- pair-commiting will improve your code even more (code as you wish, but always commit with another coder, a lot of new ideas will emerge that way) - run the tests continuously on a computer with a big screen, and display the current status of the build (if possible with noise when the build fails) - try to use BDD, so the product management will learn the joy of implementing tests - writing Unit Tests will save you the time to write documentation on your code
Also, the article has a wrong premise: Apple is not a software company !!!
How can you compare Apple and Google ? Apple is entirely about hardware and PR (and they don't care about the software). Google is entirely about software and bandwidth.
I have the feeling that Steve Jobs doesn't respect developers, but instead hardware designers.
I used Copernic at the time. It was a program which searched over all the existing search engines, sorting the results by relevance. It was very cool then.
you'd pay a lot of money to move beyond the fragile, hinges-breaking crappy ass plastic that you buy on your cheap-as-shit will break in 9 months disposable notebook.
Citation needed.
From my experience, all laptops -even Apple's- are built to last around 3 years, then you need to buy another one because of obsolescence.
BTW, I think you drink too much the Apple PR's Kool-Aid. I'm not very surprised by your attitude, since Steve Jobs always wanted to become a guru. Welcome to Apple's sect.
(Oh and don't give me crap about Macs being better - the $1500 model actually had 1 GB less memory and 500 megahertz slower speed than the $450 Toshiba laptop.)
Probably, but her kid can now boast that he has an Apple computer, and that is priceless.
Excellent list. I'd offer one even more profound example. Apple. The Apple II (combined with VisiCalc) redefined the personal computer from hobbyist novelty to must-have business tool. If anyone has had a front-row seat to how the industry works, it's Apple.
No, Visicalc has been written by a small company: Software Arts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc Companies probably bought Apple II because of Visicalc, but not the other way.
Apple II was just the hardware platform, and it was only an expensive game platform at this time. Professional software was rare on it.
The real reason for writing multiplayer games is that you can force people to pay every month to have access to your server.
Frankly, every game developer knows that doing a multiplayer game takes a lot more time than doing a single player game, and also it's pretty boring to code (yes, I wrote several multiplayer games several years ago).
But when you realize that the most successful games are multiplayer because of the subscriptions, it would be dumb to miss this opportunity.
There is basically no communication between the developers and community.
Since the game was probably finished 3 months before its release, I would say that 30% of the team left at this moment (in general, the first to leave were the most motivated, and those who really believed in the game).
Out of the remaining 70%, all are completely burnt out, and they won't be able to work for one month, so they are forced to take a vacation.
After this month, they are immediately assigned to a new project, since companies like to believe that busy workers do not think too much (or at least do not complain too much, due to overwork).
What is left for fixing the bugs on the released game are junior coders or those who didn't get burnt during the project (the lead coders don't want to spend even a minute on the finished project).
This is why you have bugs fixed so slowly and so badly.
Windows is setup like a toll booth where you have to pay extra to get it to do anything useful or keep it running.
Not exactly.
It's mainly for educating users, I mean consumers.
Educating users that software is not cheap and must be bought to do anything useful. It's better to teach them as soon as they start using computers, so they'll continue paying when they'll be more experienced, the more the merrier !
And in the same process, they learn that free software is a bad thing:
this software is free, and this one costs $30 ? Sure, give me the one at $30, its cost surely means that it's better !
Anything that is good for Microsoft is good for the software industry, right ?
Blocking a political party because "sex" is in the name is wrong. If you can't figure out why, you're part of the problem with those that want to stomp on democracy.
This is a side effect.
This has nothing to do with democracy, and everything to do with bandwidth availability. At my company, we set up DansGuardian, which is probably the same filter used here. DansGuardian can block sites based on their URL (or reverse DNS), by keywords filtering (a word can block a link), and content filtering.
Because we have bandwidth problems (in this case, people at work abusing it), DansGuardian was installed. It was first configured to use all the possible filters, but after a few days, we realized that it was not possible to do anything because of the settings. So now, there is no more keyword filtering nor content filtering.
However, we are trying to monitor the bandwith to find who abuses the system. Recently, one of the employees streamed 800 megabytes, meaning that he watched something on TV during 2 hours during work hours ! Now, this site is blocked, and I'm pretty sure it contains political insights, but frankly, why do you consult such sites AT WORK ?
Accessing sex from work could be dangerous for your job.
If you really want to watch sex, just do it from your home.
Here are 2 other examples of harmless words that are filtered by DansGuardian (which is the filter we use in my company, and probably the one used here):
cluster -> because of 'lust' (there is one link on Microsoft's site with this word in the URL) ptit (which is a contraction of the word petit in french) -> because of 'tit'.
After that, we disabled keyword and content filtering, because of the false positives, but we are keeping the sex filters anyway.
BTW, if you want to have nice links, just download DansGuardian's blacklists;-)
And sometimes they don't take into account certain potential problems, such as malware preventing one file from updating, making the system Bluescreen at boot.
You are mixing 2 events in your memory: 1) blue-screen due to a malware which modified a driver. 2) continuous reboots when updating an antivirus.
