Quote from: 2112 on May 10, 2017, 01:06:35 PM

Quote from: delicopsch56 on May 10, 2017, 09:44:07 AM

Don't mind MOST OF your reply much, actually. No, I didn't have a horrible education, I opted out of CS in engineering school because I was cognizant that I was hitting a wall in hard engineering and wasn't trying hard enough in digital design, physics, calculus, etc, too busy having fun, and I had no $. Reality check, almost everyone does hit a wall at some point where they realize they are just faking it if they continue to try to advance, learning how to do it pretty well but have stopped total comprehension.

Did a different career for 5 years, went back and did CS business degree and had a very successful career in business software dev. I pretty much quit giving a crap about hardware while mainframe programming for 13 years, because I was riding the fastest horse in the hardware world then, hardware not by me, but smokin hot MVS with serious capacity hardware for a many billions company and I focused on delivering high quality for my end users, and that went really well as I could actually communicate with them and deliver quickly and on target and with a low margin of error without 5 intermediaries like today's email writer management layers of bullshit overhead.

If ya saw no point, why did you reply? Did you read all my posts, or was it just time to be a dick to the new guy?

Ah! Greetings retired IBM-fanboi! In the IBM-universe I'm not a big MVS fan, I'm was more into running multiple copies of MFT or CMS under VM/370.

Let me start from the last paragraph. The reason I'm writing and responding to you is standard one for me: I know that for 1 poster here there are at least 10 readers who will read yours and mine posts with understanding. So when I'm personally addressing you (delicopsch56) it is more of a rhetorical device to address the plurality of you (named and unnamed readers of this thread).

In particular I'm writing for the benefit of young readers, who are still ahead in their life. They can still use their school time to "learn", not to "have fun". They can still avoid having "successful career" where maintaining employment was only possible with the help of regularly obliterating their own brain with alcohol (or other addictive substances or behaviors). I used to work in the entertainment industry and I can immediately recognize a bitter burnout. I've been on the meetings where people would small-talk about addiction rehab facilities like most of the employed people discuss vacation destinations.

There isn't much technical and mining-related to address in your reply. You've however very clearly and beautifully underlined the perils of technical fanboism. Most of the technical forums have fanboi discussion threads like Intel vs. AMD, ATI vs. NVidia, etc. delicopsch56 is an example of a dinosaur fanboi, from the days when various IBM-designed machines were bought under the assumption of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". IBM may even had "fastest horse" trophy for awhile, they still sell them under "z/Arch" moniker, but lots of people got fired for continuing to "buy IBM" where different, better, cheaper, faster solutions were available.

The simplest, easiest way to avoid burnout and being perpetually perplexed is to keep your mind open. Even if you don't have time or money to pursue a formal degree you can still greatly benefit from clicking around the "See Also" links in Wikipedia. And when you choose to "have fun", choose the activities that do as little as possible damage to your brain.

I want to personally "thank you" to all those people who gave the similar advice when I was young student in school. You most likely won't read it. All I can do repay it is to repeat it in an updated way, with modifications to match the changed technological landscape.

Great point, not just about me. To clarify I burnt out on CORPORATE IT. I still love IT, but the corporate part was trying to kill that love, and my soul (or whatever) Not really bitter, in 20/20 hindsight quitting jobs have been my best decisions ever. I contracted for a while, and that was mostly great, but 2008 financial mess came along and I no longer had my pick of companies\jobs. But life is change.

I'm not really a fanboi on anything, generally not an early adopter. I like stuff that works, makes sense, has very few release bugs, and doesn't break easily. Best tool for the job is my general strategy when I get to make the choice.

I did enjoy MVS, very much, but in hindsight the coolest thing to me about it was when they went OS/390, Z/OS, whatever with it, I don't remember how they did it exactly, but it impressed me. I was busy working, but didn't have to change a thing, and like flipping on a light switch you could be in unix land if ya wanted.

Certainly some of the engineering school issues were my fault, but at that time they were just busy trying to push engineering cs people out the door due to high demand, and by the time I was done with my Bachelors business CS degree I realized the way that said education structure was structured prerequisite-wise didn't fit my learning style for sure (either track).

IMO with the hindsight again they should teach Boolean logic in high school. It ain't just for tech.

Some days my mind is so open I don't get a thing done, prioritization is a must.

Thanks for the reply.