Once I would have recommended "Peopleware", but I feel like it's a little-bit dated now. I wasn't as happy w/it the last time I picked it up as I had been before. It has good ideas, but then again some of things that it is saying are better explained in books about Agile.
The bottom-line, though, is that I don't think that many managers really understand at all what it is like to do the programming work. If they have never done it theirselves, it can be very hard to get it across sometimes. Putting yourself into the position of another person who is not like you is challenging - it requires empathy, and wisdom. I'm not sure that these are the qualities that are most prevelant among those who choose to become managers.
However, the best managers who have programming experience or can actually listen to their people, well - they're worth pure gold, especially because there are so many others out there who lack these fundamental skills.
Probably one part of it is when you have to understand and explain yourself to non-technical people. It takes a lot of work sometimes to explain technical things to non-technical people. Talking to other techies is way easier.
In my experience having to go through a meeting that requires a lot of explaining and problem-solving can render me more or less useless for the rest of the day, programming-wise. In some way that I don't know how to explain the meetings eat up the very concentration that I need for programming. Perhaps it takes so much out of a programmer when you try to understand someone instead of something you can logically deduce.
I dunno. It's still a mystery to me what one meeting can do to you sometimes.
I'm addicted to nicotine, because I was a young fool once. I've been on it for 21 years. I don't think that young people are capable of making good decisions, because I've experienced it. Therefore I think we really need some regulation, even if I don't like it too much myself.
Yes it is true. The drugs have been mixed specifically to stop abusing strong drugs like codein. In my country you simply cannot get pure codein at all. It doesn't exist in this country, at least legally. You can get it mixed w/either ibuprofen or paracetamol, and that's it.
It is also true that mixing pain-killers is more effective that taking a lot of one. The optimal way to take them is to take - this is a little simplified - ibuprofen, paracetamol and codein. They all treat pain in a different way and the net effect is much stronger than taking a lot of any one of them and there will be less side-effects. So it's a good idea to do this.
The vi support doesn't work too well. I've tried it. However, as it is easy to edit the files straight from the directories w/vim, you can just use the QT Creator as a debugger, for example.
Apart from the shoddy vi support I really liked QT Creator.
While it's a classic, and has good things here and there, I wouldn't say it's the best book. Peopleware is, IMHO, much better, and the book I'd recommend everyone reads at least once.
People are different. Some people can do the same things for decades and not learn a thing. I know a 60-yo developer who still says that X is going to take two weeks, when I can say instantly that it's more likely to take 6 months.
Then again there are those who live and also learn. From these people you should expect to see e.g. some of the following:
1. Ability to see what's relevant and what is not. Experienced people should be able to prioritize well, and see the forest from the trees. Junior people often pay attention to things that aren't all that relevant, i.e. miss the big picture.
2. More practical, less idealistic. Experienced people accept that the purpose of most companies is to make money, not to use emacs where it doesn't fit.
3. Better w/people. Experience helps w/dealing w/people. Many find the correct balance between hard and soft w/time. You should know when to push things, and when not to.
4. More experience means more experience in many areas. People who have lived for long tend to have better understanding of a wide variety of issues ranging from history to psychology to business and politics. More knowledge and more experience means that they can see things more clearly and come up w/stuff the young ones cannot, because they don't have the equal processed information databased between their ears.
5. They have made many mistakes from which they have had the chance to learn. I know I have already done my share of mistakes, and I have worked very hard to not to repeat them. Within this process of self-perfection lies the potential for true greatness.
There' surely are many more things, but here's my quick 2 cents.
I prefer/tmp, when I need only temporary storage, or a temporary backup in case something goes wrong w/what I'm doing at a given moment.
I also backup all relevant dirs like home-dirs and the like, but have an exception to the rule, $HOME/nobackup. I often put tarballs and stuff like that there that I don't want to look for again.
Are you more busy than you were ? That sounds like too much input and too little time to settle down. When I'm stressed enough I have noticed that my memory starts failing, and I'm 34. And it's all about too much load. Remove some of the stress-factors, and I'm sure you can regain your clarity of thought.
We all need to make sure we can keep a job. It's as simple as that, for me. And it has nothing to do w/facts, it's about being marketable. It gets harder and harder to find jobs when you turn 40, if you're a software designer. For a manager 40 is nothing.
My ex-coworker did just this. He developed on a floor where there was no Internet connection.
Personally, I think that having the Net there is very valuable. You can get lots of help from the Net, including manuals, tutorials, code and even answers to error and log messages you paste into Google. I love having the Net available, because it makes my work easier.
If you have a problem w/the Net, you might try what I did. I decided not to surf any stuff at work that's not related to work, when I changed jobs the last time. Doing changes like that when the environment changes helps you to get a rid of some of your nasty habits.
