And I'm all for the scientific method. Empirical observation leading to theory which can be confirmed, or denied, through thorough testing and peer review. One, two studies still do not a fact make. The outcome as presented here could as be influenced by numerous factors -- gender bias, as shown in a study, isn't necessarily all in the mind of a biased person, but can be the result of societal influences on either gender, for instance:
Again, my response was to the question posed in the summary. Your response, as far as I can determine, was only to the need of your own ego to try to "one up" some anonymous person you've never met, over the medium of the Internet. Get a life. Respond in context. I'm done here.
I _did_ RTFA. One study does not a fact make. You need to read some articles on study practices and statistics. The summary asked whether the conclusion of the study was just a gender stereotype. I'm not replying to the study so much as to the question asked in the summary.
Experience makes these points clear to me. Tech-friendly people are more open to persuasion through email -- email is their bread and butter. People who need to know, and store, a lot of details on a topic, are more open to persuasion through email -- email allows easy communication and storage of these facts. People who tend to do business on the golf course, or anyone who more typically does business face to face, is less persuadable via email.
Thank, get off my nuts, have a great day. When you finally get a clue, and get off your high horse, get back to me. I suppose that also means when you get out of high school. Like I said, one study does not a fact make.
When you're doing business with someone, you're doing business on multiple levels -- one level is the person you're doing business with, the other level is the service or product involved. Both are important -- some people are better at judging a person's business-worthiness than a product or service's value. Unfortunately, I think that also makes it easy for some people to be sold on a crap product by someone who puts out a shiny, well-polished persona, and can make it tough for a less social, less polished person to sell a perfectly viable service or product. However, if you're a good judge of people, you can often judge the sort of product or service they'd represent, or be capable of offering, whereas knowing the technical side gives you no such insight into the person.
I hear ya there, and used to feel like I was in the same boat. Practice makes perfect though -- the more f2f time you get, the more refined your skills become.
The more technologyically-friendly one is, the easier it is to persuade them by email. The more details-oriented one is, the easier it is to persuade them by email. The more "frat boy and golf games" on is, the harder it is, typically, to persuade them over email.
4a) Apparently you don't realize that the remainder of the season DOES start airing April 13th. Another 8 or 10 episodes I believe. Yes, after that, the series is, as of now, officially off the air. But the remaining episodes WILL air. The summary is not incorrect on this.
If I had any mod points, and hadn't commented in this discussion, I'd bury your flamebaiting, trollish, offtopic comment.
If you don't care, don't comment.
If you're commenting because, in some fashion, it makes you feel about yourself, you're pathetic. Cut down on your own pork life.
People have hobbies and interests. Just because this apparently isn't one of yours, doesn't give you the right, nor reason, to talk down on those who do enjoy it.
And finally, in case you somehow missed it, you're on Slashdot: News for Nerds. I'm a geek and a nerd. I also get out for hikes with my dog, and hit the fitness center at my apartment complex. Somehow I fail to see where Stargate news is somehow incongruous with having an otherwise active life.
You're dealing with a much more diverse Sci Fi tv-scape these days. And, SG-1 has actually had some similar success to ST -- it was bounced around various networks, but they kept producing new episodes thanks to cult fandom. There are SG conventions, though not as big nor widespread as Trekkie get togethers.
That said, I think the show is beat. I've been a fan for a longtime -- ever since the original movie, I'd hoped for a series, and was overjoyed when it moved off of Showtime onto channels I actually had. Unfortunately, I just don't see a lot of diversity anymore. Big new evil enemy gets defeated, big new evil enemy shows up. Wash, rinse, repeat.
As has been mentioned, once you've learned a few languages -- and learned how to use them well -- you can learn any language. Once you undertand that here are various flavors of data, and how to put them to use, once you understand separation of presentation and business logic -- whether that's OO or not -- when you know enough to understand that there are better/best practices, that different concepts apply to different situations, it simply becomes a matter of syntax and structure. I tend to prefer to dive into a new language -- I have a problem to solve, so I get my environment set up, and I start writing. First thing I do is probably check the web to get a clue on syntax. Sometimes that means language/API docs, sometimes forums, sometimes enthusiast web pages or blogs, or something article-based like 4GuysFromRolla. If I find I need, or want, to learn more than I can get from the web, then it's time to buy a book.
