14 year Programmer Will Work For Food...
Lawson English
I've been out of work for about 4-5 years due to illness, and can't find a
job.
Background:
Started Pascal classes in 1984. Chuck Allison of the C/C++ Journal was one
of my Pascal teachers -he remembers me from 15 years ago as one of his top
students, if that says anything. Learned C in 1986. First C projects
included a speedup utility for Apple //e disk-copying using //e Hi-res
graphics card memory, if present, followed by writing C interfaces to Apple
//e AppleSoft ROM graphics calls. Used both 6502 assembler and HyperC for
these.
Wrote utilities, desk accessories and applications in C and 68K assembler on
Mac+ & patched the Mac ROM to circumvent a flaw in the Mac+ SCSI
implementation that prevented a 68020 accelerator board from using a SCSI
hard drive.
Wrote a writing tutor for University of Arizona prof that used Think
[Object] Pascal and the TCL (Think Class Libraries).
Wrote a 24-bit TIFF reader using CodeWarrior C++ and PowerPlant framework
and tested convolution algorithms in C and 604 PowerPC assembler on PowerMac
9500. Used monitor registers to examine CPU behavior in greater detail.
Wrote a HyperTalk interface for Apple's QuickDraw GX graphics library using
C.
Done smattering of web-based stuff such as PHP=>PHP3/mySQL=>postgreSQL
translation.
Helped various people in various ways to enhance/debug/etc Mac-based
projects:
Know Pre-MacOS X well enough that I can diagnosis some problems over the
telephone and fix them (e.g., a snail-slow animation on an LC II was caused
by an improperly optimized CopyBit call. The fix was to "put zeros in every
parameter where it made sense, thereby avoiding pixel-per-pixel color-space
translation -speeded it up by a factor of about 20-30).
A guy from Disney Imagineering (@Squeak Central) asked me to look at the Mac
Mozilla code to see if I could tell why the Squeak (SmallTalk) browser
plug-in wasn't working right on the Mac. The problem wasn't with Netscape,
but with the fact that the Mac implementation of Squeak was using the full
path-name every time a shared library was evoked, thereby triggering a
little known feature of the Shared Library Manager that would initialize a
new copy of the plug-in, rather than using the copy already loaded (I didn't
find that, he did, but we both kicked ourselves over missing it).
Etc.
I'm currently enhancing C++ skills, Java, CGI, HTML, Python, Perl, SQL, etc.
Learning Visual C++, Delphi, generic Windows programming, etc. Have a
quadruple-boot 7300/180 using MacOS 8.6, 9.0, MacOS X and Linux. Learning
Apache administration in Lunix. Learning NeXT technologies on MacOS X (DR4
since the 7300 won't boot the beta). Learning Squeak Smalltalk.
Looking for ANY programming job in the Tucson, AZ area in the Will Work for
Food wage-range. Will accept Phoenix area jobs if they pay considerably more
(I need to commute to Tucson to see my family at least once a week).
My price range should be indicated by the title of the article.
I've interviewed with people who seem impressed by my background and then
send me form letters informing me (after meeting in several interviews) that
my initial answer to initial question disqualifies me (e.g., no embedded
systems experience, AFTER an engineer let slip that they were willing to
train).
I've informed total idiots that rather than attempting to port a multi-media
conversion app from Windows to the Mac for a ludicrous $4000, I'd rewrite
Apple's QuickTime sample translation code for free to accomplish the same
thing in exchange for a reference and had them turn me down! (never called
them an idiot to their face, mind you).
I've had CENSORED engineers at CENSORED company tell me that they needed me
to maintain a driver-control/test app in Visual C rather than let me rework
the GUI in C++ while keeping the driver portion in C "because "C++ can't run
drivers fast enough" -they later informed the headhunter that I obviously
didn't understand C very well (presumably because I informed them that my
background in C Windows programming wasn't good enough to maintain and
extend the project in that language while my ability to handle C++ GUIs
would allow me to factor the app appropriately into GUI and C driver code
for easy maintenance).
I've had idiots turn me down for a OOP/D/A position because I didn't know
how to diagram an algorithm to reverse a singly-linked list, even though
I've had over 10 years (off and on) experience with O-O, and they were
looking for an O-O analyst to help them translate a project from PHP into
Java (I'm systematically applying my chess problem visualization skills to
learn to visualize the entire problem set of Sedgewick so someone can't pull
THAT CRAP excuse on me ever again).
I had one company turn me down for a Web Objects position because "I didn't
know Java well enough."
Is it just me, or are Tucson area employers really this stupid?
14 years with procedural languages (Pascal and C). 14 years with Mac
programming. 4 different assembly languages (VAX, 6502, 68K, PowerPC). 10+
years with object-oriented technologies (using Think Pascal and Think C &
CodeWarrior C++). Less than 1 year with C++, although is that REALLY an
issue given my OOP experience?
My salary range is $10/hour and up in Tucson. I'm even willing to dye my
hair so prospective managers won't be intimidated by someone 20 years older
than they are.
[maybe I can get a job in India...]
--
Taught myself Calculus when I was 15 and I can't get a job programming
anything in a cowboy town.
--
Steve Wilbur
<eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
your problem is obviously your attitude....but i'm probably an idiot
too, right?
> Is it just me, or are Tucson area employers really this stupid?
> 14 years with procedural languages (Pascal and C). 14 years with Mac
> programming. 4 different assembly languages (VAX, 6502, 68K, PowerPC). 10+
> years with object-oriented technologies (using Think Pascal and Think C &
> CodeWarrior C++). Less than 1 year with C++, although is that REALLY an
> issue given my OOP experience?
> My salary range is $10/hour and up in Tucson. I'm even willing to dye my
> hair so prospective managers won't be intimidated by someone 20 years older
> than they are.
Aaron Robinson
i just turned 19 in september, and have coded since about age 13. learned
assembly c++ perl java etc by myself over the past few years. but rather
than shove this in people's faces, i just put some samples on my resume and
have a nice chat with interviewers. i'm leaving in january to make $25 / hr
full time. @ age 19, there's a great chance i will scale up and my goal is
80k/year by the time i'm 21. I see this as very realizable. the only
explanation why you can't do the same is your attitude.
my point is - don't let your ego take over when looking for a job. realize
that you knowing all that stuff doesn't make you 'better' than anyone, it
just means you have experience in those areas. they will respect this and
hire you if you don't shove it in their faces and act like a jerk.
"Lawson English" <eng...@primenet.com> wrote in message
news:B63DA81D.DFFA%eng...@primenet.com...
Alex Molochnikov
front. But it appears to me that you are trying to hit a very broad range of
targets in enhancing your programming skills, and as the result are getting
a very thin coverage of all of them. This may be entirely untrue, but if I
got this impression, so would others, including your prospective employers.
It may be better to select a few well-defined areas and zero in on them,
leaving the rest of your programming experience out of the resume, to be
brought up only if necessary during the interview. Job assignments usually
require a relatively narrow range of well-mastered skills, so most of the
time your broad experience does not carry much of a value to the employers,
but produces a counter-productive effect.
Alex Molochnikov
Gestalt Corporation
Lawson English <eng...@primenet.com> wrote in message
news:B63DA81D.DFFA%eng...@primenet.com...
> This is getting ridiculous!
>
> I've been out of work for about 4-5 years due to illness, and can't find a
> job.
>
> Background:
>
> Started Pascal classes in 1984. Chuck Allison of the C/C++ Journal was one
> of my Pascal teachers -he remembers me from 15 years ago as one of his top
> students, if that says anything. Learned C in 1986. First C projects
> included a speedup utility for Apple file://e disk-copying using file://e
Hi-res
> graphics card memory, if present, followed by writing C interfaces to
Apple
> file://e AppleSoft ROM graphics calls. Used both 6502 assembler and HyperC
Lawson English
In fact, I don't "shove it in people's faces" -I'm a rather polite sort of
fellow, in person, and have friends of all ages and sexes and religions and
races and so on. I get along with "dumpster divers" and bishops, cops and
robbers, etc.
And my attitude, as revealed in this article, is the result of being nearly
3x your age and not being able to find work at 1/2 the wage that you just
quoted, even though I have been in the computer business (started as an
operator in the USAF) several years longer than you have been alive.
in article 8v9oj6$qmo$1...@slate.INS.CWRU.Edu, Aaron Robinson at
ac...@po.cwru.edu wrote on 11/19/00 7:36 PM:
> i agree with the other posts - watch your attitude.
>
> i just turned 19 in september, and have coded since about age 13. learned
> assembly c++ perl java etc by myself over the past few years. but rather
> than shove this in people's faces, i just put some samples on my resume and
> have a nice chat with interviewers. i'm leaving in january to make $25 / hr
> full time. @ age 19, there's a great chance i will scale up and my goal is
> 80k/year by the time i'm 21. I see this as very realizable. the only
> explanation why you can't do the same is your attitude.
>
> my point is - don't let your ego take over when looking for a job. realize
> that you knowing all that stuff doesn't make you 'better' than anyone, it
> just means you have experience in those areas. they will respect this and
> hire you if you don't shove it in their faces and act like a jerk.
--
Reform is a state of mind.
Vote with your mind, from your heart.
Vote Reform, vote Hagelin 2000.
Lawson English Tucson, Arizona
--
Lawson English
rr_...@TakeThisOut.hotmail wrote on 11/19/00 7:36 PM:
>
> [maybe I can get a job in India...]. I will take it for a joke. I have to.
Yeah. Probably in bad taste, sorry. One of the places I applied to had a
very competent Indian working for them, but he wasn't allowed to work on DoD
work due to his nationality and H-1B status. I indicated that I was quite
willing to learn from him or anyone else who could teach me what I needed to
know to do whatever kind of work they had in mind -they indicated that they
WERE willing to train in-house for various tasks and later informed me that
they weren't interested because I wasn't experienced in what they had
already indicated they were willing to train in-house.
--
"It is very material that order, decency and
regularity, be preserved in a dignified public body."
-Thomas Jefferson, 1812, _A Manual of Parliamentary Practice_
"Who cares?" -Patrick J. Buchanan, 2000, Buchanan Reform Party Convention
--
Lawson English
dontb...@ijustfhere.com at dontb...@ijustfhere.com wrote on 11/19/00
6:47 PM:
> On Sun, 19 Nov 2000 15:54:05 -0700, Lawson English <eng...@primenet.com>
> wrote:
>
>> My salary range is $10/hour and up in Tucson. I'm even willing to dye my
>> hair so prospective managers won't be intimidated by someone 20 years older
>> than they are.
>
> The problem is that you aren't charging enough. [and other stereotypical
material from Dilbert]
What's frightening is that I've heard from others that this Dilbertesque
stuff really works, but I'm more interested in learning to do good work than
simply get paid. I'd rather work at McDonalds then fake my way.
Thanks for the advice, however. If I'm ever in a managerial position, I'll
keep an eye out for you...
dontb...@ijustfhere.com
wrote:
>My salary range is $10/hour and up in Tucson. I'm even willing to dye my
>hair so prospective managers won't be intimidated by someone 20 years older
>than they are.
The problem is that you aren't charging enough. If you ask for $10 per hour,
employers assume that's all you're worth, but they want someone worth more.
You should wear fancy clothes to the interview and smile and nod and say yes
to every question they ask. Follow that simple advice, and before you know
it you will have dozens of offers for $75 per hour or more. It also helps to
have some good references. Be nice to your references so they will lie for
you like most good references do. And don't worry about how well you can
actually do the work, because most employers don't have a clue about how hard
it is or how much time it should take. They only judge you by how hard you
look like you're working, which is very easy to fake, especially if you aim
your monitor at a wall to keep it invisible and spend your time playing
fast-action games that make you look very busy. You have to write weekly
status reports, but those are easy to fake too. You can spend a few days
writing one very long weekly status report, and from then on just make minor
changes to it every week before submitting it. When it comes time for a
salary review, they look at the total file size of all your weekly status
reports combined. Before you know it, you will be the manager of the
software department, and no longer have any need to learn programming.
