Buses were all screwy here yesterday, but they all ran late in such a way that I still made it home on time. I'm using up good bus karma at an alarming rate this winter.
His loss. Also vaguely ironic for someone who's principally a Java guy if memory serves. If memory doesn't serve it's because I haven't had enough coffee yet. I'll go work on that.
Picking up a few classes on the side might be helpful. You can also start out as a freelancer and find clients who would look more at what you can do for them rather than what paper you have.
Is it out of the question for you to get a degree, even if it is not as a full-time student? I ask because while my lack of a CS degree hasn't impeded my career as a software engineer, having a degree at all (English in my case) has been important to some of my employers and customers.
Tony, that certainly may be the case. I know that I am a much better programmer than MANY coworkers past and present with CS degrees, but you'll find a certain bias against non-diplomaed people in corporate hiring. It's not impossible to overcome, but it makes the trip a lot harder.
Certainly, there are examples of people like Jamie Zawinski who have had legendary careers with just a high school diploma, but he is the exception that proves the rule, I think.
Also haven't heard anything new about it since it was released. AFAIK it's similar to iOS with "Apps" and a "Store" of sorts all run off a modified Chrome browser which sits on top of a minimalistic OS.
I signed up towards the middle of December when I opened Chrome first thing and it invited me to apply. It seems to be difficult to come by information about how many are being delivered.
@Josh - yes, that is the impression that I have too, and while I'm not expecting the Cr-48 to be an earth-shaking experience, I am deeply interested in how HTML5 seems to have the potential to make in-browser apps that are as powerful as the desktop apps that I develop professionally.
I was a n00b at my first job when Sun's diskless workstations were coming into and then quickly out of vogue, but it seems as though we might now be in a place where the extremely light-weight client experience might be worth revisiting.
@AdamCrossland I have seen some pretty amazing things done in with the newer [HTML](news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20029043-264.html) spec. Integrating that with an operating system could mean quite a bit. Already Chrome is all browser, everything is generated with HTML and CSS. Even the developer tools and new tab. Pretty neat stuff.
@Anna - the Cr-48 is a netbook that runs Google's Chrome OS. Essentially, nothing but the Chrome browser on top of an invisible and very lightweight build of Linux.
It really could be interesting. There are enough units in the field that there are plenty of reviews of them, and there are clearly issues with the hardware, but it has the potential to be a harbinger.
Browsers aren't inherently more vulnerable than any other software, and as @josh notes, Chrome's sandboxing and process-isolation makes it pretty hard to hack.
@Anna -- yes, that has been widely complained about. It would have made some amount of sense for Google to accept non-US countries as a gauge of potential interest, but you can't even do that really. Kind of an odd gaffe by the company that lives and breathes the web.
they aren't necessarily more or less vulnerable, just I think it will possibly be easier to break when all is running inside the same parent process... it won't be long before someone finds a hole in the parent, that can get to its children
just everything is more exposed merely because it's in a browser too...
@Tony -- that is one of the greatest features of HTML 5. It contains a complete specification for delivering content and operating client-side code in complete isolation.
You need a network connection to get the content in the first place, but after that, an app that is designed to work offline can do so.
I actually didn't dislike Vista once it got past SP1, but Win 7 is superb, a legit upgrade. I just wish that my client would switch off of XP. So conservative.
You should vote for Mark Trapp, ChrisF, and Josh K here. That's who I'd vote for if I weren't running. (Come to think of it, are nominees allowed to vote? I don't think so, but I've no idea.)
I used to eat tacobell a lot while I was in college, but then my fiancée and I discovered the mexican restaurants in town, and I was never able to look back
PHP / Java / Grails is what I prefer to work on when it's "work." On the side I play with a lot of the bleeding edge frameworks (Snap / Lift / Lithium) in various languages (Haskell, Scala, PHP respectively). I also dabble in general Python scripting and done Django work though I didn't have the greatest time doing that. I'm working on increasing my basic bash proficiency and one of these days I'll do C.
But all I did are console based applications and the only ASP.NET I did to test was with an early version of Mono and it worked. So I guess they have improved a lot since then
Josh K: I'm pretty involved with them, so anything I would say will be suspicious. I will say it anyway: there are a lot of greatness in the MSFT ecosystem.
My first impression of Vista (right after it came out) was that I had to look at that little blue spinning circle of death for a few seconds after everything that I did. It improved substantially over time.
@Anna: we can see them yes, however they are anonymous. This is what you can read on the right column of the election page. To see rule of a phase, just click on the tab
In the nomination phase, any community member in good standing with more than 12,212 reputation may nominate themselves to be a community moderator. Nominees are required to construct a small, freely editable introduction to describe why they might make a good community moderator. Comments are active during the length of the nomination phase – please comment freely, particularly if there is any way a nominee introduction can be improved or refined to be more clear. All nominees are displayed in most recently nominated first order.
In the primary phase, all nominees advance to preliminary community voting. Any community member with 150 reputation may vote in the primary. There is no commenting in this phase, only one up or down vote per candidate. The candidate vote scores are all public. Initial voting should provide a rough sense of which candidates are most electable. All candidates are displayed in random order. The primary is not binding; nominees may withdraw at their discretion at any point during the nomination phase.
In the election phase, 10 candidates advance to final community voting. Any community member with 150 reputation may vote in the election. Each community member has 3 votes. Please cast your votes in order of preference, starting with the most desirable candidate first. All candidates are displayed in random order. The vote tallies are private until the election is complete. After 4 days, the final voting results will be freely downloadable from this page forever, and we will calculate the 3 winners using OpenSTV with the Meek STV method.