Class learning environments, however, are virtually useless to me. I tend to get bored and antsy. Lab environments were OK, but not great... professional environments with a local guru are excellent, but the past few years, that guru as tended to be me. I'm thinking of diving back into Java, however, as I now work in an environment with a lot of hardcore Java people (I'm primarily a.NET enterprsie engineer myself.) I've also given some thought to, finally, getting around to picking up COBOL, as we also have a 15ish year old mainframe application that uses VSAM for storage, and a team of highly skilled, old school COBOLers. In order to understand structures and rules within the database, I need to grok COBOL. I'll probably get a hold of some COBOL source, walk though the corresponding green screens, look up or ask about stuff I don't understand, and simply immerse myself.
Most $50 books on Amazon are going to qualify for free Super Saver shipping, and they never take more than 2 days to show up for me after they ship, which is typically the same day as I order. This was true for me in Rochester, NY as well as in Albany, NY, so I'd have to think that it's pretty typical, not just locational.
You can put either one on top of your resume if you KNOW the technology and are capable of delivering. And, it's not HR you need to worry about -- it's the techies. If you can't sell yourself to the technical crowd, but you CAN sell yourself to HR, you're a sham, and nothing more. Besides, you don't want to work at a company where HR is more responsible for hiring a technical person than the technical staff are. I was interviewed by two developers, an application architect, the open systems manager and the VP of IS for my current position. HR simply did the paperwork.
There are crap software engineers. There are crap web developers -- I've seen their steaming piles of crap too. I am talking about being an engineer in the purer sense -- understand the workings of the technology, and doesn't matter what your presentation layer is, you'll be able to apply the technology. Again, I'll allude to attending user group meetings, industry conferences, and to reading topical works. Be an engineer.
PS, I came from the web. I started freelancing static websites in the later mid 90s. Before that, I played with BASICA, GW-BASIC and QBasic from the age of 6 or 7 on -- thanks, Mom and Dad, for that book on Tandy BASICA instead of Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator. I was writing spreadsheets for quality control operations in the early mid 90s. I got into ASP in 98, which is when I started getting into RDBMS. With.NET, I started to make the transition from the web into OO. (I'd worked with VB, but I hardly think that counts, even though, yes, I was doing desktop apps in the late 90s.)
I was bitter once. I got laid off after 9/11, couldn't find a job to save my life... or, rather, my car.
You have to bounce back -- if you don't, you shouldn't be in the field to begin with. Same thing applies if you can't find a job today -- you probably need a new profession. IT is booming, the Internet bubble was a temporary setback. Not all IT is INTERNET.
Not everything can be offshored -- I've seen successful offshoring, but I've also seen a large number of disappointed businesses who feel they were overcharged for sub-par return on investment in off-shored projects.
There is always a need for business analysis and system architecting. Someone thousands of miles away is going to have a very difficult time truly knowing a business, and understanding its needs. There is ALWAYS going to be a need for capable, creative people who know the technology AND the business to be local.
"support; some networking; DBA; web development; project management; even working on the client side"
These aren't fields. They're roles. They're roles that will always play a part in IT. As others have mentioned, you should focus on what you like. At the same time, don't become overly-specialized -- if you pigeonhole yourself, you risk your job security in the long run.
Personally I'm a.NET enterprise software engineer, with solid proficiency in SQL Server 2000 and 2005 -- at a large company with a variety of dedicated resources, I wouldn't call hire on as a DBA, but at a small or medium size company, I would feel quite comfortable doing so. I can hack my way through server and network administration, but mostly in a development role -- I wouldn't sign on as anything more than an entry-level role in server or network engineering. (And I wouldn't even sign on for entry-level, because software is where my heart is at.)
"Web development" has become a silly term. Be an engineer, know the technology, and desktop vs. web won't make a difference. Be a "tech," and again, you're pigeonholing yourself, and putting long term job security in the pooper. Make sure you're proficient in current technology, but keep an eye to the future. Attend user group meetings. Attend industry conferences.