Raghav
I am surprised that a person with so many years of experience finds it
difficult to find a reasonably well paid job. Agreed that today age does
matters. But, you have enough experience to be a good leader and mentor for
a team of say 50 people. If you do really believe in yourself, why not try a
venture on your own. I know it's easier said than done. But why not try
once.
As you know a lot of systems were upgraded to latest platforms bcos there
were less people who can understand the whole code in older platforms
(forget changing the code to make it compliant). Veterans like you would
have made a huge difference in such cases.
[maybe I can get a job in India...]. I will take it for a joke. I have to.
With best wishes
Raghav.
Kaz Kylheku
>
>I've been out of work for about 4-5 years due to illness, and can't find a
>job.
I'd normally flame someone for starting a crossposed crap thread like this, but
I know that Lawson English has been around Usenet for quite a long time and
(probably) knows better than to do something like this. So I suspect that this
may be a clever forgery. Please no more reponses!
Courageous
>look like you're working, which is very easy to fake, especially if you aim
While I realize you were being a bit sarcastic, I should like to point out
that jaded old computer jockeys like me are quite hip to the whole aim-
the-monitor-away-from-the-door trick. I'm immediately suspicious of any
one who does this and watch their productivity carefully.
Anyway, that aside, you're quite right. He should charge more, and assume
that he can do the work. From his description, he should be fine on any task,
even with languages he doesn't know.
C//
Tim Hockin
:> [maybe I can get a job in India...]. I will take it for a joke. I have to.
: Yeah. Probably in bad taste, sorry. One of the places I applied to had a
: very competent Indian working for them, but he wasn't allowed to work on DoD
After working in silicon valley (where I, as a caucasian, am not in the
popular majority) for 1.5 years I have a whole different spin than I used
to on racial bias.
Some of the VERY VERY best people I know (EE, software, systems, managers,
etc) are Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, San Salvadoran etc. Anyone
who believes whites own the tech market ought to try hiring people in
silicon valley.
OT, sorry..
--
Tim Hockin
tho...@isunix.it.ilstu.edu
This program has been brought to you by the language C and the number F.
ZZ
Raghav
No Problem. It's alright.
:-)
Cheers
Raghav
"Tim Hockin" <tho...@isunix.it.ilstu.edu> wrote in message
news:8vaekm$btt$1...@news.ilstu.edu...
Homey
Straight up.
Say what they want to hear.. put down on paper what they want to see. If you
KNOW you can back up what you put down.. go for it.
:)
"Lawson English" <eng...@primenet.com> wrote in message
news:B63DA81D.DFFA%eng...@primenet.com...
> This is getting ridiculous!
>
> I've been out of work for about 4-5 years due to illness, and can't find a
> job.
>
> Background:
>
> Started Pascal classes in 1984. Chuck Allison of the C/C++ Journal was one
> of my Pascal teachers -he remembers me from 15 years ago as one of his top
> students, if that says anything. Learned C in 1986. First C projects
> included a speedup utility for Apple file://e disk-copying using file://e
Hi-res
> graphics card memory, if present, followed by writing C interfaces to
Apple
> file://e AppleSoft ROM graphics calls. Used both 6502 assembler and HyperC
Lawson English
jkra...@san.rr.com wrote on 11/19/00 10:25 PM:
I don't offer $10/hour -I just indicate that when I worked for Dr. Kendal
Preston, who wrote a book on computer graphics in the early '60's, I was
learning convolution algorithms, PowerPC assembler, C++ and the PowerPlant
framework simultaneously, so I took $10/hour as a trainee. It took me WAAY
too long to get up to speed, but I did it [glassy-eyed stare].
My pay-range is low when I'm the trainee and high when I'm the trainer and
in-between depending on my skill-level for the job-at-hand.
And I would be very happy to accept the low/mid/high pay-range of any
programming job -IF I could get the job in the first place!
--
"It is very material that order, decency and
regularity, be preserved in a dignified public body."
-Thomas Jefferson, 1812, _A Manual of Parliamentary Practice_
--
Robert Stankowic
>
> This is getting ridiculous!
>
> I've been out of work for about 4-5 years due to illness, and can't find a
> job.
>
> Background:
So far, so good, but...
> I've interviewed with people who seem impressed by my background and then
> send me form letters informing me (after meeting in several interviews) that
> my initial answer to initial question disqualifies me (e.g., no embedded
> systems experience, AFTER an engineer let slip that they were willing to
> train).
>
> I've informed total idiots that rather than attempting to port a multi-media
> conversion app from Windows to the Mac for a ludicrous $4000, I'd rewrite
> Apple's QuickTime sample translation code for free to accomplish the same
> thing in exchange for a reference and had them turn me down! (never called
> them an idiot to their face, mind you).
No, you did not, but (read your own statement please):
They wanted you to port that conversion app (which you obviously
refused). Instead you offered something, which might be technically
better (I don't know), but might also involve some copyright issues,
_and_ what you offered was not what they wanted. That one who pays
rules.
>
> I've had CENSORED engineers at CENSORED company tell me that they needed me
> to maintain a driver-control/test app in Visual C rather than let me rework
> the GUI in C++ while keeping the driver portion in C "because "C++ can't run
> drivers fast enough" -they later informed the headhunter that I obviously
> didn't understand C very well (presumably because I informed them that my
> background in C Windows programming wasn't good enough to maintain and
> extend the project in that language while my ability to handle C++ GUIs
> would allow me to factor the app appropriately into GUI and C driver code
> for easy maintenance).
Same as above..
>
> I've had idiots turn me down for a OOP/D/A position because I didn't know
> how to diagram an algorithm to reverse a singly-linked list, even though
> I've had over 10 years (off and on) experience with O-O, and they were
> looking for an O-O analyst to help them translate a project from PHP into
> Java (I'm systematically applying my chess problem visualization skills to
> learn to visualize the entire problem set of Sedgewick so someone can't pull
> THAT CRAP excuse on me ever again).
You failed that one and you are going to improve your skills. That
does not say anything about your skills except they did not match
their requirements (or what they thought their requirements are).
That happens to everybody sometimes. So what - just forget it...
>
> I had one company turn me down for a Web Objects position because "I didn't
> know Java well enough."
>
> Is it just me, or are Tucson area employers really this stupid?
Not really. They are looking for an incadescent bulb and you offer
them a golden gas-lighter. Even if they can do better with your
solutions _they don't want to_
And you cannot be sure, that your solution _is_ better for them
(from an overall point of view)
>
> 14 years with procedural languages (Pascal and C). 14 years with Mac
> programming. 4 different assembly languages (VAX, 6502, 68K, PowerPC). 10+
> years with object-oriented technologies (using Think Pascal and Think C &
> CodeWarrior C++). Less than 1 year with C++, although is that REALLY an
> issue given my OOP experience?
>
> My salary range is $10/hour and up in Tucson. I'm even willing to dye my
> hair so prospective managers won't be intimidated by someone 20 years older
> than they are.
Age is not the problem I think. I am 56 and never had problems with
that.
Anyway, if I need the money or _want_ to get my foot into the door,
I am willing to wash stairs, and as soon as I have been washing
stairs for a year or so I can _carefully_ start to improve the
method of washing stairs.
I do wish you good luck and some insight into people's mentality
Regards
Robert
--
Robert Stankowic pcdo...@netway.at
I don't make my mistakes more than once. I store them carefully and
after some time I take them out again, add some new features and
_reuse_ them.
Markku Nevalainen
>
> I've been out of work for about 4-5 years due to illness, and can't find a
> job.
>
My quess is, that employers are a bit scared about your age + serious illness
that can take a man out of work for 4-5 years. I'm not saying it is entitled
or fair, but it is there.
> My salary range is $10/hour and up in Tucson.
Maybe you are not very serious with that offer?? Anyway, if you are, and your
understand how important it is first to get your 4-5 year employment broken,
why not call and offer your services to any small company, having 10..100
person staff.
In most of the companies, there's always a small need for some VB or Excel
macros to write, or some new reports generated, some conversions to be done,
or www-connections to be brushed up or anything.
Tip: They only want to get some smooth Excel macros done, don't scare them
with reading and listing your whole 15 year Mac experience etc. Don't even
mention the whole 15 years, just tell shortly that you have several years
of experience in doing just those tasks you now offer to do.
Do anything to get your first contract, even offer to do it first and they
can pay later if it works as expected.
When you just first get started, there is no problem widening the area, or
decide to concentrate just on some specific area.
With your age and experience on, you may soon notice that you do not want to
get hired anymore, but want to continue running your own business.
Markku Nevalainen
Lawson English
venting my frustration over the results of my interviews, which I *thought*
went OK, but obviously didn't.
If I'm coming across as arrogant/obnoxious/etc. during the interview, it's
certainly a LOT more subtle than what I've shown in this thread.
in article 191120001412449654%ultra...@yahoo.com, Steve Wilbur at
ultra...@yahoo.com wrote on 11/19/00 4:12 PM:
> In article <B63DA81D.DFFA%eng...@primenet.com>, Lawson English
> <eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
> your problem is obviously your attitude....but i'm probably an idiot
> too, right?
>
>> Is it just me, or are Tucson area employers really this stupid?
>> 14 years with procedural languages (Pascal and C). 14 years with Mac
>> programming. 4 different assembly languages (VAX, 6502, 68K, PowerPC). 10+
>> years with object-oriented technologies (using Think Pascal and Think C &
>> CodeWarrior C++). Less than 1 year with C++, although is that REALLY an
>> issue given my OOP experience?
>> My salary range is $10/hour and up in Tucson. I'm even willing to dye my
>> hair so prospective managers won't be intimidated by someone 20 years older
>> than they are.
>> Taught myself Calculus when I was 15 and I can't get a job programming
>> anything in a cowboy town.
--
"It is very material that order, decency and
regularity, be preserved in a dignified public body."
-Thomas Jefferson, 1812, _A Manual of Parliamentary Practice_
Erik Max Francis
> I don't offer $10/hour -I just indicate that when I worked for Dr.
> Kendal
> Preston, who wrote a book on computer graphics in the early '60's, I
> was
> learning convolution algorithms, PowerPC assembler, C++ and the
> PowerPlant
> framework simultaneously, so I took $10/hour as a trainee. It took me
> WAAY
> too long to get up to speed, but I did it [glassy-eyed stare].
And many programmers have done programming work for free at times, for
friends or family or for personal projects. But would they ever say
something in public like, "Will work for free?" Of course not.
> My pay-range is low when I'm the trainee and high when I'm the trainer
> and
> in-between depending on my skill-level for the job-at-hand.
With your claimed skill set, why would you ever refer to yourself as
"trainee"?
I can't help but thinking that this is a very clever troll.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ So little time, so little to do.
\__/ Oscar Levant
Physics reference / http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/physics/
A physics reference.
Andreas Lander
i cant understand you, i think its no problem to find a well paid job
for your skills, im now 21 years old, finished the apprenticeship as a
electronic engineer and searched a job in the programming business, i
was going to 3 interviews and all companies wanted me to work for over
30$ an hour, without any OO skills...in the apprenticeship i only
programmed pascal(Turbo Pascal 7) and assembler(68HC11, 68HC05)...now im
learning C++ by doing, for a Salary of an employee. I could select even
my employer!!!
I can explains only with your 5 year illness. The company thinks: He
loses the cover to the actuality! I think you MUST DO SOMETHING
IMPORTANT WRONG, sorry, may be im not right, but i think so.....and with
an offer of $10 an hour, please, i was not working for that money, then
you better stay at home and work for yourself!!!
Im sorry for your sitation, but I don't have any other explanation.
Hope you find a job...
