In retrospect, if I were going to do something for a living, it would not be software development. Most of the reason is the sometimes intentional, and about equally as often unintentional-due-to-ignorance, abuse of software professionals. Unless, of course, you can bill by the hour and get the money by the hour.
Customers and PHBs routinely, and again either intentionally or through stupidity, under-scope projects and expect you to put forth the 120% effort (yah, I can do math, but they can't) routinely to put out the prouduct with high quality and any features that pop into their heads as the project goes along.
I'm abour ready to miss my third summer in a row of vacation because the boss is seeing an opportunity to make megabucks to try to squeeze a system sized for 900 simultaneous users to 2700 users (which isn't so bad, but here comes the clincher) as the first customer! I've been pushing for having a friendly be the first customer so that we can make the inevitable missteps with someone who is a mite more tolerant of issues, but no, that's not thinking positively enough.
So what's going to happen? Well, I've already made my pitch for going with a low-load friendly, but that's not going to fly. It appears that this new deal with the 2700 users is coming through, I'll be asked to pulll a miracle out of my ass with the same number of sustainers and support people (me and one other guy), with the same amount of testing (very little since the boss doesn't want to pay for the testers or the testing software) and the same amount of false hope that it'll work the first time, for which the company's track record is 0% over the past 5 years... but this time it will be different! Oh, did I forget to mention that the outside company developing the initial version hasn't finished it yet, it's four months overdue so far, they're balking at completing the functionality because they didn't scope it right, and there's no end in sight?
Anyway, just stay away from software. Go into something like Civil Engineering that everybody needs, and that is a little more deterministic with time estimates.
OTOH, I can't think of something else I'd rather do for a living. But not being able to do it correctly is what galls me.
Fantastic! Now I'm completely unconfused....
So, Steve Jobs is actually Stevey Wonder!
No no no no no... Steve Jobs is actually Michael Jackson!
Notice you never see them in the same room at the same time.
Plus, when Steve gets excited, he says, "Whooo hoo!" or whatever that is, in a high voice.
couldn't I jut buy a new hard drive every year or burn hundreds of DVDs for far far less? not to mention they'd be secure from whatever prying eyes or security holes an online backup provides.
And then you get to go to your safe-deposit box once or twice a week to retrieve your hard drive, back up to it, and then drive back to your bank. You did want offsite storage, didn't you? How much is the gas and the inconvenience going to cost you? Encryption will take care of prying eyes.
My bosses demanded a military-like work ethic, wanted to be constantly informed... Without him breathing over my shoulder and constantly asking me why I had a browser open(that better be work related!) and without having to explain to him why DNS is so important to an AD network, I was able to do what he was trying to 'motive' me to do, actual work!
Um, why are/were you still there? With such unprofessionalism breathing down my neck, I wouldn't stick around if I were you. Better be getting six figures to put up with that.
Send the soybeans to Africa where they would quite literally and without any doubt whatsoever save lives.
I'm sure that the local warlord or militia will welcome your offering as a tool to maneuver the local starving people to where they want them to be. Time to get your head out of the sand, my friend. We've got more food than we know what to do with, and can produce much more.
Every new computer that carries the "Designed for Windows Vista" sticker must meet minimum system requirements.
Will they get XP if their system does not meet the requirements? Surely Dell will sell a low-end machine that might not have the hardware to run Vista? Or worse yet, they sell a machine that meets the minimal requirements, and performs like a dog. I wouldn't think that they'd want that perception, right?
This assumes that every new computer will be decked out enough to be able to run it. Obviously they won't have to have a decent 3D card to run it with the fancy desktop bell & whistles.
The American executives who are planning to send work abroad express concern about what they regard as an incipient erosion of scientific prowess in this country...
I don't see why big big business executives care since they're international anyway, and they can go where the talent is in other (non-US) countries. As long as they have markets in other countries where their workers are, then you have some sort of balance, right?
But if your market is in the US, and (lemmie do the math here) you remove US residents' ability to make money, then you're killing off your market. OTOH, if all you do is reduce the incomes of US citizens, then as long as you're not stuck selling just luxury goods (except for phat stuff that kidz will buy anyway), you'll still make money!
IT is really all you need for standard technical assistance. CS tends to deal more with the code and mathematics/science behind the code (not pretty)
I've had to explain it to my boss many a time that just because you "know computers" doesn't mean that you can fix a totally-screwed-over Windows Server 2000 box, code up a wave analysis routine in C++, modify a Linux kernel, call a TWAIN routine using JNI in a Java applet, upgrade a printer driver on an XP box, spec out and order up a rack-mount dual-Xeon server with dual RAID-5s, draw up a requirements spec., manage an outsourced EJB3 project, yell at the Fanatical(tm) Rackspace tech support, and fix their kid's Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 game.
