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I totally agree with that. I'm much happier wanting what I have than what I don't.
My friend didn't pursue material wealth either. It landed in his lap by way of a software contract with Mastercard.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Well, my story is a little boring, I also grew up, went to school and university.
I am always glad that I learned at University a lot about mathematics, I am using Fourier transforms quite often and even Laplace.
Wrt computers (computer science?) I learned about the PDP-8 and PDP-9, programming in assembler code, using DECtapes for storage. While I am not using PDP-8 or PDP-9 instruction sets nowadays, I really believe that it helps me in my programming.
What I further learned was some language theory (type X grammars, 2VW grammars, attribute grammars etc etc), typical things you best learn when you are young. Now from time to time
I even use these formalisms to structure my programs.
I am fully aware of the fact that after my university education I could write programs but essentially could not program. In the early 70-ties I wrote some parser generators (LL and LALR) and a few compilers (one for Algol 60) and to put it mildly: with my current experience I would have written it differently. Nevertheless, for writing these programs I needed some
math, though not calculus. But these programs had a size such that one starts to think
about structuring the code and the development process (the language of the 70-ies was for me BCPL). After the 80-ties with Unix and C, I ended up as manager. The last 20 years of my working career I was involved in management, and there were days that I did not use a fourier or Laplace transform of though about formal verification of program (fragments)  .
After my retirement I started programming again at a level that - at least what I think - would have been impossible without some formal training and some experience in my younger years. My current domain is software defined radio, and there is quite some math in my programs.
Summarizing, writing good code is not something you learn from a book, but a slightly more formal training may make it easier to understand what code is good, why it is good, and what code smells
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I have degrees, but most of the top notch programmers I know do not. Being self taught does wonders for your confidence and although coding styles, standards and protocols are often missing, the skills and understanding are what matter most.
When I interview, most of the interviewers are impressed enough by a degree to call you in, but the questions fall along lines of what you know and what you can bring. They are most often concerned with key things in the technologies they consider tough to do and less on what lies behind the paper. Only Chemical Abstracts demanded a degree and then only because they advertise their degrees as a way of selling their product.
Truth be told, I would rather have someone easy to work with and go to lunch with than a degree in the cubical next to me. Sometimes a second set of eyes is all you need. Other times, you need to share technical expertise or receive technical expertise, but it works better if the person is a good communicator.
Having a degree got me the opportunities, but I don't even think about it when working. Unless someone hung their shingle in their cube, I wouldn't know or care.
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Rusty Bullet wrote: Having a degree got me the opportunities, but I don't even think about it when working.
That sounds sensible. 
I had to learn styles and standards on the job, and it took me awhile. Since I haven't been working on teams so much my style has drifted more back to my natural form.
But my natural form is almost what I'm stuck with now. It doesn't help that I code without thinking half the time these days, and the stuff even works sometimes.  Not sure if that's a feature or a bug, but ever since early 2017 I've been able to hold conversations while coding. That was about the same time I went over the high wall and had a massive psychotic event, and I think they might be related since I haven't been the same since. My routines got longer. My comments fewer. My code tighter. My designs better. So it's good and bad.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I work over in Yakima (mid-Washington state). there is a lot of software dev jobs around if you know where to look; they are just not software companies. The fruit and produce companies and supporting industry do have uses for developers.
I never finished collage, when my first job offer came around, my wife and I were pretty hurting on income and took what I could. fast forward: now I'm 45, been developing software professionally for 23 years, but this year I'm going back to collage (WGU) to get a degree and be able to move up in my career a bit
honey the codewitch wrote: I can't tell you how grateful I am that this industry values talent over credentials.
This really is a great industry to be in. and for the most part pretty forgiving on formal education, although we all have to constantly be learning something new to keep up to date.
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Yeah, I live in the western half, and I've had contracts from florida to canada but never local. *shrug*
There's some IT, but there's not enough demand and I think most of the positions like you speak of are filled by Roger, the same software guy that worked there since 1992 and put their page on geocities.
Real programmers use butterflies
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In some situations, yes the same guy stays with the company forever, but when you do get an opening, it's total job security. programmers are very rare around here, but there is a demand.
I can think of 4 companies currently looking for someone. I've had way too many job offers in the last year, but I'm very happy where I'm at currently and plan to retire from here if possible; so I end up telling them that I'll keep an open eye for other devs looking.
My first job was with an industrial controls company, to automate the fruit warehouses, went everywhere from Canada, to Mexico, to Pennsylvania, but mostly in the Nortwest for 18 years. It was great work, and I could have worked there forever, but it got dull after awhile and had to move on. It was about that time that I discovered how much the industry was hurting for more good devs on everything from embedded, to desktop, to Web. They just don't tend to advertise on most job boards, always looking for someone local to hire.
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Started programming at 13 (1984) and never considered that my goal, which was computer engineering. Dropped out of engineering school 3 times, then lived for four years just wearing different hats. Went back to school to do Computer Science after doing web development from 94 to 96. Learned the fundamentals and left school in 2000 without a degree and have had a very successful career thereafter. But its hard emotionally, I think this profession tends to chew people up with the hours and mind games some people play.
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I hear you. I've found working for myself to be the only way I can do it anymore.
Real programmers use butterflies
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My first reaction was, "Oh great. Another software developer with untreated mental illness."
