I Don't Agree That There Really Is a Tech Worker Shortage

These sorts of overly complex solutions usually indicate someone who doesn't actually know how C strings work/how they're stored in memory. Reversing a string is one of the instances where these weaknesses show up. I've seen various people with degrees in CS who claim to have worked with lots of C do this problem, and it's almost amusing the volume and variety of code they can produce for such a simple problem. What should only involve two array indices or pointers in a loop can turn into something containing numerous malloc()s (often with no free()s), copious copying and moving of data around, recursion (this one isn't so bad), and I've even seen sprintf() make an appearance.

However, none of this compares to one individual whose quite memorable solution involved creating a temporary file, writing the string into it, then executing an external command to reverse that file, and reading it back in. His reasoning was "because I don't want to reinvent the wheel."

(Related article about std::string in C++: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8704318)

In the entire nation of Canada, one cannot publicly denote oneself as an "engineer" of any sort, unless one is the Canadian equivalent of a PE. In my own case, it was flatly illegal that I did so, as I did not have a professional software engineering license, had not served an apprenticeship, and had a physics rather than a software engineering degree, however I was completely prepared to defend myself in court, as I regard myself as a far, far more competent engineer than the vast majority of "engineers" that I have ever personally met.

(Note that a "software engineering" degree is quite a different thing than a "computer science" degree.)

I'm completely cool with just about anyone calling themselves a "Computer Programmer", but I'm not cool with just anyone calling themselves a "Software Engineer".

Consider that I'm damn near clueless about computer science.

What I can do is write code that is completely flawless, runs fast and uses very little memory. I can also take a total rat's nest that someone else wrote, and get all the bugs out of it.

   > During the dotcom bubble anyone that could click a button was hired. But it was a bubble.

In the United States - specifically the US, I don't know about other countries - the Constitutional right to not incriminate oneself only applies to criminal procedures, not to civil ones.

So all I would have to do is put Zuckerberg - or whoever I think may have made the decision not to hire me - under oath in a deposition, then ask them directly whether the didn't hire me as a result of my age. If they perjure themselves, they would do hard time in prison.

Now there are people who will lie in depositions, or on the witness stand before a jury, so we have discovery. I would just say "Give me all of your email" and they would have to - or again, they would go to prison.

I myself have Amazon cold for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. I have two very prominent links at the top of every single page on my website, to essays about my mental illness. Amazon's HR was all over me like a cheap suit until I asked them to have a look at my site. Within the hour I received an email that informed me I would not be getting an interview.

I myself am reluctant to file an ADA complaint, what I would rather do is to address the problem by writing more essays. However, were my writing to have any effect, that would only happen very slowly.

I might file that complaint, as it would help other mentally ill people get work.

The reason I work as a coder, and not a physicist, is for the specific reason that computer programming "accomodates" my mental illness in a way that academia does not.

That is, I can be floridly paranoid, even hallucinating - and I do hallucinate from time to time - yet I can still write really good software.

Consider the book "Laughter is the Best Medicine". Some guy's cancer went into remission when he watched a whole bunch of really funny movies.

Given that, would you suggest that we should do away with chemotherapy, radiation and oncology surgeons?

The length of the visa is up to three years. It also can't go past when your passport expires and may be shorter depending on your job offer. It can be renewed many times (I think up to twenty years but could be wrong).

Application and renewal is normally pretty easy. If you're doing a border crossing it takes a little time and a $50 fee. If you're doing it through the mail it takes about 2 months and a larger fee (several hundred dollars).