What are you talking about? Programming doesn't pay? Are you kidding me... There is a huge difference between someone rolling their own code expecting to be paid for it with zero clients and zero marketing funds vs working for a fortune 500 company that absolutely needs you to keep the lights on.

I don't know where you live, but where I live programmers working in the field make way more than the middle income average. Most developers I work with in my day job do work at 3am at least once every few months because those pesky fortune 500 companies don't like you messing around with code in production during the day. However, my comment regarding "your greatest accomplishment" was indeed about coding as a hobby. Because let's face it...most programmers don't get paid to do glamorous work. Which is why the best programmers are still writing code even off the clock. It's because we didn't get into this field just to pay the bills, we're here because it was a hobby first and we still do what interests us most off the clock. Unless of course you work for google and work 80 hour work weeks building the next version of an AI that's going to destroy the world or something....most of us find ways to keep ourselves interested in learning and building things off the clock.

What some programmers don't want to hear though is that programming isn't an easy ticket. You still have to network to get your first job and second and third job. You still have to retrain yourself constantly. If you do write your own code you still have massive marketing costs to find clients...you don't get to become the next Bill Gates just because you tinkered with a few measly thousand lines of code in your spare time. The entry to market is mind boggling difficult than it was just 20 years ago because you have huge monopolies that can easily clone everything you've done and market it to millions more customers in a fraction of the time. I will not lie here, it's incredibly difficult to start off on your own in the field just as it's incredibly difficult to start any business. But to say that Programming doesn't pay is not honest in the least. In comparison to other industries you need far less formal training to become a programmer and you get paid far more. Programming pays, but you don't get an easy button in the business world of selling software just because you're smarter than the average bear.

I hate to break it to you but the majority of what we all do is not special or snow flakey enough to impress anyone that isn't a programmer. If by chance you do build something that would impress the likes of many non programmers...it's highly likely you could just pay someone to explain how awesome your programming skills are to said person 24/7...yes even while they are sleeping. Sometimes you spend days building something that can easily be done in excel because excel isn't going to extract all the data you need from the database for you or get it to display properly in all modern browsers. Our jobs are rarely glamorous which is why back in the day so many programmers wanted so very much to become game programmers...which today the ideal is big data or AI since the laymen at least believe they understand it enough to be impressed when you tell them what you do. If you're a programmer to impress people then you're in the wrong field. Your highest accomplishments will be met with you shouting with glee at 3am in your study after a 8 hour session trying to finally finish something you've been working on for months...you will have no audience...you will have no glory...you will not make millions but you'll likely make more than most of the people you grew up with. Don't worry about family and friends understanding what you do. If you can find one significant other that doesn't slip into a coma when you explain your day job...be happy with just that alone.

http://www.circle7ranch.com/tabletaps.php A place called Circle 7 Ranch already does this near St. Louis, MO

So they start to build unattractive mansions and consider them the hipster version of mansions...or they gold plate their mansions...there is no limit.

Today resources for families are not Food/Water/usable land...it's income and the cost of raising a child both in time and money. With a UBI population would increase in first world countries since it would reduce the impact of having children on families.

Honestly in order for it to work you would need two monetary systems. One that can be used on basic necessities such as utilities, food, water, gas, rent or part of a house payment, some clothing...and another for everything else. The first type reduces the amount of taxes a company has to pay which obviously means from the source of the materials to the retailer would have to be automated in order for it to have almost a zero cost effect...which would never have a zero cost effect because the materials do not magically sprout from the ground. Only renewable resources or through recycling could be put under the system. The second type would ensure the capitalist ideals which are honestly embedded into our nature of greed and can not be driven out. You still need to dangle that carrot out there even if it is unattainable by the majority of the population so they have some weird fucked up form of hope of a better life...which honestly is the same life just with more crap...but that's besides the point.

The supporters of UBI honestly have no idea how dysfunctional some people are with their money. Those that don't need it will use it to buy a crap load of cloths they buy every week and throw out the next or something.

I can't believe for a second that you own the code you write for any Phd program...soo...I have no clue why he thought he had copyrights over it....oh that's right he was insane.

Learning the language is not the problem, it's the framework. Think about J2EE. Java is easy to learn if you already understood OOP. But J2EE is very difficult to learn because of all the frameworks that can be and must be used with it. COBOL is the same way today but it's far worse because each company over decades created their own way of building solutions to the same problems. Then you have the MF itself and all the tools that are either custom made or bastardized versions of vendor crap. Learning COBOL isn't the problem, it never was.

You do understand that the only reason why they even have the ability to find a software job is the end result of 1st world nations being stable enough to support and help drive the entire software development field... So in your mind everyone born on this planet gets to inherit nothing from their parents hard work or desire to live in a stable environment...that all children should just be thrown into some little people human pool that you select from when you want a child in this world? lol.

I work my ass off for my children and for my family's children. Every penny I earn is either directly or indirectly driven to their success and inheritance in life. We all have fun with our money but for countless generations this has been our system. And you're ignorant to believe it doesn't exist in every country on this planet.

This concept that the entire planet is all equal is a new concept. While we certainly no longer have an interest in invading and taking over other countries...this idea that our generation is responsible for all of your plight and things you don't have in life is a joke. Governments are bribed. People obey the governments instead of leaving the country or overthrowing it. Corporations might be evil, but they bribe those governments.