Andreas Lander
Graham Cox
>
> I've been out of work for about 4-5 years due to illness, and can't find a
> job.
drop these people a line, but don't tell them I said so:
Marcel Weiher
>If I had this attitude during the interview, *I* would be the idiot. I'm
>venting my frustration over the results of my interviews, which I *thought*
>went OK, but obviously didn't.
>If I'm coming across as arrogant/obnoxious/etc. during the interview, it's
>certainly a LOT more subtle than what I've shown in this thread.
Hi Lawson,
people are very, very smart when it comes to detecting attitudes. It
is obvious on this list that you *feel* this way. Try to convince
yourself it is otherwise. Try to believe that the people you're
hiring with are not idiots, because quite often they aren't, even
if they do things differently from what you like.
Just my 2c worth,
Marcel
--
Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones.
Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.
- Alan Kay -
Steve Wilbur
In article <B63E4098.E554%eng...@primenet.com>, Lawson English
Steve Wilbur
<mar...@cs.tu-berlin.de> wrote:
> Lawson English <eng...@primenet.com> writes:
>
> >If I had this attitude during the interview, *I* would be the idiot. I'm
> >venting my frustration over the results of my interviews, which I *thought*
> >went OK, but obviously didn't.
>
> >If I'm coming across as arrogant/obnoxious/etc. during the interview, it's
> >certainly a LOT more subtle than what I've shown in this thread.
> people are very, very smart when it comes to detecting attitudes. It
> is obvious on this list that you *feel* this way. Try to convince
> yourself it is otherwise. Try to believe that the people you're
> hiring with are not idiots, because quite often they aren't, even
> if they do things differently from what you like.
exactly.
Michael Howarth
yourself " I AM A TIGER !" growl and look menacing. Confidence is
everything !
Don't bullshit, just be straight with employers and don't fill their heads
up with meaningless cobblers that they don't need to hear.
As for the Tiger thing, I learned that from a great man named Alan
Partridge. :-)
M.
Goz
> I think you MUST DO SOMETHING IMPORTANT WRONG, sorry,
> may be im not right, but i think so
I would disagree with you whole heartedly. Although this problem is not one
I suffer (being 22) my Dad on the other hand is a programmer of 53 with 36
years experience. He can't get a job for the pure fact that managers are
rarely willing to take some1 on who is "better" (by better read more
experienced) than them. There are people out there who would take on a
younger less experienced programmer for the same salary a more experienced
programmer would get purely for the fact that the less experienced
programmer is less likely to tell them they are wrong. This is where
mistakes are made and it is 90% down to arrogance on the part of employers.
Lawson keep trying you will find an employer who does not give a f**k about
anything but your ability but unfortunately it may take time.. :(
Good Luck
Goz
Goz
M.H. Avegaart
ps. This is really the widest cross-post I have ever seen !!!
"Goz" <goz@_trueharmoniccolours.co.uk> schreef in bericht
news:ci9S5.62898$K64.7...@monolith.news.easynet.net...
Peter Mutsaers
MHA> You are ignoring the difference in salary between a 53 and a
MHA> 22 year old ! ps. This is really the widest cross-post I
MHA> have ever seen !!!
Not necessarily. For contractors there is (luckily) no such thing as
automatic increase of salary with age (which is more typical european
anyway). You just get paid for what you're worth, as it should
be. When you get older, at a point the extra in experience gets
outweighted by slower and less creative thinking.
As a contractor of 34, I count on a slowly declining hourly rate in
the future (which still leaves enough for a decent income). Anything
above that (equal or more) I regard as a bonus. This assumption (with
this in mind I save a lot) makes that it can only be better than I
expect :) and protects for unforseen circumstances, bad times etc.
In general I think, in these times it is very risky to assume your
income will rise as you get older. As we see from this story, age is
not valued anymore.
The problem is that some think older people must earn more, therefore
they are too expensive. If we could get used to declining salary,
older people shouldn't have much problem to find a job in the IT
field, but they should just accept that since their value declines
their income does too.
--
Peter Mutsaers | Dübendorf | Trust me, I know
p...@gmx.li | Switzerland | what I'm doing.
Andreas Lander
> I would disagree with you whole heartedly. Although this problem is not one
> I suffer (being 22) my Dad on the other hand is a programmer of 53 with 36
> years experience. He can't get a job for the pure fact that managers are
> rarely willing to take some1 on who is "better" (by better read more
> experienced) than them. There are people out there who would take on a
> younger less experienced programmer for the same salary a more experienced
> programmer would get purely for the fact that the less experienced
> programmer is less likely to tell them they are wrong. This is where
> mistakes are made and it is 90% down to arrogance on the part of employers.
ok, i dont know the situation in US(im from switzerland), but 90% is a
bit much!!! The employers i know, wasnt anyone arrogance. And that was
great employers(espacialy Siemens where i made my apprenticeship). Thus
if I was an employer, I will engage sure the senior for the same salary.
he has a lot more experiences in the field. ok, a disadvantage is, that
the senior-programmer is older and may be work for the companie only 5
years and a junior-programmer want be able to spent my be the whole life
at the same companie.
> Lawson keep trying you will find an employer who does not give a f**k about
> anything but your ability but unfortunately it may take time.. :(
I dont say, that he will never find a job, I will find it also well, if
he finds a job again. Its hard today without a job. Especially if one
was once unemployed, to find the getting on again. But in our Time,
where the software-market booms its no problem to find something good.
regards
Andreas Lander
L. M. Rappaport
consulting that managers are uniformly the least qualified to judge
your abilities. Why? I don't know. Perhaps their decision to move
to management was caused either due to financial reward or because
they couldn't handle the technical side; regardless, the move places
too much emphasis on their management functions and there is little
time to keep their technical skills sharp. There is a definite age
bias at many places and they won't hire you simply because you would
cost them too much. Productivity doesn't seem to enter the equation.
This doesn't help you, but perhaps if you understand the playing
field, you will know how to "play" them better. Keep indications off
your resume which indicate your age. Dye your hair if you think it
will help.
Of course, in the consulting field age can actually help. There are
lots of consulting firms desperate for folks if you don't mind the
travel. Anderson Consulting, E & E, etc. come to mind.
Good luck.
Larry
--
ra...@lmr.com
Lawson English <eng...@primenet.com> wrote (with possible editing):
>This is getting ridiculous!
>
>I've been out of work for about 4-5 years due to illness, and can't find a
>job.
>
>Background:
>
>Started Pascal classes in 1984. Chuck Allison of the C/C++ Journal was one
>of my Pascal teachers -he remembers me from 15 years ago as one of his top
>students, if that says anything. Learned C in 1986. First C projects
>included a speedup utility for Apple //e disk-copying using //e Hi-res
>graphics card memory, if present, followed by writing C interfaces to Apple
>I've interviewed with people who seem impressed by my background and then
>send me form letters informing me (after meeting in several interviews) that
>my initial answer to initial question disqualifies me (e.g., no embedded
>systems experience, AFTER an engineer let slip that they were willing to
>train).
>
>I've informed total idiots that rather than attempting to port a multi-media
>conversion app from Windows to the Mac for a ludicrous $4000, I'd rewrite
>Apple's QuickTime sample translation code for free to accomplish the same
>thing in exchange for a reference and had them turn me down! (never called
>them an idiot to their face, mind you).
>
>I've had CENSORED engineers at CENSORED company tell me that they needed me
>to maintain a driver-control/test app in Visual C rather than let me rework
>the GUI in C++ while keeping the driver portion in C "because "C++ can't run
>drivers fast enough" -they later informed the headhunter that I obviously
>didn't understand C very well (presumably because I informed them that my
>background in C Windows programming wasn't good enough to maintain and
>extend the project in that language while my ability to handle C++ GUIs
>would allow me to factor the app appropriately into GUI and C driver code
>for easy maintenance).
>
>I've had idiots turn me down for a OOP/D/A position because I didn't know
>how to diagram an algorithm to reverse a singly-linked list, even though
>I've had over 10 years (off and on) experience with O-O, and they were
>looking for an O-O analyst to help them translate a project from PHP into
>Java (I'm systematically applying my chess problem visualization skills to
>learn to visualize the entire problem set of Sedgewick so someone can't pull
>THAT CRAP excuse on me ever again).
>
>I had one company turn me down for a Web Objects position because "I didn't
>know Java well enough."
>
>
>
>Is it just me, or are Tucson area employers really this stupid?
>
>14 years with procedural languages (Pascal and C). 14 years with Mac
>programming. 4 different assembly languages (VAX, 6502, 68K, PowerPC). 10+
>years with object-oriented technologies (using Think Pascal and Think C &
>CodeWarrior C++). Less than 1 year with C++, although is that REALLY an
>issue given my OOP experience?
>
>
>
>My salary range is $10/hour and up in Tucson. I'm even willing to dye my
>hair so prospective managers won't be intimidated by someone 20 years older
>than they are.
>
>
>[maybe I can get a job in India...]
>
>
>--
Graham Cox
> Partridge. :-)
Yes, and look where that got HIM ;-)
Erik Max Francis
> If I'm coming across as arrogant/obnoxious/etc. during the interview,
> it's
> certainly a LOT more subtle than what I've shown in this thread.
Are you sure about that?
Earlier you said that, during an interview, you indicated that they were
looking for the wrong job to get done and suggested what they should do
instead (presumably you weren't under NDA yet, so you were getting a
watered-down description in a vacuum without knowing the full context).
That sounds extremely arrogant and obnoxious to me, and I would _expect_
that anyone exhibiting such behavior in a preliminary interview would
rightfully _not_ get the job.
There are only a few ways to totally fail an interview. About the only
way to fail worse would be to start a fight with the interviewer or just
not show up.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Physics, as we know it, will be over in six months.
\__/ Max Born (1928)
The laws list / http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/laws/
Laws, rules, principles, effects, paradoxes, etc. in physics.
vrml3d.com
> I can't help but thinking that this is a very clever troll.
No, I don't think so. Many IT professionals have a high IQ, but a low EQ
(Emotional Quotient). I'm dealing with this myself right now. When I get
"in the door" I'm very good, but when it comes to the schmoozing skills
required to get me in the door, I'm very bad.
--Steve
Lawson English
m...@alcyone.com wrote on 11/20/00 1:54 AM:
>> My pay-range is low when I'm the trainee and high when I'm the trainer
>> and
>> in-between depending on my skill-level for the job-at-hand.
>
> With your claimed skill set, why would you ever refer to yourself as
> "trainee"?
Because I've never done ANY Windows program except working through
tutorials. Ditto with Java, Perl, Python, CGI, etc.
>
> I can't help but thinking that this is a very clever troll.
Or a not-so-clever cry for help...
--
"It is very material that order, decency and
regularity, be preserved in a dignified public body."
-Thomas Jefferson, 1812, _A Manual of Parliamentary Practice_
Lawson English
mar...@cs.tu-berlin.de wrote on 11/20/00 4:17 AM:
> Lawson English <eng...@primenet.com> writes:
>
>> If I had this attitude during the interview, *I* would be the idiot. I'm
>> venting my frustration over the results of my interviews, which I *thought*
>> went OK, but obviously didn't.
>
>> If I'm coming across as arrogant/obnoxious/etc. during the interview, it's
>> certainly a LOT more subtle than what I've shown in this thread.
>
> Hi Lawson,
>
> people are very, very smart when it comes to detecting attitudes. It
> is obvious on this list that you *feel* this way. Try to convince
> yourself it is otherwise. Try to believe that the people you're
> hiring with are not idiots, because quite often they aren't, even
> if they do things differently from what you like.
>
> Just my 2c worth,
Some good points. I'd like to think that this attitude is recent, but maybe
not.
Cheers.
David Burgun
I think it would be cool idea to start a Software/Hardward consulting company
that hired no one BUT (say) 35+ year olds!
I wonder if they'd get hit by the Ageism police!?
Cheers
Dave
Lawson English
avegaar...@mccomm.nl wrote on 11/20/00 6:28 AM:
> You are ignoring the difference in salary between a 53 and a 22 year old !
