Subj : Ulrich owes me an explanation (was: Resume questions, how convey?) To : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.lisp From : rem642b Date : Sat Sep 03 2005 10:43 pm > From: Ulrich Hobelmann > The DiffAlg was only an abstract?? Only the abstract was published. The main paper was nicely printed but not accepted by any publisher because of only about ten people in the world who would be interested in details of such a specific result. > You could create or participate in an open-source project and mention that. I already did that. Nobody cares. > > I do too have 22+ years experience at writing > > computer software. > Then mention some practical key examples that are appropriate to the job > you're applying to. That's not possible in a single general-purpose resume that I post on the net for everyone to see. In fact in customized resumes for single jobs I already do what you suggest, and it doesn't get me any contact back from the employer/agency that posted the ad. I suspect that the customized resume is no good because it's based on the general resume which you and everyone says is complete crap (except for Jennie and Elizabeth at FFW who helped me work on the 2003 edit to the 1998 resume and believe their handiwork is just perfect, and Blanche at DeAnza who converted the format to MS-Word without making any major changes to the information). I've gotten advice how to improve the latest general resume, but the advice is contradictory, both to itself and to really good advice on Web sites and from other good-advice sources. > If your unpaid work resulted in anything useful (that interests the > $COMPANY), just mention it. I already do that in the case of customized resumes (see earlier above). > > You don't even know what my skills are! The total time I've spent > > writing computer software is at least equivalent to 22 years fulltime. > We know what you said they are. But we don't see lots of cool > applications that could have been written in that time. A lot of my work was research, rather than practical applications, such as my work on mathematical and board games, and fractals and base&digit systems, and the paid work on English language interface for instructable robot where I invented some new methods that might be useful someday but the software I wrote up to the end of funding wasn't itself of any immediate practical use, and my symbolic algebra package for differential algebra. A lot of my work was R&D, where I had to do a lot of trying different approaches before I found the right way to do it. For example, for my spam-reporting software I tried ad hoc semi-parsers, but then I discovered cases where they produced the wrong IP number, a number forged by the spammer rather than supplied by the SMTP server from the TCP/IP source. At that point I decided I absolutely had to start from scratch writing a true parser, only to discover that there were more than a hundred different formats of Received lines in headers, causing my work on the parser to take several weeks, but finally I had it fully working and could replace the old semi-parser with the new genuine parser and resume running the main program. Did you actually look at the list of my major accomplishments which I posted? Here's a quick one-[compound]-word-per-accomplishments checklist for you to consider: SegMat, languagerecognizer, flashcardsequencer, XGP, mathprint, calculusderivations, directories, pcnet, compression, linrel, MaasInfo, SeekJobIndex, lineaments, sourcesyntax, treeinfo, imageprocess, NMR, payroll, preregistration, filecopy, cobolfixes, differentialalgebra. If that list doesn't look familiar, then I presume you didn't even bother to read that list of accomplishments before complaining that you don't see enough accomplishments to represent 22 years of programming work. If that's the case, you need to go back and look at where I posted a link to that list of accomplishments which has been online for years sitting there waiting for you to see it even before I posted the link again: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming/msg/5aba4006df4e0f70 Message-ID: In any case, obviously some of those accomplishments aren't software applications themselves, but most are, and the few that are something else involved software work to make them possible. Also those (by coincidence 22) accomplishments are just the major highlights of my 22 years of software work. So do you consider 22 major accomplishments, each worth listing individually, and hundreds of lesser accomplishments not listed there, would ordinarily be achieved by average programmers in much less than 22 years of effort, so that you are justifieid in basically calling me a liar to claim 22 years experience with such a small amount of major accomplishments (appx. one per year)? The message you wrote, basically calling me a liar, was written five days after I posted that link to my list of accomplishments, which has been sitting there ever since early 2001, more than five years ago, so you had plenty of time to look at it. So I expect you to go through my checklist and tell me which of those items refer to software you would admit are "cool applications", which are not software applications at all so they aren't to be considered here, and which are software applications but you don't consider them "cool" so you need to explain what's un-cool about each of them. Hint: One is not software, it's math. One is not a software application, it's just data. One is not an application, it's a callable utility package. Two aren't complete programs, they're just fixes I made to somebody else's programs. One is not a useful appliation, it's just a demo of a software technique I was researching that turned out to have surprizingly good results. The remaining sixteen (16) are useful software applications, and I expect you to tell me which of those are not "cool" in your opinion, to attempt to justify you basically accusing me of lying about my 22 years software programming experience. Also, you said "... we don't see ..." when you call me a liar, so please tell me who else you're speaking for there. I would like that other person to likewise state which of my 16 major practical software application accomplishments are not "cool" in that person's opinion. If you were speaking only for yourself, you owe me an apology for posting a public message basically saying the you and other people all consider me to be lying about my 22 years software experience. If you were in fact speaking for more than just yourself, you owe me the name of the other person you speak for who is with you calling me a liar. .