bobochan

10 ms·

181.
by bobochan 15y ago
I coded in SAS for a long time and I can say unequivocally that their support was absolutely worth it. I have had techs work practically around the clock to find fixes and offer suggestions. MathWorks is about the only other company that
182.
by bobochan 16y ago
Exactly, good to hear I'm not the only one. Fortunately nobody locks doors where we live or I'd been retracing my steps every day. Do you ever crash around 4PM? I find that there are many days where I absolutely need a strong cup of coffe
183.
by bobochan 16y ago
I very rarely sleep past 5:30 but I feel the opposite way, particularly during the winter. There is something about getting up a couple of hours before sunrise that is very conducive to getting through a morning routine with the entire wor
184.
by bobochan 17y ago
Scraping and painting a greenhouse at a farm for $3.50 an hour when I was 16. It was actually a great job, except when we were painting the inside. Once my back was hurting from painting some trim and I stood up too quickly and put by hea
185.
by bobochan 17y ago
I have pretty awful memories of bullying, fights, etc. from growing up and the tyranny of the schoolyard pack. I had visions of those scenarios when my own kids started public school but I’ve been very impressed with how the school has mad
186.
by bobochan 17y ago
I was shocked by that too, but you are absolutely right. One of my favorite modules in that spirit was Damian Conway's Lingua::Romana::Perligata which made it possible to "write Perl programs in Latin." Just reading the documentation was
187.
by bobochan 18y ago
I lived in a cube for a good long while but have had an office for the past ten years. An office is nice but I really miss the camaraderie of being the 14th cube in the 8th row after the water cooler. Maybe it was a unique situation but I
188.
by bobochan 18y ago
I was a subscriber for a long time, it really was a good magazine. There used to be so many good publications just for computing hobbyists. My favorites were Creative Computing, Nibble, inCider, DDJ and, of course, BYTE. Not to be too nos
189.
by bobochan 18y ago
Agreed, Titanium seems really useful. It bundles a lot of the modules that I usually use with CGI::Application and is logically put together. I have about 12 years of Perl CGI stuff for different projects (most of which is still running) b
190.
by bobochan 18y ago
My theory is that a high percentage are forced out because there are incentives for doing so. Undergraduate programs are ranked based on the percentage of graduates they place in competitive graduate programs and top employers. Getting we
191.
by bobochan 18y ago
Brian Harvey is the author of some fantastic books on Logo. I've just been getting around to showing MicroWorlds Logo to my kids, but UCB Logo has always been on my machine. I love Lisp so I'm all fired up to check these out.
192.
by bobochan 18y ago
> promoted to something beyond coder Many of the organizations that I have worked for have management and technical tracks that lead up the presidency. Organizations with a lot of money on the line are more than happy to provide advanc
193.
by bobochan 18y ago
I have been all over the map (literally), but most of my work has been in finance. I agree that your sentiment is the prevailing wisdom, I just have never found it to be particularly true. It is perhaps counter intuitive but in my experie
194.
by bobochan 18y ago
I respectfully disagree, at least in part. Despite the overwhelming number of things that I have read to the contrary I have never worked anywhere where my accomplishments were overlooked. Honestly, in many situations I've found that mere
195.
by bobochan 18y ago
Wouldn't it make a bit more sense to signup with an organization that is already working on this: http://www.geekcorps.org/ As someone that has wired networks, written code and taught some basic computer skills in Africa, I would suggest
196.
by bobochan 18y ago
N == 1 in my sample but a few random things that I did in college that have made me happy ever since: meet you future spouse; make lifelong friends; learn a foreign language; play in a band; act in a play; and find a life long sport that yo
197.
by bobochan 18y ago
It is so much better than I ever could have imagined that it would be. It is a daily game of show and tell where we get to show off the cool things we got working. If you had told me 20 years ago how much fun it would have been I simply w
198.
by bobochan 18y ago
It is in the source: http://goosh.org/goosh.js Personally I think this is fantastically cool. It is just going to take me a little while to stop typing "ls -l" and "mutt" at the prompt.
199.
by bobochan 18y ago
Can you mention a company whose official strategy is to have their software pirated by one group of users under the theory that they will make it up with increased legitimate sales? Yes, companies love having students using their software
200.
by bobochan 18y ago
Don't do this, really. The Mathworks has a great product and offers tremendous support, training, etc. Beyond that they have always been extremely reasonable in their licensing, e.g. letting me run the Mac version on my laptop at home and
201.
by bobochan 19y ago
I thought this was a great point too, but I did not take it as literally. I find that if I walk out the door with something in my mind that needs to be fixed, a real problem that I'm not sure how to tackle, that I'll daydream about it whil
202.
by bobochan 19y ago
Hey, I remember upgrading from my thoroughly cool //e to my first Mac -- they were VERY cool at the start. Macs were more like a cool band that has a huge first album, kind of loses their way for a couple of records and then gets the mojo
203.
by bobochan 19y ago
"Before HyperCard, programming was more or less the exclusive domain of professional programmers." I loved HyperCard (still have some of the reference books on my shelf in case it does come back) but a statement like this is way off base.
204.
by bobochan 19y ago
This was a good article and I enjoyed reading it, but I have to say I disagree with the central premise. I love the "family of languages" aspect of Lisp and the incredible amount of innovation that is going on with Lisps and functional pro
205.
by bobochan 19y ago
You were fortunate. I was the only guy in my college dorm with a computer, an Apple //e, when my neighbor announced he was getting a PC Jr. As a dedicated fanboy (even back then) I was nervous that my Apple would be crushed by the IBM gia