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I'm sure most of us know the story of Beethoven, but for those that don't...
He grew up with an abusive father who was a failed musician but wanted Beethoven to be the next Mozart. Mozart was only born 14 years prior to Beethoven, but Mozart was a natural child prodigy. So much so that he was renowned by the time Beethoven was getting potty trained. Beethoven was never the natural prodigy like Mozart, he's good but it didn't come naturally. It was forced by his father and Beethoven made the most of it. Still, he looked up to Mozart for his natural talent.
His mother was clinically depressed and resented her husband and her marriage. As the oldest son of three, Ludwig was forced to play organ and piano to earn enough money to keep the family afloat. When his father was forced to retire - fired - with a pension, Ludwig had to petition the court to name himself guardian of his fatherβs pension because his father would drink it all up. This is all while he was still a teenager. When he was 16, he finally got the chance to study with Mozart, but had to cut it short due to his mother's illness.
Having lousy role models his entire life. Beethoven's relationships always sucked. He grew up to be abusive too. His world was angst, pain, and hurt and he kept the hate legacy alive by treating the people in his life like crap too. But, back in the depths of his mind he always knew he was screwed up just like his father and deep down wanted happiness and that love that normal people have. And he always had this little melody in the back of his mind that he associated with being happy.
His relationship with his nephew horrifies us today. His business dealings with his publishers and benefactors were jaw-droppingly unethical at times. His open disrespect of the aristocrats who were his benefactors would have landed him in prison in Mozartβs times. In one famous letter to one such aristocrat, he wrote βPrince, you are what you are only because of the luck of being born. What I am, I am because I made who I am by my own industry and struggles. There may be many Princes, but there is only one Beethoven.β
Just as his career and ambitions were beginning to take off, he began to lose his hearing at the age of 28. By the time of his Second Symphony it was noticeable enough that he had difficulty having conversations. He considered suicide, in a letter to his brothers, trying to explain his predicament and his increasing isolation. In it, he wrote βHow unfairly people judge me, not knowing or understanding me. How can I explain to them that the one sense that should have been most perfect in me, is diminished and failing me?β
If Beethoven was an a**hole, he earned the right. By age 44, his hearing loss was complete. This was around his 8th symphony. Still, in the back of his mind was that melody which snuck its way into a few songs every now and again. Being the driven type, he found a way to go on making music with no hearing based solely on muscle memory and knowing how notes are supposed to sound. He went on to finish his 8th symphony and compose another in fact. And still, that melody in his mind...
While Beethoven never had the raw natural talent of Mozart, he was the embodiment of never, ever giving up. Against all odds. No matter what. Push forward. He was deaf for his 8th symphony but not done. That little melody that kept ringing in his head. There was one more thing he needed to do, and for his 9th and final symphony he wrote his masterpiece called Ode to Joy. It was the finale. And it used that melody always in the back of his head. It was a song about the beauty in the world, an ode to something he never had, and coming to terms with existence.
Just a couple years after his 9th symphony, he passed away. His work was done. He got his message out. Despite the hell he knew, he left us this song.
May you never listen to this song the same way again.
Ode to Joy - (Epic Cover)
Ode to Joy: Joy, thou shining spark of God,
Daughter of Elysium,
With fiery rapture, goddess,
We approach thy shrine!
Your magic reunites those
Whom stern custom has parted;*
All men will become brothers*
Under your protective wing.
Let the man who has had the fortune
To be a helper to his friend,
And the man who has won a noble woman,
Join in our chorus of jubilation!
Yes, even if he holds but one soul
As his own in all the world!
But let the man who knows nothing of this
Steal away alone and in sorrow.
All the world's creatures draw
Draughts of joy from nature;
Both the just and the unjust
Follow in her gentle footsteps.
She gave us kisses and wine
And a friend loyal unto death;
She gave the joy of life to the lowliest,
And to the angels who dwell with God.
Joyous, as His suns speed
Through the glorious order of Heaven,
Hasten, brothers, on your way
Exultant as a knight victorious.
Be embraced, all ye millions!
With a kiss for all the world!
Brothers, beyond the stars
Surely dwells a loving Father.
Do you kneel before Him, oh millions?
Do you feel the Creator's presence?
Seek Him beyond the stars!
He must dwell beyond the stars.
Jeremy Falcon
modified 56 mins ago.
