• On Life and Love

    Beginner Developer: Where to Start?

    I have a friend who’s looking to become a marketable developer fairly quickly, but is essentially trying to go from zero to hero. Despite starting a project in Python to randomize wedding slideshows, he’s never really done development, nor does he understand its core concepts (classes vs. objects, for instance). He kinda just needs a job, plus the ability to make useful tools for himself. Folks are telling him Java and *.NET, and I (mostly) agree for the simple purposes of 1) easy desktop or web development, and 2) using keyword-heavy languages to reinforce programming concepts. Not strong reasons, no. If he just wanted a job, I’d recommend UI development.…

  • On Life and Love

    Surprise Wedding Shower!

    I try not to be all weddingy at work, although I have a few close colleagues I geek with. (Drama-inducing colleagues, I’ll add. They think I should be super-stressed and overly-picky.) In fact, I’m not sure all my colleagues knew I was getting married at all until I mentioned it to one of the admins on the floor a couple of weeks ago. Regardless, two of my closest buddies snuck around behind my back–literally, one of them sits behind me–and crafted a wonderful party/shower that they dropped on me yesterday. The whole team showed up. There was both cheesecake and a tasty lemony cake. The whole thing was decked out…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: Politics, Money, and Some Music

    The original posting of this was horribly borked. I may be switching link-posting plugins. Warm and Fuzzy Budgeting – "You have things that matter to you. Hopes, and goals, and dreams. This is going to sound cheesy, but I think it’s true: Your budget is simply your hopes, and goals, and dreams … on paper." Maybe those tax incentives for creating new jobs should be for hiring a currently unemployed person | Prometheus 6 – What? How are you only going to hire people who already have jobs? "Members of Congress had urged the commission to explore the issue, after reading press reports of numerous instances in which employers and…