So... while I respect avoiding shameless self-promotion, referencing your hobby project, or at least including it in your "About" info would be cool, for those interested. :)

Oh! Totes fair. It's https://www.brian.bot/ and also all the help kiosks in https://topia.io/

I think the complexity of AWS's pricing is what led me to use the simplicity of AWS' lightsail offering.

No free tier, but the free tier is frought with potential for overrun. Lightsail is not.

https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/

That looks a lot like Digital Ocean's offering - anyone tried both who can compare Lightsail vs DO?

edit: Blog post that says they are about equal, Lightsail has AWS integration but DO is a but more full-featured as of the writing (https://cloudacademy.com/blog/amazon-lightsail-vs-digital-oc...)

I echo your rant.

Looked up effnet stats the other day to find out there's only 20k users there these days. Not sure how many it was back in the day, and I was more of an undernet guy... but seems small today.

Contact details are in my profile... we can reminisce via email (which is effectively going the way of the Old Internet, especially as the millennials take over).

Read a book called The Google Resume. I think it'll help you position yourself better in the market.

If you want to work for Microsoft or Google, while you likely can't get away with using your employers's $2K, the best books to read are Cracking the Coding Interview and Elements of Programming Interviews. Both books have very solid algorithm questions which you can use to go research the various algorithms and learn them. Although, I'd wait for Elements of Programming Interviews v2 which will include Java samples, as opposed to C++, but that's just me.

McDowell's The Google Resume also has some useful tidbits in it.

I've been totally missing that green rotating skull and cross bones! I used that thing everywhere!

Hi Mike Ross,

I was (am) you. I skipped college/university 15 years ago because I felt it couldn't teach me anything.

On the one hand, I now sit beside someone with a Masters in Computer Science in a lateral position to him, so I've done OK.

On the other hand, if there's one thing I've observed about mentorships, etc., it's that they don't exist out in the real world. Companies are there to _do their business_, whatever that might be. They don't have time to hand-hold you. IF you want to make great connections, find great peers and mentors, go to college or university and talk to everybody. Do the tedious grunt work... and get the credentials while you're at it.

Entering the workforce with your (supposed) capability AND a degree will make you unstoppable. Also, chances are you may bail on the degree, but you should only do that if you and a couple peers are making something super cool.

Good luck!

Brewing beer.

Is this hard to do correctly? How did you start?

How easy is it to get into this?

I could be too late... but I'd love an invite too. I'm excited to experiment with extending Atom using Javascript, since I'm a web developer. cunninghamd@nosleep.ca.

Dollar value of disposable income. Retirement is a good consideration (per the other poster), however I do have a pension plan, so I'm slightly less concerned about that.

Ultimately, I'm considering financing or leasing a (pretty expensive) car, and wonder how short I should leave myself.