I've both been a new developer, and also have trained plenty of new (and I mean new) developers.
Ask your lead developer (or the most senior developer on your team) questions without fear. If the answer is "figure it out", expect that answer without worry.
Try to learn what good, maintainable code looks like. If you're working with an ugly code base, tacking on top of it to get the quickest results is not the way to go. In my experience, any developer will appreciate taking the time to implement a good solution in bad code, rather than adding bad code. It's the PMs and managers who push for faster results, and doing a good job is a golden defense.
Starting out, you will likely be slow, but it's much better to question and learn how to improve your efficiency without sacrificing quality.
People are divided on this, but take a look at your typing ability. I may be influenced by a command line background, but it's my experience that has shown that programmers who cut and paste a lot, and don't make an effort to learn to touch type efficiently (that is with code, mavis beacon doesn't cut it here), are much more likely to replicate bad code and more likely to not fare so well in the company.
I've had to train some desperate hires, and I've had some really bad experiences with code written by people I'd qualify as poor to bad typists. Since the new programmers work almost entirely in PHP, the line I use is that I expect them to start to type "$this->" as effortlessly as they type their own name.
The typing approach is entirely up to debate, and I'm sure there are thousands of programmers much, much more talented than I, who disagree. I'm not going to defend it.
More important is questioning, and learning what it means to write clean, logical, maintainable code. Don't be intimidated, when questioned how an error came to be in code you wrote, I always found the best answer to be "programmer error". It happens, that's the learning process.
How code flows on a page is important, and a lot of the code I send back to new hires is accompanied by a second copy in which I merely moved things around and condensed functions to make it more readable, with only one or two actual code changes.
Look at some good code, look at some bad code, and the difference is often apparent at first glance. Remember that in a development environment, the initial exploratory process can be messy, but at the end of the day, the work you save might be reassigned and someone else will be dealing with it.
What surprises me most about the pro or anti Google opinions, is how quiet the open source supporters have been. This year we have a company developing both an open source web browser and an open source operating system for mobile computing, and people seem to be up in arms about it.
Considering NONE of us are required to use the official versions of either if we don't like something about it, what's there to complain about?
Well said! After the big discussions on Slashdot about Chrome and Google in general raising concerns on privacy, nitpicking about the term fanatic seems silly.
This is a reminder that Chrome is open source; open enough that a full fork retains all (desired) functionality. That seems to be exactly what "giving back to the open source community" seems to entail.
Cheers to Google. Whether you like Chrome or not, Google thinks it's innovative, and the community can adapt it or take from it as needed.
I wasn't quite clear on the fact that much, much more makes the iPhone undesirable. My post was meant to entirely be in the context of an iPhone alternative.
Why not an unlocked handset that works on ANY compatible technology carrier (INCLUDING AT&T/Cingular) with a proper SIM card?... I would be willing to pay a little bit more for it.
After all, I will not buy a certain PC if it ONLY works with AOL or Earthlink "service providers"...
Keep in mind this is the first phone release, and Android's open philosophy is a threat to cellphone providers who happily profit off of dependence. Google's business engine had to work as hard as it's engineering teams here, to get carriers on board. Of course T-Mobile wants this phone to be a T-Mobile phone.
I'm sure we'll see an expensive, unlocked handset running Android in the future. There are a lot of good reasons not to expect that the G1 should have been it. Bottom line, is right now the providers still hold all the cards. Android is an attempt to lessen their control over who can do what in the mobile world, which includes Google, as well as the individual.
3. No Exchange support, tethering, desktop sync, video or Skype. Some or all of these would be nice at launch but I assume they will be added fairly quickly by others though given it is an open-source platform.
Tethering and Skype are major concerns, both things that keep the iPhone undesirable. I also assume that on an open source platform these, and the other features you mention, will come soon, but I would definitely like some clarity beforehand.
"In response to a question about whether the device will be tetherable to a laptop, the company said that the G1 was "meant to be used as a mobile device, not as a tethered modem."
A simple "but of course, we expect many will use it so, as there are no inherent limitations that would prevent such functionality from being implemented" would have been nice. It could, of course, be a matter of keeping T-Mobile feeling secure about their network.
I think, on balance, I am going to wait until Android is available on other handsets or can be downloaded onto a handset of my choosing. The potential is still very much there with Android itself, but this version ain't it (at least for me). It is a shame really since I had such high hopes for the G1
I'm torn on this issue, since the heavy buzz of this phone going head-to-head with the iPhone (ignoring all the other smart phones out there), seems to place extra importance on the G1's success.
