Infinite Recursion

Occupation: Software Engineer


How you allocate your time is up to you. I know people who don't own a computer at home because they use one all day at work as well as those who have their on little world with themselves and their computers. Again, it is up to you to maintain a balance to accomondate your other interests and needs.


Of course it can be, those who claim it not to be must just be copying and pasting in someone else's code and calling themselves a programmer.


I kept my schedule maxed with as many courses as they would let me take a semester. Most of them were computer related, others were science based. I have a BS in Software Engineering with a double minor in Computer Science and Geological Science, I lack 2 senior level classes for a BS degree in Computer Science. I've been thinking about going back to finish that degree as well as to pick up Aerospace Engineering.

I always thought liberal arts majors took up space on the sidewalks to be honest... most of them that I went to college with have a very low paying job now and most have nothing to do with their degree. Of course you will need your english and history, etc... but those are core classes and you will probably have to have them anyway to graduate. If you want to get into game design, take courses in Fine Art and Mathematics for your electives.



Question is broad... in general, if there is a program I need in order to do my job or solve an interest... I pick it up and use it until I am comfortable with it.

I work for a DoD contractor, so I will leave that to your imagination.

I do mind actually... although, in short... I can buy what I want without looking at the cost and without worrying about a potential dent in my bank account. Big ticket items that I don't have cash for, my credit can get me. Look under salary.com for software engineering positions.

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http://jasonpowers.net

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

A.K.Al Shamsi

well.... i am still student... and i didn't go for any training yet.... i know how to use visual basic, dreamweaver, oracle and java...

dr.p

Technically, I guess I'm a professional, so that's what I voted for. I never got a degree, but I've developed in PHP/PERL professionally for the last 8 years.

Except for a brief period when I was 20, I've always had time to do other things, whether I had the interest in doing them or not. Programming was a hobby for me before it was a job, though, and it's mostly continued to be a hobby and a job.

Absolutely, it can become tedious... but, pretty much anything can.

Only took one college class, and that was in CIS. If I ever get to go back and finish, I would most likely major in CIS and minor in Language or Music.

Oooo... listing... visual studio (c++/c#/vb), gcc, doxygen, html help workshop, subversion/tortoisesvn, cvs, mysql, editplus/vi, openoffice, paintshop pro, audacity, acid, ableton live, cubase, all kinds of net clients, sysop tools for win/lin/mac, web browsers of all kinds, winamp, mediacoder, qtmoviemaker, garageband, haxe (haxe is really cool), perl, php, apache... yeah.

Depends on who you ask. I've written some huge programs that are still in use on a number of web sites. Did the code for a NY company's fashion web site. But, no... I don't really think I've done anything that most would consider "big." Nothing really juicy

None. Still on hiatus.

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Neeley.org

wannabe7

Thanks for all the feedback, guys. I really enjoyed reading all the responses from real programmers like yourselves. This really helped me a lot!

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Aspiring Game Designer

mackenga

> Would you have a fair ammount of time to focus on other things or would you have to concentrate all/most of the time on programming? (things meaning like exercising, social activities, other interest?)

I spend too much time programming between my job and my personal projects, but still have some time for other things. I restore old vehicles and play in a band, for example.

> Even though this is what you love to do, can it be extremely tedious, at times? (Certain programmers says it can be.)

Programming is a mixture of good stuff and donkey work. Usually when I find myself doing the grim, dull stuff it's because I'm being paid to do it, which sort of makes up for it, but I do sometimes wonder why I love to program. Then I get home and crack out the C compiler, PHP, Perl and Tcl interpreters and remember the joy of it - encoding intention, having a machine rigidly repeat one's own thoughts - it's a real kick.

> What type of courses/majors/minors did YOU pick in school to better prepare you?

Computer Science at school was a waste of time. I learned by reading a lot of books. At University, my main areas of interest were psychology and databases (or more generally data representation and retrieval).

Psychology, maths and statistics are probably the best things to look at first if you're interested in computing.

> And what would you advise? (Since I want to ultimately end up in game design, I was thinking of taking liberal arts courses, to have a well-rounded education.)

Arts courses sound like a good ingredient to me. Don't skimp on the technical stuff - maths can't be avoided! If you hate maths (like I did) try approaching the subject afresh starting with Set Theory then moving onto Number Theory; that route in seemed much more natural to me. I now believe that I only hated maths because of the stupid way they approach it in schools - rote learning rules for arithmetic and then trying to blend that into real maths rather than starting with simple concepts like sets and boolean logic and building that into a real comprehension of the subject.

Programming is an art, not a science. Inspiration is crucial. Get a lot of diverse input and you'll have interesting ideas; the implementation details, the machinery behind the construction of working systems, is important of course but you need to start by having an idea worth building.

> What program(s) are you familiar with and use?

At work, I use Visual Studio on Windows XP, and MS SQL Server 2000 (and its associated client tools). When I get the choice I use C (the GCC compiler to be specific), emacs, gedit, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Apache on Ubuntu Linux. I don't do a lot of graphics work, but when I need to I use Dia and the GIMP. On occasion I use Perl and Tcl (I use Tcl where most people would probably use shell scripts, because I'm very comfortable with the language). And of course I use XMMS and VLC when I'm procrastinating

Learning open-source technologies is very important. When I did it, it was mostly a matter of convenience since I wasn't in a position to afford software licenses (and didn't have the MSDN subscription I do now). These days, it's crucial because so many businesses are using FOSS, especially for their web presences. The company I work for is a Microsoft shop to the core, but keep accidentally buying Linux systems! For the best employment prospects, I recommend learning about Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL, plus the usual 'Enterprisey' Java stuff - Java, JSP, etc.

> Anything big you've done in your career so far? (Very curious xD)

My personal projects (Samsa and Lereco) are big in an industry-shaking way but it'll take time for me to prove that. Samsa is a really unusual database engine that provides the perfect business automation framework for virtually any business, doing anything. Lereco is a generalised learning system that could replace humans in many roles - I like to think it may be the beginning of another genetic takeover (see Cairns-Smith's "Genetic Takeover") since I don't see any limit to what this system can learn given enough processing power (and don't get the wrong idea; it doesn't take much to do a lot!).

Concretely, this year should involve me writing a new SCADA system from the ground up and extending two existing ones for OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) monitoring, which is quite major. Up to now, professionally, the biggest thing I've done is a major refactoring of a couple of the existing SCADA systems.

> Your salary? If you don't mind.

21,000 GBP PA. That's about $40,000 at the current exchange rate, thanks to the weak dollar, if my information is up to date. This is pretty low for my line of work but it'll do for now!

> Thanks for all the inputs.

You're very welcome! Good luck in the business - IT is a good industry to get involved with an a philosophically interesting world too. Good luck with game programming - very new ground to be broken in that direction. I've always been fascinated by it myself but never quite got around to it.

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"I'm not a genius. Why do I have to suffer?"