Yes, I'm 33 and I'm a COBOL developer. No, I've no idea how that happened either...
Don't worry, I'm 22:P (although I'm COBOL by day, VB/C++ by night), but to counter your argument about naming variables/documenting code... try telling that to the OTHER 50 PEOPLE who touched it before me.
The 10,000 line code thing was just an example, I've worked at 2 companies so far (1 year each now) and each one had quite a few, huge programs. You touch what you want, and get out hoping you don't screw something else up (and many of the senior programmers have slipped up, at least at my other job) Believe it or not, some people code for job security, so making it as obscure and confusing as possible means they are more likely to stay in the company, since few people spot check their work as they do it. Designing programs is easy, maintenance/scope creep are where programs start getting messy.
Sorry, I must apologize. When I was learning for my career, I never thought typing up business letters correctly on a forum with 'nerds' who would most likely understand the correct meaning, would ever come up when coding for core business applications.
I'll try my best to get my priorities straight for you Mr. Anonymous, and I hope to impress you with my new learning's the next time we meet.
christ, the company that runs Runescape can just restore the the items back to the kid who was robbed.
Sadly, they don't. The company (Jagex) is slipping in customer support as the company 'grows' (too many people to help with too few staff), they have a valid reason not to restore the items though (too much effort, can't determine if its the rightful owner, etc.).
Although, now you can no longer trade/give items as quickly, so forcing someone to log in/hacking their account and giving their entire bank of items is impossible, but some saw this as a bad thing, and hate them for it. If it prevents physical violence issues like this, then maybe it was for the greater good... The company has balls to try new things, I'll give them that much.
My apologies, like I was saying, I hardly use it. I knew it sounded funny though, but since spell checker didn't care, I figured I would go with the flow.
Thanks for the assumptions. No, most COBOL programs are NOT accounts payable, and DONT run for just 8 minutes, and DONT handle just 100k of memory.
I have seen plenty of COBOL code (one program containing over 10,000 lines), now try reading through it and understanding the scope of each variable, when the working storage itself takes up 2,000 lines of code (at least 1,000 variables, ALL global, ALL being used 'randomly' throughout the entire program). These are the programs that no one touches, because of fear that the system is just too complex. This is why these things are not rewritten for the newest/popular programming language.
While a program like this is more efficient (because you don't have to allocate/free memory at all during execution) it is very hard to understand. This is one of the tradeoffs between newer languages as well. Now, some may want to argue that allocate/free times are 'negligible', but to some companies that process 24/7, every bit literally counts. I'm not for COBOL or trying to promote it though, I wouldn't mind a more easily readable language, but EVERY language has it's problems.
Yes, if we follow the "rewrite for the newest method", we would never have a stable and reliable platform. Hell, lets just write in assembler, then rewrite it all for C, then rewrite it all for COBOL, then C++, then VB, then JAVA, then C# then whatever new language is out and is "popular" the next year (AJAX? RUBY on rails? Honestly, I don't know whats the 'in' thing this year)
Disclaimer: that's probably not the order you want to rewrite them in.
I'm pretty sure, the fathers who are currently paying child support, would love to forget his now ex-wife/troubles and forget the lessons about trusting a person first in a relationship, and do it all over again... and again.. and again...
if I can do what you do, and do it well (in a skirt)?
I think the GP was saying something about cat ears... I have yet to see a girl work with cat ears on... I have found his ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to his newsletter. Oh and that IT girl's newsletter because I find her intriguing.
This is pretty much the same state our (USA) measurement system is in. I personally wouldn't mind using centimeters/kilometers/grams opposed to our "less" useful system.
But you are right, the problem is that it requires EVERYONE to change, which no one does. When I want to hear kph, I always get mph regardless. So keeping 2 measuring systems in my head is hard enough.
It's kind of like languages. When you are surrounded by a language the first 20 years of your life, its hard to 'think' in another language in your head even if you do learn to speak another language fluently. You would almost need the next 20 years of not speaking your native language, and I'm pretty sure when I ask how fast car 'x' can go here, I'm going to get mph in the response, and no, me immigrating to a place that uses kph for 20+ years won't change the system over here.
