Yeah, this one is the worst. These low-complexity sites started to have more rules. Things like minimum 8 chars, mix of case, at least one number and one letter...
Now, for all these low priority sites, I have to remember permutations of my password.
I think he just doesn't see the world of 'regular' programmers. Has he heard of things like SAP or People Soft or SharePoint.
All of these offer pretty regular people to write applications and web applications.
Next comes the point you make that I will just reiterate. Programming is a skilled job. I taught high school computer science. I don't know how long its been since you were in high school, but most students can't even understand assigning a variable properly. If they can't get it in algebra, they don't get it in cs. That's for even basic programming. For anything more complex, it really takes another level.
The point about the web is valid to a certain extent. You can't just 'learn' it and be happy. It's a process of constant learning and research and working with the community. I can't think of a field that changes so much. I doubt AngularJS is crazy complicated, but darn it, I haven't even touched it and I'd have to learn it a new in all its complexities and idioms if I want to work on it.
You learn a trade like construction, you will learn what a 2x4 is and how to frame and that is eternal knowledge. Not so with writing software.
Lastly is programming culture. He doesn't spend enough on this point, but its a big thing that is affecting even good programmers. The constant desire to learn the same thing in a different way is something that you probably need to be a bit autistic as he says. I can't explain what happened. I used to get so involved in a game like Baldur's Gate, I'd spend weeks so focussed on it. I'd to the same with programming. I have no desire to do that anymore. But, I know some people who still have that. Good on them. I'm hardly normal, but if I'm feeling the edge, imagine an actual normal person:P
To top it off, getting involved in software development used to be easier when more people were hired. Today, I'm finding developers need to write documentation of all sorts, figure out the requirements, code it up, write up the test cases, figure out the environment issues, do the database work...
Basically do everything. Some companies even have teams dedicated to these tasks, but they don't have enough skilled people to not have the developer do it with the speed at which companies have to operate.
In previous times, you could indeed have a skilled engineer design the system. Write a proper document. Then hand off some UI work to some application developer or even a junior developer. They would take the time to explain the system to the test team, who would then know how to use it and thus craft a test plan. All these people would be able to be involved.
But that's no the world we live in today. Everyone wants speed and moving fast, without building the long term technical base. This reduces the number of people capable of entering the field in a useful way.
So many political opinions are viable within any party IF you frame it correctly.
Somehow many anarchist/libertarians end up on the progressive/leftist portion of political because they are against corporation/banks/police/war.
Similarly, many anarchist/libertarians end up on the 'right' because they are against corporations/banks/police/war/government excess..
I'll give my own example. I grew up in pretty conservative Islam. Now, as I grew up, I was still a Muslim. I could sit around and interpret the texts any which way I want and I could have a decent conversation and be a part of *most* Muslim communities. I didn't pray, didn't really believe in any of the rules, barely fasted... yet I was still by in large welcomed in *most* Islamic communities.
Eventually, I left Islam and would not be called a cultural Muslim or an ex-Muslim or whatever label you want. In practical things, I believe and act pretty much the same. Yet, by denying God and Mohamed was God's messenger/perfect man, suddenly I am shunned. I knew that going in. People suddenly stopped communicating.
The point I am making here, is that whatever practical issues I had with Islam, I could deliberate and discuss with people as long as I didn't threaten the Islamic identity and Islamic power. The moment I did, my opinion becomes meaningless.
The same is largely true of politics.
People think Climate Change is merely science. It is not. By admitting the 'science' you are automatically subscribing to a whole host of political initiatives from carbon taxes, road tolls, increased government spending...
But all that has nothing to do with the science. In some ideal world, climate change science could be independent of policy. But that is not the world we live in today.
How many scientists say we must act on global warming and have more taxes, more government spending...
Buying into climate change MEANS buying into the political policies of 'the other team'. Hence you are more likely to reject it the science.
The same is true again of religion. Evolution is pretty convincing. I know many Muslims who believe in Evolution as well. Some kind of God guided evolution:P But much better than the creation story.
In any case, however, if buying into evolution means rejecting god, siding with secularists... then they are likely to just ignore the science of evolution.
I'd be willing to wager that if the climate science was presented to republications without any stipulation of Big government / Left political action, most would not fight it.
And just to emphasize, there is no reason climate change should entail carbon taxes or anything of hte like. Those are all policy tools we choose. We could just as easily pay the oil companies extra money for them to deveolop green energy. We could just as easily reduce healthcare spending and entitlement spending, and use that money to build levies, green power....
It's not what we need. We've always had what we need. It's about getting everyone to use the same thing.
Basically we have debates on screen layout, networking... other APIs. We've been building such APIs for decades.
It is just hard to get everyone to use the same API.
We need HTML+javascript, because for whatever reason that worked to get the world moving. Maybe it would have better if the web just ran off perl scripts or python scripts or QT application or TCL or whatever, but it didn't.
It began as a markup language (more to display documents like Word). Then it moved to become dynamic pages. Again like adding VBScripting to Word. Now we keep hacking and putting stuff on top of it to make it a full fledged programming environment.
We can hope for niceness, but this seems to be repeated over and over and our field. Yet, somehow, things get made.
However, maybe I'm just jaded, but the fault is not with the MBA, it is largely with us (engineers/developers). The MBAs think highly of themselves and value themselves and attempt to maximize their own power.
That is no different from any other group of people (doctors, teachers, lawyers, accountant, trades people...).
