Having dropped out of a five year EE program after 4 years to work for my brother over twenty years ago I can't say it made much of a difference in my career. I started working as a computer programmer while I was still in high school. I went to college for the same reason everyone does, to meet girls and have fun. I seriously can barely remember any programming classes, although I took enough to equal my universities' CS requirements. When I spoke to the administrators about changing to the CS major and letting me graduate, they said that I had to retake my CS101 course because I had taken it at a junior college when I was a sophomore in high school. Apparently they thought that it being six years before and from a community college that it shouldn't count. I suggested that they consider the four years of part time work I had programming, which they also couldn't accept. It seemed so ridiculous that I left in my senior year without a degree. After about five more years my university decided that although they didn't give me a degree that I might give them more money. I receive two letters a year from them asking me to donate. Why can't I remember the programming classes? Most of the programming classes had a lab and tests administered at a testing center. I would write the labs in the first two weeks of class, pass them off and take the tests, I usually lost interest in the lectures after about the third week and I would pick up more hours working. I do remember a silly humanities class where we looked at pictures of Grecian urns. So do I recommend college, of course, I still have the wife I met there and I still have fun.
I've checked the rate of growth of my church. Wars and the great depression had a lower growth rate than during this recession. Still the membership of my church is growing. Sitting home and surfing the web may make people less likely to seek out the society of a church. What's funny is the assumption that this is a good thing. I rarely post to these self congratulations postings of atheists. Atheists will continue to pat themselves on the back. You cannot give an atheist any evidence that they will accept, as they refuse to look just like those who claim the world is flat. Atheists will stand in line at a church's soup kitchen and deny that there is any reason for people to come together to help others. They will claim the religion is the cause of all the problems in the world, even though many horrible world leaders like Stalin were clearly atheist. Don't think that just because I stop arguing with you that your ideas are correct. It may be that I realize it is pointless to argue with those who cannot think. There will come a time in your life when you need help. You may continue to deny it. But realize that God will be there even if you do not believe.
Respond that your doctor will charge you even if you die on the operating table. If he wants a non-skilled job done, hire non-skilled employees and tell them each line to write. If you need a skilled job done the risks are born by both the client and the provider. The client pays for all cost overruns. The skilled employee risks a bad reputation if they do a bad job.
I looked at my desk yesterday, I have a Dell machine running Windows 7 with two monitors. In the second monitor I run Linux in a virtual machine. My Laptop is a Mac running OSX. I also have Parallels on my Mac with virtual machines with Red Had Linux and Windows 7 images. Lately I have been working on embedded software, but I also write Windows apps and do some web site development. Some tools only run on Windows, some only on Linux, some only on Mac. You can wine and cry or just learn to use all systems. If I were to spend my own money today to buy a computer it would be a Chromebook. My children have no trouble using Macs, Windows or Linux as I also have all three types of machines at home. We are also about evenly split on iPhone vs. Android. Tablets, we use the iPad most as my early Visio Android tablet quit due to poor soldering. I just haven't gotten around to resoldering its poorly made power connector. Most people don't have experience with all systems and can't afford to buy multiple systems. Here are a few things I do to keep sane. Don't ever upgrade the OS on a machine. Unless you got a lemon OS like Windows Vista, you are better off keeping with the OS that came with your box. Buy the hardware and OS based upon your application needs. My wife uses iTunes, a web browser and email, so we bought her a Macbook Pro. My kids do school work and play games, obviously a WiiU and a Chromebook is what they need. Don't worry about switching from one system to another. If you are considering a system that locks your data in, reconsider. Even the best system will be out of date in three years. I've been buying personal computers for over 30 years, I was online before the internet. If I had stuck with the CP/M system I took to college I would be way out of date now.
It is an ignorant point of view that believes thinking about something, or for that matter writing it down or drawing it is invention, that is called fiction. Did Jules Vern invent the rocket because he wrote about taking a trip to the moon or did Michelangelo invented the helicopter. If that was true invention, then we wouldn't need any engineers. We all could have travelled to the moon in 1865 when Jules Vern released his book. I was born 100 years later and no one had still stepped on the moon. People point at patent law as inventions, yet that is just how lawyers and judges play in technology. Real invention doesn't happen sitting on your couch. It doesn't happen in the attorney's office. Real invention takes many disciplines, team work, time, money and desire. More things are being invented today than at any other time. True invention actually produces a working version of an idea. The wright brothers were not credited with inventing the airplane because they were the first to think about it, they were credited with inventing the airplane because they were the first to take off and land in a craft they built without killing themselves. And Curtis invented the aileron that all modern use to fly even though he lost the patent battle with the Wright brothers. Real invention is doing the work, not wining in court. I've worked at companies where someone wanted to sell us ideas, what a load of bull, usually we would tell them to get lost as we have a ton of ideas that we employees have discussed already and many times we had already written down in detail. Part of the inventive process is trowing out ideas that are not yet cost effective.
I worked at one place that fired all the programmers nearly every two years. Bad programmers come and go. So what. I worked there nine years until I quit to go to another company when I wanted to leave. If you cannot take over a project, figure out what is wrong and correct it, then maybe you're not the great programmer you think you are. Here's how to become a better programmer. Realize first what is good code, it isn't the code style, you can use a code beautifier to change that. It isn't in the comments. Although good programmers recognize when a well placed comment will help. Good code works. Support calls decrease. You can demonstrate that to a non-technical boss. Why was I still employed when they fired all programmers every two years? Because often I was the sole programmer on a project and it didn't fail. If they had a project that failed, they gave it to me and after a few releases it was fixed. So secret number one, the reason you right unit tests isn't because your boss forces you to do it, it is because you recognize that your work is your reputation. So what if you aren't given time to write good code, you're not given time to write bad code, are you? Don't even commit your code to the repository until you have tested it. Study programming, and I don't mean like you did in school, realize that professors like to teach, programmers like to program. Find a good programmer and look at his code. If there are no good programmers in your company, look at open source. Lastly, recognize that becoming a good programmer takes years. Learn a little about metrics, it will help you to show your boss that your projects are improving while you are becoming a better programmer.
