Whatever you wish to say about 'real corporations' is fine with me. There are many different kinds of working environments in the world. I have no turf to protect and I am neither ignorant nor arrogant.
What I was simply saying is that in your first post you very much sounded like you were bashing people who are intimately in-depth with one particular language. Especially if those people resist learning 20 new languages simply for the sake of having to learn them. That is a waste of everyone's time and money, especially if the project can be accomplished in the language the programmer is most comfortable with and happy using. Not everyone's reason for resistance is 'protecting their turf'. If you are trying to talk specifically about some people who you know, in a very finite view, then that is fine.
Personally, I love to program in Java and would move most of our corporation to the platform if the opportunity were to present itself. In a small generalist corporation, it may be beneficial to have 20 different programming languages being learned on a superficial basis by 20 different people, none of them experts on any one particular field. Generally, but not always, you get what you pay for in the end product with a group of people like that too. You've heard the saying "Good at everything but exceptional at nothing". Like I said, that does not apply to everyone as some people can be absolutely exceptional at anything and everything they want, and those people are exceptional talents, but you get my point. In a much larger corporation, such as the one I currently work at, software goes into production cycles on scales of 10-15 years. In-house talent and support dictates how projects get implemented. A very small, finite number of excellent programming languages, a small group of programming language experts, and reuse and homogenization at every possible step saves not only time but money.
Intelligent people are not just the ones who are the most flexible, but are absolutely the ones who are the most singular and focused on the job at hand. And on top of it, if they are passionate about their work too, then more power to them.
I agree that with your point that learning should never end and that adaptation and flexibility is key to growth. But, you need to learn respect and be understanding of those people who are most in-depth in their work too. On your point about flame-wars being stupid, I completely agree.
The second post of yours is much more intelligent and much less ignorant and arrogant than your first post. I rolled my eyes when I read your first post.
Depth is far more valuable than breadth, especially in a real corporation. In a real corporation, the objective is to make money, not see how many different disparate technologies can be strewn around and later supported for the next 10-15 or more years. The objective is also to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible. If Java does the job better than than Java gets chosen for our enterprise project. If Java and do the job equally well, but we already have a Java programmer and not a programmer, then Java gets chosen. Every minute you spend barely getting deeply involved in a language, such as you claim to do in your first post, makes you more useless to a corporation, not more useful.
From an educational standpoint, I agree than both depth and breadth are of utmost importance. But from a business standpoint, I completely disagree with you.
What you have written is not only completely incorrect, but absolutely NOT 'Interesting' or whatever the moderators decided to give you just recently.
People who program for a living, especially people like myself who program in a manufacturing R&D facility, program to make things work. 'Dicking around' costs money and jobs. Serious programmers program to solve problems and accomplish goals among other reasons. Programming for fun is just one of the benefits enjoyed by serious programmers.
You are either an ignorant high school student/dropout or worse an ignorant/arrogant college flunky. People go into construction because they are not intelligent enough to become programmers.
It means such software implementations as massive/distributed databases, massive collaborative development environments, J2EE, groupware backends, webserving, various application servers, NFS, NIS, print servers, redundancy, fail-over, massive scalability, etc.
Basically, everything that does not normally exist on a desktop computer or small office server. Personal computing is a very small tip of the iceberg in the overall picture of computing needs and power.
The post by erroneus gets a +3? Look, just because 99% of the Slashdot crowd is in high school or college, who's only jobs include mowing lawns and dishwashing at McDonald's, does not mean taxes are by any means simple. TurboTax is an absolutely excellent software package for managing your own taxes when needed, especially if you own your own small business.
In this case, Open Source would never be able to touch the amount of detail that TurboTax needs to gaurantee through the IRS and State governments, especially given the fact that they cover state taxes in all 50 states. IMO, only an IRS/government created and maintained OSS project would be able to match it.
Fortunately, not ALL scientists believe and act this way. As a scientist myself, I believe in the truth at all cost, regardless of outcome. Yes, there are some scientists who do not believe the way I do. NOT by lying, but using and taking some particularly specific actions exactly like you pointed out, although that certainly does NOT speak for the majority. Extremely rigorous peer review is the best solution to this problem.
The real problem is the news media grabbing the first piece of sensational non-news before any rigorous analysis and blabbing it all over. Then the idiot/ignorant masses converge and there you have it.
You are complaining about the x86 version of Solaris. Hardware problems are non-existent on the Sparc platform. And you are complaining about features that have NOTHING to do with Enterprise Server computing. USB keyfob? WTF? If you want Linux, then install Linux. Linux is slowly reaching perfection one day at a time. But, if you want almost limitless power, scalability, reliability, and security on huge SMP systems and distributed networks today then you choose an OS like Solaris. If you are someone looking to use Solaris to play MP3 files then you have no idea what you are doing.
