nemesis wrote:

> "Welcome to the desert of the real." ;)

How apt those words suddenly seem...

>> The idea that there might exist "software" which doesn't fit this 
>> model appears to have not occurred to anybody here. For example:
>>
>> - Embedded software.
>> - Device drivers.
>> - Computer games.
>> - Mathematical moddeling.
>> - Signal processing.
>> - Artificial intelligence.
> 
> You forgot computer graphics. :)

I pretty much figured computer games subsumed that - but sure, people 
also use graphics itself for movie special effects and previs, 
scientific visualisation, mathematical modelling, etc.

> Anyway, those are niches.  90% of IT (which is not the same as compsci) 
> is about COBOLs.

Hmm. Between the global telecommunications network (with its custom 
hardware and the recent craze for mobile phones), the 
multi-billion-dollar games industry, the presumably large industry 
making computer components (most of which require drives of some kind), 
the ever-increasing sea of consumer goods that need firmware to 
function, the financial institutions that build and run huge complex 
financial simulations, and the endless array of applications of DSP... 
those look like some pretty ****ing big niches to me! ;-)

I believe it was Djikstra who wrote "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; 
its teaching should therefore be considered a criminal act."

>> Also... I really ought to get a job where all this stuff is useful! I 
>> wonder if such a thing exists?
> 
> It only exists within firms providing the infrastructure and research 
> everybody else employs to do their things.  I'm talking about Microsoft, 
> Adobe, Sun, Autodesk, open source projects etc...

Yeah - maybe I should get said to write open source software?

Oh, wait...

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