I wrote a little Javascript tutorial that I teach to scouts to satisfy the programming requirement of the computer scout merit badge. I haven't gotten much feed back from people who have just seen it on the web. http://nicholdraper.com/scouts/jtutorial1.html. I wrote it because anyone who has access to a computer has the tools to execute this little tutorial. The scout merit badge has a good introduction to computers. I wouldn't recommend how I learn languages to a non-techie, I've taught a couple dozen scouts and only the techie ones really finish. But everyone should understand the idea of a machine processing data. Techie people want to understand deeply, non-techie people want and overview. So much more than a very simple Javascript program just causes frustration.
You have a good point. There are some activities legal in parts of the world that are not legal in other parts of the world. All the more reason to not continue the myth that you can use the internet without being found out. By the way, I have a patent on detecting how many computers you have behind your residential gateway. No matter how smart you think you are you are not safe to believe that you can do things on the internet and remain anonymous. I guess I should add either stop it or flee to a safe country for your activity.
I worked for a hotel ISP provider. Every week we received subpoenas for people's activities on the internet. We identified the room they stayed in. The hotel would get a subpoena and would turn over the sign in information and even security camera pictures of the individuals. Usually they paid with credit cards and they were known, but even paying cash they had a picture of the individual. Home ISPs are the same, they know where you live. Piggy backing on your neighbor's ISP, it doesn't take too long to track down an unwanted signal. Most people follow the law. Why would we not want sick people who victimize children to be locked up. With under $1000 in off the shelf equipment I can watch what my neighbor downloads. I'm surprised that readers of Slashdot would believe that what they do online can't be monitored, traced, recorded and used against them is a court of law. Read your ISP agreement. Frankly if this bothers you -- what weird sick stuff are you into? Stop it.
You bring up a very good point. I used to work for an ISP, we found that porn sites were the most likely to play tricks with their pages to increase their apparent popularity. When we counted web pages by viewers and not by page hits, not a single porn site remained in the top 100. I very much doubt the percentages are accurate at all.
There are some web sites dedicated to just source code:
http://www.codeproject.com/ is a great place to find useful small applications with an explanation. http://sourceforge.net/ has excellent code. http://apache.org/ has very good projects. These sites don't require you to retype anything. While the programs in codeproject are small, some of the projects in source forge and apache are huge -- but many have very good small tutorials to get you up and running.
For little hardware projects look at http://www.instructables.com/. Even the commercial products now have incredible online resources that in many ways surpass what we got in Byte, if you're not familiar with http://msdn.microsft.com/ check it out. Another approach is to install Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora, or any distribution comes with a package manager that allows you to browse applications by the thousands. I set one up in my house and my daughter had Tux Racer installed before I got home from work the next day.
Computer magazines didn't go away, they were eclipsed. Oh did I mention http://eclipse.org/ its a full IDE, open source and a development environment as well.
I too learned to program in basic on a TI-994a. I wanted an Apple II but my dad wouldn't spend the money. But, I don't agree that Basic is the way to learn today. I've written a programming intro for the Scout computer merit badge programming requirement. Here's a link http://nicholdraper.com/scouts/jtutorial1.html I can usually get through this in about an hour and a half with five or six scouts 12-15 years old. I recommend that you get him an introduction into programming. After completing a small program, if it sparks his interest he will do more. One of the things that exists now that didn't when I was a kid is the web. So, in my introduction, I choose to teach using JavaScript. It exists for free in every browser on every computer. Also, learning a bit of HTML helps kids understand how the web pages they use every day are formed.
Please, have you seen the Walt Disney movie "Never Cry Wolf?" If your IT integration skills lead to a mountain of we'll say junk for the sake of politeness, then maybe its your own skills. I worked at a place where a group of programmers constantly complained that they weren't given the resources to do good work. I was working on firmware and their group was responsible for the Windows software part of the project. Finally our boss came to me and asked me to take over their project. So they were let go and I took over their responsibilities. Good grief, they were coding in C++ and I had given them some simple C code to integrate. I had expected them to take my small c file and create an object out of it. Instead they had cut and pasted the guts of my small code into methods in C++ objects that had grown to thousands of lines. It took me a couple of years, but I managed to refactor all their code and port the system to Java and I added automated testing. I was able to improve the reliability from about a six percent failure rate to less than a one percent failure rate. (Our customers told us that our competitors products ran at about an eight percent failure rate.) If you find yourself with kludge after kludge and go and see the movie "Never Cry Wolf" and then spend less money on Moose Head beer and more on software training.
