A goodie from 2011.
I like this because, even though a lot of it is gloomy and depressing ("almost no one makes customer-facing software" and "profit centers of a business hear the word "programmer" as "cost sink"" stand out), there's some genuinely hopeful stuff in there. I really appreciate
- Do Java programmers make more money than .NET programmers? Anyone describing themselves as either a Java programmer or .NET programmer has already lost, because a) they’re a programmer (you’re not, see above) and b) they’re making themselves non-hireable for most programming jobs. In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t been doing that one for your entire career. I did back-end Big Freaking Java Web Application development as recently as March 2010. Trust me, nobody cares about that. If a Python shop was looking for somebody technical to make them a pile of money, the fact that I’ve never written a line of Python would not get held against me.
Also, god yes for communication skills. Brilliant people still need to communicate their brilliant ideas - otherwise, how will anyone but them know these ideas? Master communication, strive to write your best all the time, learn rhetorical techniques. I'm curious how far you can get on just a great sense of humor, on account of the fact that humor is pretty much understood to be a fantastic metric of someone with linguistic talent.
A damn fine read. This sounds like some Real Talk, which is definitely relevant to my interests as an aspiring Prgramm- uh... Engineer.