Quick! Where's the German version? I need to boost my sociology grades!
Seriously, the first thing you have to thouroughly disable when doing sociology is your brain and any sense of logic or common sense in it. The bizar bullshit that is put out in this field even at academic level is mindboggling. The blatant non-sense that's in the books and readers of this subject is unbelievable.
It's not only the Software people that suffer. The guy who built the Golden Gate Bridge got sick over it and was depressed for the rest of his life and died early. I probably would've shot myself half way into the project.
So "Mostly functional programming is unfeasable"? Oh, really? No shit.
There's a name for 'mostly funcitonal programming' - it's called 'I-just-started-with-programming-and-Basic imperative spagetti code'.
There is one situation were functional programming makes sense, and that is when you're not sure which segment of which procedure will come first, either because you can't wrap your head around it due to the complexity of the domain you're just programming your way into or because you really can't know. UI state and workflow procedure is one of those things. It's basically information hiding when building and tying up complex interdependant procedures, and functional programming is the intelligent hack to deal with that. Well-built Spreadsheets of course being *the* classic example of that sort of thing.
Doing functional programming outside of its domain, like, for instance, modelling a business process or a gameworld, is not only counter-productive, it's flat out stupid/bad software development.
So, yeah, doing everything functional is unfeasable. Thanks for the news pal.
That being said, every programmer should look into functional programming and know when to apply it. Switching your mind to functional mode at the right time is a skill that can save a programmer lots of headaches. Quite litteraly actually.
My 2 cents.
Right now, the big scare is that we're running into a deflation. No, really. DEflation. Not INflation. Now, considering how bad inflation is (allegedly), deflation must be good, right? Wrong! It's even more feared than inflation.
Inflation and deflation are orthogonal to each other. Inflation is a devaluation/flat tax on money while deflation is a devaluation of goods & services that can be bought with money. You can have both at the same time, they are not opposites, but two entirely seperate matrixes which are, at most and only under certain circumstances and certain moments, indirectly linked to each other. Right now we're observing a bit of a mixture of both.
Sidenote: While you are reading this, 6 trackers on slashdot.org are tracking you.
Just saying.
Naturally.
We're fast moving into a post-scarcity economy with practially finished software doing all the work nowadays, running on hardware that has a cost approaching near-zero as we speak. A computer that can be bought for 20 hours of work at a fast-food joint today is the size of a book, can run on solar power and has enough processing power to do all the billing and taxes for an entire city. What's left to do for suits beside sitting in parlaments and passing stupid laws or selling the customers we service bloated shit that no one can operate with the sole purpose of producing more pointless work and billable hours?
Social contacts, knowledge and information are increasing in value, simple manual work beyond a certain threshold is decreasing in value, repetetive "knowledgework" is bascially disappearing entirely, unless required due to bad human planing (hence IT experts jobs are becoming increasingly tedious and boring).
That's all basically a Good thing(TM) I'd say. The problem is getting there will be a pain and yield the one or other new great depression along the way.
I personally rather would have a cheap all-in-one computer sitting in the corner of my room doing all the work for me my clients while I cook for friends, dance tango all night, sleep late and help the occasional customer update their content on a Joomla installation for 50$ and hour because they couldn't be bothered clickling their way through that luxurious web interface than build yet another Web CMS or hassling with other stuff that can be done orders of magnitudes cheaper by computers or service providers. Point in case:I recently set up the entire IT infrastructure for a client using only Google Drive, GMail and Squarespace in roughly 7 hours, 3 of which were taking photos and talking strategy and workflow. Even with potential downtime of the Intarweb and/or Google, that environment is orders of magnitude more productive than any MS PC, with all her shit automatically backed up and available from any PC around the world hooked to the internet. I don't expect her to get back to me until she wants to update her portfolio in a year or two and needs some handholding when clicking through squarespaces gallery options. Which I will gladly provide and ask 35 Euros per hour for.
With "knowledgeworkers" being put out of business by Google, Huawei and Co., no wonder they're working longer hours than the guy at the filling-station down the street. He's actually doing something usefull - until Teslas battery replacing robots come that is.