The best thing about open source is that most projects don't make money. Most posts here have taken for granted that money equals value. Oracle as a for profit business MUST evaluate its role in its open source projects by the profitability of its involvement. But, open source projects can be run for other reasons. And the best thing is that if Oracle drops support for an open source project, unlike a closed source project it can continue. Now, the question is will it. It the open source project was just an appendage of a for fee project, then we haven't really lost anything. If it really solves the needs of a community then that community should pick it up. Free software should be allowed to exist for reasons beyond money, I'm not suggesting that a for profit company should keep unprofitable open source projects, in fact I think that they should not. But individuals, groups and even corporations should be allowed to sponsor open source project for any reason. I know many individuals that have written and continue to maintain open source projects for a resume item, as a tool they love and even just to learn something. I hired just such a guy and I encourage him to use his open source software to solve our companies problems and I encourage him to add features to the open source project. He specifically came to work for me because his previous employer didn't share my views. We have a better product with an employee with the open source experience. Would I say his open source projects are profitable? I don't care, we don't look at it that way. He is profitable for us and our core business is profitable, so, who cares if we sponsor a side open source project.
In the US it is very common to require vesting of time to pay for training. It is also very common for companies to just give grants and scholarships to pay for schooling. There are contract laws that protect both the employer and employee. I have gone to many training programs for certification of this or that product and always had my company pay. I've never had any restrictions in when I could quit after receiving the training. Generally the higher up the ladder you go, the more you get without restrictions. There are also parts of the USA that like unions and do collective bargaining. But, it tends to not do well among IT workers because, job hopping can raise your salary faster than any union can. Also, job hopping can yield contract clients who need your expertise, but couldn't afford to keep you. My comment to the original poster is, who cares if a company requires you to train on your own time. Find a better employer and leave. Personally, I got into programming computers because I like it, it really doesn't matter what a company requires in time or training, I will exceed it.
I'm working at a company that has a few very solid products that need to be updated. I'm throughly enjoying recreating these products with modern tools. The pathetic old micro-controllers that don't have on-board emulators, serial drivers, and interface logic are replaced by chips that are simple to use and way faster. I've started a controller project using the Open Embedded framework to provide the base. I've been able to cross off every standard feature as working in just a week and I am spending my time on just the applications and drivers unique to my companies' project. In a week I already have more functionality than the original programmers provided after three years of work. And for all the "but when I wrote everything I knew how everything worked complaint," is it really that hard to read a few howto's about someone else' project. I've written my own TCP/IP stack, I don't need to do it again, nor do I need to use the version I wrote for a company years ago. I've written a bunch of Ethernet drivers, writing even one again will bore me to death. True there was a sense of satisfaction to knowing that everything in a software product was the work of your own. But, who cares, been there done that in college or before should satisfy that craving. As bitbake chugged along for eight hours putting over 4,000 packages into my product, I couldn't care less that I wasn't even going to bother to read the names of the packages much less write them.
This isn't really that hard, even the old 802.11b service can handle this, a few years ago I worked for an ISP that serviced hotels and we setup these networks all the time. I even have a couple of patents on wireless security. The suggestions to use all 14 channels, lowering the power output with the same SSID works. You do want to physically separate the access points. Some people erroneously think that more power gets more connections. What you really are concerned with is that everyone on the same channel has to listen to all the other traffic from the other computers on the same channel. People also think that since channels 1, 6 and 11 don't overlap in frequency, that they are the only channels to use. The channels that overlap cause noise, but normally don't cause the clients to drop off.
Get yourself a spectrum analyzer. I use Wi-spi from Metageeks which only costs about $200, you may want a couple. Next position your access points so that the close frequencies are furthest away from each other. Your goal is to create 14 overlapping circles of wireless activity that will cause the least interference with each other. In a single big ballroom you can draw a plan on paper in a box and figure it out. If it is a really big space there are usually support beams that you can also use. Walls, depending on the building material can cause your signal to do things you don't expect, so you need to get into the space and take some readings. I've seen some reenforced concrete walls kill most of the signal so that we could reuse channels right outside the room, while other walls allow most of the power to pass right through. We've also seen where we could actually place an access point outside on a light post and get great connectivity through windows.
We've done this with multiple brands of access points, with good success. One other thing, don't forget the connection to the outside. A single T1 will not cut it for 500 users. Most services now don't care about being NATted, but its good to know if your presenter wants a dedicated IP.
Nichol Draper, yes I post under my real name, my finger prints are on file in California. My mother had a day care center and I was finger printed and put on file when I was a teenager. My name, address and phone number are in the phone book. My name is in the patent database on two patents. My wedding certificate in online in California. Code I've written is on numerous sites and registered in the Library of Congress. I could go on and on. Google me and you will find even more links including my web site. This life's about getting noticed. If you are afraid of getting your finger prints into a private database, something is wrong with you.
I never found accurate estimates to be all that difficult. I don't subscribe to the extreme/agile/scrum/what ever is the latest process is in the news. Create a design, mock up each page/dialog box whatever. Code one up, write your unit tests. Count up how many database tables you have, code up persistence to one and run your automated tests. Determine how many blocks of logic you will have and code up one and test it. You should have coded up the most difficult part in each category. Then simple math add up each part as though it will take as long as the longest part in each category.. Then as you complete each project, only count completely done parts, don't give partial credit.
Recognize that if you estimate four days on a part and two days into it, you are pulled off, you still have four days that have to be made up. Thrashing eliminates all part work not fully completed. Now, if marketing, or your boss or whoever says, you missed this page, your estimate stands only for original design work. New features get new estimates. If you follow this and track your work through two or three projects, you will get better at determining the most difficult parts and learn to code those before you complete your estimate.
After doing this for a few years, you will get projects for which you can see the end and you can give better estimates from the hip. But, never promise estimates to be more that +200% -50% accurate. I've had many bonuses tied to finishing on time and I always get my bonuses.
