Working for the Man: Essay on Lessons for Young Software Developers

[KenR]

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After I'd finished checking for obvious facial wrinkles in the bathroom I decided to go on a quest to find other engineers in the building who were at least as old as I was, and felt much better when I found some. But it set me thinking about what kind of advice I would give if I could meet myself at his age, in order to guide the young Allison into a promising engineering career. So in the best spirit of "The Screwtape Letters", here is some of what I've learned so far about making yourself a career in writing software.
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If it's not what you love, don't do it
I've worked with many programmers during my career. Without a doubt, the only ones who are any good at it are those who see writing code as art, a creative process.
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http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/122

from www.slashdot.org

[tinjaw]

And my advice you young programmers to go along with this fine article [hint, hint] is to find the good blogs, the ones by veteran programmers AND THEN from those, find the ones that have comments from other veteran programmers. Now, you have a blog on programming that is worth reading. And that means from blog post to the last comment each day for a week, or more. Just because the original post is more than 24 hours old, it does not mean the discussion is over. And just because a blog post is a year old, does not mean that the advice is no longer valid. Good advice, real good advice, is timeless.

update: I added a comment to the blog. I am interested in your comments on my comment.  It is awaiting approval my the moderators. I signed it Chaim and it is titled Know The General and Learn the Specifics.