IT professional, student or hobbyist?

[martienne]

Some people here are amazingly knowledgeable - I am in awe.
Just a poll to get a feeling for whether people are professional techies or something else.
Feel free to elaborate in your response.

I am an IT project manager. Have been a developer. On rare occasions I have had reason to work on databases running on Unix or Linux for work. Or carry out some urgent maintenance or troubleshooting. At the time I found it intimidating and very difficult.

[richyrich]

Retired MCSE, MCP, A+. Have been using Linux for over 20 years, exclusively (no win whatsoever) since Mint 7 Helena.

[Pierre]

Retired from Telecommunications Industry,
also have A+ cert.

been messing with Linux for over 15 years,
& re-building computers for 30 yrs, & PCs for maybe 20 yrs.

now a hobbyist.

[srq2625]

I've been an IT professional since 1982. I've worked with so many different O/S (MS and others) ... it kinds spins my mind.

I've been using Linux (LM, Debian, SolydXK, back to LM) for about 3 years. I've got one Win7 install (in a virtual machine) that I, literally, haven't booted in about 3 months and I don't look forward to the Widows Update when/if I do next boot it up. The ONLY thing I use it for is to update the maps on my Garmin GPS unit and with the advent of Google Maps on my Android phone, I haven't used the Garmin in about 6 months. Hmmmm .... I think I see a pattern here...

[Habitual]

Under the hood since 1993.

[martienne]

People like richyrich, Pierre, srq2625 and Habitual taught me IT, the hard way, when I got a programming job that I was totally unqualified for at a consultancy (but I had the right language skills, gender + passed an IQ test.) The reason I still build my own machines, for example, is because somebody like this forced me to. He said that no serious programmer is unable to pick their machines apart, and change any part. He had me put in all the wrong components without saying, until I realised how to make sure everything fits together.
Others like this repeated the mantra about the evilness of Microsoft so much that I still "know" that it must be true.

What impresses me with guys like this, is that the were willing to take on anything from soldering a mobo, to coding for a mainframe or in an operating system they never used before.
So I have a very high level of respect for this generation of techies.
No drag-and-dropping, or "call support" there!

No students so far. I wonder if the <25s (say) are too busy with social media to use forums?
I read somewhere that social media are a threat to forums. The same demographics also think that IRC is too complicated in many cases, apparently?!
I personally prefer forums, but that could be because I remember life before Facebook... maybe?

[duneelliot]

I chose "Other".

I work in a non-IT job but still spend time tinkering with the work computers as long as I don't break them. I work for a small-enough company that they don't care if I run Firefox or Chrome instead of IE. Nor do they care if I install a VM for Linux on my desktop.

I also chose "Other" because I do some computer fixing on the side as part of a small computer-repair and service business I am trying to get started. This is mostly Windows systems, but I have installed a couple of Linux distros on older computers for people who can't afford to buy a new computer. So far, no complaints.

[Fred Barclay]

You just got your first student.

I'm studying to be a radiation physicist. While we use a lot of computers, there is really no IT work involved, except for programming. (Even the programming is generally OS-independent--think Matlab, python, r...).

[srq2625]

I personally prefer forums, but that could be because I remember life before Facebook... maybe?

This is funny .... I remember life before the internet! My first exposure to the internet was, as a member of a computer SIG, another member brought in for copying a number of 720K floppy disks containing dumps from select UseNet groups. We all were so starved for information we thought they were gold!

[richyrich]

This is funny .... I remember..

Lol , remember when Mosaic brought out Netscape ? A www GUI !!! That's when everything changed !
Remember also when Microsoft brought out the Win 3.1 upgrade to 3.11 ? Now we could graphically connect to a LAN ! That's when business changed.

What a time to be alive !

[Ark987]

This is funny .... I remember..

Lol , remember when Mosaic brought out Netscape ? A www GUI !!! That's when everything changed !
Remember also when Microsoft brought out the Win 3.1 upgrade to 3.11 ? Now we could graphically connect to a LAN ! That's when business changed.

What a time to be alive !

I was just a baby, my awesome experiences started with NeoPlanet browser with a Windows 98 @ 32 MB of ram:



I went crazy when I got my first 64MB RAM upgrade, didn't knew what to do with that speed

[srq2625]

Lol , remember when Mosaic brought out Netscape ? A www GUI !!! That's when everything changed !
Remember also when Microsoft brought out the Win 3.1 upgrade to 3.11 ? Now we could graphically connect to a LAN ! That's when business changed.

What a time to be alive !

I do, in fact, remember both of those events. I remember thinking that MS-DOS 4.02 was "the bomb"!

Wasn't the Win3.11 also called Windows for Work Groups (or some such name) and facilitated sharing of data across a network rather than sneaker-net?

[chipps61]

I was a multi-node BBS sysop and shareware author back before the internet arrived, using proprietery 2mbps Lantastic networking under good old MS-DOS. Learned today's job skills during that time frame - have been programming in a data-driven production environment (write the quick and dirty, get the job done, move on) for well over 20 years now. At home, computing is all about recreation these days.

At home I have a Win 7 desktop, a Linux laptop, a Win 7 laptop, plus a couple of Android devices. If all of them blew up tomorrow, the world wouldn't come to an end.

[BigEasy]

So I have a very high level of respect for this generation of techies.
No drag-and-dropping, or "call support" there!

No drak-and-drop and call support is true. But don't forget about anything in computer world two amd more decades ago supplied with a lot of perfect paper documentations. Just read and learn. As I remember my PX-XT Olivetti was supplied with paper docs in heght as system block with display at top.
What now? Nothing. Ah, forget: ask Google and guess by yourself.

[z31fanatic]

I am just a hobbyist.

[capivara]

I've been an editor for the Dutch PC Magazine for about 15 years. Also trained police forces when they started to do computer-related forensics (gaining access to systems etc).

Officially I'm retired, but in reality I'm still involved in a lot of 'fun stuff' (let's leave it at that).

Hans

[Moem]

Self-employed signwriter here, using my computer mostly for fun, but also for business (mostly email and designing). I've switched to Linux lately because Win10 (no need to explain, I'm sure).
So far, it's all been pretty smooth sailing. I have a 'helpdesk' close by because my partner is a long time Linux user (currently on Open SuSe) but i haven't needed his help much yet, and the switch was definitely my idea, not his.

Oh, and I'm a founder and ex-chairperson of my local hackerspace. So, there's that.

[Neil Edmond]

Hobbyist, for about 10 years. Must use Windows at work (non IT job...sales actually), and almost always have a Windows machine running at home too, since I provide tech support for family and friends.

[JayKay3OOO]

IT Support for a school so naturally it runs Windows. Active Directory is fantastic.

I keep a small windows partition on my laptop if I need to re-create or do a remote step by step guide of some windows thing, but I'm happy that 99% of my home computing time is using Linux Mint. It's taken 8 years for Linux to move from being a curiosity at university to my full time computing OS outside of work. This reason has been the introduction of the ghastly windows 8 and than dis-jointed windows 10.

[Derek_S]

I did not own a computer until 1999, at which point I was 48 years old. I have no formal training at all, either in Windows or Linux. Everything I've learned, I've learned the hard way. I read about whatever it is I want to do, and when I feel confident enough, I try it. If I succeed, I pat myself on the back. If I fail, I go back, read more, learn more, and try again. I probably know more than the average computer user, but there's still a lot for me to learn.