Realize that I've architected over five projects with over a million dollar budgets and each took over a year to complete all phases, some multiple years. I also have managed teams from myself to a dozen programmers and support personal (testers, graphic artists, tech writers, etc..). My first project didn't go that well, but after multiple projects I learned how to do it correctly. Don't buy into the comments here that say since so many people do estimating badly, that it is impossible. Also, realize that you will have to read code from the programmers on your team and fire the non-performers.
And last of all, ask the programmers on your team for their estimates, but don't use them, use your senior architect's estimates. If a programmer estimates long, there needs to be more training to show them how to code up whatever it is you are writing in the time the architect estimates. If they estimate short they also need training. You must also make sure that sub-tasks are broken down into ½ day to 2 days chunks. If a programmer doesn't finish the first sub-task in time, retrain or re-estimate.
You may have a boss that comes in and says, how long will this take, I want the estimate now and I don't want you to do any design or prototyping first. Estimate how long it will take you to find a new boss and add two weeks for notice.
Why doesn't your email client notify the end-users that their attachment is too large to be sent? Why haven't you locked down installations avoid toolbar additions? If they need a PDF editor, why don't you get to their machine and install it?
I could go on, but the point is if users are a pain, you may be the problem. I work in R&D, but at various times in my career I have had some IT tasks. I'm currently at a company that had a horrible R&D department before I came. We let four engineers go. Now we are releasing products faster than ever before and everybody loves us. If your users don't love you -- you should find a new career, with the level of friendliness your posts demonstrates may I suggest prison guard.
Why is Microsoft able to find these scumbags and the US government can't? Right before I read this I sent a phony phishing scam to the IRS because it perported to come from our government. If our government would go after these scams like it goes after legitimate tax-payers who are a little behind, the world would be a better place. Good for Microsoft.
So, things like the integrated circuit chips, Internet, personal computers, office applications, 3D rendering video graphic cards, social networks, cell phones, laptops, palm computers, not to mention that about half the patents ever registered were registered after the 1950s. Just be cause you are ignorant of improvements, and more are coming from outside the US doesn't mean that the pace has slowed. Sure some of the technology is used to play games with the mortgage industry. Some ideas like the video game consoles have realized such great improvements in the last five years, that I'll bet no one still plays pong, oh wait pong was invented after 1950. There is a technology industry that is making more money than the movie industry, so new technology pushes old technology aside. I'm 45, but I as a teenager wanted film cameras and a chemical dark room -- there's another entire industry replaced by new digital technology. Well I guess I can read about the new technologies in the newspaper -- ops there's another thing replaced by new technology. I'm a computer programmer, when I started programming, I had a chance of learning every programming language in use -- now there are frameworks for creating domain specific languages to program faster which only specific types of users will ever learn. So, measuring by patents awarded -- rate is increasing, measured by industries changed, rate is increasing, measured by available products, rate is increasing. So by what yard stick is the rate of technology change slowing down? Oh yardsticks were replaced by laser meters.
You obviously have weak leaders in your company. Take charge, insist that they make you scrum master, raise your pay and fire the dead weight. If they don't do what you say, use every available means of persuasion, coercion, threats and violence to get what you want. Whatever you do, don't post whinny "my manager doesn't do what I want" on slashdot. Be a man.
You've missed the point. Its not that word doesn't have its place. And in the academic world, progress is slow and trails the entrepenueral world. Yes word works for writing a traditional book or paper, but if your university was more up to date, a submission of a web site that linked to your sources would be better. Then instead of a 20th century thesis, you would have created a 21 century thesis that could be searched and linked by everyone. You could have comments like slashdot on each page and you could get instant feed back by your professors and the world.
I have long been done with the academic world, but the only thing worse is the corporate world. I showed my last employer how a Wiki was a much better repository for technical information. It is easily accessible any where in the world, we tied the security into our active directory system so it was secure. But, alas they also failed to understand the significance of new approaches to text management. I've since left that company and I am doing the same thing for a company that gets it. And get this, I get paid a consulting fee by my previous employer to lookup documents in their own Wiki and email them back to them. I charge in block increments so that a one minute query gets me a quarter hour of pay.
Maybe the religions you have been introduced to are incompatible with science. But, there is a lot of science that cannot be shown/demonstraited/repeated. Do you not know of the heisenberg uncertainty principle. Do you not know that many scientific discoveries were postulates before they could be proven? What about all the postulates that are proven wrong? What about the particle theory of light and the wave theory of light, should you not study them, because one theory seems to contradict another? Many people believe in religion as what it is claimed, faith is not something you can prove, but I believe that being kind to fellow human beings will bring me a reward, am I deluded? Possibly, but isn't it worth testing the theory out during my short life-time. If it is a theory that proves to be false, I still believe that for the space of my human life that I will be better off. Do you refuse to use the equations for Newtonian Physics because they are only valid for objects around the mass of things we use everyday and not for very small or very large objects?
So, you still maintain that there is not reason to follow religious beliefs because God hasn't knocked on your door? The golden rule do unto others as you would have done to you is bogus because your limited knowledge of religion cannot be met? Yes you are better off without religion and without science, because, you don't believe in science, you only believe in known science. You're not much better than the people who wouldn't believe the world was a sphere because you couldn't see the whole of it in your day.
I am very religious, I see no conflict between religion and the theory of evolution, Darwin was a Monk and prayed every day, how do you think he was able to get past the limited scientific views of his day and propose a theory that has since had so many proof? If I didn't believe in God, I wouldn't feel so strongly that we can successfully clone humans, full or parts to solve some of the defects in our physical bodies. Does that shock you that religious people not only believe in science, but that religion encourages that belief? I went to a religious university, the professors there said God wants us to learn these things, that is why we are here.