>
> ps. This is really the widest cross-post I have ever seen !!!
It was an act of desperation, I'll admit.
For those who think that my troubles are unusual, I refer you to this
web-site:
Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.html
Especially:
<http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#tth_sEc5>
Relevant quote:
"5 Rampant Age Discrimination-at Age 35
Mid-career programmers often have a very difficult time finding programming
work, so much so that large numbers of them leave the field.
The following is very instructive (IEEE-USA Perspectives, March 1999):
IEEE-USA's 1998 Unemployment Survey shows that despite a growing economy in
1998, the mean duration of unemployment among our members has increased from
84 weeks in 1995 to 103 weeks in 1998. Using data from the survey, Dr. Laura
Langbein of American University has calculated that each additional year of
age of members seeking new jobs translates into three additional weeks of
unemployment. "
Lawson English
m...@alcyone.com wrote on 11/20/00 10:08 AM:
> Lawson English wrote:
>
>> If I'm coming across as arrogant/obnoxious/etc. during the interview,
>> it's
>> certainly a LOT more subtle than what I've shown in this thread.
>
> Are you sure about that?
>
> Earlier you said that, during an interview, you indicated that they were
> looking for the wrong job to get done and suggested what they should do
> instead (presumably you weren't under NDA yet, so you were getting a
> watered-down description in a vacuum without knowing the full context).
> That sounds extremely arrogant and obnoxious to me, and I would _expect_
> that anyone exhibiting such behavior in a preliminary interview would
> rightfully _not_ get the job.
>
> There are only a few ways to totally fail an interview. About the only
> way to fail worse would be to start a fight with the interviewer or just
> not show up.
Hmmm... A point, except that I made it clear that I was the wrong PERSON to
do the job they wanted done due to my lack of C WIndows GUI experience, but
could do the job by splitting it into a VC++ GUI and a C-based driver app
if they were interested. They were all engineers whose idea of programming
comes from burning ROM, rather than from writing user-interfaces, so the
concept of an easy-to-program interface was completely foreign to them. As
far as I know, they STILL can't find someone to fill the position (it's been
open for about 6 months now, I think).
--
Erik Max Francis
> Because I've never done ANY Windows program except working through
> tutorials. Ditto with Java, Perl, Python, CGI, etc.
You're supposed to be an experienced programmer. Why can't you learn
it? Even on the job?
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
\__/ Oscar Wilde
Fat Boy and Little Man / http://www.fatboyandlittleman.com/
Watch Fat Boy and Little Man go about their antics.
Steve Wilbur
Rappaport <ra...@lmr.com> wrote:
> There is a definite age
> bias at many places and they won't hire you simply because you would
> cost them too much. Productivity doesn't seem to enter the equation.
Oh please. Not hiring someone because you can't afford to pay what
they ask is hardly age bias. If you have $50K in your budget, then you
have $50K in your budget, no matter WHO you interview.
Steve Wilbur
<eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
> Because I've never done ANY Windows program except working through
> tutorials. Ditto with Java, Perl, Python, CGI, etc.
and there you have it. you can have all the programming skills you
want, but if you don't have the ones i need, why should i hire you?
i'm not a training ground. i need someone coming in the door that's up
to speed.
gen...@hexdump.org
: and there you have it. you can have all the programming skills you
: want, but if you don't have the ones i need, why should i hire you?
: i'm not a training ground. i need someone coming in the door that's up
: to speed.
Someone with that much programming experience can pick up anything
relatively quickly.
Languages are just tools. They are simply a collection of syntax, idiom,
and grammatical rules.
--
Jeff Gentry gen...@hexdump.org gen...@rpi.edu
"You're one of those condescending UNIX users! ...."
"Here's a nickel kid ... get yourself a real computer."
Lawson English
m...@alcyone.com wrote on 11/20/00 1:44 PM:
> Lawson English wrote:
>
>> Because I've never done ANY Windows program except working through
>> tutorials. Ditto with Java, Perl, Python, CGI, etc.
>
> You're supposed to be an experienced programmer. Why can't you learn
> it? Even on the job?
I think that that has been my point... No one wants to let me learn it, even
at $10/hour.
Lawson English
gen...@hexdump.org at gen...@hexdump.org wrote on 11/20/00 3:19 PM:
> In comp.lang.c++ Steve Wilbur <ultra...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> : and there you have it. you can have all the programming skills you
> : want, but if you don't have the ones i need, why should i hire you?
> : i'm not a training ground. i need someone coming in the door that's up
> : to speed.
>
> Someone with that much programming experience can pick up anything
> relatively quickly.
>
> Languages are just tools. They are simply a collection of syntax, idiom,
> and grammatical rules.
Well, OOP and client/server and Web technologies all have there own
idiosyncrasies that need experience/guidance/insight to use properly, but
I've run into enough badly designed & written OOP&Web-stuff to know that
that isn't the REAL reason why I'm not getting hired...
At best, managers are merely ignorant of how poorly-trained their current
crop of OOP & web-developers are. At worst, they don't care.
It's that magic-bullet thing, I guess.
Steve Nester
>: and there you have it. you can have all the programming skills you
>: want, but if you don't have the ones i need, why should i hire you?
>: i'm not a training ground. i need someone coming in the door that's up
>: to speed.
I'm convinced this is a big reason why projects and companies fail.
Would you really rather hire an average programmer who may be up to
speed immediately or a good programmer who make take a month to get up
to speed but in two months will far outstrip the abilities of the
average programmer?
Of course there's no pat answer to that question depending on circumstances,
but I feel that all too many companies always answer "yes" no matter what
the circumstances because they can't plan their projects and are always
in the middle of a perceived crisis or feel they absolutely must work
in "Internet time" whether they really need to or not. Of course
I'm not saying this is the case with you.
Steve
Steve Wilbur
someone who has to learn, I'm going to pick the person who already
knows.
On a side note, I don't care how much non-object-oriented experience a
person has, if I need them to use Java and be truly proficient with it,
it's gonna take them a year (or more) to really get it. If I have to
saddle another programmer with training that person, I've lost a lot of
capacity!
Another example...take a "mainframer" for instance. I don't care how
much experience they have programming on a mainframe - if I need
someone doing C++ under UNIX, that's a serious change in mentality. I
work with mainframers and trust me, when it comes to things like OOP
and UNIX, they don't get it.
In article <qrhS5.19215$751.5...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net>,
<gen...@hexdump.org> wrote:
> In comp.lang.c++ Steve Wilbur <ultra...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Steve Wilbur
<eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
> I think that that has been my point... No one wants to let me learn it, even
> at $10/hour.
That's because there is a serious cost involved in OJT. What you're
paying the guy (learning) is the least of it. Odds are, you've got
someone else saddled with training him or answering his questions,
making that person less productive. Then you've got the work the
trainee is doing - it's not as much as it would be if you hired someone
who already knows what's going on. Assuming you're taking 20% of the
trainer's time, and you're being half as productive as you otherwise
would be, that's 70% of a programmer. Essentially, I've hired you for
100% of the time, and I'm effectively getting 30% of you. Yeah, maybe
you only cost $10/hr, but that's not helping me get my projects done.
If you really feel that lack of "required skills" is the issue, then
get them. You can get them on your own. Do some stuff as a hobby, do
some work for a non-profit, hell, go back to school. But I have to
say, given the huge demand for IT people, the willingness of employers
to do most anything to fill vacancies (including train/retrain) people,
I find it hard to believe that someone with as much experience as
you're claiming as any difficulty at all finding a job. Maybe it's
time to move to a different area of the country. Hell, here in Alaska,
we're DESPERATE to fill jobs. At my employer, 25% of the IT positions
on the books are unfilled because we can't find anyone to take them.
Lex Spoon
> parameter where it made sense, thereby avoiding pixel-per-pixel color-space
> translation -speeded it up by a factor of about 20-30).
No one else has mentioned, but it's weird to love both bit-level
computation and abstract design. The former tends to have tricky
puzzles to solve, and the latter tends to be simpler but more
voluminous. Most jobs are going to be heavily weighted one way or the
other, so it's worth thinking about which you'd rather spend your life
on.
Also, be sure to choose what you tell people at the particular job you
are interviewing for. eg, don't brag about clever low-level
optimizations when you are interviewing for an analysis position. :)
> I've had idiots turn me down for a OOP/D/A position because I didn't know
> how to diagram an algorithm to reverse a singly-linked list, even though
> I've had over 10 years (off and on) experience with O-O, and they were
> looking for an O-O analyst to help them translate a project from PHP into
> Java.
This actually seems fair to me. Designers need to be able to explain
their designs to the implementors, and there are some standard
notations around for doing this. It's reasonable for companies to
require that you know at least one of these notations.
At a guess, maybe you might be happier hunkering down and working with
some of those ROM-burning EE guys?
<soapbox>
Computer knowledge is not scalar. How do you compare an algorithms
expert to a machine code expert? How do you compare the guy who's
software never crashes to the guy who's software is on everyone's
desktop? You can't -- these guys have completely different skills.
We call all of them "computer guys", but that's only for lack of a
better term.
I mean, just consider how silly "hospital guy" would sound!
</soapbox>
-Lex
Erik Max Francis
> I think that that has been my point... No one wants to let me learn
> it, even
> at $10/hour.
I find that extremely hard to believe. I suspect the problem you're
having is not located where you think it is.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ When in doubt, win the trick.
\__/ Edmund Hoyle
Interstelen / http://www.interstelen.com/
A multiplayer, strategic, turn-based Web game on an interstellar scale.
Erik Max Francis
> Hmmm... A point, except that I made it clear that I was the wrong
> PERSON to
> do the job they wanted done due to my lack of C WIndows GUI
> experience, ...
If you say that you're the wrong person to do a job in an interview, why
would you possibly expect to get it?
> ... but
> could do the job by splitting it into a VC++ GUI and a C-based driver
> app
> if they were interested.
And then you suggested that you _could_ do something more complicated
that they did not as for. And you're surprised that you didn't get the
job because ... ?
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Oh, what lies there are in kisses.
\__/ Heinrich Heine
Erik Max Francis' bookmarks / http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/
A highly categorized list of Web links.
Lawson English
ultra...@yahoo.com wrote on 11/20/00 6:37 PM:
> ure, but if I have a choice between someone who already knows, and
> someone who has to learn, I'm going to pick the person who already
> knows.
>
> On a side note, I don't care how much non-object-oriented experience a
> person has, if I need them to use Java and be truly proficient with it,
> it's gonna take them a year (or more) to really get it. If I have to
> saddle another programmer with training that person, I've lost a lot of
> capacity!
>
> Another example...take a "mainframer" for instance. I don't care how
> much experience they have programming on a mainframe - if I need
> someone doing C++ under UNIX, that's a serious change in mentality. I
> work with mainframers and trust me, when it comes to things like OOP
> and UNIX, they don't get it.
Ummm...
I was under the impression that UNIX *is* a mainframe OS...
Used to be when *I* was a kid...
And I've been "OOP"ing for 10 years. The only hand-holding I need with Java
is with the client-server issues.
Lawson English
l...@cc.gatech.edu wrote on 11/20/00 7:10 PM:
>
> At a guess, maybe you might be happier hunkering down and working with
> some of those ROM-burning EE guys?
>
>
>
>
>
> <soapbox>
> Computer knowledge is not scalar. How do you compare an algorithms
> expert to a machine code expert? How do you compare the guy who's
> software never crashes to the guy who's software is on everyone's
> desktop? You can't -- these guys have completely different skills.
> We call all of them "computer guys", but that's only for lack of a
> better term.
>
> I mean, just consider how silly "hospital guy" would sound!
> </soapbox>
I enjoy working with the full range of programming issues and tend to move
from one end of the scale to the other reasonably easily, in my opinion.
I'm odd that way: I enjoy learning new guitar & juggling techniques as well
as playing full-blown pieces of music and performance routines.
Weird, I know.
