What are some recurring themes in the career of a retired software developer?

[daboulet]

I'm a retired software developer*.

Some recurring themes of sorts that seem to have kept popping up over the course of my career have been distributed computing, software architecture, and software as infrastructure (i.e. software that provides a useful service without providing anything even remotely resembling an end-user interface; put another way, infrastructure software is APIs all the way down). Along the way, I have managed to create a respectable amount of kernel-level software and other difficult to characterise 'stuff'.

I also lectured in Computing Science for about four years fairly early in my career and found myself presenting and sometimes writing various customer training courses (everything from introduction for new users to kernel internals) on a contract basis for a really large software company with a three-letter acronym (I have been known to observe that they were a very good travel agent of sorts).

* that means that I still create software but there's no ongoing revenue stream and my toy budget is a fair bit smaller.

 

[anorlunda]

Welcome to PF. We're glad to have you.

You may be able to help students with their CS homework. Please read our helper guidelines first.

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/guidelines-for-students-and-helpers.686781/

 

[daboulet]

While I will probably comment on software topics from time to time, students looking for my help with their CS homework are likely to be disappointed.