I'm a year shy of old school (39) and always wondered where all the Engineer, Architect and Developer titles came from. I started as a hobby in the 80s and it was "coder" or "programmer." You were either a new one, a decent one, a good one or a great one, depending on how much of the lifecycle you could handle, and if you could work through the tough algorithms and so on.

I guess it was for business people to be able to categorize the skill of employees they knew absolutely nothing about. Since "coder" and "programmer" really didn't indicate any sort of skill level other than professional and amateur, fresh programmers latched on to the titles to nurture their egos.

Professional programmers noticed the noobs were calling themselves software engineers and whatnot and noticed that these new titles sounded more experienced than their simple "programmer," so they latched onto the naming convention.

I just made all that stuff up. Am I an opinion engineer or opinion developer?

>Of course, it will never happen, since it suits both major parties perfectly well to keep the voters ignorant.

I don't see how you came to that conclusion. Blue states have much better educational systems than red states for K-12.

Well they/we had something even better than the telecom boom, they had worldwide devastation of any economic competition. Who are our primary competitors economically and how were they fairing after WWII? They were all rubble and some didn't even have their own government.

I give that generation credit, but they didn't do it in a vacuum.

I was just augmenting the conversation about how getting behind on skills can creep up on people.

>Of course some older programmers really do slow down, stop learning, and coast along. It might be getting stuck in a rut and not bothering to do anything about it. It might be a matter of changing priorities, family commitments becoming more demanding and the like.

What the hell industry do you work in? You're trolling, right?

Here's how it works:

Microsoft just released Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012. A lot of people aren't happy with either Windows 8 or Visual Studio or Windows Store App development, they think it's silly / ugly / too abstract / all of the above.

New kid comes out of high school or college. He wants to learn whatever he can and eventually get paid for it. He embraces Windows 8 and VS 2012 and Windows Store App development because he has Windows 8 at home / school and there is a buzz about it. More and more companies start looking for Windows 8 / VS 2012 developers because they want to move from their clunky WinForms interface to a Windows 8 interface. Microsoft accelerates this by announcing a sunset of support for Windows 7. 3-5 years later, the first group is out of date. If their current job doesn't switch, they most likely stay out of date.

The old folks have seen this pattern before. The gone folks didn't adapt. That's why old folks who are still around are language / OS agnostic.

There were/are other methodologies other than waterfall before agile. Cinnibun was very efficient. It was waterfall broken into smaller pieces and adjusted at every interval, which is pretty much a sprint. No one really implements a true waterfall, it was borrowed from construction company management and quickly morphed into other methodologies when people realized that users couldn't conceptualize an entire system up front. Waterfall is really a baseline to compare other methologies to.

>People lose money investing all the time, would they get those higher taxes back?

They do. They only get taxed on net. If one investment earns $100 and the other loses $100, you have 0 net and therefore pay no taxes.

>Money being invested has already been taxed, why should it even be taxed again just because you invested it and it paid off?

All income is taxed. There are exceptions like income from a Roth IRA, but these exceptions have caps.

>Let alone be taxed MORE or even the same as standard income?

Capital gains tax (tax on investment income) is 20%. Most tech earning brackets are higher than that, plus you have to pay payroll and SS tax. During my early working years (Clinton) capital gains was taxed at 20% if you held your stock for a full year. Now it's 20% for day traders too.

I don't think the Ds are the party of peace. I think that moniker came out when Bush II pushed for war in Iraq when everyone else wanted to wait for the weapons inspections / sanctions.

Here's the 20th century wars the US fought in and the president in charge (if I remember correctly)

WWI - Wilson (D)
WWII - FDR (D)
Korea - Truman (D)
Vietnam - Kennedy (D) , ramped up by LBJ (D) (some feel this started with Ike (R) in the 50s with aid to the French)
Gulf War I - Bush (R)
Afghan War - Bush II (R)
Gulf War II - Bush II (R)

>Nixon pulled the US out of Vietnam

He also sabotaged the peace talks in 1968 which would have gotten us out earlier.

His slogan was "Withdrawl with Honor" which happened 4 years after he was elected with not much honor.

>enforced desegregation of southern schools

That was Kennedy and Johnson.

>created the EPA

I believe he did do that. He also created the drug schedule we now all know and love.

I've been paying attention to most of it I could bear. To me, his debt reduction plan was:

Lower Taxes
???
No Deficit!

To lower taxes that much, you have to make up for it if you are trying to reduce the deficit. He just refused to say how he was going to do that. If you are bold enough to lay out number for tax reductions, you better damn well be bold enough to say how you are gonna pay for it.

I agree with the war on color. I liked Snow Leopard color here and there to Lion and Mt.Lion. The skeuomorphic doesn't really bother me as much as some people. I can't even spell it.

The only issue I have with your comment is whether Ive prefers color or drab. He did design the original iMac which was massive color in a beige box world. I suspect his taste changes with the times.

Time will tell.

The US is the sweetest marketplace in the world, by far. It was build by generations before mine and generations before theirs. It was fought for in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, The Pacific, Japan, and others. It's been hammered to the ground, yet Americans managed to bring it back to life, over and over. It was nourished and brooded over and caressed and cared for by generations. Americans for the most part, built the US marketplace, not Hondurans, not South Americans, not Europeans, not Russians.

That's why it matters where you were born.

The Nand2Tetris is a great resource and I am working through it myself. I wish there was something like this available when I started college 20 years ago. The start of our instruction centered around a variable, then loops, data types, etc. I assume it's because students could related to variables through Algebra. It worked well enough though.

Don't go to a technical school. Go to a state sponsored 4 year university. They're cheaper, better value, and your professors, if you impress them, have some really good in's into hiring companies.

Get your foundation there. Understand *why* companies are willing to pay you 6 figures. Understand the value of scalability and maintainability. Understand how to build a proper ERD. Understand your data structures and why coding something one way is inefficient and doing it another way will make it 1000 times faster. Become an engineer, not a mechanic.

Not true, you can have a single man operation that doesn't create any jobs. Look at all the contractors out there filling demand. Whether they file as an individual or as a business entity makes no difference.