By that I mean that you have choices on what to concentrate. You could do your thesis in Automata Theory or Compilers... or you could do it in, say, Cost Estimations in Software Engineering projects, or Enterprise Architecture. The later two are also theoretical, BUT with immediate applications to enterprise computing and IT.
Other combinations could be Computer Science and Systems Engineering, with a grad certificate in Business (or at the very least, some courses/seminars in Finances, Project Management and Risk Assessment.)
Don't forget, though, that the Computing/Software industry is partitioned only between the theoretical and business-oriented enterprise computing. There is software manufacturing (with software as a product), hardware-oriented software manufacturing, scientific computing, stuff like that.
Decide what you want to do and train yourself accordingly (while making sure you get additional training in business, or at least the minimal on finances and project management.)
If I had a chance to turn the clock backwards when I left grad school to look for a job, I would have accepted a job as a C++ instead of chasing the Java dream during the dot-com era. I've been unemployed for 3 months, and if I had at least a year of working experience in C or C++, I would be employed and making much more money now.
But that was then, this is the now, so I'll keep my suggestions generic:
In addition to learning C, C++ and Java (but learning their fundamentals really well), learn C# and get proficient with Unix tools (vi, awk, sed, perl, make). If you don't have access to a Linux/Unix box, install the cygwin stuff on your PC.
On the four languages mentioned above, get really good at (or at least acquainted with) multithreading, resource allocation and de-allocation, error logging, sockets. It is horrendously surprising how bad Java programmers tend to be. I've made a living rewriting f-horrible Java code that tanks because the retards that wrote them don't know they need to close connection pools or avoid creating a kazillion objects that bring the gc to its knees under heavy load.
Never assume you have infinite memory, CPU or shit like that. This applies to any platform you wish to pursue.
Since my experience is with Java, if you were to go that way, I'd suggest you immediately train for the Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) exam.
People are going to say that certs don't mean anything, and they are usually right. But you need to stand out as a green horn, plus the certs help you verify if you really know what you think you know.
Then pursue the SCJWCD (Web Components) and SCJBCD (Business Components) certs - leave the certs for web services and enterprise architecture for later. These three certs will truly prepare you to talk intelligently about the J2EE stack - obviously this will only work if you are a decent programmer. You might have only the basics of programming, but there are principles by which you can abide and be a good programmer.
Then learn the basics of the Spring Framework, Hibernate and iBatis. This is pretty much the training path I would suggest for anyone trying to get into the Java market with some solid footing. Webucator.com has e-learning classes that you can take at your leasure in basic web services, ejb components and J2EE architecture, for $100 each course. Now with the new EJB 3.x being available, now it's a good time to really learn J2EE (which wasn't the case with the monstrosities that were EJB 1.x and EJB 2.x.) There are different vendors that provide professional training in 5-day long seminars that cost between $2 and $4 (training ain't cheap, but it's a good way to go.)
If you don't feel like working towards those certs (which I think it will be a shame), then get 'EJB 3 In Action', 'Head First Servlets & JSP' and 'Spring Recipes'. Take 3 months to learn that stuff inside out, download WebLogic and JBoss and learn how to configure those containers, and how to deploy stuff. Learn how to use log4j (this is very important!), Maven and Ant.
You could also go the C# way - there are more jobs in C# than Java, but they pay less. And also, don't ever be dogmatic or fall for religious wars. A tool is a tool, and to be honest, C# and .NET are not bad technically speaking. I prefer to work on non-MS platforms, but I'm not a dogmatic idiot - don't be one of those.
For the C# platform, Microsoft has a series of free training lessons available, all laid out according to the specialization path you wish to follow:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/bb308760.aspx
Then aim to get a MSCT or two from them.
For C or C++ I can't say anything. I had my chance when fresh out of college. If you get a chance to get a junior position, get it, even if you don't have a clue. Just do it and go the extra mil
You don't have to live in it, but by simply stating your professional resume, some trusted professional contacts as well as several recommendations visible in your profile would help you network with head hunters when and if times get though (which are right now.)
As for facebook, it depends. I keep one with discrete pics of me and my family, mostly to keep in touch with friends and family oversea. And it is linked to my linkedin profile. Plus I have a hi5 strictly for family.
I also have a myspace account, but that one will never, ever be linked to my professional career, at least not on purpose.
Fact is, it was through linkedin that I've been able to network with the main head hunter I'm using now as well as establish relations with other professionals and join several developer groups that I was not aware of until now. So the experience has been quite positive.
If you keep your linkedin and facebook presence discrete and with class, it should not hurt. Mind you, you should never accept invites from "Hi I'm Wendy and I'm horny lol, u want me tonite?", and you should never have a trace of facebook or whatever on your online PROFESSIONAL presence if it has pics of you in all types of questionable debauchery (not that it is a bad thing, but you know what I mean you dawg.)
Mythical Man Month. A classic. There are no silver bullets! As true now as then.
Amen!
This is one of those hard cases which is going to make bad law. There was nothing legitimate to charge Lori Drew with, so they went reaching for any tool available -- in this case, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which has already been pretty badly stretched. If Drew is found guilty (and she will be, on the emotional factor), that sets the precedent that violation of Terms of Service is now a criminal act. Talk about a big stick for ISPs to beat customers with... (share your wifi, go to jail...)
A violation of a TOS should be a criminal act... so long as it was done to commit a crime, specially if it leads to death or injury. In fact, any questionable act (even if its barely questionable by the most lenient of interpretations) that has been done (and lead to) with full premeditation to commit (or intent to commit) a criminal act, it should be prosecuted (read "burn the bitch".)
Now we can outsource all of Houston Mission Control's operations to India, it should be a real cost saving measure.
Hahaha :) Maybe NASA will see the writings on the wall and begins to cut the fat and start moving in the right direction.