You shouldn't base your future on specializing in one of these roles you've specified, unless that's what you want to do, and nothing else, ever. You're better off exploring theory, being capable of applying practice. Improve your communication skills. Learn something new every month. Read the Pragmatic Bookshelf series, I think they might help enlighten you. Read well-known works, the classics, the new hotness. I can't say it enough: don't pigeonhole yourself.
I fully expect to see an improvement in my search results... for about five minutes, until the SEO spammers crank out their next method of making the Internet less efficient.
The mind is a network of neurons. Neural nets attempt to emulate this. The closer they come to emulating the workings of our mind, the greater the likelihood of substructures evolving within that network that may function not as originally intended. Again, read Pinker's work, for starters. Evolutionary biology pretty much describes this scenario.
The reference to Norman's work was in the context of "why" robots need emotion, how that would benefit us in terms of their operating parameters. If a robot is "concerned" about humans, without explicit safety rules being written into their software, but instead a complicated network of weighted nodes emulating "concern," then the programming becomes that much less complex, and the outcome, that much more effective.
A lot of what's being done in neural network tech today is analogous to human sensory perception, like vision and hearing. Just because the artificial neural net you're using today to predict stocks or the weather has zero potential to develop something like "emotion," doesn't mean that more human-like networks won't. Read Donald Norman's Emotional Design and Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works, and get back to me.
"Roams" threads... not really. Someone else had already pointed out that you basically said exactly what I had already said. The fact that you're throwing a tantrum here simply keeps me entertained, what can I say, it's a slow week, post-rollout on a project I'd been working on for months. Would you like to come over, have a beer, and watch some paint dry with me?
Slashdot Mirror
And I'm all for the scientific method. Empirical observation leading to theory which can be confirmed, or denied, through thorough testing and peer review. One, two studies still do not a fact make. The outcome as presented here could as be influenced by numerous factors -- gender bias, as shown in a study, isn't necessarily all in the mind of a biased person, but can be the result of societal influences on either gender, for instance:
. htm
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/wp/access-2002/gender_bias
Again, my response was to the question posed in the summary. Your response, as far as I can determine, was only to the need of your own ego to try to "one up" some anonymous person you've never met, over the medium of the Internet. Get a life. Respond in context. I'm done here.
I _did_ RTFA. One study does not a fact make. You need to read some articles on study practices and statistics. The summary asked whether the conclusion of the study was just a gender stereotype. I'm not replying to the study so much as to the question asked in the summary.
Experience makes these points clear to me. Tech-friendly people are more open to persuasion through email -- email is their bread and butter. People who need to know, and store, a lot of details on a topic, are more open to persuasion through email -- email allows easy communication and storage of these facts. People who tend to do business on the golf course, or anyone who more typically does business face to face, is less persuadable via email.
Thank, get off my nuts, have a great day. When you finally get a clue, and get off your high horse, get back to me. I suppose that also means when you get out of high school. Like I said, one study does not a fact make.
When you're doing business with someone, you're doing business on multiple levels -- one level is the person you're doing business with, the other level is the service or product involved. Both are important -- some people are better at judging a person's business-worthiness than a product or service's value. Unfortunately, I think that also makes it easy for some people to be sold on a crap product by someone who puts out a shiny, well-polished persona, and can make it tough for a less social, less polished person to sell a perfectly viable service or product. However, if you're a good judge of people, you can often judge the sort of product or service they'd represent, or be capable of offering, whereas knowing the technical side gives you no such insight into the person.
I hear ya there, and used to feel like I was in the same boat. Practice makes perfect though -- the more f2f time you get, the more refined your skills become.
The more technologyically-friendly one is, the easier it is to persuade them by email. The more details-oriented one is, the easier it is to persuade them by email. The more "frat boy and golf games" on is, the harder it is, typically, to persuade them over email.
4a) Apparently you don't realize that the remainder of the season DOES start airing April 13th. Another 8 or 10 episodes I believe. Yes, after that, the series is, as of now, officially off the air. But the remaining episodes WILL air. The summary is not incorrect on this.