Our job as IT and software people is to make ourselves superflous. And we're getting good at it.
My 2 cents.
I use Evernote. But I don’t trust it.
I use Evernote for most of my digital notes stuff. I like the syncing feature which keeps notes on my mac, smartphone and tablet in sync.
However I don’t trust it for really important long-term stuff. Really essential stuff, such as long writing projects, articles, essays, important letters or digital journals go into textfiles that are in directories covered by redundant backup/archive mechanisms on detached portable HDDs with filesystems that can be read with widely available free open source software (Mac OS X HFS *without* journaling).
Doing anything else with anything valuable that’s supposed to stay useable longer than a decade is insane.
For instance, I still have CD copies of CD Archives of Zip Disk Archives of very old HDDs (2,5 40 MB HDDs would fit on one ZipDisk attached via parallel port - yepp, those were the days) with texts written in Ami Pro. The Ami Pro format is openable with a regular text editor, but it still is anoying to extract the useful data. No way am I installing Dos 5 and Win 3.11 on a Vbox just to run Ami Pro just to open them. Hence, only UTF-8 textfiles since round-about 2000.
You should do the same for any journal stuff that is supposed to last longer than 3 years.
My 2 cents.
Sharp PC 1403H from '91. I'd bet money that my 1986 Sharp PC 1402 (same device with less memory) still would be working too if I hadn't sold it.
Batteries are from the 90ies too - haven't replaced them since. Still work. Still have microcassettes with my own software on them, such as a Shadowrun (1st Ed.) Character Builder. Would print out the stats on the cash register strip printer. Still have that too, still works.
My Mac Mini from 2006 still is going strong, aswell as my HTC Desire HD Smartphone and my HTC Flyer tablet, both of which have been in hard everyday use since 3 and 2 years ago respectively. Both have been dropped hard multiple times, the Flyer is nicked and dented around the edges, the pounch looks like it's been through a war and I've wasted 3 hardcases on my HTC Desire HD and replaced the battery and protective foil once, because it was so banged up already. I expect both to last another few years with everyday use. It's a shame replacing the HTC Flyer battery isn't done as easyly as with the phone.
I consider the HTC Desire HD and the HTC Flyer the best smartphone and tablet enclosures ever (solid aluminium), better even than Apples current cases - although the iPad Air enclosure does look cool. Shame they don't build them in that quality anymore. They are from a time when everyone was rushing into the mobile market and trying to make a name for themselves. Although the HTC One line still has pretty goog enclosures.
Interesting tidbit: The HTC Flyers enclosure is top notch and very sturdy which makes it notably heavier than your usual 7" plastic tablet. That's actually a little downside.
Robin Seggelmann, thank you and the entire OpenSSL Team for your contributions to free open source software. Glad we could find a serious security flaw, that you're helping to find out how it happend and that the OpenSSL crew is so fast in coming up with a fix.
With just about any other development paradigm and folks like MS we'd've waited for weeks for that to happen.
Carry on with the good work, you guys rock!
That is *not* a Graffiti Drone, it's an RC Quadcopter with a Spraycan attached. Hopelessly imbalanced and overladen, aimlessly spraying paint about and barely even hitting the space it's supposed to paint on, let alone drawing anything remotely resembling usefull graffity.
These guys have a long way to go.
My 2 cents.
I now have almost $150,000 in debt, ruined credit, and no job prospects. What should I have done different?
Exited before stacking up 150k dept.
But that aside, try to stay on track. And don't waste your time. You can always make back money, you can not, however, make back time. Don't waste it. And when you start making the money back, getting of 150k gets easy very fast. Just don't *add* more dept, that would be my advice. Be glad you've got nothing to lose.
Tim Ferriss "4 hour workweek" comes recomended as an inspirational book for you in your situation.
And hang in there. I've lost 8 jobs in 15 years, but I'm closing in on my sweet spot.
Good luck. Especially with the leasons learned.
