I agree with some of what he said and disagree with other parts. For example I think eating healthy and getting enough exercise will improve your quality of life into your 70s and beyond but I also see the point he is trying to make.

If you read the article you will see that he doesn't plan to die at age 75 and does recognize that he may well in fact have several years left of both enjoying his life and not being a burden to others. What he is saying that that after 75 if he is diagnosed with cancer for example, he won't try to beat it. That likely his best years are behind him anyway and fighting it would lengthen his life but to little benefit. He won't have a pacemaker put in and would avoid those kinds of major procedures in an effort to prolong his life.

My step dad lived into his 80's and was a vibrant person up until the last couple months before his death. He had had heart trouble since his 40's. He was a gift to my kids and his other grand children even though he wasn't making major contributions to society. I'd argue that lots of people never do so I don't know that that is a good measuring stick anyway. On the other hand, my mother was very healthy until 70, injured her back and then rapidly declined. She spent most of the last 7 years of her life in bed and was really unable to take care of herself for the last 5.

You have to be in demand for this technique to work but it can happen. I was offered compensation for the first time this past year to run a workshop at an out of town conference. Not nearly enough to cover the costs of going but every bit helps. And if you're a speaker it does offer a bit of free advertising/prestige for your employer (if you don't suck). The downside for you and your employer is that there is prep time involved which can take away from your normal duties.

What I would recommend is to start out by attending and presenting at local user groups on your own time. You will learn a lot and hone your presentation skills.

I don't know how your company deals with performance reviews and pay raises or bonuses but just like salary, bonuses, and vacation time you can negotiate for something beyond what's typically provided. And just like all of those things, it comes down to how much they want to keep you and how much money they can justify spending on you. Training could be an easy sell since the company stands to benefit.

You could say that you'd like to go to one national conference per year or every other year for the purposes of training and staying on top of industry trends. Or maybe rather than saying one conference, you'd like to them to be willing to spend a certain amount annually and anything beyond that would be on your dime.

The problem with traveling to many conferences is that they can be a very expensive way for a company to train employees vs an actual class or even setting aside a certain amount of time each week for employees to work on pet projects. I consider them something of a perk actually and if a company has cash flow issues, I would hope they'd be one of the first things to go.

If a company requires or clearly wants you to go to a conference or class, they should definitely pay. If you expect them to pay for training, they should have final say over which and how many conferences/classes you attend. There are grey areas of course. If I think a particular conference would be great for my career but doesn't have a particular application to my job, I'd not expect them to pay for that. If it's something I want for my career but also has some benefits to the company, then I would see if they'd pay, but would understand if they wouldn't and not leave the company if I were otherwise happy.

Are you sure these were people with actual computer science degrees and not graduates of some tech school or possibly software engineering (which is different from computer science)? If not it sounds like you've worked with some bad computer science grads.

I can't imagine anyone doing well in computer science without being very curious and willing to learn. It's been many years but to get my degree I did have a semester of technical writing on top of all english/lit courses I took in my first two years of college. I was required to give presentations and I also had a math class that was entirely about writing proofs. It was painful but forced you to be completely logical. I found it much harder than my English Comp classes that talked about logical fallacies and the like.

I agree that you can be very successful in a tech career without a CS degree but once in awhile you run into a situation where the CS grads will shine and those without will struggle. Often it has to do with wringing the most performance out of a system. I recently viewed a video about MongoDB internals that was immensely helpful. Those without a CS degree would have difficulty understanding most of it.

I've worked in union environments and non-union ones. Let's just say the union environments don't have the market cornered on dysfunction. In fact, probably the most dysfunctional place I ever worked as a programmer would never happen under a union.

I suppose it depends on your perspective though. If you like 18 hour days and being considered basically being unemployable by the time your 50, a job as a corporate programmer is an ideal career choice.

I did something similar for awhile but instead of a safe deposit box, I just left a drive at work. The only problem with this approach is that you have to remember to rotate the drives and any important content that's created between rotating the drives has the potential to be lost.

So now I have a mac mini (could be a PC or linux server though) that's hooked to our TV as a media server. It has a great big external drive that's used for time machine. Our laptop backs up to it as well. In addition I use CrashPlan to back things up to the cloud for offsite storage. You can schedule Crashplan to work when you want so it's not sucking up bandwidth that you might otherwise be using. You can also select what it backs up.

For me having something that runs automatically is much better than a process that depends on me to remember to do something.

Studded bike tires: http://www.eriksbikeshop.com/n...

Ride year round in Minneapolis. -2 or -22.

I'm not telling anybody how to live, only telling people what's possible. If you live within 10 miles of work biking to work isn't really all that hard (winters excluded) assuming you don't have 1,000 feet of climbing to do and you have a reasonably safe route.

Vegas?