Lawson English
R...@Lurkingmostly.invalid wrote on 11/20/00 8:40 PM:
>> I can't help but thinking that this is a very clever troll.
>
> I agree - I am certainly a beginner/trainee etc, starting to look for my
> first (programming) job at age 35. With the experience stated in this post -
> I would think it would be harder *not* to find something. Anywhere. For good
> money.
> I haven't seen how many x posts he's sent - but why x post? max attention.
> well he's
> hit paydirt in clc. probably elsewhere too.
> --
Max xpost, max advice & feedback.
Simple, no?
Lawson English
m...@alcyone.com wrote on 11/20/00 9:27 PM:
>> ... but
>> could do the job by splitting it into a VC++ GUI and a C-based driver
>> app
>> if they were interested.
>
> And then you suggested that you _could_ do something more complicated
> that they did not as for. And you're surprised that you didn't get the
> job because ... ?
But it isn't more complicated.
Why would you think that creating a few simple dialog boxes and buttons via
the VC++ IDE to call existing driver code would be easier than maintaining
said code with the GUI code embedded in each separate module? Every time you
modified the driver you'd have to fart around with the GUI to get it to work
correctly again (now where in the code did that thread start/stop?).
Ironically, the guy who wrote the original thing diagramed the existing code
for me in a very OOPish way. He just had the GUI code embedded in each box,
instead of putting it at a higher level where it could be maintained
separately from the driver code.
Since the idea was to add NEW drivers and NEW interfaces as time went on, it
would make no sense to try to write them both at once if they could be
factored out separately. Use the right tool for the right job: hammers and
screwdrivers, both.
He just had a phobia against using C++ because it was "too slow for drivers"
(the fact that I was talking GUIs and not drivers, and that the drivers
themselves were living in a PC and talking to the SCSI interface, not burned
into ROM, apparently had passed him by).
Dann Corbit
news:B63F51FE.EB38%eng...@primenet.com...
> in article 3A19EE9B...@Lurkingmostly.invalid, RogerH at
> R...@Lurkingmostly.invalid wrote on 11/20/00 8:40 PM:
>
> >> I can't help but thinking that this is a very clever troll.
> >
> > I agree - I am certainly a beginner/trainee etc, starting to look for my
> > first (programming) job at age 35. With the experience stated in this
post -
> > I would think it would be harder *not* to find something. Anywhere. For
good
> > money.
> > I haven't seen how many x posts he's sent - but why x post? max
attention.
> > well he's
> > hit paydirt in clc. probably elsewhere too.
> > --
>
> Max xpost, max advice & feedback.
>
> Simple, no?
Even simpler than you think.
Max annoyance.
Max probability that you will get a flippant answer.
Max likelihood of...
*PLONK*
--
C-FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
"The C-FAQ Book" ISBN 0-201-84519-9
C.A.P. FAQ: ftp://cap.connx.com/pub/Chess%20Analysis%20Project%20FAQ.htm
Lawson English
gen...@hexdump.org at gen...@hexdump.org wrote on 11/20/00 10:03 PM:
> In comp.lang.c++ Lawson English <eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
> : I was under the impression that UNIX *is* a mainframe OS...
>
> Then explain why my PCs all run one version of UNIX or another?
Because PCs are now powerful enough that they beat the pants off of the
biggest big-iron from 20 years ago?
The average PDA has more RAM in it than the Burroughs 3500 that I was using
in the USAF had core memory.
>
> "Mainframe" in this context is referring to things such as the S/390 from
> IBM and the like, IMO.
Big-iron always gets bigger.
Erik Max Francis
> Max xpost, max advice & feedback.
Nice to see you don't care much about Usenet etiquette, then.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
\__/ Anatole France
Official Omega page / http://www.alcyone.com/max/projects/omega/
The official distribution page for the popular Roguelike, Omega.
Erik Max Francis
> I enjoy working with the full range of programming issues and tend to
> move
> from one end of the scale to the other reasonably easily, in my
> opinion.
So why can't you get a job? There is something you're not telling us.
Ray Blaak
> and there you have it. you can have all the programming skills you
> want, but if you don't have the ones i need, why should i hire you?
> i'm not a training ground. i need someone coming in the door that's up
> to speed.
Smart companies hire smart people, not acronyms.
The truly valuable employees are the ones that are good problem solvers and
quick learners.
After all, the technologies are constantly changing, so adaptability is more
imporant than knowing a particular OS or API.
Not only that, but most of the stuff far over-hyped, and is all the same
anyway. Know a few languages and picking up another is a snap. The same is true
for operating systems, databases, windowing systems, whatever.
It is the principles that matter. Know them and you are intrinsically more
valuable.
The sad thing is that many employers don't realize this.
--
Cheers, The Rhythm is around me,
The Rhythm has control.
Ray Blaak The Rhythm is inside me,
bl...@infomatch.com The Rhythm has my soul.
Mike Westerfield
----------
In article <201120001637065988%ultra...@yahoo.com>, Steve Wilbur
<ultra...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On a side note, I don't care how much non-object-oriented experience a
> person has, if I need them to use Java and be truly proficient with it,
> it's gonna take them a year (or more) to really get it.
Maybe, maybe not. The guy who walks through the door with a BS in CS, having
written a few relatively small programs in Java and dabbled with a few other
languages, is a very different person from a seasoned pro who has written
10,000+ line programs in multiple languages. Even if the seasoned programmer
has never used Java, he is likely to code a moderate size project in less
time--and do a better job--than the entry level programmer.
Mike Westerfield
Erik Max Francis
> If you want the job, never ever question the design desicions that
> have already been made. This hurts the (incompetent) people and they
> won't like you. They will fool themselves that you are the one at
> fault, sine every company is so proud of its "briliant" people.
Either that, or they know more about the subject than some insecure
programmer on his first interview who is not under NDA and who cannot be
told the full history and full story of the project and why the
decisions were made.
In the real world, the easy, obvious engineering solution is not always
the right one. And, in the real world, engineers who want to throw in
their two cents in an interview aren't always right.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Triumph cannot help being cruel.
\__/ Jose Ortega y Gasset
RogerH
I agree - I am certainly a beginner/trainee etc, starting to look for my
first (programming) job at age 35. With the experience stated in this post -
I would think it would be harder *not* to find something. Anywhere. For good
money.
I haven't seen how many x posts he's sent - but why x post? max attention.
well he's
hit paydirt in clc. probably elsewhere too.
--
RogerH
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I don't like quotes - and you can quote me on that." anon
gen...@hexdump.org
: I was under the impression that UNIX *is* a mainframe OS...
Then explain why my PCs all run one version of UNIX or another?
"Mainframe" in this context is referring to things such as the S/390 from
IBM and the like, IMO.
--
Peter Mutsaers
LE> Ironically, the guy who wrote the original thing diagramed the
LE> existing code for me in a very OOPish way. He just had the GUI
LE> code embedded in each box, instead of putting it at a higher
LE> level where it could be maintained separately from the driver
LE> code.
If you want the job, never ever question the design desicions that
have already been made. This hurts the (incompetent) people and they
won't like you. They will fool themselves that you are the one at
fault, sine every company is so proud of its "briliant" people.
I have questioned some designs during job interviews, but *only* in
cases where I could negotiate from a position of strength (like if you
already have another job offer) and from my POV it was a "take it or
leave it" situation.
Normally, you first see that you get the job, than once you're in
convince them of your capacities, and only after that, very tactfully,
suggest fundamental improvements to the design. You must first earn
their respect *on the job*.
Even if the first project fails because of bad design, so be it. On
the next project you'll have the chance to show your qualities from
the beginning.
--
Peter Mutsaers | Dübendorf | Trust me, I know
p...@gmx.li | Switzerland | what I'm doing.
Steve Wilbur
significant either. (: But I agree with your general point. However,
it's not something someone can easily "pick up" no matter who they are.
There's SO MUCH to it. All the classes and libraries and stuff...the
only way to really bone up on it is to do work with it. And i'd rather
someone learn on someone else's time, not mine. Not to mention the
fact that I don't want to pay to train someone, only to have them quit
and take a higher paying position somewhere else.
In article <8vd501$dn8$1...@news.rt66.com>, Mike Westerfield
Lawson English
m...@alcyone.com wrote on 11/20/00 11:16 PM:
> Lawson English wrote:
>
>> I enjoy working with the full range of programming issues and tend to
>> move
>> from one end of the scale to the other reasonably easily, in my
>> opinion.
>
> So why can't you get a job? There is something you're not telling us.
I'm 45 and recovering from a long-term illness. 'nuff said?
Lawson English
m...@alcyone.com wrote on 11/21/00 12:24 AM:
> Peter Mutsaers wrote:
>
>> If you want the job, never ever question the design desicions that
>> have already been made. This hurts the (incompetent) people and they
>> won't like you. They will fool themselves that you are the one at
>> fault, sine every company is so proud of its "briliant" people.
>
> Either that, or they know more about the subject than some insecure
> programmer on his first interview who is not under NDA and who cannot be
> told the full history and full story of the project and why the
> decisions were made.
>
> In the real world, the easy, obvious engineering solution is not always
> the right one. And, in the real world, engineers who want to throw in
> their two cents in an interview aren't always right.
Yes, but in the real world, the engineer did the first version in his spare
time over Christmas and has never used OOP in his life because he burns ROM,
not writes code for end-users.
Steve Nester
>Sure, but if I have a choice between someone who already knows, and
>someone who has to learn, I'm going to pick the person who already
>knows.
>On a side note, I don't care how much non-object-oriented experience a
>person has, if I need them to use Java and be truly proficient with it,
>it's gonna take them a year (or more) to really get it. If I have to
>saddle another programmer with training that person, I've lost a lot of
>capacity!
>Another example...take a "mainframer" for instance. I don't care how
>much experience they have programming on a mainframe - if I need
>someone doing C++ under UNIX, that's a serious change in mentality. I
>work with mainframers and trust me, when it comes to things like OOP
>and UNIX, they don't get it.
I think your sweeping generalizations are troubling.
gen...@hexdump.org
: biggest big-iron from 20 years ago?
True that.
:> "Mainframe" in this context is referring to things such as the S/390 from
:> IBM and the like, IMO.
: Big-iron always gets bigger.
When I look back on things, I still don't envision many 'mainframes'
running UNIX. Not to say that UNIX was a home user's OS (especially when
there was no such thing), but it wasn't the BIG iron.
Phillip Lord
Steve> Sure, but if I have a choice between someone who already
Steve> knows, and someone who has to learn, I'm going to pick the
Steve> person who already knows.
This only makes sense if you know exactly what skills are
going to be required to finish the job. If it is possible that the
nature of the job is going to change before the end (and with
programming I think its always possible), then having someone who can
adapt and learn something new is probably better. Some programmers do
one language all their life, other can adapt to many. Experience is
nice, but only worth so much.
Phil
Lawson English
gen...@hexdump.org at gen...@hexdump.org wrote on 11/21/00 8:47 AM:
> In comp.lang.c++ Lawson English <eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
> : Because PCs are now powerful enough that they beat the pants off of the
> : biggest big-iron from 20 years ago?
>
> True that.
>
> :> "Mainframe" in this context is referring to things such as the S/390 from
> :> IBM and the like, IMO.
> : Big-iron always gets bigger.
>
> When I look back on things, I still don't envision many 'mainframes'
> running UNIX. Not to say that UNIX was a home user's OS (especially when
> there was no such thing), but it wasn't the BIG iron.
Just checked on the history of UNIX. It was a scaled-down version of
MULTICS, originally called "UNICS" designed to run on smaller systems.
Marcel also pointed this out to me.
Still, the distinction in MY mind between PC and Big Iron has been that "BIg
Iron" was meant to run with multiple users, while the PC design was "one
user, one computer" and originally "one user, one app-at-a-time." The line
has been blurring for some time, but I'd imagine that this is where the main
difference in programming strategy comes from.
