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Programmers' Day

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Re: Programmers' Day

#11

Post by thebootstrapper »

Great day to quote from Dijkstra's good old article. At that time(1957) programming was not considered as a profession!

Extract from Humble Programmer[1]

"..in 1957, I married and Dutch marriage rites require you to state your profession and I stated that I was a programmer. But the municipal authorities of the town of Amsterdam did not accept it on the grounds that there was no such profession. And, believe it or not, but under the heading "profession" my marriage act shows the ridiculous entry "theoretical physicist"!.."

[1] http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340....

Re: Programmers' Day

#13

Post by spiralganglion »

thebootstrapper wrote: post #11

Great day to quote from Dijkstra's good old article. At that time(1957) programming was not considered as a profession! Extract from Humble Programmer[1] "..in 1957, I married and Dutch marriage rites require you to state your profession and I stated that I was a programmer. But the municipal authorities of the town of Amsterdam did not accept it on the grounds that there was no such profession. And, believe it or no…

What a quote! I would have opted for exterminator — a satisfactorily legitimate profession, and a nice bit of tongue-in-cheek for those who know what is really meant.

As a child, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always answered that I wanted to kill bugs. Of course, this was a bit before our meaning of "bug" became common knowledge, so it always got a good laugh. I'm thrilled to have followed my childhood dream to be a part of this wonderful industry of err exterminators. Happy PD everybody!

Re: Programmers' Day

#14

Post by pestaa »

pestaa wrote: post #9

Today is the day I must hunt down that irritating segfault, then!

I should add that 10 minutes later I got rid of that specific segfault I spent nights on! Wish you all the same luck.

Re: Programmers' Day

#15

Post by xentronium »

hollerith wrote: post #4

Any Russians want to tell us whether this holiday has any meaning to the ordinary Russians?

> Any Russians want to tell us whether this holiday has any meaning to the ordinary Russians?

No.

[UPD]: Disambiguation: this holiday has no meaning to the ordinary Russians.

Re: Programmers' Day

#17

Post by AngryParsley »

Degrees in computer science and computer engineering are in the top 10 for average earnings. We get to build all kinds of cool stuff used by people around the world. For many of us, programming is fun. And we get paid to do it!

Every day is programmer's day.

Re: Programmers' Day

#20

Post by spiralganglion »

AngryParsley wrote: post #17

Degrees in computer science and computer engineering are in the top 10 for average earnings. We get to build all kinds of cool stuff used by people around the world. For many of us, programming is fun . And we get paid to do it! Every day is programmer's day.

Some interesting data I pulled together today:

Approximate revenue-per-employee. Data from Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia.

Apple makes $2,000,000 per employee. Facebook makes $1,500,000. Google makes $1,000,000. Microsoft makes $800,000. Sony makes $500,000. Kraft makes $400,000. Walmart makes $200,000. McDonalds makes $60,000.

Now, if only there was a good source of users-per-engineer. I read that Facebook is somewhere around 1,260,000. That's just awesome.

We create so much value, and for so many people.

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