Wow, are you jealous of your father-in-laws Mercedes Benz or what? What a wanker. Plus, have you ever heard of a car alarm/immobilizer? Maybe one of you should have tried RTFM before owning or driving the Mercedes Benz. Of course, you could always pay to have the car alarm/immobilizer disabled to idiotize your father-in-laws Mercedes. And if you do that, please let me know where it is parked so that I can borrow it when you are not looking. LMAO.
I believe in reality and only reality. Make believe is exactly that...make believe. The universe is not determined by mysticism outside of the human mind. The universe exists, is determined by unbreakable rules, and nothing in the universe is above those rules. End of the story. All of those rules can be determined and eventually will be.
As far as 'unprovable', the term is highly misleading. To be more specific, if there is a fabric which exactly explains the universe, mathematics, so be it. If the physical results of that fabric are repeatable, predictable, and disprovable then that is it.
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
- Albert Einstein"
This quote is often misunderstood and taken out of context. It is as much as statement that the universe exists mathematically, but mathematics itself is both empirical and unempirical.
"Also, on a side note, I feel that uncertainty is necessary for there to be a God. QM uncertainty is the physical means to a free will which allows us the ability to accept or reject God."
Once again proving that most of the people in world are, in the end, as dumb as a brick. Here is a clue: The universe is not ruled by mysticism/make-believe. Religion and any concept of a god is completely make-believe invented by humans for humans. Physics is reality.
1) You are an empirical physicist and not a mathematician. You should limit your comments to that point.
2) The universe exists mathematically. Without mathematics there would only be observation without understanding.
3) There does not need to be physical testability or direct relation to experiment for mathematics to be true. For each physically testable experiment there is an exponential amount of mathematical 'fabric' which exists to determine it. Mathematics itself is both empirical and unempirical. If physicists create incorrect mathematical models, it is not the mathematics which is false, but the model itself.
4) Aside from your second paragraph, which is poorly thought out, the rest of your post is spot-on.
By your post you are simply a kid at best and an ignorant computer science major wannabe at worst.
It is almost gauranteed that you neither use *BSD whatsoever (which means you are using it as a hypothetical response to argument based on other people's supposed reputation of it) nor use *BSD 100% of the time for every task.
The difference is with Mac OS X is that I can use Unix with a Mac interface at the time. 100% of the time.
Your high school friends or fellow freshman in college are idiots. Also, most likely you are nothing more than some computer tech support moron who is trying to pass himself off as a real programmer/CIO/power user/etc.
You are absolutely correct. Unions are the biggest problem the US labor and consumer market faces today. Your post is one more reason why labor unions are no longer needed anymore.
Obviously you are completely wrong. I develop in Objective C/Cocoa and Java and I completely disagree with you. I have nothing to do with Carbon whatsoever.
I have spent the past 11 years working with Linux. Talk about a fucking mess, Linux is a fucking mess. If you do not fuck with OS X, such as installing Linux code underneath, it is one of the most beautiful OS's I have ever worked with.
"Or maybe it's just a "grass-is-greener" syndrome."
No, that is not true at all. Your comment is just a simple cop-out on the truth.
I am a huge gearhead and have traveled overseas. The cars the Asians and Europeans drive are unbelievable. There is no "grass is greener" syndrome, the grass IS greener over there.
The main problem with a lot of technology, automotive or electronic, are the ridiculous laws in the US.
For automotive technology, you can blame the completely fucked up California emmisions laws on why we don't get most of the highest end import cars in the US. Add on top of that the ridiculous amounts of "crash safety" laws forbidding other cars from being imported. We only get cars here in the US, generally speaking, if they are watered down or stripped down and must be built back up to their international counterparts. A simpler method would be to make public transportation in California cheaper and more accessible and teach people how to drive. But that is another topic for another day.
This is also true about electronics. The FCC has ridiculous amounts of physical and political/financial control over electronic devices and the radio spectrum. If the FCC was cut off at its needs and monitored by an independent organization, a lot more electronic devices would make their way into the US at a much sooner rate.
Slashdot Mirror
Proof? References? Empirical data and analysis?
Whatever you wish to say about 'real corporations' is fine with me. There are many different kinds of working environments in the world. I have no turf to protect and I am neither ignorant nor arrogant.
