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Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

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Re: Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

#51

Post by alnayyir »

run4yourlives wrote: post #46
alnayyir wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your candor, but you're missing the point. No source of funding, no school. It's not like I need to "snap" out of anything. I want to go back to school. As I've already said I've spoken with a financial aid advisor, things are grim and don't seem plausible failing a windfall. My car is mine, I'm not an idiot, I'm just poor. You're quite right, problems don't fix themselves, they also aren't fixed because…

To illustrate my point, I decided not to pursue a fairly cute girl recently because she would cut into my coding and learning time. Nothing in the world is as important to me as my work and my intellectual pursuits. This may be unpopular on this forum, but in 10-15 years, you should expect your views to change 180 degrees. For that reason, it would be unwise for you to focus so narrowly on your "interests". You are y…

No heartache, if she'd been interesting enough to pursue for the sake of long-term, I wouldn't have minded losing the time.

The problem is that the kind of girl who interests me intellectually and understands me (outside of my programming interests) is supremely rare.

I've mostly accepted that either chance will favor me and I'll run into the "girl", or I'll focus on my work. I don't really care.

It doesn't help that I refuse to have kids, that narrows down my options as well.

Re: Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

#52

Post by alnayyir »

run4yourlives wrote: post #48
mynameishere wrote: post #6

Disown your father.

From the sounds of it, it might be very likely that his father is not the curmudgeon that he appears, but is in fact attempting to teach his son a very valuable lesson, one that will allow him to avoid the perils that his mother faces.

My Father could afford to pay for me to go to Princeton, in cash, on a yearly basis.

It has nothing to do with debt management.

I am extremely frugal, and as said elsewhere, I'll be going to a community college I found. I am paying the tuition in cash. That isn't something someone with poor finance skills can do.

Re: Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

#53

Post by alnayyir »

mickt wrote: post #34

Here's what I did; I went part-time off-and-on for 4 years and it seemed like an eternity and sucked big time. Finally quite my job and financed my 1st year of full-time (State) college with my credit-cards, worked in the Unix lab. In my 2nd year I got an internship, as a software engineer, that paid well and continued the internship part-time till I graduated. One summer (3 months) working as an intern and I made mo…

I'm not making 1600 anymore, that was when I was a programmer. I make ~1050 a month post-tax.

Re: Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

#54

Post by alnayyir »

mickt wrote: post #49
alnayyir wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the excellent advice. As I said in another reply, I found a community college that is cheap enough for me to pay for the tuition in cash. I'll just get my degree and go from there.

Great it's a good start! :) Just be careful that you don't take courses that won't transfer to a 4-year college (beats me how you'd determine this). Plus, this discussion is good for anyone else in your position and it'd be good to keep the dialog going as you may get some other useful suggestions for the future. Why not apply to MIT maybe they'll give you a scholarship! U never know. :)

I highly doubt MIT would want me, my high school grades were mediocre, and I did get a 28 on my ACT, but that was with a hangover. I didn't learn my lesson regarding grades and working in school until it was too late.

Re: Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

#55

Post by coglethorpe »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #33
gm wrote: post #12

I'll be honest, hopefully you'll appreciate it because you need honest advice. I read your post and I can already hear the self-pity string quartet playing and a big screen in the background playing images your hard, hard life. Task #1 is to stop whining, not just to other people, mainly to yourself. What do you mean you could not get any loans? What kind of whiny-ass thing is that? You could not get loans so you dro…

I've often wondered why it is that colleges have gotten away with raising tuition 7% to 10% per year for decades on end. This post is, indeed, very honest about the reason: Your college degree is a badge of social class that every other college grad will look for. If you don't have one, many college grads will assume that you are shiftless and lazy and whining and self-pitying and that you potentially have a series o…

I've always thought that it's the loans that end up raising tuition. It's the same way the easy loans raised housing prices. Too much money chasing too few goods.

Re: Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

#56

Post by run4yourlives »

alnayyir wrote: post #52
run4yourlives wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the sounds of it, it might be very likely that his father is not the curmudgeon that he appears, but is in fact attempting to teach his son a very valuable lesson, one that will allow him to avoid the perils that his mother faces.

My Father could afford to pay for me to go to Princeton, in cash, on a yearly basis. It has nothing to do with debt management. I am extremely frugal, and as said elsewhere, I'll be going to a community college I found. I am paying the tuition in cash . That isn't something someone with poor finance skills can do.

I don't think the lesson he is attempting to teach you has anything to do with money, btw.

Re: Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

#57

Post by alnayyir »

menloparkbum wrote: post #31

If you're in Columbus, in state tuition at Ohio state is less than $9000 a year, so it is hard to imagine being unable to find money for school. You can make that kind of money working part time at a bar.

I found a solution, but I'd still like to correct you.

You can make that kind of money part-time at a bar, while homeless and never eating.

9k is the sum of what you'd make working part-time at a bar here.

Re: Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

#58

Post by run4yourlives »

alnayyir wrote: post #51
run4yourlives wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To illustrate my point, I decided not to pursue a fairly cute girl recently because she would cut into my coding and learning time. Nothing in the world is as important to me as my work and my intellectual pursuits. This may be unpopular on this forum, but in 10-15 years, you should expect your views to change 180 degrees. For that reason, it would be unwise for you to focus so narrowly on your "interests". You are y…

No heartache, if she'd been interesting enough to pursue for the sake of long-term, I wouldn't have minded losing the time. The problem is that the kind of girl who interests me intellectually and understands me (outside of my programming interests) is supremely rare. I've mostly accepted that either chance will favor me and I'll run into the "girl", or I'll focus on my work. I don't really care. It doesn't help that…

You're 20. Of course you don't want to have kids. Very few people at 20 want kids. I certainly didn't.

In fact, at 26, I was settled on being single for the rest of my life. I'm now 33, married, and have a 1 year old son. I laugh at my past self and understand how naive I was.

I'm not suggesting you'll be the same, just that you pay attention to the fact that you are seeing the world through the eyes of a 20 year old. :-)

You won't run into "the girl" though if you are standing still.

Re: Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

#59

Post by mickt »

alnayyir wrote: post #54
mickt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great it's a good start! :) Just be careful that you don't take courses that won't transfer to a 4-year college (beats me how you'd determine this). Plus, this discussion is good for anyone else in your position and it'd be good to keep the dialog going as you may get some other useful suggestions for the future. Why not apply to MIT maybe they'll give you a scholarship! U never know. :)

I highly doubt MIT would want me, my high school grades were mediocre, and I did get a 28 on my ACT, but that was with a hangover. I didn't learn my lesson regarding grades and working in school until it was too late.

UR probably right, but what the heck!

Re: Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

#60

Post by menloparkbum »

alnayyir wrote: post #57
menloparkbum wrote: post #31

If you're in Columbus, in state tuition at Ohio state is less than $9000 a year, so it is hard to imagine being unable to find money for school. You can make that kind of money working part time at a bar.

I found a solution, but I'd still like to correct you. You can make that kind of money part-time at a bar, while homeless and never eating. 9k is the sum of what you'd make working part-time at a bar here.

It may be different in Columbus. A popular bartender at the right bar in SF can make $400/night in tips. However, I paid my way through school in the midwest with academic scholarships and a part time unix systems administrator job. The school I went to cost twice as much as Ohio State, and I graduated with no debt, so I sort of agree with "gm."
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