The last few years I've worked on mostly desktop graphics ranging from a virtual oscilloscope to process control UI. Last summer I was working on robotics, some

The last few years I've worked on mostly desktop graphics ranging from a virtual oscilloscope to process control UI. Last summer I was working on robotics, some iPhone UI stuff for a spy camera, and a desktop OpenGL based color picker. This year I'm working at my best job ever - I'm doing Windows/WPF and computer vision stuff for guiding lasers for a 3 person company. As a regular reader of HN one might get the impression that: (A) The web is where all the developer jobs are. (B) The alternative to working at a startup is working for Ginorma Corp in a veal fattening cube farm. (C) Everyone has to pay their dues working on old crusty code. While the above is mostly true, there is an alternative developer world where none of those things are true. (a) I've never worked on the web (unless you count web clients for handhelds). (b) I've spent most of my (non-contacting) career working for tiny companies (1-2 devs) and I love it. (c) Believe it or not, I've never worked on code that was much more than a year old - and I probably wrote it. Here's the kicker - I'm not some genius but I've managed to only work at dev jobs I've loved since 1985... In short, my brothers in the web world aren't the only ones having fun. There a rich development world outside of the web world as well.