Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

This has been an interesting thread.  David, Steve, and all of you, you 
have interesting things to share.


I really have not given all of this much thought... until now.  I have 
given it a little thought... through the years. I think I need to ponder 
it more now to see what comes of it.


I would say my BS degree from the UofA was a waste of time and money.  I 
really learned almost everything I needed to know at the JC down the 
street.


It has been a wild ride. I insisted in being in technology and have the 
road rash to show for it.  For a long time I had a love/hate 
relationship with technology.  Maybe that is just life.


Life has been a challenge.  I think technology has been more so than say 
being an accountant.


I miss the good ol days... I liked messing with Pascal and dBaseII.  The 
old days playing with my dual floppy, no hard drive, 640K of RAM, and 14 
inch monochrome monitor, and thinking of all the possibilities.


One thing I realize is I should have learned C in the very beginning.  
At the JC they used Pascal to teach programming.  I think they should 
have taught plain old C.  Make it a 2 semester course.  Teach the 
fundamentals the first semester, and get advanced in the second 
semester.


I've always looked at technology as a hobby that I could make money off 
of.  Maybe that is a short coming.  I really did not try to optimize for 
that... I was a leaf floating in the wind.  This has me thinking...


Anyway - Steve, I was stationed at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station 1976 
- 1977 - about a year and a half.  Cal was really nice back then.  The 
base was rural and the city had not built up around it yet.  I recall 
being on I5 on a Sunday afternoon and there were just a couple cars in 
sight.


I can only imagine working second shift as a programmer in Santa Monica, 
CA in that era and eating an old fashion burger.  Back in the day when 
CA was a great place to live and beef was still beef.  That sounds like 
a good life!!




On 2022-08-24 00:46, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:

On Tue, 2022-08-23 at 19:29 -0700, techli...@phpcoderusa.com wrote:


I've made friends with a guy who works at Walmart who tells me he used
to be a COBOL programmer and his job was sent to India.

About 5 years ago I met a guy at a local car show.  He was showing his
1960's Vette.  He told me he was a COBOL programmer.


It's offtopic, but this story fits in with what you just said.

A long, long time ago, when I was a fairly new programmer working
second shift, I
took lunch at All American Burgers on 10th and Wilshire in Santa
Monica. I had with
me a book on Pascal programming.

A homeless guy was wandering around the restaurant, talking loudly
with somebody I
couldn't see, making wild gestures. I steered clear and went to the
counter to order
my hamburger. The homeless guy drifted toward me, I assumed to 
panhandle me. But

when he got four feet from me, he looked at my book and said "Th
That's P Pascal,
it's a p programming language." (Gesture, gesture)

He continued, "I used to be a p programmer, b but I don't l like it any 
more."


Then he went back to animatedly talking with his buddy I couldn't see.

For a long time I wondered if I'd end up like him, especially after I
read Edward
Yourdon's book "Death March". That was 38 years ago, and I still talk
to myself only
when others can't hear me, so I guess I didn't meet the same fate as 
that guy.

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Re: Opportunity

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

On Tue, 2022-08-23 at 19:29 -0700, techli...@phpcoderusa.com wrote:

> I've made friends with a guy who works at Walmart who tells me he used 
> to be a COBOL programmer and his job was sent to India.
> 
> About 5 years ago I met a guy at a local car show.  He was showing his 
> 1960's Vette.  He told me he was a COBOL programmer.

It's offtopic, but this story fits in with what you just said.

A long, long time ago, when I was a fairly new programmer working second shift, 
I
took lunch at All American Burgers on 10th and Wilshire in Santa Monica. I had 
with
me a book on Pascal programming.

A homeless guy was wandering around the restaurant, talking loudly with 
somebody I
couldn't see, making wild gestures. I steered clear and went to the counter to 
order
my hamburger. The homeless guy drifted toward me, I assumed to panhandle me. But
when he got four feet from me, he looked at my book and said "Th That's P 
Pascal,
it's a p programming language." (Gesture, gesture)

He continued, "I used to be a p programmer, b but I don't l like it any more."

Then he went back to animatedly talking with his buddy I couldn't see.

For a long time I wondered if I'd end up like him, especially after I read 
Edward
Yourdon's book "Death March". That was 38 years ago, and I still talk to myself 
only
when others can't hear me, so I guess I didn't meet the same fate as that guy.
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Re: Opportunity

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

On Tue, 2022-08-23 at 22:33 -0700, Phil Waclawski via PLUG-discuss wrote:

> I am looking forward to seeing how our first 4 year degree (Data Analytics
> and Programming) pans out when it starts Fall 2023.

What's Data Anylitics? It sounds interesting.

SteveT
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Re: Opportunity

[David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss]

> Data Analytics and Programming

Is this the next iteration of Computer Science ?

The other day when I posted what I thought about CS degrees, it made me realize 
that most of what’s taught in traditional CS programs is really rooted in the 
practical limitations of hardware from the 60’s and 70’s. Today, most of what’s 
taught really doesn’t matter since hardware and computer bandwidth are WAY 
beyond most of the concerns that were taught back then.

If you think about it, on one hand, traditional CS training was designed to 
help us cram 25 pounds of stuff into a 3 pound bag within a specified 
time-frame, with no loss of fidelity, so to speak.

It think we’ve passed a point where this has become inverted. Your average 
phone today has more processing power than anything used teach CS topics prior 
to 2000. Today phones are like 25 pound bags, and using REST-based services 
over omnipresent wireless connections, we can build programs that are 
equivalent to 150 pounds of stuff and yet they only take up 3 pounds in the 
bag, leaving 22 pounds of unused resources.

They haven’t taught “structured programming” since "object-oriented 
programming" (OOP) became mainstream in the 90’s, and I’m not sure they even 
teach OOP today — it’s just “programming” now. 

Multi-threading used to be fairly arcane; today it’s a fairly common part of UI 
design that’s hot-wired to “live” back-end services.

Multi-processing used to be something that only CS graduate students messed 
with. Today you can buy a Raspberry Pi Pico for $5 that’s got a 1.6 GHz CPU 
composed of four independent CPU cores. Meanwhile, the stripped-down Linux 
distro that runs on it has the smarts built-in to “load-level” the activities 
of your code without any specific coding  practices neded on your part. 
Virtually every CPU made today is “multi-core” and some even have multiple GPUs 
on them. There are even specialized “low-energy” CPU cores for handling 
background tasks that don’t need as much attention (and energy) as the “main” 
cores. And none of it requires any specialized programming.

Traditional Computer Science is obsolete. What’s needed now is a better 
understanding of what’s out there in terms of available services, how to best 
leverage them in your app, and how to keep from inadvertently scooping up 50 
pounds of stuff that’s attached to your 3 pound program without being cognizant 
of what’s actually there.

-David Schwartz

> On Aug 23, 2022, at 10:33 PM, Phil Waclawski via PLUG-discuss 
>  wrote:
> 
> As a CIS (Computer Information Systems) Faculty at Mesa Community College, I 
> am of course biased. I do feel that we offer a good education at an 
> affordable price compared to the universities. With CIS, we focus more on 
> actually coding/making things than theory. So, you won't build compilers, but 
> you will build working programs, web sites, databases etc etc.
> 
> Education is definitely shifting, and the "taught yourself" crowd has done 
> well since the early days :) I tell my students that they need to work on 
> some projects for themselves, or work with another group on code/etc. 
> Employers want to see what you have done. The degree is great, but if that is 
> all you have, you are at a disadvantage. And learn to network if you truly 
> want to get a good job.
> 
> I am looking forward to seeing how our first 4 year degree (Data Analytics 
> and Programming) pans out when it starts Fall 2023.
> 
> Phil W
> 
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 7:08 PM Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss 
> mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> Sounds like a good school.  I do not think my JC experience was a s 
> good.
> 

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Re: Opportunity

[Phil Waclawski via PLUG-discuss]

As a CIS (Computer Information Systems) Faculty at Mesa Community College,
I am of course biased. I do feel that we offer a good education at an
affordable price compared to the universities. With CIS, we focus more on
actually coding/making things than theory. So, you won't build compilers,
but you will build working programs, web sites, databases etc etc.

Education is definitely shifting, and the "taught yourself" crowd has done
well since the early days :) I tell my students that they need to work on
some projects for themselves, or work with another group on code/etc.
Employers want to see what you have done. The degree is great, but if that
is all you have, you are at a disadvantage. And learn to network if you
truly want to get a good job.

I am looking forward to seeing how our first 4 year degree (Data Analytics
and Programming) pans out when it starts Fall 2023.

Phil W

On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 7:08 PM Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

>
>
> Sounds like a good school.  I do not think my JC experience was a s
> good.
>
>
> On 2022-08-22 19:13, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> > On Mon, 2022-08-22 at 15:35 +, der.hans via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> >> Am 22. Aug, 2022 schwätzte greg zegan via PLUG-discuss so:
> >
> >> Community college won't get you all the way to CS or EE, but you can
> >> get a
> >> bunch of the non-domain specific classes that way.
> >
> > You wouldn't believe all I learned at Santa Monica Community College
> > (SMC) in the
> > 1980's. Most important, I learned the program architecture tool of that
> > era,
> > functional decomposition. At SMC I learned to design both Cobol and
> > Pascal programs
> > using functional decomposition. And by learning Pascal, I had a leg up
> > learning C,
> > Python, Perl, Java, Javascript, and pretty much every language that can
> > be used
> > procedurally.
> >
> > SMC taught me systems analysis, the art, science and procedure of
> > querying for user
> > requirements, incorporating them into the design, planning the
> > project, writing the
> > specs, and implementing them in code. As a freelancer, this gave me a
> > huge
> > advantage, because I could dig down to what the user/customer REALLY
> > wanted, tell
> > them whether it was feasable within time/budget constraints, and then
> > deliver the
> > software.
> >
> > I don't know if community colleges are still as good, and I suspect
> > California
> > community colleges are the best, and SMC is among the best of them, but
> > my
> > experience tells me that a few courses at a community college can
> > jumpstart your
> > career.
> >
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Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

On 2022-08-23 12:46, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
On Tue, 2022-08-23 at 03:01 +, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss 
wrote:
The question that was posed morphed into something about the value of 
CS degrees

today. I don’t think they’re worth the time or cost to get one. 


I agree. More later...


Pretty much all of the work I’ve been hired to do since then (2005+) 
was based

entirely on the fact that I had 10+ years working with Delphi. 


How would you like to give an online presentation, on Lazarus, at the
GoLUG meeting
in early October or early November? I think it would be well received.


About CS degrees...

