Who here works in tech?

[Crystallas]

If you catch onto one of the newbish languages easily, skip Python and learn Rust. It's all-in-all just a smarter platform all together and has a quantum leap in userspace performance benefits over python and java. And as the tools get better, so will ease of entry.

The reason why it's important to get over the hump and learn something slightly harder(ONLY initially, because lets be real, Rust is still a very easy language), Rust, unlike Python, will help a user develop better habits because of how effective *by design* the compiler system is at sniffing out issues. Java devs, heck, USERS, know damn well how often code makes it through with critical issues or how Python dependencies can kill year long developments. I equate it to learning how to drive a friendly soft clutch stick shift first to improve your overall habits, except, likely at no point in time will Python ever outperform Rust in a clean code:clean code compile. It was designed to be easy, not effective. And in todays world, running into innovation walls that require breaking laws of physics to advance, performance = longevity in career.

 

[Fatman LOU]

People ask me all the time where they should direct their kids and I say:

-Security
-Artificial intelligence
-Big Data

Outside of sales, the tech side of these disciplines are the best way to make a very good living

I was in the security field part time.

 

[nvanprooyen]

People ask me all the time where they should direct their kids and I say:

-Security
-Artificial intelligence
-Big Data

Outside of sales, the tech side of these disciplines are the best way to make a very good living

Solid list. Although I'd throw out there that big data is tightly coupled to AI and machine learning.

 

[nvanprooyen]

If you catch onto one of the newbish languages easily, skip Python and learn Rust. It's all-in-all just a smarter platform all together and has a quantum leap in userspace performance benefits over python and java. And as the tools get better, so will ease of entry.

The reason why it's important to get over the hump and learn something slightly harder(ONLY initially, because lets be real, Rust is still a very easy language), Rust, unlike Python, will help a user develop better habits because of how effective *by design* the compiler system is at sniffing out issues. Java devs, heck, USERS, know damn well how often code makes it through with critical issues or how Python dependencies can kill year long developments. I equate it to learning how to drive a friendly soft clutch stick shift first to improve your overall habits, except, likely at no point in time will Python ever outperform Rust in a clean code:clean code compile. It was designed to be easy, not effective. And in todays world, running into innovation walls that require breaking laws of physics to advance, performance = longevity in career.

I'd make the argument that the language should fit the job. Python certainly isn't the greatest when it comes to performance, but the ML libraries are excellent. As are the ones available in R. I can't comment on Rust libraries specifically, but I would guess that they aren't nearly as functional / mature. But I could be wrong.

Hell, I still write an awful lot of stuff in PHP, which of course draws snickers from the "cool kids" chasing the latest language / framework...but the fact of the matter is Wordpress has a gigantic footprint on the web, and Magento is one of the best open source options available for ecommerce if you need to go beyond the basics. Which are both written in PHP. It might be ugly, but PHP 7 is a pretty well featured language, and it's fast. Also frameworks like Laravel for custom development. Most people who talk shit about it are comparing the current version to legacy stuff (which was pretty terrible), or just parroting something they heard someone else say with little context.

Edit - it looks like it is very much in the early stages:

http://www.arewelearningyet.com/

 

[Omeletpants]

I meant to ask you awhile ago, but the opportunity never presented itself. What were you selling? Hardware for infrastructure? Enterprise software (e.g. ERP)? Both?

I sold hardware for 12 years but realized that selling integrated solutions (Hardware, Software, Managed Services, support, consulting) would yield higher compensation and lower competition. So, I always strove to add an element of complexity to my deals which often made me the only bidder. I sold enterprise visions and compelling solutions, never products.

In 2005 I sold the single largest IT in the world that year ($1 billion dollars) based upon an idea my services principal and I dreamed up (as opposed to responding to a bid)

Now I torture dicklickers on sports forums

 

[Crystallas]

I'd make the argument that the language should fit the job. Python certainly isn't the greatest when it comes to performance, but the ML libraries are excellent. As are the ones available in R. I can't comment on Rust libraries specifically, but I would guess that they aren't nearly as functional / mature. But I could be wrong.