And if you wish to take that route, then the many maps in Starcraft were the original "mods". Warcraft 3 just took most of Starcraft and made it 3D with a "hero" system. Guess that's why I never really enjoyed WC3, but loved Starcraft to death (SC2 and its now many 'expansions')
There's your problem. Just there, emphasis mine. Welcome to the world of "I don't care what you think, my definition of the word is the right one". And btw, his use of the word nerd is good. Just check it out here [google.com]
Emphasis mine, you're putting words into people's mouths. No, it's not that "I don't care what you think", I'm stating a personal opinion.
The following link seems to point more to nerd being intelligent (more than a geek), which is what I'm saying. To call someone intelligent for playing 36 WoW characters all day... He may be "smart" to use the "tools" (if you read the original article several links down to the actual forum post) to run this setup, but that's about it. Whether he is smart enough to know when to just move on in life, play another game rather than beating the game 32 times with 32 shamans, I'll let you decide.
Then he would be nerd? "News for Nerds" is what it's called, useful news that help you "learn new shit alla time".
The only people who have been helpful and informative were nerds who knew stuff.
I still have yet to meet a geek who watches nothing but star wars (star trek, star gate, whatever) all day, tell me something new/interesting/useful, because they are merely being entertained by technology and doing nothing useful with it.
For one to argue "I'm being entertained and learning at the same time!" then look at the qualifier word "and", and notice you are doing more, thus deserve the title of nerd (someone who is smart).
What's with people using the word nerd incorrectly?
He's a LOSER plain and simple, a geek at best.
To me, GEEK, means: fascinated by technology, completely clueless how it even works
NERD means: knows technology and how it works, useful to society and isn't locked in basement playing D&D (or WoW) all day, every day like GEEKS.
Although a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person. was found on a dictionary site... which nerd being stupid/irritating/ineffectual don't sound like a nerd to me. BUT this is because it's origin of the word, and the definition changed over time.
Well duh, this way, those on the list can contact all the others on the list, and form a group! Imagine... millions(?) of them create their own group, and private little forums now!
Reliability is another; in all three of your searches once you get beyond the first page, the results become rather harder to identify - unless you can rely on your users to know that a boat is tagged as an octopus, as are some toys, a hand..
Still hitting a 50% chance of aardvark on page 5. Understandable I suppose, but then again this is one search engine. I'm sure you can "prune" results by searching zoo sites only.
Copyright? Understandable, but what about "fair use"? I'm sure there's a legal debate within that.
once you know the database being used, the accuracy of robust image comparison functions normally breaks 90%,
How will you figure what database is used if one is selected randomly (just because I use google as an example, doesn't mean it will be that, or even a generic search engine)? If the program is going to archive all the images on the internet of a broad range (not just animals) then we are talking a big database, not a problem with storing nowadays, but to have it sort through tons of images and do image processing on all to see if a photo is like another one would severely hinder the rate it can process, meaning a 1% success rate in text based processing is far higher accounts created per second than 1% success in images.
Now throw in something where IPs are only allowed to create an account/whatever it is per day on that IP, you can help.
Combine multiple solutions, and alter them. Unbreakable against brute force? Impossible, because we all know a million monkeys will type out a Shakespeare novel. To say you can make a system 100% secure is only wishful thinking.
See above comment A database the size of the internet that picks the nth item from a randomly selected search engine/photo sharing site, that this program can supposedly parse out random noise/image effects on each image on each engine, and then compare all these within a matter of seconds?
Now you will say: they will develop a program that search's google images and compare the images. Then I will say: alter the images, pick the nth result, use another site/search engine (facebook/myspace if you want). Hell, we invented "tagging" images with "relevant" info. I'm sure you will find something, the internet is your already human identified database.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I'm 33 and I'm a COBOL developer. No, I've no idea how that happened either...
Don't worry, I'm 22 :P (although I'm COBOL by day, VB/C++ by night), but to counter your argument about naming variables/documenting code... try telling that to the OTHER 50 PEOPLE who touched it before me.
The 10,000 line code thing was just an example, I've worked at 2 companies so far (1 year each now) and each one had quite a few, huge programs. You touch what you want, and get out hoping you don't screw something else up (and many of the senior programmers have slipped up, at least at my other job) Believe it or not, some people code for job security, so making it as obscure and confusing as possible means they are more likely to stay in the company, since few people spot check their work as they do it. Designing programs is easy, maintenance/scope creep are where programs start getting messy.