As I've mentioned a few thousand times, I learned to program at Santa 
Monica

Community College. In late 1986 I had to hire an assistant programmer
to help take
care of what ten years later would be called the client in what ten 
years later
would be called a client/server system. This client was written, by me, 
in Turbo
Pascal, which is an easy language, so I was looking for an entry level 
person
willing to work cheap. I put the word out, got 750 resumes, and called 
a few.


The test part of my interview consisted of the following:

In *pseudocode*, write a program to read lines out of one file, 
capitalize every
letter, and write them to a new file. You have 30 minutes, but if you 
hand it in

earlier it will count to your credit. Easy, right?

Several applicants had CS degrees from UCLA. Some claimed they could 
write a

compiler. Not one of the the UCLA grads could get it done in 30
minutes. Disgusted,
I recruited a couple of students from Santa Monica Community College.
They both did
it in 30 minutes or less. One was ideal, but she and I couldn't come 
close to

agreeing on salary.

Yeah, I'm not that impressed with CS degrees for real world
programming, and the CS
grads or undergrads I knew who were good would have been good if
they'd spent the
time clerking at a convenience store: They simply had what it takes, 
schooling

irrelevant.



Interesting statement.  I think programmers are like sport's players.

Some do really good in high school and go not further.
Some make it to college and go not further.
Others make it to the farm team  and go not further.
And then the select few get to make it to the majors.

Technology is a crazy place.  So many directions to go and things are 
constantly changing.  Kind of like being in a blender on high speed.


I've made friends with a guy who works at Walmart who tells me he used 
to be a COBOL programmer and his job was sent to India.


About 5 years ago I met a guy at a local car show.  He was showing his 
1960's Vette.  He told me he was a COBOL programmer.


I like technology... No I love technology, however if I had it all to do 
again...







SteveT

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Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

On 2022-08-22 20:01, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:

The question that was posed morphed into something about the value of
CS degrees today. I don’t think they’re worth the time or cost to
get one. Keith keeps trying to make my skills sound like I’m some
kind of super-hero or something. Thanks, but things took  weird turn
around 2004 and nobody seems to care much today.


I met David about 15 years ago at a PHP meetup at what I seem to recall 
was Walt's TV.  And yes I think David is very knowledgeable and skilled.




Early in my career (mostly in the 1980’s), the dominant attitude
was, “Hey, you have a CS degree! You can learn anything!” Nobody
cared much if I knew stuff already or not, they just expected me to
LEARN NEW THINGS QUICKLY. For example, I left Intel after 5-1/2 years
and went to work with Moto on the team porting Unix System V Rel 3 to
the 68020; I had never seen or heard of Unix or C prior to that. After
PC/MS-DOS hit the scene, the shells in Unix seemed like a breath of
fresh air! Given the attitudes in hiring today, there’s no way in
hell I’d be hired for that job even though I was great at it! (FWIW,
I got laid-off at both Intel and Moto.)

I went out on my own in the 90’s and was the primary architect and
developer at four startups. The amount of research I had to do for
them probably came close to qualifying for a couple of PhDs. I
absolutely LOVED it, but the politics SUCKED. Two of the companies
were imploded due to the egos of the investors; one had the life
snorted out of it because of the founder’s drug habit; and one came
so close to succeeding, but got unexpectedly bought up by Computer
Associates who put our software on a shelf in a back room because they
didn’t understand what made it different from other software they
were already marketing. (The founders tried valiantly to acquire it
back from CA for over a year, with no success. It was seen as
worthless to CA, but they saw it as a threat if it were to fall into
competitor’s hands.)

In 2000 I took a job at the ASU BioDesign Institute and worked there
for around 4 years. While I was there, I did get to take advantage of
lots of my compiler-related knowledge because it turned out that half
of the work I did involved writing import parsers for whatever crazy
data files Biologists working on their Master’s Degrees created.
They maybe had one programming class, and they were expected to write
all of the software needed to support their Master’s thesis. The
software I worked on needed to be able to import EVERY data file
format that someone at some university somewhere in the world
published as part of their thesis that was of interest to other
researchers anywhere in the world.

Pretty much all of the work I’ve been hired to do since then (2005+)
was based entirely on the fact that I had 10+ years working with
Delphi. (It could have been COBOL or FORTRAN.) Nobody gave a rat’s
ass about my education, background, patents, or any of that. Nobody
really cared what I had to say except as it related to
customer-specific programming requests that affected their
Delphi-based apps.

At one place, something I was totally capable of doing in a few months
was out-sourced at great expense to a team of peole at some company
that spend over a year and finally gave up ... and the other guy on
the team finished. (I had taken another job by then.) At another
place, I found some patterns that turned up over 100 bugs in code that
was easy to see once the code patterns were pointed out; but I was
basically was fired because I kept trying for 6 months to fix them and
was repeatedly told that only bugs reported by the customer can be
fixed. Seriously. They were more concerned with getting ISO-900x and
CMMI Level-3 certification than ensuring their code was bug-free. To
them, their PROCESS was more important than the PRODUCT it was used to
manage.

I’ve been hired several times and told EXPLICITLY that one of the
main reasons they were hiring me was to keep their asses out of the
fire by letting them know if there was anything I might find them
doing that was seriously in need of attention. I found plenty of
things at different places, and nobody wanted to hear about ANY of it.


At a few places, the code blew up and I was blamed. I later learned
that a lot of contractors are hired specifically as “fall guys”
for known problems that are about to blow up. Being able to blame the
contractors gets the managers off-the-hook and their bosses then
extend their budgets and schedules in ways they refused to do
previously. Turns out this is an old game in the world of engineering
contract work. Remember when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up
during launch? A lot of the people trying to alert upper management
about the potential problem were … contractors.

I am honestly fed up with how software companies are being run since
the whole "dot-com meltdown” in 2000.

All of this is to say, I don’t think a CS degree has been worth the
paper it’s printed 

Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

Sounds like a good school.  I do not think my JC experience was a s 
good.



On 2022-08-22 19:13, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:

On Mon, 2022-08-22 at 15:35 +, der.hans via PLUG-discuss wrote:

Am 22. Aug, 2022 schwätzte greg zegan via PLUG-discuss so:


Community college won't get you all the way to CS or EE, but you can 
get a

bunch of the non-domain specific classes that way.


You wouldn't believe all I learned at Santa Monica Community College
(SMC) in the
1980's. Most important, I learned the program architecture tool of that 
era,

functional decomposition. At SMC I learned to design both Cobol and
Pascal programs
using functional decomposition. And by learning Pascal, I had a leg up
learning C,
Python, Perl, Java, Javascript, and pretty much every language that can 
be used

procedurally.

SMC taught me systems analysis, the art, science and procedure of
querying for user
requirements, incorporating them into the design, planning the
project, writing the
specs, and implementing them in code. As a freelancer, this gave me a 
huge

advantage, because I could dig down to what the user/customer REALLY
wanted, tell
them whether it was feasable within time/budget constraints, and then
deliver the
software.

I don't know if community colleges are still as good, and I suspect 
California
community colleges are the best, and SMC is among the best of them, but 
my
experience tells me that a few courses at a community college can 
jumpstart your

career.

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Re: Opportunity

[David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss]

Like most folks, you were testing for the wrong skills.

The last job I had was Delphi-specific, and their “coding test” was very simple:

Write a program that uses a TStringlist, reads in a CSV file with 7 columns, 
sorts it on column 3, removes column 5, and saves the result to a file name 
xyz.dat. Something to that effect.

It took me about 10 minutes and it was maybe 20 lines of code.

Later on, after I’d been hired, the guy who interviewed me and gave me the 
test, said, “Oh, by the way, I just looked at the code you gave for your coding 
test. You passed.” I looked at him for a moment and shrugged. He said, "very 
few people do.” I asked “why?” He said, “Because they don’t know much about 
Delphi I suppose. Or maybe the power of stringlists."

I initially started to solve the problem by thinking about how to solve it in 
general; but re-reading it, I kept notincing it said to use a TStringList. It 
wasn’t there by mistake. Then I remembered that you can read CSV files into 
them directly using default settings, something a LOT of Delphi programmers 
don’t realize. It all hinged around knowing the features of TStringLists — 
which are probably THE single most used object in Delphi’s entire library. 
They’re sort of the Swiss Army Knife of Delphi programming if you’re 
manipulating any sort of text. 

I probably would not have thought about using a TStringList if it had not been 
mentioned, but I was glad it WAS mentioned. I mean … it simply wasn’t the first 
solution that came to mind.

Too many people want to hire for solutions in X and then ask candidates to 
solve an example problem that asks for solutions using Y. I’ve never understood 
that.

When I’m screening Delphi people, I ask them questions about solving problems 
using Delphi. Not “theoretical” but stuff I run into all the time … things that 
THEY should run into all the time if they’re working with Delphi.

Hardly anybody takes that approach. I don’t know why. Something like, “create a 
form with a DBGrid and Nav bar that displays the FishFact demo table” is like 
“Hello World” for database apps, and it’s amazing how many peole can’t do it!

Do you know how many people I’ve interviewed over the years for Delphi roles 
who provided resumes with tons of Delphi experience shown, yet they couldn’t 
even answer basic questions about the IDE or common library functions? I don’t 
even look closely at their resumes any more. If they apply, I give them four 
questions to answer that relate to our project, from simple to hard, and see 
how they respond. I don’t expect them to answer all four, but some can’t even 
answer one adequately.

None of this has anything to do with their educational level or background. 
Either they know what they say they know, or they don’t. And most people 
over-inflate their claims on the resume they turn in.

People with a CS degree don’t know any more about Delphi or C# or Java than 
those who don’t. But if you’ve been doing original programming (ie, writing 
tons of code) for a few years, there’s stuff you do repeatedly. It’s like 
playing the same few common musical bars on a piano. If they can’t play them, 
then they lied about their experience. They aren’t going to work out if the job 
involves a lot of original coding. 

If it’s for a maintenance role, then I’d give them examples with subtle bugs in 
the code and see how many they can find. Don’t ask them to write a bubble-sort 
function! Ask them to refactor a chunk of code that’s buggy, adding in some 
exception handling, and see what they do.

Having a CS degree won’t differentiate ANY of these candidates today.

There used to be a time when everybody reinvented the wheel. Those were the 
good ‘ol days. Today people search Google and rummage through StackOverflow for 
ready-made solutions. Even Microsoft has integrated an AI bot into Visual 
Studio that lets you search for code fragments scraped from GitHub to reduce 
coding time. Most such examples are over-simplified and incomplete, so I’m not 
convinced they’d save time over using a solid component library like what TMS 
Software and others sell for Delphi and C#, but when you have been given no 
budget to spend, someone has declared that your time is easier and cheaper to 
come by.