Most engineers/developers don't seek to maximize their power and value themselves quite low. In a sense, we (as a collective group) don't respect ourselves, yet we somehow think MBAs should respect us? The world sadly does not work like that.
Be it unions, professional organizations, credentials, or just having high alpha type personalities in your profession, you need that respect.
While you held your ground and acted in a way that demands respect, 95% of engineers/developers don't. MBA types are right to think "I wouldn't pay some nerd X money".
Most developers/engineers are either push overs or uncooperative grumps. They're not assertive professionals (me included)
Do you think they'd treat a lawyer or doctor like that?
It has more to do with the lawyer or doctor, than it does with the MBA.
Yeah, but really you should be allowed to poach all customers and what not.
If the company values you, they should be making your life 'nice' so you stay. The problem is most employees don't even value their own knowledge base. Many still think in terms of only being paid when I am working.
When in reality, you should be paid heavily for what you know. Know key customers... you should be being paid not to leave and take them with you. Are you the only one who knows how to setup the work VPN? You should be being paid for that knowledge...
We see a lot of these articles. It is not about ageism or anything of the like. In every industry there are always people willing to work for less, work harder, working with less standards, take shortcuts...
Most other industries, put in some barriers. Those that don't... well... let's just say they're not for most people looking for good work.
Doctors, lawyers, teachers, trades people, nurses, dentists, accountants... all have some kind of union or professional association to enforce working conditions and standards.
Then again, there are two kind of engineers and software developers.
Those that view it as a career. They want to do an honest days work for an honest days pay.
Those that view as greatness or changing the world.
That ultimately determines how you view it. For me at least, I'm in the honest days work for honest days pay.
This is why I'm a big believer in simple taxation. Sales Tax (to capture consumption) Income Tax (to capture income) Property Tax (to handle local infrastructure) Wealth/Inheritance Tax (if you have to.... to prevent a concentration of wealth)
If something needs to paid for, we pay for it by raising the taxes for everyone. Playing around with all these specific taxes and proxy taxes and sin taxes... just creates massive complexities
We'd all take transit if our work was right beside a subway station and there was a subway station next to our home.
All sin-taxes or fines should NEVER go to revenue. Speeding tickets, smoking taxes, alcohol taxes... rather they should go to 'victims' of said activity. Speeding ticket revenue goes into a pool for accident victims. Smoking taxes goes to help those who got lung cancer from smoking...
As best as possible it should go to the victim. I know it can complicated and I don't pretend it would be perfect, but it would definitely be more honest and transparent and have less corruption.
And yes, there are ways to do things without taxes. Non-profits, pay per use, subscriptions... are all ways to do things without taxes. For example, let us suppose a community wanted to build it's own ISP. But they can't convince the whole populace. Rather than taxing the whole populace, they could people a stake in a non-profit entity to build it out. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. But no taxation money flows into it.
Money influences politics isn't really an explanation. It gives the impression people just buy off politics.
Almost every such policy is partly money, partly ideology, partly special interest, partly regional politics...
My brother used to be an engineer, and is now in patent law. He genuinely believes that patent law is essential to protecting IP so Western businesses can thrive and long term intellectual property is protected.
I heard a similar story on TVO (Canada's version of PBS). A bunch of lawyers and such talking about free trade and competition. They genuinely believe they are fighting the good fight on behalf of Western industry.
Now of course, it just so happens they benefit very much from this patent business.
So there is a real ideology behind this patent system. People really do believe. Think about politicians who speak about free trade. What idea do they push? They push the idea that the Western world can still thrive via education and IP. So how do we protect this IP? Yep patents. without patents everything is made cheap and their whole intellectual basis for the 'new economy' goes out the window.
I don't agree with their ideology. I'm just stating that people believe in that ideology and so they base their assumptions and what not on it.
Then yes, there is money form lawyers, big companies... do try and influence politics.
This is not unlike say teacher unions. Many genuinely believe education is the future and education will solve any number of problems. It just so happens of course that they benefit from the union and tenure system.
So there is this ideology that education solves all problems. It is what will allow us to compete globally and keep our standard of living. again, I don't agree with this ideology. I'm just stating what they say.
Then they ally themselves as allys of politicians and ideology and money...
It's all a very complex intertwined system. Thinking all of politics is just people in briefcases buying off votes is just silly.
The real devil is and will always be ideology, institutions, special interests...
On the contrary. We just need to use existing languages. And make use of good libraries and good patterns.
Most new languages offer very little. Most of the good changes are in the libraries.
Offline web-applications? They need a good caching mechanism of web requests / responses. Easily done as a library. They might need a background updater/fetcher. Easily done as a library again.
Now there a lot of details to work out. And perhaps you can have a common library for the caching mechanism to coordinate between client and server. I've worked on something like this and it can be very tricky. I don't want to discount the complexity. But it is nothing that needs a new language. Just some good libraries and patterns.
I'll put a little twist on it as often even when we speak of 'science' we can use 'facts' that are not truly 'facts'.
I think science is a process that uses logic, experimentation, mathematics, hypothesize... to arrive at conclusions.
Religion uses belief to arrive at conclusions.
For example, the idea of God has no other basis... except the belief in God. You can't experiment on it, use mathematics, hypothesize and test...
You will never get a religious person to say "if this is done... then this should happen religiously... and if it does not happen, then my faith is wrong"
Now, let's take a whacky scientific theory that many would say is 'belief'. Let's say string theory. It is an interesting theory. There is math involved. It has to fit in with the rest of what we know about physics, quantum physics. There's a variety of tests that have been proposed to detect if it is accurate or not. It is possible given enough and energy to perform such tests and get a result which would determine if string theory is true or not.
