I'm a buyer, and yet I can say all of the same things:

I am not a ....

• Professional shopper.
• Money spender.

I am a ...

• Problem solver.
• Artist.
• Thinker.
• Philosopher
• Analyist.
• Scientist.

It's just a matter of what we apply our science to. Programming, trend analysis and buying, physics, economics, or even vacationing. ;)

"Art vs Science - I issue a restraining order, Science is to stay 100 yards from Art at all times"
Actually it was 'Religion' in my Simpsons misqote.
IMO there is no one midset that suits hacking. The mental attitudes are as wide and deep as the discipline itself. One moment you need to be an Artist, the next you need your 'Codemonkey Engineering' head on, and after spending a while as a Linguist, a Mathematician, or whatever else your specialisms bring to the mix you have to be a able to become an Ignoramus, a Consumer and Yahoo to utterly beat and stress test your application. That's a lot of brainwork for one day.

Who was the Turing award winner who said, if it's got to be called a science ... it isn't (referring to computer science)? ;)

I know that Larry Wall used that line in one of his talks. I'd always thought that the line was original to him. He could well have been borrowed from someone else, though.

Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah
Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me Maurice
Cause I speak of the pompitous of love

People talk about me, baby
Say I'm doin' you wrong, doin' you wrong
Well, don't you worry baby
Don't worry
Cause I'm right here, right here, right here, right here at home

Cause I'm a picker
I'm a grinner
I'm a lover
And I'm a sinner
I play my music in the sun

I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I sure don't want to hurt no one

I'm a picker
I'm a grinner
I'm a lover
And I'm a sinner
I play my music in the sun

I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I get my lovin' on the run
Wooo Wooooo

You're the cutest thing
That I ever did see
I really love your peaches
Want to shake your tree
Lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey all the time
Ooo-eee baby, I'll sure show you a good time

Cause I'm a picker
I'm a grinner
I'm a lover
And I'm a sinner
I play my music in the sun

I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I get my lovin' on the run

I'm a picker
I'm a grinner
I'm a lover
And I'm a sinner
I play my music in the sun

I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I sure don't want to hurt no one

Wooo Woooo

People keep talking about me baby
They say I'm doin' you wrong
Well don't you worry, don't worry, no don't worry mama
Cause I'm right here at home

You're the cutest thing I ever did see
Really love your peaches want to shake your tree
Lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey all the time
Come on baby and I'll show you a good time

Huh. I thought this was a K.D. tune. "The Beatless Sense Mongers" started it?

Originally done by a '50s doo-wop band, The Pompadours of Love. (jk)

I was so meditating on this just yesterday when i told eduardo that i should soon start looking towards Project Management. You see, i don't want to be a "construction worker" for the rest of my life -- i would much rather be an "architect".

I really am starting to think that "coders" are going to become less skilled in the future and rely on hooking together "canned solutions" to solve the bigger problem. And that is not only where the money is not, but it is also where the "thinking" is not as well.

When the future does arrive, i would rather be an "architect", especially since i have two BS degrees. :/

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

The problem is, there are very few Frank Lloyd Wrights, fewer wealthy patrons with the vision to give you free reign and, as yet, no equivalent of the architectural drawing for specifying your software design.

The architect can calculate--or in most cases, just consult a pre-calculated table to obtain--the size of his beams and know they will be sufficient for the task.

The software architect can have no such confidence. As yet, we have no way to accurately predict the loads we must cater for, and no way to quantify them if we settle upon an estimation.

Be wary of any suggestion that Project Management is a stepping stone to either job security or job satisfaction. Project management in software requires much the same set of skills as project management in any other field. It is about enforcing the whims of customers and upper management upon the daily lives of the do-ers, and insulating each from the other. A good filing system, time management, people skills, and a thick skin, are infinitely more important and useful than any amount of familiarity with Knuth or Turing.

It may be a stepping stone to upper management for the lucky few that excel at it, but if your joy is in programming, realise that you will rapidly leave it behind.

I agree that the future is likely to be gluing together canned solutions, especially as the demand for software increases, but most of these bread & butter jobs will rapidly move off-shore to countries with lower costs of living. The project management jobs will rapidly follow them.

However, the canned solutions will still need to be devised and written, and these R&D type jobs are where the money will be and these will tend to remain in the western societies for a while to come. The number of these R&D type positions is likely to remain pretty static whilst the rest of the software industry grows, and the people that will get these jobs are those that take inovative and unconventional views of the problems to be solved and are open to exploring uncharted waters.

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail

It reminds me of a joke a prof told me.

In a town, three seperate fires started in a town, not necessarily at the same time. One in a chemist's bedroom, another in a physicist's and a third in a computer scientist's room.

The chemist wakes up, measures the size of the fire, the heat and gets a flask of water and equally distributes the water over the fire to extinquish it.

The physicist wakes up, sees the fire. Fills the flask to the brim and douses the fire. Fire is out.

The CS dude wakes up, looks at it, determines the problem is solvable and goes back to bed.

Just my point of view. :)

I always find it inspiring to select my own way of solving a problem, trading between CPU cycles, memory footprint, disk I/O's, mantainability and what else can make the piece of code you write simply unique, and your own. Very often you can distinguish the 'touch' of a programmer by reading some code, seeing his/her own unique style.

Most of them find wat they do boring, just something you do for a living. What a pity they don't see the beauty hidden in what they're doing. And if you try explaining it to them, they look at you as if you were positively nuts.

I wonder if medieval artists (or artisans?) engraving churches were the 9-to-5 type looking for a better job.... and now we celebrate what they did as an achievement of humanity. Will this happen for CPAN contributors one day?

Dear Programming God, help me from becoming one with the machine.

Working for my company... It's like asking Michelangelo to paint houses. Sadly, most of us paint houses most of the time... it's just something we've got to do to find those little places where we can create a Sistine Chapel ceiling when no one is noticing.

yeah, of course they ask you painting houses. but doesn't it depend on how you paint the houses? didn't they ask michelangelo to please paint that chapel ceiling and the way he did made it special in the end?

of course the do have to give you enough freedom to make a sistine chapel out of painting the house, and seldomly they do so.

update:
oh yes, and for the artist:
I am all the things in this thread.

i once read about the japanese zen art of flower arrangement (ikebana). they meditate until 'everything is there' and they only have to put it the right way. sounds interesteing.

You must be master and win, or serve and lose,
grieve or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.
Goethe

You're a yob or you're a wanker -
Take your fucking choice
T.I.S.M.

And likewise, the vast majority of my jobs have been in code maintenance: not a sexy image there, but really, most of life is routine. That doesn't mean it has to be boring (although it usually is: I work with Java).

And too, I don't see much artful in most code I've written and/or maintained. Rather the opposite: unless a system was designed "well" (for some value of "well"), I'm quite wary of it and worried about it.

Rob

"Shaa!" ekshiish Pooh. "Eeyore eksisasguke ma paadurkakshingi sigadasurak in ekhirgarimguke melam ka Heffalump. Piglet shekhurakimguke ka angiin saamakengi kardami-ak."