It's only funny because it's true. I have been fighting the good fight for years, but these days I keep getting pulled further and further away from my keyboard to handle vendor contract negotiations, functional/technical requirement documentation, "beta" demos at conferences and all the other mind-numbing details of software development, when all I really want to do is CODE! It's depressing that all the good coders end up being managers and meeting fodder while the newbies/junior/intermediate programmers actually get to experience the joy of code.

Frankly, I haven't taken a shred of what I learned with me after I graduated. I've been coding since I was 8, starting on a Tandy TRS-80 with BASICA and moving up the ranks over the years to more modern machinery and languages. In the end, regardless of education, I'll always hire someone who has a passion for the field. You can't teach passion! I sure as hell can teach you dozens of different design patterns, but if you aren't interested, I might as well be taking to the wall. Every great programmer I've ever worked with was more or less self taught. Continuous learners, inquisitive by nature and unafraid of taking risks....that's the recipe for a great programmer! I can't tell you how many egg-heads with Masters or Doctorates I've had to suffer through. When we get into crunch-time and a package has to be deployed that night, these academic folks would rather spend time discussing why we should have implemented a Facade or Observer pattern and how we can reduce the number of objects in the heap if we refactor this or that...Come on guys, lets get this god damn thing out the door and we'll revisit it in our next iteration. They don't see the forest, or even the trees, they worry about the one wildflower that just sprung up and squabble over whether it is a native or invasive species. Programming is hard. It doesn't matter if Microsoft continues to release products like LightSwitch or Razor that further obfuscates the technology, programming will always be hard. You had better enjoy it because if you don't, spending two days chasing down some obscure sequence of events error that corrupts the stack, but is working fine on your machine and a bank of virtuals, but is reproducible on their computer, only to find out that the user is missing a patch released 18 months ago because their IT department determined that it would break a 10 year old inventory tracking system written for Windows 98 by some company that is now out of business and this nimrod calls you every 20 minutes for a status update, telling you that it is in his critical path and he's dead in the water until you push out a fix just might drive you to drink! Uhhhh...... so I've heard.

I use DVDFab to rip DVDs and remove CSS, Macrovision, etc. DVDFab HD Decrypter is free and updated regularly to address new security provisions. Then I use either ffmpeg or handbrake to encode in H.264. Lately, I've been using handbrake (the last update was nearly a year ago!), but ffmpeg just released a new version on June 15 that they claim significantly improves H.264 encoding speed. Looks like I'll be downloading ffmpeg 0.6 and testing both the speed and encoding quality. Generally, I target 1GB per movie (main movie only) and H.264 provides the best compression with the least amount of degradation. As far as players go, I typically use GOM (developed by GOM Labs) because it supports just about any type of audio/video file (if you don't have the codec, it tells you and provides a link to get it). VLC is not bad either, I just prefer GOMs interface. All the software packages that I mentioned are free, so at least you don't have to worry about buyers regret. Download, install, play and if you don't like it, remove.

Nearly everyone who has a desire to learn how to program can do so (with varying degrees of success). The thing that I have learned is that there are those who have a natural ability to think logically and can break down complex problems into smaller, more manageable chunks. These individuals (and they are not always programmers, or even technical for that matter) will be the ones that have a greater likelihood of success. Logical thinking can be taught, but it is a matter of retraining the individuals thought process - which is no small feat. Those who have this innate logical thought process have a much higher ceiling, and schooling or experience can enhance it; those without it start off at a lower ceiling. Furthermore, experience, not college, is the greatest teacher. No amount of schooling can completely prepare you for the rigors of development in a mission critical environment. Great programmers were not born great, they were born with an aptitude and desire for programming, but they are a product of the mentorship and environment that they came from. The best programmers I have worked with can all point to a single, more senior programmer who taught them the intricate details of software development somewhere in their past. Add to that the experience of working with great teams on successful (or even disastrous) projects and you have the perfect recipe for terrific programmers. Finally, and this can not be taught, the most critical piece of the puzzle is passion and desire. The individual who is internally motivated to learn new techniques, new technologies and better, more efficient ways of development will always be a star. Even the most skilled programmer in a team will quickly be left behind in our ever-changing field unless he/she has a desire to improve their skill set. I would gladly hire someone into my team that demonstrates a passion for their field, a clear, logical thought process and a few years of applicable experience. The education part of the equation simply does not factor into my decisions at all. I have seen too many "career students" with no aptitude to give any weight to the education section of the resume. Give me someone who can and more importantly wants to be taught, rather than someone who knows it all. With that being said, I would describe myself as self taught, but I had a lot of mentors and guidance along the way.

