Members the stranger Posted January 31, 2007 Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 I think I'm addicted to endless tweaking of html/css etc. I think I got about 12 hours in my sig. And probably a good 80 hours on my myspace page. Probably got too many on my web page. I can just sit tweaking code for hours on end. Should I be concerned? Is there still a market for web design/mastering? I'll probably edit this post 6 or 8 times? Maybe I should have spelled "six" and "eight"? My Mom is a grammar nazi. I just realized the correlation! No offense, Mom. I'm down with grammar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted January 31, 2007 Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 You misspelled "grammar", you code writing ignoramus. Always remember: code without proper content is like a crust without a pie filling. Or like a car without a distributor cap. Or a metal guitar solo without a pick scrape and a whammy bar dive. This I tell you brother: you can't have one without the other. - Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lee Flier Posted January 31, 2007 Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 Well, considering I do it for a living, I like it all right but it's not like I sit around doing it for the hell of it. Maybe I would if I didn't get my fill of it with work. As it is I'm ready to go play my guitar when I'm done working, I don't wanna look at code no mo'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted January 31, 2007 Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 Yeah, I also do some coding as part of my job. Simple stuff, really... HTML, some Javascript, some other stuff. To be honest, if I could, that's one area that I'd like to hand off to someone else to do so I could focus on the content creation aspect of what I do. But then I'd have to pay someone, and I break out in hives whenever I'm writing a check. I do find there's an art to good coding, and if it were all I did for a living, I could find some enjoyment in it. Personally, I like writing and making preety peectures even better. But I know some people that get off on code, and why not? There are worse things to love. - Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff Leites Posted January 31, 2007 Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 I started coding in school in 1967, and I was a programmer/analyst until I retired last April. Since then I haven't written on line of code, not even an Excel VB macro. I haven't missed it one bit. I'll modify my web page as needed, but to me, that's not the same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ultravibe Posted January 31, 2007 Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 I code for a living, but I don't even have a personal web page. I guess that says alot about how much I enjoy it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators MrKnobs Posted January 31, 2007 Moderators Share Posted January 31, 2007 I love to code, especially in machine language. The last major project I did was really fun, recognition and characterization of crack patterns in an asphalt surface from a two camera optical scan under variable lighting conditions (i.e. no artificial light). Just a huge raster scan. I made the app interactive so that the operator could look at a graphic display of the original scan superimposed on the computer program's characterization of the crack and tension vectors that caused it. If the operator disagreed with the computer's rendering and conclusions, he could override it and the computer saved his decision along with all the applicable variables used in the decision so that the program could "learn" from the expert operator. That was a lot of fun and I got a ton of props for it, but it was the last major piece of code I wrote, because they don't want me coding anymore. Apparently presentations, publishing papers, and ESPECIALLY bringing in new grants are all more important to my bosses than the things an experienced programmer can do. Hell, they don't even like it when the students program, which is strange since some of them are very good and all of them are very cheap. A while back I was running a project for some dumbass faculty guy who was frequently out of the country. The Chinese PhD student we had on that project was an exceptionally good programmer, but every time the prof came back he'd say, "No coding! Buy several off the shelf programs and make them work together to do what you need!" Then he'd leave again. I mean, sometimes what he was suggesting works, if you can devise a system where the various programs communicate through files. But in this case, we really needed to modify and integrate the programs, and I couldn't make him understand that software companies aren't going to just hand over their source code so you can change it! So the student and I conspired to let the student write the whole app from scratch while letting the prof think he was knitting together store bought software. I kinda stuck my neck out with that, but luckily the student really came through. In fact, he won a national "young engineer" innovation award for his program. The funniest thing was for years the prof would bring that up, and tell me, "I can't believe Xin won a programming award for using packaged software." True story! Terry D. P.S. Recently I've been getting calls from headhunters who are looking for people experienced with "archaic" languages. I know COBOL, FORTRAN, APL, and PL/1 pretty extensively (subject to memory loss). In fact we still use FORTRAN here fairly often. It's hard to believe, but I'm told that people are needed (and can make some good money) coding in the old languages. Maybe I'll do that when I finally retire from here. I really love to code! