Question for programmers....

[PAH]

I don't know why, value tuna is cheaper than cat food.......

Whatever floats your boat I guess.....

Guess which tins are mis-labelled. I'd be buying the cat food in that shop!

[PAH]

Are you the one who said we are golorified typists?

Nope. I have a feeling it was an agent.

[PAH]

PAH - taking the above into account - would you consider yourself "just a programmer" or "a programmer plus a load of other useful stuff"?

I've never been a "programmer".

From my experience, the clients may be asking for a specific role, but often expect contractors to know more besides, seeing as they've typically moved about quite a bit and gained lots of varied knowledge/experience.

Rightly so, contractors are seen as the cream of the crop. Doesn't stop them (or the agents) trying to get quality at a tesco value price.

[thunderlizard]

It's only a matter of time before writing code is obsolete. Just look at what tools (such as IronSpeed) can do already. At some point the middle management won't need to mess about with Excel and Access, they'll be knocking up proper apps instead!

That is what's supposed to happen but history has always fallen short. SQL was originally conceived as an idiot-proof way for managers, accountants etc. to work with their data without having to know DCL; but nowadays it's very much the preserve of the IT department. At every step in the journey from machine code -> assembler -> C -> Basic, the intention has been to make programmers less necessary; and each time, the world has ended up with more of them. Nowadays programmers are doing more dragging and dropping within IDE's and less typing, but it is still basically the same people doing the age-old job of taking the subtleties of the real world and explaining them to a box of superheated sand.

[PAH]

Closest we're likely to get to a job on the beach.

I suppose there's no limit to the laziness of those that can delegate. We're just slaves really. At least there's some compensation these days.

[NickFitz]

SQL was originally conceived as an idiot-proof way for managers, accountants etc. to work with their data without having to know DCL

SQL was originally conceived as a language for querying and manipulating database management systems that had been constructed according to the relational model defined in strict mathematical terms by Codd.

If anybody ever suggested that SQL was intended for direct use by end-users of data such as managers and accountants, it can only have been in the same article in which they stated that housewives would write their shopping lists in FORTRAN and everybody would have hovercars.

[NickFitz]

...the journey from machine code -> assembler -> C -> Basic, the intention has been to make programmers less necessary...

BASIC predates C by eight years. Also, that wasn't the intention of that progression.

[expat]

SQL was originally conceived as a language for querying and manipulating database management systems that had been constructed according to the relational model defined in strict mathematical terms by Codd.

If anybody ever suggested that SQL was intended for direct use by end-users of data such as managers and accountants, it can only have been in the same article in which they stated that housewives would write their shopping lists in FORTRAN and everybody would have hovercars.

COBOL. That was intended for end-users. Has put dinner on the tables of how many millions of programmers?

[Scotchpie]

£8/hour!!!

Well I sarted contracting to the Public Sector (NHS) 12 months ago after 8 years in a permie postion at my local hospital and have been fortunate enough to go from one contract to another without anytime on the bench.

Currently I'm developing front ends for databases in VB.Net and get £25 per hour easily - in fact I'm considered cheap. My current contract is up at the end of December though it seems likely that they want to extend again (3rd time) as I've been sent on a training course for a piece of software that will not be installed until the new year.

However not wanting to tempt fate I put my CV online and within a couple of days I got about 5 calls a day from the pimps with firm offers for NHS devevlopers all starting at £25/hour.

Where this £8 per hour comes from I don't know.

PS. I'm in the North

[Cowboy Bob]

£25/hour

Do people really work for rates that low?

in fact I'm considered cheap

That's probably because you are. Anything below £300 per day is criminally cheap, even in the north. I suspect your agent has seen you coming...