Average August high temp of 106 and humidity probably under 30% - Yeah, I could definitely do it and really most people could as long as they drink plenty of water and don't push it too hard. Think about it, you can walk outside right? Sure on a bike you might be putting in a little bit more effort but how much is really up to you, - plus you're generating a breeze. I've gone on 35 mile fast group rides in heat indexes higher than that. I'm sure that there are some days that it would be too dangerous just like riding in a thunderstorm or blizzard would be, but those days are the exception and not the rule.

Oh and if you work in a city as opposed to a suburb it's very likely you are on your own for parking, - often at significant expense.

What sort of clothes aren't safe to ride a bike in? There are such things as chain guards and skirt guards. And as long as you ride at a reasonable pace, you don't need to work up a sweat but it does depend on climate, the time of year, and how far you have to ride.

I have about a 6 mile trip into work. I ride year round in Minneapolis. I usually wear some sort of athletic clothes and shower at work, but a good chunk of the year I could get by with business attire in the morning (when it's cooler) if I was content to go a bit slower. I like to go fast though and have my commute double as a workout. Sometimes I'll add in some extra miles on the way home. Most of the year it's faster than driving since I'm not really affected by traffic congestion. Riding in the winter is harder and slower.

Even if you don't have a shower at work, there are ways to clean up to make yourself presentable (unscented baby wipes are popular but there are other means). Just bring a change of clothes or keep some at work. I generally bring my clothes in everyday but leave a pair of dress shoes under my desk.

If you have a small workspace, limited dexterity (find it hard to strip wires and shove the ends to small holes), and are just starting out in electronics, Snap Circuits are great.

Lego Mindstorms are good for understanding the basics of robotics and to a certain degree programming but out of the box don't teach a lot about electronics.

If you have some programming experience and at least a basic knowledge of electronics then Arduinos are a lot of fun but I think a lot would depend on the kind of facilities a VA Hospital would have for working on electronics. You would need a computer, a reasonably sized work surface, a place to store components, a soldering iron would be really nice to have, along with a set of tools like small screw drivers, wire strippers/cutters, etc.

That seems to be the question. Personally I'd rather have somebody with experience AND a CS degree. ;)

I've been in the field awhile and have worked with many people who are self taught and either have no degree or a degree in another field. I've also worked with many CS grads. It's anecdotal but in my experience the CS grads in general will pretty quickly surpass the non grads in programming acumen, - all else being equal (and they seldom are). They often grasp concepts quicker and develop a larger set of tools to draw upon. There are many exceptions of course and I've hired and worked with good software developers that don't have a CS degree. It's not a pre-requisite for working for me but I consider it a strong plus.

It's not surprising to me that half the programmers in the US don't have a CS degree. That's partly because historically programmers have been in high demand. A more interesting statistic would be which group tends to be more successful in tech careers over the long haul.

I was kind of confused about the message and intent of the videos. If the goal is to give advice to those who want to continue programming as a career beyond their 40's and into their 60's, it might make more sense to interview somebody who has managed to do that. I guess the idea was to avoid doing what he did.

The advice seemed to come down to this: Take care of yourself and work for the government or just skip a career in programming altogether. The rest was made up of miscellaneous recollections.

I was curious enough to look at his blog. Though he's only posted sporadically, he does come across as a very intelligent guy with a graduate degree that still has something to give the industry, though I'm not sure in what capacity. He was a teacher for awhile and that seems to have been a good fit but it sounds like health issues ended that part of his career.

Outside of management, keeping ones career going all the way through to retirement can be a challenge in technical fields. Part of that is pure discrimination but I would also guess that in many cases companies get are getting more per dollar spent out of younger employees. How does one combat that as they age? Some do it successfully. Is becoming a consultant or moving into management the only way to go?

So what constitutes a small town vs a city? You talk about Ancient Athens and Sante Fe as if they aren't cities.

I live in a city of 400,000. I grew up in small town. It's population was about 2,000 when I was young. It's evolved/devolved into an outer ring suburb of about 30,000.

I went to college in a town of about 50,000. My wife grew up in what I consider to be a small city, - 80,000

For awhile we lived a suburb of about 30,000 in a metropolitan area of about 4.5 million.

So those are my reference points. My parents knew most of the people in our small town, but most of the socializing was done with extended family. I knew hardly any of my neighbors when I lived in the suburbs. You just never saw them. People drove from the street into their attached garages and went into the house without ever setting foot outside. By contrast I know my neighbors in the city very well.

Anyway, you have some long posts and I could pick at them point by point but I don't have time for that. For decades cities were losing population to the suburbs and that trend has reversed. Assume for the moment that many places in many cities are desirable places to live for a certain segment of the population. Given that, here is my challenge to you: Go to a city or especially a suburb and take a long look at how much infrastructure and space is devoted to the automobile. We don't notice because we are so used it. Look at how much space is devoted to roads and parking. Look at some modern suburban homes where the garage takes up 1/3 of footprint the whole structure. Is that really a good use of limited resources?

Then ask yourself if maybe Helsinki isn't on the right track, especially in a city where there are a number of good and healthier alternatives to climbing into a car.

I'm pretty sure I know where I live. ;)

Cities aren't just downtown apartments and high rises.