5 ms·

Key Takeaway : If you are really really good at what you do, companies will pay you to work out of home, writing Open Source code, from scratch, at your own pac

Key Takeaway : If you are really really good at what you do, companies will pay you to work out of home, writing Open Source code, from scratch, at your own pace, on your own terms. For the rest of us there is always enterprise systems and cube farms. :-(. Yeah Ok I am just depressed at how much other programmers are better than me :-( More seriously though, I wouldn't have thought that there is such a "market" for expertise in writing VM s. Of course you probably get to be that good by not caring how much of a "market" there is to doing the things you love. "Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. " - PG in his essay "How to Do What You Love"

ErrantX 18y ago
maybe not a huge market - but I guess when you can write a VM that works 56[sic] times as fast as IE's JS engine then people tend to let you have your own way :)
patio11 18y ago
I am just depressed at how much other programmers are better than me Learn a differentiating skill or two and suddenly you're the best programmer in the niche. Human languages, domain expertise, business/soft skills, etc etc. (I am no great shakes as a programmer but, if I actually cared to be "gainfully employed" for the duration of my career, being bilingual in Japanese/English and capable of programming my way out of a paper bag would pretty much guarantee it.)
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  On a similar note: If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1. Become the best at one specific thing. 2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try. The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it. http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...
  - Hexstream 18y ago
    I don't know... if one is great at, say, 3D programming, VM implementation and parsing theory is that being great at 3 things or at 1 thing (a subset of computing)?
    - mixmax 18y ago
      Well there probably aren't that many people, if any, that are good at 3D programming, VM implementation and parsing theory - so if you can find a niche that will pay money for those specific skillsets then you're good to go.
    - nostrademons 18y ago
      3 things - it makes you expertly qualified to write a new programming language for manipulation of 3D video streams...
    - Hexstream 18y ago
      (I want to make it clear I don't have any of those skills yet, hence "one", not "I")
- cglee 18y ago
  Another option is to use the existing ability that you have to solve a problem. You don't have to be the world's top PHP/Ruby/Python hacker to create something useful.
- whacked_new 18y ago
  I'm curious, as you seemed to have brought up being bilingual several times -- are multilingual (human lingual) programmers rare? I have the impression that they're exceedingly easy to find. Or, are you only talking about "foreigners" (who look foreign) who speak the host language?
  - patio11 18y ago
    It depends on the language combination. A lot of people told me to study Chinese -- economy of the future and all. My feeling is that there are a lot of Chinese people who speak acceptable English. However, in a major metropolitan area like Nagoya, you could fit all programmers who are functionally bilingual in a room the size of my kitchen. (It might have actually happened once. Three in one place, crikey.) There is a certain benefit to having one token white guy around who speaks Japanese, too, but I've got higher ambitions in life than being the token white guy. Besides, every organization only needs one token white guy, but e.g. my employers would hire twelve clones of me for bilingualism if they could. [Edit: which reminds me. Here's my algorithm for ranking language choices for anyone looking for career prospects: sum(trade between your country and of all countries speaking that language) / sum(number of Americans who speak the language better than you + number of relevant foreigners who speak English better than you speak their language). The languages that consistently top this heuristic are Korean, Japanese, and maybe Chinese. If you're looking for employment in government, Arabic and possibly Russian are good bets, too. I'd stay away from Spanish for career purposes. I love being able to speak it, don't get me wrong, but you're asking to compete with literally millions of natively bilingual American Hispanics and competing with millions is not the point of the exercise.
    - whacked_new 18y ago
      Interesting perspective; still surprising: I am trilingual in two languages that you have listed, and somehow I feel that there are plenty of people like me, such that if there was any demand at all it would have been easily and quickly filled. The programmers who are functionally bilingual in your kitchen, were they all white? Frankly my feeling is that a Japanese, fully bilingual with English, would still be at a disadvantage to a Caucasian who speaks English and passable Japanese. That is to say, P(speaks English + Japanese | Japanese) > P(speaks English + Japanese | Caucasian American), which makes the latter more expensive, or am I mistaken? I was once advised that to make myself competitive with multilingualism I should study law, and I thought, if that's really what it takes, then, whatever.
wheels 18y ago
Programmers aren't born good. When I started working on OSS projects I wasn't. I had a knack for it, but I wasn't an impressive coder. But after getting involved in open source and working with people better than me, surprise, I got pretty good. "What you'll wish you'd known" has hit the front page again, and is my favorite of Paul's essays because of the bits about how it's a lot of work to become good. Now, I don't know Lars, the guy that wrote this engine, but I am old friends with Harri, the guy who wrote the one he was replacing (KJS, original KHTML / WebKit JS engine) and he's smart, but not intimidatingly smart. Open source developers tend to be some of the best hackers; I know since I've worked with them and I've worked many years full time as a commercial software developer. But the open source hackers don't join the projects as great hackers; they start as mediocre hackers that want to do something cool, and with enough cojones to take getting flamed when they screw up in stride and learn from it. Give that process a couple years, and poof, way above average programming ability.
- wheels 18y ago
  I was just rereading this and thought of some more interesting context: This was the KDE project. Harri got in and first wrote ... a modem dialer. Non-trivial, but not exactly mind blowing. A couple years later and much learned, as HTML / JS support was being added, he wrote the JS engine. I came in and wrote a crappy little flash card application since I was learning German at the time, then an MP3 tagger. The tagger went on to become a full-fledged music jukebox, and I rewrote the ID3v2 and meta-data layer to become TagLib, which has now become more or less the standard ID3v2 implementation (used by most OSS software, Last.fm and a handful of proprietary apps). In both cases we started small, bumped up our skills and then wrote something with some staying power. When people have done hard projects, it's easy to think it's because they were just born that way, but most of the time, they just kept learning, kept getting better, and eventually had some significant hacker mojo.
michaelneale 18y ago
I don't think you have to be really really good - I know plenty of people who are do similar work (myself included). Maybe very very lucky? (I wouldn't consider myself very very good).

