[macosxnerd101]

Quote

Jim Showalter worked for Rational before it became a division of IBM and helmed numerous startup companies before going back to his roots as a programmer in 2005. In this interview, Matthew Heusser talks with Jim about working life and the evolving Java technology stack at Intuit, open source tools he uses every day, and where he currently finds challenge and inspiration as a career programmer.

Jim Showalter is an old-school engineer, which in his case means that he started programming with punch cards, coding Fortran on an OS/360 mainframe, in 1970. The price of a mistake in those days was 24 hours of calendar time, because his middle-school computer science teacher had to take students' punch cards to the school district's mainframe and run them overnight. Jim got very good at writing tight, solid code as a result, and he's still doing it today.

http://www.javaworld...-of-intuit.html

[farrell2k]

Nice read, Mac. I guess there is no Microsoft server sticker shock at Intuit.

This post has been edited by farrell2k: 26 January 2013 - 11:07 AM

[darek9576]

I am sometimes wondering whether at 50 i will still have the same drive to keep up with the ever changing technology stack. For now, management does not interest me.

[farrell2k]

darek9576, on 26 January 2013 - 11:43 PM, said:

I am sometimes wondering whether at 50 i will still have the same drive to keep up with the ever changing technology stack. For now, management does not interest me.

That guy's career is no atypical. Ask anyone who is old enough to have experienced it. A few people still keep coding at that age, but discrimination is rampant. I think most will have a tough time by then if they haven't made the switch to management.