@Trip - So I should keep it in my desk drawer at work and pull it out when I take a thinking break (like now)?

I'm not sure what your line of work is, but if you're comfortable with it, who am I to object.

strat: that should be posted right along what to do if you have a cheating accusation.

Just your typical software developer. An overpaid, underworked (strike that, turn it around) cubicle jockey.

The world needs ditch-diggers too.

I work in the IT trenches digging IT ditches. :-)

Stratagos, this one needs to go at the very top, not the bottom:

*Have you been approached by an active Mod/Admin about becoming a fellow Mod/Admin?*
YES: Continue.
NO: On the topic of becoming a mod, your permanent silence is greatly appreciated.

@fk, ~6 years, ~2 professionally. Still don't have my undergrad (I'm 23), but I'm in graduate research and TA for kids I also take courses with. My research mainly encircles tools for collaborative programming and teaching aides for CS courses. Think Google WAVE for your IDE, where each group member's work (and the entire history of their changes) is searchable. The same tool allows an instructor to "step-through" a student's mindset in how they programmed a solution. To catch any possible bad habits or areas of weakness, or unfortunately, find out they cheated.

But my work is in writing and video games. I'm only writing code now and getting the degree to prove I know my shit. I'm an "idea" guy, not a "get it done" guy, and I love the English language too much to write in anything else, foreign or digital.

I took a quick look at some of the admin action code earlier today, and I think given enough time (which hopefully I have at the end of this month,) I could make sense of it. It's fairly (and given the norm in programming, surprisingly ) well structured and commented, I just need to pull everything into an IDE to explore it properly.

I must say your view of "the norm in programming" must be a result of seeing student code. Programming at the level I work is very organized, readable, structured, and reusable. But my piers and I are all senior level developers and insist on code reviews and agile methodologies.

Granted, my experiences are limited to academia, the video game industry, and mobile development. (Code for mobile devices alone is a nightmare) but it's not just students that have terrible habits in making their code an uphill battle to make sense of. If anything, students are better because they know I'll decimate their grade if they don't document their projects. Overall, I'd say I'm disappointed with more code that comes across my screen in the work environment than in a teaching environment. So the majority must lose those habits sometime after graduation.

Documented code... now that is an exception. Most I know only use xml comments so reference docs can be generated. And it depends on the time constraints of the programs in question. Students are given resonable deadlines, but the real world is you quote six months and the client wants it in 2 to 3.

Oh and readability and performance are typically counterproductive. To get the best performance you optimize your code to reduce remote calls unless the routine in question is extensive and threatens to push your memory limits. With mobile devices just now going dual core but having as much as 4 gig of memory, you let the code bloat to avoid the remote calls.

I'm never given reasonable deadlines in school or work. =P Video games are notoriously the worst at crunch times and deadline deaths.

That's funny. When I was in college, deadlines were pretty easy (tight but doable) compared to the deadlines I deal with in the real world.

Maybe it has something to dso with being the "go to" guy they call in when a project is way behind and they are trying to salvage it before uppoer management cancels it and audits the expenditures.

Agreed, though a lot of the deadlines are difficult I haven't had a coding project in school yet that I've found unreasonable.

For the record, every developer in college wants to write video games.
I was interviewed for several opportunities... got a job offer too late.

Glad I never went into the industry. The pay is terrible, the benefits are worse, and the work conditions are amongst the worst. You work on shitty titles unless you know someone to move up to something good. You work 80 hour shifts on regular weeks, you sleep at the building during crunch time. You have no off time and will be working from home even if you are sick. The code is extremely complex (you better double in math... I had a minor in math and was going to be docked for it until I showed I have all the complex linear algebra classes and knew how to write 3 software), and kludgy as hell, especially when getting things to work.

You get no recognition unless you are the producer or lead and have had a lot of success before...
And if you start getting burned out or not performing well? You are gone... there's a list of college grads with high credentials waiting to take your spot.

The real money is in stuff like bejeweled or angry birds. Simple games, no copyright protection. Small price. Hundreds of thousands of people pay the $1 for it, and you don't have to worry about packaging, shipping, marketing and all that overhead. I know the bejeweled guy was a millionaire from just the original game.

Back to on topic: I'm just like Draug... in fact, I'm one of the first certified scrum masters in Cincinnati. I write code for maintainability and readability. I plan for bugs to happen and make sure the system can recover and appropriately log the mistake so it can be fixed... that is what is needed if you work on something like webdip...

I'd like to back up what FK was saying - a friend has 15 years of experience, and worked himself up to lead, but now works to port older games to mobile platforms - because he saw the writing on the wall a few years ago and starting shifting his skill set while he still could.

@fk, thankfully, I've dodged most of those pitfalls. Small games, self-produced titles, "indie," even the few larger titles I've worked on were always on a production basis, so I never had to be the victim of crunch time, I just witnessed what it did to everyone else. The company I'm currently in talks of permanent employment with is exactly the opposite of the industry standards. I walked into their office knowing they were in crunch mode for the next release and found the team taking long lunches, playing ping pong, and in a general "my job is awesome" happy mood. And before anything is said, I surprised them with my visit, so it wasn't an act. =P Hopefully it happens. If not, the writing gig is self sustainable, so I'm not worried.

And you'd be surprised. I can count the number of people that have asked for advisement about getting into the video game industry in the past two years on one hand. Most want to go into HCI and bioinformatics. The other half gets scooped up by defence contractors and three letter agencies.

I'd give boht my left and right nut to work for the CIA. FBI? Not so much. NSA? Maybe. But CIA? Abso-fucking-lutely!

it is so much more boring than you can imagine, draug.

I enjoy the electronic chase... Looking for subtle patterns to track down and verify intel... I would actually enjoy it, I think.

They're always recruiting, Draug, but the pay bites, and unless you have specific skills you'll have all the boring, bureaucratic crap from corporate America, plus never being able to bitch about worrk

"I enjoy the electronic chase... Looking for subtle patterns to track down and verify intel... I would actually enjoy it, I think."

Heh. I wonder when the CIA will realize that webDip Mods could be their Minor Leagues.

They're too afraid you'll run off with a database when they left it unguarded, and you'd just leave a note "sorry for the stab, part of the game "

I just went through a series of interviews with the NSA. The first three were fun crypto puzzles, the last one was torture. I wouldn't have landed the SC anyway, I'm too Canadian.