David Burgun
(in message <B63F507A.EB36%eng...@primenet.com>):
> in article 201120001637065988%ultra...@yahoo.com, Steve Wilbur at
> ultra...@yahoo.com wrote on 11/20/00 6:37 PM:
>
>> ure, but if I have a choice between someone who already knows, and
>> someone who has to learn, I'm going to pick the person who already
>> knows.
>>
>> On a side note, I don't care how much non-object-oriented experience a
>> person has, if I need them to use Java and be truly proficient with it,
>> it's gonna take them a year (or more) to really get it. If I have to
>> saddle another programmer with training that person, I've lost a lot of
>> capacity!
>>
>> Another example...take a "mainframer" for instance. I don't care how
>> much experience they have programming on a mainframe - if I need
>> someone doing C++ under UNIX, that's a serious change in mentality. I
>> work with mainframers and trust me, when it comes to things like OOP
>> and UNIX, they don't get it.
>
> Ummm...
>
> I was under the impression that UNIX *is* a mainframe OS...
>
> Used to be when *I* was a kid...
>
Haaaah, it was way too unreliable in those days, not sure if it's any better
now!
Plus when I think of "mainframe" I think of a big main CPU with hundreds of
Front end processors hooked to it, e.g. like a VAX or a 390 etc.
---Dave
gen...@hexdump.org
: MULTICS, originally called "UNICS" designed to run on smaller systems.
: Marcel also pointed this out to me.
Indeed ... the rhyming with "eunuchs" also was not at all coincidental.
: Still, the distinction in MY mind between PC and Big Iron has been that "BIg
: Iron" was meant to run with multiple users, while the PC design was "one
: user, one computer" and originally "one user, one app-at-a-time." The line
: has been blurring for some time, but I'd imagine that this is where the main
: difference in programming strategy comes from.
I dunno, from the mainframes that I've seen, there is a large mental
difference between UNIX and say, OS/390.
Ray Blaak
> However, it's [Java & OO] not something someone can easily "pick up" no
> matter who they are. There's SO MUCH to it. All the classes and libraries
> and stuff...the only way to really bone up on it is to do work with it.
Beg to differ here. I am doing it myself at the moment, having been assigned a
Java project when I have never really developed in Java. It was expected that
I would learn the environment real quick.
Java the language is so clean and consistent that there are no surprises. As
for the libraries, having done many systems in varying languages and
environments, I know what to look for. (Whoops! I need a thingy dialog. Search
for thingy -- there it is. 10 minutes later I have a thingy on the
screen. Whoops! I need to draw something explicitly. Hmm these guys called use
a "graphics" instead of a "device context". There's the draw line call. Etc.)
Mind you, I was already deeply familiar with the OO way of thinking. That is a
general principle that applies across technologies.
Lex Spoon
> Steve Wilbur <ultra...@yahoo.com> writes:
> > and there you have it. you can have all the programming skills you
> > want, but if you don't have the ones i need, why should i hire you?
> > i'm not a training ground. i need someone coming in the door that's up
> > to speed.
>
> Smart companies hire smart people, not acronyms.
>
> The truly valuable employees are the ones that are good problem solvers and
> quick learners.
Well, it really depends on the job, wouldn't you agree? Sometimes you
just plain want someone to write Windows device drivers in C.
-Lex
Lex Spoon
> Why would you think that creating a few simple dialog boxes and buttons via
> the VC++ IDE to call existing driver code would be easier than maintaining
> said code with the GUI code embedded in each separate module? Every time you
> modified the driver you'd have to fart around with the GUI to get it to work
> correctly again (now where in the code did that thread start/stop?).
>
> for me in a very OOPish way. He just had the GUI code embedded in each box,
> instead of putting it at a higher level where it could be maintained
> separately from the driver code.
>
Running code is quite valuable, though. In particular, a rewrite is
going to take quite a bit of programmer time, so you really need to
justify it. It's not enough to say updates will be cheaper with the
new design; you need to argue that there will be enough updates, and
that they will be cheaper enough, that paying for the rewrite is
overall cheaper in the long run. That's three difficult numbers to
estimate -- maybe your interviewers were, in fact, fishing for you to
do such estimates?
By the way, your design guideline is a rule of thumb, not an absolute.
There really are cases where embedding the GUI is simpler than
separating it and writing lots of tunnel code. Specifically,
embedding can be better when the interface provides very detailed
interactions deep into the system. So, your choice of design needs
arguing, as well. Maybe it's a simple argument in this case, but it
still needs to be made.
-Lex
Lex Spoon
> I enjoy working with the full range of programming issues and tend to move
> from one end of the scale to the other reasonably easily, in my opinion.
Okay, but most jobs are going to be mostly one or the other. Which
would you like to spend *most* of your time on?
If you choose the abstract simple-but-voluminous stuff, doesn't it
seem reasonable that you should need to know some standard notations
like UML?
-Lex
Lawson English
l...@cc.gatech.edu wrote on 11/21/00 11:15 AM:
> Running code is quite valuable, though. In particular, a rewrite is
> going to take quite a bit of programmer time, so you really need to
> justify it. It's not enough to say updates will be cheaper with the
> new design; you need to argue that there will be enough updates, and
> that they will be cheaper enough, that paying for the rewrite is
> overall cheaper in the long run. That's three difficult numbers to
> estimate -- maybe your interviewers were, in fact, fishing for you to
> do such estimates?
>
>
Perhaps. I wouldn't have been able to give them, however, given my
inexperience with C coding in Windows.
> By the way, your design guideline is a rule of thumb, not an absolute.
> There really are cases where embedding the GUI is simpler than
> separating it and writing lots of tunnel code. Specifically,
> embedding can be better when the interface provides very detailed
> interactions deep into the system. So, your choice of design needs
> arguing, as well. Maybe it's a simple argument in this case, but it
> still needs to be made.
No doubt. In this case, it was an app that provided an interface to multiple
drivers that exercised multiple types of hardware. The "maintenance" issue
was really an extension issue: the drivers worked, but there were more and
more people calling for THEIR particular hardware to be massaged by the same
app, simultaneously. The REAL hassle, as far as I could tell (and the
engineer didn't contradict me when I stated it) was with getting the GUI to
behave when all the drivers were running and the operator wanted to tweak an
option.
It was this situation:
hardware1<>SCSI<=>test-driver-thread1GUI1<=>operator1
hardware2<>SCSI<=>test-driver-thread2GUI2<=>operator1
hardware3<>SCSI<=>test-driver-thread3GUI3<=>operator1
hardware4<>SCSI<=>test-driver-thread4GUI4<=>operator1
...
I wanted it to look more like:
hardware1<>SCSI<=>test-driver-thread1<=>\
hardware2<>SCSI<=>test-driver-thread2<=> \<=>VC++_GUI<==>operator1
hardware3<>SCSI<=>test-driver-thread3<=> /
hardware4<>SCSI<=>test-driver-thread4<=>/
...
That would have been my first pass at rationalizing the thing. Obviously, a
true OOP design could have gone much further, but they had working code for
most of it -it was the GUI issues that were messing them up whenever they
wanted to extend it, or so I gathered and nothing more was really needed to
make it useable.
I tried to make an analogy to Visual BASIC -that VC++ allowed
ease-of-GUI-coding that approached VBC. Thy pointed out that VBC wouldn't
handle SCSI drivers. I pointed out that VC++ would interface with their
existing VC-drivers with no real problems. They got upset at the concept of
C++ being used in their speedy driver setup and we left it at that.
Later, the headhunter told me that word got back to him that I obviously
didn't understand C very well and wanted to use Visual Basic, instead...
[I mentioned Visual Basic ONCE in the entire interview]
Obviously, my people skills weren't where I needed them to be, but I also
feel that the technical skills of the people I was dealing with were such
that I probably didn't want to deal with them professionally, either.
Lawson English
l...@cc.gatech.edu wrote on 11/21/00 11:18 AM:
Ah, but I DO know a little UML and am working to get proficient. The problem
was to draw the way pointers behaved when reversing a singly-linked list. My
mind went blank at that point (so did theirs, actually, but THEY weren't
being interviewed).
Erik Max Francis
> Ah, but I DO know a little UML and am working to get proficient. The
> problem
> was to draw the way pointers behaved when reversing a singly-linked
> list.
Are you saying that you don't know how to reverse a singly-linked list?
That's a pretty standard interview question.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ No man quite believes in any other man.
\__/ H.L. Mencken
REALpolitik / http://www.realpolitik.com/
Get your own customized newsfeed online in realtime ... for free!
Ray Blaak
> Ray Blaak <bl...@infomatch.com> writes:
> > Smart companies hire smart people, not acronyms.
> >
> > The truly valuable employees are the ones that are good problem solvers and
> > quick learners.
>
> Well, it really depends on the job, wouldn't you agree? Sometimes you
> just plain want someone to write Windows device drivers in C.
If the job is programming, I prefer to have employees as smart as
possible. Certainly there is programming that is more at a "grunt" level then
others, but all too often coders who cannot learn or adapt simply break things.
With device drivers in particular one tends to need a good understanding of how
computers work in general, and how hardware tends to interface to the OS. Sure
you can cut and paste sample drivers from a book, but when (not if) something
goes wrong, you need someone who can reason decently as to what the problem
might be.
Lawson English
m...@alcyone.com wrote on 11/22/00 12:45 AM:
> Lawson English wrote:
>
>> Ah, but I DO know a little UML and am working to get proficient. The
>> problem
>> was to draw the way pointers behaved when reversing a singly-linked
>> list.
>
> Are you saying that you don't know how to reverse a singly-linked list?
> That's a pretty standard interview question.
At the time, I didn't. Had I not blanked, I probably would have been able to
derive it, it's pretty trivial.
Graham Perkins
> >someone who has to learn, I'm going to pick the person who already
> >knows.
>
> >On a side note, I don't care how much non-object-oriented experience a
> >person has, if I need them to use Java and be truly proficient with it,
> >it's gonna take them a year (or more) to really get it. If I have to
> >saddle another programmer with training that person, I've lost a lot of
> >capacity!
>
> >Another example...take a "mainframer" for instance. I don't care how
> >much experience they have programming on a mainframe - if I need
> >someone doing C++ under UNIX, that's a serious change in mentality. I
> >work with mainframers and trust me, when it comes to things like OOP
> >and UNIX, they don't get it.
>
Agreed. Very troubling.
If you believe the industry press, you'd think that the computing
industry is constantly desparate for skilled personnel, and improved
quality from existing staff. With attitudes like the above, certain
quarters in industry are ensuring that they will only ever recruit
narrowly skilled individuals who have no ability to learn rapidly
or transfer their skills from one area to another.
Steve's notions of developers who "take them a year (or more) to
really get it" indicates a poor understanding of relevant skills.
Get hold of the right people and you'll find they can "get it" on
a new language/system in a couple of days, and "get it" with a
completely new paradigm in a week or two.
And what's so unique about C++ and Unix that makes them so
different from mainframes? I wonder which mainframes Steve
is familiar with that don't support C++ and other OO languages,
or don't support unix-like processing and scripting?
Graham Perkins
> Just checked on the history of UNIX. It was a scaled-down version of
> MULTICS, originally called "UNICS" designed to run on smaller systems.
You've learnt a different history than I have!
The version I read (in a few articles by Kernighan) was that the
*name* "Unix" was a play on the name "Multics". It wasn't a scaled
down version of anything, but was designed and written from the
bottom up. Originally it was a document management system, written
in layers to enhance portability. (only the kernel needs re-write
in different assembler language for port)
> Still, the distinction in MY mind between PC and Big Iron has
> been that "BIg Iron" was meant to run with multiple users, while
> the PC design was "one user, one computer" and ...
Sure, but Steve Wilbur was making distinction between mainframe
and unix system. For example, mainframe has good memory
management, multi-processing, lotsa hardware i/o channels, so can
support large numbers of concurrent users and tasks. Unix running
on a decent box (say, VAX, Silicon Graphics, RS600) differs in
that .. er .. well .. um .. let's leave that one aside for the
moment.