Hell, I still write an awful lot of stuff in PHP, which of course draws snickers from the "cool kids" chasing the latest language / framework...but the fact of the matter is Wordpress has a gigantic footprint on the web, and Magento is one of the best open source options available for ecommerce if you need to go beyond the basics. Which are both written in PHP. It might be ugly, but PHP 7 is a pretty well featured language, and it's fast. Also frameworks like Laravel for custom development. Most people who talk shit about it are comparing the current version to legacy stuff (which was pretty terrible), or just parroting something they heard someone else say with little context.

Edit - it looks like it is very much in the early stages:

http://www.arewelearningyet.com/

If a person learns a language for their career, that means 2-4 years before they do anything outside of hobby level coding. By then, Rust will be the new hot language. Just like Python replaced Qt and Ruby, and to some extend, Java.

The thing is, once the code is there, there is less demand for the person to write more code. Python may survive for one reason, despite core flaws that can never be fixed, it has been adopted as a standard course at nearly every school. Given free competition, Rust wins. But now with thumbs on the scale, looks sad, like we're going to be stuck with another Java (a known broken language that gets forever legacy support because 'it just works' returns as the short term mentality while ignoring massive long term problems.

I started on Basic, then Fortan then C. One mishap was to learn fortan (because at the time, it was the easier language and by popular opinion others kept steering me towards it and hardcore nerds were all about asm as their measuring contest) before C. And for a fact it wouldn't have made it any different to learn C first, because Fortan wasn't a jumping off point. In fact, it basically slowed me down and I lost good work because of it. Rust is not ASM or the latest cool language. It is the solution to some of the biggest compiler problems facing us. If I wanted to suggest some obscure language it would be Clang. But the development dies so quick, that who knows if Clang can ever see the potential and bares any real difference from going straight to whatever C-based language is in their path.

 

[number51]

Fucking software guys, the bain of my existence.

 

[nvanprooyen]

If a person learns a language for their career, that means 2-4 years before they do anything outside of hobby level coding. By then, Rust will be the new hot language. Just like Python replaced Qt and Ruby, and to some extend, Java.

The thing is, once the code is there, there is less demand for the person to write more code. Python may survive for one reason, despite core flaws that can never be fixed, it has been adopted as a standard course at nearly every school. Given free competition, Rust wins. But now with thumbs on the scale, looks sad, like we're going to be stuck with another Java (a known broken language that gets forever legacy support because 'it just works' returns as the short term mentality while ignoring massive long term problems.

I started on Basic, then Fortan then C. One mishap was to learn fortan (because at the time, it was the easier language and by popular opinion others kept steering me towards it and hardcore nerds were all about asm as their measuring contest) before C. And for a fact it wouldn't have made it any different to learn C first, because Fortan wasn't a jumping off point. In fact, it basically slowed me down and I lost good work because of it. Rust is not ASM or the latest cool language. It is the solution to some of the biggest compiler problems facing us. If I wanted to suggest some obscure language it would be Clang. But the development dies so quick, that who knows if Clang can ever see the potential and bares any real difference from going straight to whatever C-based language is in their path.

I guess I am of the mind that if someone understands the core fundamentals of software development, it is relatively easy to transition from on language to another. Of course there is some learning curve / nuances involved, but having a solid base makes it relatively easy. I've written stuff in C#, Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, etc along with different frameworks and moving from one to another hasn't been that hard.

That said, I don't consider myself to be a "real developer", even though I've written a lot of stuff that works. I'm more of a marketing / analytics / strategy guy that leads teams. Having a solid understanding of development certainly helps though in recruiting talent and managing people / projects.

 

[nvanprooyen]

Fucking software guys, the bain of my existence.

Who hurt you?

 

[KittiesKorner]

I'd make the argument that the language should fit the job. Python certainly isn't the greatest when it comes to performance, but the ML libraries are excellent. As are the ones available in R. I can't comment on Rust libraries specifically, but I would guess that they aren't nearly as functional / mature. But I could be wrong.

Hell, I still write an awful lot of stuff in PHP, which of course draws snickers from the "cool kids" chasing the latest language / framework...but the fact of the matter is Wordpress has a gigantic footprint on the web, and Magento is one of the best open source options available for ecommerce if you need to go beyond the basics. Which are both written in PHP. It might be ugly, but PHP 7 is a pretty well featured language, and it's fast. Also frameworks like Laravel for custom development. Most people who talk shit about it are comparing the current version to legacy stuff (which was pretty terrible), or just parroting something they heard someone else say with little context.

