First Video Cast! Discussing when it's time to change languages, and the WAN party last week.
WAN Party again this week, 7:30 EST Weds 2/11 SkypeId: SaraJo81
Have a question/comment/suggestion for Sara? Think you can drop some tech that she can't handle? Shoot her an email at sarajchipps [at] gmail.com
Please note: All marriage proposals must be accompanied by previous year's W2.
Sara hosts a WAN party each Wednesday at 7:30 PM where we discuss and debate current development topics and issues. For more info join us at http://TinyChat.com/wanparty every Wednesday.
Sara is a consultant that specializes in creating beautiful and intuitive Microsoft .NET web applications. She can be reached by email (sarajchipps [at] gmail) or on her cell at (862) 201-3065. References and code samples available on request.
Comments
Lee Dumond on on 2.09.2009 at 10:17 PM
Sara, can't agree with your observation about COBOL developers. There are LOTS of large corporate legacy systems that still run on COBOL. A few miles from where I'm sitting right now, there is a office that houses dozens of COBOL guys who pretty much work 7 days a week. I even live next door to one of them!
By the way, experienced COBOL developers command salaries that would put C# and VB devs to shame.
John_Idol on on 2.10.2009 at 5:13 AM
Girl - you REALLY are a geek.
This reminds me of those chicks video blogs on youtube --> www.youtube.com/.../watch - sorry but I can't help it, normal posts are much better.
Oh - do not switch to Ruby: it's cool and all but it's not too easy to get a ruby gig nowadays compared to .NET.
Open Source: Did U change your mind? I remember reading in a previous post U wanted to get payed 'cause U don't have time and all.
Basu on on 2.10.2009 at 9:09 AM
Lisp for the win!! Of course, I'm planning to go into academics and be a professor.
Chris Boldon on on 2.10.2009 at 10:45 AM
IMHO Ruby is a fad. I've worked on a few Ruby projects. They aren't as stable, and are extremely difficult to enhance/improve.
It fills a need for quick and dirty webapps, but for anything beyond basic CRUD it really doesn't fit. I'd use Grails over Ruby.
Erika on on 2.10.2009 at 2:40 PM
I agree w/John_Idol..u are a geek :)~
Teasing, thats what we love about you.
Next time you're doing a video cast..come to my house, I'll film u!
xo
developingchris on on 2.10.2009 at 3:20 PM
Nice post, glad to finally hear Sara, to know you truly are as geeky as us.
Hope I can make the WANP this week, 7:30 cuts pretty close to family time.
schipps on on 2.10.2009 at 8:13 PM
@Lee - Touche I suppose my experience with them has been limited to one guy in the corner somewhere I used to work.
@John_Idol - Someone called me Lonely Dev 15 today. All together a rookie operation. I now have a real life producer and partner, stay tuned for pure awesomeness. (PS I do an amazing smokey eye)
sixlettervariable on on 2.10.2009 at 9:35 PM
Plenty of folks still use COBOL/FORTRAN, plenty of new code is written in both. We use everything from F66 all the way to C#/WPF. Hell I'm in charge of plenty of codes written before my parents were even in high school, so as @Lee noted you can make some good money on the old horses.
So when you're looking to change languages, use a different mindset. Instead of changing, add to your toolbox. So when it comes time to solve a problem, you pick the right tool for the job. Maybe it's F95, COBOL, Java/C#, Ruby, C/C++, Perl, or hell perhaps just a 5 line sh script. You'll be happier when you've solved the problem well enough to barely notice maintaining it, rather than trying to recall the specifics for the language you used!
Erik van Brakel on on 2.11.2009 at 4:36 PM
I've switched around with languages quite a few times, but I think most of the time it was simply a matter of 'moving on' in the progression.
I started out writing my own little quick start menus as MSDOS batch files (woo!), writing a simple pong game in QBasic, going visual with VB6, then mixing in some DLL calls to get more advanced tooling.
After that, college kicked in, did some simple C programming before starting on my Java courses. After a while C courses came (thank god I already programmed that :)), windows/linux and embedded. C++ was merely a step up from C. In the meantime I did some web developing in PHP 3 and 4. At my internship I started using ASP.NET with C#, 1.1 framework. Now I'm devoting all my time in learning more of C#, focusing on the new MVC stuff.
But as more people say here, the 'old' languages are not dead. It's just that web applications are hot right now, so everybody and their mom are writing stuff in PHP, C#, Java. There's simply more jobs available for those languages, so more people use them (not everyone is that good though :/).
As for your conference call meeting thingy: I'd love to join in on the chat, or simply listen in, but it's at an impossible time for me, being in the CET timezone (that's, err, GMT+1 now?)
Slackmaster K on on 2.11.2009 at 4:52 PM
COBOL is paying better these days because COBOL Programmers are retiring and dying from old age, and there is very little interest in COBOL among the new folks coming into the industry.
Also, in your div="footer", there is an erroneous period that rouses my suspicion. What could this dot be doing?
<p>.</p>
FloydWing on on 2.12.2009 at 7:39 PM
I did DEC Fortran for 9 years in a production environment. I finally decided I was tired of being a dinosaur with non-current skills, jumped ship, and finally ended up in a Java job. I left a good job and constantly question if I mad the right decision for me and my family, but I am happier. Systems built on languages such as Fortran and Cobol are still alive and well, and probably not going away. Those systems are helping those companies make money now and rewriting them in a more current language would cause quite a time of upheaval and non-stability, not to mention the cost. I'm involved in rewriting an ancient ERP app right now and I don't really see how we'll ever catch the moving target that is the existing system.
So what was the secret language that you are embarrassed about using?
Ben on on 2.13.2009 at 3:34 PM
I'm like you and am curious about Ruby on Rails. What .Net developer isn't right?
I've finally committed a few hours a week to building a fun project in Ruby on Rails.
I'm not going to stress over big decisions like "is it time to leave" my current platform, until I've gotten a taste for something else.
Josh Stodola on on 2.19.2009 at 10:26 PM
I actually work in a COBOL shop, but I am an ASP.NET developer. I know COBOL, CICS, DB2, and VSAM well - I learned this in college before I effort touched .NET. Although most of my work now is in building web applications, I still get plenty of chances to fire up the emulator and write/maintain some legacy code.
Having experience with both, I thought I would chime in and contradict the first commenter about the salary of a COBOL dev. Unless they have system administration experience, they should not be making more than a web developer. This opinion is based on the fact that COBOL is such an easy language. I've had to make changes to programs written in the 70s with ungodly confusing logic (I picture a hippie on acid writing this code). Yes, it's a pain in the ass to follow all those GO TO statements, but in the end it is really just busy work and does not require significant amounts of brain power. There's a WHOLE lot more to learn if you want to become an experienced web developer. I'm certainly not trying to say that a COBOL programmer makes dirt, that is certainly not the case. The fact that they are hard to find keeps the salary competitive.
While I'm here, I'll say that Ruby on Rails is a waste of time.
Bye!
free online casino gambling games on on 12.30.2009 at 12:27 AM
am a full on fan of the agile methodology - however... very few organizations - beyond perhaps Microsoft, Intel, Sun Microsystems.
Poor developers can take a lot away from a project when they are given the high degree of trust that an Agile project has. And it's not clear how to interoperate Agile development teams and operational teams.