klahnako

You have limited options. I suggest using the internet for reference material only (no HN or Slashdot allowed). Your boss is not going to change. What is your job worth to you now? Do you need more compensation? If so, I suggest working on leverage first:

1) Apply for other jobs, even if you must move. Only with a job offer do you have leverage to get more pay.

2) Would ODesk or eLance provide enough income to live where you are?

3) When burned out, get out of your desk and walk around find out who knows who.

4) The only way you can get another job is through your contacts. #1 is a terrible way to get a job. Expand your list of contacts.

...

Perhaps what you mean is you hate the escape characters used to switch between html and sql.

Perhaps what you mean is you hate the MVC separation.

I do not agree with swix that drag and drop is that solution. If there is one thing that has burned me too many times it is visual programming. Visual programming, to me, converts somatic gestures into black-box code. I love casting magic spells, but the lack of tools make them hard to fix: You must start from scratch for a small change.

I believe the solution is textual: Where different text means different things, and text can be edited to correct your mistakes. This means SQL will stay.

On another subject, I can see how Model/View separation is causing great pain. Separating a simple view into 2+ files makes a distinction without a measurable benefit. How often has your model changed without touching the view? And when it did, would having it all in one file make that change harder?

From my little experience, the majority cases leave Models and Views in a 1-1 correspondence. I agree with swix that current languages make those cases needlessly difficult.

I am in a very similar situation: Mortgage, kids, wife and in an almost failing startup. First, you need to know how much risk the wife can stomach. Second, the money does not matter to children; they may be better off if you have more time to spend with them. Third, always have small contracts on the side to balance the startup losses. Fourth, it is important that you contract to other companies, instead of being employed. This will help with the small contracts, but also allows you to own the copyright you build for the startups; maybe not directly useful to you, but adds to your personal library and makes you more productive to your customers.

Good luck!

Yes.

1) To practice my writing skill - I may be awesome at programming, but my prose comes out too slow. I hope practice will allow me to write faster, yet still coherently.

2) There are many people on the internet that are just plain wrong, and I must correct them! :)

3) To leave an impression when I am gone, albeit small.

Most items on this list are surprising effective when done by the media.

I do not know how you can call yourself a geek if you can tolerate boredom 3 or 4 times before even considering making a program instead. For some reason, you (and others here) assume efficiency is an attribute of geekdom. I suggest that efficiency is actually a contraindicates geekdom.

Being a geek is more about fun, it is not about how well you can optimize.

May I suggest that you are not a geek: No Star Trek? Blasphemer!

IMHO, it is hard to find a domain that is challenging, useful, and small. But a couple of examples listed above are pretty good: 1) Write your own web server, blog software, etc: By leveraging existing libraries (or not!) you can get a lot of effect for very few lines 2) Script your daily chores: It does not matter what language you write the “scripts” in. Choose your current favorite and get a feel for how you can interact with the OS

I dislike the free-form overlapping windows, but tiling is still worse. Tiling could be better if windows had a 'reduced' mode: which needs minimal screen area to show status. Some examples: I like the last two lines of IM and terminal windows to show. I like to see the folder status on Thunderbird peeking out from behind other windows. I only need the smallest portion of the top left title bar to show for plain documents (they have no 'status').

Three screens help. :)

Should have compared cubes instead of squares

From the article: "This should say to employers that insisting people work long hours is actually not good for your business"

Wrong! As a business, you should overwork you employees. When the dementia starts affecting performance you fire them. This way you can privatize the benefits (long hours) and socialize the losses (some else takes care of them). Anything else would not be good for profits.

I am in Ontario. My advice is:

1) Stay in real cash (not equivelents) until this market turmoil is done. 2) Figure out what you want your next "career" to be. You are in a position to take some risks, but 2million is not that much. You want to give yourself purpose and continue making some money. 3) Do not travel unless you are one to learn other languages: Travel is addictive but does nothing to improve you. Like all drugs, travel should be a reward to yourself, not the purpose.

Sorry, I am not convinced.

Java's exception handling may be slower, but exceptions should be rare: In the few cases exceptions are not rare, return an object instead.

The issue of loosing some variables is misleading. First, the heap is not rolled back, so many of the side effects are still available for inspection. Second, how often do you want one method to handle another method's variables, and if you do, is either method maintainable? Finally, if frame variables are important, then you can put them in the exception.

If you want to complain about loosing context, try PL-SQL: "Raising" an exception rolls back all evidence of there being a problem.

"Europeans would look at our education system and be appalled by two things. One was that we were educating so many, which they considered to be highly wasteful. The other was that we were educating girls as much as boys."

I would have thought it was another two things: One, US high school education is poor; US graduates are one or two years behind the European graduate. Second, the US does not pay for college and university; preventing able individuals from getting a full education.

Maybe Goldin was confusing Europeans with the Church.

...it's worse!

That was an interesting meme. I have long valued waking up early, and I promote going to bed hungry. Looks like the two principals are related.

I do the same. I have a script that will update my hosts file at the start and end of each day. All my bookmarked sites are blocked during the work day.