I've certainly got more money :-) I'm not entirely sure whether that translates directly into more financial freedom. I never really felt constrained by my finances as a student; I think I had a natural tendency not to want more than I could afford.
(Also, I was reasonably rich by student standards, thanks to parental generosity a little way above the call of duty, a number of well-paid summer jobs, and on one occasion successfully licensing some of my own software to a Canadian company.)
I'm sure I'd feel constrained if I had to go back to a student budget now (not least because I'd have to move out of this reasonably nice flat into a small room of some sort). But at the time, it didn't bother me. Certainly I was able to respond positively to almost all random "let's go out for pizza/curry" type suggestions without ever having to beg off on financial grounds.
The company in question was writing software which modified executable files to provide, in their words, "various kinds of security". I was never entirely sure what that meant; could have been anything from obfuscation to self-decrypt-at-runtime. They licensed the disassembler in the NASM suite from me to use in their product. I got nearly £2000 for it, which I thought was pretty good going given that it had taken me two days to write :-)
(Well, not exactly. The disassembler was mostly a front end on the enormous instruction table I'd already spent a lot more than two days on; that was where the real value lay, if anywhere. But the two days I spent writing a disassembler front end to the table, simply because it seemed easy and it might come in handy one day, turned out to be well spent indeed!)
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(Also, I was reasonably rich by student standards, thanks to parental generosity a little way above the call of duty, a number of well-paid summer jobs, and on one occasion successfully licensing some of my own software to a Canadian company.)
I'm sure I'd feel constrained if I had to go back to a student budget now (not least because I'd have to move out of this reasonably nice flat into a small room of some sort). But at the time, it didn't bother me. Certainly I was able to respond positively to almost all random "let's go out for pizza/curry" type suggestions without ever having to beg off on financial grounds.
Tell me more, please?
(Well, not exactly. The disassembler was mostly a front end on the enormous instruction table I'd already spent a lot more than two days on; that was where the real value lay, if anywhere. But the two days I spent writing a disassembler front end to the table, simply because it seemed easy and it might come in handy one day, turned out to be well spent indeed!)