Agreed! I dealt with them for almost a decade. I was a Bridge customer, bought by Reuters maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I also used lots of Thompson data and have colleagues who have had their companies purchased and ruined by Thompson as they so often do. I must say that a high percentage of folk I've had the pleasure to work closely with in this uber conglomerate are, in fact, asshats. Its appalling what they want to charge for data and services and their contract agreements are only second worst to Bloomberg. I've barked at their mismanagement and have actually received personal apologies from the then only Reuters senior executives. It ain't pretty.
Its not surprising this buy-the-competition-worry-about-merging-later abomination is looking for $$ now that the economy and pending regulation changes are destroying a solid chunk of the Thompson Reuters customer base. Look for them in the news again shortly.
Oh man, I was hoping germanium was going to make a comeback as a semiconductor. It holds up better when its hot, IIRC from my college days. I'll just have to make a lot of retro guitar effects pedals.
Outstanding topic for discussion at 1:37 am CST. Yes, we are addicted. I'm nearing 30 and I've been addicted to a lot of things. Video games are near the top of the list.
Like most things that are sinfully delicous (pr0n, booze, pot) - video games provide so much satisfaction, even though its totally synthetic. Would I get a "high" reading a Tolstoy novel? Yes. Would I get a high getting wasted and watching Robot Chicken? Yes. One takes dicipline and the other is cheap, but they both work.
Can someone become addicted to any of these things? Absolutely. Anything that is enticing enough to detract from the dicipline of the daily grind can become an addiction (/. anyone?)
The article talks about "drug memories" - how about my keyboard? Man, it feels so familiar. My PS2 controller? Oh, yeah, totally an extension of my hand.
A point about video games specifically - does anyone know a casual+ gamer that hasn't gone on an 8 hour binge? I recently introduced my 30-something neighbor to video games (GT4 + logitech wheel). Sure enough, he did an 8pm-4am addict session after only two days and he'd never played video games before.
If you show me a screenshot of Super Mario Bros or Starcraft...hell yeah, I'm going to want to play that game.
One last comment - has anyone seen the Marco Brambilla exhibit called Half-Life? Its a room with three screens - the front is a 2x2 display of kids playing counter-strike and the sides are videos from the conter-striker game they're playing. Its done really well - watching their faces hit me like a rocket launcher. I had to sit down and watch it for 15 minutes or so. I almost totally broke down. All those empty souls just wanted a kill. I'm not against video game violence but you can't deny its impact on your inner being.
I can get vi in visual slick edit and kdevelop because it is small and efficient like my happy hacker keyboard. Mostly, I use vim and make because its harmony between depth and simplicity satisfy me. I write my latex in with vim as well as my email. I don't understand how overcustomizing your bloat makes you more flexible for what life will send your way tomorrow. Educate me, please.
When you have 460TB of data, how the hell do you even begin to search it?
With SQL.
Relational databases aren't always the best answer, especially for time-series data. I work with data mining huge amounts of data here in the finance industry - not 460TB, but still a lot - and we get gigantic performance increases by storing the data in our proprietary format.
They key for us has been to rotate the data so that similar properties of information are loaded on request (like "store sales" for example) and the end software handles the date/instrument indexing, which can be static if done correctly.
There are no joins or date synchonization done on the fly. Typically, you've got to have an idea what you're looking for, so you can write structured software to do the analysis. While SQL is good at organizing data, it can be very limited and inefficient when it comes to research.
Yes, but it has a nostolgic factor that lets me reminisce about the good old days.
Given your simpleton mind (being a Vi luser) might I be as bold to recommend Perl as your corner.
the AWK/SED vs Perl flamewar is harder for me to enter. Indeed, I intuitavely corner with Perl, but I use sed quite a bit. Bash is beautiful and sed is a big factor for me. Really, its regular expressions I like. Regex is one of the things linux has lying all over that makes me find it attractive.
But as for a text editor...I'm totally married to vi. I've used the happy hacking keyboard at work for the last 3 years. When people ask me why I have such a small keyboard I say its because I like vi so much. This almost always yields poor responses, especially pot shots at my modestly sized man jewels.
But I always know that I will be able to do my job faster than an Emacs user.
Bah! Over time I've become more comfortable with edit mode. Its amazing how much repetition there is in coding. I'd have to say its pretty much 50/50 for me. My coworkers get a kick out of watching me code and they have been using vim for years. Mostly because it looks weird. tap-tap-tap-tap...then on the last tap the text appears. Cursor bouncing all over. Makes sense to me. Yes, I'm a manager.
