Oddly enough, as I get older, I am less interested in learning the Latest and Greatest and more interested in the theoretical concepts behind programming. I still want to learn new stuff — and am on a tear for Ruby and Ruby on Rails at the moment — but I could read an entire book on Code Refactoring and be pleased. I could read JOEL ON SOFTWARE and be thoroughly interested and entertained.

Maybe I’m just turning into a different type of hacker than I ever imagined I’d be? Or maybe since all of my languages are nearly dead to the world now, I’m just looking elsewhere.

I think I’ve gotten good in job interviews with expressing to the interviewer that I’m willing and able to learn, if given the opportunity. But there are enough programmers out there who already know so much of this stuff, that why would they ever want to take a chance on the newbie? It’s a little frustrating, and it makes me whine out loud sometimes. Sorry about that.

No one is born into the hacker ethos, and rare is the person who can develop it on his or her own. It’s no crime to admit that previous jobs and previous environments haven’t afforded an opportunity to be the kind of programmer one really wants to be. The whole “hacker ethos” can almost be summed up as “I want to be a more effective programmer.” In that regard, just being able to articulate the desire to have the hacker ethos is 90% of the way to really joining it.

There are slim pickings for good programmers nowadays, and many people I have interviewed recently are usually bad programmers with misguided opinions about how clever and edgy they are. I can tolerate programmers whose skills quite aren’t where they should be, IF they can demonstrate a certain level of self-awareness about their limitations and have some idea about how to correct them.

Phil - I remember watching one episode of THE BRADYS when I was younger and being done with it fairly quickly.

REFACTORING is a fairly cool book, but tread carefully - it’s a $60 hardcover textbook kind of thing. And I don’t think there’s a PDF-only version of it on-line, either, to save you any money. Even on Amazon, it still runs $50 or more.

I remember watching M*A*S*H as a kid, but I don’t think I quite got what it was about until much later.

I’ve heard of half those spinoffs — I remember watching THE BRADYS (the name of the actress who was the new Marcia is on the tip of my tongue); a couple of local DJs had some cameos in one of the episodes — they were a Brady party where some guy choked, and they actually showed their horribly-acted reaction shots.

Based on yesterday’s blog post, Augie, I guess I’ll now have to pick up REFACTORING. I’ve never heard of the book until now, though.

And go NPR — anything that can help force the RIAA into the new music age is a good thing.

Um, was Mr. T actually on “Aftermash”? I never saw it. And I didn’t think “That ’80s Show” was all that good, but the blonde on it was hot, IIRC. (I think she played Eric’s cousin on a “That ’70s Show” episode.)