Tag Archives: english

So You Want to Be a Programmer?

April 22, 2009Rantsabout, account, Algebra, article, basis, binky, blog, book, career, change, classes, coding, coding horror, college, compisition, computer, concepts, content, courses, day, dev, developer, diaper, dolphins, done, ears, education, english, english language, experience, flaws, future, Getting Things Done, good, Google, help, higher education, hunt and peck, ideas, ignorance, interface, keyboard, keyboarding, learning, leech, material, math, medium, mod, money, opera, platform, post, prerequisites, problem solving, product, programming, quote, read, recommendation, school, science, search, simple, software, source, stack overflow, stories, student, studies, study, suffocate, system, target, technology, text, thoughts, time, tool, waste, wasting, websites, work, Writing, wwwBenjamin M. Strozykowski

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I was sitting and typing up another blog post earlier today, and I was interrupted rudely by a fellow student who decided it was completely up to me to fix her (or his) specific problem in their code. Being the pushover that I am, I lent a hand, only to find that this person was way over her (or his) head.

I don’t want to call names, or cite specific examples, so I’ll talk in really broad terms about why some people may need to rethink their career path when they make it to college, and find the work to be way over their heads.

I’ve talked before about how the higher education system is becoming a joke, and how the value of a Computer Science degree is ever decreasing. In fact, the other post that I was writing was about a similar subject. My opinions are certainly just that–opinions. Please take them as such, and don’t think that I am bashing any specific person or group of people with this post.

The fact is that some people aren’t cut out to be programmers.
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Software Spotlight: RadicalCodex

February 9, 2009Software Spotlightadobe, application, art, barebones, bbedit, book, books, bryan lunduke, castablasta, codex, collecting, Comic, cs4, english, Entertainment, expensive, extension, firefox, free, future, ibook, ibook g4, interface, library, lightweight, linux, lunduke.com, mac murphy, mac os x, medium, novel, opera, PI, platform, product, read, sci-fi, software, Software Spotlight, source, spotlight, steam, stories, story, switch, target, the future, totally rad show, ubuntu, windowsBenjamin M. Strozykowski

RadicalCodex 1.0

RadicalCodex 1.0

There has been a lot of controversy lately about the viability of commercial, closed source applications running on Linux as a platform. The purists believe that all closed source applications are inherently evil, and should not be allowed to run on Linux, as it spoils the world of freedom. The other side of the coin are the people thinking about the future of Linux as a viable platform for even our grandparents to use.

I subscribe to the latter point of view. I’d like to point out one amazingly awesome piece of closed source commercial software for Linux.

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How Not To Write A Novel – Or 4 Ways To Drop The Ball

November 11, 2008Rants2002, accountability, ADD, albinoni, baroque music, blogging, brains, cell phones, chaos, corelli, crawl, digg, dime, distraction, drop the ball, ears, english, facebook, failure, finishing, focus, function, goals, Google, google reader, GTD, ideas, indoor plumbing, instant messaging, library, lyrics, material, mcdonald's, medication, motivation, movies, music, myspace, novel, organization, public, rss feeds, shut-in, stack overflow, task, television, time management, tv, universe, unplug, weird al yankovich, wikipedia, world wide web, Writing, wwwBenjamin M. Strozykowski

As I’ve mentioned multiple times here in the past, I am working on writing a novel. Truthfully, there is enough material in the universe of this novel for three or four full length novels.

I started with the ideas in late 2002, and have progressively and consistently dropped the ball day after day since then. I have found that there are no less than four things that have played into my failure in finishing the novel(s) that I have been working on over the past few years.

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