More importantly, a single Unix user with large amount of local
memory can run apps. with full bit-mapped graphics, eg with
X-Windows. Whereas a mainframe user can use a client terminal
with big memory or DMA and run bit-mapped graphics apps. with
X-Windows .. hmmm ...
Aha! I've got it! Mainframe developers can use their machines
as whopping great big servers and concentrate on processor and
sequential i/o bound applications with the client software running
on a different machine and handling human interaction elsewhere.
Whereas Unix developers .. er .. can use their machines as whopping
great big servers .. etc.
Peter Goddard
>
> This is getting ridiculous!
>
> I've been out of work for about 4-5 years due to illness, and can't find a
> job.
>
Maybe you need to sign up with some agencies to try
and get the number of interviews up. They tend to
take a CV and re-work it and present it to
potential employers. That way they are working on
your behalf and the employer knows more about you
than the more speculative approach.
Another approach is to be a contractor. That way,
an employer can take you on for a specific job
for a short time. You can use that to sure up
your CV.
If you are writing GUI applications maybe you can
take them on CDROM to an interviewer. Show them
at the interview what you can do. Or get a web
page with samples on it.
>
> [maybe I can get a job in India...]
>
I think all Indian IT specialists are coming to Europe !
> --
> Taught myself Calculus when I was 15 and I can't get a job programming
> anything in a cowboy town.
> --
Best of luck in integrating !
Cheers
Peter.
--
Please remove SpamMeNot when replying to deter would be spammers.
' Fishing is a good sit ... spoilt '
Jani Kajala
The first thing which you should write is a proper CV, and maybe post it to
some of your friends (or better yet, foes) for evaluation. From your
description I didn't get have you had any real jobs or has programming been
a (possibly part-time paid) hobby for you. I didn't notice your education
either. List always the most recent and important things first. Listing the
oldest things first gives an impression that you are living in the past.
You definitely shouldn't mention any stuff like "I have written a 24-bit
TIFF reader." because it gives an impression that you have not been in any
real-world size project. Of course TIFF reader might be an important
component in many applications but at the end it is still only a single
component which has no meaning without context. For which company did you
write the TIFF reader? In what project it was used? Same thing with stuff
like that friend of yours in Disney. (briefly: cut the crap)
Get a bit up-to-date before applying for a job. Check the usual requirements
for jobs you're interested in and then learn the stuff a bit so you can say
that you have the basic skills. You have probably made some programs while
learning, you can show them. Of course nobody expects you to master the
skills but you need to know at least the basics so you are able to discuss
about the topic and you have a clue how to solve a problem related to the
area. Also you don't need to get a job to learn, nobody stops you learning
on your own. You could maybe get involved in some open source projects,
you'd get some recent reference to your CV and maybe valuable experience
from the stuff you are learning.
Also, as many have pointed out: Friendly and just a bit humble attitude is
maybe the most important factor. If you don't respect them don't expect them
to respect you.
Good luck,
Jani Kajala
http://www.helsinki.fi/~kajala/
"Lawson English" <eng...@primenet.com> wrote in message
news:B63DA81D.DFFA%eng...@primenet.com...
> This is getting ridiculous!
>
> I've been out of work for about 4-5 years due to illness, and can't find a
> job.
>
> Background:
>
> Started Pascal classes in 1984. Chuck Allison of the C/C++ Journal was one
> of my Pascal teachers -he remembers me from 15 years ago as one of his top
> students, if that says anything. Learned C in 1986. First C projects
> included a speedup utility for Apple file://e disk-copying using file://e
Hi-res
> graphics card memory, if present, followed by writing C interfaces to
Apple
> file://e AppleSoft ROM graphics calls. Used both 6502 assembler and HyperC
for
> these.
>
> Wrote utilities, desk accessories and applications in C and 68K assembler
on
> Mac+ & patched the Mac ROM to circumvent a flaw in the Mac+ SCSI
> implementation that prevented a 68020 accelerator board from using a SCSI
> hard drive.
>
> Wrote a writing tutor for University of Arizona prof that used Think
> [Object] Pascal and the TCL (Think Class Libraries).
>
> Wrote a 24-bit TIFF reader using CodeWarrior C++ and PowerPlant framework
> and tested convolution algorithms in C and 604 PowerPC assembler on
PowerMac
> 9500. Used monitor registers to examine CPU behavior in greater detail.
>
> Wrote a HyperTalk interface for Apple's QuickDraw GX graphics library
using
> C.
>
> Done smattering of web-based stuff such as PHP=>PHP3/mySQL=>postgreSQL
> translation.
>
>
> Helped various people in various ways to enhance/debug/etc Mac-based
> projects:
>
> Know Pre-MacOS X well enough that I can diagnosis some problems over the
> telephone and fix them (e.g., a snail-slow animation on an LC II was
caused
> by an improperly optimized CopyBit call. The fix was to "put zeros in
every
> parameter where it made sense, thereby avoiding pixel-per-pixel
color-space
> translation -speeded it up by a factor of about 20-30).
>
> A guy from Disney Imagineering (@Squeak Central) asked me to look at the
Mac
> Mozilla code to see if I could tell why the Squeak (SmallTalk) browser
> plug-in wasn't working right on the Mac. The problem wasn't with Netscape,
> but with the fact that the Mac implementation of Squeak was using the full
> path-name every time a shared library was evoked, thereby triggering a
> little known feature of the Shared Library Manager that would initialize
a
> new copy of the plug-in, rather than using the copy already loaded (I
didn't
> find that, he did, but we both kicked ourselves over missing it).
>
>
> Etc.
>
>
>
> I'm currently enhancing C++ skills, Java, CGI, HTML, Python, Perl, SQL,
etc.
> Learning Visual C++, Delphi, generic Windows programming, etc. Have a
> quadruple-boot 7300/180 using MacOS 8.6, 9.0, MacOS X and Linux. Learning
> Apache administration in Lunix. Learning NeXT technologies on MacOS X (DR4
> since the 7300 won't boot the beta). Learning Squeak Smalltalk.
>
>
> Looking for ANY programming job in the Tucson, AZ area in the Will Work
for
> Food wage-range. Will accept Phoenix area jobs if they pay considerably
more
> (I need to commute to Tucson to see my family at least once a week).
>
>
>
> My price range should be indicated by the title of the article.
>
> I've interviewed with people who seem impressed by my background and then
> send me form letters informing me (after meeting in several interviews)
that
> my initial answer to initial question disqualifies me (e.g., no embedded
> systems experience, AFTER an engineer let slip that they were willing to
> train).
>
> I've informed total idiots that rather than attempting to port a
multi-media
> conversion app from Windows to the Mac for a ludicrous $4000, I'd rewrite
> Apple's QuickTime sample translation code for free to accomplish the same
> thing in exchange for a reference and had them turn me down! (never called
> them an idiot to their face, mind you).
>
> I've had CENSORED engineers at CENSORED company tell me that they needed
me
> to maintain a driver-control/test app in Visual C rather than let me
rework
> the GUI in C++ while keeping the driver portion in C "because "C++ can't
run
> drivers fast enough" -they later informed the headhunter that I obviously
> didn't understand C very well (presumably because I informed them that my
> background in C Windows programming wasn't good enough to maintain and
> extend the project in that language while my ability to handle C++ GUIs
> would allow me to factor the app appropriately into GUI and C driver code
> for easy maintenance).
>
> I've had idiots turn me down for a OOP/D/A position because I didn't know
> how to diagram an algorithm to reverse a singly-linked list, even though
> I've had over 10 years (off and on) experience with O-O, and they were
> looking for an O-O analyst to help them translate a project from PHP into
> Java (I'm systematically applying my chess problem visualization skills to
> learn to visualize the entire problem set of Sedgewick so someone can't
pull
> THAT CRAP excuse on me ever again).
>
> I had one company turn me down for a Web Objects position because "I
didn't
> know Java well enough."
>
>
>
> Is it just me, or are Tucson area employers really this stupid?
>
> 14 years with procedural languages (Pascal and C). 14 years with Mac
> programming. 4 different assembly languages (VAX, 6502, 68K, PowerPC). 10+
> years with object-oriented technologies (using Think Pascal and Think C &
> CodeWarrior C++). Less than 1 year with C++, although is that REALLY an
> issue given my OOP experience?
>
>
>
> My salary range is $10/hour and up in Tucson. I'm even willing to dye my
> hair so prospective managers won't be intimidated by someone 20 years
older
> than they are.
>
>
> [maybe I can get a job in India...]
>
>
gen...@hexdump.org
: *name* "Unix" was a play on the name "Multics". It wasn't a scaled
: down version of anything, but was designed and written from the
True, but I can see where he was coming from. The whole rasion d'etre was
that MULTICS was simply too big, and taking too long ... so they decided
to design something similar, that was lighter/tighter and would get done
faster.
David Burgun
(in message <3A1BB046...@dmu.ac.uk>):
> Steve Nester wrote:
> Steve's notions of developers who "take them a year (or more) to
> really get it" indicates a poor understanding of relevant skills.
> Get hold of the right people and you'll find they can "get it" on
> a new language/system in a couple of days, and "get it" with a
> completely new paradigm in a week or two.
>
You really can't put a time on it in terms of days, weeks, months, years. I'd
say the "learning curve" is depandant on how long to takes you to write a
fairly complex "Module", fit it into the rest of the system, have it crash
and burn, fix it and get it working. At this point you have EXPERIENCE of the
actual job, development system, new language and should have developed a
"feel" for the other people on the job, their roles and what they (and you)
will be working on this week and next week (and if you're lucky maybe next
month).
If the time to write the module would take X units of time to complete by
someone who is working on the project already. Y units for someone new but
has the relevant skills already and Z for someone new that doesn't have the
relevant skills.
If the Y time is large, then this indicates a poorly managed or pooly
designed project. But this will affect *ANY* newcomer.
The actual time for Z is entirly dependant on:
1. The developer in question, if they put in extra hours at the start they
can shorten this time. If they take some classes in the new language this
will help too.
2. The state of the project documentation.
3. How well designed the project is. If there are many, complex inter-module
dependancies then this will take *ANYONE* longer.
4. How well the project is managed.
5. How much "Legacy" Code is around.
In short, it's a two way street, if the enviroment is good then a person
without the required skills will get up to speed quickly. I have worked on
projects where I needed to learn something new, sometimes it's taken weeks
and sometimes months.
Sometimes you can be have a project which uses a different language but needs
a skill you have previously acquired, for instance, one job that was in C++
needed a lot of low level graphics/image processing functions, so what I was
really doing was taking something that I knew a lot about and just adding a
Shell. This was a good break into C++, since I could show that the thing they
were really after (some pixel crunching) was happening and I was now
developing a C++ API for it.
> And what's so unique about C++ and Unix that makes them so
> different from mainframes?
Well, in the case of Unix it's too inflexible or unweildy to be used on
"mission critical" systems.
And in the case of C++ it is too uncontrolable to be used to Application
Programming.
By "Mainframe" I mean the type of machines used by Banks, Credit Card
companies, Energy companies, Insurance companies, Telephone Companies, etc.
These use systems like IBM 390's and a whole host of mini-computers all doing
different I/O and
I wonder which mainframes Steve
> is familiar with that don't support C++ and other OO languages,
> or don't support unix-like processing and scripting?
These system might exist in Universities or Science Labs, in the real world
"Mainframes" do not run Unix and/or C++.
It really depends on your definition of "Mainframe", to me it doesn't really
denote one computer, it denotes a whole bunch of computers all working in
parallel.
Cheers
Dave
David Burgun
(in message <3A1BB433...@dmu.ac.uk>):
> Lawson English wrote:
>> Just checked on the history of UNIX. It was a scaled-down version of
>> MULTICS, originally called "UNICS" designed to run on smaller systems.