I left, when I was in a similarish position. I met a person a few weeks ago that still works there, and he told me that it was wise of me to leave. More than a year later, the situation is exactly what it was when I left.
You can save yourself, but probably no-one can save the company - at least not in a year or two. Five ? Maybe. But why go through the aggravation ?
I have worked w/people who don't have CS studies, and it seems to me that they're completely oblivious to all of things that they do not know. It is often the case that these people cause all kinds of problems at work just because they don't know anything about computer science outside of just programming. It's a pain to get any design or documents out of these people, not to mention that they're usually completely unable to come up w/any kind of reasonable schedule. Also, these people often lack completely the theoretical framework for things, which leads them to concentrate on wrong things, and doing thins like premature optimization on a completely wrong part of the software. They also often cause social problems w/people who do have a better understanding of the whole process, as their actions are sometimes so harmful to the projects.
I am not saying this as a blanket statements, there are different kinds of people out there w/ or w/o a degree, but not having one can very well be a problem. Actually, I don't have one, but I did get 140 credits out of 180 you need here for a degree, so I actually know most of the important stuff anyway. It's my experience that people around 100 credits out of 180 begin to have most of the needed knowledge. So to be more specific about my claim, I'd say that theoretically about a bachelors degree is what you need. Of course a higher degree could open more doors.
There's also the thing about the kinds of people you end up w/. In a good university you are likely to enjoy the companionship of very intelligent people, and this, I believe, is absolutely priceless. Most of the skills I have I possess almost completely because of these people w/whom I studied and worked w/ from my university. Actually, I just got one these friends to work w/me at the latest project at my new job, so on it goes. I will probably work in some form w/these people for the rest of my life. And all of these people just get better and better each day, because they're very talented and driven. Knowing these people has made me a lot better in C/S, and it will continue to do so. I can only hope that knowing me has been as useful to some of these people, as well.
I have things set up so that things like email and irc autostart when I start X. I used to have a shortcut for swiftfox long ago, but now I always start it from a shell, because it's easiest to kill it that way w/just ctrl+c, when it hangs (or ctrl+z and kill %1, if need be). If it's started w/o a parent that you can easily command, you have to go through the trouble of ps auxw | grep fox, and killing it by PID. Mostly, when it hangs bad, killall swiftfox-bin or similar just won't do it. I think this has been an issue since like Netscape 4, or something. It's those darned embedded players that just don't behave.
Regarding apps, my shortcuts mostly just open terminals. I continue from there as needed. I actually have a menu, but I noticed that I nearly never use it. And yes, it comes from the menu button. The only time I use it is when I exit X. I use three sizes of terminal, one fullscreen and two half-screen terms (top/bottom). And you can always alt+F10 between fullscreen/window as needed.
And oh yes, mouse-focus is the way to go. Moving mouse cursor w/keyboard is also practical.
I'm not sure people really enjoy those cluttered desktops, that's just what they were taught to work w/. It's sad. Part of the problem in Windows is that mouse-focus doesn't really work there the way it's supposed to, so you can't really get that WM system to work as well in there no matter what you do. You'll end up w/pop-up windows vanishing behind other windows and that kind of stuff. It was really annoying when I tried it the last time.
One more nice feature in fvwm (and others) is that you can resize a window w/o having to search for a window corner. I just hit alt and a mouse button to start resizing. I'm sure there are many other niceties that I can't recall right not, but all in all fvwm just works really, really well, if you know what you want of it. You're in luck, if you can get an old-timer to give you his or her config files. It's nice to start w/an already perfected config.
Another unrelated tweak that I have is a custom xmodmap file so that I can use caps-lock as an extra shift to produce scandinavian letters from an otherwise US-1 layout. Shells, and programs like vi were created w/the assumption that that's what you use, so it really saves me a lot of trouble to go this way. It's way more friendly for programmers than the Finnish layout is. And I'm sure this is true for most non-us1-layouts, and I feel sorry for the people who struggle w/alt-gr and very odd hand positions to get characters like []{} from their keyboards. It just makes no sense, and is very bad for your hands, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes... Slack, Peopleware. And of course there's the actual book about flow.
Once I would have recommended "Peopleware", but I feel like it's a little-bit dated now. I wasn't as happy w/it the last time I picked it up as I had been before. It has good ideas, but then again some of things that it is saying are better explained in books about Agile.
The bottom-line, though, is that I don't think that many managers really understand at all what it is like to do the programming work. If they have never done it theirselves, it can be very hard to get it across sometimes. Putting yourself into the position of another person who is not like you is challenging - it requires empathy, and wisdom. I'm not sure that these are the qualities that are most prevelant among those who choose to become managers.
