Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

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Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

Really, I'd just like to be a math professor, or some other profession involving mathematics. but, I don't want to stop programming. I see battle bots in my future.

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

I knew I wanted to do something with programming since I was a junior in high school. I was totally intending to go be a game programmer/designer (I was even accepted to and intending on attending DigiPen for a B.S. in Real-Time Interactive Simulation). After joining FIRST in my senior year (sadly I hadn't discovered our team before then) I decided to pursue a B.S. in Software Engineering at MSOE.

As for personal preference, I like to do back-ends and algorithms and such. GUIs aren't my thing because whatever I make never looks as good as my original vision :)

Plus, I realized that if I became a game designer I don't think I would enjoy video games as much anymore. :D

EDIT: My dream job? Being the guy to create frameworks to parse statistical data on characters in an MMO like World of Warcraft and heading up the balance department :) (Kinda has to do with games...)

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

Not everyone who programs is moving towards a degree in it; my teams former main programmer is actually in civil engineering (and he was good enough to get into one of the best software engineering programs in Canada).

Realistically, every engineering discipline programs now. As a mechanical engineering student, I have three or four programming and electrical control based courses in my first two years.

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

If I'm doing active programming I'd like to do back end algorithms. it gives me the most pleasure to work these out plus it incorporates mathematics and physics (application dependent) which is the most interesting part IMO.

However what I'd really like to do is to do project management, while this is not technically programming it is an interesting and challenging job.

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

I started out from high school wanting to be an electrical engineer. Now I just made the jump to computer science. I love writing code way to much.

To be honest, I don't really have a set goal for where I want to end up. I figure as long as I'm innovating, working with a good team, and helping people with their lives, I'm sure I'll enjoy the job.

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

Well I am either going to be a programmer, or a pilot, or Aeronautical engineering sounds cool.

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

As a side note, it is easier to innovate with automobiles than it is with airplanes. More types of cars are released than types of airplanes, and the regulations around things that fly are oppressive/stifling. To overgeneralize, plane manufacturers are thinking "Safety, Safety, Safety", and automobile manufacturers are thinking "Safety, out-cool the competition, Safety".

I want to be a professor.

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

This is true but it's been slowly changing. Auto software development is slowly coming under increasing scrutiny and micromanagement. Toyota's latest problems will provide an extra push in this direction.

Also, it is easier to innovate with automobiles in Europe than it is in the US, due to Europe's more reasonable tort laws.

Those of you who want a taste of what Eric is talking about (oppressive/stifling regulations for aircraft), try Googling

DO-178B site:faa.gov


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Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

I actually want to go into chemical engineering, but I would love to incorporate programming into it as well, because it's grown on me over the years :D

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

I plan to basically keep making robots. My big hope is that I can work on developing artificial intelligence, while still building hardware as well. I think medical applications would be a nice way to contribute (think the Luke arm), but I can't help but think that bio-form robots would be cool.

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

Either a computer or software engineer :D

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

Well, thats there is a hard question to answer. I recently got a job working on fossology.org, a website dealing with the legal problems associated with free and open source software. However, I also just finished my favorite professor in rewriting his research (an vision recognition system). Both of these projects have been incredibly interesting but they reside in very different parts of computer science.

If you put a gun to my head and told me to choose I would probably have to go with systems at this point. I love working with low level application and operating system programming. However, I start my senior level classes this summer and I plan on getting a masters after those, so I have plenty of time to dable before a decision needs to be made.

There is something that I would like to say for all those thinking of getting into the gaming industry:

Don't make your hobby your career.

And I say this because there are so many interesting places to take the field of programming that you don't need to make your entire life revolve around video games. In addition there are soooooooooooooo many students in computer science students who will tell you that they want to work on video games that its becoming a sad stereo type.

EDIT: missed a word

Re: Programmers: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
 

You could go to Japan and make a Wii-keyboard and make lazy schlubs like all of at Chiefdelphi work a bit harder while we type the day away.