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Having dropped out of a five year EE program after 4 years to work for my brother over twenty years ago I can't say it made much of a difference in my career. I started working as a computer programmer while I was still in high school. I went to college for the same reason everyone does, to meet girls and have fun. I seriously can barely remember any programming classes, although I took enough to equal my universities' CS requirements. When I spoke to the administrators about changing to the CS major and letting me graduate, they said that I had to retake my CS101 course because I had taken it at a junior college when I was a sophomore in high school. Apparently they thought that it being six years before and from a community college that it shouldn't count. I suggested that they consider the four years of part time work I had programming, which they also couldn't accept. It seemed so ridiculous that I left in my senior year without a degree. After about five more years my university decided that although they didn't give me a degree that I might give them more money. I receive two letters a year from them asking me to donate. Why can't I remember the programming classes? Most of the programming classes had a lab and tests administered at a testing center. I would write the labs in the first two weeks of class, pass them off and take the tests, I usually lost interest in the lectures after about the third week and I would pick up more hours working. I do remember a silly humanities class where we looked at pictures of Grecian urns. So do I recommend college, of course, I still have the wife I met there and I still have fun.
I've checked the rate of growth of my church. Wars and the great depression had a lower growth rate than during this recession. Still the membership of my church is growing. Sitting home and surfing the web may make people less likely to seek out the society of a church. What's funny is the assumption that this is a good thing. I rarely post to these self congratulations postings of atheists. Atheists will continue to pat themselves on the back. You cannot give an atheist any evidence that they will accept, as they refuse to look just like those who claim the world is flat. Atheists will stand in line at a church's soup kitchen and deny that there is any reason for people to come together to help others. They will claim the religion is the cause of all the problems in the world, even though many horrible world leaders like Stalin were clearly atheist. Don't think that just because I stop arguing with you that your ideas are correct. It may be that I realize it is pointless to argue with those who cannot think. There will come a time in your life when you need help. You may continue to deny it. But realize that God will be there even if you do not believe.
Respond that your doctor will charge you even if you die on the operating table. If he wants a non-skilled job done, hire non-skilled employees and tell them each line to write. If you need a skilled job done the risks are born by both the client and the provider. The client pays for all cost overruns. The skilled employee risks a bad reputation if they do a bad job.
I looked at my desk yesterday, I have a Dell machine running Windows 7 with two monitors. In the second monitor I run Linux in a virtual machine. My Laptop is a Mac running OSX. I also have Parallels on my Mac with virtual machines with Red Had Linux and Windows 7 images. Lately I have been working on embedded software, but I also write Windows apps and do some web site development. Some tools only run on Windows, some only on Linux, some only on Mac. You can wine and cry or just learn to use all systems. If I were to spend my own money today to buy a computer it would be a Chromebook. My children have no trouble using Macs, Windows or Linux as I also have all three types of machines at home. We are also about evenly split on iPhone vs. Android. Tablets, we use the iPad most as my early Visio Android tablet quit due to poor soldering. I just haven't gotten around to resoldering its poorly made power connector. Most people don't have experience with all systems and can't afford to buy multiple systems. Here are a few things I do to keep sane. Don't ever upgrade the OS on a machine. Unless you got a lemon OS like Windows Vista, you are better off keeping with the OS that came with your box. Buy the hardware and OS based upon your application needs. My wife uses iTunes, a web browser and email, so we bought her a Macbook Pro. My kids do school work and play games, obviously a WiiU and a Chromebook is what they need. Don't worry about switching from one system to another. If you are considering a system that locks your data in, reconsider. Even the best system will be out of date in three years. I've been buying personal computers for over 30 years, I was online before the internet. If I had stuck with the CP/M system I took to college I would be way out of date now.
It is an ignorant point of view that believes thinking about something, or for that matter writing it down or drawing it is invention, that is called fiction. Did Jules Vern invent the rocket because he wrote about taking a trip to the moon or did Michelangelo invented the helicopter. If that was true invention, then we wouldn't need any engineers. We all could have travelled to the moon in 1865 when Jules Vern released his book. I was born 100 years later and no one had still stepped on the moon. People point at patent law as inventions, yet that is just how lawyers and judges play in technology. Real invention doesn't happen sitting on your couch. It doesn't happen in the attorney's office. Real invention takes many disciplines, team work, time, money and desire. More things are being invented today than at any other time. True invention actually produces a working version of an idea. The wright brothers were not credited with inventing the airplane because they were the first to think about it, they were credited with inventing the airplane because they were the first to take off and land in a craft they built without killing themselves. And Curtis invented the aileron that all modern use to fly even though he lost the patent battle with the Wright brothers. Real invention is doing the work, not wining in court. I've worked at companies where someone wanted to sell us ideas, what a load of bull, usually we would tell them to get lost as we have a ton of ideas that we employees have discussed already and many times we had already written down in detail. Part of the inventive process is trowing out ideas that are not yet cost effective.
I worked at one place that fired all the programmers nearly every two years. Bad programmers come and go. So what. I worked there nine years until I quit to go to another company when I wanted to leave. If you cannot take over a project, figure out what is wrong and correct it, then maybe you're not the great programmer you think you are. Here's how to become a better programmer. Realize first what is good code, it isn't the code style, you can use a code beautifier to change that. It isn't in the comments. Although good programmers recognize when a well placed comment will help. Good code works. Support calls decrease. You can demonstrate that to a non-technical boss. Why was I still employed when they fired all programmers every two years? Because often I was the sole programmer on a project and it didn't fail. If they had a project that failed, they gave it to me and after a few releases it was fixed. So secret number one, the reason you right unit tests isn't because your boss forces you to do it, it is because you recognize that your work is your reputation. So what if you aren't given time to write good code, you're not given time to write bad code, are you? Don't even commit your code to the repository until you have tested it. Study programming, and I don't mean like you did in school, realize that professors like to teach, programmers like to program. Find a good programmer and look at his code. If there are no good programmers in your company, look at open source. Lastly, recognize that becoming a good programmer takes years. Learn a little about metrics, it will help you to show your boss that your projects are improving while you are becoming a better programmer.