Real support costs money. Most people aren't willing to pay the proper cost for it.
The next best example of something we all own and often need troubleshooting is a car.
Routine car things are costly enough (oil change...). But that's the equivalent of running a virus scan or defrag.
If you ever have a real problem where something isn't working, it is costly. Diagnostic work? Even costlier and no guarantee it will work.
And the PC is ever more complex as you mod it will all kinds of stuff. Custom hardware. Custom software installed on it. Custom configuration.
Now, how much do you think it will cost you to fix a problem with your car that had it's engine replaced with a more powerful model, software modded... and all the other fancy things car modders do? Yeop... it's going to cost you a hell of a lot more.
And with cars, the normal answer is to just replace parts as a whole.
If you have a problem with some application crashing. Would you consider it valid support if they just said, let's try replacing your ram or upgrading your video card. Cost $500. And no guarantee of working.
And yes, car manufacturers do offer warranties. But they're typically void if you do anything to mod the car.
You'd no doubt not find that acceptable. You want them to fix the software.
Computers are just that complex. And for the rest of the industry, it is heavily cost driven.
The real issue is regulation. As you point out conflict of interest.
I hope we all learned about conflict of interest from the great recession of 2008 with respect to the financial sector. They came out with new products/services that the regulatory bodies hadn't dealt with and in many cases, reduces regulation.
That is to say, anytime you grant some powerful organization a new power or tool, it needs to be examined for conflict of interest and other pitfalls. Seems reasonable.
What hasn't happened is regulation on government. Well that is not true. Historically, we have regulation on government dating all the way back to English common law.
The government was granted the right to enforce the law. Many centuries have passed and we have pretty reasonable laws to regulate government in how it enforces law (warrants, search and seizure, trial, juries...) It's not perfect and the regulation varies, but it is actually pretty reasonable in most of the western world.
What has not happened is the regulation on government in all the new areas it has gained power.
Everything from pensions (special for public sector workers), to administrating common fines, regulating daily lives of people, debt, taxation...
You can tell we don't have regulation in these areas as there is really nothing stopping the government from doing anything, except that is doesn't do it. We can have 99% taxation. Nothing illegal about it. We can have the government grant arbitrary benefits to any segment of the population...
In this case, we have a conflict of interest between revenue, fines, pay...
So we could have rules and regulations like the following: 1. All fine revenue from regulatory activities can only be used for victims of the act. It cannot be used for revenue or paying salaries...
This would keep fining honest and removes the conflict of interest.
Now that is just a sample regulation, but that is the general idea.
It's not just about cost. It's also about their priorities.
Older people generally want some time for their lives. Things like family and other interests.
They might also be less driven to just plow through the work as they've been through it a million times. So the younger candidate is more beneficial as he is naive per se.
There's also not much professionalism is software, so things like experience and mentorship and long term platforms are not really there for most companies.
It is not the young people the young people that support the old people.
It is young people with 'good' jobs that support the old people.
If we look throughout the world right now, young people aren't exactly basking in good high paying jobs that would be net payers into a tax system.
So yes, an aging Japanese population is a problem. It might actually be a worse problem to have a large population of elderly people AND a large amount of unemployed or underemployed young people.
I'm Canadian and I just thought I'd point this out as I'm sure it is the same in most countries. The 'economists' have been saying for years we need to have more kids to provide a tax base for our aging baby boomers. Yet, we can't even find good jobs for our current youth.
Seems to me, many of the youth will not be net payers into the tax system. They might get government work, funded by tax dollars or whatever.
I personally have nothing against a 'fast-lane'. As in your VOIP example, as a consumer, I should be able to tell my ISP to reserve such traffic and pay for that enhanced service.
But what is really important is who pays.
In my view, your connection to the 'internet' should be paid for by you. You want more speed. You pay for it. You want reserved traffic for VOIP, you pay for it.
You could use that reserved lane for VOIP, torrenting, gaming, or just your own personal FTP.
By letting the deals be made by content providers and ISPs, you lose a lot of the transparency.
It's a bit of both and it's the same with software.
There was this theory at one time that we outsource low-level work and can keep the high-level work.
The problem is simply how do you build high-level talent without having anyone coming in at the lower level.
You generally can't and you just exhaust your old high-level talent.
And yes there is of course the cost equation from overseas as well. They of course forget the payscale difference and the hours worked and the working conditions.
I don't know how we got here, but education is touted as the solution and the cause of all of life's problems.
Lack of jobs? People need more education. Crime? People just need more education.
Most of these problems are huge and have more to do with other factors like industrial policy, culture... than education which tends to mean the school system.
There was an article recently about Japan making sure people can make things by hand to keep the knowledge so we can automate it better. That is part industrial policy, part culture, part education, part corporate policy...
Or for that matter, during the big recession, Germany paid the wages of its industrial workers, to keep them employed at companies producing goods. Again, industrial policy.
Similarly, this guy has a problem with people not being able to think critically. Here's a magic thought. There isn't a profession on Earth where most people 'think critically' to the level people want of IT workers. Even doctors and lawyer who make hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most just end up learning some very key skills and repeat it. There are a few brilliant lawyers and doctors, but most are just pretty skilled at doing the same tasks over and over. I don't mean to belittle it and I hope no one else does either.
And he wants critical thinking from IT workers who make a decent, but not top wage.