What I was simply saying is that in your first post you very much sounded like you were bashing people who are intimately in-depth with one particular language. Especially if those people resist learning 20 new languages simply for the sake of having to learn them. That is a waste of everyone's time and money, especially if the project can be accomplished in the language the programmer is most comfortable with and happy using. Not everyone's reason for resistance is 'protecting their turf'. If you are trying to talk specifically about some people who you know, in a very finite view, then that is fine.
Personally, I love to program in Java and would move most of our corporation to the platform if the opportunity were to present itself. In a small generalist corporation, it may be beneficial to have 20 different programming languages being learned on a superficial basis by 20 different people, none of them experts on any one particular field. Generally, but not always, you get what you pay for in the end product with a group of people like that too. You've heard the saying "Good at everything but exceptional at nothing". Like I said, that does not apply to everyone as some people can be absolutely exceptional at anything and everything they want, and those people are exceptional talents, but you get my point. In a much larger corporation, such as the one I currently work at, software goes into production cycles on scales of 10-15 years. In-house talent and support dictates how projects get implemented. A very small, finite number of excellent programming languages, a small group of programming language experts, and reuse and homogenization at every possible step saves not only time but money.
Intelligent people are not just the ones who are the most flexible, but are absolutely the ones who are the most singular and focused on the job at hand. And on top of it, if they are passionate about their work too, then more power to them.
I agree that with your point that learning should never end and that adaptation and flexibility is key to growth. But, you need to learn respect and be understanding of those people who are most in-depth in their work too. On your point about flame-wars being stupid, I completely agree.
The second post of yours is much more intelligent and much less ignorant and arrogant than your first post. I rolled my eyes when I read your first post.
Depth is far more valuable than breadth, especially in a real corporation. In a real corporation, the objective is to make money, not see how many different disparate technologies can be strewn around and later supported for the next 10-15 or more years. The objective is also to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible. If Java does the job better than than Java gets chosen for our enterprise project. If Java and do the job equally well, but we already have a Java programmer and not a programmer, then Java gets chosen. Every minute you spend barely getting deeply involved in a language, such as you claim to do in your first post, makes you more useless to a corporation, not more useful.
From an educational standpoint, I agree than both depth and breadth are of utmost importance. But from a business standpoint, I completely disagree with you.
Your point is taken.
Reality hurts.
A three button USB mouse is $25 at Wal-Mart. ALL USB mice work in Mac OSX. Stop the stupid ignorance and ignorant ranting.
"non astronomy sciences" are less geeky? What the hell planet are you on? Yeah, sure, Quantum Physics is not very geeky at all.
What you have written is not only completely incorrect, but absolutely NOT 'Interesting' or whatever the moderators decided to give you just recently.
People who program for a living, especially people like myself who program in a manufacturing R&D facility, program to make things work. 'Dicking around' costs money and jobs. Serious programmers program to solve problems and accomplish goals among other reasons. Programming for fun is just one of the benefits enjoyed by serious programmers.
You are either an ignorant high school student/dropout or worse an ignorant/arrogant college flunky. People go into construction because they are not intelligent enough to become programmers.
That is wrong for Adobe Acrobat 7.0 and Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Pro. The toolbar is now found in a DLL file which is a bitch to remove.
It means such software implementations as massive/distributed databases, massive collaborative development environments, J2EE, groupware backends, webserving, various application servers, NFS, NIS, print servers, redundancy, fail-over, massive scalability, etc.
Basically, everything that does not normally exist on a desktop computer or small office server. Personal computing is a very small tip of the iceberg in the overall picture of computing needs and power.
The post by erroneus gets a +3? Look, just because 99% of the Slashdot crowd is in high school or college, who's only jobs include mowing lawns and dishwashing at McDonald's, does not mean taxes are by any means simple. TurboTax is an absolutely excellent software package for managing your own taxes when needed, especially if you own your own small business.
In this case, Open Source would never be able to touch the amount of detail that TurboTax needs to gaurantee through the IRS and State governments, especially given the fact that they cover state taxes in all 50 states. IMO, only an IRS/government created and maintained OSS project would be able to match it.
Fortunately, not ALL scientists believe and act this way. As a scientist myself, I believe in the truth at all cost, regardless of outcome. Yes, there are some scientists who do not believe the way I do. NOT by lying, but using and taking some particularly specific actions exactly like you pointed out, although that certainly does NOT speak for the majority. Extremely rigorous peer review is the best solution to this problem.
The real problem is the news media grabbing the first piece of sensational non-news before any rigorous analysis and blabbing it all over. Then the idiot/ignorant masses converge and there you have it.