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Playing off the below post and my peeve of folks saying "invest" for stuff way too much to justify an expense that keeps them broke...
How many of y'all get just as excited to buy a new stock or commodity when it's on sale and cheap? Or running your business (during the good times  )? Or when learning something new that you know will change your life for the better? Or just from waking up to have another day to be awesome? Or getting your flirt on with your special someone?
I know for me, I get much less excited about PCs these days and get much more excited by stuff that actually makes money rather than lose it. Or it's more exciting seeing someone you helped train do something awesome. The excitement for a new PC wears off in a day.
Side note, silver is at $32ish an ounce again.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: peeve of folks saying "invest"
Ah, perhaps we've struck upon another topic upon which we agree, rare as that seems. 
Many people use the term "invest" when they actually mean "spend", perhaps in hopes of making it seem like a better expense than it actually is.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: Ah, perhaps we've struck upon another topic upon which we agree, rare as that seems.
Woo hoo. 
PIEBALDconsult wrote: Many people use the term "invest" when they actually mean "spend", perhaps in hopes of making it seem like a better expense than it actually is.
Tru dat, buddy. I'm gonna go invest in Taco Bell now. 
Jeremy Falcon
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As much as I might want to do the investment thing, I simply can't, the subject matter bores me to tears.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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jeron1 wrote: I simply can't, the subject matter bores me to tears.
I totally understand that. The good news is, you don't have to care. I mean, you won't get like a bazillion percent returns, but you can just pay someone to manage a portfolio for you or just dump a few bucks into the S&P 500 every paycheck and never look at it until you retire. It mean it'll take a few decades, but you'll have a nice nest egg without ever having to look at it.
Jeremy Falcon
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If you are employed as a programmer in a company, how much money relative to your salary is justified for work equipment such as computers?
Licenses for tools excluded, as a programmer you simply depend on certain tools.
From my point of view, I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer. Am I exaggerating?
Thank you in advance.
modified 7hrs 5mins ago.
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I don't think of it that way. But I will say that both "too little" and "too much" are to be avoided.
One of my past employers -- to some extent -- spent "too much". In one case declaring that all ETL developers (such as I) were to use a particular tool -- the most expensive one available -- even though SSIS was paid for (included with SQL Server) and did everything we needed it to. They also bought each developer an MSDN subscription, which we didn't need.
Knowing that an employer is willing to pay for what a developer asks for is good, but buying what the developer didn't request is a waste of money.
Also the general observation that many things which are "free" are often not worth the price.
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Ok, but let us assume we need to pay the employee let's say fictional $100K per year...
... after five year the developer needs a new PC (company guidelines, W10, W11, Wxyz!)...
... In my opinion, it is reasonable that the PC can costs $5K. Or is this completely absurd?
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What PC are you looking at that costs $5K in 2024?
$2K will get you a killer PC that should still perform very well in 5 years from now.
Maybe if you're throwing in a couple of large monitors, spare disks, etc but those all outlive the typical PC.
[Edit]
All of that said, I wholeheartedly agree that a developer's time costs more - a lot more - than PCs, so a PC that's so slow a dev has to constantly wait for things to happen is costing a company a lot more than the price of a new computer every couple of years.
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No sorry, but for $2K you get only something simple from my point of view.
I like to have 64GB memory for Windows and VS. I like also to have another 64GB of memory for let's say 8 VMs.
And of course 1TB SSD 
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Are you considering only list prices?
For about $2K USD, the laptop which I just bought is a Lenovo ThinkPad P16s Gen 3, which has 32GB and a 1TB drive. Intel Core Ultra 7. Windows 11 Pro. Unsure if I could have increased the RAM, but I doubt I'll need more unless I begin doing some video editing -- which I might.
As I mentioned in another post, I nominally got about 50% off through my employer -- the list price on the Lenovo site was greater than $4K USD at the time of purchase earlier this month.
So far, I've installed SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition (free) and Visual Studio 2022 Pro -- there was a post about a deal on that a few months back.
It does what I need so far -- e.g. some light SQL and C#
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I bought a pair of Beelink[*] SER5 Mini PCs with a Ryzen 5 (6 cores/12 logical processors) and 8GB RAM/500GB NVMe back in May; both have had a 64GB RAM upgrade and are now hosting VMs 24/7. I paid CAD$430 for both computers, and CAD$200 for each 64GB RAM upgrade kits.
