To the laser show software companies

[PackCat]

A good computer programmer can cost a company $150K a year in the US.

I think they are overpaid for the crap they put out.
You could hire 15 intellectual genius programmers from India, to put in bells and whistles for that amount. LOL
Just don't let them handle the support calls!

[carmangary]

Yea, my company tried doing that with our software and we got back a pile of crap.

[PackCat]

Programmers do not get paid $150K a year either.
I live near D.C. where the janitor at McDonald's makes $100K a year, but they simply do not pay programmers more than $60-$80K a year. You are talking high level management. I know from experience. If they paid near that much for programmers, I would have stayed one instead of managing them. Nice wishful thinking though.

[carmangary]

A senior level software engineer easily makes over $100K. Then you add in what the company pays for 401K, health insurance, and social security and you're talking $150K. I know people that even make more than that. $60-80K is what a programmer makes with 3 or 4 years of experience.

[DZ]

I don't doubt a good programmer can make 6 figures a year in the intel platforms. I suspect though, that you can make even more as a system programmer/system administrator in the unix environment, which has been making a huge comeback, and good programmers/administrators seem to be in very short supply. I think you can do even better as a programmer/administrator for mainframes. Word on the street is all the really good/old programmers are all retiring. Lots of money to be had as a programmer/administrator for z/OS and z/VM.

[godfrey]

I had another laser that was programmed by a keypad on the controller, where you plotted all of the points, (like GPS navigation on a cell phone) that was easier to work with than all of the Laser software I've seen

You know, that sounds a lot like the Milton Bradley toy "Big Trak" from the late 1970's - I used to have one of those...anyone remember those?

Sorry - I can't help but revisit my childhood.


Phil

[buffo]

I remember the big trac! I always wanted one, but never got it.

By the time I could afford one of my own, they had ceased production. Damn cool toy though. (Now I'm really showing my age)

Adam

[mixedgas]

It is now time to state Robertses law of modern computer operating systems

"As motherboard speed, memory, and hard drive capacity climb, operating system programmers will use the resources in such a bloated way, that soon boot time will go from 15 seconds or so to approaching infinity, the machine will never be able to fully boot through the bloated operating system, let alone run a benchmark or give you a prompt."


We have two skilled programmers trying to learn how to read a variable length file format from a doppler velocimeter here at work, its goonna take them weeks in java and windows "C sharp dot net" whatever. I'm getting so POed waiting for it,That I'm about to do it in Quickbasic in a evening just because I can and I'm the hardware guy, not the code guy.

I had a model I 16K TRS80 with a tape drive, Dad wouldnt pay 700$ for the expansion interface and another 500$ for a floppy.Buffo, I have seen and used EIs, and seen the schematics, so I know they existed. Remember the "one liners" contests in the TRS80 magazines? How much code could you fit in one line to do something useful. Remember , hitting carrage return to add a line to a program could burn as much as 200 bytes of ram.
I too, missed getting a big trak. fnny how there is not a toy rob0t out there now with anywhere near the functionality of that beast for the price, even adjusted for todays dollars.

BTW, one of the first laser graphics generators had 128 pairs of linear pots, scanned in sequence.Try drawing with that!.. then record it to FM tape. Its successor was boosted to 256 pairs. Suprisingly, some of the pictures of the images were pretty good by todays standards.

Steve Roberts

[OldGrumpy]

About the figures for programmers and all that: just visit the daily WTF and you will learn where the money is and where it goes to.

[norty303]

A Laser package with a UI like Millennium (Laser Electronics Ltd)

I had a good long look at Zion/Millenium when i was looking for a software setup based on the fact that someone I know uses it, and it was immediately accessible, and seemed to do everything i wanted, whilst looking very polished. Unfortunately the price was out of my reach, but it certainly impressed. It's not an application/system that I hear very much about though.