The Obsessed Programmer

In the 1950s, NPR ran a radio series called This I Believe. Journalist Edward R. Murrow invited Americans of every description to write a synopsis of their beliefs in 500 words or less and send it in for public airing. Those who were selected were brought on the show to read their essay on national radio for about three minutes. All essays submitted were saved and submitted to the Library of Congress as a snapshot of what one American considered his bedrock beliefs at that time in history.

Before the show began, the concept was widely criticized and was considered a certain flop by others in the radio biz. Instead, it was a smash hit. Millions of Americans listened each week to hear the beliefs of their fellow Americans, and the published collection of the essays rocketed to the #2 best-selling book in America, second only to the Bible.

Dan Gediman and Jay Allison have revived the show.

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I have horrible eyesight. At a distance of 20 yards, I could only distinguish my father and mother from each other by height. I’ve worn glasses since about the 2nd grade. I’ve always been so squeamish about touching my eyeballs that I’ve never even considered wearing contact lenses.

That all changed yesterday. I realized that the ski resorts here in Park City open this weekend (weather permitting), and I can’t wear my glasses underneath ski goggles. So I took the plunge and went in to get a contact lens exam.

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When the tagline on a website is “127.0.0.1 For IT Pros,” you know it’s for geeks.  I signed right up.

Aggreg8 used to be the name of an RSS feed aggregator.  The domain was recently sold to Microsoft for $5,000 to use as an IT networking site–sort of like a MySpace for geeks.

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Software “engineering” is very different from every other field of engineering–it’s done almost freehand. In the relatively early days of software development, the gears began turning to make software development a licensed trade. Imagine a world where programmers are required by law to pass a certification exam in order to write software. It makes a certain degree of sense, I suppose; millions of lives are at the mercy of software every year in hospitals, airplanes, and traffic lights. So how is it that such a system is not in place?

The property of software engineering that sets it so far apart from other areas of engineering is the low barrier to entry. Within 19 years of their invention, personal computers resided in over 50% of American homes. Today that figure is much higher. Excellent software development tools are often free. This is not the case with, say, mechanical or civil engineering. The software to support those professions is prohibitively expensive for a hobbyist, and the actual execution of the craft (construction) is laughably far from the reach of an enthusiast.

Because the barrier to entry in software development is so low, hobbyists are everywhere, in varying degrees of mediocrity. A very few develop incredible skills with no professional training. Most, however, are complete incompetents claiming that their self-taught abilities are somehow more… 1337 than any formal Computer Science education.

With about five years’ professional experience under my belt, I’ve come to the following conclusions about the role of education in programming prowess: (more…)

Every year, Park City, UT has one of the largest ski swaps in the United States. I was just there yesterday, and I was shocked by how many people were there. When I arrived, there were about 500 people waiting in line in front of me just to get in.

Snowboarding is a new thing for me. What I mean is, it will be a new thing for me the first time I do it. I’d already invested $375 in a season pass to the Park City Mountain Resort before this ski swap, so I was committed to buying hundreds of dollars worth of gear. I went with a veteran snowboarder, hoping to mooch off of his knowledge to find out what I really need.

I lost track of him within five minutes.

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Microsoft’s gaming division has made much ado over the so-called “10-foot user experience.” People are starting to use their PCs for entertainment in a new way, Microsoft claims. Rather than sitting in front of a 19″ monitor with a keyboard and mouse, they are attaching their PCs to big-screen TVs to watch movies and play simple games.

Since my recent acquisition of a Dell Axim PDA, I’ve become much more interested in the opposite end of the spectrum: the “3-inch user experience.” As I’ve scoured the web for handheld entertainment on my PDA, I’ve been shocked by the poor quality of PocketPC games.

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Hello World!

There, I’ve done it. I’ve satisfied my inner programmer’s need to do a Hello World application in my newest technological toy. And now, by way of introduction:

I am an obsessed programmer. I began programming at the tender age of six. One Sunday afternoon we were driving home from church. Dad (a programmer at that time) said to Mom, “Laura, we need to teach these kids how to program computers.” I was six! Who says that about a six-year-old?

Well, Dad whipped up a quick program on our Commodore 128D to ask my name. I typed in “Ben” and the computer replied, “Hello, Ben.” I about fell out of my chair.

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