>Am I insane for being completely satisfied with $80,000/yr to do really cool multithreaded programming work on some seriously beefy hardware? (Midwest area.)
In 10 years of midwest experience, $80k is probably a bit on the low side for systems-level work. Just a few years ago I would see DreamWeaver jockeys pick up full time for ~$50k/year. One hire did NOT know the difference between HTML and an HTTP server, someone else called me into a training session she was hosting and asked why her form wouldn't work. She had set the form's action param to email:
<form action="mailto:example@domain.com">
Sadly I'm not kidding. :(
On the high-side, I've seen C/C++ contractors charge $100-$250/hour, depending wildly on the individual consultants.
So I don't think you're crazy for being happy. And great working conditions can have an often immeasurable impact on life. Happiness, is, after all, the end game - and a guaranteed $80k/year might be worth more than an unknown $120k/year for some people.
Cool, I didn't know that (started late 90s here) but that wasn't what this person attempting to do. Apparently she had asked for the source from another dev's script and saw something like:
action="process.php"
And just thought This Should Work™ too and put the mailto: into the form. When it happened, in front of 50 other people, I just stared at her for a moment and said it was complex and we could look at it later. Not really much else you can do in those situations.
No. Mosaic did not have an integrated email reader, and there was no protocol for starting your mail client of choice. OmniWeb did support mailto: by passing it over to the mail app on NeXTStep, but that was an uncommon platform.
When I first learnt HTML in the late nineties, the book I used contained mailto actions on forms, which I remember worked just fine for me in IE (4 or 5). Some searching suggests that IE interfaced with Outlook Express to do this.
In 10 years of midwest experience, $80k is probably a bit on the low side for systems-level work. Just a few years ago I would see DreamWeaver jockeys pick up full time for ~$50k/year. One hire did NOT know the difference between HTML and an HTTP server, someone else called me into a training session she was hosting and asked why her form wouldn't work. She had set the form's action param to email:
Sadly I'm not kidding. :(On the high-side, I've seen C/C++ contractors charge $100-$250/hour, depending wildly on the individual consultants.
So I don't think you're crazy for being happy. And great working conditions can have an often immeasurable impact on life. Happiness, is, after all, the end game - and a guaranteed $80k/year might be worth more than an unknown $120k/year for some people.