I would love to try it out just for kicks, but from what I can tell, there is no way to develop for iOS without owning a physical Mac machine, even with MonoTouch. I am not shelling out for a new box just for fun. As far as doing serious development, have you seen the price point for most apps in the appstore? If you want more than 99 cents per download you are already overpriced. That's not including apple's cut ...

I guess it's a little off the original topic, but there is no reason that software engineering should not be considered "real" engineering. It's just that (at least in my experience) 90% of the software dev out there is done by unorganized, fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants organizations with no processes and no rigorous design or testing. Most of the time it's just so easy to make changes that there is no incentive to make sure you get it right the first time. And in those cases, no, I agree that the term "engineer" does not apply in any way. But when software is done with careful planning and processes there is no reason not to consider it engineering. That's my two cents, anyways. And to the original poster, I made 25K my first job out of school with a comp sci degree and I thought it was way too low at the time, but in retrospect getting my foot in the door at the right company and getting the real world experience proved to be a great move. And the real question is how much do you make now and how many other offers do you have? $22/hr is a whole lot better than $0/hr.

Hey man, it could be worse, I went from VS 2008 and some sweet WCF stuff straight to .... wait for it ... VB 6 in classic asp! I didn't even know it still existed. At least I was able to use VS 2005 for it. It's really still too soon for me talk about it.