Feeble mortal! Your weak mind cannot distinguish between the EDIT mode and the COMMAND mode. Perhaps if your cannot understand this concept, you should eliminate some letters from the keyboard.
I'd start with q, x, c, and z. You probably don't have enough dexterity in your left hand and those are fairly useless letters. You could eliminate 4,5,6,7,8 and 9 because I'm sure you can't count higher than 3.
If only you could be trained enough to eventually comprehend the potential of vi...but we'd probably have better luck with a drunken monkey than a foolish emacs lover like yourself.
Word. I work on a trading floor. I witness a lot of business transactions. Lots of people get fucked good every day. It all gets really amped up when the number of zeros increase.
Ha! I knew wind was not a replenishable resource. It will only be a matter of time before we realize the photons absorbed by solar panels will eventually send the Earth spiralling out of its orbit around the sun. Back to strip mining the shit out of nature and paving it over when we're done.
Seriously, though, it seems as though if we require extreme amounts of energy to power our world, we will alter the world we extract it from. There is no free lunch (lifted from the article). Perhaps the answer is in being more efficient with the power we use, thereby requiring less. But I hate those damn econo-flush toilets.
I really wish I could take back my vote in 2000 and give it to Gore.
Come now. I do not like Bush. I didn't vote for him before and I won't now. He has made grave mistakes for this country that may never be undone.
But Gore? He was delusional. Have you ever read Earth in the Balance? Wow. Somehow, I imagine in the Gore parallel universe, it would have been worse. I'm a pessimist, so either way I look at it, it totally sucks. Thats why I love voting.
Indeed. First, I'll admit this is probably the least comfortable I've ever felt writing code. At the time (this was years ago), I already had a few years experience managing larger software projects (6-9 month projects) and managing other peoples code, so I had already been hurt by shortcuts. My own, and ones take by others.
That said, this was truly a simple project. Someone would send an email requesting authorization, a little procmail and perl scipt would create a text db of requests. One user would run a gui to accept or deny these reqeuests and an email would get sent back requester.
The one user was the coworker that requested the software, and it was understood that this was a quick and dirty solution. But that is all he wanted. Of course there is the potential for feature creep. But if I had to tell him, "I didn't account for it to be used like that, I'll have to rewrite it and it from scratch and it will take another 20 hours." - I took the risk he'd understand.
Now if this was to be part of a bigger system, or a truly "production" application, I absolutely would not have done this. But that is not what this user wanted. If it was going to take more than a week, he couldn't justify it, and would be required to continue tracking this by hand.
So many things can be done with a shell script or a little perl. I'm spoiled because most of my group are developers, so they do things like this naturally. Maybe, as more computer literate generations enter the work force, these smaller automated tasks could be done by anybody, instead of a overestimated IT project.
That said, my current boss underestimates absolutely everything to a level of complete absurdity. Pretty much anything short of a compiler can be done in 2 weeks, according to him. I battle this on a regular basis - by no means am I promoting underestimating or taking shortcuts by writing non-maintainable code. Geez, nearly all the weak areas of our current system were designed by him, many of the choices (or shortcuts) I openly protested.
However, I do see many scenarios where a user just needs a little help automating a simple task that a developer (or power user) familiar with some basic tools could do for themself and IT manager treats the project like it needs to be done for an external client. Not everything needs to be in XML or in a relational database.
Time Management::
Them - How much time is required?
New Manager - 2 weeks. (2xactual required)
Seasoned Manager - 2 months. (8x actual required
I dunno. People can get caught doing this, too. I worked with an IT manager that grossly overestimated time and cost. Frustrated, due to the inability of the rest of the company function, I was nominated to secretly implement one of the projects. I was a software developer outside of IT, but still within the company.
The original budget was estimated at $300k-$500k with a 6-9 month duration and would require at least 1 contractor. I completed the entire project in 20 hours, which included the specification gathering, development, testing, installation and documentation. It really was a simple, non-critical project. I believe its still being used and maintained.
We did a demo of the project and I distributed the PDF describing the whole situation. Holy cats, did that make me unpopular with some and popular with others.
I do believe in overestimating, but there usually is a ceiling before someone comes and busts your nuts. Karma being what it is, unfortunately, I believe mine is due.