"Free Speech" doesn't mean that you get to say whatever you want to say all the time without consequences./quote.
Agreed there. If the child is meant to have learned a lesson here, her parents having sued the district hardly will have helped her in that regard. This only could have gotten to court through horribly irresponsible parenting. Regardless of whether or not a suspension is appropriate, punishment certainly is, and it should have come from her parents (in addition to the suspension, as well as in lieu).
College campuses are the one places LAN parties aren't needed (computers in dorm rooms are much more convenient). A local source for game servers, however, could be quite useful. I don't know how many of the popular games it's possible for these days, but when I was in college, properly implemented Quake 1, 2, and 3 servers would have been much appreciated.
Debian is a poor analogy because their release is all non-proprietary, but installing non-proprietary software is extremely easy. Try running "apt-cache search nvidia" on a fresh Debian install, without having updated the sources.list.
Even if it was at all difficult to install any proprietary software in Debian, the whole point is flawed. Debian doesn't want to ship with proprietary software IN their OS on install. There is no restrictions on actual use or development. You don't have to get into their official package repository to develop software that will install flawlessly with their release.
There are no awkward technical hoops to jump though. If some software requires newer libraries, clearly it's development objective wasn't to install for the stable release; something that the developers should be well aware of at every step of the process. Getting the software running is still possible of course, usually through instructions provided by the developers or on the Debian community support site.
All of these completely moot your DRM comparison, and I could go on and on. If anything, the two are opposite approaches to a platform release that has conditionals on what can come with it on install. Open and closed, it's beyond a stretch to say they have the same restricting effect.
Your example is counter to your point. If I lost my eyesight I'd still be able to operate any non-touch screen TV remote and listen to the news, sporting events, etc. The radio is hardly as convenient.
The word "conservatism" is being used to mean "the principles and practices of political conservatives" in that context. A new variant of principles and practices by political conservatives is quite obviously a legitimate condition and neoconservatism describes it without confusion. "Newstickwiththeold" certainly doesn't make sense, both as a word and as a conceptual breakdown of the term neoconservative.
You got the evidence to back up your claims of crime in England dropping? As to the Obama claim, look at his voting record on gun issues. All the proof you need is right there.
This sentence makes no sense as a response. Regardless of whether or not Obama's voting record now constitutes proof, it's utterly ridiculous to assume a direct comparison between the USA and the UK when it comes to things like gun crime (and remember, the parent post you responded to doesn't make that comparison, the grandparent post it's responding to does).
Mod parent up. True English has uses 'vet' in common speech all the time.
Typos aside (always understandable), is the issue here that Uvajed's post thought it interesting that the primary British news source used "vet" in the primary English-language manner?
Fascinating that it's become ubiquitous enough that it's normal use, by a source most likely to use it so, can be considered interesting. Considering BBC being a reputable news agency, I don't see any other way it really could be used. They'd certainly not use it as an abbreviation.
Put all objections and concerns aside for a second.
Honestly, isn't stuff like this why we all went into computer science and engineering in the first place? Crazy sci-fi ideas that have little to no practical value in the short (and often long) term.
Oh, definitely. I deal more with people in their mid-to-late-20s who have chosen web development as a career, and are unable to write professional code, do any sort of documentation, and in some cases even think abstractly.
This comic quite seriously is almost exactly how the code reviews I give go. I think I use the word "retarded" a lot, also, preceded by "This is the most" and followed by "thing I've ever seen."
I generally recommend ignoring web development as a career move for programmers who have the skill set to work elsewhere. Being a competent web developer is sort of like being a waiter at a 4-star restaurant. You have to have the talent/experience to get the good job, and you earn a much better salary than other waiters, but in the end, you're still in a field that any high schooler with no formal education can do.
I feel the same way about Android, incidentally. Now you're going to have a cellphone that's completely subsidized by another business in which the company has a virtual monopoly. And they'll be able to link their web content to their cellphone by adopting standards that the competition chooses not to (the nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from). They're treading a pretty fine line here, and things like the Mobile Street View working on most phones except the iPhone aren't going the help the anti-trust argument any.
