I've had three programming jobs out of school and have never had that experience. Though, others in the same positions have shared the same experiences as you. This leads me to believe that it is more about the person than the job (although the job certainly has an impact).
1. Learn to estimate effectively, I usually just double whatever time I believe something will take and usually finish early (without having to kill myself).
2. Don't feel guilty working only 40 hours a given week and are meeting the deadlines you set for yourself. (If you have no input into your own deadlines, that is a problem. But if you have some input and your deadlines are still challenging, you'll need to work on your persuasive abilities)
I don't think anyone is arguing that none of these technologies exist, but saying that the average person shouldn't be overly concerned with any of this.
I don't really care if companies, the government, or my family know what sites I visit, where I travel, or who I speak with and which topics I'm interested in.
Certainly, there are people (like you and others) who have passionate objections to all of this. There is an easy solution: Do not use technology.
On another note, I'm sure many of the readers on this site are actually the individuals responsible for building some of these systems. :)
The higher-education system is in trouble the way I see it. I was a business major (Management) and spent ~5 hours each week on average (5 courses/semester) and graduated with decent grades.
I've since enrolled in graduate CS program. Taking 1-2 classes, I spend 10-20 hours each week outside of class. The contrast between CS and Business courses is ridiculous. I feel that my time as an undergrad was almost worthless.
I'm unsure of why the Business degree was so "easy", but my inclination is that colleges want to keep their enrollment high ($$$) so they try to keep less-than-stellar student's enrolled by watering down the requirements.
I'd be interested to learn whether standardized tests should be implemented for colleges/universities to ensure that student's are getting an education worth the price of enrollment.
Up/down arrows are not synonyms for agree/disagree but are supposed to reward people for providing valuable additions to the conversation.
Too many times have I seen people downvoted because they provide an unpopular perspective on a topic. This results in HN turning into a circle jerk of similar discussions/ideas and avoids some of the most truly interesting conversations. To me, this is the single biggest threat to HN.
Why would anyone mention any radical ideas when the masses downvote them because it does not match their own?
I think that attitude is a bit harsh. Does it make him a bad person? I disagree. While I can't imagine doing such things, I understand that people have vastly different values regarding many topics and aren't trying to be evil regardless of how opposed the values are to others.
I agree that in this particular case its a bad move to release this publicly because he is a leader of a major company and shouldn't invite such controversy.
I think the point is that it is risky to design before you fully understand the problem you're solving. From my interpretation of the slides, they are often working on tasks they have little experience with. Instead of spending time thinking about potential design issues (which may or may not exist), build something that works and the patterns which the feature requires will emerge, enabling an elegant design afterwards.
I had almost received my B.S. Management when I was offered a entry-level job as a Requirements Analyst at an eight-person software company. At this point I had probably written 1000 lines of code in my entire life (JavaScript/PHP, mostly copying tutorials) and had no real intention of becoming a programmer.
After four months, I had become the longest tenured employee (besides the owner, who was non-technical) after everyone else in the company quit. I had no choice but to take the role of Lead Developer on a $170,000 project. Needless to say, I learned to code ... and since then my interest in CS/SWE has snowballed to the point I enrolled in a M.S. Comp Sci program.
I think a lot depends on the teacher. If there is a really good teacher which challenges their students then any course can be a great learning experience (even beyond the material covered). Obviously, it will always be different between schools. If I were you, I'd ask fellow students to see if anyone has taken a truly interesting/challenging course.
I took a Negotiations course my senior year of college and it was easily my favorite class of all time. There was a lot of roleplaying and class debate, but the teacher played Devil's Advocate and poked holes in everyone's arguments. He truly required us to think creatively and analyze a situation thoroughly before speaking/writing, or else he'd rip us apart. It was a breath of fresh air after many other classes were purely focused on learning concepts, rather than applying them creatively.
With a quick and easy modification of your code, you could make a 0 handed clock where the current time is always lined up at the top-center of the screen.
That way, you only have to look at one place to find the time.
In Fall 2009, with only 1 year of experience with high-level web programming and no computer science background (BS in Management), I created the goal of working at Google within 3 years.
I enrolled in graduate school pursuing M.S. Computer Science, watched online course lectures, read textbooks, worked on a number of pet projects, and learned new programming languages... all while working full-time.
I'm now 9/30 credits towards my Masters degree and currently interviewing with Google (made it through 2 steps thus far). While I may or may not get an offer, it is just another step on the path to reach my goal.
Well, I had an idea for a web application that I'd otherwise create in Python. I figured I'd use Lisp to get some experience using it (also, my AI class next semester uses Lisp).
