Forth. For your own good: Do not use Forth!

I did it for a while, (Because I was young and needed the money.) and it broke my brain and hurt my soul.

The status quo is not the result of smart people thinking, it's the result of successful people doing.

As far as solutions go: Why bother? I'd rather leave revolutions to people younger, and even dumber than me.

Software does not have to be complex. It usually ends up that way for economical and practical reasons, i.e. incompetent people working for impatient managers. "It's hard" is not an excuse, it's a challenge.

And I think that things could be better, because I see no improvement over the last 30 or so years. More people have access to technology, and some execution times have decreased, but we are still doing the exact same things, in the exact same ways. Except for the things that we are doing worse now. Like shoving mainframe applications on clusters of PC hardware, or nesting VMs to display a hyper text page, or encrusting everything in thick layers of drm and NDAs, or using complex multi user systems to drive hand held telephones.

I'd say being able to replace a random part of a system from scratch is a pretty good indicator of understanding the whole system.

That said: I miss the days when a single man could understand a whole computer system. We have come a long way, since the days when a new computer came with the circuit diagram of the cpu. And it does not feel like we took the right path.

This is /v/programming, not /v/MeanwhileOnReddit.

No... Please! Don't! I'm not even done with Infinifactory, yet. I don't want to get addicted to another Zachtronics game.

It's very sad, but not necessary at all.

Java? Really? I am not saying you are wrong, but personally java seems like the 21st century equivalent of COBOL to me. They are both decent languages, with an awesome infrastructure behind them, but ultimately they are the tools, and the result of the corporate IT environments of their time. They are not something I would even think of to try and do "cool shit" with. Unless your definition of "cool shit" is "fitting seamlessly into an established business IT environment."

This won't help on its own, but I found that one of the big tricks behind drawing illustrations and cartoons is to think visually. We can only draw what we can see, but since cartoons are not real you have to visualize them in your mind to see them.

The next time you want to make an illustration, try to imagine the whole picture before you start. Imagine all the little details, and how they connect and relate to each other to form the whole picture. Once you can clearly see an image it becomes a mere act of patience and dedication to get it onto paper.

Also, don't let a perceived lack of talent, knowledge, or experience stop you from drawing. They make things faster and easier, but they are in no way necessary to get started, or even to create whatever you want to create.

The job description asked for an expert, suddenly I was an expert.

It's an almost meaningless term that roughly translates to: "Can safely work without somebody looking over his shoulder."