Programmer’s Maxim

Good coders code, great coders reuse.

Never re-invent the wheel, if you already have a function that does something previously, use that function. Don't re-write. In all my work at uni I've re-used code from one assignment or another. And since it's my own work, it's not cheating. In fact I remember from one assignment I re-used code from an assignment that was done prior to even starting uni.

I re-use code in my commercial work as well. As well as other freely available code. If it's there to use, use it. The reasons being, you don't have to write the code, but also because it's another person's implementation very likely it's already been tested many times, has it's bugs ironed out and has been proven to work (and thereby saving you programming and debugging frustration).

Are you a good coder, or a great coder?

$300US per second

That's how much Bill Gates makes a second, from the conception of Microsoft at 14 hours a day till sometime in 1998. That's pretty astounding.

How much do you make a second?

Use this ridiculously simple formula

Take the amount made per year divided by 12 (monthly), divided by 4 (weekly), divided by 5 (assuming 5 working days), divided by 8 (assuming 8 hours a day), divide by 60 (minutes) then divide that by 60 again to get seconds.

Very likely you're only making a couple of cents, or even less!

Here's some stuff about average salaries in the US, for programmers

Salary by school (US)
Gender distribution (US)
Salary by years of experience (US)

Salary by years of experience (AU)

I'm assuming these salaries are pre-tax values. Payscale.com has some very interesting data for salary comparison so join it (it's free) and have a look. My data's somewhere in it. ;-) Obviously I'm not from the US so I my data isn't in the US ranks.

If anyone's interested, I'll post my ranking but for now I'll keep mum.