Ryokeen

Alex (if it's okay for me to call you that!) Great information. Thank you! I take it you're working on paving your own path in the field then? You said you've managed to land some freelance work. Well done! How do you go about competing with bots and, for lack of a better phraseology, foreigners with a lower cost of living, effectively? I am developing my skill-set, trying to make sure I can competently tackle some work before I put up more portfolio and begin trying to get folks to pay me to build the things to solve their problems. But I suspect I'm not too far off. I've grasped the basics firmly in my desired tech-set and am going deeper now. Thanks again

Thanks for the insight DevBlox!

Thanks for the insight, and best of luck! Hang in there. It doesn't seem to be an uncommon position to be in based on my internet searching.

In what regard?

Hey Gang, Here's the scoop. I am just now 26 years old, I am married happily and struggling deeply. I have not gotten a degree yet -- I have roughly 24-30 credits, one year of school basically, and a 3.93 GPA in the courses I have taken. But I am struggling. The local CS/CSE programs (which are about an hour drive from home one way) have high entry requirements, with certain courses necessary for entry. Sadly for me, I haven't taken those courses (I was unaware until recently.) This means it'll be another year of pure Maths/Sciences until I can get into the four year program. This has me graduating college at 31... I've managed businesses (I use to manage two restaurants as a sort of regional manager), and while I have a complicated background and am understanding of unique histories, most companies get a stack of resumes and I assume some HR person would look at my age (31), my lack of experience (none) and my degree acquisition date (five years from now) and probably toss my stuff off the desk, regardless of my (likely) 3.9x GPA. There's also the matter of caring for my wife. If something should happen to her, I need to be able to provide to care for her. I currently could never do that a million years. So I feel the pressure to act swiftly. I just don't know what to do. There are no junior colleges or two year programs in my area that deal with anything other than IT, and from my understanding, IT jobs are slowly being dried up and/or require more training/experience. I was wondering if self-teaching, or programs like Udacity are viable options? I don't have the 20k to drop on a bootcamp, and we're not keen on moving to SF to do so either. Do you think it's possible to self teach? Could I jump into Freelance or remote work, if I do so? Or do you think companies would be interested in a self-taught, older junior developer? Any advice? (Not opposed to negative feedback - the truth is the truth regardless of how it makes me feel. ) Cheers

I've never owned a SSD in my life. Next week is wide open for a change of life experience

The machine we're building will be a high-end editing rig as I'll be doing some design work myself as well as some High-res and 3D rendering. Part for Part, a PC seems much cheaper (and I can maintain it myself much more easily) than an Apple product.

That's a really interesting case study. In my experience, the one MBP I had to buy for a previous job was a factor of 2 greater in cost than any comparable laptop on the market. Though, Laptops are not often cheap and quality, so it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable.

My bride is a hobbyist turned part-time photographer and when we upgrade our PC, I want to make sure that she has the best foot-forward she can and that our rig will support it. Should I really be considering a Mac Pro for her sake, or will a high-res, high quality, high accuracy monitor take care of most of her potential issues? She CAN do great video work (but she doesn't and doesn't plan to - no idea why.)

I don't think intelligence is the issue... Sure, you're over-paying for hardware and software, but there has to be compelling reasons for doing so. The design would be a draw, if you were trying to sell your services to non-techy people who "don't get computes." Mac products do look more sleek than the average Workbench/Editing Bench but the company I might work for is supported remotely, so that's not the issue either. In this case, anyway.

Hey Gang, I'm being mentored and pruned to become a Front-End Dev for a start-up that's going well out of Cali. My, would be boss is using a Mac and he's constantly making small comments about how "using Windows for development is silly." That's not the first time I've heard a Web Developer say that. Most of the Web Dev. focused podcasts I listen to are hosted by folks who use Apple products. I get that there certainly are several Mac-focused software packages that help with the process, but I'm sure Windows/Linux has them too. Or, I would think that, that is true - but is it? But I want to know who decided developing with Windows (or Linux) was a bad thing and why do seemingly so many Web Devs use Mac? Is it just because design schools use them so much? Any thoughts? Also if anyone has any tool recommendations for improving workflow and productivity on the Windows/Linux side, let a guy know.

Yeah, my thoughts too. But he's done a phenomenal job with it. I haven't seen mention of the libraries he used. You could tweet him @concernedape - He's been good to reply/like/interact with me previously.

@KuJoe Yes sir, I'll be doing the same.

@KuJoe He's said that he's revamping it, but about two years ago he had an alpha build with co-op he showcased, and in that players could work together to manage their town/farm, split up chores for the day, marry each other or separate towns folk, etc. He wanted co-op to add to the experience of the game more, so that it'd be a substantial contribution to the game, so he's developing it further and I'm sure once the single player release drops and he spends his first week or two, taking care of minor bugs that he couldn't for see, He'll get right to updating the community about Multi-player. I think there'll be a surge of support for single player, but the real resurgence will come with multi-player. Personally, I'm hoping to build a boss farm with a few friends. We'll see. I'm a fan of ConcernedApe and have been following the game for a while, so it's a day one buy for me regardless

No, he built it all from complete scratch in C#.