While it will probably cause some additional hurdles of complexity (such as figuring how how to use ASDF and manage packages), I find it is hard to motivate myself without a shiny carrot in front of me. The web application is something that I would use and want to build, whereas writing a simple and purely educational program doesn't provide the same kind of motivation.
I'm just beginning my road down the path of learning Lisp. My plan for learning is:
1. Read the Practical Common Lisp chapters which introduce Lisp features.
2. Write a web application using Common Lisp (Hunchentoot/Postmodern). After all, the only way to learn a language is to use a language.
3. Re-read Practical Common Lisp and/or other Lisp books.
I realize that I won't remember 90% of the material read in Practical Common Lisp in Step 1. However, I'm hoping that I can get an overview of the features available in the language to help design a better web application. Knowing some names of features like CLOS, cons cells, plists, alists (and others that I haven't gotten to yet) will just make it easier for me to search for help when I run into problems.
If anyone has any references to good materials for the following:
- Learning Common Lisp
- Creating CL applications using Hunchentoot and/or Postmodern
- Quality Common Lisp API specs
- Any other tips for an aspiring Lisper
I'd be grateful for any additional information that might help me along the way.
Most of my experience is web development related, and my language of choice is Python (although I've used Ruby, C#, Java, PHP, C++, C). Though being a web developer isn't necessarily what I'd look for (I wouldn't mind it), I hope to find a job that offers more challenging computer science problems than merely cutting-pasting libraries to create a simple CRUD interface. However, I know that it'll be difficult to find a job in a new country and a job that really pushes my CS knowledge and forces me to learn, so I don't plan on being overly picky.
From the responses thus far, I realize that for someone hoping to go to a new country, I'll need to learn about VISAs and work-permits.
Beyond information about where I should look to find a job (which is very helpful), do you have any additional insight into how I should find one?
Are there specific European-focused tech job-boards/search engines I should browse? Are there any things I should avoid when contacting European companies, that might be common in job-hunting within the USA?
As opposed to Berlin specifically, how should an American software engineer get a job in a different country? I'd like to experience different cultures and I'd like to move to another country (after finding a job) but I'm not sure how I should go about doing it.
Initially, I think western Europe is the most ideal place since I do not know any other languages, some place where many people spoke English would be ideal.
If anyone has any tips for how an American (with no foreign contacts, or fluency in other languages) can land a job in a western European country, I'd be very interested in hearing them.
I've had a couple herniated discs in my lower back for over eight years now, so I've spent significant time focusing on improving my posture while sitting.
Here are a few tips:
1. Use a lumbar roll -- you place this in your lower back and it forces you to maintain a lordosis (curve of the spine) by keeping it in position. This will be tiring for the first couple of weeks, but eventually it will feel natural.
2. Monitor height -- you want your monitor to be positioned so that you are looking straight ahead, rather than down, towards your monitor. If you are forced to look down there is a better chance of leaning forward instead of maintaing good posture.
If you can't get your monitor high enough relative to your position, you'll need a taller desk.
-------------------------------------------------------
Those are my two biggest tips, but there are others:
Chairs are not made equal... different chairs have definite discrepancies in the amount of pain they cause me on a day to day basis. Even expensive ones will send shooting pains down my leg within a few hours of sitting in them. If you can test some new chairs out for a day or two at a time, I'd recommend doing so.
Get up, walk, and/or stretch regularly for a couple of minutes. At work I use a small cup for water, which requires me to refill every 45 minutes or so. A quick 2 minute walk to the water tank for a fill-up is a refreshing break for our backs.
Thanks for the feedback. I think I definitely need to address some of the issues you've raised. One of my apprehensions to posting my "Review my App" post is that my app doesn't instantaneously provide any functionality (other than viewing apps looking for testers).
As a developer, you submit an app and it appears on the list. However, it may take hours/days/weeks to get any tester requests (based on whether or not the site is being used). Similarly, as a tester if you apply to test an App, you aren't granted access to that app (or the ability to provide feedback) until the developer accepts you, which can take hours/days/weeks itself.
I will definitely take some screenshots and make the 'internal' features of the site more evident so people aren't forced to create an account in order to see whether or not they'll want to use the service.
As for whether this will become a business, my answer is: Not yet. While I have some ideas for monetization and where to grow the feature-set in the future, right now I'm just interested in getting users and feedback to help guide the direction of BetaBoom in the future.
For now, its merely a free service (and learning experience for me) to help Developers find/manage testers and feedback.
1. Learn to estimate effectively, I usually just double whatever time I believe something will take and usually finish early (without having to kill myself).
2. Don't feel guilty working only 40 hours a given week and are meeting the deadlines you set for yourself. (If you have no input into your own deadlines, that is a problem. But if you have some input and your deadlines are still challenging, you'll need to work on your persuasive abilities)