141–150 of 246 posts
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So true. Finance attracts the most incompetent egomaniacs possible. I love getting lectures about how to design software from someone who has written: if x == 0: return "Monday"; elif x == 1: return "Tuesday"; ... This should be a criminal offense.
Honest question. What is wrong with something like that? I could see it justified by saving the overhead of a complex Date class.
Or just an array.
Quick quiz: Given the ability to charge $100/hr for your time (which is what this guy's rate works out to), would you prefer to make: a.) $500,000 by working 100hr weeks b.) $250k by working 50hr weeks Me? I tend to lean toward secret option c: make $100k by working 25 40hr weeks, then spend the rest of the year squandering it on a beach with tall cold beers, good surfing/climbing and good wifi. Gotta keep them prior…
Spot on! I was on the verge of writing almost the same reply only to find yours. Let's crunch the numbers: 52 weeks/year - 4 weeks for vacation = 48 weeks $500,000 / 48 weeks = $10,417 / week $10,417 / 1 week * 1 week/ 100 hours = $104.17/hr As a freelance developer, in the US, and particularly in this startup economy (bubble?), it is entirely possible to earn 500k/year working 100 hours/week. Most modest freelancers…
I like how the slashdot discussion rapidly turns into a moral debate.
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Because you can make enough money to retire before you are 30, which means you can spend much more time with your wife and kids when that time comes. I wouldnt want to be the type of dad who has to stress out about money issues.
Replying to bmj (not sure why i don't see a reply link ...) For me, and I think for a lot of other people on HN, retirement means not having to work for the money. Which, for people in some areas of the world, isn't really that much. And in that vein, if you don't have to worry about the money, you can afford to say "no, I would rather go see my daughter's choral concert than work". Obviously I would keep myself busy…
HN has a reply cool off period. The more nested a comment, the longer the cool off period.
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Even normal developer salaries amount to a lot of money compared to median household incomes. I'm known as the "rich one" in my family, and I haven't taken any risks at all. It's all relative, I guess.
Agreed, however, the shelf life of a programmer is very short compared to other career paths. It all depends on your industry, of course, but once you hit 40-50, you're competing with younger developers who have more energy and require far less compensation. Hence the need to make "real money" before you hit the age ceiling.
Maybe it's different in other parts of the country/world.
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I was hoping that wouldn't come off as elitist in this crowd— it's really just an observation on the difference between technical and non-technical people. Which I guess highlights why I kept my mouth shut in school. When your job involves doing something that strikes you as straightforward and intuitive, but is bizarrely valued at several times, or tens of times, the labor of your peers, it's pretty hard to talk abo…
Huh? That's pretty much like any other skilled trade. I don't understand tractors like my grandfather does and he's made a lot more money selling them than most programmers will. I'm not more valuable as a human because I know code and he knows combines.
(Now, one could argue that they were simply being on top of the technology of different eras; diesel tractors revolutionized agriculture in the last century and he apparently got into selling them at a good time, but again, there are a bajillion fields where staying on top of tech is both lucrative and non-trivial.)
This is a huge load of bullshit. 99% of the "banking programmers" are some of the worst coders in the world. A vast majority of them just babysit a Bloomberg terminal, barely understanding the supposed math they use all day. Others just babysit an Excel spreadsheet, or worse, develop whole applications in Excel then try to get a real programmer to "build it". The lower echelons are even worse and just make shitty C#…
Fast C++ is an oxymoron. Real men use C and assembly. And yes, I bootstrapped my own HFT
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So true. Finance attracts the most incompetent egomaniacs possible. I love getting lectures about how to design software from someone who has written: if x == 0: return "Monday"; elif x == 1: return "Tuesday"; ... This should be a criminal offense.
Honest question. What is wrong with something like that? I could see it justified by saving the overhead of a complex Date class.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was hoping that wouldn't come off as elitist in this crowd— it's really just an observation on the difference between technical and non-technical people. Which I guess highlights why I kept my mouth shut in school. When your job involves doing something that strikes you as straightforward and intuitive, but is bizarrely valued at several times, or tens of times, the labor of your peers, it's pretty hard to talk abo…
What they will never understand is how we get it so intuitively— not unless they put in the decades we did to get there. Huh? That's pretty much like any other skilled trade. I don't understand tractors like my grandfather does and he's made a lot more money selling them than most programmers will. I'm not more valuable as a human because I know code and he knows combines. (Now, one could argue that they were simply…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So true. Finance attracts the most incompetent egomaniacs possible. I love getting lectures about how to design software from someone who has written: if x == 0: return "Monday"; elif x == 1: return "Tuesday"; ... This should be a criminal offense.
Honest question. What is wrong with something like that? I could see it justified by saving the overhead of a complex Date class.
Additionally, one would normally use an array of names and index it:
days = ["Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun"]
that_day_you_wanted = days[x]