I am writing a paper on moving from novice to intermediate programmer and got to thinking about the sort of things that people say that identify someone as a novice programmer. NOTE: No one is allowed to feel bad for having made these mistakes. Everyone you meet will admit to having made the exact same…
There are two kinds of people in organizations; those who can count and those who claim to have “people skills”. When David Wechsler created the most commonly used intelligence test in America, the results gave two IQ scores, Verbal and Performance Intelligence. Dr. Wechsler said he had noticed that there are some people who were…
Back when I was in college, there was a group advocating burning rock albums. A major investigative journalist wrote a story on their motivation (I think he either wrote for Rolling Stone or Playboy, the latter of which, yes, I really did read for the articles. Despite having competed on my college track team and…
I’ve been in business for over twenty years. All of that time, I have run a small business, by choice. During those twenty years, I have had a sick husband, been widowed, had four children – so I had some reasons that becoming the next Oracle was not my priority. However, I have made a…
So, I am writing a paper on how you know you (or someone else) is a “real” programmer. That is, they don’t fit in that “new user” box any more. But how do you make that decision? Is it like pornography, you just know it when you look at it? (Not that I ever personally…
Writing a presentation for WUSS, I had to fill out the usual check box for the intended audience: Level of programming expertise: ___ Novice __ Intermediate __ Advanced and I started wondering when exactly does someone stop being a novice? One answer is that your programming no longer LOOKS like it was written by a…
When I was in high school I had a very defined career path. I told anyone who asked me (which was very few people since no one cares what a high school kid thinks) that my career goal was to be president of General Motors. I even applied to the General Motors College. (Bet you…
A large part of my day is spent playing with new software and trying to break it. Yes, there are actually grown-ups who get paid to do this for a living. I find it hard to believe myself. The theory, which actually works well, is that whenever someone has a question about something he or…
A miracle has occurred and I have had time to spend evaluating two things that have been on my to-do list forever, JMP and SAS Enterprise Miner. Both of these products are produced by SAS and the first interesting point is that knowing SAS won’t really help at all. That isn’t to say that having…
You know those give-aways you get at conferences? The favorite one I ever saw, which I did not get because they had run out of them, was a magic wand. It was wand-shaped, with sparkles floating inside, they had a vase full of them with a note that this was the magic wand some people…