The guy posting the question could code a simple game. My first 3 apps I wrote in Basic on a TRS-80 and then a commodore 64 when I was 15 were:

1. A character generator for D&D that would roll the stats and let you pick the attributes to generate a D&D character.
2. A text based Blackjack 21 game.
3. A simple shooter that had one sprite for a space ship you could move around and control with a joystick and some simple sound and graphics.

I probably learned more coding these types of app's then I learned in college. For example, to code the simple shooter I learned about sprites, peeks and pokes, using plot verse directly addressing screen memory to control graphics,writing loops, handling input real-time events from the keyboard and then a joystick, generating random numbers, data types, etc. It also started me looking into assembly language for games because Basic was so slow.

Of course, a lot has changed since then, but a simple game app would be a challenge and it would be something this guy could show off to his friends when he was done.

Actually, the hourly rate and what a contractor makes depends on a lot of factors. I've contracted a lot ( almost 10 gigs in my career ) as an LCC, Sub Chapter-S corp and as a W-2 Employee ) and basically:

1. You can setup a sub-chapter S corp and work for a company as another corporation.
2. You can just do 1099 self-employeed as sole-propritor, LLC or partnership if you have others involved.
3. You can work through a contracting company as their "employee" where they pull out the FICA, Social Security, etc and provide benefits at a cost to you and you get billed at X dollars an hour and get paid X - Y dollars an hour ( Y being the contracting companies cut ).

There are probably other options I don't know about.

So when someone says 100 bucks an hour, it doesn't mean much until you look at HOW they are earning 100 bucks an hour: W-2 or Independent as S-Corp, self-employed, etc , how they are filing their taxes, what expenses and other deductions they are taking, etc. In fact, I would say that at least in my experience I actually earned more of the rate as a sub-chapter S then any other way. Its just some extra work to keep track of all the expenses, run your own payroll, pay estimated taxes, file taxes and make sure you take all the deductions for the right expenses, etc.

Also rates depend very much on skills and demand. 100 dollars an hour is not that unrealistic. SAP and other ERP software packages and specialists can easily go over 100 an hour even being paid as a W-2 employee no matter where you are.

On the other hand, if a programming language or skill is "saturated" with a lot of programmers and the supply of talent exceeds the demand, rates drop like bricks. This seemed to happen with Java a few years back. I had some people calling me offering 30-40 bucks an hour for Java. I either ignored or laughed at most of them. Thankfully Java rates seem to be going up again, although I'm not doing much Java these days so I can't comment on what the going rates are for Java right now.

But the previous post was right. You have to "live" it. Even when I take time off between jobs, I spend some time reading technical books, checking out new languages, and writing code to keep my skills current. An hour a day probably isn't enough to learn a new language.

By the way, there is a link to the privacy policy on the first page of the app.

Like I said in my original post most if not all of the people using this app have already provided a lot of personal information to Delta. Seriously, you need a sky miles ID to log in and do most things, so most users of this app are just tying back to a Sky miles account with information that has already been provided. So they aren't really "collecting" any data that they don't already have.

They never required a picture from me to board a plane or nor have I ever had to use this app if I didn't want to. And I have flown delta more than 100 times in the last 10 years. The app isn't a requirement to board a flight or purchase a ticket. Much ado about nothing.

One other point. Cities are going bankrupt in California and they just had to raise taxes to help met a budget shortfall. Shouldn't the State of California focus on solving its internal problems managing money, instead of going after airlines because they write apps that ask for your personal information to HELP you keep track of the flights you are on? What a mis-directed use of state government time and resources this is.

I have this app on my iPhone. You can use it as a guest, but really its for frequent flyers that already have Delta sky miles accounts. The majority of people using this app have already provided most of the mentioned personal information, if not more because they have a SkyMiles Account and they have bought plane tickets. So this lawsuit is kind of silly in my opinion.

