[Wildly off-topic, seeking advice] What do programmers do these days?

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ivan.lt
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Joined: Sun Sep 20, 2020 8:36 pm

[Wildly off-topic, seeking advice] What do programmers do these days?

Post by ivan.lt »

Hi! Since there are a lot of IT people hanging out here I thought I would ask you guys. So I was a programmer about 15 or 20 years ago. While most of my work was about databases and CRM, I dabbled in a lot of things including the usual stuff (Windows, C/C++, VB, Java, HTML/CSS/JS/PHP/Perl) and more niche interests (Forth, LISP, x86 assembly, 3D graphics). Long story short, now I am considering going back into IT business but there's so much going on that I just can't wrap my head around it. So I guess I'm asking whether you could direct me to some online resources with practical advice on how to start making money using IT skills these days. Or maybe a site like stackexchange.com where these questions are appropriate. Like what is a "frontend Boost developer" (maybe that's nonsense, just improvising) and do I want to be one. :) Thanks!

P.S. Also, why do people say "Recall" when it's called "Teleport" in Daggerfall?..

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DigitalMonk
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Re: [Wildly off-topic, seeking advice] What do programmers do these days?

Post by DigitalMonk »

I'm a software engineer, so IT isn't exactly my focus. For me, modern C++ and Python (and C# if you're making Windows apps or developing Unity-based games :D ) are my main go-to languages. I have some interest in Rust, as a modern language that makes memory safety mostly guaranteed at compile time and that can also be used for bare metal embedded programming.

With the availability of Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, and other engines, I would say that full 3D programming probably isn't a thing people generally do unless they're working inside one of those projects (I could easily be wrong here, though). As near as I can tell, Pixel, Vertex, and Fragment shaders are where graphics programming happens out on the edge now.

As to IT, if you're thinking infrastructure/backend/support, Python and Windows Powershell (depending on OS) seem to be the main automation languages. If you're thinking web development, I can't really help you -- there are so many frameworks, and to be honest they all seem to be "similar but incompatible" to me. But I have a deep and abiding hatred for web development, so my bias is going to show there...

Oh, and of course, Cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud... AWS, Azure, all those goodies. Only actually need them if you're doing big data analysis or BIG company web presence, but you need to understand the pros and cons so that you can dissuade the boss of a 10 employee company from putting the interoffice memo system in the cloud "because it's cool"...

As for Recall/Teleport, my guess would be that it comes from Morrowind and the later TES games breaking Teleport into two spells, Mark and Recall. I personally prefer the split, because you can Mark once, and it stays there through an arbitrary number of Recalls. Only another Mark will move it. Not a big deal, but one fewer thing to have to ritualize (ie, you don't have to reflexively re-cast Teleport to re-set the marker after each recall use). But it's probably a matter of taste. (My CRPG life started with Might and Magic 6, and the teleportation spell there let you teleport to any city you knew and also to "memorize" up to 5 personal locations if your magic level was high enough -- so I've always found TES teleportation to be extremely limiting anyway)

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Ralzar
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Re: [Wildly off-topic, seeking advice] What do programmers do these days?

Post by Ralzar »

ivan.lt wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2020 6:02 pm P.S. Also, why do people say "Recall" when it's called "Teleport" in Daggerfall?..
Because the effect is called "Teleport". The teleport spell you can buy is called "Recall" ;)

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ByteMixer
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Re: [Wildly off-topic, seeking advice] What do programmers do these days?

Post by ByteMixer »

A late response, in case anyone reads, but after that really nasty hacking job was the big talk, security is probably going to be seeing a LOT of stuff going on going forward.

IMO, if you're going back into specifically IT rather than software development/engineering....you might want to consider focusing on networking and specializing in security. People are going to be scrambling to close up loopholes and harden systems all over the the US if not the world. And there will be a need for new ideas and concepts to combat security threats going forward. So go out, get your network and security certs, and hit the ground running.

Basically, the original paradigm way back when the internet and networking was in its infancy and just starting to boom was, "Keep all unwanted users out" Well, that didn't work so hot, so they revised the idea: "Well, we're never going to be able to keep unwanted access completely out 100% of the time, so we'll develop various intrusion prevention systems and ways to monitor and prevent various intrusion attempts" That's basically been the paradigm for the last 20 or 25 years. Well, thanks to what those two unrelated groups of hackers pulled off, security experts are going to have to rethink the paradigm all over again, because they basically showed that intrusion prevention systems and even manual monitoring by security teams didn't detect what was going on since it literally looked like legitimate traffic. The hackers were pretty clever, and they're thinking a creative group called "Cozy Bear" was involved.

Here's a couple Twit.tv Security Now episodes that talk about the Orion software, and how they got in and did what they did. It was a real mess. They basically swiss cheesed it. And they were in for MONTHS! First intrusion of the first group was suspected to be back in October 2019. They left the door open for the 2nd group which got in and started their operation around what did they say, March or April 2020? Not great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-QQN8w9i1g&t=3975s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEAb8___VDE

So yeah, I think going into security might be something to consider over the next few years.
Me? I'm sticking with music. :D
"Whatever you do, make good art." - Neil Gaiman

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