However, the best managers who have programming experience or can actually listen to their people, well - they're worth pure gold, especially because there are so many others out there who lack these fundamental skills.
You're on the right track, then! Good luck w/all that. Maybe you'll become one of the good guys out there who actually make programming possible.
Probably one part of it is when you have to understand and explain yourself to non-technical people. It takes a lot of work sometimes to explain technical things to non-technical people. Talking to other techies is way easier.
Sounds like Scrum.
In my experience having to go through a meeting that requires a lot of explaining and problem-solving can render me more or less useless for the rest of the day, programming-wise. In some way that I don't know how to explain the meetings eat up the very concentration that I need for programming. Perhaps it takes so much out of a programmer when you try to understand someone instead of something you can logically deduce.
I dunno. It's still a mystery to me what one meeting can do to you sometimes.
I'm addicted to nicotine, because I was a young fool once. I've been on it for 21 years. I don't think that young people are capable of making good decisions, because I've experienced it. Therefore I think we really need some regulation, even if I don't like it too much myself.
Yes it is true. The drugs have been mixed specifically to stop abusing strong drugs like codein. In my country you simply cannot get pure codein at all. It doesn't exist in this country, at least legally. You can get it mixed w/either ibuprofen or paracetamol, and that's it.
It is also true that mixing pain-killers is more effective that taking a lot of one. The optimal way to take them is to take - this is a little simplified - ibuprofen, paracetamol and codein. They all treat pain in a different way and the net effect is much stronger than taking a lot of any one of them and there will be less side-effects. So it's a good idea to do this.
Viplugin (commercial, 15 euros) and then there are the two other ones that did not work as well when I tried them 6 months ago.
The vi support doesn't work too well. I've tried it. However, as it is easy to edit the files straight from the directories w/vim, you can just use the QT Creator as a debugger, for example.
Apart from the shoddy vi support I really liked QT Creator.
Find it here. It does cost 15 euros, however. When I last tried it and the free alternative it was well worth the money.
Then again, I wonder what would happen to Eclipse, if I opened a 255 Meg file w/it. I have done this w/Vim and edited it w/o a problem.
My best friend was recruited to Canada from Europe through LinkedIn. So hell yea you want to be there!
Effective C++ and More Effective C++. I haven't read Effective STL, but I'm guessing it's good as well.
Also remember: The Art of Unix Programming and of course Joel Spolsky is a favorite, too.
I guess everyone should read The Fifth Disciple, as well.
And then there's of course Crucial conversations
See prev. post.
While it's a classic, and has good things here and there, I wouldn't say it's the best book. Peopleware is, IMHO, much better, and the book I'd recommend everyone reads at least once.
People are different. Some people can do the same things for decades and not learn a thing. I know a 60-yo developer who still says that X is going to take two weeks, when I can say instantly that it's more likely to take 6 months.
Then again there are those who live and also learn. From these people you should expect to see e.g. some of the following:
1. Ability to see what's relevant and what is not. Experienced people should be able to prioritize well, and see the forest from the trees. Junior people often pay attention to things that aren't all that relevant, i.e. miss the big picture.
2. More practical, less idealistic. Experienced people accept that the purpose of most companies is to make money, not to use emacs where it doesn't fit.
3. Better w/people. Experience helps w/dealing w/people. Many find the correct balance between hard and soft w/time. You should know when to push things, and when not to.
4. More experience means more experience in many areas. People who have lived for long tend to have better understanding of a wide variety of issues ranging from history to psychology to business and politics. More knowledge and more experience means that they can see things more clearly and come up w/stuff the young ones cannot, because they don't have the equal processed information databased between their ears.
5. They have made many mistakes from which they have had the chance to learn. I know I have already done my share of mistakes, and I have worked very hard to not to repeat them. Within this process of self-perfection lies the potential for true greatness.
There' surely are many more things, but here's my quick 2 cents.
I prefer /tmp, when I need only temporary storage, or a temporary backup in case something goes wrong w/what I'm doing at a given moment.
I also backup all relevant dirs like home-dirs and the like, but have an exception to the rule, $HOME/nobackup. I often put tarballs and stuff like that there that I don't want to look for again.
How about mv /etc/asterisk /etc/asterisk.old ? Also, I often mv things to /tmp instead of rm them.
Are you more busy than you were ? That sounds like too much input and too little time to settle down. When I'm stressed enough I have noticed that my memory starts failing, and I'm 34. And it's all about too much load. Remove some of the stress-factors, and I'm sure you can regain your clarity of thought.
We all need to make sure we can keep a job. It's as simple as that, for me. And it has nothing to do w/facts, it's about being marketable. It gets harder and harder to find jobs when you turn 40, if you're a software designer. For a manager 40 is nothing.
