One of the problems I’ve suffered from all my working life is an inability to sleep when something is bugging me about the program I’m working on. Currently, it’s 3:56 am and I’m at my computer because I was tossing and turning thinking of various things I had to try to figure out what’s going wrong, and so I had to get up to try them. Unfortunately, those things didn’t work, so I had to try other things, and here it is 2 hours later and I’m not closer to fixing the original problem, and no closer to going to sleep.
I’d say this inability to shut out a problem and go to sleep was a major problem, but by the same token I like to tell myself that it’s this single minded determination to get things right that makes me so good at programming, so I guess I have to take the one with the other.
And now it’s 4:03, and my latest test is getting
fetch of http://localhost/Documents/pharma/DocSamples/CHINA.doc failed with: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.apache.poi.poifs.filesystem.POIFSFileSystem.getRoot()Lorg/apache/poi/poifs/filesystem/DirectoryNode;
so it looks like sleep isn’t any closer.
My wife is convinced that the only reason I am at the computer at 3:00 AM is to secretly watch porn. It’s hard to make people understand.
And mine is pissed when she discovers I’m at the computer at 3am and _not_ watching pr0n!!
So what was the problem? A classpath problem? A classloader problem?
Yeah, the code that I’m adding Nutch into already had a different version of jakarta-poi.jar in the classpath.
Well in that case that’s certainly a nice clear error message!
Do you consider it impolite to ask about existing education concerning computer science?
Around here, (see TLD of mail adress) computer science is an exact science (directly derived from the math science after all), mostly because the scholastic education (3 years, half of that in 20 hours per week in school) is only around 10 years. Before that, you either went to university (small track is 3-4 years minimum, big track is 4-5 years minimum – no time in a company required) or became a self-taught programmer.
“exact science” meaning: for any given problem do a design phase, then implement, then do quality checks – zero uncertainty involved.
Local thinking MAY include: Showing Un-certainty is a sign of un-knowledge, meaning the person is unfit for the job (if specification is clear and understood) or a risk for the business (if specification is not clear).
Well, the four-digit-number in my mailadress are my birthyear, so java wasn’t around much then. Still had to do Assembler and Fortran and C (without ++). Didn’t like the Fortran, but that was in the last century. Last time I checked Java isn’t an requirement at university, entry-level object orientation yes, but without inheritance.
From my point of view none of the two above-mentioned educations will result in a good programmer, the former is way too easy, the other way too hard and high-level. My last employer used merchants as programmers.
So, I’m not saying you’re doing things wrong, I’m just describing one local environment not including java and the internet. I’m not competing with you, I do not think you’d like my job and the commute and the pay.
Totty: anybody who thinks programming is an “exact science” has never done any real programming.
As for your birth year and the availability of Java, I don’t see the connection. I’m over a decade older than you. I graduated as a Civil Engineer, so I had one programming course in Fortran, which I took the final exam in the first week and so skipped it. Everything else is self taught. If you don’t keep up with the technology, you might as well die.