So I'm in staying in Redmond, Washington visiting relatives and getting over jet lag after arriving in the States. Just this morning we were looking for something to do so my aunt calls one of her friends who is a dev over at Microsoft. He agreed to show us around the building where he works. We went over around his lunch hour and had lunch in the very nice cafeteria with him and his coworkers. We talked about what they do and programming and stuff in general, and then he showed us around the offices. THing is, this is a great place to work. Everyone but interns has an office. Everyone had couches or whatever they wanted in their office. In the hall there were some guys pinball machines that he let everyone use. He was telling me how he tends to put in an 11 hour workday, but that he takes time off to do on some days to play D&D in a conference room with his co-workers. It was just all around cool.

In conclusion, I'm going into programming.

If you go into programming, you'll be hired by me and I'll be sure that you stay up working every day by hiring hairy-footed hobbit-ish people to take shifts slashing at you with whips tipped with acid and knives tipped with... acid

You should never go into the Microsoft building without some plastiques.

>.>
<.<

That's just the screen saver kid... that's how they lure you in................!!!!

It's just a Potemkin village. When they know someone's visiting, they tidy the place up, hide the torture equipment, and have the whip-wielding demons hide behind desks.

I've often thought about working for MS when I grow up. The work would be so dry though...programming's bad, but even their experimental staffs can't be having too much fun.

Maybe though. All I know is I'm about 90% certain I'm going into Software Engineering.

...software engineering is programming, buddy.

I know buddy. :p

bad, thats just what they got for giving their soul to gates.... they think theu have it easy with pinball machines and cozy couches and D&D games... what whats the price... huh!

Yay! Redmond! I live right near there! Microsoft capitol of the world! (not so yay, but most of the people in my neighborhood are rich... at least, rich compared to the average US citizen)

Just because they make their programmers happy doesn't mean they are not evil.

Actually, software engineering is programming with all the joy sucked out of it and loads of REALLY BORING STUFF such as UML and development methodologies attached to it.

Well, OOP, although boring, does make a lot of sense and is smooth concept.

OOP isn't a methodology, it's a programming paradigm.

UML makes Baby Jesus cry.