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted January 31, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 You misspelled "grammar", you code writing ignoramus. Always remember: code without proper content is like a crust without a pie filling. Or like a car without a distributor cap. Or a metal guitar solo without a pick scrape and a whammy bar dive. This I tell you brother: you can't have one without the other. - Jeff It's Firefox's fault. It's in charge of spelling errors. _~ Content is my number one concern...after aesthetic concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted January 31, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 You misspelled "grammar", you code writing ignoramus. - Jeff That was a clever troll I built in to flush out the spelling nazis...I just remembered... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted January 31, 2007 Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 Like others who code for a living, I'm ambivalent. I spend WAY too much time tweaking my work code (not for pleasure but not really billable, either). As a consequence, my own web pages are ALWAYS on my "re-do" list but seldom ever get worked on... If I DIDN'T code for a living, I think I WOULD enjoy tweaking code -- because I DO enjoy the work, overall -- but the more pressure there is to get the job done (and I'm just finishing up [i hope, I hope] a moderately big dev project so the pressure's been on) the less enjoyable things are (imagine). It's like last night... For the first time I submitted preliminary video fly-thrus for the project showing the feature highlights and general workflow. And, happily, the client appeared really impressed (or he's so desperate for the project to get done he'll say ANYTHING... either way, works for me). After (what I hope will be) the final round of major changes, I redid the fly thrus (WAY too much like recording when you're not feeling it... take, retake, take again). Now, I'm a database guy and I started taking in web work when I got an e-commerce project to do. I have a little visual flair, I suppose, but I'm not really a graphics guy. And, while I've owned the Flash authoring tool for a couple versions and done a few things, I can't say I'm anything but a Flash newbie. My screen-vid-capture tool (the free/open source CamStudio, which became the foundation for a version bought by the dreaded beast, Adobe, which plans [or maybe already sells] a payfor version) has an AVI-to-Flash utility that works OK. Or I can use Flash to create the SWF and, putatively, get some real control over things. Or I SHOULD be able to. Now, Flash is far enough away from my regular work that I, intellectually, think it should be "fun" to play with. It's "actionscript" language has some oddness, to be sure, but, you know, I just can't get overwrought by language flavor differences. As you web dudes know, a web services app under something like the old pre-.Net ASP could have as many as 4 languages IN THE SAME file. And, so, in a hurricane-eye period of calm last night, I decided to set aside some "fun" time to figure out why I just can't seem to get things to turn out right in Flash... fun, it should be. Ugh. Groovy, entertaining video-capabilities notwithstanding... ugh. I put on a Leave It to Beaver episode on the DVR (BIG Eddie Haskel fan, here, I'll fast forward through a whole show, sometimes, just to get to Eddie) and fell asleep on the couch, instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted January 31, 2007 Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 Like others who code for a living, I'm ambivalent. I spend WAY too much time tweaking my work code (not for pleasure but not really billable, either). As a consequence, my own web pages are ALWAYS on my "re-do" list but seldom ever get worked on... If I DIDN'T code for a living, I think I WOULD enjoy tweaking code -- because I DO enjoy the work, overall -- but the more pressure there is to get the job done (and I'm just finishing up [i hope, I hope] a moderately big dev project so the pressure's been on) the less enjoyable things are (imagine). It's like last night... For the first time I submitted preliminary video fly-thrus for the project showing the feature highlights and general workflow. And, happily, the client appeared really impressed (or he's so desperate for the project to get done he'll say ANYTHING... either way, works for me). After (what I hope will be) the final round of major changes, I redid the fly thrus (WAY too much like recording when you're not feeling it... take, retake, take again). Now, I'm a database guy and I started taking in web work when I got an e-commerce project to do. I have a little visual flair, I suppose, but I'm not really a graphics guy. And, while I've owned the Flash authoring tool for a couple versions and done a few things, I can't say I'm anything but a Flash newbie. My screen-vid-capture tool (the free/open source CamStudio, which became the foundation for a version bought by the dreaded beast, Adobe, which plans [or maybe already sells] a payfor version) has an AVI-to-Flash utility that works OK. Or I can use Flash to create the SWF and, putatively, get some real control over things. Or I SHOULD be able to. Now, Flash is far enough away from my regular work that I, intellectually, think it should be "fun" to play with. Its "actionscript" language has some oddness, to be sure, but, you know, I just can't get overwrought by language flavor differences. As you web dudes know, a web services app under something like the old pre-.Net ASP could have as many as 4 languages IN THE SAME file. And, so, in a hurricane-eye period of calm last night, I decided to set aside some "fun" time to figure out why I just can't seem to get things to turn out right in Flash... fun, it should be. Ugh. Groovy, entertaining video-capabilities notwithstanding... ugh. I put on a Leave It to Beaver episode on the DVR (BIG Eddie Haskel fan, here, I'll fast forward through a whole show, sometimes, just to get to Eddie) and fell asleep on the couch, instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ed A. Posted January 31, 2007 Members Share Posted January 31, 2007 Can't say that I enjoy tweaking code anymore seeing that I'm no longer working as a programmer. I was in IT for about 20 years and I've programmed