4 ms·

> Am I missing something? I think you are. I work fulltime at a bank for my paycheck. I have an internet connection in my apartment, and an office assigned win

by dxbydt 15y ago

> Am I missing something? I think you are. I work fulltime at a bank for my paycheck. I have an internet connection in my apartment, and an office assigned wintel laptop. When I get home at 6ish, I can maybe put it 2-3 hours of coding. Right now I code 8 hours of Scala for my dayjob. Have always been wanting to check out what objective-C is all about. Perhaps I could learn how to write an app. Don't have an iphone ipad imac etc. So paying $40 a month to check this out is not such a bad idea. I'll sign up, see if I can hack objective-C on the iOS, and take it from there.

vtail 15y ago
So let's assume you wills spend couple of months learning iOS, and will decide that you're into it. Will you buy yourself a Mac at that point? Assuming yes, you've maybe generated them $100 in revenue. They would need 10,000 people like you to generate their first million in revenue, and they have obviously many costs. Do you think the world has at least 10,000 people interested in iOS development who don't have a mac yet? 100,000?
- dxbydt 15y ago
  You are trying to count your chickens before they hatch.Before Netflix came along, the thinking was - if you like a movie you will just buy the DVD so you can watch it any number of times. Its just $10, why not just buy it ? Guess what, I watch tons of movies, don't buy a single DVD. If I like the movie I put it on my netflix queue & then watch it right there. If its not available, no skin off my back - there's plenty of other movies that are available on my queue, some 300+ are unwatched, last I checked. My wife averages 3 books a month. We don't own a single "book". She's on her 2nd kindle and all our books are essentially on the AWS. When she moves to her 3rd kindle & so on...the books will continue to be on the cloud. She downloads one book, reads it & then deletes it & downloads the next. So yes, owning a Mac, or even a PC is not on my to-do list. The bank gives me a laptop, why should I go buy my own PC ? And for what ? 8 hours of Scala per day at my desk is quite enough. I don't bring my work home. Objective-C will start out as a hobby. I don't know if I'm going to be able to complete my app, put it on the app-store, get customers etc. Seems like a daunting task. So no, I won't buy a Mac. And yes, the world has plenty of people who work for big-corp and pull in 150k coding business apps, with no desire to own Macs & PC, while still doing some hobby coding in some fringe language on the side just to retain their sanity. Office work gets boring after a while, and I plan to write silly time-waster apps in objective C, not your standard issue portfolio optimization code which I do at work anyways.
  - vshade 15y ago
    I just did some quick calculations and you can buy an used mac for the price you would pay for a year of this service. And your analogy is completely wrong, at least for me, I don't watch a movie much more than on time, unless it is already playing for one motive or other. But you will use the same computer for a time.
    - bond 15y ago
      So he has to wait a year to be able to buy the mac or he can start coding right now...
  - brador 15y ago
    Wait. You are a professional programmer at a bank and you don't own a PC or mac at home? Is this common? How do you keep your skills up to speed?
    - bschlinker 15y ago
      I'm confused as well by this. From my perspective, in order to keep your business and personal lives separate (and private) you need two separate systems to work on. I have no interest in IT possibly being able to log or monitor my interactions with my personal GMail, bank accounts, etc. Since most companies Acceptable Use Policies provides them with the right to monitor all of this and more, it seems necessary. Other people though don't seem to feel as strongly about keeping their work and personal lives separate...
      - elektronaut 15y ago
        I find folders and mail accounts work fine for keeping work and personal stuff separate. Just having one computer to deal with is nice. And cheaper.
    - dxbydt 15y ago
      > Is this common? Well, its not uncommon. From my unscientific survey among my colleagues I'd say ppl who don't own machines is upwards of 60%. Its not hard to see why. Banks work you quite hard anyways. I stare at a PC 8 hours a day. Plus there's the pager so you can respond to calls at night & so on...the association of PC=Work becomes quite hardwired. Last thing I'd want to do is muck around with a computer at home as well. If I buy a PC/Mac, like a desktop with monitor, where do I keep it ? I have to buy a computer desk and computer chair and all that? Dude I live in a tiny apartment 10 minutes from the bank. There's no space. As to keeping up with my skills - I've been doing this some dozen plus years at this point. I will say if you know how to fold and write a parser combinator, you are golden. I know both, so my comp science degree wasn't a total waste. Most of what I do is just some combination of map reduce filter fold partition, occasionally some lazy eval/Stream, some memoization, rest is just standard finance - portfolio theory, capm, derivatives, option pricing, stochastic calculus etc - you learn those at school anyways, otherwise they won't give you a diploma, and the bank won't hire you without a diploma.