>
> You've learnt a different history than I have!
> The version I read (in a few articles by Kernighan) was that the
> *name* "Unix" was a play on the name "Multics". It wasn't a scaled
> down version of anything, but was designed and written from the
> bottom up. Originally it was a document management system, written
> in layers to enhance portability. (only the kernel needs re-write
> in different assembler language for port)
From what I've read, Unix and C were really just a big joke.
Apparently, the authors were impressed with the cool multi-tasking of MULTICS
and the natrual beauty of the Pascal language. One of them had recently
finishing reading a book called "Bored with the Rings", a nasty, cheap parody
of the classic "Lord of the Rings" and thought it would be a hoot to commit
the same kind of crime against MULTICS and Pascal. Which they did and called
them Unix and C. Later on when management actually thought it was *good* and
bought into it big time, they were blown off their feet and thought it was a
*REAL* hoot!
If this is true (and looking at Unix and C, I sometimes cannot beleive that
it isn't true, I mean who would invent the Unix/C syntax UNLESS they were
doing it as a joke!) then what we are left with now are the remains of that
joke! Just think of the cost to the industry!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If it's true, then GOOD GOING GUYS, Andy Kaufman has NOTHING ON YOU!
---Dave
David Rifkind
<NOdbur...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 22 Nov 2000 3:55:31 -0800, Graham Perkins wrote
>(in message <3A1BB433...@dmu.ac.uk>):
>
>> Lawson English wrote:
>>> Just checked on the history of UNIX. It was a scaled-down version of
>>> MULTICS, originally called "UNICS" designed to run on smaller systems.
>>
>> You've learnt a different history than I have!
>> The version I read (in a few articles by Kernighan) was that the
>> *name* "Unix" was a play on the name "Multics". It wasn't a scaled
>> down version of anything, but was designed and written from the
>> bottom up. Originally it was a document management system, written
>> in layers to enhance portability. (only the kernel needs re-write
>> in different assembler language for port)
>
>From what I've read, Unix and C were really just a big joke.
>
>Apparently, the authors were impressed with the cool multi-tasking of MULTICS
>and the natrual beauty of the Pascal language. One of them had recently
>finishing reading a book called "Bored with the Rings", a nasty, cheap parody
>of the classic "Lord of the Rings" and thought it would be a hoot to commit
>the same kind of crime against MULTICS and Pascal. Which they did and called
>them Unix and C. Later on when management actually thought it was *good* and
>bought into it big time, they were blown off their feet and thought it was a
>*REAL* hoot!
This is complete nonsense. The book is called "Bored *of* the Rings".
--
The children were playing 'Other Kind of People', and I asked them what
it meant. "We play we're the Other Kind of People, and nobody can tell
we're not regular people," they said. "They can't even guess it."
Doug Way
Graham Perkins wrote:
>
> Lawson English wrote:
> > Just checked on the history of UNIX. It was a scaled-down version of
> > MULTICS, originally called "UNICS" designed to run on smaller systems.
>
> You've learnt a different history than I have!
> The version I read (in a few articles by Kernighan) was that the
> *name* "Unix" was a play on the name "Multics". It wasn't a scaled
> down version of anything, but was designed and written from the
> bottom up.
True, although Lawson's original description wasn't totally unreasonable, maybe a little simplistic. UNIX was scaled-down in the sense that it was a smaller OS than Multics, but it was written from scratch. Multics was also similar to UNIX in that it was also used more for engineering apps rather than traditional business (mainframe) apps.
I actually worked on a Multics application for a brief period (no, that doesn't make me as old as you might think... this was only 8 years ago). Many of the common UNIX commands ("ls", "pwd", etc.) were borrowed from Multics, but the command naming was actually a lot more consistent in Multics than the hodgepodge in UNIX. Multics also had more powerful security/file access control, but UNIX had a much better process model, etc... they were pretty different. (Oddly enough, this Multics app was replaced by a Smalltalk app which is still going strong.)
> > Still, the distinction in MY mind between PC and Big Iron has
> > been that "BIg Iron" was meant to run with multiple users, while
> > the PC design was "one user, one computer" and ...
I guess I've always thought of the three areas as being pretty separate... the mainframe world (IBM, OS/390, Cobol, etc), the "engineering workstation"/UNIX world, and the PC world. (I've never actually worked in the mainframe world, other than Multics, which was kind of in a nether region.) The three worlds overlap each other more and more as times goes on, as Graham described...
- Doug Way
dway at riskmetrics.com
David Burgun
(in message <4EUS5.1584$zf2.2...@news.uswest.net>):
> On Wed, 22 Nov 2000 18:35:19 GMT, David Burgun
> <NOdbur...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> On Wed, 22 Nov 2000 3:55:31 -0800, Graham Perkins wrote
>> (in message <3A1BB433...@dmu.ac.uk>):
>>
>>> Lawson English wrote:
>>>> Just checked on the history of UNIX. It was a scaled-down version of
>>>> MULTICS, originally called "UNICS" designed to run on smaller systems.
>>>
>>> You've learnt a different history than I have!
>>> The version I read (in a few articles by Kernighan) was that the
>>> *name* "Unix" was a play on the name "Multics". It wasn't a scaled
>>> down version of anything, but was designed and written from the
>>> bottom up. Originally it was a document management system, written
>>> in layers to enhance portability. (only the kernel needs re-write
>>> in different assembler language for port)
>>
>> From what I've read, Unix and C were really just a big joke.
>>
>> Apparently, the authors were impressed with the cool multi-tasking of
>> MULTICS
>> and the natrual beauty of the Pascal language. One of them had recently
>> finishing reading a book called "Bored with the Rings", a nasty, cheap
>> parody
>> of the classic "Lord of the Rings" and thought it would be a hoot to
>> commit
>> the same kind of crime against MULTICS and Pascal. Which they did and
>> called
>> them Unix and C. Later on when management actually thought it was *good*
>> and
>> bought into it big time, they were blown off their feet and thought it was
>> a
>> *REAL* hoot!
>
> This is complete nonsense. The book is called "Bored *of* the Rings".
>
Opps! Yes that's the correct title, the rest is correct though?
David Burgun
(in message <9GRS5.23415$751.7...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net>):
> In comp.lang.c++ Graham Perkins <g...@dmu.ac.uk> wrote:
>> *name* "Unix" was a play on the name "Multics". It wasn't a scaled
>> down version of anything, but was designed and written from the
>
> True, but I can see where he was coming from. The whole rasion d'etre was
> that MULTICS was simply too big, and taking too long ... so they decided
> to design something similar, that was lighter/tighter and would get done
> faster.
>
Well they didn't really suceed then, since Unix did/does not get the job done
faster!
Actually I think one of it's main "selling" points was that it was "portable"
to newer hardware. I'm not sure if this was a side-effect or planned. Anyway
that's the main reason it spread, in terms of reliabilty, error recovery,
usability and intuative HI Unix is/was years behind it's predecessor. Much to
the annoyance of many programmers and users.
---Dave
gen...@hexdump.org
: Apparently, the authors were impressed with the cool multi-tasking of MULTICS
I believe that was an april fools joke.
gen...@hexdump.org
: faster!
You misunderstood. I meant that they wanted it to be finished before
Multics was finisehd, and that much was true.
IE they figured that designing an OS that didn't offer as much in the way
of functionality but had similar design motives, could be pushed out
*before* MULTICS was, even tho it was started after.
: Actually I think one of it's main "selling" points was that it was "portable"
: to newer hardware. I'm not sure if this was a side-effect or planned. Anyway
: that's the main reason it spread, in terms of reliabilty, error recovery,
Yes and no. The main reason it was picked up was because it was given
away to universities and the like. The source code was available so it
was extended quite heavily. And that begat the portability.
Tim Slattery
>
>From what I've read, Unix and C were really just a big joke.
>
>Apparently, the authors were impressed with the cool multi-tasking of MULTICS
>and the natrual beauty of the Pascal language. One of them had recently
>finishing reading a book called "Bored with the Rings", a nasty, cheap parody
>of the classic "Lord of the Rings" and thought it would be a hoot to commit
>the same kind of crime against MULTICS and Pascal. Which they did and called
>them Unix and C. Later on when management actually thought it was *good* and
>bought into it big time, they were blown off their feet and thought it was a
>*REAL* hoot!
Absolutely absurd! Unix and C predate both Pascal and "Bored of the
Rings". No truth to this story at all.
--
Tim Slattery
Slatt...@bls.gov
Kaz Kylheku
wrote:
>From what I've read, Unix and C were really just a big joke.
You were likely duped by a humorous article that has been circulating around
the net for years.
>Apparently, the authors were impressed with the cool multi-tasking of MULTICS
>and the natrual beauty of the Pascal language.
Actually, the inventors of UNIX previously *worked* on MULTICS. The invention
of Pascal took place roughly in parallel with UNIX. Development on UNIX
started in 1969. Wirth came out with Pascal in 1970. Thompson and Ritchie
developed a language B, which was BCPL hacked down to fit into 8 Kwords of RAM,
with some inspiration from PL/I, Algol and maybe some Fortran. E.g. PL/I has
the /*...*/ comments. Algol 68 has declarations in which you can specify
initial value, like INT a = 42, b = 5; semicolons for statement separation and
sequencing, additive assignments like a +:= 3; block structure and such. The
language B then evolved into C sometime prior to 1974. BCPL itself was a
stripped down CPL (Cambridge Programming Language). Any similarities between C
and Pascal, it's simply due to some common roots.
>If it's true, then GOOD GOING GUYS, Andy Kaufman has NOTHING ON YOU!
Am I gullible to believe that anyone can be this gullible? ;)
You can set yourself straight by reading these:
The Development of the C Language (Dennis Ritchie):
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html
Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language (Brian Kernighan):
http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html
The page http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/index.html has these links and other
interesting ones.
Greg Faron
>
> Lawson English wrote:
>
> > Hmmm... A point, except that I made it clear that I was the wrong
> > PERSON to
> > do the job they wanted done due to my lack of C WIndows GUI
> > experience, ...
>
> If you say that you're the wrong person to do a job in an interview, why
> would you possibly expect to get it?
I said the same thing to an interviewer about 14 months ago; told him
I knew little to nothing about the stuff he was looking for. I got a
call the next day asking if I would mind having another interview, this
time over a business lunch. With my protestations on record, I
grudingly accepted the job, and I still LOVE it here! Best damn work
environment I've ever been in, and I'm learning so much.
--
-Greg
David Burgun
(in message <igVS5.24918$751.7...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net>):
> In comp.lang.c++ David Burgun <NOdbur...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Well they didn't really suceed then, since Unix did/does not get the job
>> done
>> faster!
>
> You misunderstood. I meant that they wanted it to be finished before
> Multics was finisehd, and that much was true.
>
> IE they figured that designing an OS that didn't offer as much in the way
> of functionality but had similar design motives, could be pushed out
> *before* MULTICS was, even tho it was started after.
It shows! But as far as I know some version of MULTICS was running quite a
while before the first Unix came on the scene.
>
>> Actually I think one of it's main "selling" points was that it was
>> "portable"
>> to newer hardware. I'm not sure if this was a side-effect or planned.
>> Anyway
>> that's the main reason it spread, in terms of reliabilty, error recovery,
>
> Yes and no. The main reason it was picked up was because it was given
> away to universities and the like. The source code was available so it
> was extended quite heavily. And that begat the portability.
>
True.
David Burgun
(in message <QdVS5.24900$751.7...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net>):
> In comp.lang.c++ David Burgun <NOdbur...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Apparently, the authors were impressed with the cool multi-tasking of
>> MULTICS
>> and the natrual beauty of the Pascal language. One of them had recently
>
> I believe that was an april fools joke.
>
Who knows?! All I can say is that if there were a better April Fools joke
then Unix and C, I've yet to see it! Ahhhh, there it is C++!
---Dave