...and no problems. Our entire group is all debian. Our (10) desktops are unstable. We've ran into maybe 3 or 4 issues with unstable over the last 4 years, but they were all easly resolved. Servers are currently woody (with a few backports). We haven't run into any "you're not running Redhat?" problems.
We're mostly developers, which is probably what made us attracted to debian in the first place. We have a developer in our group that wears the sysadmin hat (ducks) but he is both a black-belt problem solver and a good admin. I enjoy the anal-retentiveness of debian-devel and its great to see so many minds focusing on a project.
We put a lot of faith into Debian. Our servers run all of our models and our execution platform, which trades enough securities every day to put my face on MSNBC if something goes horribly wrong.
We do use 3rd party libraries in our software development, and as far as they know, we're running Redhat like we're supposed to. I have yet to have a conversation with someone in tech support that is really a Linux guru. I'm not going to claim to be one, either; however, the code I support is only used by my group. The people I usually talk to in support are usually developers, too. If our group had to support 3rd party executables, then Debian probably wouldn't work so smoothly.
All these negative comments about Debian have suprised me a little bit. Perhaps I don't read/. often enough. And no, I probably wouldn't recommend Debian to any of my peers outside my company. But I don't think "Using Debian in Commercial Environments?" is a ridiculous question, either. It can work without a headache for a troop of coder monkeys writing in-house software.
Here in finance we have the O'Hare Straddle. I think it goes by other names (Brazilian Straddle?), but the spirit is when you have a big high-risk/highly-levered position and you know things have a non-zero probability of going very sour you purchase a plane ticket to Brazil every morning. If nothing goes sour or you actually make money, you throw the ticket away. If things do go bad, you use the ticket.
I think this applies to managing software projects as well. Do you think anyone saw this coming?
Actually, KDE 4 will likely be based on Qt 4. Qt 4 should be faster:
Significant performance and size improvements
The combined effects of many low-level improvements already in place in Qt 4 mean that applications will have executables about 10% smaller, will start up 20% faster, and will consume about 15% less memory compared to Qt 3.
I've been using Qt at work for almost 4 years. I've been impressed with trolltech's consistent progress. I believe they are headed in the right direction full steam ahead.
I've been using the Happy Hacking keyboard for about 3 years now. I spend most of my day in vim, so the HH treats me very well. Amazingly enough, when I'm using a "normal" keyboard, I have no problems immediatly switching my mind back to non-HH mode.
Another advantage is that it keeps others at work from using my PC. They see the keyboard, get intimidated and ask me to do things. This seems like it wouldn't be a problem - especially with WindowMaker. That keeps away most people. But my boss loves using other peoples computers for some reason. Very annoying.
They're going to become nothing more than a distribution channel for G4, which I'm told has the exact same problem that TechTV had for years -- no repeatable content.
Lets not count out Starcade. I'm pretty sure those are reruns.
I know I need to get outside after I've watched back-to-back eposides and have insulted little Jimmy by correlating his Congo Bongo abilities to that of a retarted monkey.
I agree learning industry specific technology will get you a step ahead. But its only a step. Being a code god is still the key. APIs can be usually be quickly mastered; however, writing good code usually cannot.
I've hired people that are a little more green and have no industry experience (I work in finance) over people that have some industry experience but aren't as strong of coders. So far, it seems to be the right decisions as all of my hires have picked up the industry quickly.
Ah, the bloomberg API. I use the C API. Sadly, it only comes on Windows and bloomberg doesn't like you copying data to and fro especially when using the C API. This makes it hard for all-linux shops!
Even though its really slow, it does work fairly well. I don't use it for pricing data, its just too slow. However, its pretty complete. Its amazing what you can do with thousands of data-entry monkeys.
True if you haven't done it before. True if you don't know your hardware or are using very new hardware. Otherwise, installing Debian is extremely simple. 11 keystrokes simple.
I was hired as an intern to help a senior developer at a large company. He gave me a list of manual tasks to do every day, which were so simple I had them scripted (on a mainframe, fun!) within the first week.
After repeatedly asking for work and not receiving any, I started asking other people around me if they needed help. I started working on some HTML and other scripts when a boss a few levels up caught wind.
I was taken aside and told that me helping other groups messes up their books, and I should go back to doing nothing.
I had no internet to browse. Not even an intranet. Wow, was I bored. I spent an entire morning opening up all the folders on all the servers in Network Neighborhood. Thats a lot of little +'s. There were 40+ servers, so it took all morning. Then, after lunch, I closed them all.