I wrote a little Javascript tutorial that I teach to scouts to satisfy the programming requirement of the computer scout merit badge. I haven't gotten much feed back from people who have just seen it on the web. http://nicholdraper.com/scouts/jtutorial1.html. I wrote it because anyone who has access to a computer has the tools to execute this little tutorial. The scout merit badge has a good introduction to computers. I wouldn't recommend how I learn languages to a non-techie, I've taught a couple dozen scouts and only the techie ones really finish. But everyone should understand the idea of a machine processing data. Techie people want to understand deeply, non-techie people want and overview. So much more than a very simple Javascript program just causes frustration.
You have a good point. There are some activities legal in parts of the world that are not legal in other parts of the world. All the more reason to not continue the myth that you can use the internet without being found out. By the way, I have a patent on detecting how many computers you have behind your residential gateway. No matter how smart you think you are you are not safe to believe that you can do things on the internet and remain anonymous. I guess I should add either stop it or flee to a safe country for your activity.
I worked for a hotel ISP provider. Every week we received subpoenas for people's activities on the internet. We identified the room they stayed in. The hotel would get a subpoena and would turn over the sign in information and even security camera pictures of the individuals. Usually they paid with credit cards and they were known, but even paying cash they had a picture of the individual. Home ISPs are the same, they know where you live. Piggy backing on your neighbor's ISP, it doesn't take too long to track down an unwanted signal. Most people follow the law. Why would we not want sick people who victimize children to be locked up. With under $1000 in off the shelf equipment I can watch what my neighbor downloads. I'm surprised that readers of Slashdot would believe that what they do online can't be monitored, traced, recorded and used against them is a court of law. Read your ISP agreement. Frankly if this bothers you -- what weird sick stuff are you into? Stop it.
You bring up a very good point. I used to work for an ISP, we found that porn sites were the most likely to play tricks with their pages to increase their apparent popularity. When we counted web pages by viewers and not by page hits, not a single porn site remained in the top 100. I very much doubt the percentages are accurate at all.
There are some web sites dedicated to just source code: http://www.codeproject.com/ is a great place to find useful small applications with an explanation. http://sourceforge.net/ has excellent code. http://apache.org/ has very good projects. These sites don't require you to retype anything. While the programs in codeproject are small, some of the projects in source forge and apache are huge -- but many have very good small tutorials to get you up and running. For little hardware projects look at http://www.instructables.com/. Even the commercial products now have incredible online resources that in many ways surpass what we got in Byte, if you're not familiar with http://msdn.microsft.com/ check it out. Another approach is to install Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora, or any distribution comes with a package manager that allows you to browse applications by the thousands. I set one up in my house and my daughter had Tux Racer installed before I got home from work the next day. Computer magazines didn't go away, they were eclipsed. Oh did I mention http://eclipse.org/ its a full IDE, open source and a development environment as well.
I too learned to program in basic on a TI-994a. I wanted an Apple II but my dad wouldn't spend the money. But, I don't agree that Basic is the way to learn today. I've written a programming intro for the Scout computer merit badge programming requirement. Here's a link http://nicholdraper.com/scouts/jtutorial1.html I can usually get through this in about an hour and a half with five or six scouts 12-15 years old. I recommend that you get him an introduction into programming. After completing a small program, if it sparks his interest he will do more. One of the things that exists now that didn't when I was a kid is the web. So, in my introduction, I choose to teach using JavaScript. It exists for free in every browser on every computer. Also, learning a bit of HTML helps kids understand how the web pages they use every day are formed.
Please, have you seen the Walt Disney movie "Never Cry Wolf?" If your IT integration skills lead to a mountain of we'll say junk for the sake of politeness, then maybe its your own skills. I worked at a place where a group of programmers constantly complained that they weren't given the resources to do good work. I was working on firmware and their group was responsible for the Windows software part of the project. Finally our boss came to me and asked me to take over their project. So they were let go and I took over their responsibilities. Good grief, they were coding in C++ and I had given them some simple C code to integrate. I had expected them to take my small c file and create an object out of it. Instead they had cut and pasted the guts of my small code into methods in C++ objects that had grown to thousands of lines. It took me a couple of years, but I managed to refactor all their code and port the system to Java and I added automated testing. I was able to improve the reliability from about a six percent failure rate to less than a one percent failure rate. (Our customers told us that our competitors products ran at about an eight percent failure rate.) If you find yourself with kludge after kludge and go and see the movie "Never Cry Wolf" and then spend less money on Moose Head beer and more on software training.