jgasm wrote:

everyone is just lazy and useless now and the world will probably self-destruct when whatever prior generations have all died away

- Senseless hyperbole. What I am saying is that previous generations of software engineers, the same group that built the software and hardware foundations that we take for granted today, were intellictually inquisitive pioneers relentlessly driven to extract the maximum value out of the modest capabilities of the hardware and software of the time. They were the ones that invented, revolutionized and drove into the mainstream ideas and concepts that others were disparaging as senseless and infeasable. Many of those old-timers were severely undervalued financially or were simply dedicated hobbyists. There was a large percentage of the talent pool at the time that exhibited all of the above traits. Today, that percentage has shrunken immensely. There will always be superstars in every generation, but there are just fewer of them now. There is simply a change in the motivational drivers today - the differentiator is that for one group it's a job, for the other it is/was an obsession. Does that mean that the Mellenium generation us incapable of innovation, or will self-destruct as you say? No, as a matter of fact, I expect that this generation will revolutionize technology and introduce new ideas that will make electronics inseparable in every day life. This is the generation that was raised with technology, and so will be the ones that will find new, practical uses that other generations would never have though of. Laziness, not necessity, is the mother of innovation. Laziness brought us the remote control, and for that, I'm grateful.

Touche! It probably IS the same gripe. On the other hand, I do notice that the newest generation tends to be more innovative in the application of technology in every day life. That's probably because technology was so ubiquitous while they were growing up. Again, I'm sure that the same comment was made against the GenY and GenX'ers.

Having risen through the college system and through the corporate ranks here are some observations: Colleges are not focusing on the fundamentals of programming, namely Systems Analysis, Workflow Logic, Structured Programming, the Low Level details of WHAT the code is ACTUALLY doing and finally the Human/Computer interaction basics (such as good UI design). I have seen a shift away from the detailed understanding of programming to a more high level practical understanding of the Framework/IDE that they are trying to teach. It seems this industry is trying to turn everyone into programmers by dumbing down the prerequisites and wrapping everything up in a shiny IDE that does a lot of the heavy lifting. This, ultimately, leads to lazy programmers who don't have the solid computer science and logical concepts to grasp what their code is doing at a low level. Unfortunately, we are creating a generation of script kiddies that can't code outside of an IDE that provides most of the programming structure/objects for them. For those who went through the Computer Science tracks during the 80's, I'm sure that you will agree that instructors were engaging in the same level of learning and discovery as the students. This led to a more inquisitive environment that made graduates more well rounded at both a conceptual and practical level. Many modern colleges have turned into maketing companies that tout courses in whatever the hottest platform of the day is (RUBY, .NET, etc.) and eschewing fundamental courses such as COBOL (don't laugh, even though it is an ancient platform, it is a great class for structured programming concepts), and C/C++ and even the more general Networking (TCP/IP) and Systems Analysis courses. Another observation, and this is more of a cultural phenomenon is that young developers today simply are not as driven to put in the hours to learn the details of their profession. Granted, I am broad brushing and there are A LOT of great programmers that recently graduated, but this Millenium Generation needs instant gratification and suprisingly lacks the dedication to their profession that previous generations had. Programmers from yester-year were enginneers first, always trying to make things better, to understand fully what was going on, to provide real value with the software that they created. Newer programmers are in the field because it pays well, has a high degree of job security and is relatively easy. Finally, and I mentioned this before, today there is a flood of IDE's, 3rd party c