Eventually, I was given a small task that need to be done in VB. That was a great day! I wrote lots of horrible VB code, which was pretty good by company standards, so I was finally given tasks and did some actual work.
I learned so much about doing nothing early in my career. "Always carry a clipboard," my boss told me. He said that if you go to fix someone's computer and you have a clipboard, they don't ask questions.
He always communicated via email, even though his desk was 3 cubes away. Typing an email takes soooo much longer than a 10 second verbal conversation. His desk was always a mess, and he always looked disorganized or frazzled. It made me want to communicate only via email.
He successfully lobbied to get a new catagory in the timesheets for organizing files on your PC.
Anyway, blah blah blah, the final tasks once I had my VB installed was to write software to deploy the real coders software. Once their DLLs and C apps were ready to go, they had to use my LAME ASS VB programs to setup a buggy overnight automated install instead of walking to the target PCs and using installshield. I wish I could kick my ass.
It's the same thing as not eating sugar for months/years then eating something like a cookie and thinking: what the hell is this revolting shit that I used to consume by the bagload?
Indeed. I spent quite a bit of my childhood without at TV. When we finally did get one, it was black and white and we only got 1 channel (good old Wyoming). The TV was used solely for my TI-99.
When I started watching TV with friends, I couldn't handle it. I would get upset because we're all sitting around watching Cheers, which could hold my attention for about 5 minutes.
Now, however, a strong drink and TV are a good way to shut my brain the fuck up. I crank all day at work and the kids are a handful (actually, its the wife). After the kids are in bed and other hobbies are fulfilled (guitar,/., PS2, etc), I've trained myself to enjoy some time in front of the electronic campfire.
If my eyes weren't so shot from so many years of coding, I'd probably read more. Instead, I have hundreds of channels of TV that allow enough variety for an hour or so before I head upstairs to bed. Comedy Central, MTV2, Sundance, IFC, MSNBC, TNT, Spike, TLC, Discovery(s) and G4 can throw enough into an hour of flipping before bed.
That link is a good puzzle but I don't know how well its going to help you find good developers in an interview. I remember I was about a year out of college when I discovered such details of C++. I was like, "WTF? I'mn not overloading that one...why am I here?". About 5 minutes and 1 small program resembling the one in your link I had my answer and moved on.
So was it that one year of experience you would be seeking? Or would it be my problem solving skills that when my code doesn't work I'll find the answer quickly and consistently? When I interview, I try and discover one's problem solving abilities, not one's specific knowledge. It obviously all depends on what role you need filled.
A C/Java world with no C++? Most of the software I've written in the past few years has been C++ with lots of C influence. Lots of functions, few objects. I probably have more structs in cvs than classes. Its really nice to have my function/struct style code and my message/class style code coexist freely.
For example, I have a system I wrote that the backend database is all in shared memory. I played with classes in shmem and I put some templates there, too, with the Allocator. In the end, I chose structs because I was able to exploit their fixed size to make things quite speedy.
But now I have a Phd physicist that needs to do some serious matlab-style maxtrix maninpulation of my struct-based data. And he can 'kind-of' code. It was nice wrapping up access with some matrix classes so it all looked more like matlab to him.
I think there is still value in having all that in one language, even though it can make it an ugly one.
Slashdot Mirror
Thomson Reuters has too many asshats.
Agreed! I dealt with them for almost a decade. I was a Bridge customer, bought by Reuters maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I also used lots of Thompson data and have colleagues who have had their companies purchased and ruined by Thompson as they so often do. I must say that a high percentage of folk I've had the pleasure to work closely with in this uber conglomerate are, in fact, asshats. Its appalling what they want to charge for data and services and their contract agreements are only second worst to Bloomberg. I've barked at their mismanagement and have actually received personal apologies from the then only Reuters senior executives. It ain't pretty.
Its not surprising this buy-the-competition-worry-about-merging-later abomination is looking for $$ now that the economy and pending regulation changes are destroying a solid chunk of the Thompson Reuters customer base. Look for them in the news again shortly.
that Captain Kirk picked up something nasty from those green bitches. Damn space viruses.
Oh man, I was hoping germanium was going to make a comeback as a semiconductor. It holds up better when its hot, IIRC from my college days. I'll just have to make a lot of retro guitar effects pedals.
