Hi all,

I need your advice; I'm working in an internal IT department at a non-software company which is, as you can guess, far from ideal. I live + work in the UK.

I am starting to feel very depressed about my situation and am desperate to find a way out. I've applied to a job at a decent software company which unfortunately I didn't get (though it certainly gave me an idea of what to improve if I were to apply again, so was positive overall.)

I'm working on developing a programming language; it's extremely early days but I have certain convictions about what is important in a language and in the hacker tradition want to make something that fits those convictions.

I, much to my regret, don't have a degree in Computer Science (though I do have an engineering degree) - though I grew up loving programming I, for somewhat complicated reasons, ended up choosing the wrong subject.

As far as I can see the following steps are the way out. I'd be very grateful for any advice/criticism you care to offer about these steps, also with any suggestions you can offer me in finding a happier coding existence:-

+ Work hard on my language project; if I can actually do something with this I will have something very nice to put on my CV. Programming languages, compilers, parsing, etc. are really my passion; they are the one thing I'd like to get into more than anything else.

+ Develop knowledge of algorithms, big O, etc. - the kind of stuff I would have picked up on a computer science course, as well as being the kind of stuff asked at interviews.

+ Get involved with open source - I am especially interested in LLVM as it ties in nicely with my language project.

+ Practice, practice, practice - Practice coding, consciously trying to improve as much as I can.

And the most recent, most radical thought:-

+ Ditch the idea of going to work on someone else's stuff and get going on a Micro ISV. Keep the day job and work all the hours outside of work to put a product together. I'd like to somehow link this to my passion for programming languages, etc. - perhaps that old programmer startup cliche of a development tool of some kind?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me, it's really appreciated. Feel free to criticise + tear my ideas apart, by the way! Always happy for (constructive) criticism.

(I am using a different HN login from usual for obvious reasons.)