ErrantX 18y ago

maybe not a huge market - but I guess when you can write a VM that works 56[sic] times as fast as IE's JS engine then people tend to let you have your own way :)

patio11 18y ago

I am just depressed at how much other programmers are better than me Learn a differentiating skill or two and suddenly you're the best programmer in the niche. Human languages, domain expertise, business/soft skills, etc etc. (I am no great shakes as a programmer but, if I actually cared to be "gainfully employed" for the duration of my career, being bilingual in Japanese/English and capable of programming my way out of a paper bag would pretty much guarantee it.)

kirubakaran 18y ago
On a similar note: If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1. Become the best at one specific thing. 2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try. The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it. http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...
- Hexstream 18y ago
  I don't know... if one is great at, say, 3D programming, VM implementation and parsing theory is that being great at 3 things or at 1 thing (a subset of computing)?
  - mixmax 18y ago
    Well there probably aren't that many people, if any, that are good at 3D programming, VM implementation and parsing theory - so if you can find a niche that will pay money for those specific skillsets then you're good to go.
  - nostrademons 18y ago
    3 things - it makes you expertly qualified to write a new programming language for manipulation of 3D video streams...
  - Hexstream 18y ago
    (I want to make it clear I don't have any of those skills yet, hence "one", not "I")
cglee 18y ago
Another option is to use the existing ability that you have to solve a problem. You don't have to be the world's top PHP/Ruby/Python hacker to create something useful.
whacked_new 18y ago
I'm curious, as you seemed to have brought up being bilingual several times -- are multilingual (human lingual) programmers rare? I have the impression that they're exceedingly easy to find. Or, are you only talking about "foreigners" (who look foreign) who speak the host language?
- patio11 18y ago
  It depends on the language combination. A lot of people told me to study Chinese -- economy of the future and all. My feeling is that there are a lot of Chinese people who speak acceptable English. However, in a major metropolitan area like Nagoya, you could fit all programmers who are functionally bilingual in a room the size of my kitchen. (It might have actually happened once. Three in one place, crikey.) There is a certain benefit to having one token white guy around who speaks Japanese, too, but I've got higher ambitions in life than being the token white guy. Besides, every organization only needs one token white guy, but e.g. my employers would hire twelve clones of me for bilingualism if they could. [Edit: which reminds me. Here's my algorithm for ranking language choices for anyone looking for career prospects: sum(trade between your country and of all countries speaking that language) / sum(number of Americans who speak the language better than you + number of relevant foreigners who speak English better than you speak their language). The languages that consistently top this heuristic are Korean, Japanese, and maybe Chinese. If you're looking for employment in government, Arabic and possibly Russian are good bets, too. I'd stay away from Spanish for career purposes. I love being able to speak it, don't get me wrong, but you're asking to compete with literally millions of natively bilingual American Hispanics and competing with millions is not the point of the exercise.
  - whacked_new 18y ago
    Interesting perspective; still surprising: I am trilingual in two languages that you have listed, and somehow I feel that there are plenty of people like me, such that if there was any demand at all it would have been easily and quickly filled. The programmers who are functionally bilingual in your kitchen, were they all white? Frankly my feeling is that a Japanese, fully bilingual with English, would still be at a disadvantage to a Caucasian who speaks English and passable Japanese. That is to say, P(speaks English + Japanese | Japanese) > P(speaks English + Japanese | Caucasian American), which makes the latter more expensive, or am I mistaken? I was once advised that to make myself competitive with multilingualism I should study law, and I thought, if that's really what it takes, then, whatever.

wheels 18y ago

Programmers aren't born good. When I started working on OSS projects I wasn't. I had a knack for it, but I wasn't an impressive coder. But after getting involved in open source and working with people better than me, surprise, I got pretty good. "What you'll wish you'd known" has hit the front page again, and is my favorite of Paul's essays because of the bits about how it's a lot of work to become good. Now, I don't know Lars, the guy that wrote this engine, but I am old friends with Harri, the guy who wrote the one he was replacing (KJS, original KHTML / WebKit JS engine) and he's smart, but not intimidatingly smart. Open source developers tend to be some of the best hackers; I know since I've worked with them and I've worked many years full time as a commercial software developer. But the open source hackers don't join the projects as great hackers; they start as mediocre hackers that want to do something cool, and with enough cojones to take getting flamed when they screw up in stride and learn from it. Give that process a couple years, and poof, way above average programming ability.

wheels 18y ago
I was just rereading this and thought of some more interesting context: This was the KDE project. Harri got in and first wrote ... a modem dialer. Non-trivial, but not exactly mind blowing. A couple years later and much learned, as HTML / JS support was being added, he wrote the JS engine. I came in and wrote a crappy little flash card application since I was learning German at the time, then an MP3 tagger. The tagger went on to become a full-fledged music jukebox, and I rewrote the ID3v2 and meta-data layer to become TagLib, which has now become more or less the standard ID3v2 implementation (used by most OSS software, Last.fm and a handful of proprietary apps). In both cases we started small, bumped up our skills and then wrote something with some staying power. When people have done hard projects, it's easy to think it's because they were just born that way, but most of the time, they just kept learning, kept getting better, and eventually had some significant hacker mojo.

michaelneale 18y ago

I don't think you have to be really really good - I know plenty of people who are do similar work (myself included). Maybe very very lucky? (I wouldn't consider myself very very good).