I already had a pair of 2TB SSDs (coming out of another VM host that I've since retired) to host my VMs. More than enough space - one's using 800GB and the other 1.4TB. As I'm writing this, one's running 7 lives VMs, the other 6; both are currently using 40-something GB out of their respective 64. In other words, they still have quite a bit of resources still available, and I don't exactly go out of my way to shut down VMs even if I'm not gonna be using them for a few days.
It's "simple" enough in terms of system setup, but it's working out extremely well and the load on each is less than it was on the retired system they're now replacing. Sure, the CPUs aren't exactly latest-gen, but I don't feel like they're performing in a way that wastes my time.
Windows and VS licenses are provided by my employer through the MS Partner program. (Oh, and the systems both came fully licensed with Windows 11 anyway)
[*] If I ever spend money again on a full-tower system, 1000W power supply and stupidly power-hungry video card, it'll be my gaming rig.
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$5k would be 5% of your $100k salary, not 1%. Just sayin'.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Sorry, forgot to mention a five year intrevall...
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If you have a real day to day need for 8 VMs then I would expect you to need more than 1TB for storage.
Although not sure why you need 8 VMs day to day. Only reason I can think of is a Microservice Architecture which is not actually keeping the interfaces between each Microservice clean. Thus requiring frequent multi-service debug sessions. And if that is the case then better if the company spend money on fixing that.
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I've never given much thought to it.
I do know that larger enterprises pay less per unit than small businesses. They also (tend to) pay higher wages.
So, a mom-and-pop may pay 5K for a laptop for an employee they pay 75K -- and buy only the one.
While a large enterprise may pay 2.5K for the same laptop for an employee they pay 100K for the same work -- and replace it every couple of years whether it's necessary or not. (Boss: "You need to have your laptop replaced." Me: "But it's still working just fine.")
If you want an employer to increase their percentage -- would you rather they pay more for the same item, or pay you less?
Obviously, comparing percentage spent is not really important.
As an aside, I just bought a laptop -- my first. I got a "discount" through my employer -- about 50% off list price ("does anyone ever actually pay list price?", my wife asked, rhetorically). So that factors in as well, if you consider the "savings" to be sort of a "bonus" from my employer. I've gone this long without a laptop, I didn't really need one.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: I don't think of it that way.
Totally tangential side note, but the wealthy think in percentages. It's the poor/middle class that refuse to. It's actually very smart to think in percents as that changes much less frequently than inflation rates.
Jeremy Falcon
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I wasn't dissing percentages themselves, but the comparison of percentages, which is fraught with peril. Which is pretty much what I was saying, though not very clearly perhaps.
Jeremy Falcon wrote: the poor/middle class
Well, it's not a matter of class. The less educated of whichever class are easily swayed by misuse of statistics -- percentages, graphs, etc.
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Oh snap.
Jeremy Falcon
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Some would see this as a "them" problem.
If you have some jank thinkpad with 4 GB of RAM and that means everything is sluggish, it's just meaning you aren't able to give them as much as you could if they enabled you to do so.
I don't think it would necessarily be a function of salary but it's definitely a consideration in some ways. IDK so much I've ever had a problem where the equipment was just wholly inadequate. But I have been places and seen others where skimping on things like server resources had to cost them more than it saved.
If it's gumming up the progress for multiple people because things take way too long it's just hard to see how the money to improve it isn't less than the money lost in their loss of productivity.
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0x01AA wrote: I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer.
I went and did the calculation.
I did My_Annual_Salary * 0.01 (That's the calculation, right?)
I don't want to reveal my salary but this would mean that the company had to spend $10,000 on my computer.
That seems like an awful lot for the company to spend on my computer each year.
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Ok, ok; maybe an upper limit sould be set 
But on the other hand, if you earn that much, why the tools you use to earn that, should not be in a relation.
[Edit]
Or are you a banker-CEO whose income has nothing to do with the work done. And work done, usually requires tools, except for banker-CEOs of course
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0x01AA wrote: why the tools you use to earn that, should not be in a relation.
I think that's the main fallacy with your thesis.
If two workers are performing the same job, it is reasonable to expect them to use the same tools/equipment regardless of how much they are paid to do it or how much the company earns from it. For the higher-paid worker, this would be a smaller percentage of income, but such a worker shouldn't complain about it.
This is one of the problems inherent in trying to compare percentages.
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