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Who here works in IT

Discussion in 'Entertainment and Technology' started by starfish, Dec 30, 2012.

  1. starfish

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    It seems like we have quite a few IT folk here now.

    I've been in IT for quite a while. I've worked with quite a bit of stuff. I've done software development, built a couple of datacenters. Worked with mainframes, midrange systems, networking, storage, windows, linux. Really what ever needed to be done.

    I've never done much with the application side of the house. I prefer working with the systems and infrastructure.
     
  2. RainbowMan

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    *raises hand*

    I've been doing IT forever (like since I was out of high school forever, so 15 years now? Makes me feel OLD!)

    Linux has always been my passion, and I'm an active open source contributor (and somewhat well known, which makes going through this current phase of my life....difficult. When I decide to come out, it's going to be public is the problem).

    That being said, I think that being out publicly in that context will say A LOT about the tolerance of our community. I'm very certain that there are homophobes hanging out there, but there probably a lot more that are LGBT that feel the need to hide that part of themselves. I want to put an end to that.

    To actually make money, I do Linux engineering work, concentrating on the base operating system layer (basically kernel and basic userspace, compilers, libraries, etc). I'm not a programmer as such, but I can find my way around code (particularly Python). Lots of scripting development, etc.

    I feel very lucky to be able to work on what I'm passionate about - it brings a joy to going to work everyday (now, it's not all roses - I hate dealing with political bullshit, meetings, project management types who have no clue what I actually do, etc).
     
    #2 RainbowMan, Dec 30, 2012
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2012
  3. Pret Allez

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    I've always worked with Windows, but I don't care about it. Right now, I work as a programmer on tax software... Visual Basic.NET. Ooh la la. (Puke.)

    Eventually, I hope to get into Linux development. Maybe computer security or cryptanalysis.
     
  4. Stridenttube

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    I work in IT, both of my parents work in IT so I've been exposed to it my whole life. I used to have a real passion for it, now I feel like the IT industry is changing, and in a way that I don't really find interesting.
     
  5. SomeNights

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    Same here been in IT for close to 7 years now (yes I am aware that means I started working with IT when I was 13). Experience with everything from CIO, Lead Systems Administrator and user support in a ~250 user environment to Web sites scripting.

    On the systems end I am CompTIA A+ Network+ and Server+ certified. Very familiar with AD and GPO (sadly). Worked with Multi operating system support and management. Love Linux and BSD systems.

    On the web development End I am an apache/PHP/MySQl person with JS(just recently JQUERY), CSS and of course HTML.

    As with RanbowMan I Fully support open source, but have slowly been moving more to entertainment and production management and networks. :slight_smile:

    ---------- Post added 30th Dec 2012 at 10:59 PM ----------

    don't forget snobby asses that think they know something they don't lol
     
    #5 SomeNights, Dec 30, 2012
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2012
  6. starfish

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    I've done some VB.Net programming. It has worked well for me. It is great for rapid application development, but it is not sexy at all.

    Looks to be a lot of Linux/BSD love here. I just moved into a new job supporting a production Linux environment. I've been a jack of all trades for so long and I looking forward to the chance to narrow my focus some.

    If you are interested in the Linux kernel guts I took this Linux Kernel Programming course a couple of years ago. An introduction to Linux kernel programming - An introduction to Linux kernel programming

    It is dirt cheap, just $39.
     
  7. RainbowMan

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    Yep, at my previous job I was a bit of a jack of all trades with a Linux specialty, now I'm "Mr. Linux" (yes, someone at work actually calls me that!). It's allowed me to go a lot deeper and understand a ton more.

    When you're fighting fire after fire after fire, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to do anything "right". Now I have the ability to take a step back and say "yes, we can do this - but is it the right thing to do?".

    I think that you'll like the ability to specialize and become REALLY good at one thing. I've been slightly concerned about becoming pigeon-holed and limiting my career choices later, but I figure someone is always going to need someone with my skillset, so I'm not overly concerned about that either. Everyone needs infrastructure geeks!
     
  8. SomeNights

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    ^limiting? No way not by learning how something as big and as robust as the Linux os is. I mean when you think about it, almost every router, switch, application gateway, firewall, embedded system is either running a *nix kernel or a windows embedded..depending on how stable people want it to be.

    In my mind that makes you one of the more valuable people out there. ESP if you are able to successfully modify the system to accomplish a task!
     
  9. RainbowMan

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    So this thread has been dead awhile, and it seems we have some new blood! So I'm bumping this thread to see what other people do for a living.
     
  10. starfish

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    Yeah I've noticed we seem to have a lots of developers here lately.

    Interestingly enough. Tonight I whipped up a quick web service in PHP. First time I've ever done anything in PHP. It reminds me of Perl.
     