Deserve has got nothing to do with it, lol. You think children of my family "deserve" to have someone looking out for their future and best interests? Deserve has got nothing to do with it. It's about the choices all of us make to build up or destroy a nation. You may not be where you are in this world because you deserve it. But if you do nothing with what you are given in it and instead just sit and complain and whine about all that you do not have, then you certainly do not deserve anything that you might achieve in your life. This 1% bullshit in the USA has nothing to do with the difference of equality on this planet.

Everyone living in 1st world nations owe the status of their life to their ancestors. It is their right to continue to try and achieve the most they can out of their lives and pass that onto their children. The 1% in the USA specifically is only interested in their own greed and has no/ZERO comparison to that of a middle income family trying to get by with the wealth of the entire planet. To even compare those two things is insulting...to imply that someone attempting to further their children's lives by gaining wealth in this life with that of the BILLIONS of dollars just single individuals have in this world is not even close to an accurate or fair comparison. Deserves got nothing to do with it. You want what we have? Build it in your own damn nation...work your ass off for it...give the life you are bitching and whining about not having to your children by creating a better world for them to live in...do you honestly believe the short term solution of working in another country only to return home will do that? Nope...it will only serve that 1% that has billions of dollars to take money away from the middle class of another country....all to what...let you barely get by living out of an apartment in another country away from the rest of your family shipping home what money you can save up? This conflict of H1B visas has nothing to do with you or I and everything to do with internal class conflict in the USA and other 1st world nations. You think this is about what people deserve? Try asking to get paid what an American gets paid and see what it gets you...because THAT's what you deserve to be paid...because that's where the job is. EVERY PENNY difference in the income of an American and someone here on an H1B visa goes to that 1% that already has billions of dollars in their pockets. It's as simple as that. This has always been about class warfare...putting it out there as income inequality with the entire planet is ignoring what that same upper class 1% in first world nations is already doing to 3rd world nations by bribing governments.

I'm just going to make a guess here...but you're not a happy software developer are you?

Yes for most, code quality is horrible. It takes a lot to clean it up and really you can't rewrite all of it for them. There are of course always exceptions. The H1-B visa holders with a decade or more of experience have cleaner code in the languages they have a decade of experience in. It also seems very difficult for them to learn any new languages, and their code quality goes down even more because of that. I would like to say though that it might be because they are contractors and it has nothing to do with being H1-B visa holders. People don't care if they aren't there to worry about issues that come up because they wrote a nightmare no one wants to support. They meet the deadline regardless of what the code looks like...missing half the functionality along the way too...

In some companies management do not care about code quality, they care about the feedback from the business users. The business users will not know that they bought a kludge until it takes way to long to fix issues with it or add functionality to it. By then the contractor is off on something else. I think we have all seen that clear line where marketing and management deadlines completely ignore estimates or what the people that designed the system are telling them it will actually take to do something. They simply don't care unless the business user notices. So to them it doesn't matter what piece of crap gets put in. I've been in similar performance issues you described and we simply don't trust fixing such issues to contractors unless we detail every last line that needs to get changed...which in many cases I have to do with a lot of them.

I have never seen a college grad as a contractor where I work, yet many of the H1-B visa holders are about that age with just as little experience. Go figure they managed to get enough experience in zero years that would take a college grad 5-7 years to get...which of course doesn't add up.

Which is a symptom of a problem that started many years before 2000. The race to the bottom line really has no limits.

What I've found impressive with the H1-B visa holders I've worked with is the network they have to train them. Some of their resumes are fluff, but you'd never know it because what they don't know they don't just have google there for them but a network of other H1-B visa holders to answer questions and basically provide that "on the job" training they supposedly don't need. That's what college kids also have to compete with, not just low pay and the inability to hop jobs...but a training network.

In order for CS college grads to compete with H1-B visa holders they would need an additional year or so training just for language and technologies they will be using in one specific job (a few java classes on basics doesn't train you in j2ee, php doesn't teach you about phar files or frameworks, a few JavaScript classes doesn't teach you anything close to the insanity business users request front ends to do with it)...then they would need to sign a contract with the employer that states they will not change jobs again for at least X number of years....or get a raise for that long either....or have any benefits....then they would be on par with H1-B visa holders.

They can't compete so they will not get hired. The only way to win this (yes, I have a side because I too used to be a fresh out of college kid and it took me a decade doing odd free jobs to gain the experience you need to get a job now. Today I spend my days teaching H1-B visa holders how to write clean code and solve basically everything they can't figure out.) is to give H1-B visa holders more rights just as any employee would have. Give them the right to play the market just as US employees can. It might seem ass backwards, but fighting change that large corporations profit from almost never works in an oligarchy owned by them. I'll give them that I've yet to meet one that isn't a hard worker (granted they got here for a reason), but in terms of technical ability they are no better or worse than a college grad...and I think we can at least agree there are plenty of them without a job?

Of the college interns I've worked with I was very impressed and they were far far more independent than any H1-B visa holder I've ever met. Granted the interns at my company would have already been at the top of their class though.

I agree, I love what I do and used to do it as a hobby. Now even as a job, I still come home and do my own programming...but at some point down the line you begin to realize that regardless of what you love to do, it is not more important than friends and family. Doing what you love and drowning yourself in your work, regardless if you love it or not...is not a substitute for socializing or creating memories that actually matter. Someday you will be to old to change the choices you made.

WTH? As if what we've done isn't enough we now are going to cut up plastic and throw that into the air as well. There are better solutions and they don't involve making things worse.

I think the major advantage to using Spark isn't just in the performance but in using libraries such as MLBase/MLLib. Is this not correct? While I realize R is mostly adopted in the industry, MLLib seems to be catching up very fast.