|
|
Kixdemp wrote: I plan on being a programmer when I grow up!
"Grow up!" ??? In my country you can get married at your age. How much more grown up do you want to be? 
Just kidding. (But, you can get married at 16 here)
Kixdemp wrote: Is it fun?
Depends on who you work for. The most fun I had was why I had my own software company. I was working on software I loved. Now I work on public projects (i.e. government projects) and they are interesting, but not quite as much fun as I used to have.
Kixdemp wrote: Is it hard?
That depends on your skill level. I don't think any of the projects are hard, some are more challenging than others. But, if I were to work on a project for biometric identification then I'd probably say that was hard - but my area of expertise is in business applications (lots of database, web application, and services kind of things).
ColinMackay.net
"Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in." -- Confucius
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kixdemp wrote: You can get married at 16? Where's that at?!
I live in Scotland (hence the flag in my signature). But what 16 year old really wants to get married? It happens, but it isn't very common.
Kixdemp wrote: I'll have to try having my own company then!
The main caveat to having your own business is that you don't just do software development. I spent office hours doing office chores, and the rest of the day doing the software development. I was working just about every hour there was available and often until 4 in the morning. If you are going to do that my advice is that you either do it now while you still have the energy to pull those sort of hours and still be excited the next morning, or wait until you have more experience so you work more efficiently within a standard 40 hour week.
ColinMackay.net
"Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in." -- Confucius
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell
|
|
|
|
|
Hmm... that sucks! On summer break, I oftenly code until like 7 or 8 in the morning... 
But yeah, I'll try to make an online RPG... and if I ever get a decent amount of players, I'll add something I hate: members-only features!  I need to learn to pixeldraw though...  Thanks! 
Lord Kixdemp
www.SulfurMidis.com
www.SulfurSoft.tk
[ftp://][http://][hotline://]tsfc.ath.cx
|
|
|
|
|
Kixdemp wrote: I'll have to try having my own company then!
It's a ton of work, but the best feeling you can have. And I recommend you start now, that you don't have anything to lose, and nothing like a family to mantain. So you can risk more. You'll have fun, learn a lot, and who knows, you might just succeed!! 
-- LuisR
Luis Alonso Ramos
Intelectix - Chihuahua, Mexico
Not much here: My CP Blog!
The amount of sleep the average person needs is five more minutes. -- Vikram A Punathambekar, Aug. 11, 2005
|
|
|
|
|
|
LOL - I'm not sure. I'm 37 and I've been doing this for 6 years, with a fair degree of success. But I'm not sure if I'd consider myself a grown up
Yes, it's fun. It's sometimes hard, but those bits are the most fun IMO.
I will just add that I'd been programming windows for < 6 months when I took my first paid job. I guess it depends on how you define 'professional' - I got lucky with that job, and I still had a lot to learn. Luckily, I was looking for opportunities to learn whatever I could, and I closed the gap as soon as I could, by working hard at work, and in my own time.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
-- modified at 21:42 Sunday 29th January, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
Christian Graus wrote: But I'm not sure if I'd consider myself a grown up
Christian Graus wrote: Yes, it's fun. It's sometimes hard, but those bits are the most fun IMO.
True... Specially when you tried to get something working for a week and then at last you fixed it... I feel so happy those times...
Lord Kixdemp
www.SulfurMidis.com
www.SulfurSoft.tk
[ftp://][http://][hotline://]tsfc.ath.cx
|
|
|
|
|
The most interesting thing I find is that at parties, I mention that I am a a computer programmer and they clam-up pretty fast. They often think, or even say "how boring"! But I find when I get the computer to do something that I want it to do, it is the most exciting reward ever!
|
|
|
|
|
I've been hanging around with code snippets since i was 12 years old (with an AMSTRAD 6128).Since i was 18 i'm working professionally as a programmer and now i'm 28.
It has its ups and downs as every aspect of life.Its rather rewarding(ethically talking) type of proffesion because it's a really creative one but in contrary it's quite cruel and tiring.Sometimes i feel very alone (me and my problems ).
i've set a threshold to myself to quit programming business about at the age of 32 and that's because i don't want to be a dinosaur.You need to constantly study study study and after an age you can no longer do that.So i dont want to end up as a ludicrous figure talking about e.g COBOL.Many people in my country still do that and its pretty sad.
But till then....happy programming.
|
|
|
|
|
LuluSailor said:
The most interesting thing I find is that at parties, I mention that I am a a computer programmer and they clam-up pretty fast. They often think, or even say "how boring"! But I find when I get the computer to do something that I want it to do, it is the most exciting reward ever!
That's why I don't have any friends...  (LOL!)
predragzakisevic said:
I've been hanging around with code snippets since i was 12 years old (with an AMSTRAD 6128).Since i was 18 i'm working professionally as a programmer and now i'm 28.
I would have LOVED to live back in that time... 5.25" floppies... low-level languages... MS-DOS (and lower)... No Int... WAIT! No Internet?! Nevermind. 
predragzakisevic said:
So i dont want to end up as a ludicrous figure talking about e.g COBOL.
I thought that was good...
Lord Kixdemp
www.SulfurMidis.com
www.SulfurSoft.tk
[ftp://][http://][hotline://]tsfc.ath.cx
|
|
|
|
|
Kixdemp wrote: 5.25" floppies...