Like most things that are sinfully delicous (pr0n, booze, pot) - video games provide so much satisfaction, even though its totally synthetic. Would I get a "high" reading a Tolstoy novel? Yes. Would I get a high getting wasted and watching Robot Chicken? Yes. One takes dicipline and the other is cheap, but they both work.
Can someone become addicted to any of these things? Absolutely. Anything that is enticing enough to detract from the dicipline of the daily grind can become an addiction (/. anyone?)
The article talks about "drug memories" - how about my keyboard? Man, it feels so familiar. My PS2 controller? Oh, yeah, totally an extension of my hand.
A point about video games specifically - does anyone know a casual+ gamer that hasn't gone on an 8 hour binge? I recently introduced my 30-something neighbor to video games (GT4 + logitech wheel). Sure enough, he did an 8pm-4am addict session after only two days and he'd never played video games before.
If you show me a screenshot of Super Mario Bros or Starcraft...hell yeah, I'm going to want to play that game.
One last comment - has anyone seen the Marco Brambilla exhibit called Half-Life? Its a room with three screens - the front is a 2x2 display of kids playing counter-strike and the sides are videos from the conter-striker game they're playing. Its done really well - watching their faces hit me like a rocket launcher. I had to sit down and watch it for 15 minutes or so. I almost totally broke down. All those empty souls just wanted a kill. I'm not against video game violence but you can't deny its impact on your inner being.
Marco Brambilla link #1
Marco Brambilla link #2
I can get vi in visual slick edit and kdevelop because it is small and efficient like my happy hacker keyboard. Mostly, I use vim and make because its harmony between depth and simplicity satisfy me. I write my latex in with vim as well as my email. I don't understand how overcustomizing your bloat makes you more flexible for what life will send your way tomorrow. Educate me, please.
With SQL.
Relational databases aren't always the best answer, especially for time-series data. I work with data mining huge amounts of data here in the finance industry - not 460TB, but still a lot - and we get gigantic performance increases by storing the data in our proprietary format.
They key for us has been to rotate the data so that similar properties of information are loaded on request (like "store sales" for example) and the end software handles the date/instrument indexing, which can be static if done correctly.
There are no joins or date synchonization done on the fly. Typically, you've got to have an idea what you're looking for, so you can write structured software to do the analysis. While SQL is good at organizing data, it can be very limited and inefficient when it comes to research.
Yes, but it has a nostolgic factor that lets me reminisce about the good old days.
Given your simpleton mind (being a Vi luser) might I be as bold to recommend Perl as your corner.
the AWK/SED vs Perl flamewar is harder for me to enter. Indeed, I intuitavely corner with Perl, but I use sed quite a bit. Bash is beautiful and sed is a big factor for me. Really, its regular expressions I like. Regex is one of the things linux has lying all over that makes me find it attractive.
But as for a text editor...I'm totally married to vi. I've used the happy hacking keyboard at work for the last 3 years. When people ask me why I have such a small keyboard I say its because I like vi so much. This almost always yields poor responses, especially pot shots at my modestly sized man jewels.
But I always know that I will be able to do my job faster than an Emacs user.
Bah! Over time I've become more comfortable with edit mode. Its amazing how much repetition there is in coding. I'd have to say its pretty much 50/50 for me. My coworkers get a kick out of watching me code and they have been using vim for years. Mostly because it looks weird. tap-tap-tap-tap...then on the last tap the text appears. Cursor bouncing all over. Makes sense to me. Yes, I'm a manager.
I'd start with q, x, c, and z. You probably don't have enough dexterity in your left hand and those are fairly useless letters. You could eliminate 4,5,6,7,8 and 9 because I'm sure you can't count higher than 3.
If only you could be trained enough to eventually comprehend the potential of vi...but we'd probably have better luck with a drunken monkey than a foolish emacs lover like yourself.
vi vs emacs flamewars are sweet.
Word. I work on a trading floor. I witness a lot of business transactions. Lots of people get fucked good every day. It all gets really amped up when the number of zeros increase.
Seriously, though, it seems as though if we require extreme amounts of energy to power our world, we will alter the world we extract it from. There is no free lunch (lifted from the article). Perhaps the answer is in being more efficient with the power we use, thereby requiring less. But I hate those damn econo-flush toilets.
Come now. I do not like Bush. I didn't vote for him before and I won't now. He has made grave mistakes for this country that may never be undone.