-David Schwartz


PS: no thanks on the Lazarus presentation. I’ve never used Lazarus. I might be 
persuaded to demonstrate building a web app using TMS WebCore, starting in 
Delphi then switching to Visual Studio Code. It’s written in Delphi, but 
translated to js that runs inside the web browser. WebCore isn’t free, but 
pas2js and  VSCode are. (See TMS Software to learn more about WebCore and their 
TNC library of cross-platform components.)




> On Aug 23, 2022, at 12:46 PM, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss 
>  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 2022-08-23 at 03:01 +, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>> The question that was posed morphed into something about the value of CS 
>> degrees
>> today. I don’t think they’re worth the 

Re: Opportunity

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

On Tue, 2022-08-23 at 03:01 +, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> The question that was posed morphed into something about the value of CS 
> degrees
> today. I don’t think they’re worth the time or cost to get one. 

I agree. More later...
> 
> Pretty much all of the work I’ve been hired to do since then (2005+) was based
> entirely on the fact that I had 10+ years working with Delphi. 

How would you like to give an online presentation, on Lazarus, at the GoLUG 
meeting
in early October or early November? I think it would be well received.


About CS degrees...

As I've mentioned a few thousand times, I learned to program at Santa Monica
Community College. In late 1986 I had to hire an assistant programmer to help 
take
care of what ten years later would be called the client in what ten years later
would be called a client/server system. This client was written, by me, in Turbo
Pascal, which is an easy language, so I was looking for an entry level person
willing to work cheap. I put the word out, got 750 resumes, and called a few.

The test part of my interview consisted of the following:

In *pseudocode*, write a program to read lines out of one file, capitalize every
letter, and write them to a new file. You have 30 minutes, but if you hand it in
earlier it will count to your credit. Easy, right?

Several applicants had CS degrees from UCLA. Some claimed they could write a
compiler. Not one of the the UCLA grads could get it done in 30 minutes. 
Disgusted,
I recruited a couple of students from Santa Monica Community College. They both 
did
it in 30 minutes or less. One was ideal, but she and I couldn't come close to
agreeing on salary.

Yeah, I'm not that impressed with CS degrees for real world programming, and 
the CS
grads or undergrads I knew who were good would have been good if they'd spent 
the
time clerking at a convenience store: They simply had what it takes, schooling
irrelevant.


SteveT

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Re: Opportunity

[David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss]

The question that was posed morphed into something about the value of CS 
degrees today. I don’t think they’re worth the time or cost to get one. Keith 
keeps trying to make my skills sound like I’m some kind of super-hero or 
something. Thanks, but things took  weird turn around 2004 and nobody seems to 
care much today.

Early in my career (mostly in the 1980’s), the dominant attitude was, “Hey, you 
have a CS degree! You can learn anything!” Nobody cared much if I knew stuff 
already or not, they just expected me to LEARN NEW THINGS QUICKLY. For example, 
I left Intel after 5-1/2 years and went to work with Moto on the team porting 
Unix System V Rel 3 to the 68020; I had never seen or heard of Unix or C prior 
to that. After PC/MS-DOS hit the scene, the shells in Unix seemed like a breath 
of fresh air! Given the attitudes in hiring today, there’s no way in hell I’d 
be hired for that job even though I was great at it! (FWIW, I got laid-off at 
both Intel and Moto.)

I went out on my own in the 90’s and was the primary architect and developer at 
four startups. The amount of research I had to do for them probably came close 
to qualifying for a couple of PhDs. I absolutely LOVED it, but the politics 
SUCKED. Two of the companies were imploded due to the egos of the investors; 
one had the life snorted out of it because of the founder’s drug habit; and one 
came so close to succeeding, but got unexpectedly bought up by Computer 
Associates who put our software on a shelf in a back room because they didn’t 
understand what made it different from other software they were already 
marketing. (The founders tried valiantly to acquire it back from CA for over a 
year, with no success. It was seen as worthless to CA, but they saw it as a 
threat if it were to fall into competitor’s hands.)

In 2000 I took a job at the ASU BioDesign Institute and worked there for around 
4 years. While I was there, I did get to take advantage of lots of my 
compiler-related knowledge because it turned out that half of the work I did 
involved writing import parsers for whatever crazy data files Biologists 
working on their Master’s Degrees created. They maybe had one programming 
class, and they were expected to write all of the software needed to support 
their Master’s thesis. The software I worked on needed to be able to import 
EVERY data file format that someone at some university somewhere in the world 
published as part of their thesis that was of interest to other researchers 
anywhere in the world.

Pretty much all of the work I’ve been hired to do since then (2005+) was based 
entirely on the fact that I had 10+ years working with Delphi. (It could have 
been COBOL or FORTRAN.) Nobody gave a rat’s ass about my education, background, 
patents, or any of that. Nobody really cared what I had to say except as it 
related to customer-specific programming requests that affected their 
Delphi-based apps. 

At one place, something I was totally capable of doing in a few months was 
out-sourced at great expense to a team of peole at some company that spend over 
a year and finally gave up ... and the other guy on the team finished. (I had 
taken another job by then.) At another place, I found some patterns that turned 
up over 100 bugs in code that was easy to see once the code patterns were 
pointed out; but I was basically was fired because I kept trying for 6 months 
to fix them and was repeatedly told that only bugs reported by the customer can 
be fixed. Seriously. They were more concerned with getting ISO-900x and CMMI 
Level-3 certification than ensuring their code was bug-free. To them, their 
PROCESS was more important than the PRODUCT it was used to manage.

I’ve been hired several times and told EXPLICITLY that one of the main reasons 
they were hiring me was to keep their asses out of the fire by letting them 
know if there was anything I might find them doing that was seriously in need 
of attention. I found plenty of things at different places, and nobody wanted 
to hear about ANY of it. 

At a few places, the code blew up and I was blamed. I later learned that a lot 
of contractors are hired specifically as “fall guys” for known problems that 
are about to blow up. Being able to blame the contractors gets the managers 
off-the-hook and their bosses then extend their budgets and schedules in ways 
they refused to do previously. Turns out this is an old game in the world of 
engineering contract work. Remember when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up 
during launch? A lot of the people trying to alert upper management about the 
potential problem were … contractors.

I am honestly fed up with how software companies are being run since the whole 
"dot-com meltdown” in 2000. 

All of this is to say, I don’t think a CS degree has been worth the paper it’s 
printed on since 2004 or so.

Compiler design is just a one-semester class. That, along with things like 
Database Design, Formal Automata Theory, Finite Math 

Re: Opportunity

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

On Mon, 2022-08-22 at 15:35 +, der.hans via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> Am 22. Aug, 2022 schwätzte greg zegan via PLUG-discuss so:

> Community college won't get you all the way to CS or EE, but you can get a
> bunch of the non-domain specific classes that way.

You wouldn't believe all I learned at Santa Monica Community College (SMC) in 
the
1980's. Most important, I learned the program architecture tool of that era,
functional decomposition. At SMC I learned to design both Cobol and Pascal 
programs
using functional decomposition. And by learning Pascal, I had a leg up learning 
C,
Python, Perl, Java, Javascript, and pretty much every language that can be used
procedurally.

SMC taught me systems analysis, the art, science and procedure of querying for 
user
requirements, incorporating them into the design, planning the project, writing 
the
specs, and implementing them in code. As a freelancer, this gave me a huge
advantage, because I could dig down to what the user/customer REALLY wanted, 
tell
them whether it was feasable within time/budget constraints, and then deliver 
the
software. 

I don't know if community colleges are still as good, and I suspect California
community colleges are the best, and SMC is among the best of them, but my
experience tells me that a few courses at a community college can jumpstart your
career.

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Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

On 2022-08-21 17:50, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:

On Sun, 2022-08-21 at 07:08 -0700, techli...@phpcoderusa.com wrote:


I think the Universities
will dry up.  


I   H O P E   S O !


M E   T O O ! ! !




Degree discrimination really frosts my petunias. Very little of the
programming I've
done or seen done couldn't be done by a fairly bright person, perhaps
with 3 or 4
programming courses in junior college. To me, the higher education
system is class
warfare, plain and simple. And I have a BSEE degree.


I would agree, especially PHP.  I think some make PHP more difficult 
than it needs to be.





I first looked at college in 1978 and that year it was $275 a semester
at the University of Arizona. I ended up going to junior college and 
it

was $100 my first semester the spring of 1979.


I took programming and business courses at Santa Monica Community 
College, for

$20/course. My income tripled, so both the state of California and I
laughed all the
way to the bank.



Nice!!



When I was first exposed to programming in 1983 a bachelor's degree 
was

required to be a programmer. I think that requirement is long gone.  I
think employers are looking for just skills.


1983 was the tail end of the glass house, IBM Mainframe era, which was 
almost a
monopsany. By 1985, with DBASE, Turbo Pascal, and the rise of 
affordable 286's,
the Kitchen Table Programmer made his or her move, running circles 
around the

mainframe programmers on minis or micros.


Interesting observation.  I started programming on dBaseII in 1986.  A 
manager gave me an Otrona Attache portable computer 
https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1=1227 telling me 
I was the only one who had any computer experience.  At that time I was 
working on an Associates degree in programming.


In 1986 I bought a Commodore 64 and the next year I bought an 8088 
garage clone that has 2 360M floppies and 640K of RAM.  A couple years 
later I got a Seagate ST-225 hard drive, which as I recall, was all of 
20MB and cost somewhere around $300.


I followed the dBase clones all the way to 2000.

I was exposed to Turbo Pascal in junior college and at the university.





But still, many employers screen out the
non-degreed. They claim it's because the graduate at least proved 
he/she could

complete something. But all too often, what a college degree proves is
you didn't
have to spend all your time supporting your family as a kid. By the
way, 1984 was
when I busted into professional programming: Whitesmith Pascal on a
PDP11/23 running
TSX multitasking over RT/11. The next year I started professional
programming in C.



Nice!!



I think self study is big today.  


Huge. And also these inexpensive online courses.



And if the economy does crash I'm
thinking that the next generation of programmers will be self thought
and might just be more inclined to be using Linux.


LOL, depends on the severity of the crash. If it's too bad the guy
knowing how to
grow crops, sanitize water, and buy/sell stuff will be on top.


I've heard that.  Don't think I'll become a farmer in my old age



But yeah, if it's
only like 1982 or 2008-2009, and there aren't enough rich kids to fill 
the

programming positions and they don't import hordes of H1-B's, then
yeah, self taught
will be more of a thing. By the way, it's already doable: I've seen
folks do it here
in Orlando.