Nop.There were 3" floppies double sided. 5.25" were much much newer.
Kixdemp wrote: low-level languages...
not exactly.BASIC 1.1
Kixdemp wrote: MS-DOS (and lower)...
CP/M (|cpm for those who remember)
|
|
|
|
|
predragzakisevic wrote: Nop.There were 3" floppies double sided. 5.25" were much much newer.
Hmm... What is it with the "double-sided" thingy? I don't think you could insert the floppy on both sides... could you? 
predragzakisevic wrote: not exactly.BASIC 1.1
BASIC? Yeah... I looked up some ColecoVision programming on Google, and it seems that many people used BASIC on it...
predragzakisevic wrote: CP/M (|cpm for those who remember)
I need to try that CP/M... I actually never tried anything below DOS 1.0... :->
Lord Kixdemp
www.SulfurMidis.com
www.SulfurSoft.tk
[ftp://][http://][hotline://]tsfc.ath.cx
|
|
|
|
|
Kixdemp wrote: I don't think you could insert the floppy on both sides... could you?
Yes, 3" floppy disks were in a rectangular hard shell plastic case (you're thinking of 3.5" disks which were squarish and could only be inserted one way up)
3" floppies were never very popular and never really caught on. AMSTRAD was the only company that I can think of that ever used them.
ColinMackay.net
"Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in." -- Confucius
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell
|
|
|
|
|
I still have several boxes of 8 inch floppies. And a pair of drives to match. With double density and both sides (2 headed drives) one coule get 1.2MB on the things. I wrote firmware (8085 assembly) for the Fulcrum Computer Products OmniDisk. (Floppy (5.25 and 8 inch), hard disk (some interface I forget which) and RAM disk. I made it able to boot to the RAM disk as a joke. Little did I know that Brent (who paid me for the firmware) was making a battery backed up RAM card a huge 256K bytes!
Somebidy hire me. Please. (Silicon Valley) Read my stuff on http://hmtown.com/
-Peter Butler
|
|
|
|
|
predragzakisevic wrote: set a threshold to myself to quit programming business about at the age of 32 and that's because i don't want to be a dinosaur.You need to constantly study study study and after an age you can no longer do that
That is utter crap. Your just lazy. Pure and simple. You just can't be bothered.
Look at people like Charlie Poole (co-author of NUnit), he transferred to .NET only a few years ago (he must be in his 50s or 60s) and he was previously a decades long mainframe guy before that.
ColinMackay.net
"Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in." -- Confucius
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell
|
|
|
|
|
Colin Angus Mackay wrote: That is utter crap. Your just lazy. Pure and simple. You just can't be bothered.
Thank you very much for the ornamental adjectives. I believe you are rather preoccupied or you may had a rather hard day.
I don't reply just to fight back and convince you i'm not.I'm just rather upset of a stranger unblushingly calling me LAZY.
Colin Angus Mackay wrote: Look at people like Charlie Poole (co-author of NUnit),
Does one or two persons make the rule ??? Do you understand the essence of the "exception of the rule" ? Probably not.
Colin Angus Mackay wrote: You just can't be bothered
No that's not true.If you consider that in the age of 28 i've done almost everything in the field of applied programming (in my country) i just want to EVOLVE.
At the age of 21 i was working on a nuclear reactor ,
At the age of 25 i was teaching in the university ,
At the age of 27 i got a goverment contract of 5 million euros for a system i developed myself
I'm just 28 . DO I SOUND OR LOOK LAZY ????
Give me a break and be more polite when you are axpressing your views when you hide behind of a monitor.
|
|
|
|
|
When actually working on original code, it feels great. When improving someone elses code, it ranges between horrid and great. When dealing with management and morons who don't know what they're doing, it's hell.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.
- P.J. O'Rourke
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kixdemp wrote; "What does being a professional programmer feel like?"
Stressed out, tired and overworked!
Having said that I wouldn't think of doing any other type of work. Well, at your age, I wanted play in a band but that never worked out.
Find an area of programming you like and become a subject matter expert in that area. At least you will be doing something you like to do when you find yourself up in the middle of the night chasing the illusive bug that seems to defy logic but in the end [when you track it down]turns out to be very logical after all.
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kixdemp said; "I'll have to think deeply about that"
Actually, if you have to think about it is not the right area for you.
The right choice is like how you define beauty; hard to quantify but you know it immediately when you see it.
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kixdemp said; " I'm worried that later on I'll want to change it"
One reason I chose a carrier in IT is because it changes so rapidly. I did not want to learn everything I was ever going to know about my profession in the first 5 years of working in it. In that respect IT has not disappointed me.
Nothing will be stopping you from re-inventing yourself whenever you feel the need to change. The only difference is that you will not be approaching the new areas with the same enthusiasm that you have now.
I have re-invented myself many times as technology changed over the years. It is a continuing process that will probably continue in computing for the foreseeable future; and well beyond.
So yes, change is possible, but it will be driven by practical reasons.
Go with whatever is exciting to you now because it is much easier to learn [and excel] when doing something you find enjoyable.
Get really good at the things you like now and you will have a solid foundation to build on when, at some future date, you need to investigate an alternative path based on practical reasoning.
In other words don’t get old before your time. Time will eventually catch up and you will be making practical decisions from then on.
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Praise 
Rant 
Admin 
Submit an article or tip
)
