Am 11.06.2010 12:32, schrieb Invisible:

> And like I said, every geek on the planet wants to get paid to develop
> mathematical algorithms or design cutting-edge chips or build
> next-generation game engines or... The trouble is, there are a tiny
> handful of such jobs in the entire world, and therefore you are almost
> guaranteed to never be hired.

Throw that mindset overboard, or you /are/ indeed guaranteed to never be 
hired.

I wouldn't want to develop mathematical algorithms, for instance. But I 
do love developing software for embedded systems. Fact is, that's what I 
did for a living during the last 5 years or so, and possibly soon do again.

How come?

Because I kept toying around with computers, hardware, and the like. And 
because I'm good at learning stuff like that: You'd possibly be 
surprised to hear how few job vacancies in our business are filled with 
people who happen to be a /perfect/ fit for it; so virtually the only 
way to get that is to hire some bloke who is good at /learning/, and 
have him /become/ the perfect fit.

So by all means do keep training your learning skill.

And forget that the only programming /language/ you know is Haskell - 
instead focus on the fact that you have a lot of experience with the 
/concept/ of functional programming in general. Which is /not/ just an 
academic concept (if I'm not mistaken, the mobile communications sector 
does a lot with functional programming).

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Am 11.06.2010 13:11, schrieb Invisible:

>> but if you want to do digital circuit design for a job there are
>> plenty of opportunities in a vast range of industries.
>
> Seriously... Doing what? Everything seems to be made of off-the-shelf
> parts (which, by definition, already exist). What's to design?

You may be underestimating how many of those off-the-shelf products are 
designed to implement ASICs (application-specific ICs) at low costs. 
Just like PROMS (and later EPROMS and EEPROMS) were 
off-the-shelf-products designed to be customized (by programming them 
with the desired content) where true ROMs (i.e. ICs "hard-wired" to hold 
some particular content) would have been too costly, FPGAs are designed 
to be "programmed" with custom logic rather than creating a dedicated 
ASIC for the job. And just like the software to be programmed into an 
EEPROM needs to be designed by someone, the same goes for the logic 
circuitry to be written into an FPGA.

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Invisible wrote:
>>> Maybe it's just the part of the world I live in, but I thought touch
>>> screen technology was still very rare?
>> 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_phones
>> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10389847-17.html
>> 
>> Put together the sales of all iPhones, iPods and clones and that's a
>> huge number of touch screens.
> 
> I wasn't aware that the iPhone has a touch-screen. (I hadn't really
> thought about it...) 

<facepalm/>

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On 11/06/2010 4:01 PM, scott wrote:
> Since working for 6 or 7 years and regularly having meetings with many
> different customers I have never once heard anyone shout or get visibly
> angry.

I've seen them cry, though. :-D

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I wasn't aware that the iPhone has a touch-screen. (I hadn't really
> thought about it...)

ZOMG, are you from Mars?!

it's been its killer feature upon launch time!

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
> > And game engines... Well, that's probably way, way less exciting than it
> > sounds anyway. ;-)
>
> I expect designing the games is more cool than coding them. I expect coding
> game engines is more cool than most anyting "enterprise".

Most definitely.

Yet you guys underestimate how much work goes into trying to develop things like
Global Illumination or Participating Media in real time for games.  And looking
almost as good as hours-long renders...

> >> Sure, most are not as glamorous as designing the next GPU for the
> >> PlayStation 4,
> >
> > Actually, I imagine most jobs are way less exciting than they sound. ;-)
>
> Welcome to the real world, where jobs suck bad enough they have to pay you
> to do them.

Designing a GPU for PS4 may sound glamurous, but I guess if you were the
japanese guy working 30 hours a day under lots of pressure you'd actually think
of suicide... :P

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>> As for other people: You can always find people who do other stuff
>> than you and thus show no interest in what you do. Do they count?
>> Nope. After all, I don't understand much about medicine nor do I want
>> to study it, but I'm sure happy there are doctors around.
>
> Ironic how society values doctors, but computer programmers are seen as
> losers who can't handle real life...

Yeah, I was wondering if I should have picked a different job for the 
example. >.<

I guess the doctors take care of you when you're feeling sick and, of 
course, in life-threatening situations, they tend to keep your bloodflow 
going. You get to be the go-to-guy when you are a doctor.
Studying medicine is still a difficult task, and the responsibility you 
have as a doctor would probably be too much for some to handle. No 
wonder they're valued.

But coming back to computer programmers: Not so long ago, computers 
weren't what they are today: Really powerful machines. If you went 
tinkering with a computer, you just *had* to be a geek in a dark little 
corner.
Nowadays, programming is not just another job like any other, its even a 
valued one: At least in my country, lots of people are looking for jobs, 
the only ones that need not worry *in the least* are the programmers. 
Send three applications and get at least two job offers back.

It's about how you present yourself and how confident you are in your 
abilities, not just as a programmer, but as a human being. I reckon 
you're a good guy and a rather capable programmer. So stick with that 
instead of carrying a long-faced loser-pose around. Nothing shouts more 
for a loser-title than a loser-pose. ;-)

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>> I'd be surprised if there aren't already off-the-shelf parts you can 
>> buy for MPEG4 decoding. Surely there are for MPEG1...
> 
> Generally, what you buy is an off-the-shelf core, not an off-the-shelf 
> chip. ARM doesn't sell chips as much as they sell cores. Cores are the 
> new ICs.

Yeah, I'd heard about that. I guess if space is tight you need to put 
everything into a single ASIC. But otherwise, I'm not sure what the 
advantage is to integrating (say) an MPEG1 decoder into your chip is 
verses just mounting two chips on the board. Any cost saving in having 
to only mount one chip is surely dwarfed by the vast cost of making an ASIC.

>> Sure. But how often do you need to design new test equipment?
> 
> Every time you have a new type of product to test.

And here I was thinking that once you have a PSU tester, you can test 
any kind of PSU with it...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> I wasn't aware that the iPhone has a touch-screen. (I hadn't really
>> thought about it...)
> 
> ZOMG, are you from Mars?!
> 
> it's been its killer feature upon launch time!

And since I don't own or want to own an iPhone, why would I know about this?

It's like saying the killer feature of the Mazda Z3 is that it has an 
extra 50 BPH. And since I don't have a Z3, why would I know that?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New wrote:

> You know, every time you have one of these conversations, I can't help 
> but imagine your cutting edge technology is this:
> 
> http://theradiokitchen.net/wp-content/uploads/image/80scellphone.gif

Actually this:

http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=nokia+2760

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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