Many admire the knowledge of computer geeks, admire their coding skills, hacking capabilities and all cool stuff they know about computer gadgets.
But many don’t know about computer geeks social life. It takes months or years to be good a programmer. To be a good hacker it takes more time. 90% of this time you are alone learning stuff on your laptop.
Forget about those who just know how to format a box, burn stuff into CDs, install programs, am talking about those who code applications or hacker boxes.
Your computer becomes your lover, you spend more time thinking how to make algorithms work
the way you want, I remember how i spent one weekend working on how to sort a multidimensional array in PHP to arrange the positions of students in a program, another time how pointers work in C++(Nikaachia C++ hapo).
When other people are having fun, socializing and meeting new friends, a computer geek in busy coding, meeting virtual/online friends and fun is when you accomplish a task/project.
Hehe…lazima niseme I am not your typical geek. Huwezi jua by looking at me, but crazy thing is that I am constantly churning ideas in my head and I get slated a lot for zoning out of conversations as I dissect a new idea. My friends think I am a genius because I literally do everything, not to a general professional level on some of those things.
I recently developed an application that gives you all possible combinations of a jackpot. It would be very effective especially when the jackpot has accumulated for a long time to a big amount. I can then provide all the combinations for the jackpot and at least have one winner. I am still doing some math to see how I can make it profitable in other ways than the jackpot.
I love learning new things and that gives me personal fulfillment.
True that your machine becomes your everything, sometimes you go without even eating because you cant just stand why something is not working. I always laugh at the way some newbies who don’t know anything about programming will come to you and tell you that they are hackers, i always chuckle to myself and innocently ask them this simple question “which is your favorite language and why do you like it?”. Well @MegaKing most of them don’t have a clue, and the most annoying thing is when someone comes and tells me i just formatted my flash disk can you do your computer thingy and get back my photos, that statement annoyed me so much that i quit my job as tech support and went freelance never regretted the move.
I even broke up with my girlfriend just because i was spending too much time on the computer she just could not understand that if i don’t complete that project by Friday then she is not going to the saloon on Saturday, those were the days
Yeah coding doesn’t make alot niliwachana nayo kitambo when people started coming to me for advise and i realised i can charge them for the same. Geeks out there especially those working for major companies tafadhali check that contract you signed angalia ianasema nini kuhusu rigths to ideas/codes unaeza code kitu ya 100million lakini shida sasa contract inasema whatever you do while working for us is ours not yours.
This is the life we live. Cant regret. Those saying coding cant make money are wrong. It depends on for who, how and where you do it. Mark you to make money you have ti do more than just writing code. As kadinal says up there, advise aka consultation brings more for less effort.
I actually started typing this comment an hour ago but then a better way to implement a certain C class came to the fore and I had to clear it first. This is for a DIY facial recognition algorithm am playing with, as I await a KWI file to compile for a toyota Stereo I want to flash. In short, code is expansive, not just your basic web apps / mobile apps / desktop apps. Play smart, eat smart.