But about being only suited to develop software, I feel ya'. I frequently wonder what I would have done to feed myself if there was no software development. Even today, when I sit down in front of a computer, I feel powerful and effective. When I try to do anything that touches the real world, it's like I'm stuck in syrup, slow and clumsy.
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I'm treated now, but I didn't know for most of my life, and even after I realized how ill I was it was hard to find someone that knew enough to diagnose me (my condition is tricky to diagnose but serious) much less treat me. I had a great support network at the time, and I can't imagine how hard/impossible it must be for someone in that position who doesn't have that.
And relatable content. I'm a fish out of water unless you put a computer in front of me.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I had a great and supportive family. My father was a genius, master engineer (metal kind), master carpenter and inventor. My mother was a first class cook/chef, opera singer, history and geography expert and all round genius. They didn't push me at all but encouraged me in whatever I wanted to do. I had a great childhood, went to university to study Law, decided I didn't like lawyers and switched to a combined sciences degree, stuck with Computer Science through to a PhD and then became a professor of same. Quit after three years to get a real job programming for fighter jet development, invented an expert system (a version of which was still partly used 25 years later) and just generally had fun. 
I used to lie about my qualifications on my CV, leaving out the PhD and the professorship after I found out it had actually cost me a job! 
Since then, nearly all interviews have been exclusively about what projects I have done, not which pieces of paper I held. The PhD I did, the thesis was on computer game development back when min-computers were the smallest machines available and before the internet effectively existed, is basically useless as far as paper is concern and most of the tech I learned for it is obsolete. 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Sounds like you lucked out in the parental department.
And good for you for making the most of it.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I don't think you give yourself enough credit - the great equaliser is your strength, not what you do.
I live in a country where you would have been encouraged to depend on the state so people's strength is eroded from their government.
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I still needed someone to give me a shot, without credentials. You just don't find that everywhere. I've found it a lot in software. If you can demonstrate technical proficiency they don't mind the lack of degree. I won't say it's exclusive to development, but I think it's more common in development than many other professions.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I've been trying to debug intermittent problems with one of my video drivers. It would plot just a couple of random pixels sometimes while doing line drawing for example.
The problem is, I didn't notice for two days because the screen is so small.
So I've been using my bench's magnifying lamp as my primary debugging tool.
This would not even be a thing except I'm getting old and I can't see anymore. 
Turns out I was trying to run the display at too fast a clock speed. Once I dropped it from 26MHz to 10 everything worked fine.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: This would not even be a thing except I'm getting old
Don't feel ashamed, there's a lot of that going around.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I suppose it beats the alternative.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: bench's magnifying lamp
Welcome to my new life as a monocular person. After a fall last autumn I lost my right eye. I now use the "extra large" mouse pointer set on my PC's, because it's so easy for my surviving eye to lose the normal size pointer. My desktop magnifier is now one of my favorite things in the world. This is especially useful given that my wife has an amazing ability to find very small objects that I must repair  .honey the codewitch wrote: I was trying to run the display at too fast a clock speed
I ran into that once on an embedded project that used a monochrome LCD display. When my program was idle, it displayed just fine. As soon as it did its thing, it went blank. To give you an idea of how bad it got, at one point a logic analyzer and an oscilloscope were involved  . Come to find out I was both updating two often and clearing the entire display prior to the update. The end result, a blank screen. Reworking the updates to be more selective and only clearing the screen when absolutely necessary fixed things.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote: After a fall last autumn I lost my right eye.
Ow! That must have been some fall. I'm glad you survived it, but wow! I'm sorry to hear you lost your eye.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Thank you. The fall wasn't bad, but I had my glasses on and I fell on the right side of my face, pushing the frames into the eye socket and rupturing the eye. Not a lot of pain, but a whole lot of drama for a few days. In an unbelievable case of happenstance, my daughter was coming to visit the next morning. She wrangled me to the hospital and doctor visits for a week. Pro tip: When you are recovering from fasting and then general anesthesia, a large vanilla shake from Ritter's Frozen Custard[^] is the perfect answer. I developed a deep emotional bond with that shake, and entered mourning when the cup was empty.
Needless to say I've had to make a number of adaptations. Like I mentioned I now use the x-large mouse pointers plus I've bumped text size up a notch. I use prescription reading glasses when working on the computer. Left-to-right lane changes when driving are exciting  .
It's not been something I'd wish on anyone else, but there are worse things. I'm manfully resisting the middle-aged urge to recount examples [honey/witch sighs in relief].
Software Zen: delete this;
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Do you have a patch? Those are rather dashing.
I've actually thought about all the aesthetic advantages of missing an eye, of which there are several, not all involving parrots.
It's supervillain-esque as well. I'd rock the heck out of that like I do my silver streak/witch mark.
Just sayin'
I hope I'm not being too forward, or putting you on the spot. You can tell me to get lost and I won't mind.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I wore a patch when I went out until I was fitted for my prosthesis, and the patch was kind of attention-getting. FWIW, wearing an eye patch and a face mask leaves you feeling like you're looking at the world through a periscope. It does get a little old after a while.
I enjoyed it when little kids noticed. One little girl popped up and asked me point-blank what happened to my eye. I explained to her that I had hurt my eye, and the patch protected it. Her mom was embarassed, but I told her curiousity was a good thing.honey the codewitch wrote: I hope I'm not being too forward, or putting you on the spot.
Not at all. One of my favorite things about [well-advanced] middle age is that so few things embarass me.
Software Zen: delete this;
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