Incidentally, I've seen a formula used, time and time again, for 
self-taught

programmers to succeed hugely:

1) Learn the technology to a level of plausible expertise.

2) Network, network, network.

3) Get yourself installed as a presenter at multiple 
shows/clubs/groups.


4) Network, network, network.

5) Lowball your way into getting your first client.

6) Network, network, network.

7) Whipsaw multiple clients to raise your rates.

8) Network, network, network.

9) Rinse, lather, repeat.


SteveT

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Re: Opportunity

[der.hans via PLUG-discuss]

Am 22. Aug, 2022 schwätzte greg zegan via PLUG-discuss so:

moin moin,


Hello,  Good question.  Where can you get a good CS degree on a budget?India? 
Europe? North America?thanks,Greg


MIT and some other universities have put their courseware online and
available for no cost. If you want the degree, you have to apply for and
pay for the program, but the knowledge is supposed to be sweat equity.

There are also MOOC ( multi something something courses ) for no or little
cost. MOOC might also be what MIT is using. They were invested in
something like that.

ASU has online degree programs. There's probably an in state discount for
Arizona residents. There is for the in person programs.

There's also the option of working for a university and getting free
tuition. I know several people who've done that. I think ASU also gives
spouse and children classes as well.

Community college won't get you all the way to CS or EE, but you can get a
bunch of the non-domain specific classes that way.

In town we also have UAT, but I don't think it's on the inexpensive side
of the scale.

In Europe many of the universities are essentially no cost in at least
several countries if you can qualify as a citizen or other class
elligible. Getting in might be difficult, or it might not. It's been a
while since I've looked at it.

ciao,

der.hans


   On Monday, August 22, 2022 at 07:27:37 AM MST, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss 
 wrote:



On 2022-08-22 00:17, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:

Not sure what good a CS degree is these days. Seems like all anybody
caress about today is “at least 3 years hands-on experience with xyz
and abc” to get hired for stuff.



I consider a CS degree as an engineer.  Those who follow this path can
do things the rest of us cannot do like create parsers, compilers, and
interpreters. Am I wrong?

I'm a programmer.  I do not have the skills of a CS degree holder.  You
(David) can do lots of neat things that I cannot.  I think your niche is
smaller if you want to do engineering class work.

I had a love/hate relationship with IT for a long time because I
struggled to find adequate W2 employment. I had to become a freelancer
to rise to my potential, and that could be a book.

I bet you could spend a couple months learning Kotlin, put up a website
and do freelance Kotlin development.

I have read articles that say freelancing will take over the world in
the future.  As companies start to realize they only need a core of
employees supplemented by freelancers, then that will become the norm.

It has been my experience that small businesses mostly hire freelancers
and have no IT staff.






I read an article today that was saying how Google has been working
hard to replace Java in the Android ecosystem with Kotlin. I’m sure
Java will be with us a long time, but learning Kotlin could open some
doors in the not-too-distant future.

Five years later, Google is still all-in on Kotlin

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/18/five-years-later-google-is-still-all-in-on-kotlin/
[2]

It’s been just over five years since Google first announced that it
would make Kotlin, the
statically typed language for the Java Virtual Machine first developed
by JetBrains, a first-
class language for writing Android apps at Google I/O 2017. Since
then, Google took this a
step further by making Kotlin its preferred language for writing
Android apps in 2019 — and
while plenty of developers still use Java, Kotlin is quickly becoming
the default way to build
apps for Google’s mobile operating system.

I suspect that when Google announces the first version of Android
written in Kotlin, it will open a huge demand for Kotlin programmers
with even 6 months of experience with it.

-David Schwartz


On Aug 21, 2022, at 7:08 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
 wrote:


On 2022-08-19 10:41, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
On Thu, 2022-08-18 at 15:52 -0700, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
wrote:
David,
You provide a bunch to think about.
What does this have to do with Linux?  We are on a Linux list and I
would guess most are not going to retool.
I'm 66 and do not think I will retool, so I am looking at some
simple
things that might make my life better while we enter a period of
chaos.
I am a PHP programmer and I know less about Linux than I would like
to.
For me the opportunities have to be in the realm of LAMP/LEMP.
PHP is so ingrained that it will be around for decades.  Eventually
it
will go the way of COBOL... AND COBOL is still around.  I think a
person
could make a career being a COBOL developer.
So I think the question is what are the opportunities for the Linux
admins and the associated technologies?
What I'm personally doing is developing a Troubleshooters.Com [1]
HTML/CSS
subsite in
preparation to teach online HTML/CSS classes to people who:
1) Understand that HTML, DOM and CSS are the basis of web
presentation, regardless
of higher layer tools used,
2) Want a teacher instead of just taking a programmed online course,
3) Don't want 

Re: Opportunity

[greg zegan via PLUG-discuss]

 Hello,  Good question.  Where can you get a good CS degree on a budget?India? 
Europe? North America?thanks,Greg
On Monday, August 22, 2022 at 07:27:37 AM MST, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss 
 wrote:  
 
 

On 2022-08-22 00:17, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> Not sure what good a CS degree is these days. Seems like all anybody
> caress about today is “at least 3 years hands-on experience with xyz
> and abc” to get hired for stuff.
> 

I consider a CS degree as an engineer.  Those who follow this path can 
do things the rest of us cannot do like create parsers, compilers, and 
interpreters. Am I wrong?

I'm a programmer.  I do not have the skills of a CS degree holder.  You 
(David) can do lots of neat things that I cannot.  I think your niche is 
smaller if you want to do engineering class work.

I had a love/hate relationship with IT for a long time because I 
struggled to find adequate W2 employment. I had to become a freelancer 
to rise to my potential, and that could be a book.

I bet you could spend a couple months learning Kotlin, put up a website 
and do freelance Kotlin development.

I have read articles that say freelancing will take over the world in 
the future.  As companies start to realize they only need a core of 
employees supplemented by freelancers, then that will become the norm.

It has been my experience that small businesses mostly hire freelancers 
and have no IT staff.





> I read an article today that was saying how Google has been working
> hard to replace Java in the Android ecosystem with Kotlin. I’m sure
> Java will be with us a long time, but learning Kotlin could open some
> doors in the not-too-distant future.
> 
> Five years later, Google is still all-in on Kotlin
> 
> https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/18/five-years-later-google-is-still-all-in-on-kotlin/
> [2]
> 
> It’s been just over five years since Google first announced that it
> would make Kotlin, the
> statically typed language for the Java Virtual Machine first developed
> by JetBrains, a first-
> class language for writing Android apps at Google I/O 2017. Since
> then, Google took this a
> step further by making Kotlin its preferred language for writing
> Android apps in 2019 — and
> while plenty of developers still use Java, Kotlin is quickly becoming
> the default way to build
> apps for Google’s mobile operating system.
> 
> I suspect that when Google announces the first version of Android
> written in Kotlin, it will open a huge demand for Kotlin programmers
> with even 6 months of experience with it.
> 
> -David Schwartz
> 
>> On Aug 21, 2022, at 7:08 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
>>  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 2022-08-19 10:41, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>> On Thu, 2022-08-18 at 15:52 -0700, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
>> wrote:
>> David,
>> You provide a bunch to think about.
>> What does this have to do with Linux?  We are on a Linux list and I
>> would guess most are not going to retool.
>> I'm 66 and do not think I will retool, so I am looking at some
>> simple
>> things that might make my life better while we enter a period of
>> chaos.
>> I am a PHP programmer and I know less about Linux than I would like
>> to.
>> For me the opportunities have to be in the realm of LAMP/LEMP.
>> PHP is so ingrained that it will be around for decades.  Eventually
>> it
>> will go the way of COBOL... AND COBOL is still around.  I think a
>> person
>> could make a career being a COBOL developer.
>> So I think the question is what are the opportunities for the Linux
>> admins and the associated technologies?
>> What I'm personally doing is developing a Troubleshooters.Com [1]
>> HTML/CSS
>> subsite in
>> preparation to teach online HTML/CSS classes to people who:
>> 1) Understand that HTML, DOM and CSS are the basis of web
>> presentation, regardless
>> of higher layer tools used,
>> 2) Want a teacher instead of just taking a programmed online course,
>> 3) Don't want to pay the price of coming to a face to face class.
> 
> Very nice!! Based on what I am reading and hearing I think there will
> be continued demand for this type of learning.  I think the
> Universities will dry up.  It might take a while.  Looks like a year
> at ASU is almost $13,000
> https://admission.asu.edu/aid/resident-first-year [3]  Who can afford
> that?
> 
> I first looked at college in 1978 and that year it was $275 a semester
> at the University of Arizona. I ended up going to junior college and
> it was $100 my first semester the spring of 1979.
> 
> By 1990 UofA was just over $1000 a semester. 4 times what it was just
> 12 years prior.
> 
> When I was first exposed to programming in 1983 a bachelor's degree
> was required to be a programmer. I think that requirement is long
> gone.  I think employers are looking for just skills.
> 
> I think self study is big today.  And if the economy does crash I'm
> thinking that the next generation of programmers will be self thought
> and might just be more inclined to be using Linux.
> 

Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

On 2022-08-22 00:17, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:

Not sure what good a CS degree is these days. Seems like all anybody
caress about today is “at least 3 years hands-on experience with xyz
and abc” to get hired for stuff.



I consider a CS degree as an engineer.  Those who follow this path can 
do things the rest of us cannot do like create parsers, compilers, and 
interpreters. Am I wrong?


I'm a programmer.  I do not have the skills of a CS degree holder.  You 
(David) can do lots of neat things that I cannot.  I think your niche is 
smaller if you want to do engineering class work.


I had a love/hate relationship with IT for a long time because I 
struggled to find adequate W2 employment. I had to become a freelancer 
to rise to my potential, and that could be a book.


I bet you could spend a couple months learning Kotlin, put up a website 
and do freelance Kotlin development.


I have read articles that say freelancing will take over the world in 
the future.  As companies start to realize they only need a core of 
employees supplemented by freelancers, then that will become the norm.


It has been my experience that small businesses mostly hire freelancers 
and have no IT staff.







I read an article today that was saying how Google has been working
hard to replace Java in the Android ecosystem with Kotlin. I’m sure
Java will be with us a long time, but learning Kotlin could open some
doors in the not-too-distant future.

