Why go to college ?

When you can invent your own course ?

Stiff seems to have created (crafted) his own course, and it makes for very interesting reading. I seem to have opened 15 links in new tabs before I got from his blog to mine (not counting the links which went to Amazon, can't afford that these days).

Given the quality of the links Stiff comes across as erudite and experienced, so it was a surprise to see his real age. But his age may also be garnered by the comment that Swing is "the best GUI toolkit programming-wise I’ve ever saw ... its a pity its sucks user-wise".

Two dead giveaways for youth in a programmer:

1. A program is "for" the programmer
2. "My code has no bugs"

Actually the latter is my one consistent interview question. I only started coding in my 30s, and the last guy I gave a job to seems to have started in kindergarten, so I'm always aware that age is not a good measure of experience. A much better measure is "What percentage of the new code you write has bugs ?"

An experienced humble programmer should reply "100"

An experienced arrogant programmer may reply with somewhere above "80". (And any programmer who manages to retain arrogance about his chosen profession doesn't have exnough experience yet :-)

A junior will use numbers less than "50".