by dxbydt 15y ago

vtail 15y ago

So let's assume you wills spend couple of months learning iOS, and will decide that you're into it. Will you buy yourself a Mac at that point? Assuming yes, you've maybe generated them $100 in revenue. They would need 10,000 people like you to generate their first million in revenue, and they have obviously many costs. Do you think the world has at least 10,000 people interested in iOS development who don't have a mac yet? 100,000?

dxbydt 15y ago
You are trying to count your chickens before they hatch.Before Netflix came along, the thinking was - if you like a movie you will just buy the DVD so you can watch it any number of times. Its just $10, why not just buy it ? Guess what, I watch tons of movies, don't buy a single DVD. If I like the movie I put it on my netflix queue & then watch it right there. If its not available, no skin off my back - there's plenty of other movies that are available on my queue, some 300+ are unwatched, last I checked. My wife averages 3 books a month. We don't own a single "book". She's on her 2nd kindle and all our books are essentially on the AWS. When she moves to her 3rd kindle & so on...the books will continue to be on the cloud. She downloads one book, reads it & then deletes it & downloads the next. So yes, owning a Mac, or even a PC is not on my to-do list. The bank gives me a laptop, why should I go buy my own PC ? And for what ? 8 hours of Scala per day at my desk is quite enough. I don't bring my work home. Objective-C will start out as a hobby. I don't know if I'm going to be able to complete my app, put it on the app-store, get customers etc. Seems like a daunting task. So no, I won't buy a Mac. And yes, the world has plenty of people who work for big-corp and pull in 150k coding business apps, with no desire to own Macs & PC, while still doing some hobby coding in some fringe language on the side just to retain their sanity. Office work gets boring after a while, and I plan to write silly time-waster apps in objective C, not your standard issue portfolio optimization code which I do at work anyways.
- vshade 15y ago
  I just did some quick calculations and you can buy an used mac for the price you would pay for a year of this service. And your analogy is completely wrong, at least for me, I don't watch a movie much more than on time, unless it is already playing for one motive or other. But you will use the same computer for a time.
  - bond 15y ago
    So he has to wait a year to be able to buy the mac or he can start coding right now...
- brador 15y ago
  Wait. You are a professional programmer at a bank and you don't own a PC or mac at home? Is this common? How do you keep your skills up to speed?
  - bschlinker 15y ago
    I'm confused as well by this. From my perspective, in order to keep your business and personal lives separate (and private) you need two separate systems to work on. I have no interest in IT possibly being able to log or monitor my interactions with my personal GMail, bank accounts, etc. Since most companies Acceptable Use Policies provides them with the right to monitor all of this and more, it seems necessary. Other people though don't seem to feel as strongly about keeping their work and personal lives separate...
    - elektronaut 15y ago
      I find folders and mail accounts work fine for keeping work and personal stuff separate. Just having one computer to deal with is nice. And cheaper.
  - dxbydt 15y ago
    > Is this common? Well, its not uncommon. From my unscientific survey among my colleagues I'd say ppl who don't own machines is upwards of 60%. Its not hard to see why. Banks work you quite hard anyways. I stare at a PC 8 hours a day. Plus there's the pager so you can respond to calls at night & so on...the association of PC=Work becomes quite hardwired. Last thing I'd want to do is muck around with a computer at home as well. If I buy a PC/Mac, like a desktop with monitor, where do I keep it ? I have to buy a computer desk and computer chair and all that? Dude I live in a tiny apartment 10 minutes from the bank. There's no space. As to keeping up with my skills - I've been doing this some dozen plus years at this point. I will say if you know how to fold and write a parser combinator, you are golden. I know both, so my comp science degree wasn't a total waste. Most of what I do is just some combination of map reduce filter fold partition, occasionally some lazy eval/Stream, some memoization, rest is just standard finance - portfolio theory, capm, derivatives, option pricing, stochastic calculus etc - you learn those at school anyways, otherwise they won't give you a diploma, and the bank won't hire you without a diploma.