Sorry, I must apologize. When I was learning for my career, I never thought typing up business letters correctly on a forum with 'nerds' who would most likely understand the correct meaning, would ever come up when coding for core business applications.
I'll try my best to get my priorities straight for you Mr. Anonymous, and I hope to impress you with my new learning's the next time we meet.
christ, the company that runs Runescape can just restore the the items back to the kid who was robbed.
Sadly, they don't. The company (Jagex) is slipping in customer support as the company 'grows' (too many people to help with too few staff), they have a valid reason not to restore the items though (too much effort, can't determine if its the rightful owner, etc.).
Although, now you can no longer trade/give items as quickly, so forcing someone to log in/hacking their account and giving their entire bank of items is impossible, but some saw this as a bad thing, and hate them for it. If it prevents physical violence issues like this, then maybe it was for the greater good... The company has balls to try new things, I'll give them that much.
It's funny and sad...how imaginary pixels can run people's lives to do horrible things in a physical world.
My apologies, like I was saying, I hardly use it. I knew it sounded funny though, but since spell checker didn't care, I figured I would go with the flow.
Thanks for the assumptions. No, most COBOL programs are NOT accounts payable, and DONT run for just 8 minutes, and DONT handle just 100k of memory.
I have seen plenty of COBOL code (one program containing over 10,000 lines), now try reading through it and understanding the scope of each variable, when the working storage itself takes up 2,000 lines of code (at least 1,000 variables, ALL global, ALL being used 'randomly' throughout the entire program). These are the programs that no one touches, because of fear that the system is just too complex. This is why these things are not rewritten for the newest/popular programming language.
While a program like this is more efficient (because you don't have to allocate/free memory at all during execution) it is very hard to understand. This is one of the tradeoffs between newer languages as well. Now, some may want to argue that allocate/free times are 'negligible', but to some companies that process 24/7, every bit literally counts. I'm not for COBOL or trying to promote it though, I wouldn't mind a more easily readable language, but EVERY language has it's problems.
Yes, if we follow the "rewrite for the newest method", we would never have a stable and reliable platform. Hell, lets just write in assembler, then rewrite it all for C, then rewrite it all for COBOL, then C++, then VB, then JAVA, then C# then whatever new language is out and is "popular" the next year (AJAX? RUBY on rails? Honestly, I don't know whats the 'in' thing this year)
Disclaimer: that's probably not the order you want to rewrite them in.
While a joke, I must disagree/explain. It does not require you to use all uppercase.
The only problem I have with COBOL is that every variable is a global variable, defined at program startup.
I'm pretty sure, the fathers who are currently paying child support, would love to forget his now ex-wife/troubles and forget the lessons about trusting a person first in a relationship, and do it all over again... and again.. and again...
if I can do what you do, and do it well (in a skirt)?
I think the GP was saying something about cat ears... I have yet to see a girl work with cat ears on... I have found his ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to his newsletter. Oh and that IT girl's newsletter because I find her intriguing.
This is pretty much the same state our (USA) measurement system is in. I personally wouldn't mind using centimeters/kilometers/grams opposed to our "less" useful system.
But you are right, the problem is that it requires EVERYONE to change, which no one does. When I want to hear kph, I always get mph regardless. So keeping 2 measuring systems in my head is hard enough.
It's kind of like languages. When you are surrounded by a language the first 20 years of your life, its hard to 'think' in another language in your head even if you do learn to speak another language fluently. You would almost need the next 20 years of not speaking your native language, and I'm pretty sure when I ask how fast car 'x' can go here, I'm going to get mph in the response, and no, me immigrating to a place that uses kph for 20+ years won't change the system over here.
I believe "maps" aren't really mods, sorry.
And if you wish to take that route, then the many maps in Starcraft were the original "mods". Warcraft 3 just took most of Starcraft and made it 3D with a "hero" system. Guess that's why I never really enjoyed WC3, but loved Starcraft to death (SC2 and its now many 'expansions')
Ok... what will it take to make javascript shirt then?
Citation needed? Where did you pull these numbers from?
