The Open Thread posted at the beginning of the month has exceeded 500 comments – new Open Thread posts may be made here.
This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.
Sorry for not reading the follow-up discussion earlier.
What do you mean by this? How can I be hired for programming based on just what I have now? Who hires people at my level, and how would they know whether I'm lying about my abilities? (Yes, I know, interviews, but to they have to thin the field first.) Is there some major job finding trick I'm missing?
My degree isn't in comp sci (it's in mech. engineering and I work in structural), and my education in C++ is just high school AP courses and occasional times when I need automation.
Also, I've looked at the requests on e.g. rent-a-coder and they're universally things I can't get to a working .exe (though of course could write the underlying algorithms for).
I'm sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but the IT industry has appallingly low standards for hiring.
For instance, you may be able to get a programming job without at any point being asked to produce a code portfolio or to program in front of an interviewer.
I'd still be keen, by the way, to help you through a specific example that's giving you trouble compiling. I believe that when smart people get confused by things which their designers ought to have made simple, it's an opportunity to learn about improving similar designs.