Remote drove me insane. I was younger then though, and if I did it again I would make sure I had a seperate office room. Living in a flat of rowdy people was a bad idea.
XML Doesn't necessarily make it easier. Maintaining and changing things down the road is better. wxPython doesn't have XML examples for every widget and it does make trying new things out more involved. wxPython isn't a pure MVC design. Hopefully a more expert developer will discuss this.
I would suggest looking at the most popular tookits and making an example screen with all the widgets you'll need in each and then testing it in OSX/Windows 7. Shouldn't take you too much time. Screen shots should filter the toolkits down to a reasonable number.
Another approach is to separate your presentation layer completely so that you can use different toolkits on each platform. With two platforms you'll only have to learn the basics of two libraries. If you move to Linux later this would allow you to use QT/GTK+ as well.
A very good point. Landing a non-web gig seems more daunting to me. In part, this may be because even small companies have websites whereas in the areas that I want to go into I would need to work with much larger clients.
I was at a Polytechnic for my degree. It is pretty much a uni, just doesn't have the prestige. The lecturers are as good and have taught at universities in the past. I say this as I think they are often confused with community colleges in america. It was really good in that the classes were small (it ended up being 15 students in first year). We could even talk to our lecturers at lunchtime.
I felt free to listen in to my lecturer's discussions at lunchtime, or raise a topic of interest and discuss it with them. They also had real world experience which was great. For example: the head didn't have a degree in my field. It was in commerce, not Information Systems. The Information Systems part was from working in that field for years.
There is a place for completely studying solo, but meetups in physical space do allow people to innovate better (bouncing ideas off each other without impediment). Creating a study group with red_beard08, squizgirl77 and <some guy with a weird name> has a certain amount of artificialness to it. Perhaps due to not knowing them. Maybe social tools like twitter will help alleviate that.
HN isn't so much a movement in the content industry, but a very specialized aggregator. It certainly is one of the ways I try to provide myself with good reading material so it does help.
One of the good things about twitter is if you follow content sharing people with similar interests it acts as a filter. A human filter you are exploiting, but still a pretty good filter. I'm sure somehow content aggregators can move away from a board based format and into a more heavily human filtered format. Trawling through a board is time-consuming and not nearly as well filtered as it could be.
A programmer I know told me once about his method of using Twitter. He doesn't read any normal news sites, use RSS, etc. but just follows on Twitter people who write things that he finds interesting (mostly game development). When someone stops tweeting high-value things (links to interesting articles, etc.) he just stops following him and finds someone with more interesting tweets.
Actually, I just found something which looks like a good solution for developers: http://tagmask.com/ . It allows developers to share not just posts, but code snippets as well. Filtered by tags. A social-news board-community for programmers. Found it via Twitter, Guido shared it. I do indeed use twitter for news and resources.
I think it's disappointing your friend doesn't (presumably) have a Twitter List. Many of us on HN love game programming, even if we don't live it because game programming is an art.
I too have to second the dancing. It's lots of fun and it throws you out of your comfort zone in a good way. It'll force you to develop socially and once you start to 'get' the dancing and get into it, you will improve in dancing. Most people are also very forgiving (as a guy at social dances, I've occasionally danced with girls many levels above me and found this to be true).
BTW, you might find going straight from coding all day to dance class an interesting experience mentally. :P
One thing to consider is that the usability and maturing of the mainstream tech has helped it's easy adoption by people who otherwise wouldn't be bothered. I'd say the same thing will happen with 3d printers. Possibly we will see an easy abstraction over the top of things like the arduino - roomba type gadgets which are customizable?
I don't think the Alpha geeks are failing. I do think that computer literacy has increased as younger generations have grown up with technology and also, because a lot of smart alpha geeks have improved the usability of the technology (two forces meeting so to speak).
It is a little bit like the motorists of old - they were first really weird, then being good was largely regarded as being ultra cool as others battled with the new cars, then they were sponsored in races and now they still exist. They exist as kitset car builders, engineers, racers, and oh dear... boy racers. The alpha geeks may not use the latest technology (some Linux users manage to keep their machines going with their skills) but hasn't it always been the skills and knowledge of the geek? If that's the case, I think we are doing very well. The improvement in usability of the internet and easy availability of knowledge means the barrier to entry is lower which means more geeks. On the other side of the spectrum it also means more non-geeks know how to fix their computers etc. Rather like cars. However, being able to replace a battery doesn't make you a car enthusiast, nor does being a savvy Facebook user mean you could build it.
