Oh, yeah. Didn't want to spend the extra time because of this and let them know. Got fired. C'est la vie.

I've had a number of sabbaticals, most worked out well. I highly recommend doing so. Got real good at windsurfing due to one forced sabbatical. Always gone back to software dev 'cause I like it and it puts food on the table. But, life is short. Go for it.

I'm sure lots of us receive job postings from many recruiters. I just thought I'd post this one because it made me laugh. 10 years minimum required for many, *very* particular skills?! Let me know if anyone on the planet would qualify. I'll be happy to send the original post if you want to respond :) Skills Required Demonstrated experience working with MS Dynamics Online CRM Platform (current versions preferred) Required 10 years Experience designing, developing and managing multiple enterprise level CRM applications Required 10 years Experience creating web services for enterprise MS Dynamics CRM Online applications Required 10 years Experience with CRM data replication to Microsoft SQL Server Required 10 years Experience with bi-directional integrations with multiple source systems. Required 10 years Experience with GIS integration with MS Dynamics Online CRM Platform Required 10 years Experience with batch document scanning and storing those images in Azure Blob Storage Required 10 years Must have enterprise application experience in setting up security roles for multi-level (county/state or similar) agencies. Required 10 years

Talk to me in four months.

1981 - Montana State University, CS 151, Pascal, Honeywell mainframe. Always like solving problems. Almost 40 years later, I still enjoy the challenge and the creativity.

Your subject line upset me [until I read the message].

Marc should be fired.

What about "CS 101" at your local community college or extension class?

You could consider telling the senior dev about the .HasValue property; knowledge share. Also, the correct English for "... an nullable ..." is "... a nullable ...". :)

I think Wolowitz was only about 10 at the time. Cut him some slack, eh?

It's great reading all these "old guy" stories [as an old guy]. My 2nd favorite story is how it took three of us to carry a 600 MB hard drive up three flights of stairs (the A/C often failed which of course meant the drives would often fail). There's another unit of comparison: let's see, three young men might imply the drives weighed about 150 kg (Someone want to check that for me? They were DEC VAX drives). That's roughly 4 MB/kg :)

I feel your pain. You feel my pain. (fortunately, I got a guy who knows a guy ... )

No, really, tell us how you feel :)

Nice assessment. When conducting interviews, I used to spend 10-15 minutes talking to the candidate, then ask them to go to the white board and write a simple function [e.g., reverse a string]. Found a number of great candidates that way. One may love programming but if one cannot converse/discuss a [small] problem then one is likely to fail in a group setting.

Yeah, I did one a few years ago. It totally sucked and was a waste of my time. I was presented with three problems and scored zero because my style is to do things right. I started into two of the three and ran out of time because I have the awful habit of thinking too much (the third problem was never going to fit into the [short] time allotted). Anyway, I write beautiful code and that company missed a good opportunity.

How many trips have you made around the Sun?

Buy two and remember to put one in your sibling's/friend's/whoever's garage. In the past, I've "traded" drives with someone. They backup and store their drive with me; I do the same with them.

Sounds dreadful.

Tell him there's no functions in C#.

Whether or not you're debugging: F6 - compile F5 - compile and run I hit F6 often - don't always need to run but I do it just to save files and make sure I didn't miss something that won't compile.