Here's the problem with 'IT'. You shouldn't need lots of people with critical thinking skills. Most of 'IT" work can and should be run like infrastructure. Well trained people, probably unionized/accredited/guild (like construction),
Right now, people only think IT needs a lot of critical thinking because it is so poorly run. Things constantly changing with no benefit, a skilled and trained workforce is not maintained, architecture and planning not done. Standard tools not there...
Note, that I speak of IT here. There is definite design work that does need critical thinking and innovation. But the number of these jobs is small and these people are definitely out there. Whether they stick around or are in the right role is a different story.
Only the super super mega wealthy rich don't really work hard... and even that is purely based on my imagination of how they live.
Every other person from executives down to managers down to the middle class workers works damn hard. It's one of the reasons I've often turned down the management path. I saw my old managers and I thought, that is not my life.
It's one of the reasons it is very hard to say raise taxes. People are working so damn hard. 50+ hour week, deadlines, no security... and people want to take more of their money to give it to people who often work less. Then they're often pushed to even work harder to keep up their living or generate more profits...
We could certainly become more leftist, but that has to start with the middle class/rich workers. More vacation time. More job security. Less overtime... This makes people more amenable to then providing other programs and higher taxes and what not.
But the way things stand right now. It's pretty crazy. Automation, computing... should be having us working less, job sharing... We should not be having a smaller and smaller group of highly educated folks working harder and harder to support the welfare state. It's almost mathematically impossible at this point.
However., I think there is a general trend line out there where medical products are significantly overpriced relative to the actual cost of production or use. A lot of the industry is based on keeping the medical professionals and companies filled with decent money.
Things like 3d printers, scanners, generic parts will reduce the cost significantly. It is definitely an area where automation and computing could reduce costs significantly. And yes, perhaps for a while, there will still be some optimization that could be provided for by the super skilled labor. However, there is always a trade off between cost and quality.
If you could get 95% of the quality for 1/20th the cost, it's probably a good idea for most of the population.
Not everyone needs a professional camera person. Sometimes most people can do quite well with a simply point and click of their own. And yes, healthcare is no different in that respect.
Maybe I've naive, but I really don't think lobbying is just about buying votes.
That is to say, I don't think the government has a perfectly reasonably policy, like simplified tax returns.
Then Intuit comes along and says 'This is gonna hurt our profits', so lets pay politician X some money to stop this bill.
More than likely, lobbying is backed by 'real needs' Let's face it, there are a lot of people employed as accountants and I guess nowadays, a fair amount of software developers and business. These are real concerns and they lobby to have them addressed. You can't just rip disrupt entire industries via legislation without concern for the people and businesses that are dependent on them.
The same would be done if something impacted doctors, teachers, engineers, factory workers...
Maybe I am naive and it's just as simple as dropping a few million in the hands of some politician.
I don't think anyone thinks employers create jobs out of altruistic motives.
However, they do create jobs by virtue of being willing to take the risk of their own time and money and effort. Something most of the population is not willing to do.
Most plumbers don't bother building a big huge plumbing corporation even though there is plenty of demand. Most are more than comfortable knowing there is good demand for their services and making a good living. Most don't care about expanding their business and employing people.
I'm probably quite young, but I learned programming in C and assembler as my starting languages.
That said, I have worked on many frameworks including things like ASP.NET and Java Enterprise stuff. My first one was probably MFC.
Here's the key thing that got me for a long time. Learning a new framework is like learning a new programming language from scratch. You have to put in the same effort into it. At least I need to as I need to understand what the framework is doing before I feel comfortable using it.
I reflect at all all the time I spent learning C/C++ and it was filled with books and trial and error and nuances.
Yet, when first presented with Frameworks, that is generally not how it is approached in companies. It took me years to get pretty good at C and C++ including STL... Frameworks are thrown around so quickly, it is almost like they just expect it to be easy to use and you just call a few methods and away you go.
So that is the first thing, you need to put in the time to learn it properly. There is also a certain amount of trust that occurs. I've found myself learning to trust frameworks more. I can't really explain it, but I trusted MFC when I used it. For all the weirdness it used and preprocessor crap, Microsoft provided a pretty good IDE that made it easy enough to use and get started. Boy was there a lot of mysterious boiler plate code.
And yes, MFC is technically C++ I guess, but you really needed to learn MFC to actually do and understand anything.
It's the same with say Java. You might learn Java, but you need to learn Spring or Hibernate or Maven or whatever.
A lot of modern frameworks don't really come with that nice custom tailored IDE. Some do integrate nicely with say Eclipse or whatever, but it still generally leaves you in a state of uncertainty.
That is one area I've always appreciate MS in. For their frameworks, they tend to provide the custom tailored tools to actually let you use it.
But lesson. The lesson is, it's going to take you a while to learn the framework. It's going to take you even longer if you plan on being an expert and knowing how it works underneath.
In either case, having a strong belief does not mean believing in a religious text.
Someone can have equally strong views on politics or anything else they are passionate about. In all these areas, there are people who give speeches, have gatherings... and other such activities.
I don't see anything controversial with the idea that meditation, group belonging, and believing in a greater ideal, or leadership, is going to reduce stress levels.
And of course all of these activities that bring such benefits can also bring the same harm religion does. Strong political beliefs can result in war and atrocities (communism, Nazism...). Adherance to leadership and deference to community can result in totalitarianism or submissive populations.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, this one is the worst. These low-complexity sites started to have more rules. Things like minimum 8 chars, mix of case, at least one number and one letter...
Now, for all these low priority sites, I have to remember permutations of my password.
There's a few themes going on.