Five years later, Google is still all-in on Kotlin

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/18/five-years-later-google-is-still-all-in-on-kotlin/
[2]

It’s been just over five years since Google first announced that it
would make Kotlin, the
statically typed language for the Java Virtual Machine first developed
by JetBrains, a first-
class language for writing Android apps at Google I/O 2017. Since
then, Google took this a
step further by making Kotlin its preferred language for writing
Android apps in 2019 — and
while plenty of developers still use Java, Kotlin is quickly becoming
the default way to build
apps for Google’s mobile operating system.

I suspect that when Google announces the first version of Android
written in Kotlin, it will open a huge demand for Kotlin programmers
with even 6 months of experience with it.

-David Schwartz


On Aug 21, 2022, at 7:08 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
 wrote:


On 2022-08-19 10:41, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
On Thu, 2022-08-18 at 15:52 -0700, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
wrote:
David,
You provide a bunch to think about.
What does this have to do with Linux?  We are on a Linux list and I
would guess most are not going to retool.
I'm 66 and do not think I will retool, so I am looking at some
simple
things that might make my life better while we enter a period of
chaos.
I am a PHP programmer and I know less about Linux than I would like
to.
For me the opportunities have to be in the realm of LAMP/LEMP.
PHP is so ingrained that it will be around for decades.  Eventually
it
will go the way of COBOL... AND COBOL is still around.  I think a
person
could make a career being a COBOL developer.
So I think the question is what are the opportunities for the Linux
admins and the associated technologies?
What I'm personally doing is developing a Troubleshooters.Com [1]
HTML/CSS
subsite in
preparation to teach online HTML/CSS classes to people who:
1) Understand that HTML, DOM and CSS are the basis of web
presentation, regardless
of higher layer tools used,
2) Want a teacher instead of just taking a programmed online course,
3) Don't want to pay the price of coming to a face to face class.


Very nice!! Based on what I am reading and hearing I think there will
be continued demand for this type of learning.  I think the
Universities will dry up.  It might take a while.  Looks like a year
at ASU is almost $13,000
https://admission.asu.edu/aid/resident-first-year [3]  Who can afford
that?

I first looked at college in 1978 and that year it was $275 a semester
at the University of Arizona. I ended up going to junior college and
it was $100 my first semester the spring of 1979.

By 1990 UofA was just over $1000 a semester. 4 times what it was just
12 years prior.

When I was first exposed to programming in 1983 a bachelor's degree
was required to be a programmer. I think that requirement is long
gone.  I think employers are looking for just skills.

I think self study is big today.  And if the economy does crash I'm
thinking that the next generation of programmers will be self thought
and might just be more inclined to be using Linux.

If what I am hearing and reading is that the economy is going to crash
and inflation is going to stay at 10% for the next 10 years, I think
the world will look and feel a lot different 10 or 12 years from now.

So doing what you are doing, Steve, should pay dividends for years.



Links:
--
[1] 

Re: Opportunity

[David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss]

BTW, I’m sure lots of people here remember when Apple announced the iOS SDK a 
few months after the first iPhone was released…

I also remember seeing tons of ads from companies looking to hire “iOS SDK 
programmers with 3-5 years of iOS experience”. I could never figure out if they 
were just trolling for Apple employees or they honestly thought there were 
people outside of Apple who had been in the beta programs that long and would 
take a pay-cut to get a full-time job doing iOS programming somewhere. But the 
demand for iOS programmers is still quite strong.

-David Schwartz




> On Aug 22, 2022, at 12:17 AM, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss 
>  wrote:
> 
> Not sure what good a CS degree is these days. Seems like all anybody caress 
> about today is “at least 3 years hands-on experience with xyz and abc” to get 
> hired for stuff.
> 
> I read an article today that was saying how Google has been working hard to 
> replace Java in the Android ecosystem with Kotlin. I’m sure Java will be with 
> us a long time, but learning Kotlin could open some doors in the 
> not-too-distant future.
> 
> 
> Five years later, Google is still all-in on Kotlin
> 
> https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/18/five-years-later-google-is-still-all-in-on-kotlin/
>  
> 
> 
> It’s been just over five years since Google first announced that it would 
> make Kotlin, the 
> statically typed language for the Java Virtual Machine first developed by 
> JetBrains, a first-
> class language for writing Android apps at Google I/O 2017. Since then, 
> Google took this a 
> step further by making Kotlin its preferred language for writing Android apps 
> in 2019 — and 
> while plenty of developers still use Java, Kotlin is quickly becoming the 
> default way to build 
> apps for Google’s mobile operating system.
> 
> 
> I suspect that when Google announces the first version of Android written in 
> Kotlin, it will open a huge demand for Kotlin programmers with even 6 months 
> of experience with it.
> 
> -David Schwartz
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Aug 21, 2022, at 7:08 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss 
>> mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 2022-08-19 10:41, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>>> On Thu, 2022-08-18 at 15:52 -0700, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:
 David,
 You provide a bunch to think about.
 What does this have to do with Linux?  We are on a Linux list and I
 would guess most are not going to retool.
 I'm 66 and do not think I will retool, so I am looking at some simple
 things that might make my life better while we enter a period of chaos. 
 I am a PHP programmer and I know less about Linux than I would like to. 
 For me the opportunities have to be in the realm of LAMP/LEMP.
 PHP is so ingrained that it will be around for decades.  Eventually it
 will go the way of COBOL... AND COBOL is still around.  I think a person
 could make a career being a COBOL developer.
 So I think the question is what are the opportunities for the Linux
 admins and the associated technologies?
>>> What I'm personally doing is developing a Troubleshooters.Com 
>>> 
>>>  HTML/CSS
>>> subsite in
>>> preparation to teach online HTML/CSS classes to people who:
>>> 1) Understand that HTML, DOM and CSS are the basis of web
>>> presentation, regardless
>>> of higher layer tools used,
>>> 2) Want a teacher instead of just taking a programmed online course,
>>> 3) Don't want to pay the price of coming to a face to face class.
>> 
>> Very nice!! Based on what I am reading and hearing I think there will be 
>> continued demand for this type of learning.  I think the Universities will 
>> dry up.  It might take a while.  Looks like a year at ASU is almost $13,000 
>> https://admission.asu.edu/aid/resident-first-year 
>> 

Re: Opportunity

[David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss]

Not sure what good a CS degree is these days. Seems like all anybody caress 
about today is “at least 3 years hands-on experience with xyz and abc” to get 
hired for stuff.

I read an article today that was saying how Google has been working hard to 
replace Java in the Android ecosystem with Kotlin. I’m sure Java will be with 
us a long time, but learning Kotlin could open some doors in the 
not-too-distant future.


Five years later, Google is still all-in on Kotlin

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/18/five-years-later-google-is-still-all-in-on-kotlin/

It’s been just over five years since Google first announced that it would make 
Kotlin, the 
statically typed language for the Java Virtual Machine first developed by 
JetBrains, a first-
class language for writing Android apps at Google I/O 2017. Since then, Google 
took this a 
step further by making Kotlin its preferred language for writing Android apps 
in 2019 — and 
while plenty of developers still use Java, Kotlin is quickly becoming the 
default way to build 
apps for Google’s mobile operating system.


I suspect that when Google announces the first version of Android written in 
Kotlin, it will open a huge demand for Kotlin programmers with even 6 months of 
experience with it.

-David Schwartz




> On Aug 21, 2022, at 7:08 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 2022-08-19 10:41, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>> On Thu, 2022-08-18 at 15:52 -0700, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>>> David,
>>> You provide a bunch to think about.
>>> What does this have to do with Linux?  We are on a Linux list and I
>>> would guess most are not going to retool.
>>> I'm 66 and do not think I will retool, so I am looking at some simple
>>> things that might make my life better while we enter a period of chaos. 
>>> I am a PHP programmer and I know less about Linux than I would like to. 
>>> For me the opportunities have to be in the realm of LAMP/LEMP.
>>> PHP is so ingrained that it will be around for decades.  Eventually it
>>> will go the way of COBOL... AND COBOL is still around.  I think a person
>>> could make a career being a COBOL developer.
>>> So I think the question is what are the opportunities for the Linux
>>> admins and the associated technologies?
>> What I'm personally doing is developing a Troubleshooters.Com HTML/CSS
>> subsite in
>> preparation to teach online HTML/CSS classes to people who:
>> 1) Understand that HTML, DOM and CSS are the basis of web
>> presentation, regardless
>> of higher layer tools used,
>> 2) Want a teacher instead of just taking a programmed online course,
>> 3) Don't want to pay the price of coming to a face to face class.
> 
> Very nice!! Based on what I am reading and hearing I think there will be 
> continued demand for this type of learning.  I think the Universities will 
> dry up.  It might take a while.  Looks like a year at ASU is almost $13,000 
> https://admission.asu.edu/aid/resident-first-year 
>   Who can afford that?
> 
> I first looked at college in 1978 and that year it was $275 a semester at the 
> University of Arizona. I ended up going to junior college and it was $100 my 
> first semester the spring of 1979.
> 
> By 1990 UofA was just over $1000 a semester. 4 times what it was just 12 
> years prior.
> 
> When I was first exposed to programming in 1983 a bachelor's degree was 
> required to be a programmer. I think that requirement is long gone.  I think 
> employers are looking for just skills.
> 
> I think self study is big today.  And if the economy does crash I'm thinking 
> that the next generation of programmers will be self thought and might just 
> be more inclined to be using Linux.
> 
> If what I am hearing and reading is that the economy is going to crash and 
> inflation is going to stay at 10% for the next 10 years, I think the world 
> will look and feel a lot different 10 or 12 years from now.
> 
> So doing what you are doing, Steve, should pay dividends for years.

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Re: Opportunity

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

On Sun, 2022-08-21 at 07:08 -0700, techli...@phpcoderusa.com wrote:

> I think the Universities 
> will dry up.  

I   H O P E   S O !

Degree discrimination really frosts my petunias. Very little of the programming 
I've
done or seen done couldn't be done by a fairly bright person, perhaps with 3 or 
4
programming courses in junior college. To me, the higher education system is 
class
warfare, plain and simple. And I have a BSEE degree.

> I first looked at college in 1978 and that year it was $275 a semester 
> at the University of Arizona. I ended up going to junior college and it 
> was $100 my first semester the spring of 1979.

I took programming and business courses at Santa Monica Community College, for
$20/course. My income tripled, so both the state of California and I laughed 
all the
way to the bank.


> When I was first exposed to programming in 1983 a bachelor's degree was 
> required to be a programmer. I think that requirement is long gone.  I 
> think employers are looking for just skills.

