[Cialug] Cialug Beginnings

[Morris Dovey]

On 7/20/11 11:38 AM, Pawel wrote:

> And please, what is the "industry standard" for C certificates? I'm
> having an impossible time finding a C cert... And my instructors don't
> really know of any.

Suggestions:

[1] Go to the ANSI web site and download a copy of the ISO/IEC 
International Standard, plus addendum - and take the time to familiarize 
your self with the documents (which is a lot less time than it takes to 
internalize their content).

[2] Subscribe to the newsgroup news:comp.lang.c and lurk (only read the 
posts) for a month while you absorb the culture and get a feel for the 
personalities. Familiarize yourself with the CLC FAQ. Correlate what you 
read on CLC to what the Standard says.

[3] Take time to read the old hacker's guide at

    http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

for some insights into formal/technical newsgroup culture.

[4] After a month of lurking, post that you've been studying the 
standard and the FAQ, and how long you've been lurking. Then carefully 
join in the fun.

[5] Ditto all of the above for news:comp.unix.programmer - which has a 
slightly different culture - somewhat similar to CIALUG's but with a 
programming, rather than sysadmin, flavor.

Observations/experience:

[1] Becoming a respected regular contributor to CLC group makes you more 
visible than nearly anyone might guess, and provides you with instant 
credibility to employers for whom quality of effort is important (and 
why would anyone choose to work for any other kind?)

[2] Neither of those two newsgroups are Linux-specific (and the folks on 
CLC don't want OS-specific discussion), but both will make you stronger, 
more credible, and more visible.

[3] If ever I needed to assemble a "dream team" of programmers for a 
mission-critical programming project, every member of that team would, 
at some time, have been a regular on CLC.

...Morris