Edit - it looks like it is very much in the early stages:

http://www.arewelearningyet.com/

Been there with php. I didn’t hate it as much as some do

 

[BNB]

I sold hardware for 12 years but realized that selling integrated solutions (Hardware, Software, Managed Services, support, consulting) would yield higher compensation and lower competition. So, I always strove to add an element of complexity to my deals which often made me the only bidder. I sold enterprise visions and compelling solutions, never products.

In 2005 I sold the single largest IT in the world that year ($1 billion dollars) based upon an idea my services principal and I dreamed up (as opposed to responding to a bid)

Now I torture dicklickers on sports forums

Maybe it did happen, but I didn't find anything online about the "largest IT" in the world worth 1 billion that was sold in 2005. I would think that would be news worthy and easy to find.

 

[nvanprooyen]

As far as what I want to get better at in 2019, I want to start playing with a Javascript framework / library. Likely either Vue.js or React.

 

[KittiesKorner]

As far as what I want to get better at in 2019, I want to start playing with a Javascript framework / library. Likely either Vue.js or React.

Vue is pretty handy if you are coming from angular. React is React as you know; curious if its context-api will supplant redux eventually.

Had to do some backbone at my last job (talk about old-school).




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ShiftyDevil]

I'm a data engineer for a large company. I work in our legal silo on an "Analytics R&D" team. So my job is dealing with the pipeline that feeds our data scientists, and the pipeline that the data scientists input back into. I took a weird path to where I am now. I went to school to be a bog standard, no real specialization programmer right out of high school, I hated it, ran out of money and "took a quarter off" to work and fix my money problems. That quarter lasted into my 30s. So with rudimentary programming/computer science skills the best job I could find was as a helpdesk monkey.

I did that for a while, and then one day someone asked if anyone wanted to learn the reporting system to help smash out some standard business reporting we did, I says "sure". And that turned into an "analyst" role (which was DEFINITELY not what a real analyst does). Then one day some said "Hey analytics monkey's can any of you write SQL?" and I said "Sure", hell I took a database class once and I learn fast. So that turned into a SQL developer role, and that turned into a DBA role, and that turned into a Data Engineering role.

So I have SQL coming out of my ears, I've been picking up Python and have some dirty data science skills I've picked up from working with real scientists.

Right now I'm going back to school, my initial plan was to teach computer science at a highschool level, but I think I'll pick up a masters in Data Science. UW has a program I really want to get into focused on professionals already in the industry, and UW is just down the road from me.

I used to work in tech long long ago. Think, before 2000.

So today I am like a lost little rabbit in the tech world.


A random question though. If someone was wanting to get into tech today what would be the best, most lucrative, easiest way to accomplish that?

I am just curios what current tech people think.

If you're looking for a skill set that is very, very in demand, data science is good. If you don't have a background in it, you'll almost certainly need classwork, but, if you want a large salary it's the way to go. One of our senior scientists left the company last year because Starbucks (of all places) gave him $280k/year plus signing bonuses. So that'll be your top end, around the Seattle area we were having to offer high 100's to be competitive the last time we were hiring that position.

Or work in a startup. If you already know Python, the libraries available are excellent. E.g. scikit-learn. Just start learning, writing code, networking, publishing some projects on github and maybe contribute to some open source stuff in the space. Check out Kaggle for datasets to play with.

We use sci-kit a good bit, we also use madlib a lot. We also use Kaggle for a lot of stuff (good ol' 20 news groups data set), it's a good resource. We're probably moving away from our current infrastructure (nix/madlib/greenplum/bespoke python) to Azure. The rest of the company is Microsoft so we're having to get in line.

 

[nvanprooyen]

What's your favorite editor or full blown IDE? Most of the stuff I work on doesn't require the overhead of an IDE, so I tend to gravitate towards editors. Used Sublime for years, but recently have fallen in love with VS Code. They brought a lot of the stuff that makes Visual Studio great over, but in a light format. Lots of extensions, customization, and the Intellisense is really good. Tried Atom for a minute, but it felt really slow.