I share the sentiment, but the iPhone makes me shudder more, by iTunes tie-in alone. The mobile market needs an open OS for these "next-gen" phones, and who's got the money/motivation/ability to deliver it? Android is definitely beneficial to Google, but all optimism remains in it being beneficial to us as well.
I suppose the best outcome might be Android's success, and a full fork that makes Google's version optional. Google's been subsidizing Firefox, after all, and that's worked out.
Can't anyone who meets the qualifications (35 years old, natural born US citizen) be a write-in?
If both of the big parties missed the deadlines, I really, really hope that they are denied their names on the ballot. Not because I don't want either to win, but because the rules are already stacked against 3rd party candidates enough that it's hardly appropriate for the 2 parties to be exempt from the same rules.
And yet before the bid, or any copyrights (I assume), were made / secured. If I get the domain name Berlin2028.com, it can hardly be argued that I should give it up if Berlin makes a bid for the 2028 Olympics.
I like to think of them as a different password I can set in case I forget the first one. What I enter, of course, is not a factually accurate answer to the question at all.
While I give technical interviews, which are quite necessary after 2-4 years experience, it is my non-technical boss who gives a silly test that he's put together from an internal doc initially put together as interview questions used in the past.
He does this solely to weed out people who are uncooperative or not especially interested in working at the company.
When it comes to the technical interviews, those are much more of an actual test (rather than a "hoop"), because the quality of talent that comes in the 2-4 year of verifiable experience group has ranged from good to horrible.
Then again, most of the applicants I interview are for web development, and even 10 years of working for companies that produce web sites can still mean no experience working on large projects with high standards for efficient code, database design, and documentation.
when people discuss free software in the open source sense they mean free as in speech.
No they don't.
If they did, it would be released into the public domain. Instead, it is copyrighted, with the restrictions in place relating to what that particular community thinks is an acceptable "price" for use, modification, and distribution rights.
You do understand that free speech works exactly as you describe here? I have the freedom to write a book stating my beliefs, but that right to free speech in no way implies my book is to be released into the public domain, or that it isn't implicitly my intellectual property and subject to copyright.
Free beer and free speech are simple analogies, but be careful about nit-picking with them.
Slashdot Mirror
I've both been a new developer, and also have trained plenty of new (and I mean new) developers.
Ask your lead developer (or the most senior developer on your team) questions without fear. If the answer is "figure it out", expect that answer without worry.
Try to learn what good, maintainable code looks like. If you're working with an ugly code base, tacking on top of it to get the quickest results is not the way to go. In my experience, any developer will appreciate taking the time to implement a good solution in bad code, rather than adding bad code. It's the PMs and managers who push for faster results, and doing a good job is a golden defense.
Starting out, you will likely be slow, but it's much better to question and learn how to improve your efficiency without sacrificing quality.
People are divided on this, but take a look at your typing ability. I may be influenced by a command line background, but it's my experience that has shown that programmers who cut and paste a lot, and don't make an effort to learn to touch type efficiently (that is with code, mavis beacon doesn't cut it here), are much more likely to replicate bad code and more likely to not fare so well in the company.
I've had to train some desperate hires, and I've had some really bad experiences with code written by people I'd qualify as poor to bad typists. Since the new programmers work almost entirely in PHP, the line I use is that I expect them to start to type "$this->" as effortlessly as they type their own name.
The typing approach is entirely up to debate, and I'm sure there are thousands of programmers much, much more talented than I, who disagree. I'm not going to defend it.
More important is questioning, and learning what it means to write clean, logical, maintainable code. Don't be intimidated, when questioned how an error came to be in code you wrote, I always found the best answer to be "programmer error". It happens, that's the learning process.
How code flows on a page is important, and a lot of the code I send back to new hires is accompanied by a second copy in which I merely moved things around and condensed functions to make it more readable, with only one or two actual code changes.
Look at some good code, look at some bad code, and the difference is often apparent at first glance. Remember that in a development environment, the initial exploratory process can be messy, but at the end of the day, the work you save might be reassigned and someone else will be dealing with it.
What surprises me most about the pro or anti Google opinions, is how quiet the open source supporters have been. This year we have a company developing both an open source web browser and an open source operating system for mobile computing, and people seem to be up in arms about it.
Considering NONE of us are required to use the official versions of either if we don't like something about it, what's there to complain about?
Well said! After the big discussions on Slashdot about Chrome and Google in general raising concerns on privacy, nitpicking about the term fanatic seems silly.
