casey chesnut, whose propensity for lower-casing his name ticks off Word auto-correction, says that it is a myth that the best way to be hired as a programmer is to code something cool. casey's right. He’s proved by his Web postings that he can write: neural nets to defeat CAPTCHA, machine vision applications, speech-based interfaces, mobile code, etc. At the very least, it’s clear that when given a problem he’s not going to be sitting around, stumped and discouraged.

Cool doesn’t work: once upon a time, I wrote a column called “Expert’s Toolbox” for a magazine called “AI Expert.” I published stuff like the first genetic algorithm in C++, the first fuzzy logic engine in C++, and the second C++ neural network (missed being first by 3 months! Darn it!). At the time, this was considered cool stuff. I can’t quite say it never made me a dime because my neural network code was used in a mumble mumble developed by mumble mumble and apparently used until at least the late-90s. But essentially, the cool stuff was worthless. Then, in the mid-90s, I programmed what was probably the first profitable non-pornographic Website (a registration system for the Software Development conference – one of the first 10,000 sites on the Web), wrote the first technical article on Java, the first article on servlets, and developed the first XML-driven Web site. Did I make any money off of that stuff? A little, but not much.

You want to know what made me money? Any of this cool stuff? Oh no. Reservation systems. Several years ago, when XML expertise was still relatively rare, I was hired to do what we’d now call the “Web Service” portion of an airline / hotel / car reservation engine targetting medium-sized corporations. Once I got a reputation in that field, the phone rang off the hook.

• Every business in the world must have a computerized inventory-management system.
• Inventory control is domain-specific. If your inventory is seats, you can’t use a system designed to sell books. If your inventory is pencil leads, you can’t use a system designed to sell slots in a marina.
• The best way for an individual or small company to make money in software is to develop inventory control software for a niche. You’ll make money selling it, but you’ll make a ton more customizing and supporting it.

The problem with that is that from a coding standpoint, it’s insanely boring. Believe me, once you’ve solved all the variations of “What if the employee wants to add a lay-over in the middle of the trip and bring a companion along using frequent flyer points and upgrade using their credit card?” you really, really miss watching genetic algorithms co-evolving.