I think he just doesn't see the world of 'regular' programmers. Has he heard of things like SAP or People Soft or SharePoint.
All of these offer pretty regular people to write applications and web applications.
Next comes the point you make that I will just reiterate. Programming is a skilled job. I taught high school computer science. I don't know how long its been since you were in high school, but most students can't even understand assigning a variable properly. If they can't get it in algebra, they don't get it in cs. That's for even basic programming. For anything more complex, it really takes another level.
The point about the web is valid to a certain extent. You can't just 'learn' it and be happy. It's a process of constant learning and research and working with the community. I can't think of a field that changes so much. I doubt AngularJS is crazy complicated, but darn it, I haven't even touched it and I'd have to learn it a new in all its complexities and idioms if I want to work on it.
You learn a trade like construction, you will learn what a 2x4 is and how to frame and that is eternal knowledge. Not so with writing software.
Lastly is programming culture. He doesn't spend enough on this point, but its a big thing that is affecting even good programmers. :P
The constant desire to learn the same thing in a different way is something that you probably need to be a bit autistic as he says. I can't explain what happened. I used to get so involved in a game like Baldur's Gate, I'd spend weeks so focussed on it. I'd to the same with programming. I have no desire to do that anymore. But, I know some people who still have that. Good on them. I'm hardly normal, but if I'm feeling the edge, imagine an actual normal person
To top it off, getting involved in software development used to be easier when more people were hired. Today, I'm finding developers need to write documentation of all sorts, figure out the requirements, code it up, write up the test cases, figure out the environment issues, do the database work...
Basically do everything. Some companies even have teams dedicated to these tasks, but they don't have enough skilled people to not have the developer do it with the speed at which companies have to operate.
In previous times, you could indeed have a skilled engineer design the system. Write a proper document. Then hand off some UI work to some application developer or even a junior developer. They would take the time to explain the system to the test team, who would then know how to use it and thus craft a test plan. All these people would be able to be involved.
But that's no the world we live in today. Everyone wants speed and moving fast, without building the long term technical base. This reduces the number of people capable of entering the field in a useful way.
Unfortunately, that is not true.
So many political opinions are viable within any party IF you frame it correctly.
Somehow many anarchist/libertarians end up on the progressive/leftist portion of political because they are against corporation/banks/police/war.
Similarly, many anarchist/libertarians end up on the 'right' because they are against corporations/banks/police/war/government excess..
I'll give my own example.
I grew up in pretty conservative Islam. Now, as I grew up, I was still a Muslim. I could sit around and interpret the texts any which way I want and I could have a decent conversation and be a part of *most* Muslim communities. I didn't pray, didn't really believe in any of the rules, barely fasted... yet I was still by in large welcomed in *most* Islamic communities.
Eventually, I left Islam and would not be called a cultural Muslim or an ex-Muslim or whatever label you want. In practical things, I believe and act pretty much the same. Yet, by denying God and Mohamed was God's messenger/perfect man, suddenly I am shunned. I knew that going in. People suddenly stopped communicating.
The point I am making here, is that whatever practical issues I had with Islam, I could deliberate and discuss with people as long as I didn't threaten the Islamic identity and Islamic power. The moment I did, my opinion becomes meaningless.
The same is largely true of politics.
People think Climate Change is merely science. It is not. By admitting the 'science' you are automatically subscribing to a whole host of political initiatives from carbon taxes, road tolls, increased government spending...
But all that has nothing to do with the science. In some ideal world, climate change science could be independent of policy. But that is not the world we live in today.
How many scientists say we must act on global warming and have more taxes, more government spending...
Buying into climate change MEANS buying into the political policies of 'the other team'. Hence you are more likely to reject it the science.
The same is true again of religion. Evolution is pretty convincing. I know many Muslims who believe in Evolution as well. Some kind of God guided evolution :P But much better than the creation story.
In any case, however, if buying into evolution means rejecting god, siding with secularists... then they are likely to just ignore the science of evolution.
I'd be willing to wager that if the climate science was presented to republications without any stipulation of Big government / Left political action, most would not fight it.
And just to emphasize, there is no reason climate change should entail carbon taxes or anything of hte like. Those are all policy tools we choose. We could just as easily pay the oil companies extra money for them to deveolop green energy. We could just as easily reduce healthcare spending and entitlement spending, and use that money to build levies, green power....
It's not what we need. We've always had what we need.
It's about getting everyone to use the same thing.
Basically we have debates on screen layout, networking... other APIs. We've been building such APIs for decades.
It is just hard to get everyone to use the same API.
We need HTML+javascript, because for whatever reason that worked to get the world moving. Maybe it would have better if the web just ran off perl scripts or python scripts or QT application or TCL or whatever, but it didn't.
It began as a markup language (more to display documents like Word). Then it moved to become dynamic pages. Again like adding VBScripting to Word. Now we keep hacking and putting stuff on top of it to make it a full fledged programming environment.
We can hope for niceness, but this seems to be repeated over and over and our field. Yet, somehow, things get made.
Yeop, most definitely agree.
However, maybe I'm just jaded, but the fault is not with the MBA, it is largely with us (engineers/developers). The MBAs think highly of themselves and value themselves and attempt to maximize their own power.
That is no different from any other group of people (doctors, teachers, lawyers, accountant, trades people...).
Most engineers/developers don't seek to maximize their power and value themselves quite low. In a sense, we (as a collective group) don't respect ourselves, yet we somehow think MBAs should respect us? The world sadly does not work like that.
