3rd June 2010

Learning programming languages.

In some job interviews, the candidate is asked “given a rating from 1 to 10, how do you rate yourself given that Bjarne Stroustrup is a 10?”

Here is a breakdown of that scale:-

0 No knowledge

1-3 Novice

1 Done a “Hello World” program from a magazine/web site article.

2 Novice/Tourist – relies on “phrase books” (e.g. O'Reilly's books).

3 Novice – less reliant on books.

4-6 Practised

4 Gaining confidence – books / man pages used for reference.

5 Average – knows the ins and outs of the language/topic.

6 Fluent – above average, becoming an expert.

7-9 Expert.

7 Expert.

8 Lead Programmer.

9 Mentor.

10 Guru. (e.g Bjarne Stroustrup for C++).

Am learning Perl – an old language but a good language to know when doing Systems Administration on Linux systems. At the moment I'm a 3, going on 4.

Role Playing Games.

Traveller books are my self-indulgence at the moment. I'm not running Traveller games at the moment but I hope to do so once I've eventually moved house...

Moving house.

Want to move house but its pretty much a work in progress.

Contact.

Still working on the PC refurbishment project. Most people only know how to use a variant of Microsoft Windows. Am increasingly coming to the belief we should be using Ubuntu Linux instead of Microsoft Windows.

Nintendo DSi

The Nintendo DSi's camera is being helpful as I can show people different parts of my life. The DSi itself is really good. I bought a second hand copy of “Travel Games for Dummies (Sudoku / Solitaire / Chess)” with practice modes and help as well as the games themselves.