It's been a great ten years

Lots of things change over a ten year period. On the Internet, that's close to a century of real time.

And I've had absences from Perlmonks, but I keep coming back for the thoughtful replies and the local brand of humour. The beer's good, too. :)

If I can pass on one piece of advice, it's "Never stop learning." In the world of high tech (which is clearly where software development lives), if you stop learning, you go stale. And stale folks aren't employable, either in their current job, or their next job.

Don't have time? Make time. Watch a little less TV, read a little less Fail Blog, and stay current. After all, it's only your career.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

Comment on It's been a great ten years

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Re: It's been a great ten years by Argel (Prior) on Dec 12, 2011 at 22:26 UTC
Hey!! Ten years for me too!! And it's still one of the best community type sites on the Internet!! (^_^) Happy Monkday!! You've been here 10 invigorating years. You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake. Bob Hope Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks My deviantART gallery	[reply]
Re: It's been a great ten years by fisher (Priest) on Dec 13, 2011 at 06:48 UTC
Don't have time? Make time. Watch a little less TV, read a little less Fail Blog, and stay current. After all, it's only your career. I disagree at this point. Want to watch TV? Well, watch it. Want to read something not related to your job? Read it. If you set artificial boundary to yourself, you fail. If you try to spell yourself a mantra like 'I really really REALLY don't want a candy' - you fail. And remember, you can't make more than 24 hours per day. After all, it's only your life.	[reply]
Re^2: It's been a great ten years by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Dec 13, 2011 at 13:33 UTC
I disagree at this point. I both agree and disagree with this point. Living naturally can be healthy and good for your psyche. Discipline and artificial limitations can take you to new ground. One of the greatest inspirations to stretch and try new things in my life has been simple boredom. Hosing down that part of your psychological drives with mass media as a matter of course leads to atrophy.	[reply]
Re^2: It's been a great ten years by talexb (Chancellor) on Dec 13, 2011 at 17:57 UTC
If you set artificial boundary to yourself, you fail. I'll buy that. Personally, I've just lived through a couple of years of hell. I'm now (hopefully) coming out the other end. Yes, it's OK to hang out and relax in front of the TV once in a while, but when evenings become a TV marathon because you can't tear yourself away from Repo Games or 1,000 Ways To Die, it's time to quit. I realized the problem, cancelled my cable in September and got a ton of stuff done, including getting a new home file server set up (with RAID-1), something that I've had good intentions of doing .. for the last 18 months. It's a matter of finding the right work/life balance. IMO I was spending too much time frittering, and not enough time being productive. That's now changed, but I need to stay on top of it. That may not be necessary for you, but it's what I need to do for myself. Alex / talexb / Toronto "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds	[reply]
Re: It's been a great ten years by locked_user sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Dec 21, 2011 at 15:31 UTC
Goin’ somewhere, Talex? Oh well, ’tis the season, after all. “Should auld ... a-quain-tance be ... for-got...” (I’ll stop singing now; you’re welcome.)
Re^2: It's been a great ten years by talexb (Chancellor) on Dec 21, 2011 at 17:34 UTC
Goin’ somewhere, Talex? I'm working on a virtualization project using libguestfs right now, and I'm using Perl only peripherally .. and I haven't done any web development in a few months, after doing nothing but that since the late 90's. That's OK -- Perlmonks continues to be an excellent place to visit for intelligent conversation. I'll be back. ;) Alex / talexb / Toronto "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds	[reply]