If I had any mod points, and hadn't commented in this discussion, I'd bury your flamebaiting, trollish, offtopic comment.
If you don't care, don't comment.
If you're commenting because, in some fashion, it makes you feel about yourself, you're pathetic. Cut down on your own pork life.
People have hobbies and interests. Just because this apparently isn't one of yours, doesn't give you the right, nor reason, to talk down on those who do enjoy it.
And finally, in case you somehow missed it, you're on Slashdot: News for Nerds. I'm a geek and a nerd. I also get out for hikes with my dog, and hit the fitness center at my apartment complex. Somehow I fail to see where Stargate news is somehow incongruous with having an otherwise active life.
You're dealing with a much more diverse Sci Fi tv-scape these days. And, SG-1 has actually had some similar success to ST -- it was bounced around various networks, but they kept producing new episodes thanks to cult fandom. There are SG conventions, though not as big nor widespread as Trekkie get togethers.
That said, I think the show is beat. I've been a fan for a longtime -- ever since the original movie, I'd hoped for a series, and was overjoyed when it moved off of Showtime onto channels I actually had. Unfortunately, I just don't see a lot of diversity anymore. Big new evil enemy gets defeated, big new evil enemy shows up. Wash, rinse, repeat.
As has been mentioned, once you've learned a few languages -- and learned how to use them well -- you can learn any language. Once you undertand that here are various flavors of data, and how to put them to use, once you understand separation of presentation and business logic -- whether that's OO or not -- when you know enough to understand that there are better/best practices, that different concepts apply to different situations, it simply becomes a matter of syntax and structure. I tend to prefer to dive into a new language -- I have a problem to solve, so I get my environment set up, and I start writing. First thing I do is probably check the web to get a clue on syntax. Sometimes that means language/API docs, sometimes forums, sometimes enthusiast web pages or blogs, or something article-based like 4GuysFromRolla. If I find I need, or want, to learn more than I can get from the web, then it's time to buy a book.
... professional environments with a local guru are excellent, but the past few years, that guru as tended to be me. I'm thinking of diving back into Java, however, as I now work in an environment with a lot of hardcore Java people (I'm primarily a .NET enterprsie engineer myself.) I've also given some thought to, finally, getting around to picking up COBOL, as we also have a 15ish year old mainframe application that uses VSAM for storage, and a team of highly skilled, old school COBOLers. In order to understand structures and rules within the database, I need to grok COBOL. I'll probably get a hold of some COBOL source, walk though the corresponding green screens, look up or ask about stuff I don't understand, and simply immerse myself.
Class learning environments, however, are virtually useless to me. I tend to get bored and antsy. Lab environments were OK, but not great
Is that still the case though? Five years ago in Rochester, I had the same problem, but last year, it was down to ~2 days.
Most $50 books on Amazon are going to qualify for free Super Saver shipping, and they never take more than 2 days to show up for me after they ship, which is typically the same day as I order. This was true for me in Rochester, NY as well as in Albany, NY, so I'd have to think that it's pretty typical, not just locational.
You can put either one on top of your resume if you KNOW the technology and are capable of delivering. And, it's not HR you need to worry about -- it's the techies. If you can't sell yourself to the technical crowd, but you CAN sell yourself to HR, you're a sham, and nothing more. Besides, you don't want to work at a company where HR is more responsible for hiring a technical person than the technical staff are. I was interviewed by two developers, an application architect, the open systems manager and the VP of IS for my current position. HR simply did the paperwork.
There are crap software engineers. There are crap web developers -- I've seen their steaming piles of crap too. I am talking about being an engineer in the purer sense -- understand the workings of the technology, and doesn't matter what your presentation layer is, you'll be able to apply the technology. Again, I'll allude to attending user group meetings, industry conferences, and to reading topical works. Be an engineer.
.NET, I started to make the transition from the web into OO. (I'd worked with VB, but I hardly think that counts, even though, yes, I was doing desktop apps in the late 90s.)