But Gore? He was delusional. Have you ever read Earth in the Balance? Wow. Somehow, I imagine in the Gore parallel universe, it would have been worse. I'm a pessimist, so either way I look at it, it totally sucks. Thats why I love voting.
That said, this was truly a simple project. Someone would send an email requesting authorization, a little procmail and perl scipt would create a text db of requests. One user would run a gui to accept or deny these reqeuests and an email would get sent back requester.
The one user was the coworker that requested the software, and it was understood that this was a quick and dirty solution. But that is all he wanted. Of course there is the potential for feature creep. But if I had to tell him, "I didn't account for it to be used like that, I'll have to rewrite it and it from scratch and it will take another 20 hours." - I took the risk he'd understand.
Now if this was to be part of a bigger system, or a truly "production" application, I absolutely would not have done this. But that is not what this user wanted. If it was going to take more than a week, he couldn't justify it, and would be required to continue tracking this by hand.
So many things can be done with a shell script or a little perl. I'm spoiled because most of my group are developers, so they do things like this naturally. Maybe, as more computer literate generations enter the work force, these smaller automated tasks could be done by anybody, instead of a overestimated IT project.
That said, my current boss underestimates absolutely everything to a level of complete absurdity. Pretty much anything short of a compiler can be done in 2 weeks, according to him. I battle this on a regular basis - by no means am I promoting underestimating or taking shortcuts by writing non-maintainable code. Geez, nearly all the weak areas of our current system were designed by him, many of the choices (or shortcuts) I openly protested.
However, I do see many scenarios where a user just needs a little help automating a simple task that a developer (or power user) familiar with some basic tools could do for themself and IT manager treats the project like it needs to be done for an external client. Not everything needs to be in XML or in a relational database.
Them - How much time is required?
New Manager - 2 weeks. (2xactual required)
Seasoned Manager - 2 months. (8x actual required
I dunno. People can get caught doing this, too. I worked with an IT manager that grossly overestimated time and cost. Frustrated, due to the inability of the rest of the company function, I was nominated to secretly implement one of the projects. I was a software developer outside of IT, but still within the company.
The original budget was estimated at $300k-$500k with a 6-9 month duration and would require at least 1 contractor. I completed the entire project in 20 hours, which included the specification gathering, development, testing, installation and documentation. It really was a simple, non-critical project. I believe its still being used and maintained.
We did a demo of the project and I distributed the PDF describing the whole situation. Holy cats, did that make me unpopular with some and popular with others.
I do believe in overestimating, but there usually is a ceiling before someone comes and busts your nuts. Karma being what it is, unfortunately, I believe mine is due.
We're mostly developers, which is probably what made us attracted to debian in the first place. We have a developer in our group that wears the sysadmin hat (ducks) but he is both a black-belt problem solver and a good admin. I enjoy the anal-retentiveness of debian-devel and its great to see so many minds focusing on a project.
We put a lot of faith into Debian. Our servers run all of our models and our execution platform, which trades enough securities every day to put my face on MSNBC if something goes horribly wrong.
We do use 3rd party libraries in our software development, and as far as they know, we're running Redhat like we're supposed to. I have yet to have a conversation with someone in tech support that is really a Linux guru. I'm not going to claim to be one, either; however, the code I support is only used by my group. The people I usually talk to in support are usually developers, too. If our group had to support 3rd party executables, then Debian probably wouldn't work so smoothly.
All these negative comments about Debian have suprised me a little bit. Perhaps I don't read /. often enough. And no, I probably wouldn't recommend Debian to any of my peers outside my company. But I don't think "Using Debian in Commercial Environments?" is a ridiculous question, either. It can work without a headache for a troop of coder monkeys writing in-house software.
I think this applies to managing software projects as well. Do you think anyone saw this coming?
Actually, KDE 4 will likely be based on Qt 4. Qt 4 should be faster:
Significant performance and size improvements
The combined effects of many low-level improvements already in place in Qt 4 mean that applications will have executables about 10% smaller, will start up 20% faster, and will consume about 15% less memory compared to Qt 3.
(from trolltech)
I've been using Qt at work for almost 4 years. I've been impressed with trolltech's consistent progress. I believe they are headed in the right direction full steam ahead.
Another advantage is that it keeps others at work from using my PC. They see the keyboard, get intimidated and ask me to do things. This seems like it wouldn't be a problem - especially with WindowMaker. That keeps away most people. But my boss loves using other peoples computers for some reason. Very annoying.
