On 10/2/2015 7:17 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 09:13 PM, Don Y wrote:
My downside was that clients wanted "repeat business" -- but, that would
just be "another project very similar to the one you just finished".
There's no appeal in that, for me. Sure, LOTS of appeal for client
as I am now a "proven quantity" -- especially for projects of that
sort! But, I'm not going to LEARN anything doing "model 2".

It wasn't all bad but I took one 'three month' project at GE Ft. Wayne that
lasted for over a year. Indiana is a little short on mountains and trees, both
of which are required for my sanity.

Yeah, I turned down a job offer designing televisions in Indiana. Didn't
look like a place I'd want to spend much time -- let alone *live*!
(apologies to folks there!)

A year later the guy called me up again to
sort out some BASIC. While I was somewhat happy to find BASIC had advanced past
needing line numbers unraveling somebody else's mess in a language you're not
that familiar with was interesting. Paid well though and I managed to swing by
Mardi Gras on my way back to New Hampshire.

Puzzles (for the sake of being a puzzle) have only limited appeal. I've had to
reverse engineer projects from bare metal (draw schematic from an analysis
of foils, decompile software from ROM dumps, etc.). The first time is
challenging. The second is just tedious (you already *know* you CAN do this
so a lot of emphasis goes on the "Why" you're doing it -- again!)

Yup. I am a terrible manager! My idea as to "management" is that *I*
should facilitate getting whatever resources those "under me" need.
I shouldn't need to monitor their progress (they're PROFESSIONALS, right?)
or track their attendance, hours, etc. This is contrary to what most
employers consider "management responsibilities".

I got drafted into being a manger a few years ago after avoiding it all my
life. The 'junior' programmer has been there 15 years so mostly I just carry on
as a working programmer. Especially with the guys working on the Android and
phone stuff I don't have a clue what they're doing most of the time. I fix a
few of the easier Java bugs every now and then to retain some familiarity with
the code base but I really prefer languages that start with C -- C, C++, C#.
And, no, I've never touched COBOL.

I prefer C to any of the others as it lets me imagine what code the compiler
is *likely* to generate. I don't have to worry that some anonymous object
is being constructed "between the lines" or some overloaded cast is
burning hundreds of machine cycles between one arithmetic operator and
the next, etc. (I do real-time embedded systems)

Presently using C, ASM, Limbo (C-ish) and SQL on my current project.
Makes it interesting to keep track of what's "legal" at any given time! :