No worries. My reply was something that wasn't targeted at a more experienced dev like yourself, but I'll attempt to reply in good spirit.

...that's fair. Being in the midst of actively searching for a new job, I've seen this kind of attitude before, directed at me. The whole hiring process right now is completely fucked, and I'm tired of getting passed on in favor of pajeets who will work for peanuts and produce absolute fucking garbage, or being told "you don't have enough experience" when these ignorant fuckwits ask for 5 years experience with a technology 2 years old.

I expect someone who is young and green and wants to be a great car mechanic to have a hobby project or two. Heck, even most older mechanics who really love what they do have a hot rod they are working on in their garage.

You can drive a hot rod when it's finished. What the hell am I supposed to do with ~5 TB of data and a neural net specifically tuned to it and a particular problem? Besides, at this point, in my free time, I am more interested in focusing on the aspects of the problems of AI that aren't related to the coding bit. Writing the code will be the easy part. What the actual fuck does it mean to know something, though: that's (one of) the real problem(s).

I'm more focused on the technologists here, but yes. Someone who's job is networking ... and who is good at it ... will always be networking.

To me, that's just fucking crazy, sorry. People are more than their job. They're allowed to have other hobbies and other interests.

And, to be frank - I wouldn't want to hire you. This is exactly why I care about that question. :)

While I appreciate your more detailed explanation here, it really sounds like I wouldn't want to work for you anyway. It seems to me that you think people need to be single-minded to be successful, that they are dedicated to one thing and one thing only. That's just... insane, honestly.

Honestly - really does sound like you are in the wrong role. I'm not saying that you aren't good at your job. But, shit ... life is too short to do something you hate for the majority of your waking life. My first job out... I absolutely hated and wanted to quit my profession. I took a new job and realized that it wasn't the job I hated, but it was the employer / situation. After that first bad job, I've loved every bit of my work. Maybe you should look at the same for yourself?

Wow, yes, so insightful. I'm obviously just bitching about my job on the internet and not actively interviewing or anything.

Have some respect for my intelligence, here.

Education because our 4 year universities mostly suck at teaching how to be a good dev. Teaching technology + creative problem solving isn't easy and doesn't bend well to the 4 year education model.

This is absolutely true.

I've been thinking, the past few years, that the issue here is that programming is a trade. You can be a solid coder without necessarily understanding the underlying theory, if given guidance and not expected to design things right off the bat.

I've also seen complete fucktards fail at their job despite having supposedly years at experience. I don't know how you manage to keep a job as a coder for years by failing constantly, but... here we are, I guess.

You are being a bit myopic. Anyone who is really good at their profession will have an obsession with it. Sales guys are always selling. Good marketing guys are thinking about how to market their products 24/7. In my current role, I work heavily with a marketing team ... the number of 3AM brainstorming ideas on slack ... the creativity and obsession ... it never turns off for these guys.

If I'm not getting paid for the time, I'm not doing a single goddamn thing for you ("you" being my employer, not you specifically). I have to constantly stop myself from thinking about work while at home, because of that approach, but I'll be fucking damned if I give you anything for free. This is how I earn my bread: why the fuck would I give that away for nothing?

If you're going to pay me the same as Bob who sucks ass at slinging code and has to constantly ask me basic-ass questions, why the fucking fuck would I give you even more of my time? It's bad enough that you're getting someone significantly more productive and knowledgeable for the same rate as you get idiot mouth-breathers.

Not only that, but there is such a thing as work/life balance. As I've said, you seem to have this approach where you think that people who are really good at a thing are only interested in that one thing. Maybe that's true for lesser minds, but fuck me if I'm going to focus my brain on one thing 24/7. I'd go fucking crazy.

So, is this pigeon-holing? Maybe ... but creatives and non-creatives are different creatures and have different skill sets to offer the world. Putting a creative in a non-creative roll is just as bad as doing the opposite.

It is absolutely pigeon-holing. As I've said, it seems to me that you think that "creatives" need to be solely focused on their one thing, and only on that one thing.

That's... basically the definition of pigeon-holing.

... And, now imagine you are actually getting to implement (and improve on) these AI approaches. Shame on you AND your employer for having you in a role that isn't your passion.

I was told the role would have AI, and that - and the ~30% raise - got my attention. Showed up and haven't had dick to do with AI since I got here, including watching the whole hiring process for some fucking intern who got sent to our AI lab.

Why is the AI specialist not at the AI lab? I dunno, and I've stopped asking that question because these idiots clearly don't care. Instead I just quietly started applying for jobs again.

So take your "shame" and kindly shove it up your ass. Maybe you live in some fucking metropolis where jobs just fall out of the sky, but - unfortunately - I live in the shithole that is the American south, and that seems to have tainted my resume to some degree. And as I mentioned earlier, this industry is full of HR fucktards who would much rather hire some pajeet than a white guy who actually knows what the fuck he's talking about.

The problem isn't when people do that. It's expecting it as some kind of baseline.

If you want crazy single-minded people who have literally nothing else going on but their one thing? I probably don't want to work for you anyway, because - gee - I have more interests than just one thing. Sorry for being a more complex person with some actual depth, I guess.

Yeah, I guess that whole "work/life balance" thing is a bitch.

I am doing the aforementioned "getting hammered" thing, so cannot - at this moment - respond appropriately.

However I have read your response, and want it known that I am of the opinion that it is solid and well-reasoned. I appreciate your candor, and it is quite deserving of a solid response when I can manage it (ie, not now).

Only thing I want to say right now is that I was led to believe my current role would be much more AI-focused than it is. I was basically catfished, which is part of why I am so frustrated at the moment.