This is a reminder that Chrome is open source; open enough that a full fork retains all (desired) functionality. That seems to be exactly what "giving back to the open source community" seems to entail.
Cheers to Google. Whether you like Chrome or not, Google thinks it's innovative, and the community can adapt it or take from it as needed.
I wasn't quite clear on the fact that much, much more makes the iPhone undesirable. My post was meant to entirely be in the context of an iPhone alternative.
Why not an unlocked handset that works on ANY compatible technology carrier (INCLUDING AT&T/Cingular) with a proper SIM card?...
I would be willing to pay a little bit more for it.
After all, I will not buy a certain PC if it ONLY works with AOL or Earthlink "service providers"...
Keep in mind this is the first phone release, and Android's open philosophy is a threat to cellphone providers who happily profit off of dependence. Google's business engine had to work as hard as it's engineering teams here, to get carriers on board. Of course T-Mobile wants this phone to be a T-Mobile phone.
I'm sure we'll see an expensive, unlocked handset running Android in the future. There are a lot of good reasons not to expect that the G1 should have been it. Bottom line, is right now the providers still hold all the cards. Android is an attempt to lessen their control over who can do what in the mobile world, which includes Google, as well as the individual.
3. No Exchange support, tethering, desktop sync, video or Skype. Some or all of these would be nice at launch but I assume they will be added fairly quickly by others though given it is an open-source platform.
Tethering and Skype are major concerns, both things that keep the iPhone undesirable. I also assume that on an open source platform these, and the other features you mention, will come soon, but I would definitely like some clarity beforehand.
A simple "but of course, we expect many will use it so, as there are no inherent limitations that would prevent such functionality from being implemented" would have been nice. It could, of course, be a matter of keeping T-Mobile feeling secure about their network.
I think, on balance, I am going to wait until Android is available on other handsets or can be downloaded onto a handset of my choosing. The potential is still very much there with Android itself, but this version ain't it (at least for me). It is a shame really since I had such high hopes for the G1
I'm torn on this issue, since the heavy buzz of this phone going head-to-head with the iPhone (ignoring all the other smart phones out there), seems to place extra importance on the G1's success.
"Free Speech" doesn't mean that you get to say whatever you want to say all the time without consequences. /quote.
Agreed there. If the child is meant to have learned a lesson here, her parents having sued the district hardly will have helped her in that regard. This only could have gotten to court through horribly irresponsible parenting. Regardless of whether or not a suspension is appropriate, punishment certainly is, and it should have come from her parents (in addition to the suspension, as well as in lieu).
College campuses are the one places LAN parties aren't needed (computers in dorm rooms are much more convenient). A local source for game servers, however, could be quite useful. I don't know how many of the popular games it's possible for these days, but when I was in college, properly implemented Quake 1, 2, and 3 servers would have been much appreciated.
Debian is a poor analogy because their release is all non-proprietary, but installing non-proprietary software is extremely easy. Try running "apt-cache search nvidia" on a fresh Debian install, without having updated the sources.list.
Even if it was at all difficult to install any proprietary software in Debian, the whole point is flawed. Debian doesn't want to ship with proprietary software IN their OS on install. There is no restrictions on actual use or development. You don't have to get into their official package repository to develop software that will install flawlessly with their release.
There are no awkward technical hoops to jump though. If some software requires newer libraries, clearly it's development objective wasn't to install for the stable release; something that the developers should be well aware of at every step of the process. Getting the software running is still possible of course, usually through instructions provided by the developers or on the Debian community support site.
All of these completely moot your DRM comparison, and I could go on and on. If anything, the two are opposite approaches to a platform release that has conditionals on what can come with it on install. Open and closed, it's beyond a stretch to say they have the same restricting effect.
Your example is counter to your point. If I lost my eyesight I'd still be able to operate any non-touch screen TV remote and listen to the news, sporting events, etc. The radio is hardly as convenient.
The word "conservatism" is being used to mean "the principles and practices of political conservatives" in that context. A new variant of principles and practices by political conservatives is quite obviously a legitimate condition and neoconservatism describes it without confusion. "Newstickwiththeold" certainly doesn't make sense, both as a word and as a conceptual breakdown of the term neoconservative.
For American readers, that's about $3.66 right now -- plus shipping yourself to the UK.
CLEARLY worth the price, considering the benefits of leaving the US. ;)
You got the evidence to back up your claims of crime in England dropping? As to the Obama claim, look at his voting record on gun issues. All the proof you need is right there.