1983 was the tail end of the glass house, IBM Mainframe era, which was almost a
monopsany. By 1985, with DBASE, Turbo Pascal, and the rise of affordable 286's, 
the Kitchen Table Programmer made his or her move, running circles around the
mainframe programmers on minis or micros. But still, many employers screen out 
the
non-degreed. They claim it's because the graduate at least proved he/she could
complete something. But all too often, what a college degree proves is you 
didn't
have to spend all your time supporting your family as a kid. By the way, 1984 
was
when I busted into professional programming: Whitesmith Pascal on a PDP11/23 
running
TSX multitasking over RT/11. The next year I started professional programming 
in C.

> 
> I think self study is big today.  

Huge. And also these inexpensive online courses.


> And if the economy does crash I'm 
> thinking that the next generation of programmers will be self thought 
> and might just be more inclined to be using Linux.

LOL, depends on the severity of the crash. If it's too bad the guy knowing how 
to
grow crops, sanitize water, and buy/sell stuff will be on top. But yeah, if it's
only like 1982 or 2008-2009, and there aren't enough rich kids to fill the
programming positions and they don't import hordes of H1-B's, then yeah, self 
taught
will be more of a thing. By the way, it's already doable: I've seen folks do it 
here
in Orlando.

Incidentally, I've seen a formula used, time and time again, for self-taught
programmers to succeed hugely:

1) Learn the technology to a level of plausible expertise.

2) Network, network, network.

3) Get yourself installed as a presenter at multiple shows/clubs/groups.

4) Network, network, network.

5) Lowball your way into getting your first client.

6) Network, network, network.

7) Whipsaw multiple clients to raise your rates.

8) Network, network, network.

9) Rinse, lather, repeat.


SteveT

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Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

On 2022-08-19 10:41, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:

On Thu, 2022-08-18 at 15:52 -0700, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:


David,

You provide a bunch to think about.

What does this have to do with Linux?  We are on a Linux list and I
would guess most are not going to retool.

I'm 66 and do not think I will retool, so I am looking at some simple
things that might make my life better while we enter a period of 
chaos. 
I am a PHP programmer and I know less about Linux than I would like 
to. 

For me the opportunities have to be in the realm of LAMP/LEMP.

PHP is so ingrained that it will be around for decades.  Eventually it
will go the way of COBOL... AND COBOL is still around.  I think a 
person

could make a career being a COBOL developer.

So I think the question is what are the opportunities for the Linux
admins and the associated technologies?


What I'm personally doing is developing a Troubleshooters.Com HTML/CSS
subsite in
preparation to teach online HTML/CSS classes to people who:

1) Understand that HTML, DOM and CSS are the basis of web
presentation, regardless
of higher layer tools used,

2) Want a teacher instead of just taking a programmed online course,

3) Don't want to pay the price of coming to a face to face class.




Very nice!! Based on what I am reading and hearing I think there will be 
continued demand for this type of learning.  I think the Universities 
will dry up.  It might take a while.  Looks like a year at ASU is almost 
$13,000 https://admission.asu.edu/aid/resident-first-year  Who can 
afford that?


I first looked at college in 1978 and that year it was $275 a semester 
at the University of Arizona. I ended up going to junior college and it 
was $100 my first semester the spring of 1979.


By 1990 UofA was just over $1000 a semester. 4 times what it was just 12 
years prior.


When I was first exposed to programming in 1983 a bachelor's degree was 
required to be a programmer. I think that requirement is long gone.  I 
think employers are looking for just skills.


I think self study is big today.  And if the economy does crash I'm 
thinking that the next generation of programmers will be self thought 
and might just be more inclined to be using Linux.


If what I am hearing and reading is that the economy is going to crash 
and inflation is going to stay at 10% for the next 10 years, I think the 
world will look and feel a lot different 10 or 12 years from now.


So doing what you are doing, Steve, should pay dividends for years.






SteveT
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Re: Opportunity

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

On Thu, 2022-08-18 at 15:52 -0700, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:

> David,
> 
> You provide a bunch to think about.
> 
> What does this have to do with Linux?  We are on a Linux list and I 
> would guess most are not going to retool.
> 
> I'm 66 and do not think I will retool, so I am looking at some simple 
> things that might make my life better while we enter a period of chaos.  
> I am a PHP programmer and I know less about Linux than I would like to.  
> For me the opportunities have to be in the realm of LAMP/LEMP.
> 
> PHP is so ingrained that it will be around for decades.  Eventually it 
> will go the way of COBOL... AND COBOL is still around.  I think a person 
> could make a career being a COBOL developer.
> 
> So I think the question is what are the opportunities for the Linux 
> admins and the associated technologies?

What I'm personally doing is developing a Troubleshooters.Com HTML/CSS subsite 
in
preparation to teach online HTML/CSS classes to people who:

1) Understand that HTML, DOM and CSS are the basis of web presentation, 
regardless
of higher layer tools used,

2) Want a teacher instead of just taking a programmed online course,

3) Don't want to pay the price of coming to a face to face class.


SteveT
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Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

Then you can become a pundit.


On 2022-08-17 12:00, Eric Oyen via PLUG-discuss wrote:

I am not going to argue politics, especially on this list. However, I
do ask that you dismiss all the pundits on both sides, go out and do
your own research. Just an honest opinion on my part, I don’t think
you are going to like what you see.

-Eric
From the Central Offices of the Technomage Guild, Political Sciences
Dept.


On Aug 17, 2022, at 3:25 AM, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss
 wrote:

I don’t know what you’re referring to exactly about the economy
crashing, other than the typical doom-and-gloom nonsense that the
right-wing propaganda machinery floods the airwaves with whenever
Democrats are in charge of things. The truth is, things are always
shifting, slowly but surely.

As for technology, I’d make this simple observation:

At some point, the world leader in CPU chips — Intel — was
following along the same path they had been taking for years and was
working on a 5 GHz CPU when they realized that as they kept trying
to speed-up CPUs, the amount of effort needed to extract the heat
from the chips would make the hardware far too expensive and
cumbersome to remain viable. So they decided that multiple CPUs on
the chip where the CPU speed was around 2-3 GHz would be better in
the long-run.

I’m guessing that the folks at a world leader in computer
engineering — Apple Computer — also figured this out. Intel
sells chips; Apple sells computer systems. Dell buys Intel chips and
integrates video cards from another vendor that use Intel’s GPUs.
Apple doesn’t really care who makes what; they just want to
maximize their profits.

Coincidentally, video cards have been hard to come by because the
GPUs have been getting hijacked for use by crytocurrency miners. A
large portion of these have Intel GPUs on them.

Apple decided it might make more sense to simply put a bunch of CPUs
and GPUs on one substrate and then tune their software to run on
this sort of architecture, alleviating the dependency on separate
CPU and GPU chips and cards. There’s a side-effect in that nobody
is going to be hijacking their GPUs for other purposes.

Intel apparently didn’t want to lose the revenues they’ve been
earning from their GPU chip sales to crypto miners and, well, Apple
is no longer using either Intel’s CPUs or GPUs.

So while some say the economy is “crashing”, the 10 largest
corporations in the world are all reporting record profits and
growth. The stuff politicians are doing to continue long-term
policies that enable corporations to siphon off more and more money
from consumers is appalling, and may well lead to a lot more
discomfort and pain for consumers, but certainly not from corporate
shareholders and execs. If you want to profit from that shift, then
buy stocks in these large and growing companies. Warren Buffet has
large holdings in them, as well as Apple. He also owns a large
utility company in Nevada.

Speaking of utility companies, one thing that is surely going to
help “crash” the economy (for consumers) over the coming decade
is the increasing growth of EVs and their need to get their fuel
from the power grid. The same power grid that’s going to be used
to power computers and crypto miners. Some with
politically-motivated arguments might see it as convenient that
states like Arizona have passed laws that give utility companies the
power to punish consumers who want to install their own renewable
energy sources and batteries to become independent of the power
grid. Yes, we’re talking about those folks who’d like to unhook
from the inevitable increases we’re going to see in the cost of
electricity, especially since the cost of fuel to power generators
is also skyrocketing — and the profits from those price increases
is nearly all flowing into the bank accounts of the monarchy of
Saudi Arabia (with the help of elected officials in Congress, both
past and present, members of both political parties).

The tea leaves are pretty clear to many readers: there’s a big
shift towards more and more things in our life that require
electricity to run, and it’s inevitable that the cost of said
power is going to go up. But the price of gas is also going up,
which is contributing to the increase in power costs. Buying a bunch
of old computers that consume 3x the power of the newest computers
does not seem like a smart way to avoid increases in the cost of
electricity.

Make your home more thermally efficient so you don’t need to run
your A/C as much. Replace electronic equipment with newer
lower-power stuff. Reduce your overall carbon footprint by 10%. Grow
your own fruits and veggies. Set up a wind turbine or solar panels
to charge batteries that power your electronic equipment at home,
but do not connect them to the grid. Buy an inexpensive EV to get
around town, because in the long-run it’ll be far cheaper than a
gas-powered vehicle. (I recommend a Bolt or a Leaf as they’re the
cheapest EVs on the market today and will remain so for 2-3 

Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

On 2022-08-18 14:09, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:

I’m really not trying to get into a political debate, except that
the “doom and gloom” stuff seems to keep coming from the same
sources, in the same way that Arctic cold fronts always come from the
North. At the end of the day, it’s just another day.

Keith chose the Subject as “Opportunity” and then started the
discussion assuming “doom and gloom”. Smart investors make money
whether the market is going up, down, or sideways. I don’t pay
attention to this nonsense, and the best political advice I have is
for others to ignore it as well.

For quite a while I watched several news broadcasts daily, and one day
I was sitting there and had this epiphany: this is like listening to a
daily update of a horse race that just keeps going on ... day after
day, week after week, month after month, forever.

You tune in each day and hear this horse is edging out this other
horse, and you hear interviews about the people riding them, with
people giving their opinions about how each rider’s background is
affecting their strategy and justifying their current position in the
race today. Each day the horses are in slightly different places
relative to each other, but they’re all moving forward. Sometimes
one trips and falls, and all hell breaks loose. There are dozens of
horses and riders in the race, and MILLIONS of people watching and
opining on what’s going on.

EVERYBODY HAS AN OPINION. So what?

The thing is, from one day to the next, NONE OF THE OPINIONS MATTER.
What matters is THE RACE EACH OF US IS IN OURSELVES.

Some people choose to see “doom and gloom” while others choose to
see “everything is looking up”.

I tend to go with this: The sun is going to keep rising every day, and
life will go on given half a chance. Everything else is just noise.

I don’t claim to have a crystal ball, but I do believe that when a
small number of companies are responsible for a significant portion of
financial leverage in the world, the overall economy is going to tend
to follow in their wake, even if just a little. That’s were we’re
at today, especially in the tech world.