And you sound like a self-important pretentious jackass.

"Oh you don't spend every waking minute writing code, I don't want you in my org because you lack dedication."

Nevermind that I've been putting in 10+ hour days to meet a coming deadline these past couple weeks. The fact that after doing that I don't want to write more code means that I'm shit at coding.

Brilliant fucking logic there.

I work with guys who... ostensibly write code, who don't have programming degrees. Their code is trash, but they still technically have the job, even if I have to come in after them and clean their shit up, or explain to them incredibly basic programming concepts.

If you have a science-oriented degree and can demonstrate that you can code, I imagine that you'd be fine. Some places will obviously be pickier than others, but I can't imagine that it would be as difficult as getting such a job would be for someone without any college education.

I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. Did you say something?

I ask them what they did last Friday night. The answer I'm looking for is for them to show me their github account and show me the code they are working on for some personal curiosity

This isn't to hate on you, specifically, but I absolutely detest this attitude.

Do you expect car mechanics to tinker on their vehicles at home? Are HR people expected to be constantly socializing and improving their networks even while off the job? Accountants should be humming away as they spend their Friday nights doing double-entry accounting for their checking and savings accounts? Doctors should be doing some kind of back-alley thing, offering consults and surgeries and shit on the side?

I'm a software dev as my day job, but I am more than just my occupation, and have plenty of hobbies and interests beyond that. And honestly, after spending ~40 hours a week slinging code at a job that I pretty much hate, the last thing I want to do is come home and write more code. I would much rather cook a decent meal, work on my dnd homebrew, read a book, or even sometimes just go get fucking hammered. If nothing else, I'd rather at least make an attempt at being social on my Friday evenings, and try to meet interesting people.

I aim to try to keep my skill set current, but I do that by reading papers and articles and shit (I'm an AI/ML specialist with an MS specifically in the field, though my current position has nothing to do with that, hence why I hate it), and tinkering with it during slow periods at my current job. I'm not going to spend the time, energy, and resources to set up a Hadoop cluster at home, because (1) I'm not interested in blowing that kind of cash for a side project, and (2) I don't have a reasonable use-case for a significant chunk of my skills, in terms of personal projects.

This whole thing of ignoring peoples' education and work history because they don't have an active project on the side is irksome, and seems to be something unique to software devs (I imagine that more... artsy jobs probably get hit with it as well, with the whole "portfolio" thing, but not being an artsy dude, I'm not familiar and can't speak to that beyond speculation). Expecting software folks to have... what is basically an obsession with their profession strikes me as incredibly unfair and pigeon-holing us, in terms of personality. If you want to talk about the advances in, uses, and drawbacks of various contemporary approaches to artificial intelligence over a beer, I'm definitely game (and would much prefer that conversation over, say, the latest events in sportsball). But expecting me to have that kind of project going on in my back pocket, and not giving me the time of day if I don't? Fuck that noise.

...the fuck language is this written in?

Funnily enough the most racist tech teams are white and asian when HR is removed, they won't even look at pajeet resumes or even consider them.

When a pajeet emails me about a position, I ignore it.

When a pajeet calls me about a job, I tell them I'm not interested.

If in the future I am ever in a position with control over hiring, I will not hire a pajeet.

I laughed a whole bunch on the outside, but inside, I'm screaming.

I know next to nothing about Ruby, but isn't that sort of thing built-in?

...yep, you're a fucking jackass.

Oh look, an asshole who relies on obfuscation and shitty coding style to keep his job.

Clarity, jackass. It's a thing.

egyption brackets

Good name for that stupid bracketing style.

Frankly, I look down on people that dont code using VIM. They just feel inferior.

Feel free to be a jackass, I guess? I use the tools I'm comfortable with that get the job done.

Maybe there's a vim plugin.

I wouldn't know, I'm an emacs guy.

They have to go through job interviews, right?

To be fair, it took me awhile to fully wrap my head around them; I hadn't done much C coding in college, I was mostly a java guy. The first project I was put on involved a lot of pointer arithmetic, so I had to pick it up pretty fast (I had a two-week deadline), but it wasn't exactly fun.

I know the other folks who started at the same time I did are doing JS and... I want to say VB.net? The guy who's doing VB is also the guy who will literally sit at his desk if he runs into any kind of stumbling block and wait for his supervisor to be available so he can ask the guy questions. So neither of them are exactly rock stars (though the (((JS guy))) is pretty full of himself).

Is this a joke?

I wish it were.

Also, is there any way to make gdb display several lines of code around the line of code it's currently executing?

Not that I know of... when I'm debugging, I'll typically follow along in emacs as I walk through the code.

Automatically printing variable values would be great, too, but that's somewhat less of a concern.

You can use "watch $foo" to have it spit out some information when the variable in question changes, but I don't use it terribly often. I'm also not sure how that interacts with scope

Out in the real world, the field is full of idiots with CS degrees that can't code their way out of a wet paper bag. I should know: I work with some of these assholes, whose eyes glaze over the moment I start talking about pointers and who think that my ability to write and debug functional code using only emacs and gdb is somehow amazing.

If you are even vaguely competent and aren't afraid of some of the more difficult concepts in CS, I'm sure you'll be fine.

Uppercase.

In typing it makes them stand out more and makes it obvious to me that the string in question is a hex string and not alphabetic.

In handwriting, I write everything in uppercase.

Personally, I've found using giant box-y comments at the start of functions in C is really helpful. You can explain what it does in there, and it makes it really easy to see where one function ends and another begins when you're scanning through the code quickly.

C.

And only code in vi.