Well, where I used to work back in the 90s, we were encouraged to patent as an act of self-defense, since you never knew when someone would patent something that you thought was obvious, and then the company would end up having to roll over and beg since the patent holder has the upper hand. In fact, we used to have customers that would, upon hearing from our engineers how they could use our technology, would go off and "think about it" and patent that idea. Another reason to not let engineers talk to customers.
And now my current employer got a notice of infringement from someone that pretty much stole our idea, and by coincidence the date on their invention is a couple months before our trademark application date, imagine that! One of my first questions when I started there was if they had patented their technology, but none of the engineers thought it was novel, and actually discouraged our cut-rate lawyer from pursuing it any further. I gave them the doom & gloom(tm) scenario, and omigosh, we're living it.
All the students logged in as normal users (Users, not Power Users), and the only software we had trouble with was the MYOB suite
Well, that's kinda-sorta the point. You needed to not let those folks own the boxes, and they were probably left with a pretty short list of programs that they could run. Caveat: I have no idea what your student ran, and it might have been the full Office suite and some games.
I would love to do software development for free -- then why don't I do Open Source? Because I have to eat -- but there's these things called PHBs and customers that want their software two weeks ago, and, no, I want it in beige... with AJAX!! And they want it at half the cost of what it takes to make it.
I don't mind doing a specification or requirements (I wouldn't call it fun), but I also need them reviewed, something that PHBs don't have time for, except when the delivered software isn't what they like, and then they look at the specs and ask what piece of dung is this.
If I knew then what I knew now, I would have gone into business or tax accountancy. And done software in my free time.
Avoid software that needs to be run with administrator privilages.
Like, just about anything that runs on Windows.
I've tried that trick of running as a non-Administrator in Windows XP. It don't work. So unless you're a Linux advocate, in which case you won't listen anyway (and, yes, I use Linux, but surf as a Windows admin since there's no other way to fly), this isn't very doable to keep your sanity for all the things that you need to do on your Windows box.
I think that the best way that we can stand up for our consumer rights is to spend our money where it does us the least harm. If someone tries to pass off a highly-DRMed piece of crap, don't buy it. Divx went away because it sucked. I don't watch TV (nor do I have cable) because it sucks. I don't buy Sony anymore because they suck. I've never bought a car from Detroit because domestic US cars suck.
If it sucks, don't buy it. But they'll say sales are down due to piracy anyway.
A tech novice with 4 computers? That seems sort of unlikely. I'm not saying he's guilty, but the facts just don't seem to mesh with the description there.
Maybe he broke the first 3.
More like each one got overrun by viruses, so he had to buy another one. Unfortunately there are people who do that. I know a couple of them. They just think that their computer got old.
There is no such thing as global warming.
There is no increase in greenhouse gases.
There is no gasoline shortage, though gasoline prices need to go up to stimulate a healthy economy.
Smoking does not cause cancer.
Outsourcing is necessary to stimulate a healthy U.S. economy.
There are WMDs in Iraq; we just haven't found where those fanatics hid them.
Our twice-elected-by-the-good-Christian-people-of-Amer ica, George W. Bush, said so, and that's good enough for me!
Slashdot Mirror
No, he does a good job of that all by himself.
DT
Customers and PHBs routinely, and again either intentionally or through stupidity, under-scope projects and expect you to put forth the 120% effort (yah, I can do math, but they can't) routinely to put out the prouduct with high quality and any features that pop into their heads as the project goes along.
I'm abour ready to miss my third summer in a row of vacation because the boss is seeing an opportunity to make megabucks to try to squeeze a system sized for 900 simultaneous users to 2700 users (which isn't so bad, but here comes the clincher) as the first customer! I've been pushing for having a friendly be the first customer so that we can make the inevitable missteps with someone who is a mite more tolerant of issues, but no, that's not thinking positively enough.
So what's going to happen? Well, I've already made my pitch for going with a low-load friendly, but that's not going to fly. It appears that this new deal with the 2700 users is coming through, I'll be asked to pulll a miracle out of my ass with the same number of sustainers and support people (me and one other guy), with the same amount of testing (very little since the boss doesn't want to pay for the testers or the testing software) and the same amount of false hope that it'll work the first time, for which the company's track record is 0% over the past 5 years... but this time it will be different! Oh, did I forget to mention that the outside company developing the initial version hasn't finished it yet, it's four months overdue so far, they're balking at completing the functionality because they didn't scope it right, and there's no end in sight?
Anyway, just stay away from software. Go into something like Civil Engineering that everybody needs, and that is a little more deterministic with time estimates.
OTOH, I can't think of something else I'd rather do for a living. But not being able to do it correctly is what galls me.
DT
So, Steve Jobs is actually Stevey Wonder!
No no no no no... Steve Jobs is actually Michael Jackson!
