[marincounty]

I found the free cs50 courses at Harvard helpful. I honestly didn't have the patience to sit through the videos, but I listened to the mp3's while exercising. All the buzz words started to make sense. I don't think I'll ever become a Programmer--just don't have the drive, but I can put up websites--half ass, but they are improving. Yea, I know a bit about ROR, and Django, but would never call myself a Programer, or a cutesy Coder. In terms of making a living in this field, I honetly think who you knows matters more than what you know? I guess that's the case in a lot of fields? I've never had the stomach to suck up to someone I didn't truely like. I guess you have too though?

[jimbokun]

I really feel like, relative to many other fields, programmers sincerely their field to be a meritocracy. They don't always live up to the ideal. For example, a lot of programming interviews used to heavily feature mathematical riddles and brain teasers. More recently this has come to be considered a bad way to evaluate potential programmers, but at least the intent was trying to find out something about the candidate's intelligence, and not just trying to make a personality fit or something.