Beyond that, I believe there’s a huge mega-trend happening in the
world today, which is tied to climactic changes. You can listen to the
pundits all you want, but we cannot deny the fact that average
temperatures are rising, watersheds are drying up, and water is
becoming scarce. This may be man-made and it may be simply one of
Mother Nature’s cyclic activities. But it’s not something any ONE
of us can do much about.

Russia is trying to blow up a nuclear plant in Ukraine. They might as
well drop a nuclear bomb there. Talk about cutting off their nose to
spit their face! But that’s what they seem to think is needed to
“win” — win by blowing up their own feet. Yes, there are truly
stupid people in the world and we’re watching them destroy
themsevles day by day in that part of the world. It’s not as if
Nature is doing enough damage to agricultural production, these guys
want to ensure one of the most fertile farming regions of the world
won’t be able to produce ANYTHING for CENTURIES. What kind of idiots
do that?

One thing is certain: a LOT of people around the world are going to
start freaking out and throwing money at would-be solutions. THERE
LIES OPPORTUNITY!

Look at all of the things that burn fossil fuels; that run
inefficiently and produce more heat than needed; that are expensive to
break-down and recycle; that waste water, energy, and can’t be
re-used — all of these things are going to be looked at with
increasing scrutiny by others even as they’re watching the bigger
horse races, and they are going to be making buying decisions based on
this stuff.

Yes, this list is about technology. And technology presents a HUGE
OPPORTUNITY to fill the needs of people who are going to be looking to
down-size, right-size, and make their lives more EFFICIENT. A lot of
them are going to be us Baby Boomers who are becoming empty-nesters
and want to simplify our lives. What sorts of OPPORTUNITIES DO WE
HAVE?

They’re not all technical.

For example, next February the Super Bowl is going to be here in
Phoenix again. Last time it was here, I noticed something: you could
not get a room or a car for a 75 mile radius from early January to
late February. Car rental folks pulled in cars from Tucson, San Diego,
LA, Las Vegas, and Alberqueue, and there was STILL A SHORTAGE!

Low supply combined with high demand caused prices to SKYROCKET.

These people aren’t looking for Linux servers! They want a place to
sleep and a car to get around in! If you have a house and you can move
out for a few weeks, you might be able to rent your house and car out
for $2000-$4000 per week! Now THERE IS AN OPPORTUNITY!

Or just buy some nice used cars, put them up on GetAround, and offer
to park them at AirBNB places people will be renting next winter.
Offer them $100 a week and charge their tenants $500 a week. If that
seems like a lot, 

Re: Opportunity

[David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss]

I’m really not trying to get into a political debate, except that the “doom and 
gloom” stuff seems to keep coming from the same sources, in the same way that 
Arctic cold fronts always come from the North. At the end of the day, it’s just 
another day.

Keith chose the Subject as “Opportunity” and then started the discussion 
assuming “doom and gloom”. Smart investors make money whether the market is 
going up, down, or sideways. I don’t pay attention to this nonsense, and the 
best political advice I have is for others to ignore it as well.

For quite a while I watched several news broadcasts daily, and one day I was 
sitting there and had this epiphany: this is like listening to a daily update 
of a horse race that just keeps going on ... day after day, week after week, 
month after month, forever. 

You tune in each day and hear this horse is edging out this other horse, and 
you hear interviews about the people riding them, with people giving their 
opinions about how each rider’s background is affecting their strategy and 
justifying their current position in the race today. Each day the horses are in 
slightly different places relative to each other, but they’re all moving 
forward. Sometimes one trips and falls, and all hell breaks loose. There are 
dozens of horses and riders in the race, and MILLIONS of people watching and 
opining on what’s going on. 

EVERYBODY HAS AN OPINION. So what? 

The thing is, from one day to the next, NONE OF THE OPINIONS MATTER. What 
matters is THE RACE EACH OF US IS IN OURSELVES.

Some people choose to see “doom and gloom” while others choose to see 
“everything is looking up”. 

I tend to go with this: The sun is going to keep rising every day, and life 
will go on given half a chance. Everything else is just noise.

I don’t claim to have a crystal ball, but I do believe that when a small number 
of companies are responsible for a significant portion of financial leverage in 
the world, the overall economy is going to tend to follow in their wake, even 
if just a little. That’s were we’re at today, especially in the tech world.

Beyond that, I believe there’s a huge mega-trend happening in the world today, 
which is tied to climactic changes. You can listen to the pundits all you want, 
but we cannot deny the fact that average temperatures are rising, watersheds 
are drying up, and water is becoming scarce. This may be man-made and it may be 
simply one of Mother Nature’s cyclic activities. But it’s not something any ONE 
of us can do much about. 

Russia is trying to blow up a nuclear plant in Ukraine. They might as well drop 
a nuclear bomb there. Talk about cutting off their nose to spit their face! But 
that’s what they seem to think is needed to “win” — win by blowing up their own 
feet. Yes, there are truly stupid people in the world and we’re watching them 
destroy themsevles day by day in that part of the world. It’s not as if Nature 
is doing enough damage to agricultural production, these guys want to ensure 
one of the most fertile farming regions of the world won’t be able to produce 
ANYTHING for CENTURIES. What kind of idiots do that?

One thing is certain: a LOT of people around the world are going to start 
freaking out and throwing money at would-be solutions. THERE LIES OPPORTUNITY!

Look at all of the things that burn fossil fuels; that run inefficiently and 
produce more heat than needed; that are expensive to break-down and recycle; 
that waste water, energy, and can’t be re-used — all of these things are going 
to be looked at with increasing scrutiny by others even as they’re watching the 
bigger horse races, and they are going to be making buying decisions based on 
this stuff. 

Yes, this list is about technology. And technology presents a HUGE OPPORTUNITY 
to fill the needs of people who are going to be looking to down-size, 
right-size, and make their lives more EFFICIENT. A lot of them are going to be 
us Baby Boomers who are becoming empty-nesters and want to simplify our lives. 
What sorts of OPPORTUNITIES DO WE HAVE?

They’re not all technical.


For example, next February the Super Bowl is going to be here in Phoenix again. 
Last time it was here, I noticed something: you could not get a room or a car 
for a 75 mile radius from early January to late February. Car rental folks 
pulled in cars from Tucson, San Diego, LA, Las Vegas, and Alberqueue, and there 
was STILL A SHORTAGE! 

Low supply combined with high demand caused prices to SKYROCKET.

These people aren’t looking for Linux servers! They want a place to sleep and a 
car to get around in! If you have a house and you can move out for a few weeks, 
you might be able to rent your house and car out for $2000-$4000 per week! Now 
THERE IS AN OPPORTUNITY!

Or just buy some nice used cars, put them up on GetAround, and offer to park 
them at AirBNB places people will be renting next winter. Offer them $100 a 
week and charge their tenants $500 a week. If that seems like a lot, 

Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

David,

I have always enjoyed your thoughts, even though we do not agree when it 
comes to political issues.   And I think your a smart guy.


On 2022-08-17 03:25, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:

I'll pass on this one because it could get politically charged very 
quickly and my intention were to try to understand what is coming.


I posted to this list hoping for thoughts from technical people.


I don’t know what you’re referring to exactly about the economy
crashing, other than the typical doom-and-gloom nonsense that the
right-wing propaganda machinery floods the airwaves with whenever
Democrats are in charge of things. The truth is, things are always
shifting, slowly but surely.



I hope it is all doom-and-gloom.  I'm not up for an economic crash.  You 
and I have lived though some interesting times.


- Oil embargo, which killed the musical car era.
- 70's and 80's which kept my wages 20% behind the real cost of living.
- 30 years of perpetual wars
- The creation of the Internet and all that has come with it.

I do not think what is currently taking place is "right-wing 
propaganda".


I am hearing and reading:

- Ukraine and Russia produce 70% of the worlds wheat which is not making 
it to the market this year.
- Ukraine and Russia produce 70% of the worlds commercial fertilizer 
which is not making it to the market this year.

- We are experiencing a severe drought world wide.
- Some are saying there will be famine and food shortages.  I'm seeing 
vacant shelves at the grocery stores.
- The dollar is losing it's place as the world's reserve currency. That 
means dollars going to come home causing even more inflation.
- Some are saying it could be as bad as the Great Depression.  And I 
truly hope this is "right-wing propaganda".
- Some are saying we will see double digit inflation for 10 years.  How 
do I plan my wife's retirement with that? I'll work till I die...  I did 
the math.  If I save $1000 today, in 10 years it will have $350 of 
buying power.


I was hoping to spend my old age working on my old muscle car and old 
RV. I do not own either. Oh, and throw in some watching the grass grow.


I do not want this to turn political.  I am in search of wisdom.

Here are my thoughts.

1) Transition away from Windows and MAC.  Buy some old hardware, while 
it is cheep.  In fact 6 months from now lots of things might be cheep - 
new and old.  I read Walmart is laying off 300 executives dues to the 
slow in the economy and having an over stocked situation.  I would buy 
as much RAM as you might need for your new and old hardware and replace 
spinners with SSD drives.


2) I know this is a Linux list so I assume most know Linux better that 
most others.  I am a programmer.  A PHP developer.  I understand most 
developers do not know Linux.  I recommend learning how to configure and 
maintain a LAMP server for testing and development.  The P stands for 
PHP.


3) I would recommend that those who do not have the skills to maintain a 
Linux desktop should burn some midnight oil and learn the basics.  I had 
to move to Windows 6 years ago because of a business need.  Windows 10 
has 3 more years before it's end of life.  By that time I will be back 
on Linux for good.


4) Create a blog and journal your learning and experiences.

5) If you are looking for a job, find the hiring managers and ask them 
to mentor you so you can find the door into what you want to do.


6) I think a lot of businesses will fail. AND out of the ashes new 
businesses will form.  These new businesses will need to use technology 
to their benefit.  What technologies will they need?


7) Linux and web programming is turning into, and may have already 
turned into a cottage industry.  For hosting there only needs to be one 
admin local to the facility.  All others can work remote.


8) Covid caused a shift away from the office to the spare bedroom.  In 
an effort to save money I think most companies will have a hybrid model. 
Employees will need to make it into the office periodically while 
working from home for the majority of the time. The amount of office 
space necessary to run a business will shrink.  Office space should be 
cheep for the foreseeable future.


9) We have become a mail order economy.  I only buy groceries in person 
and that will change within the next few month.  I used to buy 
everything retail.  Not anymore.  And that saves me time and gas.  I tip 
so the tip is probably what I would spend on gas... however it does 
spare my car wear and tear.