And oh yes, it's bull$hit, but what can you do.
In Soviet Russia it's YOU who changes the DST ?
My ex-coworker did just this. He developed on a floor where there was no Internet connection.
Personally, I think that having the Net there is very valuable. You can get lots of help from the Net, including manuals, tutorials, code and even answers to error and log messages you paste into Google. I love having the Net available, because it makes my work easier.
If you have a problem w/the Net, you might try what I did. I decided not to surf any stuff at work that's not related to work, when I changed jobs the last time. Doing changes like that when the environment changes helps you to get a rid of some of your nasty habits.
I left, when I was in a similarish position. I met a person a few weeks ago that still works there, and he told me that it was wise of me to leave. More than a year later, the situation is exactly what it was when I left. You can save yourself, but probably no-one can save the company - at least not in a year or two. Five ? Maybe. But why go through the aggravation ?
I have worked w/people who don't have CS studies, and it seems to me that they're completely oblivious to all of things that they do not know. It is often the case that these people cause all kinds of problems at work just because they don't know anything about computer science outside of just programming. It's a pain to get any design or documents out of these people, not to mention that they're usually completely unable to come up w/any kind of reasonable schedule. Also, these people often lack completely the theoretical framework for things, which leads them to concentrate on wrong things, and doing thins like premature optimization on a completely wrong part of the software. They also often cause social problems w/people who do have a better understanding of the whole process, as their actions are sometimes so harmful to the projects.
I am not saying this as a blanket statements, there are different kinds of people out there w/ or w/o a degree, but not having one can very well be a problem. Actually, I don't have one, but I did get 140 credits out of 180 you need here for a degree, so I actually know most of the important stuff anyway. It's my experience that people around 100 credits out of 180 begin to have most of the needed knowledge. So to be more specific about my claim, I'd say that theoretically about a bachelors degree is what you need. Of course a higher degree could open more doors.
There's also the thing about the kinds of people you end up w/. In a good university you are likely to enjoy the companionship of very intelligent people, and this, I believe, is absolutely priceless. Most of the skills I have I possess almost completely because of these people w/whom I studied and worked w/ from my university. Actually, I just got one these friends to work w/me at the latest project at my new job, so on it goes. I will probably work in some form w/these people for the rest of my life. And all of these people just get better and better each day, because they're very talented and driven. Knowing these people has made me a lot better in C/S, and it will continue to do so. I can only hope that knowing me has been as useful to some of these people, as well.
I have things set up so that things like email and irc autostart when I start X. I used to have a shortcut for swiftfox long ago, but now I always start it from a shell, because it's easiest to kill it that way w/just ctrl+c, when it hangs (or ctrl+z and kill %1, if need be). If it's started w/o a parent that you can easily command, you have to go through the trouble of ps auxw | grep fox, and killing it by PID. Mostly, when it hangs bad, killall swiftfox-bin or similar just won't do it. I think this has been an issue since like Netscape 4, or something. It's those darned embedded players that just don't behave.
Regarding apps, my shortcuts mostly just open terminals. I continue from there as needed. I actually have a menu, but I noticed that I nearly never use it. And yes, it comes from the menu button. The only time I use it is when I exit X. I use three sizes of terminal, one fullscreen and two half-screen terms (top/bottom). And you can always alt+F10 between fullscreen/window as needed.
And oh yes, mouse-focus is the way to go. Moving mouse cursor w/keyboard is also practical.
I'm not sure people really enjoy those cluttered desktops, that's just what they were taught to work w/. It's sad. Part of the problem in Windows is that mouse-focus doesn't really work there the way it's supposed to, so you can't really get that WM system to work as well in there no matter what you do. You'll end up w/pop-up windows vanishing behind other windows and that kind of stuff. It was really annoying when I tried it the last time.
One more nice feature in fvwm (and others) is that you can resize a window w/o having to search for a window corner. I just hit alt and a mouse button to start resizing. I'm sure there are many other niceties that I can't recall right not, but all in all fvwm just works really, really well, if you know what you want of it. You're in luck, if you can get an old-timer to give you his or her config files. It's nice to start w/an already perfected config.
Another unrelated tweak that I have is a custom xmodmap file so that I can use caps-lock as an extra shift to produce scandinavian letters from an otherwise US-1 layout. Shells, and programs like vi were created w/the assumption that that's what you use, so it really saves me a lot of trouble to go this way. It's way more friendly for programmers than the Finnish layout is. And I'm sure this is true for most non-us1-layouts, and I feel sorry for the people who struggle w/alt-gr and very odd hand positions to get characters like []{} from their keyboards. It just makes no sense, and is very bad for your hands, too.