Thanks Steve! As everyone who frequents this site already knows, the IT landscape changes every 18 months or so, meaning that developers must engage in constant learning cycles. It's because of this property, which is unique to IT careers, education and to a degree experience play less of a role than attitude. The ability and willingness to learn new techniques/technologies, the ability to communicate and work effectively in a team and passion for what you do are qualities that companies are starting to focus on during the interview process. Add to this the recent corporate trend of hiring developers that are capable of business analysis, end user communication and documentation efforts, it becomes quite clear that companies are demanding more from their developer groups than just programming prowess.

When I am interviewing developers, I'm generally more interested in their career experience. I am interested in how long they held their last position, did they grow in their position (ie. promoted from developer to senior developer, or senior developer to lead, etc). Finally I am interested in the scope of work that they engaged in. The best developers that I have encountered were mostly self taught, had exceptional career histories, had a long track record of success and promotions and took on jobs of greater complexity and company significance. More than the eduction and work experience though are the soft skills. I've always felt that I can teach you the technical skills to become successful, but I cannot teach attitude. The employees that differentiate themselves are those with a positive attitude, who are self motivated and have a passion for the field that they work in. I have turned down quite a few who were technically superior, had better educations, outstanding qualifications, but poor working attitudes. If the rest of the team does not want to work on a project with you because they don't like interacting with you on a personal or professional level, then you become an anchor that drags the whole department down. So, in order of importance (to me at least): 1. Attitude and soft skills 2. Work experience 3. Education

As many others have already stated, it is difficult to compare ASP(X) with PHP or any other technical platform without a consistent standard. If one were able to develop a PHP and ASPX website with exactly the same architecture and running on identical hardware the ASPX variant would perform better because there is no JIT compilation (I'm assuming the ASPX website would be precompiled of course). Even this scenario is unfair because ASPX runs with IIS and PHP generally runs with Apache. In the end, the architecture of the application's code coupled with the capabilities of the hardware it is running on will determine it's overall performance potential. Add to the mix the web delivery platform (IIS, WebSphere, Apache, etc.), the database provider (SQL Server 2000/2005, MySQL, Oracle), operating system (Windows Server, Unix, Linux, Solaris) and clustering options, you can see that direct comparisons are impossible, there are simply too many variables to account for.

Well said Gonzo. It seems that many programmers forgot why BASIC even came to be (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC[^] for a history lesson.) Remember that BASIC and susequent incarnations were designed to make programming more accessible to the masses. As with all things, the larger the population, the greater the likelyhood that you will have abusers of the system. Considering that VB was designed for those who could not or would not grasp the intricacies of C based languages, I think that it has been an incredible success. There are now many programmers who started with a VB or BASIC derivitive who would not have been a programmer otherwise. More Programmers = More Ideas = More Innovation The other aspect of VB that separates it from C based languages is the speed of development. Non-critical utility applications and one off projects can be written quickly by Junior or Mid-level programmers, thus freeing the Senior developers and allowing them to work on the mission critical and performance critical applications (which is where they should be focusing their energies anyway.) Finally with the advent of .NET and the CLR, the whole VB bashing is rendered moot. Whatever the language, be it VB or C#, it is all compiled into IL anyway. There are very few things that a C# developer can do that a VB.NET developer can not. Criticizing a developer for choosing the VB.NET toolset is just blind hippocracy. I would rather have someone develop in a language they they feel comfortable with than enforce any prejudice. In the end, the really good programmers can pick up any language, logic is logic.

I agree. As you get older, it becomes more difficult to keep up the enthusiasm required for learning new technologies, enduring tough deadlines, dealing with late night debugging sessions and all the other stresses related to development. Generally speaking, development is a young persons job. The more experienced (read older) professionals move towards architecture, project management and team leads. In these roles, some of the stresses of day-to-day development are reduced and a greater emphasis is placed on experience, design and human interaction. I still know a lot of older developers but they are the exception, not the rule.