Building software is like building other stuff. Its engineering dude - whether its "accredited" as engineering or not...

smile++

"yet fails to slam the US for its practice of applying the 'engineer' label to sanitation workers, building janitors, boiler operators, FaceSpace coders, MSCEs and DeVry graduates."

I went to DeVry a while back and it was no cake-walk. To earn my CIS degree, the was a while back, but we had courses covering programming, databases, online systems, systems analysis.

I was a CIS graduate.

We wrote a ton of programs and we used 6 programming languages that I remember and wrote mainframe as well as Unix and MS-DOS programs.

So I'm not an "Engineer" because I graduated from DeVry with a CIS degree, but I've held the software engineering title several times in my career and I've had to mentor and supervise ( and fix bad code written by ) grads with CS and EE degrees ( even one 2 guys with CS doctorates ) from universities?

Come on, they could make it here if they wanted to. BMW makes cars/SUV's in South Carolina. Boeing makes jumbo jets in Washington state. I'm sure if Amazon shopped around they could find someone the US that could make it and import the parts that could not be manufactured here.

It might be more expensive, yes. but it could be made here.

I would keep learning. I've been in the Industry about 20 years. I started with Cobol, then RPG, then C, then C++, then Java, and now I'm doing some Groovy and Ruby and lots of SQL. Also, Its funny, I still work a lot with C and there is still a lot of C code out there.

In my humble opinion, you would probably get the best results learning Java, Groovy, and Ruby. And of course keep your SQL skills strong.

I would also stay away from PM work. I have done some Project Management and some Business Analysis. I hardly ever get recruiters asking me about PM jobs or Business Analyst jobs.

On the other hand, regardless of what anyone tells me about outsourcing, etc, recruiters still call me and email me about coding jobs all the time. I'm a US Citizen, 40 something years old, and I haven't been out of work more than 2 weeks in 20 years by staying technical and coding.

Good luck...

The problem with "always online" DRM is not that "there are situations that you can't connect to the internet". The problem is that you rely heavily on the other site and the medium for it to work flawlessly.

Let me give you an example (there is a problem with it and I reckon right from the start): It's a matter of only 2 or 3 years that Blizzard changed the maintenance cycle of their oceanic servers in WoW to coincide with the Oceanic timezone. Before that, any WoW player in Australia (for example) would get home on Tuesday and find that the maintenance cycle had just started. And that it was later extended another another for whatever reason.

Reports of Blizzard losing connecting to whole networks (like AT&T) happened even recently.

Now imagine that you finally got a day off. It's a rainy day, there is nothing going on, so you decide to play Diablo 3. And then you get the news that the servers are down or that there is a problem with the connection of Blizzard and your provider or Anonymous got ripped off in some Real Money AH and decided to bomb Battle.net login servers. Now what?

There are too many variables to give you an 100% fun experience with it.

I have no problems if they required a Battle.net account with a registered Diablo 3 key in it to play multiplayer (i.e., the lack of LAN play). My problem is that I may want to have a quick fix and I have to go to a check list to make sure I'll have fun.

Mostly men and software geeks:

http://mashable.com/2011/07/14/google-plus-male/

Wow - that's fun and diverse. Its just like Slashdot...

Empty Threats? Do you have any statistics to back that statement up?

I for one am a Netflix subscriber that used to be 5 DVD a month - when they had that plan. But I have downgraded 3 times. First when they started throttling movies and I wasn't get my DVD's in a reasonable time. Then I was at 3 a month. I dropped to 2 a month when they pulled the Blu-Ray "bait and switch" and started charging more for Blu-Rays.

Now this. So I dropped them to streaming only and I am considering canceling.

I don't think its empty threats. A lot of us have been with Netflix for a while and we have long memories. Each time the Netflix Management pulls one of these stunts, some of us cancel and some of us downgrade.

I came very close to canceling this time.

And its not about the money, its about being treated like a "customer" and not a "moran".

I think they really f'd it up this time and I think a lot of those threats of cancellation were not idle.

Seems his auto-correct changed a lot of "happen" to "happy". If any editor is watching this, could you guys fix that?