I'm not going to say I disagree with the above, but as far as "9 to 5" programmers, while I don't understand the mindset, I would like to offer this article:

They write the right stuff

This is a little background on the people who write the 400,000+ lines of code that make the Space Shuttle work. They're a "9 to 5" lot. They have no "star" programmers. They don't believe in the chaos theory of programming. They don't write in Perl (*gasp*).

Now, I do have a friend, who is a "9 to 5" programmer. She's an interesting woman, extremely intelligent, graduated highly in her class, makes a damn lot of money hacking Oracle as it relates to PeopleSoft. She only recently got a PC at home, and it's a company laptop, at that. She uses it to check her e-mail, and the weather before her flights (she commutes weekly to Kentucky). She doesn't tinker at home with it, does no educational programming, doesn't surf the net. She's long been a dear friend of mine, but I've never understood this mindset. I'm a total freakin' geek. When I'm not at work playing with PCs, I'm at home playing with PCs, or messing with embedded systems design, electronics, or tearing apart PCs.

How can this be? How can someone who is so capable with what she does have no interest outside of the office in computers? I know I don't understand, and knowing her for 18 years hasn't answered the question.

--Chris

e-mail jcwren

In reply to (jcwren) RE: Oh, this wonderful place by jcwren
in thread Oh, this wonderful place by BastardOperator

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