Image above: The L-1011 aircraft takes off carrying the Pegasus XL rocket under its belly. Image credit: NASA
Image above: The Pegasus XL rocket is released from a NASA B-52 aircraft. Photo credit: NASA/ Dryden
You know... some would consider this child porn nowadays...
There's your problem. Just there, emphasis mine. Welcome to the world of "I don't care what you think, my definition of the word is the right one". And btw, his use of the word nerd is good. Just check it out here [google.com]
Emphasis mine, you're putting words into people's mouths. No, it's not that "I don't care what you think", I'm stating a personal opinion.
The following link seems to point more to nerd being intelligent (more than a geek), which is what I'm saying. To call someone intelligent for playing 36 WoW characters all day... He may be "smart" to use the "tools" (if you read the original article several links down to the actual forum post) to run this setup, but that's about it. Whether he is smart enough to know when to just move on in life, play another game rather than beating the game 32 times with 32 shamans, I'll let you decide.
Then he would be nerd? "News for Nerds" is what it's called, useful news that help you "learn new shit alla time".
The only people who have been helpful and informative were nerds who knew stuff.
I still have yet to meet a geek who watches nothing but star wars (star trek, star gate, whatever) all day, tell me something new/interesting/useful, because they are merely being entertained by technology and doing nothing useful with it.
For one to argue "I'm being entertained and learning at the same time!" then look at the qualifier word "and", and notice you are doing more, thus deserve the title of nerd (someone who is smart).
What's with people using the word nerd incorrectly?
He's a LOSER plain and simple, a geek at best.
To me, GEEK, means: fascinated by technology, completely clueless how it even works
NERD means: knows technology and how it works, useful to society and isn't locked in basement playing D&D (or WoW) all day, every day like GEEKS.
Although a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person. was found on a dictionary site... which nerd being stupid/irritating/ineffectual don't sound like a nerd to me. BUT this is because it's origin of the word, and the definition changed over time.
*cough* mod parent UP
Well duh, this way, those on the list can contact all the others on the list, and form a group! Imagine... millions(?) of them create their own group, and private little forums now!
No kidding... I agree, because who wants to connect digitally to a wooden lawn set...?
I don't know, perhaps if you listened to GP, you would try step 1 more than ONCE and realize what is really going on?
Reliability is another; in all three of your searches once you get beyond the first page, the results become rather harder to identify - unless you can rely on your users to know that a boat is tagged as an octopus, as are some toys, a hand..
Still hitting a 50% chance of aardvark on page 5. Understandable I suppose, but then again this is one search engine. I'm sure you can "prune" results by searching zoo sites only.
Copyright? Understandable, but what about "fair use"? I'm sure there's a legal debate within that.
once you know the database being used, the accuracy of robust image comparison functions normally breaks 90%,
How will you figure what database is used if one is selected randomly (just because I use google as an example, doesn't mean it will be that, or even a generic search engine)? If the program is going to archive all the images on the internet of a broad range (not just animals) then we are talking a big database, not a problem with storing nowadays, but to have it sort through tons of images and do image processing on all to see if a photo is like another one would severely hinder the rate it can process, meaning a 1% success rate in text based processing is far higher accounts created per second than 1% success in images.
Now throw in something where IPs are only allowed to create an account/whatever it is per day on that IP, you can help.
Combine multiple solutions, and alter them. Unbreakable against brute force? Impossible, because we all know a million monkeys will type out a Shakespeare novel. To say you can make a system 100% secure is only wishful thinking.
See above comment A database the size of the internet that picks the nth item from a randomly selected search engine/photo sharing site, that this program can supposedly parse out random noise/image effects on each image on each engine, and then compare all these within a matter of seconds?
Hmm.. no database for any random item you want? Aardvarks
.jpg names.
Octopus
Zebra
Now you will say: they will develop a program that search's google images and compare the images. Then I will say: alter the images, pick the nth result, use another site/search engine (facebook/myspace if you want). Hell, we invented "tagging" images with "relevant" info. I'm sure you will find something, the internet is your already human identified database.
Don't like animals? "Pick the image that has chinese food in it" "Pick the license plate that has pennsylvania (or oranges) in it" The broad range of random ideas/topics are endless. You parse the tag info, and show them a set of pictures with randomized