bungie4

The stack is to deep. Nothing is easy anymore. The technology count is staggering. I'm close to retirement. I'm looking forward to pursuing my personal programming interests while I work some mundane, no responsibility, minimum wage job.

Programming is a ridiculous career path.

True. Northern Ontario here. I was born and raised in Toronto, where a damp -10C + moderate windchill feels orders of magnitude colder than dry -40 and no windchill.

The coldest I've been in was -52C (off an alcohol thermometer) and I was fine beyond my eyelids and nostrils crystalizing. That being said, I've been frost bitten a handful of times, each time, the temperature has been near freezing and damp.

But at the end of the day, I'd gladly exchange locales down to the North Carolina/Tennessee area on a permanent basis.

Granted, I live 'up north' but it still gets hot in my new house. I mounted some exhaust fans in the ceiling to pull the hot air from where it naturally rises too. Combined with the forced air furnace fan to circulate cool air (pulled from floor level). Finds the inside of my house 9C cooler on the hottest days of the year.

This is especially important as the brick gets heat soaked and releases its heat well into the night.

Nice to read an article from somebody local, or nearly so, to me.

I remember the outage well, I worked at a major telecommunications company with reserve generators. I really didn't appreciate the depth of the issue until I drove home that night. People were telling other people, total strangers, that nukes were dropping all over the US. You can imagine the panic.

Word eventually spread and the northern mindset of looking after your neighbours took hold, as mentioned in the artice.

I went to use the BBQ to make some burgers. We ran out of propane naturally. My neighbour offered his BBQ which coincidentally, was out of propane. Then HIS neighbour offered his BBQ. He was out building a deck when the power went out. He fired up his generator and continued on. His skil-saw was the only sound to be heard. All the neighbours threw in food and drink and we got to know one another.

I will admit to being a little said after the power was restored, because, except for a nod or a wave, we went back to the business of minding our own.

If I had a gray beard... 30+ years as working dev.

I've never taken a 'computer class' while in school, although I've taken some instruction while working.

Entirely self-taught. I do this because I like it. Back in the day, I never played video games, I taught myself, and wrote, code. To this day, I don't play video games.

It's been my experience that hiring degreed CS graduates may not be the best course. Theirs a big difference between being 'book-smart' and real world smart. I tend to give preference to guys who write code for fun over those who are in it for the money.

Case in point, we just brought on a high-school student who is about to start his comp-sci degree. He has written code for years for fun. He's just rocking it. I'm sure he'll be invited back each summer until his degree is complete and will likely be offered continued employment after.

30+ year programmer here. This is absolutely true. Some days you cause more damage then progress, forcing you to spend still more time correcting it.

My supervisors understand that some days I'm not going touch code, instead I'll spend my time on education by keeping up with new tech, or, writing docs.. anything but talk with other co-workers distracting them

Agreed, I combined this with Cloudflare's DNS service (1.1.1.1). A great combo.

I recently had to update 3 db machines with the updated schemas from one, and the data from a third. Then copy the finished version over to the first and finally the third.

Turns out Visual Studio has a 'diff' generator for both schema and data. Holy hell that worked the treat.

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail principle. Come on admit, you've hammered in a screw before.

Good easy read though.

Calvin and Hobbes has been the standard by which other comics are judged by me.

That being said

Hobbes: Look at the stars! Its as if the universe goes on forever and ever!

Calvin: Thats why we stay inside with our appliances.

Nothing is easy anymore.

The stacks are so deep with millions of lines of code. When it works, its amazing. But it seems not much just 'works' anymore.

Compared to the 80-90's. You were very close to the metal. Comparatively speaking.

#1 Red flag discoverable during your interview.

Ask if this is a new position or refilling and existing position. With some discovery, you'll find if the churn rate on the job offered is high. If so, run. Something is very wrong.