Be it unions, professional organizations, credentials, or just having high alpha type personalities in your profession, you need that respect.
While you held your ground and acted in a way that demands respect, 95% of engineers/developers don't. MBA types are right to think "I wouldn't pay some nerd X money".
Most developers/engineers are either push overs or uncooperative grumps. They're not assertive professionals (me included)
Do you think they'd treat a lawyer or doctor like that?
It has more to do with the lawyer or doctor, than it does with the MBA.
Yeah, but really you should be allowed to poach all customers and what not.
If the company values you, they should be making your life 'nice' so you stay. The problem is most employees don't even value their own knowledge base. Many still think in terms of only being paid when I am working.
When in reality, you should be paid heavily for what you know. ...
Know key customers... you should be being paid not to leave and take them with you.
Are you the only one who knows how to setup the work VPN? You should be being paid for that knowledge
Yeop.
We see a lot of these articles. It is not about ageism or anything of the like. In every industry there are always people willing to work for less, work harder, working with less standards, take shortcuts...
Most other industries, put in some barriers. Those that don't... well... let's just say they're not for most people looking for good work.
Doctors, lawyers, teachers, trades people, nurses, dentists, accountants... all have some kind of union or professional association to enforce working conditions and standards.
Then again, there are two kind of engineers and software developers.
Those that view it as a career. They want to do an honest days work for an honest days pay.
Those that view as greatness or changing the world.
That ultimately determines how you view it.
For me at least, I'm in the honest days work for honest days pay.
This is why I'm a big believer in simple taxation.
Sales Tax (to capture consumption)
Income Tax (to capture income)
Property Tax (to handle local infrastructure)
Wealth/Inheritance Tax (if you have to.... to prevent a concentration of wealth)
If something needs to paid for, we pay for it by raising the taxes for everyone.
Playing around with all these specific taxes and proxy taxes and sin taxes... just creates massive complexities
We'd all take transit if our work was right beside a subway station and there was a subway station next to our home.
All sin-taxes or fines should NEVER go to revenue.
Speeding tickets, smoking taxes, alcohol taxes... rather they should go to 'victims' of said activity. Speeding ticket revenue goes into a pool for accident victims. Smoking taxes goes to help those who got lung cancer from smoking...
As best as possible it should go to the victim. I know it can complicated and I don't pretend it would be perfect, but it would definitely be more honest and transparent and have less corruption.
And yes, there are ways to do things without taxes. Non-profits, pay per use, subscriptions... are all ways to do things without taxes. For example, let us suppose a community wanted to build it's own ISP. But they can't convince the whole populace. Rather than taxing the whole populace, they could people a stake in a non-profit entity to build it out. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. But no taxation money flows into it.
Money influences politics isn't really an explanation. It gives the impression people just buy off politics.
Almost every such policy is partly money, partly ideology, partly special interest, partly regional politics...
My brother used to be an engineer, and is now in patent law. He genuinely believes that patent law is essential to protecting IP so Western businesses can thrive and long term intellectual property is protected.
I heard a similar story on TVO (Canada's version of PBS). A bunch of lawyers and such talking about free trade and competition. They genuinely believe they are fighting the good fight on behalf of Western industry.
Now of course, it just so happens they benefit very much from this patent business.
So there is a real ideology behind this patent system. People really do believe. Think about politicians who speak about free trade. What idea do they push? They push the idea that the Western world can still thrive via education and IP. So how do we protect this IP? Yep patents. without patents everything is made cheap and their whole intellectual basis for the 'new economy' goes out the window.
I don't agree with their ideology. I'm just stating that people believe in that ideology and so they base their assumptions and what not on it.
Then yes, there is money form lawyers, big companies... do try and influence politics.
This is not unlike say teacher unions. Many genuinely believe education is the future and education will solve any number of problems. It just so happens of course that they benefit from the union and tenure system.
So there is this ideology that education solves all problems. It is what will allow us to compete globally and keep our standard of living. again, I don't agree with this ideology. I'm just stating what they say.
Then they ally themselves as allys of politicians and ideology and money...
It's all a very complex intertwined system.
Thinking all of politics is just people in briefcases buying off votes is just silly.
The real devil is and will always be ideology, institutions, special interests...
On the contrary. We just need to use existing languages. And make use of good libraries and good patterns.
Most new languages offer very little. Most of the good changes are in the libraries.
Offline web-applications?
They need a good caching mechanism of web requests / responses. Easily done as a library.
They might need a background updater/fetcher. Easily done as a library again.
Now there a lot of details to work out. And perhaps you can have a common library for the caching mechanism to coordinate between client and server.
I've worked on something like this and it can be very tricky. I don't want to discount the complexity. But it is nothing that needs a new language. Just some good libraries and patterns.
In the end though, it's all just a library.
I'll put a little twist on it as often even when we speak of 'science' we can use 'facts' that are not truly 'facts'.
I think science is a process that uses logic, experimentation, mathematics, hypothesize... to arrive at conclusions.
Religion uses belief to arrive at conclusions.
For example, the idea of God has no other basis... except the belief in God. You can't experiment on it, use mathematics, hypothesize and test...
You will never get a religious person to say "if this is done... then this should happen religiously... and if it does not happen, then my faith is wrong"
Now, let's take a whacky scientific theory that many would say is 'belief'. Let's say string theory. It is an interesting theory. There is math involved. It has to fit in with the rest of what we know about physics, quantum physics. There's a variety of tests that have been proposed to detect if it is accurate or not. It is possible given enough and energy to perform such tests and get a result which would determine if string theory is true or not.