You are complaining about the x86 version of Solaris. Hardware problems are non-existent on the Sparc platform. And you are complaining about features that have NOTHING to do with Enterprise Server computing. USB keyfob? WTF? If you want Linux, then install Linux. Linux is slowly reaching perfection one day at a time. But, if you want almost limitless power, scalability, reliability, and security on huge SMP systems and distributed networks today then you choose an OS like Solaris. If you are someone looking to use Solaris to play MP3 files then you have no idea what you are doing.
Wow, are you jealous of your father-in-laws Mercedes Benz or what? What a wanker. Plus, have you ever heard of a car alarm/immobilizer? Maybe one of you should have tried RTFM before owning or driving the Mercedes Benz. Of course, you could always pay to have the car alarm/immobilizer disabled to idiotize your father-in-laws Mercedes. And if you do that, please let me know where it is parked so that I can borrow it when you are not looking. LMAO.
By fabric I meant language. A language which exactly defines the universe.
I believe in reality and only reality. Make believe is exactly that...make believe. The universe is not determined by mysticism outside of the human mind. The universe exists, is determined by unbreakable rules, and nothing in the universe is above those rules. End of the story. All of those rules can be determined and eventually will be.
As far as 'unprovable', the term is highly misleading. To be more specific, if there is a fabric which exactly explains the universe, mathematics, so be it. If the physical results of that fabric are repeatable, predictable, and disprovable then that is it.
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
- Albert Einstein"
This quote is often misunderstood and taken out of context. It is as much as statement that the universe exists mathematically, but mathematics itself is both empirical and unempirical.
"Also, on a side note, I feel that uncertainty is necessary for there to be a God. QM uncertainty is the physical means to a free will which allows us the ability to accept or reject God."
Once again proving that most of the people in world are, in the end, as dumb as a brick. Here is a clue: The universe is not ruled by mysticism/make-believe. Religion and any concept of a god is completely make-believe invented by humans for humans. Physics is reality.
1) You are an empirical physicist and not a mathematician. You should limit your comments to that point.
2) The universe exists mathematically. Without mathematics there would only be observation without understanding.
3) There does not need to be physical testability or direct relation to experiment for mathematics to be true. For each physically testable experiment there is an exponential amount of mathematical 'fabric' which exists to determine it. Mathematics itself is both empirical and unempirical. If physicists create incorrect mathematical models, it is not the mathematics which is false, but the model itself.
4) Aside from your second paragraph, which is poorly thought out, the rest of your post is spot-on.
"Of course I agree to that, nothing is perfect in everything."
That is an incorrect statement and is based completely on your opinion.
i.e. The finite set of rules which govern the universe are without fault.
By your post you are simply a kid at best and an ignorant computer science major wannabe at worst.
It is almost gauranteed that you neither use *BSD whatsoever (which means you are using it as a hypothetical response to argument based on other people's supposed reputation of it) nor use *BSD 100% of the time for every task.
The difference is with Mac OS X is that I can use Unix with a Mac interface at the time. 100% of the time.
Your high school friends or fellow freshman in college are idiots. Also, most likely you are nothing more than some computer tech support moron who is trying to pass himself off as a real programmer/CIO/power user/etc.
You are absolutely correct. Unions are the biggest problem the US labor and consumer market faces today. Your post is one more reason why labor unions are no longer needed anymore.
Which is exactly why I switched to Mac OS X. I haven't looked back since.
Obviously you are completely wrong. I develop in Objective C/Cocoa and Java and I completely disagree with you. I have nothing to do with Carbon whatsoever.
I have spent the past 11 years working with Linux. Talk about a fucking mess, Linux is a fucking mess. If you do not fuck with OS X, such as installing Linux code underneath, it is one of the most beautiful OS's I have ever worked with.
"Or maybe it's just a "grass-is-greener" syndrome."
No, that is not true at all. Your comment is just a simple cop-out on the truth.
I am a huge gearhead and have traveled overseas. The cars the Asians and Europeans drive are unbelievable. There is no "grass is greener" syndrome, the grass IS greener over there.
The main problem with a lot of technology, automotive or electronic, are the ridiculous laws in the US.
For automotive technology, you can blame the completely fucked up California emmisions laws on why we don't get most of the highest end import cars in the US. Add on top of that the ridiculous amounts of "crash safety" laws forbidding other cars from being imported. We only get cars here in the US, generally speaking, if they are watered down or stripped down and must be built back up to their international counterparts. A simpler method would be to make public transportation in California cheaper and more accessible and teach people how to drive. But that is another topic for another day.
This is also true about electronics. The FCC has ridiculous amounts of physical and political/financial control over electronic devices and the radio spectrum. If the FCC was cut off at its needs and monitored by an independent organization, a lot more electronic devices would make their way into the US at a much sooner rate.