PS, I came from the web. I started freelancing static websites in the later mid 90s. Before that, I played with BASICA, GW-BASIC and QBasic from the age of 6 or 7 on -- thanks, Mom and Dad, for that book on Tandy BASICA instead of Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator. I was writing spreadsheets for quality control operations in the early mid 90s. I got into ASP in 98, which is when I started getting into RDBMS. With
Somebody's bitter.
... or, rather, my car.
I was bitter once. I got laid off after 9/11, couldn't find a job to save my life
You have to bounce back -- if you don't, you shouldn't be in the field to begin with. Same thing applies if you can't find a job today -- you probably need a new profession. IT is booming, the Internet bubble was a temporary setback. Not all IT is INTERNET.
Not everything can be offshored -- I've seen successful offshoring, but I've also seen a large number of disappointed businesses who feel they were overcharged for sub-par return on investment in off-shored projects.
There is always a need for business analysis and system architecting. Someone thousands of miles away is going to have a very difficult time truly knowing a business, and understanding its needs. There is ALWAYS going to be a need for capable, creative people who know the technology AND the business to be local.
"support; some networking; DBA; web development; project management; even working on the client side"
.NET enterprise software engineer, with solid proficiency in SQL Server 2000 and 2005 -- at a large company with a variety of dedicated resources, I wouldn't call hire on as a DBA, but at a small or medium size company, I would feel quite comfortable doing so. I can hack my way through server and network administration, but mostly in a development role -- I wouldn't sign on as anything more than an entry-level role in server or network engineering. (And I wouldn't even sign on for entry-level, because software is where my heart is at.)
These aren't fields. They're roles. They're roles that will always play a part in IT. As others have mentioned, you should focus on what you like. At the same time, don't become overly-specialized -- if you pigeonhole yourself, you risk your job security in the long run.
Personally I'm a
"Web development" has become a silly term. Be an engineer, know the technology, and desktop vs. web won't make a difference. Be a "tech," and again, you're pigeonholing yourself, and putting long term job security in the pooper. Make sure you're proficient in current technology, but keep an eye to the future. Attend user group meetings. Attend industry conferences.
You shouldn't base your future on specializing in one of these roles you've specified, unless that's what you want to do, and nothing else, ever. You're better off exploring theory, being capable of applying practice. Improve your communication skills. Learn something new every month. Read the Pragmatic Bookshelf series, I think they might help enlighten you. Read well-known works, the classics, the new hotness. I can't say it enough: don't pigeonhole yourself.
The point is, editing means editing of grammar as well as spelling. Spellcheck doesn't check grammar. "on IT" is not proper grammar. Next.
I fully expect to see an improvement in my search results ... for about five minutes, until the SEO spammers crank out their next method of making the Internet less efficient.
See my post above on picocells ...
Somehow I suspect the first cell phones probably didn't route to then non-existent VoIP service ...
Isn't this just like the consumer-grade picocells the telecoms have been talking about placing in customer homes? Boosts local signal, routes to VoIP?
Oh yeah, where's that, cell block F? F, for "full of yourself"? or perhaps F, for "F yourself"?
Not especially. *awaits the flood of M$ is evil replies*
The mind is a network of neurons. Neural nets attempt to emulate this. The closer they come to emulating the workings of our mind, the greater the likelihood of substructures evolving within that network that may function not as originally intended. Again, read Pinker's work, for starters. Evolutionary biology pretty much describes this scenario.
The reference to Norman's work was in the context of "why" robots need emotion, how that would benefit us in terms of their operating parameters. If a robot is "concerned" about humans, without explicit safety rules being written into their software, but instead a complicated network of weighted nodes emulating "concern," then the programming becomes that much less complex, and the outcome, that much more effective.
A lot of what's being done in neural network tech today is analogous to human sensory perception, like vision and hearing. Just because the artificial neural net you're using today to predict stocks or the weather has zero potential to develop something like "emotion," doesn't mean that more human-like networks won't. Read Donald Norman's Emotional Design and Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works, and get back to me.
"Roams" threads ... not really. Someone else had already pointed out that you basically said exactly what I had already said. The fact that you're throwing a tantrum here simply keeps me entertained, what can I say, it's a slow week, post-rollout on a project I'd been working on for months. Would you like to come over, have a beer, and watch some paint dry with me?