The notion that something like baxter could replace a waiter is ridiculous. When I actually go to a diner, a starbucks or something simular and pay super-premium to be waited (up to 20x the price it would cost to make the same quality drink myself (time not counted)), I wan't a cute, smart, charming but servile hot chica to be kind and friendly to me and make me feel accepted, loved, respected, welcome and, yes, problably also a little more manly. And bring me my latte just as I ordered it. That would be 4,90 Euros, thank you.
Same goes for the ladies I know. They want a well-groomed polite and charming hippster to serve them their latte.
No way are those jobs being replaced by robots.
My webworker coding job I'm doing right now on the other hand - that could go away in an instant. The Flash stuff I've been doing in the 2000+s f.e. has completely vanished. Heck, if they'd let me or any other respectable geek set a usefull standard for web-like services I'd be out of a job in no time. And would probalby be happier for it. I could do visual design and software OOAD all day.
Conclusion:
Waiting and service in a post scarcity economy rapidly becomes all about human interaction and little else. No way is that going to be done by robots. Those are for cleaning floors and assembly tablet computers. Or acutally making the latte that the cutey brings me.
Sidenote to that: Miele just came up with their first vacuum robot btw., and since they are the BMW of household appliances, I count this as an indicator that vacuum robots are finally up to the task.
Be friendy, humorous and honest. Play the senior card. Practice interviewing. That is, have many, apply for all jobs that could fit somehow. 90% of the specs in the ad are bogus anyway and are collected and written by people who can't even abstract a desktop icon from a file on the harddisk, let alone acutally know what they are talking about or asking for in a hire.
Display self-worth by not having to prove yourself anymore.
When you're losing your inner game just think: "If you don't hire me, that's your problem, not mine. I'm just being nice to you."
If you're in your mid-fourties, start wearing shirts and perhaps even ties (I'm going to start wearing my first tie soon), along with the matching pants and shoes and maybe a jacket to match. Skip the next 2-3 generations of high end grafics cards or other geek gadgets for a quality wardrobe. Get a good book on dressing well and perhaps pay a professional tailor to give you some advice if you are a total fashion n00b. It may even be time to give those printed t-shirts to the red cross or use them as oil rags.
Get and maintain a good haircut and pimp your grooming skills. Talk smart and less that a usual nerd and keep your voice calmer that you're used to. This all works particularly well if you've already got some gray hair to show. I call this 'the gray hair bonus' - played well it has a solid direct positive impact on your salary.
I got my last job by being friendly and honest and telling some interesting war stories about my times as a developer. We talked for 1,5 hours, had a lot of fun and in the end I got the job. 1 phonecall, 2 short emails (one being the contract for me to review) and a nice long chitchat. They didn't see a single piece of official paper from me. That's how interviews should go at 40+ when you've started programming in 1986 as a 16-year old.
If you're an IT expert you'll get a job, one way or the other. Don't worry to much. Take the edge of age discrimination by being approachable but with a senior aura. Your boss should to feel safer and better understood when you're around, because you're 'the experienced guy' on his team. That works best when you're around his age and are friendly and forthcoming when pointing out flaws in his software production.
My 2 cents.
You're not old nor are you particularly experienced at programming. Fiddling with web stuff for two decades doesn't make you an expert programmer. On the contrary, in the battle you learn lot's of bad habits. I should know, I'm in roughly the same position as you. Mind you, hacking together a messy system that has the customer satisfied two weeks from now and has the varnish of feature-completeness is a skill on its own, but it's only remotely to do with proper programming.
The problem with applied programming on the web is that it's a steaming mess and constantly moving and evolving. I recommend that you specialize in one field - let's say Android Development and dive into the accompaning technologies. Learning OOP and OOAD does not happen when you use frameworks or toolkits, it happens when you learn to build your own.
Perhaps you should get some certification alongside your field you want to specialize in. And again, be warned: PHP + JS + CSS + MySQL + jQuery + Zend/Symfony/CakePHP/FrameworkXVZ + fiddling with x-browser compatability + a litte image and/or video editing here and there does not make you an expert.
Dive in and learn OOP with a mature non-messy technology and you'll eventually get there.
My 2 cents.
Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.
