211–220 of 570 posts
It's a job that solves a lot of the problems people complain about in programming, like spending all day staring at the screen or not interacting with people or doing things that might be pointless.
The downside of course is that you eat what you kill.
The only other alternative I've considered is to teach English in foreign lands, but I'd probably still do programming on the side.
It's a job, and like any job it sucks (hugely) at times. It also provides money to keep my family, and I get to work on interesting, brain-teasing problems (sometimes! Damn web development).
Frankly, I'm not good at thinking what I'd do until I'm doing it. If I did something else it'd be one of:
Research scientist
University lecturer
R&D
Psychologist
Photographer
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Can I ask how you got started in the field? I actually began my career in Accounting (my undergrad is in it), and still find the world of finance pretty interesting. Somewhere along the line I ended up in Engineering and have been a Software Dev ever since. But I do still think about getting into trading at some point, but not sure how to transition.
How does an accountant end up in "engineering" without going back to Uni and doing an engineering degree?
Tangentially, presumably for the same reasons, both genders were evenly represented.
I'm mostly happy with programming, but I often think I'd like to try working in a coffee shop, especially a Starbucks. I spend so much time in cafes as a customer, and I really appreciate the difference that a barista's smile or greeting can make to my day. I'm curious to experience that from the other side for a while. I also read books about retail businesses & brands & Starbucks & customer experience for enjoyment…
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Programming involves very little creativity compared to actual art, so to call it a "creative art" is a gross exaggeration. A programmer is given a very specific set of tasks (eg. send data from A to B, fix bug, implement X), and his problems are mostly technical. This doesn't even compare to the creativity involved in a real artistic endeavor like designing your own videogame, writing your own screenplay, or composi…
Setting the "cool kid angst" aside, most art forms and especially song composition is a rather repetitive task where you compose certain rigid templates (tunes and chords) into a passable song according to demands and structure of current society, make your record company listen, have them edit the song, repeatedly master it until they are satisfied. My point is, however boring and repetitive, you still have some roo…
Usability as a subject is the opposite of art, it is kitsch. You actively try to make simple and obvious; to have just one possible meaning.
She also said that art/painting was the best of hobbies, but would have been the worst possible of jobs. Too little money and too many interested people, so it was a rat race.
Personally, I've found hundreds of subjects I love to learn about. But it seems only one thing I really love doing. So they'll have to break my cold fingers off the keyboard. I love to teach about subjects I love, but sadly lack all pedagogical talent. (Maybe I had liked art if I wasn't color blind or so unmusical that I can't clap hand to most of my favorite music. :-) )
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> smart but artless This is why it's so important for me to work on something people use . At a previous job I'd sometimes hit a wall. I would log into one of the production API hosts and tail -f the access logs, where I'd see many different people and applications using a piece of software that I'd help write. I'd grab an IP address and geolocate it and see where the person was from. The humanization of work can be…
Though I know that your intentions were harmless, I'd like to add that it's not a good idea to do such a lookup without a sound reason. At some places where I worked, I could have been fired for doing that unless I was looking to fix a bug and this particular bit of data was essential.
Unless u are working on a heavily confidential project that has a certain legal anonymity requirement (in which case the user's IP should be scrambled anyway), I don't see how doing a whois query could create any damage.