I do miss the keypad at times.
Lets not count out Starcade. I'm pretty sure those are reruns.
I know I need to get outside after I've watched back-to-back eposides and have insulted little Jimmy by correlating his Congo Bongo abilities to that of a retarted monkey.
I've hired people that are a little more green and have no industry experience (I work in finance) over people that have some industry experience but aren't as strong of coders. So far, it seems to be the right decisions as all of my hires have picked up the industry quickly.
Even though its really slow, it does work fairly well. I don't use it for pricing data, its just too slow. However, its pretty complete. Its amazing what you can do with thousands of data-entry monkeys.
True if you haven't done it before. True if you don't know your hardware or are using very new hardware. Otherwise, installing Debian is extremely simple. 11 keystrokes simple.
After repeatedly asking for work and not receiving any, I started asking other people around me if they needed help. I started working on some HTML and other scripts when a boss a few levels up caught wind.
I was taken aside and told that me helping other groups messes up their books, and I should go back to doing nothing.
I had no internet to browse. Not even an intranet. Wow, was I bored. I spent an entire morning opening up all the folders on all the servers in Network Neighborhood. Thats a lot of little +'s. There were 40+ servers, so it took all morning. Then, after lunch, I closed them all.
Eventually, I was given a small task that need to be done in VB. That was a great day! I wrote lots of horrible VB code, which was pretty good by company standards, so I was finally given tasks and did some actual work.
I learned so much about doing nothing early in my career. "Always carry a clipboard," my boss told me. He said that if you go to fix someone's computer and you have a clipboard, they don't ask questions.
He always communicated via email, even though his desk was 3 cubes away. Typing an email takes soooo much longer than a 10 second verbal conversation. His desk was always a mess, and he always looked disorganized or frazzled. It made me want to communicate only via email.
He successfully lobbied to get a new catagory in the timesheets for organizing files on your PC.
Anyway, blah blah blah, the final tasks once I had my VB installed was to write software to deploy the real coders software. Once their DLLs and C apps were ready to go, they had to use my LAME ASS VB programs to setup a buggy overnight automated install instead of walking to the target PCs and using installshield. I wish I could kick my ass.
Indeed. I spent quite a bit of my childhood without at TV. When we finally did get one, it was black and white and we only got 1 channel (good old Wyoming). The TV was used solely for my TI-99.
When I started watching TV with friends, I couldn't handle it. I would get upset because we're all sitting around watching Cheers, which could hold my attention for about 5 minutes.
Now, however, a strong drink and TV are a good way to shut my brain the fuck up. I crank all day at work and the kids are a handful (actually, its the wife). After the kids are in bed and other hobbies are fulfilled (guitar, /., PS2, etc), I've trained myself to enjoy some time in front of the electronic campfire.
If my eyes weren't so shot from so many years of coding, I'd probably read more. Instead, I have hundreds of channels of TV that allow enough variety for an hour or so before I head upstairs to bed. Comedy Central, MTV2, Sundance, IFC, MSNBC, TNT, Spike, TLC, Discovery(s) and G4 can throw enough into an hour of flipping before bed.
That link is a good puzzle but I don't know how well its going to help you find good developers in an interview. I remember I was about a year out of college when I discovered such details of C++. I was like, "WTF? I'mn not overloading that one...why am I here?". About 5 minutes and 1 small program resembling the one in your link I had my answer and moved on.
So was it that one year of experience you would be seeking? Or would it be my problem solving skills that when my code doesn't work I'll find the answer quickly and consistently? When I interview, I try and discover one's problem solving abilities, not one's specific knowledge. It obviously all depends on what role you need filled.
A C/Java world with no C++? Most of the software I've written in the past few years has been C++ with lots of C influence. Lots of functions, few objects. I probably have more structs in cvs than classes. Its really nice to have my function/struct style code and my message/class style code coexist freely.
For example, I have a system I wrote that the backend database is all in shared memory. I played with classes in shmem and I put some templates there, too, with the Allocator. In the end, I chose structs because I was able to exploit their fixed size to make things quite speedy.
But now I have a Phd physicist that needs to do some serious matlab-style maxtrix maninpulation of my struct-based data. And he can 'kind-of' code. It was nice wrapping up access with some matrix classes so it all looked more like matlab to him.
I think there is still value in having all that in one language, even though it can make it an ugly one.