Real support costs money. Most people aren't willing to pay the proper cost for it.
The next best example of something we all own and often need troubleshooting is a car.
Routine car things are costly enough (oil change...). But that's the equivalent of running a virus scan or defrag.
If you ever have a real problem where something isn't working, it is costly. Diagnostic work? Even costlier and no guarantee it will work.
And the PC is ever more complex as you mod it will all kinds of stuff. Custom hardware. Custom software installed on it. Custom configuration.
Now, how much do you think it will cost you to fix a problem with your car that had it's engine replaced with a more powerful model, software modded... and all the other fancy things car modders do? Yeop... it's going to cost you a hell of a lot more.
And with cars, the normal answer is to just replace parts as a whole.
If you have a problem with some application crashing. Would you consider it valid support if they just said, let's try replacing your ram or upgrading your video card. Cost $500. And no guarantee of working.
And yes, car manufacturers do offer warranties. But they're typically void if you do anything to mod the car.
You'd no doubt not find that acceptable. You want them to fix the software.
Computers are just that complex. And for the rest of the industry, it is heavily cost driven.
The real issue is regulation.
As you point out conflict of interest.
I hope we all learned about conflict of interest from the great recession of 2008 with respect to the financial sector.
They came out with new products/services that the regulatory bodies hadn't dealt with and in many cases, reduces regulation.
That is to say, anytime you grant some powerful organization a new power or tool, it needs to be examined for conflict of interest and other pitfalls.
Seems reasonable.
What hasn't happened is regulation on government.
Well that is not true. Historically, we have regulation on government dating all the way back to English common law.
The government was granted the right to enforce the law. Many centuries have passed and we have pretty reasonable laws to regulate government in how it enforces law (warrants, search and seizure, trial, juries...) It's not perfect and the regulation varies, but it is actually pretty reasonable in most of the western world.
What has not happened is the regulation on government in all the new areas it has gained power.
Everything from pensions (special for public sector workers), to administrating common fines, regulating daily lives of people, debt, taxation...
You can tell we don't have regulation in these areas as there is really nothing stopping the government from doing anything, except that is doesn't do it. We can have 99% taxation. Nothing illegal about it. We can have the government grant arbitrary benefits to any segment of the population...
In this case, we have a conflict of interest between revenue, fines, pay...
So we could have rules and regulations like the following:
1. All fine revenue from regulatory activities can only be used for victims of the act. It cannot be used for revenue or paying salaries...
This would keep fining honest and removes the conflict of interest.
Now that is just a sample regulation, but that is the general idea.
It's not just about cost.
It's also about their priorities.
Older people generally want some time for their lives. Things like family and other interests.
They might also be less driven to just plow through the work as they've been through it a million times. So the younger candidate is more beneficial as he is naive per se.
There's also not much professionalism is software, so things like experience and mentorship and long term platforms are not really there for most companies.
Just a little caveat as it is a big caveat.
It is not the young people the young people that support the old people.
It is young people with 'good' jobs that support the old people.
If we look throughout the world right now, young people aren't exactly basking in good high paying jobs that would be net payers into a tax system.
So yes, an aging Japanese population is a problem.
It might actually be a worse problem to have a large population of elderly people AND a large amount of unemployed or underemployed young people.
I'm Canadian and I just thought I'd point this out as I'm sure it is the same in most countries. The 'economists' have been saying for years we need to have more kids to provide a tax base for our aging baby boomers. Yet, we can't even find good jobs for our current youth.
Seems to me, many of the youth will not be net payers into the tax system. They might get government work, funded by tax dollars or whatever.
True,
I guess as long as they publish those rates for specific traffic or maintain some kind of neutrality on providers, they can manage it on their end.
I personally have nothing against a 'fast-lane'. As in your VOIP example, as a consumer, I should be able to tell my ISP to reserve such traffic and pay for that enhanced service.
But what is really important is who pays.
In my view, your connection to the 'internet' should be paid for by you. You want more speed. You pay for it. You want reserved traffic for VOIP, you pay for it.
You could use that reserved lane for VOIP, torrenting, gaming, or just your own personal FTP.
By letting the deals be made by content providers and ISPs, you lose a lot of the transparency.
It's a bit of both and it's the same with software.
There was this theory at one time that we outsource low-level work and can keep the high-level work.
The problem is simply how do you build high-level talent without having anyone coming in at the lower level.
You generally can't and you just exhaust your old high-level talent.
And yes there is of course the cost equation from overseas as well. They of course forget the payscale difference and the hours worked and the working conditions.
It's all a scam anyways.
I don't know how we got here, but education is touted as the solution and the cause of all of life's problems.
Lack of jobs? People need more education.
Crime? People just need more education.
Most of these problems are huge and have more to do with other factors like industrial policy, culture... than education which tends to mean the school system.
There was an article recently about Japan making sure people can make things by hand to keep the knowledge so we can automate it better. That is part industrial policy, part culture, part education, part corporate policy...
Or for that matter, during the big recession, Germany paid the wages of its industrial workers, to keep them employed at companies producing goods. Again, industrial policy.
Similarly, this guy has a problem with people not being able to think critically. Here's a magic thought. There isn't a profession on Earth where most people 'think critically' to the level people want of IT workers. Even doctors and lawyer who make hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most just end up learning some very key skills and repeat it. There are a few brilliant lawyers and doctors, but most are just pretty skilled at doing the same tasks over and over. I don't mean to belittle it and I hope no one else does either.
