2 ms·

> But the 23,000+ hours I've invested into becoming skilled at my work also play a huge part It's not like the poor people don't work; it's just that their ski

by tomp 12y ago

> But the 23,000+ hours I've invested into becoming skilled at my work also play a huge part It's not like the poor people don't work; it's just that their skills aren't additive in the same way as a programmer's are. Serving in McDonalds for 23,000 hours doesn't make you a better server. For them, it's just a job, not a career. I can't imagine what hell my life would be if I didn't have a feeling I was building towards a better future (also, my present is pretty sweet already).

fragmede 12y ago
> doesn't make you a better server. Serving in McDonalds likely doesn't take 23k hours to be passable at it, but someone with 0-hours on the job is not going to be able to punch in a Bacon Quarter Pounder, no cheese, extra pickles, no patty, extra bacon or whatever weird combination a customer wants without some help. Similarly, a good waiter/server's short-term memory has much more practice and is much better than mine. (Whether you respect them for this and think they deserve a living wage for it is a different discussion.) My point though, is that time spent with a specific programming language, as a proxy for skill with a particular language, is not an additive skill and is something you need keep learning and keep up with. There are still COBOL jobs out there but the market for them has possibly peaked. How's the market for C++ application developers since the web became all the rage? Hell, how's the market for web development now that we've moved from web and now mobile is the 'in' thing? As a programmer, are you fluent in Java? Javascript? Rails? in Python? in Golang? In Linux kernel C? Perl? Swift? Which is to say your salary as a programmer is much better than a server at McDonalds, but learn from history, don't become complacent, what you know today will soon be obsolete.

2 ms·

> But the 23,000+ hours I've invested into becoming skilled at my work also play a huge part It's not like the poor people don't work; it's just that their ski

by tomp 12y ago

fragmede 12y ago
> doesn't make you a better server. Serving in McDonalds likely doesn't take 23k hours to be passable at it, but someone with 0-hours on the job is not going to be able to punch in a Bacon Quarter Pounder, no cheese, extra pickles, no patty, extra bacon or whatever weird combination a customer wants without some help. Similarly, a good waiter/server's short-term memory has much more practice and is much better than mine. (Whether you respect them for this and think they deserve a living wage for it is a different discussion.) My point though, is that time spent with a specific programming language, as a proxy for skill with a particular language, is not an additive skill and is something you need keep learning and keep up with. There are still COBOL jobs out there but the market for them has possibly peaked. How's the market for C++ application developers since the web became all the rage? Hell, how's the market for web development now that we've moved from web and now mobile is the 'in' thing? As a programmer, are you fluent in Java? Javascript? Rails? in Python? in Golang? In Linux kernel C? Perl? Swift? Which is to say your salary as a programmer is much better than a server at McDonalds, but learn from history, don't become complacent, what you know today will soon be obsolete.