One thing I keep noticing is that people want to take whatever form of endeavor they have a familiar community around, and try to pretend their new interests fit within it. This is most apparent with the overzealous use of various Photoshop plugins and graphic design tools in the field of photography. Its getting to the point where many people want to do something you'd think of as "abstract graphic art that might have captured some small portion of the image data using a camera" and call it "photography."

I've noticed that other companies (i.e. Fuji) still make various forms of instant film. How does this compare to the Polaroid we all remember? Another use of Polaroid I've heard of is for test exposures with large-format cameras. Anyone still doing this with the alternatives?

I have to side with Ryan Bergman on this one. I've definitely been stumped by those academic-style questions before, and have grown to loathe them. Especially in the nerve-wracking environment of an uncomfortable interview. What those questions usually prove is not that I cannot program, but that I cannot remember the algorithm to do something off the top of my head. Give me the algorithm, and say "code this", and I'll be just fine. But I really thing one of the bigger issues at hand is simply that most programmers have no portfolio they can show you. If all you ever work on are closed-source projects you don't own the rights to, then you can never share more than a bullet-point in a resume about them. This is one area where participation in open-source projects can be very important, in my opinion. It gives you something you've worked on, in a calm environment, that you can openly show to anyone who is curious. Of course it can be a double-edged sword, and many people may simply not have time to do that in excess to their day job. Regardless, it is one possible solution to a problem that we all seem to have.