So... while I respect avoiding shameless self-promotion, referencing your hobby project, or at least including it in your "About" info would be cool, for those interested. :)
Looked up effnet stats the other day to find out there's only 20k users there these days. Not sure how many it was back in the day, and I was more of an undernet guy... but seems small today.
Contact details are in my profile... we can reminisce via email (which is effectively going the way of the Old Internet, especially as the millennials take over).
If you want to work for Microsoft or Google, while you likely can't get away with using your employers's $2K, the best books to read are Cracking the Coding Interview and Elements of Programming Interviews. Both books have very solid algorithm questions which you can use to go research the various algorithms and learn them. Although, I'd wait for Elements of Programming Interviews v2 which will include Java samples, as opposed to C++, but that's just me.
McDowell's The Google Resume also has some useful tidbits in it.
I was (am) you. I skipped college/university 15 years ago because I felt it couldn't teach me anything.
On the one hand, I now sit beside someone with a Masters in Computer Science in a lateral position to him, so I've done OK.
On the other hand, if there's one thing I've observed about mentorships, etc., it's that they don't exist out in the real world. Companies are there to _do their business_, whatever that might be. They don't have time to hand-hold you. IF you want to make great connections, find great peers and mentors, go to college or university and talk to everybody. Do the tedious grunt work... and get the credentials while you're at it.
Entering the workforce with your (supposed) capability AND a degree will make you unstoppable. Also, chances are you may bail on the degree, but you should only do that if you and a couple peers are making something super cool.
I could be too late... but I'd love an invite too. I'm excited to experiment with extending Atom using Javascript, since I'm a web developer. [email protected].
Dollar value of disposable income. Retirement is a good consideration (per the other poster), however I do have a pension plan, so I'm slightly less concerned about that.
Ultimately, I'm considering financing or leasing a (pretty expensive) car, and wonder how short I should leave myself.
Now it's a race, if jQuery Notebook gets up to snuff by the time I need it, I'll use it, if not, Medium Editor it is (personally, I don't care if I have jQuery or not, I'm a pragmatist).
But, you need lists. In fact, I'd either document the exact commands you have implemented, or implement all the commands Medium offers, since you're inspired by Medium:
Couldn't you just wire up a graphics library in Python, and give him a Sublime Text editor configured so that CTRL+B runs his python script? I'm not sure reinventing the wheel on this one makes sense, considering the power and simplicity of some of the environments out there, PLUS, python would provide him with real-world skills.
Yeah, I do web development in my 9-5, and my side projects were generally web development or software development oriented.
The shorter term idea is related to beer, and I'm a homebrewer, so that keeps it close. The longer term idea is related to a game I enjoy playing.
I won't be so much putting a solid 10-20 years into something, as I will be waiting 10-20 years for information to be distributed and produced using my software. The software itself should take less than a year of part-time development (if the ideas required succeed), and then idle maintenance/improvements over the course of the 10-20 years required to achieve the final result.
If you're more curious than my broad rambling fulfills, email me and I'm happy to provide specifics. I'm not trying to be secretive, other than I'd like to have something to show before I make any sort of "announcements".
I used to do side projects to earn extra income, but it became difficult to predict, and kind of a pain in the ass with invoicing, overdue clients, bug fixes, scheduling headaches (evenings and weekends working for mostly 9-5 companies), fatigue, family life, vacation time, etc.
The work dried up, partly "naturally", but also partly because I wasn't pursuing new work. I've been in a somewhat dead-state for almost a year, and have recently stumbled on two ideas that I've made my "passion projects". Neither idea has a (directly foreseeable) method of making money, but both ideas are near and dear to me.
I work on these ideas when I'm not too tired in the evening, or can find a stretch of time to concentrate on the weekends. So far it's hit or miss, but I'm progressing. One idea challenges me mentally, and has a near-epic scale result at the end of it's very long yellow-brick-road, it's a vision that in addition to all of my coding effort will take 10-20 years to come to fruition.
The other idea is effectively a CRUD system for a specific market demographic that's not being serviced the way I think it should be.
So far, neither is ticking, but give me time, and they will. :)
Not being able to program is the illiteracy of this century.
While I agree with this sentiment, I think it's patently false. The vast majority of people have a hard enough time using Word or Excel, let alone being able to understand programming concepts or actually being able to program!
I was the same, no real "problems" to solve, and the few ideas I did have amounted to fairly straight-forward CRUD-style solutions. I started implementing one of them, and then started reading an Algorithms book.
From there, a few very old ideas coalesced in my brain, and exploded. Now, I'm not solving a MY problem, so much as solving a challenging problem that I think will hold my attention for awhile. I'm hoping to have something to push out to github in the next few weeks.
Morale of the story: search for problems to solve, and you'll solve the problem of not having a problem to solve. :)