Recent content by gbeagle

Good, all the new JVM languages (Scala, Clojure, JRuby, etc.) will allow some of the good parts of the Java ecosystem to survive (the JVM itself*, the "cross-platformness") while marginalizing the fundamentally broken part: Java the language. * Footnoted because one can definitely make the...

It depends what you mean here. Not all physicists are theorists... At least in the US the differentiation between experimentalists and theorists occurs in graduate school. I'm assuming that this question is asking 'can I get a PhD in physics and then go find an industry job somewhere doing...

I used to work in 'big data', and I agree with what TomServo said. It is very much a different sort of problem than the type you work on in computational physics. The work in 'big data' more closely resembles experimental physics: Collecting data, analyzing it, and trying to draw...

Yeah, I have seen this fairly often. I think it's because the meaning of the term "entry-level" has shifted to basically mean junior level employee. In other words a sort of blanket category for people with less than 3 to 5 years experience. Why you're not seeing any "no experience" postings is...

Unless the purpose of this is to try implementing an random number generator then I'd just use an off-the-shelf one. For Java something in http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-math/ would probably work. Note that it also supports...

I second this very strongly.

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia which has a fairly similar cost of living to Charlotte as far as I can tell, so I'd say that salary is probably about right. On the graduate school plan that sounds good to me, especially if your company paying for it.

It really depends on where the job is (I'm assuming you are in the US). In most of the country that is an okay salary for a new grad in a software job. If it is in a big city like say NYC, Chicago, or Boston which also have high costs of living, then it's actually a pretty low salary. If the job...

I have a strong feeling the logic in those if statements is not going to do what you want. Generally if code looks like this it is a strong indication that you are approaching the problem in the wrong way. If you stated what this is intended to do we might be able to help you better.

Also an alternative simpler way to do the same thing without looping is: name = info.split(" ")[0]; The split function will split the String on " " returning an array of Strings. Getting the first element in the array gives you everything up to the first space. (Ex: if info is "foo...

Can't figure out this "Illegal start of expression" error One other thing to note: != is not doing what you probably want for Strings. Strings aren't a primitive type in Java, so the != operator is comparing the objects references. That operation evaluates to true only if the two strings are...

I picked choice number five. Not exactly sure if that was the right choice. At one point in high school I wanted to do what I do now, but by the time I headed off to college I had changed my mind. I started high school in the fall of 1998, and early on in high school I had wanted to be a...

Strange, our level of programming expertise are probably very similar. It might be that my experience just isn't applicable to the UK job market. What sorts of companies were you applying to for programming jobs? Some additional info that may be helpful: I had zero success at large companies...

I finished up my PhD in experimental high energy physics in June of last year. I didn't have tons of trouble finding a job, but I had absolutely no luck with jobs related to physics. I didn't apply to any academic postdocs, but I did apply to some industry jobs that were physics related. I...

More info than you provided is needed for anyone to help you. These aren't generic ROOT questions. You are asking questions that would need extensive knowledge of the experiment this data is from. What is the SMM data? The Solar Maximum Mission? That's from the 1980s... Also as was already...