I have worked for a lot of companies, large and small. The small ones were usually the best, as the space to work in peace was allowed, and the number of people making noise were limited. The largest with cubicle farms were the worst. Literally hundreds of developers working on different projects at once. In my current position we moved our entire development team to a different part of the building. The only people there are developers and there is no room for anyone else. It is quiet, loose, and comfortable. The best yet. My advise, invest in a good set of noise cancelling headphones.

This kind of thing makes me angry to be an American. Though I am certain it is not limited to us. I am baffled by someone who would put thier future in someone else's hands just because they said they would help them get a job. All I can think of is that there will be a multitude of Nigerians making money off of this one.

Ok, here is the thing about this. Programming is an inherentily artistic task. But one with a lot of technical attributes. My experience has shown a significantly elevated population of mental illness among programmers. This primarily shows up as anything from mild Aspergers Syndrome to full blown BiPolar. The reasons why this sort of person tends to fall into these sorts of jobs is pretty obvious when you study the breakdown of the traits of these illnesses. As for the medication, I have had the same issue. The Lexapro is a pretty common first line anti-anxiety/anti-depression medication. My experience with it was very similar to yours. I simply could not do anything creative. I could debug stuff ok, but creating anything new or original was practically impossible. I ended up speaking with my Psychiatrist about it and am now taking a combination of meds that has worked for me for over 3 years now. I still have my days, but everything is far better than it used to be. Drop me a message if you want to talk about it further.

When I was a kid I lived near there. My father was stationed in the mountain. I have been inside a few times. The Strategic Air Command was never based there. It was in Omaha neb. in a place affectionatly known as 'The hole'. As of the last year or so operations for NORAD have been moved away from the mountain and into the Denver / Colorado Springs area. It was decided that given the distributed nature of computing it was no longer necessary or cost effective to maintain a hardened location in order to provide continued operation in the case of hostilities. Oh, and it is cool. Nobody ever mentions having to pass through one of the largest Army bases in the country to get there though.

I did that once. Not with a baseball bat either. I was brilliant enough to do it with an axe. Sadly, I have to admit I was not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol. Just stupid.

Really, the language itself is just semantics. The underlying issue is to get a fell for how things are supposed to work. An expert with the language can still write crappy code. Think OO. Think Framework. As a very wise programmer once told me, 'Programmers are going to be cheap. Move up the food chain. Think architecture.'

This is a sore subject for me right now. I was just turned down for a job because I dont have a degree. I have been doing this for a VERY long time now, and this has frustrated me more than I could ever imagine.