Yeah...i did miss that...sorry... I agree...if you don't like what you do, you shouldn't do it.
I agree it takes a lot of hard work. I have been doing this for 13 years and I busted my backside to get where I am now. I learned BASIC back in 8th grade (which was 81-82...so yeah...you have a few years on me hehehe) when it was part of our science class which lead me to getting my first job when I was old enough to get my first computer, a C64. When I was in college, did COBOL, JCL(I never put those on my resume out of fear I might get a good job offer doing COBOL hehehe...I hated COBOL.), Pascal, Delphi, C, C++,Java, SQL and VB...taught myself HTML and Javascript...as well as VBScript. A designer friend of mine, who also knows CF, pointed me in the right direction with CSS. I take classes when I can when my family life allows it. I used to go to conferences all the time when they were in the Chicago area, but life restrictions keep me from traveling these days and going to the one I would love to go to, which seem to be concentrated on the west coast. I just can't afford to fly out to California and put down 1000 for a conference (I do like the $30 conference you guys were talking about...I wish it was closer). Doing contract work doesn't lend to taking time off, as I am sure you know...the economy hasn't helped that either. Chicago used to have a great conference industry until all the union fees killed it. When I was getting started in CF back in the last 90's, I used to go to several conferences a year as they had them all the time here and they were reasonably priced. I'll have to pick that up when I can afford to do so. Sounds like an interesting book. One of the things I lover about this field is having to learn new tech...though as of late, that has mostly been limited to learning what I need for the job and all the other stuff that I want to learn has kinda gone to the wayside. Speaking of work...time to head out. Hope you all have a great day ;-) Eric -----Original Message----- From: Sean Corfield [mailto:seancorfi...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 00:23 To: cf-talk Subject: Re: why is cf_builder so expensive? This thread is deteriorating and I'm afraid this email is going to sound a bit pissy. It's really not intended to but I'm just not sure how to respond to this line of thought without getting personal (and Eric and I got personal the last time this topic came up - I'm just not a very sympathetic soul sometimes...). Delete or read on at your peril. Sorry. On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 9:32 PM, Eric Roberts <ow...@threeravensconsulting.com> wrote: > I am sure you also make a lot more than I do (combined household that > is...especially if your wife has an MBA...mine is going for her CAN > certificate) Sean ;-) Charlie clearly reads better than you do - my wife does not work; I am the sole breadwinner. My wife hasn't worked in over 11 years (because I asked her to quit the job she hated - no one should do a job they don't enjoy). Do I make more than you? Almost certainly, I'm afraid. Over the years I've invested in my career, paying out of my own pocket to take training courses and go to conferences, as well as dedicating enough of my personal, non-work time to learn new technologies and improve my marketability. I expect I'm also waaayyyy older than you and just have more experience. I started in IT in about '82 while I was in college and I've been doing full-time IT for about 25 years now. I love technology. I've always loved technology. It's been my passion since I was a kid. I started with programmable calculators, then a correspondence course in Algol 60 (at my school - seriously!). At university I learned Basic, then Pascal, then about a dozen other languages. A friend gave me a job doing C programming after college. I pushed hard to work with C++ ('92) and then Java ('97). Recently I've pushed myself to learn a new language every year on my own time (Groovy '08, Scala '09, Clojure '10). Some of those I've been lucky enough to use at work as well. I buy a lot of books to improve my skills - they're tax deductible BTW. Every CF developer should buy and read "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" (and do the homework!). My copy is just out of reach right now but it's close by. It's an investment in yourself. Learn Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Clojure, Erlang, Haskell and apply them to your CFML programming. Anyone you look up to as an expert got there through hard work and self-investment. There's no magic. It's about hard work and priorities. You choose whether to improve yourself and what you'll achieve. CFML has been very good to many of us here - it's enabled us to make a living doing something we might never have thought was possible. But it shouldn't all be about CFML - don't expect CFML, or ColdFusion, or Adobe / Macromedia / Allaire to hand you your career on a platter... you have to invest too. Hmm, that sounds a bit like a sermon. Sorry, I warned you :) If you read this far, thank you. We make ourselves what we are. We choose to be better... or not. -- Sean A Corfield -- (904) 302-SEAN Railo Technologies, Inc. -- http://getrailo.com/ An Architect's View -- http://corfield.org/ "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:341517 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