And he wants critical thinking from IT workers who make a decent, but not top wage.
Here's the problem with 'IT'.
You shouldn't need lots of people with critical thinking skills. Most of 'IT" work can and should be run like infrastructure. Well trained people, probably unionized/accredited/guild (like construction),
Right now, people only think IT needs a lot of critical thinking because it is so poorly run. Things constantly changing with no benefit, a skilled and trained workforce is not maintained, architecture and planning not done. Standard tools not there...
Note, that I speak of IT here. There is definite design work that does need critical thinking and innovation. But the number of these jobs is small and these people are definitely out there. Whether they stick around or are in the right role is a different story.
Only the super super mega wealthy rich don't really work hard... and even that is purely based on my imagination of how they live.
Every other person from executives down to managers down to the middle class workers works damn hard. It's one of the reasons I've often turned down the management path. I saw my old managers and I thought, that is not my life.
It's one of the reasons it is very hard to say raise taxes. People are working so damn hard. 50+ hour week, deadlines, no security... and people want to take more of their money to give it to people who often work less. Then they're often pushed to even work harder to keep up their living or generate more profits...
We could certainly become more leftist, but that has to start with the middle class/rich workers. More vacation time. More job security. Less overtime... This makes people more amenable to then providing other programs and higher taxes and what not.
But the way things stand right now. It's pretty crazy.
Automation, computing... should be having us working less, job sharing...
We should not be having a smaller and smaller group of highly educated folks working harder and harder to support the welfare state. It's almost mathematically impossible at this point.
You're absolutely right about the cost of labor.
However., I think there is a general trend line out there where medical products are significantly overpriced relative to the actual cost of production or use. A lot of the industry is based on keeping the medical professionals and companies filled with decent money.
Things like 3d printers, scanners, generic parts will reduce the cost significantly. It is definitely an area where automation and computing could reduce costs significantly. And yes, perhaps for a while, there will still be some optimization that could be provided for by the super skilled labor. However, there is always a trade off between cost and quality.
If you could get 95% of the quality for 1/20th the cost, it's probably a good idea for most of the population.
Not everyone needs a professional camera person. Sometimes most people can do quite well with a simply point and click of their own. And yes, healthcare is no different in that respect.
Maybe I've naive, but I really don't think lobbying is just about buying votes.
That is to say, I don't think the government has a perfectly reasonably policy, like simplified tax returns.
Then Intuit comes along and says 'This is gonna hurt our profits', so lets pay politician X some money to stop this bill.
More than likely, lobbying is backed by 'real needs'
Let's face it, there are a lot of people employed as accountants and I guess nowadays, a fair amount of software developers and business. These are real concerns and they lobby to have them addressed. You can't just rip disrupt entire industries via legislation without concern for the people and businesses that are dependent on them.
The same would be done if something impacted doctors, teachers, engineers, factory workers...
Maybe I am naive and it's just as simple as dropping a few million in the hands of some politician.
I don't think anyone thinks employers create jobs out of altruistic motives.
However, they do create jobs by virtue of being willing to take the risk of their own time and money and effort. Something most of the population is not willing to do.
Most plumbers don't bother building a big huge plumbing corporation even though there is plenty of demand. Most are more than comfortable knowing there is good demand for their services and making a good living. Most don't care about expanding their business and employing people.
I'm probably quite young, but I learned programming in C and assembler as my starting languages.
That said, I have worked on many frameworks including things like ASP.NET and Java Enterprise stuff. My first one was probably MFC.
Here's the key thing that got me for a long time.
Learning a new framework is like learning a new programming language from scratch. You have to put in the same effort into it. At least I need to as I need to understand what the framework is doing before I feel comfortable using it.
I reflect at all all the time I spent learning C/C++ and it was filled with books and trial and error and nuances.
Yet, when first presented with Frameworks, that is generally not how it is approached in companies. It took me years to get pretty good at C and C++ including STL... Frameworks are thrown around so quickly, it is almost like they just expect it to be easy to use and you just call a few methods and away you go.
So that is the first thing, you need to put in the time to learn it properly. There is also a certain amount of trust that occurs. I've found myself learning to trust frameworks more. I can't really explain it, but I trusted MFC when I used it. For all the weirdness it used and preprocessor crap, Microsoft provided a pretty good IDE that made it easy enough to use and get started. Boy was there a lot of mysterious boiler plate code.
And yes, MFC is technically C++ I guess, but you really needed to learn MFC to actually do and understand anything.
It's the same with say Java. You might learn Java, but you need to learn Spring or Hibernate or Maven or whatever.
A lot of modern frameworks don't really come with that nice custom tailored IDE. Some do integrate nicely with say Eclipse or whatever, but it still generally leaves you in a state of uncertainty.
That is one area I've always appreciate MS in. For their frameworks, they tend to provide the custom tailored tools to actually let you use it.
But lesson. The lesson is, it's going to take you a while to learn the framework. It's going to take you even longer if you plan on being an expert and knowing how it works underneath.
In either case, having a strong belief does not mean believing in a religious text.
Someone can have equally strong views on politics or anything else they are passionate about. In all these areas, there are people who give speeches, have gatherings... and other such activities.
I don't see anything controversial with the idea that meditation, group belonging, and believing in a greater ideal, or leadership, is going to reduce stress levels.
And of course all of these activities that bring such benefits can also bring the same harm religion does. Strong political beliefs can result in war and atrocities (communism, Nazism...). Adherance to leadership and deference to community can result in totalitarianism or submissive populations.