 

[KittiesKorner]

What's your favorite editor or full blown IDE? Most of the stuff I work on doesn't require the overhead of an IDE, so I tend to gravitate towards editors. Used Sublime for years, but recently have fallen in love with VS Code. They brought a lot of the stuff that makes Visual Studio great over, but in a light format. Lots of extensions, customization, and the Intellisense is really good. Tried Atom for a minute, but it felt really slow.

Was using webstorm but new job didn’t get me a license so fell in with vs code. I like it except i miss the tabbed terminals (likely is a plugin for that). If i have to edit a single file and not a whole repo, i use sublime. Never used atom although i know people like it, or liked it. Used to use coda and textedit++ or whatever back in the day. As may be obvious I am just a front end guy lol

 

[Omeletpants]

Maybe it did happen, but I didn't find anything online about the "largest IT" in the world worth 1 billion that was sold in 2005. I would think that would be news worthy and easy to find.

United Airlines, Project Newton Managed Services project

 

[ShiftyDevil]

What's your favorite editor or full blown IDE? Most of the stuff I work on doesn't require the overhead of an IDE, so I tend to gravitate towards editors. Used Sublime for years, but recently have fallen in love with VS Code. They brought a lot of the stuff that makes Visual Studio great over, but in a light format. Lots of extensions, customization, and the Intellisense is really good. Tried Atom for a minute, but it felt really slow.

I like VS a lot, I haven't messed with VS Code too much; and I primarily use it for school. For work however, based on our infrastructure the thing we use the most is PGAdmin, but that's because we use Greenplum, and if we want to take advantage of it's parallelism we have to run things in DB (which is what MADlib is for); and PGAdmin is the common tool. The new version of PGAdmin is beyond awful and we actually have an outstanding ticket with our sys people to install some actual IDEs on our VMs (Toad, DBForge and one other one, forget what it is). I've used Toad a bit, back in the stone age when we were primarily an Oracle shop, and it was fine.

But, we're kind of in a weird spot where we're very much tied to Greenplum for now, with a move to Azure likely in our future, which limits our editor/IDE options. So, outside of PGAdmin we use Jupyter Notebook, which is fine.

EDIT: Oh and of course Notepad++, I know the other dev teams like Ultra Edit, and I messed with it a bit, but I've just gotten so used to Notepad++ that when I just want a basic ***** editor that's what I open.

 

[nvanprooyen]

Was using webstorm but new job didn’t get me a license so fell in with vs code. I like it except i miss the tabbed terminals (likely is a plugin for that). If i have to edit a single file and not a whole repo, i use sublime. Never used atom although i know people like it, or liked it. Used to use coda and textedit++ or whatever back in the day. As may be obvious I am just a front end guy lol

This looks like it might be ok:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Tyriar.terminal-tabs

I haven't used it though. I still use a seperate terminal window. I don't know why, creature of habit I guess. Also, lol...I forgot all about Coda despite using it for several years. And I too fire up Sublime still to edit a single file.

 

[nvanprooyen]

I like VS a lot, I haven't messed with VS Code too much; and I primarily use it for school. For work however, based on our infrastructure the thing we use the most is PGAdmin, but that's because we use Greenplum, and if we want to take advantage of it's parallelism we have to run things in DB (which is what MADlib is for); and PGAdmin is the common tool. The new version of PGAdmin is beyond awful and we actually have an outstanding ticket with our sys people to install some actual IDEs on our VMs (Toad, DBForge and one other one, forget what it is). I've used Toad a bit, back in the stone age when we were primarily an Oracle shop, and it was fine.

But, we're kind of in a weird spot where we're very much tied to Greenplum for now, with a move to Azure likely in our future, which limits our editor/IDE options. So, outside of PGAdmin we use Jupyter Notebook, which is fine.

EDIT: Oh and of course Notepad++, I know the other dev teams like Ultra Edit, and I messed with it a bit, but I've just gotten so used to Notepad++ that when I just want a basic ***** editor that's what I open.

I've never messed with greenplum. What makes it better than vanilla postgres?

Re Jupyter, I know a lot of people like it for tinkering...but I just can't get used to writing stuff in cells in a browser window. I have an extension for VS Code that mimics its behavior in a side window in the editor.