The best thing about open source is that most projects don't make money. Most posts here have taken for granted that money equals value. Oracle as a for profit business MUST evaluate its role in its open source projects by the profitability of its involvement. But, open source projects can be run for other reasons. And the best thing is that if Oracle drops support for an open source project, unlike a closed source project it can continue. Now, the question is will it. It the open source project was just an appendage of a for fee project, then we haven't really lost anything. If it really solves the needs of a community then that community should pick it up. Free software should be allowed to exist for reasons beyond money, I'm not suggesting that a for profit company should keep unprofitable open source projects, in fact I think that they should not. But individuals, groups and even corporations should be allowed to sponsor open source project for any reason. I know many individuals that have written and continue to maintain open source projects for a resume item, as a tool they love and even just to learn something. I hired just such a guy and I encourage him to use his open source software to solve our companies problems and I encourage him to add features to the open source project. He specifically came to work for me because his previous employer didn't share my views. We have a better product with an employee with the open source experience. Would I say his open source projects are profitable? I don't care, we don't look at it that way. He is profitable for us and our core business is profitable, so, who cares if we sponsor a side open source project.
In the US it is very common to require vesting of time to pay for training. It is also very common for companies to just give grants and scholarships to pay for schooling. There are contract laws that protect both the employer and employee. I have gone to many training programs for certification of this or that product and always had my company pay. I've never had any restrictions in when I could quit after receiving the training. Generally the higher up the ladder you go, the more you get without restrictions. There are also parts of the USA that like unions and do collective bargaining. But, it tends to not do well among IT workers because, job hopping can raise your salary faster than any union can. Also, job hopping can yield contract clients who need your expertise, but couldn't afford to keep you. My comment to the original poster is, who cares if a company requires you to train on your own time. Find a better employer and leave. Personally, I got into programming computers because I like it, it really doesn't matter what a company requires in time or training, I will exceed it.
I'm working at a company that has a few very solid products that need to be updated. I'm throughly enjoying recreating these products with modern tools. The pathetic old micro-controllers that don't have on-board emulators, serial drivers, and interface logic are replaced by chips that are simple to use and way faster. I've started a controller project using the Open Embedded framework to provide the base. I've been able to cross off every standard feature as working in just a week and I am spending my time on just the applications and drivers unique to my companies' project. In a week I already have more functionality than the original programmers provided after three years of work. And for all the "but when I wrote everything I knew how everything worked complaint," is it really that hard to read a few howto's about someone else' project. I've written my own TCP/IP stack, I don't need to do it again, nor do I need to use the version I wrote for a company years ago. I've written a bunch of Ethernet drivers, writing even one again will bore me to death. True there was a sense of satisfaction to knowing that everything in a software product was the work of your own. But, who cares, been there done that in college or before should satisfy that craving. As bitbake chugged along for eight hours putting over 4,000 packages into my product, I couldn't care less that I wasn't even going to bother to read the names of the packages much less write them.
This isn't really that hard, even the old 802.11b service can handle this, a few years ago I worked for an ISP that serviced hotels and we setup these networks all the time. I even have a couple of patents on wireless security. The suggestions to use all 14 channels, lowering the power output with the same SSID works. You do want to physically separate the access points. Some people erroneously think that more power gets more connections. What you really are concerned with is that everyone on the same channel has to listen to all the other traffic from the other computers on the same channel. People also think that since channels 1, 6 and 11 don't overlap in frequency, that they are the only channels to use. The channels that overlap cause noise, but normally don't cause the clients to drop off. Get yourself a spectrum analyzer. I use Wi-spi from Metageeks which only costs about $200, you may want a couple. Next position your access points so that the close frequencies are furthest away from each other. Your goal is to create 14 overlapping circles of wireless activity that will cause the least interference with each other. In a single big ballroom you can draw a plan on paper in a box and figure it out. If it is a really big space there are usually support beams that you can also use. Walls, depending on the building material can cause your signal to do things you don't expect, so you need to get into the space and take some readings. I've seen some reenforced concrete walls kill most of the signal so that we could reuse channels right outside the room, while other walls allow most of the power to pass right through. We've also seen where we could actually place an access point outside on a light post and get great connectivity through windows. We've done this with multiple brands of access points, with good success. One other thing, don't forget the connection to the outside. A single T1 will not cut it for 500 users. Most services now don't care about being NATted, but its good to know if your presenter wants a dedicated IP.
Nichol Draper, yes I post under my real name, my finger prints are on file in California. My mother had a day care center and I was finger printed and put on file when I was a teenager. My name, address and phone number are in the phone book. My name is in the patent database on two patents. My wedding certificate in online in California. Code I've written is on numerous sites and registered in the Library of Congress. I could go on and on. Google me and you will find even more links including my web site. This life's about getting noticed. If you are afraid of getting your finger prints into a private database, something is wrong with you.
I never found accurate estimates to be all that difficult. I don't subscribe to the extreme/agile/scrum/what ever is the latest process is in the news. Create a design, mock up each page/dialog box whatever. Code one up, write your unit tests. Count up how many database tables you have, code up persistence to one and run your automated tests. Determine how many blocks of logic you will have and code up one and test it. You should have coded up the most difficult part in each category. Then simple math add up each part as though it will take as long as the longest part in each category.. Then as you complete each project, only count completely done parts, don't give partial credit. Recognize that if you estimate four days on a part and two days into it, you are pulled off, you still have four days that have to be made up. Thrashing eliminates all part work not fully completed. Now, if marketing, or your boss or whoever says, you missed this page, your estimate stands only for original design work. New features get new estimates. If you follow this and track your work through two or three projects, you will get better at determining the most difficult parts and learn to code those before you complete your estimate. After doing this for a few years, you will get projects for which you can see the end and you can give better estimates from the hip. But, never promise estimates to be more that +200% -50% accurate. I've had many bonuses tied to finishing on time and I always get my bonuses. Realize that I've architected over five projects with over a million dollar budgets and each took over a year to complete all phases, some multiple years. I also have managed teams from myself to a dozen programmers and support personal (testers, graphic artists, tech writers, etc..). My first project didn't go that well, but after multiple projects I learned how to do it correctly. Don't buy into the comments here that say since so many people do estimating badly, that it is impossible. Also, realize that you will have to read code from the programmers on your team and fire the non-performers. And last of all, ask the programmers on your team for their estimates, but don't use them, use your senior architect's estimates. If a programmer estimates long, there needs to be more training to show them how to code up whatever it is you are writing in the time the architect estimates. If they estimate short they also need training. You must also make sure that sub-tasks are broken down into ½ day to 2 days chunks. If a programmer doesn't finish the first sub-task in time, retrain or re-estimate. You may have a boss that comes in and says, how long will this take, I want the estimate now and I don't want you to do any design or prototyping first. Estimate how long it will take you to find a new boss and add two weeks for notice.
