Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[4maskwolf]

K-12 in the USA. I don't particularly see the point in it, as opposed to any other system, but I'm an... Exception rather than the rule. And by exception I mean "I was done with calculus before sophomore year".

[Solymr]

Please expand on that subject. I'm a particular mind too. People in my class even joke that I was fed plutonium as a baby or something.
That made me remark that as a baby I repeatedly jumped head first into the floor from the cradle.

[Shakerag]

Except COBOL.  Fuck you COBOL.   

*looks at Shakerag's profile for his age*

Seriously?  COBOL?  Maybe if you were 10 years older...

But I apply the same feeling toward Scheme and Squeak.  I'm not sure why they felt like throwing obscure languages at us, but there you go.

Yes, seriously.

I got my associate degree at a community college, and on my first semester when I transferred to NIU I took FORTRAN and mainframe assembler language.  I took two more assembler language courses in grad school, and at least one other course that had COBOL and assembler together. 

And now here I am, working as an assembler language programmer. 

[Hapah]

Except COBOL.  Fuck you COBOL.   

*looks at Shakerag's profile for his age*

Seriously?  COBOL?  Maybe if you were 10 years older...

But I apply the same feeling toward Scheme and Squeak.  I'm not sure why they felt like throwing obscure languages at us, but there you go.

Yes, seriously.

I got my associate degree at a community college, and on my first semester when I transferred to NIU I took FORTRAN and mainframe assembler language.  I took two more assembler language courses in grad school, and at least one other course that had COBOL and assembler together. 

And now here I am, working as an assembler language programmer.

Funny how that works! I'm not really using my degree in my job, oddly enough.

[Toaster]

Assembler?  You poor bastard, you.

Funny how that works! I'm not really using my degree in my job, oddly enough.

Neither am I, mostly.  While the experience in true programming was quite helpful when I do the occasional script, it mostly goes unused.  Dinking around with computers, building my own, and fixing various friend and family PCs- now that was useful experience!

[Network/system admin, now]

[Mephansteras]

Life is a funny thing. I had a friend go to college to be a biotech and ended up as a database programmer.

[Solymr]

Yeah data mining is really important in biotech.
DNA is the hugest database. And mass sequentiation gives a shitload of datavto process.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah data mining is really important in biotech.
DNA is the hugest database. And mass sequentiation gives a shitload of datavto process.

True, except his route was nothing like that.

He actually got a part time job doing security at Sun Microsystems, which led to a job in their IT group, which led to a job with me doing database work in a financial company. His biotech path just sort of...stopped being relevant in that time and he dropped it entirely. Never even graduated college.

[Solymr]

Well I wasn't expecting that.

[Tiruin]

When you say BioTech, you mean...?

Because we had little to no DNA experience while I was in MedTech. Just a Cytogenetics subject in the 3rd year.
And though I loved and passed it nicely, the problem being was that the instructor had to 'rush' the lessons due to syllabus.
We learned the basics of genetics though. :v

[Solymr]

Uuuhhhhh here biotech is largely based on genetic engineering, modified plants and microbiology. With a little of chemical engineering.

[Mephansteras]

Well I wasn't expecting that.

Like I said, life can be a bit funny at times.

When you say BioTech, you mean...?

Because we had little to no DNA experience while I was in MedTech. Just a Cytogenetics subject in the 3rd year.
And though I loved and passed it nicely, the problem being was that the instructor had to 'rush' the lessons due to syllabus.
We learned the basics of genetics though. :v

It's a broad umbrella. Stuff like genetic engineering, pharmaceuticals, medical testing...they all fall in that category. I'm not sure where he'd have ended up if he'd stuck with it, although most of my biotech friends ended up in pharmaceutical research.

[Toaster]

If he ever goes back to it, someone with both IT and biotech skills will have no trouble finding a job.

[Solymr]

Yeah a biotech graduate here means you're not going to be unemployed for long.
And Tiruin we still have something to discuss :>

[Shakerag]

Assembler?  You poor bastard, you.

Heh.  Not quite.  Assembler is my favorite programming language.  I specifically searched out assembler-related jobs. 

I pity anyone who has to work with Java.  Or COBOL.