  11. Chip

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    I'm a closet IT geek, been working with computers for way too long (since 110 baud dial-up with acoustic couplers.) In some of my current work, I deal with databases, writing specs for application development, and a little bit of server admin stuff. I'm more of an "IT Lite" type, because I leave all the complicated stuff to people who do it every day, as my work is more incidental to the rest of what I do... but I try to stay at least somewhat up to date with what's going on.
     
  12. RainbowMan

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    I'm very sorry to hear that :grin:

    If you want your web service to be p0wn3d in about 30 seconds, PHP is the right language to do it in! Seriously, I'm not sure if all of PHP's reputed security problems belong to PHP, or the developers that use it and do insecure things (or a combination of the two, the language allowing the developers to be lazy and do stupid things)

    As for reminding you of Perl, I'm doubly sorry. We have some Perl code at work that I won't touch, or if I have to, it gets rewritten in Python :slight_smile: The problem with Perl is that there are 5000 ways to do something, and you can't make heads or tails of Perl code 6 months down the road.

    ---------- Post added 1st Jul 2013 at 09:33 PM ----------

    You know, we have a script at work that's named after the TRS-80. TRS could make sense as an acronym in this thing, but really it's just homage to the TRS-80. When I was explaining that to an intern recently, he was like "the TRS WHAT????". This is how I know I'm old :frowning2:
     
  13. starfish

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    Yeah we all ready plan to rewrite it in Java. We just needed something the front end guys could to run their test cases against. Though I am a bit worried it will stick.


    Funny story. I used to work at IBM. They have been laying off like crazy the past 5 years. Well after each round of layoffs I used to go around scavenging for things people left behind.

    Well one time I found a System/360 assembler book. I'm a mainframe guy at heart so I was very thrilled to find this. One of my interns at the time was taking a assembly programming class. Walking back from coffee one day I mention to him that I found the book. I kid you not. He said, "That's like a 386 right?"

    I can't believe it. What are they teaching these kids.
     
  14. Pret Allez

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    Well, we're all like 0x0a years younger than you, dude. CSC 101 was in C, and everybody complained except me. CSC 105 was in Java, and I complained, but everyone else loved it... Go figure.

    Anyway, I have no idea about really old assembly languages. We did mips64.
     
  15. biggayguy

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    Computer Lab Tech. -- The job amounted to walking community college students through getting started on their computer assignments and putting paper in the printer. I'd also get the computer unfrozen when they did something stupid.
     
  16. starfish

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    Hey I'm not that old. I'm only 0x20.

    I was just shocked that a computer science student wouldn't know what a System 360 was. In the history of computer science it was a big deal. That's like not knowing what a PDP-8 was.

    MIPS is pretty cool. I worked on a MIPS emulator project back in college. It was pretty cool. We had this big 3 foot wide display to show the internal pipeline of the processor. You could step through the instructions and it would do the data flow through the pipeline.

    I didn't get to do any of the software work on the project as I was the only one comfortable with electronics design. Boy I have some stores from that project. Soldering 480 LEDs sure was a pain in the butt.

    I remember that we paid $300 for a 133MHz AMD Geode single board computer. I got a hell of deal on it to. Well now you could get a Raspberry Pi for $35 that is an order of magnitude faster.
     
  17. biggayguy

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  18. Pret Allez

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    I was just poking some fun, dear, since you were all "back in the day." I hope I didn't offend you. (*hug*) If so, I'm really sorry.

    I don't know what either of those things were. The history of the field has never been my passion, except for a few names of people who strike my fancy, like Alan Turing, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, and Richard Stallman (yes, Stallman).

    That's definitely way cooler than what I did. I just invented a really simple assembly language and wrote a simulator in Python. And then I wrote some programs for it. Definitely a toy, and a donkey toy at that. But pretty soon here, I'm going to get an Android phone and do a real project. I'll try to describe the project in a blog post and link you to it. For a tantalizing hint, it involves calling the cops.

    Oh, that's sick, I didn't know they were that cheap. I wonder if its possible to make a vegetable garden watering system with soil moisture detectors.
     
  19. starfish

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    Oh don't worry I wasn't offended.

    Richard Stallman is quite the character. I think I still have it around here somewhere, but I read it biography once. It was quite an interesting story.

    That's cool that you wrote your own assembly language. That is fun because you can throw the book out the window and do what ever you want.

    The cool thing about Android development now is that you can get some very powerful hardware for not much money. With the built in camera opens up a lot of robotics options.
     
  20. freemysoul

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    I'm graduating in a year and a half with a degree in computer networking :slight_smile: I'm studying Cisco and Microsoft. So maybe one day I'll know as much as all of you!