This sentence makes no sense as a response. Regardless of whether or not Obama's voting record now constitutes proof, it's utterly ridiculous to assume a direct comparison between the USA and the UK when it comes to things like gun crime (and remember, the parent post you responded to doesn't make that comparison, the grandparent post it's responding to does).
Mod parent up. True English has uses 'vet' in common speech all the time.
Typos aside (always understandable), is the issue here that Uvajed's post thought it interesting that the primary British news source used "vet" in the primary English-language manner?
Fascinating that it's become ubiquitous enough that it's normal use, by a source most likely to use it so, can be considered interesting. Considering BBC being a reputable news agency, I don't see any other way it really could be used. They'd certainly not use it as an abbreviation.
Put all objections and concerns aside for a second.
Honestly, isn't stuff like this why we all went into computer science and engineering in the first place? Crazy sci-fi ideas that have little to no practical value in the short (and often long) term.
Don't stop chasing the dream!
Oh, definitely. I deal more with people in their mid-to-late-20s who have chosen web development as a career, and are unable to write professional code, do any sort of documentation, and in some cases even think abstractly.
This comic quite seriously is almost exactly how the code reviews I give go. I think I use the word "retarded" a lot, also, preceded by "This is the most" and followed by "thing I've ever seen."
If they released the full source code, just wait for any enterprise distro to fork it and integrate it into their next release.
Easier answer: have your browser block all cookies, adding exceptions for the 20 websites you need them from (and can list off the top of your head).
I generally recommend ignoring web development as a career move for programmers who have the skill set to work elsewhere. Being a competent web developer is sort of like being a waiter at a 4-star restaurant. You have to have the talent/experience to get the good job, and you earn a much better salary than other waiters, but in the end, you're still in a field that any high schooler with no formal education can do.
I feel the same way about Android, incidentally. Now you're going to have a cellphone that's completely subsidized by another business in which the company has a virtual monopoly. And they'll be able to link their web content to their cellphone by adopting standards that the competition chooses not to (the nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from). They're treading a pretty fine line here, and things like the Mobile Street View working on most phones except the iPhone aren't going the help the anti-trust argument any.
I share the sentiment, but the iPhone makes me shudder more, by iTunes tie-in alone. The mobile market needs an open OS for these "next-gen" phones, and who's got the money/motivation/ability to deliver it? Android is definitely beneficial to Google, but all optimism remains in it being beneficial to us as well.
I suppose the best outcome might be Android's success, and a full fork that makes Google's version optional. Google's been subsidizing Firefox, after all, and that's worked out.
Can't anyone who meets the qualifications (35 years old, natural born US citizen) be a write-in?
If both of the big parties missed the deadlines, I really, really hope that they are denied their names on the ballot. Not because I don't want either to win, but because the rules are already stacked against 3rd party candidates enough that it's hardly appropriate for the 2 parties to be exempt from the same rules.
And yet before the bid, or any copyrights (I assume), were made / secured. If I get the domain name Berlin2028.com, it can hardly be argued that I should give it up if Berlin makes a bid for the 2028 Olympics.
I like to think of them as a different password I can set in case I forget the first one. What I enter, of course, is not a factually accurate answer to the question at all.
While I give technical interviews, which are quite necessary after 2-4 years experience, it is my non-technical boss who gives a silly test that he's put together from an internal doc initially put together as interview questions used in the past.
He does this solely to weed out people who are uncooperative or not especially interested in working at the company.
When it comes to the technical interviews, those are much more of an actual test (rather than a "hoop"), because the quality of talent that comes in the 2-4 year of verifiable experience group has ranged from good to horrible.
Then again, most of the applicants I interview are for web development, and even 10 years of working for companies that produce web sites can still mean no experience working on large projects with high standards for efficient code, database design, and documentation.
when people discuss free software in the open source sense they mean free as in speech.
No they don't.
If they did, it would be released into the public domain. Instead, it is copyrighted, with the restrictions in place relating to what that particular community thinks is an acceptable "price" for use, modification, and distribution rights.
You do understand that free speech works exactly as you describe here? I have the freedom to write a book stating my beliefs, but that right to free speech in no way implies my book is to be released into the public domain, or that it isn't implicitly my intellectual property and subject to copyright.
Free beer and free speech are simple analogies, but be careful about nit-picking with them.