nickthedart

5 ms·

1.
by nickthedart 15y ago
Fair point. My personal definition of a reasonable living standard, is being able to save a house deposit and eventually buy a 2-up 2-down terraced house, without forgoing all social life or basic no frills holidays. Such as house costs £70
2.
by nickthedart 15y ago
May sound weird, but don't forget the Job Centre. I got a previous job at a startup via the Job Centre. My employers hadn't thought of advertising there until Business Link or some entreprisey support place like that suggested it. They've g
3.
by nickthedart 15y ago
I probably sound like a broken record on HN, but this is surely a big part of the problem - living costs in London. Even £40k doesn't give a great standard of living in London, due to ridiculous accommodation and transport costs. I think th
4.
by nickthedart 15y ago
For Nottingham related events, google "Nott Tuesday"
5.
by nickthedart 15y ago
Nowadays unis get ranked partly on what % of their grads are in employment x number of months after graduating, so its important to them to get graduates placed in jobs. I've come across a Computer Science department having a careers contac
6.
by nickthedart 15y ago
Thank you. :) As a fan of PG's articles regarding language power, I've wondered why he didn't make more comparisons of other languages to Smalltalk (whether positive or negative)
7.
by nickthedart 15y ago
Out of curiosity - what made you go with Ruby rather than Smalltalk?
8.
by nickthedart 15y ago
I acknowledge London is in many ways a fantastic place to live and grow a business. Its great for the UK if we can have a growing startup hub based in London. However, while many startups will flourish in London, so many others would be com
9.
by nickthedart 15y ago
For the UK startup scene to really succeed ..... how about if people located their startups in places where people can actually afford housing costs ? such as - Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham, Newcastle etc .
10.
by nickthedart 15y ago
You might be in a strong position with that part-time job, if it covers basic living costs. It leaves extra time that full-timers don't have. With this time, you can try ideas that may or may not pay off, like freelancing, start your own co
11.
by nickthedart 15y ago
You say it hasn't worked out .... well, it just hasn't worked out YET. In a few weeks time ski resorts will be hiring for the winter. How about doing that for a few months? You might be very glad you did. :)
12.
by nickthedart 15y ago
Meanwhile, another bit of the gov't appears to be working on this! http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/09/16/247916/Gov...
13.
by nickthedart 15y ago
Additional info : Changing this slightly to drop range header when more than 10 ranges (i:e the 5 on the third line becomes a 10 instead ), can avoid problems where serving of large pdfs get broken by this fix.
14.
by nickthedart 15y ago
I agree with that. But, a typical course contains bits that don't change e.g algorithm theory and bits that do , e.g programming skills learned from implementing algorithms, which, back in the day would have been in Pascal or C, nowadays is
15.
by nickthedart 15y ago
Interesting. Does this mean that people who want to come to the US as a contractor could now bypass the "body shops" by creating their own "body shop"? This would mean that you have almost the same employment rights as a US citizen so long
16.
by nickthedart 15y ago
Agree with this. With £27k debt for tuition alone, plus other debts for living costs, in a field that changes so fast as Computer Science, you'd be paying off this debt long after much of what you'd have learned would be obsolete. Far bette
17.
by nickthedart 15y ago
IMHO one thing the client needs to do to get a decent Python programmer apply is either relocate that job somewhere cheaper, or pay significantly more. In London, too much of that £45k is going to be swallowed up by accommodation costs.
18.
by nickthedart 15y ago
The uk is a crowded island and anything we can do to reduce the number of lorries (trucks) on our roads would be good. An example is, why do potatoes from Cornwall get sold in Yorkshire and vice versa since both areas could be self-sufficie
19.
by nickthedart 15y ago
Maybe its because your work is too solitary? It is very difficult to remain motivated when working alone as you don't get the feedback of having seen people benefit from your work and have a smile. Unfortunately this seems to be how a lot o
20.
by nickthedart 15y ago
I'm glad someone else thinks this too. In Nottingham a 2-bedroom terraced house in a good area can be rented for £500 a month and in a bad area £300, a whole year's bus travel is £350, or £199 for 100 days of your choosing, and there are ex
21.
by nickthedart 15y ago
I think that the web has made the "dark side" of H1B more widely known. H1B holders often feel like indentured servants. There are many stories of people who slaved away for years while trying to get a Green Card but didn't get one in the e
22.
by nickthedart 15y ago
Agreed, and even many experienced developer jobs are advertised at only about £40k. When you look at the cost of living in London, its simply not worth it. I'm amazed they manage to recruit at all frankly. You could quite possibly have a be
23.
by nickthedart 15y ago
One thing missed by this article - the house price boom over the last few years means that people who bought before the boom should have much lower outgoings for housing. A 30-something with much of their house paid off is in that respect i
24.
by nickthedart 15y ago
That's interesting. Completely agree about the cuts that take a long time being cheaper. I tried cooking brisket for the first time a couple of days ago. It only took 30 mins in the pressure cooker. BTW a pressure cooker saves time and mone
25.
by nickthedart 16y ago
one strange thing about the UK IT industry is that the majority of jobs are in London and the SE, where the cost of living is so high that you may well in fact be better off financially if you live somewhere cheaper and work in retail or as
26.
by nickthedart 16y ago
What if your software is better architected e:g programmed by people who ruthlessly avoid unnecessary complexity? It may be that a competitor with deep pockets wastes lots on an over-complex or vaguely/fuzzily designed competing product. OT
27.
by nickthedart 16y ago
One thing not many people have mentioned, is avoid open plan. I currently have the misfortune to work in an open plan office and basically get far less productive work done than when I worked in one with cubicles where you at least could ge
28.
by nickthedart 16y ago
This is a nice idea but I believe is in the wrong location and the government has missed an opportunity. London simply has far too expensive housing and is too crowded and a lot of smart people won't live there. Silicon Fen in near Cambridg