in everything from assembly language to Visual Basic. I was doing the web development stuff (Perl, PHP/MySQL) starting about 1995 and I wish I had gone the "real" programming language route (C, C++) instead of web programming. That kind of separates the men from the boys . I still have some interest in developing apps using Objective C on the Macintosh, but I really have better things to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted February 1, 2007 Members Share Posted February 1, 2007 Ah... Ed... What's easier? -- to program in one lower level (terser, more elegant, perhaps more 'abstract' -- for you outsiders) language or putting together an ASP or PHP script with 3 or 4 (or more) languages... you know, PHP/ASP on the server side, SQL to query the DB, javascript on the clientside for forms and page features, and HTML holding it all together. I mean, c'mon. REAL coders like you and me code in FOUR languages at once! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted February 1, 2007 Members Share Posted February 1, 2007 Well, considering I do it for a living, I like it all right but it's not like I sit around doing it for the hell of it. Maybe I would if I didn't get my fill of it with work. As it is I'm ready to go play my guitar when I'm done working, I don't wanna look at code no mo'. My position exactly - - I have alternated between writing code and designing electronics for the last 13 years at work. When I do coding, I don't even want to *look* at my PC when I get home; I just play music for fun, and do some tweaking of electronic stuff I play with occasionally. It also gives my cubital & carpal tunnel syndromes a relief period. When I do electronics, I like to do DAW recording, mixing/mastering and composing at home. I get enough electon-counting at work. Variety is a good thing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ed A. Posted February 1, 2007 Members Share Posted February 1, 2007 Ah... Ed... What's easier? -- to program in one lower level (terser, more elegant, perhaps more 'abstract' -- for you outsiders) language or putting together an ASP or PHP script with 3 or 4 (or more) languages... you know, PHP/ASP on the server side, SQL to query the DB, javascript on the clientside for forms and page features, and HTML holding it all together. I mean, c'mon. REAL coders like you and me code in FOUR languages at once! You're right about complex web apps using several technologies at once, but writing a cool softsynth app using a scripting language might be a problem . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted February 1, 2007 Members Share Posted February 1, 2007 I hear you can do anything in Perl... (Of course, us ASP/.Net guys are always the goat for those guys, y'know?) I wrote a dBase III program that played a monotonal version of "Bicycle Built for Two" out of the system speaker... well, the first two bars, anyhow. I lost interest after that... There WAS a BIN file and little API you could use with dBase that could play more complex sounds through the system speaker, though (without a soundcard, I mean). This would have been toward the end of the 80s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff Leites Posted February 1, 2007 Members Share Posted February 1, 2007 P.S. Recently I've been getting calls from headhunters who are looking for people experienced with "archaic" languages. I know COBOL, FORTRAN, APL, and PL/1 pretty extensively (subject to memory loss). In fact we still use FORTRAN here fairly often. It's hard to believe, but I'm told that people are needed (and can make some good money) coding in the old languages. That's because us "baby boomer" programmers have started reaching retirement age, and nobody seems to be trainning new COBOL programmers. My company had a heck of a time finding someone to replace me. The guy they finally found wasn't very good at all, and got axed in layoff shortly after I left. Fortunitly I was able to retire early, because I found the programming world very stressful. I really enjoyed coding and getting a system to work. It was like writting a good piece of music, but the other side of the coin was at the worse, being called into work in the middle of the night to fix someone else's program that crashed. My last job (of over 10 years) was a 9-5 job, with no overtime, and no night time calls, but I'd still get all stressed out when some important production program crapped out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted February 1, 2007 Members Share Posted February 1, 2007 I wrote a dBase III program that played a monotonal version of "Bicycle Built for Two" out of the system speaker... well, the first two bars, anyhow. I lost interest after that... "Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?" - Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted February 1, 2007 Members Share Posted February 1, 2007 "Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?"- Jeff That was my idea of computer music. Don't get me wrong, I got Morton Subotnik's Silver Apples of the Moon when it came out in '68... but HAL singing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true..." at the time just more or less musically summed up this hippie's view of the coming computer age... Now, of course, I see conclusively what I always expected: the enemy isn't the computer; the enemy is we, ourselves. (And a grammatical system that insists I say "the enemy is we" -- jeesh. That is a foolishness up with which I shall not put. Someday. When I throw off these shackles...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bunny Knutson Posted February 1, 2007 Members Share Posted February 1, 2007 I think I got about 12 hours in my sig. Are you effing kidding me?? Dude. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted February 1, 2007 Author Members Share Posted February 1, 2007 Probably 2, but 12 sounded better. _~ I was enjoying myself. What ya gonna do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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