Notice you never see them in the same room at the same time.
Plus, when Steve gets excited, he says, "Whooo hoo!" or whatever that is, in a high voice.
DT
Move along.
DT
And then you get to go to your safe-deposit box once or twice a week to retrieve your hard drive, back up to it, and then drive back to your bank. You did want offsite storage, didn't you? How much is the gas and the inconvenience going to cost you? Encryption will take care of prying eyes.
DT
Um, why are/were you still there? With such unprofessionalism breathing down my neck, I wouldn't stick around if I were you. Better be getting six figures to put up with that.
DT
I'm sure that the local warlord or militia will welcome your offering as a tool to maneuver the local starving people to where they want them to be. Time to get your head out of the sand, my friend. We've got more food than we know what to do with, and can produce much more.
DT
Will they get XP if their system does not meet the requirements? Surely Dell will sell a low-end machine that might not have the hardware to run Vista? Or worse yet, they sell a machine that meets the minimal requirements, and performs like a dog. I wouldn't think that they'd want that perception, right?
DT
DT
I don't see why big big business executives care since they're international anyway, and they can go where the talent is in other (non-US) countries. As long as they have markets in other countries where their workers are, then you have some sort of balance, right?
But if your market is in the US, and (lemmie do the math here) you remove US residents' ability to make money, then you're killing off your market. OTOH, if all you do is reduce the incomes of US citizens, then as long as you're not stuck selling just luxury goods (except for phat stuff that kidz will buy anyway), you'll still make money!
So keep shipping those jobs overseas!
DT (with tongue firmly in cheek)
I've had to explain it to my boss many a time that just because you "know computers" doesn't mean that you can fix a totally-screwed-over Windows Server 2000 box, code up a wave analysis routine in C++, modify a Linux kernel, call a TWAIN routine using JNI in a Java applet, upgrade a printer driver on an XP box, spec out and order up a rack-mount dual-Xeon server with dual RAID-5s, draw up a requirements spec., manage an outsourced EJB3 project, yell at the Fanatical(tm) Rackspace tech support, and fix their kid's Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 game.
Wait, I have done that... never mind.
DT
Well, where I used to work back in the 90s, we were encouraged to patent as an act of self-defense, since you never knew when someone would patent something that you thought was obvious, and then the company would end up having to roll over and beg since the patent holder has the upper hand. In fact, we used to have customers that would, upon hearing from our engineers how they could use our technology, would go off and "think about it" and patent that idea. Another reason to not let engineers talk to customers.
And now my current employer got a notice of infringement from someone that pretty much stole our idea, and by coincidence the date on their invention is a couple months before our trademark application date, imagine that! One of my first questions when I started there was if they had patented their technology, but none of the engineers thought it was novel, and actually discouraged our cut-rate lawyer from pursuing it any further. I gave them the doom & gloom(tm) scenario, and omigosh, we're living it.
DT
I haven't gotten mad at anyone; I just look at the price before rebate, and that's the price. Which is why I shop at Newegg.com. Or Amazon.
DT
Yep, got a few of my programs there.
What shall I do now?
DT
Well, that's kinda-sorta the point. You needed to not let those folks own the boxes, and they were probably left with a pretty short list of programs that they could run. Caveat: I have no idea what your student ran, and it might have been the full Office suite and some games.
DT
Yeah, like change.
DT
I don't mind doing a specification or requirements (I wouldn't call it fun), but I also need them reviewed, something that PHBs don't have time for, except when the delivered software isn't what they like, and then they look at the specs and ask what piece of dung is this.
If I knew then what I knew now, I would have gone into business or tax accountancy. And done software in my free time.
DT
Mission Accomplished!
DT
Like, just about anything that runs on Windows.
I've tried that trick of running as a non-Administrator in Windows XP. It don't work. So unless you're a Linux advocate, in which case you won't listen anyway (and, yes, I use Linux, but surf as a Windows admin since there's no other way to fly), this isn't very doable to keep your sanity for all the things that you need to do on your Windows box.
DT
And I betcha it comes pre-rooted.
DT
DT
If it sucks, don't buy it. But they'll say sales are down due to piracy anyway.
DT
Maybe he broke the first 3.
More like each one got overrun by viruses, so he had to buy another one. Unfortunately there are people who do that. I know a couple of them. They just think that their computer got old.
DT
Never have gotten one back from them. I quit after two.
DT
There is no increase in greenhouse gases.
There is no gasoline shortage, though gasoline prices need to go up to stimulate a healthy economy.
Smoking does not cause cancer.
Outsourcing is necessary to stimulate a healthy U.S. economy.
There are WMDs in Iraq; we just haven't found where those fanatics hid them.
Our twice-elected-by-the-good-Christian-people-of-Amer ica, George W. Bush, said so, and that's good enough for me!
DT