Why doesn't your email client notify the end-users that their attachment is too large to be sent? Why haven't you locked down installations avoid toolbar additions? If they need a PDF editor, why don't you get to their machine and install it? I could go on, but the point is if users are a pain, you may be the problem. I work in R&D, but at various times in my career I have had some IT tasks. I'm currently at a company that had a horrible R&D department before I came. We let four engineers go. Now we are releasing products faster than ever before and everybody loves us. If your users don't love you -- you should find a new career, with the level of friendliness your posts demonstrates may I suggest prison guard.
Why is Microsoft able to find these scumbags and the US government can't? Right before I read this I sent a phony phishing scam to the IRS because it perported to come from our government. If our government would go after these scams like it goes after legitimate tax-payers who are a little behind, the world would be a better place. Good for Microsoft.
So, things like the integrated circuit chips, Internet, personal computers, office applications, 3D rendering video graphic cards, social networks, cell phones, laptops, palm computers, not to mention that about half the patents ever registered were registered after the 1950s. Just be cause you are ignorant of improvements, and more are coming from outside the US doesn't mean that the pace has slowed. Sure some of the technology is used to play games with the mortgage industry. Some ideas like the video game consoles have realized such great improvements in the last five years, that I'll bet no one still plays pong, oh wait pong was invented after 1950. There is a technology industry that is making more money than the movie industry, so new technology pushes old technology aside. I'm 45, but I as a teenager wanted film cameras and a chemical dark room -- there's another entire industry replaced by new digital technology. Well I guess I can read about the new technologies in the newspaper -- ops there's another thing replaced by new technology. I'm a computer programmer, when I started programming, I had a chance of learning every programming language in use -- now there are frameworks for creating domain specific languages to program faster which only specific types of users will ever learn. So, measuring by patents awarded -- rate is increasing, measured by industries changed, rate is increasing, measured by available products, rate is increasing. So by what yard stick is the rate of technology change slowing down? Oh yardsticks were replaced by laser meters.
You obviously have weak leaders in your company. Take charge, insist that they make you scrum master, raise your pay and fire the dead weight. If they don't do what you say, use every available means of persuasion, coercion, threats and violence to get what you want. Whatever you do, don't post whinny "my manager doesn't do what I want" on slashdot. Be a man.
You've missed the point. Its not that word doesn't have its place. And in the academic world, progress is slow and trails the entrepenueral world. Yes word works for writing a traditional book or paper, but if your university was more up to date, a submission of a web site that linked to your sources would be better. Then instead of a 20th century thesis, you would have created a 21 century thesis that could be searched and linked by everyone. You could have comments like slashdot on each page and you could get instant feed back by your professors and the world. I have long been done with the academic world, but the only thing worse is the corporate world. I showed my last employer how a Wiki was a much better repository for technical information. It is easily accessible any where in the world, we tied the security into our active directory system so it was secure. But, alas they also failed to understand the significance of new approaches to text management. I've since left that company and I am doing the same thing for a company that gets it. And get this, I get paid a consulting fee by my previous employer to lookup documents in their own Wiki and email them back to them. I charge in block increments so that a one minute query gets me a quarter hour of pay.
Maybe the religions you have been introduced to are incompatible with science. But, there is a lot of science that cannot be shown/demonstraited/repeated. Do you not know of the heisenberg uncertainty principle. Do you not know that many scientific discoveries were postulates before they could be proven? What about all the postulates that are proven wrong? What about the particle theory of light and the wave theory of light, should you not study them, because one theory seems to contradict another? Many people believe in religion as what it is claimed, faith is not something you can prove, but I believe that being kind to fellow human beings will bring me a reward, am I deluded? Possibly, but isn't it worth testing the theory out during my short life-time. If it is a theory that proves to be false, I still believe that for the space of my human life that I will be better off. Do you refuse to use the equations for Newtonian Physics because they are only valid for objects around the mass of things we use everyday and not for very small or very large objects? So, you still maintain that there is not reason to follow religious beliefs because God hasn't knocked on your door? The golden rule do unto others as you would have done to you is bogus because your limited knowledge of religion cannot be met? Yes you are better off without religion and without science, because, you don't believe in science, you only believe in known science. You're not much better than the people who wouldn't believe the world was a sphere because you couldn't see the whole of it in your day. I am very religious, I see no conflict between religion and the theory of evolution, Darwin was a Monk and prayed every day, how do you think he was able to get past the limited scientific views of his day and propose a theory that has since had so many proof? If I didn't believe in God, I wouldn't feel so strongly that we can successfully clone humans, full or parts to solve some of the defects in our physical bodies. Does that shock you that religious people not only believe in science, but that religion encourages that belief? I went to a religious university, the professors there said God wants us to learn these things, that is why we are here.