[Coco] Re: Thoughts about going back to school full time.

[farna at att.net]

If your boss is "hanging a carrot in front of you" to do more, then I would think they value you as an emplyee and want to keep you on. Otherwise they wouldn't offer you more -- status quo is good until you finally leave. 

I agree though. I'm 44 now, will be 45.5 when I finally retire after just over 24 years of military service. I'm not really looking for another "career", just something to keep me busy and some spending money coming in. Different circumstances since I'm not in the computer field professionally (construction, actually), but I plan on doing some things more along my interests, maybe taking a part time job to be able to pay for it. I do get a pension, so I'm not stranded like some of you would be. It doesn't hurt that I inherited a small house and some land I'm going back to either. The house needs extensive remodeling, but I'm planning on taking 3-6 months off and doing most of that work myself. 

On programming -- I did just enough on the CoCo that I knew I wouldn't like it! I wrote an extensive genealogy program, but based it on an existing GW-BASIC listing. CoCo3 BASIC was just to different to make it a simple conversion, which was the original intent, 80-90% of the code had to be re-written! But having a working framework to guide me sure did help. It was much to big a project for my first real coding experience, but I pulled it off and sold quite a few copies. I let someone else convert it to BASIC-09, I wasn't about to! I incorporated every little trick I could to make it fast -- many people thought it was in ML. I poked so that it showed up in the directory like an ML and wouldn't list, but also used the high speed poke (dropped down for disk I/O) and every little speed trick I could find. 

What I don't get is the disdain for line numbers in the programming community. I can understand that BASIC is limited and not ideal for a lot of programms, but why not a line numbered C? Okay, I know there is no point now, but when C or other languages were coming out, and even BASIC went away from line numbers. The numbers were just place markers, and made it easier to tell what line or range was referred to. Is the disdain simply that anyone can EASILY follow line numbered code, or something more practical -- like it's harder to add sections of code or use segments over in other programs? Adding is difficult, but then that's what the RENUM command was for. Of course with a lot of GOTOs and such it didn't always work 100%, so code had to be verified, but was it really that bad? 


original message----------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:30:25 -0800
From: "Jim Cox" <jimcox at miba51.com>
Subject: Re: [Coco] Re: Thoughts about going back to school full time.
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>

There was an interesting post on Slashdot on this very 
subject:

http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/05/12/16/1833210.shtml?tid=156&tid=187&tid=4

It made me wonder why am I taking programming classes at 
47.
Should I do it for my employer because they are hanging a 
carrot on stick in front of me, or should I do it because 
I can learn something new that I can apply to a hobby 
(CoCo's and other projects) that I can have fun with and 
maybe parley into a better job.

I'm choosing the latter.  I'm looking back on my 23 years 
in the business and I am just realizing that all I have 
been doing is working with technology, and not having fun 
with it.  I look at what I haven't done with the CoCo and 
other projects (Ethernut, etc..) and I realize if I spent 
time having fun with those things, I most likely I would 
have learned a lot more and wouldn't be worried about 
where I am going.

-Jim