Hey, my wife started out working on COBOL! Okay, actually, she left the job when they started giving her COBOL to do.

My New Jersey driver's license still has me named CHRISTOPHE because back in 1993 or so when I got my license -- go ahead, count the number of characters. Ten. The idiot programmers who put together New Jersey's database allocated TEN CHARACTERS for the first name. Fucking morons. First of all, it's standard procedure, when inventing a completely arbitrary length limit in a computer program, to make it a power of 2, just so it looks like you did it for some computer-related reason. A limit of 10 is obviously bullshit because no computer in the world has a limit of 10 for anything. Only humans use 10 as a round number. Second, if you're programming a database of names and you need to set limits on length, the least you should do is check the most common names and make sure the limit is larger than the largest one. And CHRISTOPHER has been in the top twenty of American male first names for a long, long time. Citation: http://www.catb.org/jargon/htm...

Fuck all the people calling this "grammar snobbery" or inventing multiple Englishes. I thought it was amusing that a post about education would have a typo in the headline.

IT is work getting more stressful. Three words: World Wide Web. Or if you prefer more detail: PHP, JavaScript, Content Management Systems, and malware ravaging the entire network looking for one more server with a hole in it.

That's actually what I'm using.

Is that a M O D E M chip or a M O D E R N chip? KERNING MATTERS

This is basically what I see all the time. The listings all want experts in some stupidly named tech less than ten years old. Hadoop, Mongo, Tomcat, Pullwilly, Crankyank, GULP, GRUNT, and, god, still PHP. Also HTML5, which hasn't even been settled yet. They want all of that plus knowledge of ninety acronyms which don't really mean anything (RESTful). And there's absolutely NO ROOM for anyone to come in and pick things up as they go along. Every interviewer wants someone who can hit the ground running. Twenty years of experience on the web and a CS degree count for nothing if you're not an expert backwards and forwards in obscure minutia of SQL syntax, all tested using an online quiz designed to break your brain. Not to mention that the last job offer I got was for less money (accounting for inflation) than I got two years out of college twenty years ago, and in Manhattan to boot. After commuting I'd probably have lost money.

The ironclad theory of supply and demand is wonderful. If its effects on prices don't seem to be occurring, just keep looking until you find an excuse. Then stop. In this way the theory of supply and demand can be shown to be one hundred percent accurate.

Seconded: Thank you. I was going to comment that I expected a few thousand people immediately began copying the entire site, and that's probably still true, but I'm glad that one of my favorite resources is on it.

I realize this is petty, especially given the subject of the web page, but why oh why does the C&EN page have to take over my arrow keys? I tried to scroll down gradually using them and found they've been taken over to move the page to the next *section*. When what you expected was to go down one line for each tap of the key, and therefore have tapped it a few times, it's surprising and stupid to end up halfway through the article.

I'm an old-time web developer and designer. I don't really do it professionally any more but I used to. So as a professional I have to ask: WHAT THE FUCK?

I suddenly wish /. had Facebook-style likes. EXACTLY THIS.

Holy mixed metaphors! "Executing the first stage triggers a domino chain...." Does it trigger a domino chain which cascades along the peaks of the shield holding the noses of the elephants in the room?

I trust it was nice to think of your uncle. It's nuts, but that's okay.

I'm a gold-plated pedant and even I think this is going too far. This ain't my PhD thesis!

Can I come work for you, sabri?