Those are my thoughts.  I would like to hear from others.



As for technology, I’d make this simple observation:

At some point, the world leader in CPU chips — Intel — was
following along the same path they had been taking for years and was
working on a 5 GHz CPU when they realized that as they kept trying to
speed-up CPUs, the amount of effort needed to extract the heat from
the chips would make the hardware far too expensive and cumbersome to

Re: Opportunity

[Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss]

Interesting and thanks!!

On 2022-08-17 00:57, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:

On Mon, 2022-08-15 at 09:31 -0700, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:

Hi,
About 24 years ago I worked for a guy who used to say "There is
opportunity in chaos.".

Given the chip shortage and other things taking place in the global
space, present and future, I am wondering what do you see as 
opportunity

in this present/coming chaos?


I just today read about Risc-V bettering its situation. It's a long way 
from

displacing AMD or Intel in your desktop, but for lesser applications
it's getting
more inherants all the time.

SteveT
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Re: Opportunity

[Eric Oyen via PLUG-discuss]

I am not going to argue politics, especially on this list. However, I do ask 
that you dismiss all the pundits on both sides, go out and do your own 
research. Just an honest opinion on my part, I don’t think you are going to 
like what you see.

-Eric
From the Central Offices of the Technomage Guild, Political Sciences Dept.


> On Aug 17, 2022, at 3:25 AM, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss 
>  wrote:
> 
> I don’t know what you’re referring to exactly about the economy crashing, 
> other than the typical doom-and-gloom nonsense that the right-wing propaganda 
> machinery floods the airwaves with whenever Democrats are in charge of 
> things. The truth is, things are always shifting, slowly but surely.
> 
> As for technology, I’d make this simple observation:
> 
> At some point, the world leader in CPU chips — Intel — was following along 
> the same path they had been taking for years and was working on a 5 GHz CPU 
> when they realized that as they kept trying to speed-up CPUs, the amount of 
> effort needed to extract the heat from the chips would make the hardware far 
> too expensive and cumbersome to remain viable. So they decided that multiple 
> CPUs on the chip where the CPU speed was around 2-3 GHz would be better in 
> the long-run. 
> 
> I’m guessing that the folks at a world leader in computer engineering — Apple 
> Computer — also figured this out. Intel sells chips; Apple sells computer 
> systems. Dell buys Intel chips and integrates video cards from another vendor 
> that use Intel’s GPUs. Apple doesn’t really care who makes what; they just 
> want to maximize their profits.
> 
> Coincidentally, video cards have been hard to come by because the GPUs have 
> been getting hijacked for use by crytocurrency miners. A large portion of 
> these have Intel GPUs on them.
> 
> Apple decided it might make more sense to simply put a bunch of CPUs and GPUs 
> on one substrate and then tune their software to run on this sort of 
> architecture, alleviating the dependency on separate CPU and GPU chips and 
> cards. There’s a side-effect in that nobody is going to be hijacking their 
> GPUs for other purposes.
> 
> Intel apparently didn’t want to lose the revenues they’ve been earning from 
> their GPU chip sales to crypto miners and, well, Apple is no longer using 
> either Intel’s CPUs or GPUs.
> 
> So while some say the economy is “crashing”, the 10 largest corporations in 
> the world are all reporting record profits and growth. The stuff politicians 
> are doing to continue long-term policies that enable corporations to siphon 
> off more and more money from consumers is appalling, and may well lead to a 
> lot more discomfort and pain for consumers, but certainly not from corporate 
> shareholders and execs. If you want to profit from that shift, then buy 
> stocks in these large and growing companies. Warren Buffet has large holdings 
> in them, as well as Apple. He also owns a large utility company in Nevada.
> 
> Speaking of utility companies, one thing that is surely going to help “crash” 
> the economy (for consumers) over the coming decade is the increasing growth 
> of EVs and their need to get their fuel from the power grid. The same power 
> grid that’s going to be used to power computers and crypto miners. Some with 
> politically-motivated arguments might see it as convenient that states like 
> Arizona have passed laws that give utility companies the power to punish 
> consumers who want to install their own renewable energy sources and 
> batteries to become independent of the power grid. Yes, we’re talking about 
> those folks who’d like to unhook from the inevitable increases we’re going to 
> see in the cost of electricity, especially since the cost of fuel to power 
> generators is also skyrocketing — and the profits from those price increases 
> is nearly all flowing into the bank accounts of the monarchy of Saudi Arabia 
> (with the help of elected officials in Congress, both past and present, 
> members of both political parties).
> 
> The tea leaves are pretty clear to many readers: there’s a big shift towards 
> more and more things in our life that require electricity to run, and it’s 
> inevitable that the cost of said power is going to go up. But the price of 
> gas is also going up, which is contributing to the increase in power costs. 
> Buying a bunch of old computers that consume 3x the power of the newest 
> computers does not seem like a smart way to avoid increases in the cost of 
> electricity.
> 
> Make your home more thermally efficient so you don’t need to run your A/C as 
> much. Replace electronic equipment with newer lower-power stuff. Reduce your 
> overall carbon footprint by 10%. Grow your own fruits and veggies. Set up a 
> wind turbine or solar panels to charge batteries that power your electronic 
> equipment at home, but do not connect them to the grid. Buy an inexpensive EV 
> to get around town, because in the long-run it’ll be far cheaper than a 
> 

Re: Opportunity

[David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss]

I don’t know what you’re referring to exactly about the economy crashing, other 
than the typical doom-and-gloom nonsense that the right-wing propaganda 
machinery floods the airwaves with whenever Democrats are in charge of things. 
The truth is, things are always shifting, slowly but surely.

As for technology, I’d make this simple observation:

At some point, the world leader in CPU chips — Intel — was following along the 
same path they had been taking for years and was working on a 5 GHz CPU when 
they realized that as they kept trying to speed-up CPUs, the amount of effort 
needed to extract the heat from the chips would make the hardware far too 
expensive and cumbersome to remain viable. So they decided that multiple CPUs 
on the chip where the CPU speed was around 2-3 GHz would be better in the 
long-run. 

I’m guessing that the folks at a world leader in computer engineering — Apple 
Computer — also figured this out. Intel sells chips; Apple sells computer 
systems. Dell buys Intel chips and integrates video cards from another vendor 
that use Intel’s GPUs. Apple doesn’t really care who makes what; they just want 
to maximize their profits.

Coincidentally, video cards have been hard to come by because the GPUs have 
been getting hijacked for use by crytocurrency miners. A large portion of these 
have Intel GPUs on them.

Apple decided it might make more sense to simply put a bunch of CPUs and GPUs 
on one substrate and then tune their software to run on this sort of 
architecture, alleviating the dependency on separate CPU and GPU chips and 
cards. There’s a side-effect in that nobody is going to be hijacking their GPUs 
for other purposes.

Intel apparently didn’t want to lose the revenues they’ve been earning from 
their GPU chip sales to crypto miners and, well, Apple is no longer using 
either Intel’s CPUs or GPUs.

So while some say the economy is “crashing”, the 10 largest corporations in the 
world are all reporting record profits and growth. The stuff politicians are 
doing to continue long-term policies that enable corporations to siphon off 
more and more money from consumers is appalling, and may well lead to a lot 
more discomfort and pain for consumers, but certainly not from corporate 
shareholders and execs. If you want to profit from that shift, then buy stocks 
in these large and growing companies. Warren Buffet has large holdings in them, 
as well as Apple. He also owns a large utility company in Nevada.

Speaking of utility companies, one thing that is surely going to help “crash” 
the economy (for consumers) over the coming decade is the increasing growth of 
EVs and their need to get their fuel from the power grid. The same power grid 
that’s going to be used to power computers and crypto miners. Some with 
politically-motivated arguments might see it as convenient that states like 
Arizona have passed laws that give utility companies the power to punish 
consumers who want to install their own renewable energy sources and batteries 
to become independent of the power grid. Yes, we’re talking about those folks 
who’d like to unhook from the inevitable increases we’re going to see in the 
cost of electricity, especially since the cost of fuel to power generators is 
also skyrocketing — and the profits from those price increases is nearly all 
flowing into the bank accounts of the monarchy of Saudi Arabia (with the help 
of elected officials in Congress, both past and present, members of both 
political parties).

The tea leaves are pretty clear to many readers: there’s a big shift towards 
more and more things in our life that require electricity to run, and it’s 
inevitable that the cost of said power is going to go up. But the price of gas 
is also going up, which is contributing to the increase in power costs. Buying 
a bunch of old computers that consume 3x the power of the newest computers does 
not seem like a smart way to avoid increases in the cost of electricity.

Make your home more thermally efficient so you don’t need to run your A/C as 
much. Replace electronic equipment with newer lower-power stuff. Reduce your 
overall carbon footprint by 10%. Grow your own fruits and veggies. Set up a 
wind turbine or solar panels to charge batteries that power your electronic 
equipment at home, but do not connect them to the grid. Buy an inexpensive EV 
to get around town, because in the long-run it’ll be far cheaper than a 
gas-powered vehicle. (I recommend a Bolt or a Leaf as they’re the cheapest EVs 
on the market today and will remain so for 2-3 years due to factors like the 
global chip shortage. I got a 2019 Leaf SL Plus, and I *LOVE* it! It only costs 
me 4¢/mile in electricity to drive.)

While you’re at it, figure out how to generate $100-$200 per day online to 
supplement your income. 

-David Schwartz




> On Aug 15, 2022, at 9:31 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss 
>  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> About 24 years ago I worked for a guy who used to say "There is opportunity 
> 

Re: Opportunity

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

On Mon, 2022-08-15 at 09:31 -0700, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> Hi,
> About 24 years ago I worked for a guy who used to say "There is 
> opportunity in chaos.".
> 
> Given the chip shortage and other things taking place in the global 
> space, present and future, I am wondering what do you see as opportunity 
> in this present/coming chaos?

I just today read about Risc-V bettering its situation. It's a long way from
displacing AMD or Intel in your desktop, but for lesser applications it's 
getting
more inherants all the time.

SteveT
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Re: opportunity in chaos

[Michael Butash]

Everyone is looking for managed security services provider solutions, as
they are scared to be blamed themselves when they know their security isn't
up to spec, and want a finger to point at if/when exposed.

Full disclosure, we sell said mssp services, and business is good.

-mb

On Sat, Jan 6, 2018 at 10:52 AM,  wrote:

>
> About 20 years ago my then manager told me "there is opportunity in
> chaos".
>
> Probably too early to ask, however given current events... I wonder what
> the opportunities are in this chaos..?
>
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