You’re a programmer for a big corporation that makes, oh, I don’t know, aluminum cans, and there’s nothing quite available off the shelf which does the exact kind of aluminum can processing that they need, so they have these in-house programmers, or they hire companies like Accenture and IBM to send them overpriced programmers, to write this software. And there are two reasons this is so frightening: one, because it’s not a very fulfilling career if you’re a programmer, for a list of reasons which I’ll enumerate in a moment, but two, it’s frightening because this is what probably 80% of programming jobs are like, and if you’re not very, very careful when you graduate, you might find yourself working on in-house software, by accident, and let me tell you, it can drain the life out of you.... It costs so much money to hire these programmers—typically a company like Accenture or IBM would charge $300 an hour for the services of some recent Yale PoliSci grad who took a 6 week course in dot net programming, and who is earning $47,000 a year and hoping that it’ll provide enough experience to get into business school—anyway, it costs so much to hire these programmers that you’re not going to allowed to build things with Ruby on Rails no matter how cool Ruby is and no matter how spiffy the Ajax is going to be.
Read Morehow i feel about Flash
my other minion is a pagan superhero
so i enlisted him as a second minion, because i'm always looking to expand my small-but-mighty empire: here sláine is on my desk, joining forces with the tick, and my gargoyle pen holder.... i hate sterile-looking environments; they make me feel like someone's about to do surgery on my back when i'm not paying attention, because they're so clinical-looking and cold.... like sláine, my fashion choices, if i could have my druthers, would involve furry boots, jewelry, and as much as i hate to admit it, some really unflattering but comfy pants.
Read Moremy kind of game
from today's penny arcade: if that ever comes out, i am going to pwn all of you!
Read Moretrust me, i'm a designer
my favorite thing about the show is not what the redesigned rooms look like -- it's watching the designers wrangle their clients; in this case, the team of neighbors assigned to them. one thing i don't understand is why poor laurence llewellyn-bowen is the one designer none of the normal people want to work with, as he's my favorite designer on that show.... while design isn't transitive, the basic principles of design are, and that's what's lacking in so many projects i've seen, whether it's interior design, or graphic design, or art. he's got formal training in fine art. never underestimate the power of being able to draw your vision by hand, at a moment's notice, to convince a client.
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