I am trained as an electronics engineer, but now work as a programmer/analyst. How many engineers get an email when they arrive at the office stating that the equipment they built last year needs an update by this afternoon? That is why developers need compilers and error checking. If engineers had similar tools, trust me, they would use them.

I hear Runescape is still based on Java. If you have a 12 year old son, you may want to keep Java until after he discovers girls. I think the girls thing cures the need for Runescape pretty reliably. :-D

RCoate wrote:

I use wife 1.0

I hear the wife 2.0 upgrade is expensive and not guaranteed to fix the reporting issues. The upgrade costs 50% of assets, and alimony plus child support to boot. Personally, I will keep wife 1.0 even with it's reporting issues.

Nice effort, but you lack dust and heat trails. I have never seen anything that could fly without heat and dust.

Look at the open source Arduino micro controller. It runs about $30 and the C++ IDE is free. I had my first project up and running in short time. You may not get paid for building projects, but you will learn as you build. Post your projects to the web site, and you can have employers look at your work. Good Luck Don803

I go up and down the stairs twice a day. 100 feet at a time (12 flights of about 8 feet). It is enough to notice, but not enough to smell bad after I am done.

I have been working in private sector for 13 years doing IT work. The number I have seen is 2* and that pays the lights and rent and boss's salary and profit for the owner as will. I have never seen costs for servers and bandwidth on top of the hourly rate. My opinion is 2.5 plus hardware and circuits is WAY high. On the other hand, this is the government, and they print the money. Maybe that is how they roll.