These have nothing to do with Microsoft !
In these cases, I'm siding with Microsoft: it's not their responsability to be compatible with third-party software (malware and antivirus) !
MS needs to regression test each and every combination.
Frankly, this argument just proves how bad their testing method is.
At my job (and at Google's company too), we are using agile methodologies, and especially TDD (and also more complete regression tests). TDD implies that you write the tests before writing code, and this allows to quickly test any kind of components automatically. Regression tests are automated too, in order to early locate any kind of problem, and we are doing it with virtual machines, to avoid installing tons of computers.
From my point of view: - prioritizing the bug will probably take 2-3 days (prioritizing means that the bug will determine when the bug will be fixed). - fixing the problem will probably take one week to several programmers (using pair-commiting) - testing all the versions will probably take 2 weeks to a group of people (and this process can be distributed between different teams)
Presumably, this process is continuous, so this means that you have teams already working 100% of their time on fixing the bugs, so fixing the problems doesn't need to start building teams, etc...
If the management process is longer than 2 months, it means that Microsoft has serious problems with their methodology.
And if Microsoft doesn't use such automation to test the stability of their releases, then shame on them !
Slashdot Mirror
I think using several browsers is necessary now.
For example, I didn't install Flash on my computer (to avoid the endless updates), so I use Chrome whenever I need to see a Flash video.
For anything else, I use Firefox with NoScript and AdBlock.
Are you stupid ?
It's well known that 50 years ago, everything was written on papyrus.
And if they did, then Sweden would have an entire international body of allies who would object.
From France: please count us out.
President Sarkozy is so pro-american that we'll probably bomb Sweden if US asked us.
Slashdot is so buggy that I doubt that it works on anything else than IE and Firefox ;-)
What ? Slashdot works on a Safari browser ?
Other important points:
- pair-commiting will improve your code even more (code as you wish, but always commit with another coder, a lot of new ideas will emerge that way)
- run the tests continuously on a computer with a big screen, and display the current status of the build (if possible with noise when the build fails)
- try to use BDD, so the product management will learn the joy of implementing tests
- writing Unit Tests will save you the time to write documentation on your code
Also, the article has a wrong premise: Apple is not a software company !!!
How can you compare Apple and Google ?
Apple is entirely about hardware and PR (and they don't care about the software).
Google is entirely about software and bandwidth.
I have the feeling that Steve Jobs doesn't respect developers, but instead hardware designers.
I used Copernic at the time. It was a program which searched over all the existing search engines, sorting the results by relevance. It was very cool then.
Rake to replace Nant ?
If you use it to build projects, MsBuild is much better for this.
Also, RSpec has been obsoleted by SpecFlow (or Cucumber for Ruby), which is fully integrated in VS.
His name was Dave Packard.
Dave Packard ?
Sorry, I have no idea who this Packard is...
you'd pay a lot of money to move beyond the fragile, hinges-breaking crappy ass plastic that you buy on your cheap-as-shit will break in 9 months disposable notebook.
Citation needed.
From my experience, all laptops -even Apple's- are built to last around 3 years, then you need to buy another one because of obsolescence.
BTW, I think you drink too much the Apple PR's Kool-Aid.
I'm not very surprised by your attitude, since Steve Jobs always wanted to become a guru.
Welcome to Apple's sect.
(Oh and don't give me crap about Macs being better - the $1500 model actually had 1 GB less memory and 500 megahertz slower speed than the $450 Toshiba laptop.)
Probably, but her kid can now boast that he has an Apple computer, and that is priceless.
You don't understand fashion.
Mark Hurd's bio disappeared from HP's site:
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/bios/hurd.html
His motto was:
"Everything we do must be for the customer. If it's not, then we need to reconsider why we're doing it."
http://web.archive.org/web/20071226095057/http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/bios/hurd.html
He should have tried to respect it...
Excellent list. I'd offer one even more profound example. Apple. The Apple II (combined with VisiCalc) redefined the personal computer from hobbyist novelty to must-have business tool. If anyone has had a front-row seat to how the industry works, it's Apple.
No, Visicalc has been written by a small company: Software Arts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc
Companies probably bought Apple II because of Visicalc, but not the other way.
Apple II was just the hardware platform, and it was only an expensive game platform at this time.
Professional software was rare on it.
You can push a few buttons, right?
There is no button to push, everything is automated.
Don't you know what High-Frequency Trading is ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_frequency_trading
It's about transactions done within a few milliseconds, so it's impossible to trade manually.
Carrots dieting ?
The real reason for writing multiplayer games is that you can force people to pay every month to have access to your server.
Frankly, every game developer knows that doing a multiplayer game takes a lot more time than doing a single player game, and also it's pretty boring to code (yes, I wrote several multiplayer games several years ago).
But when you realize that the most successful games are multiplayer because of the subscriptions, it would be dumb to miss this opportunity.
There is basically no communication between the developers and community.
Since the game was probably finished 3 months before its release, I would say that 30% of the team left at this moment (in general, the first to leave were the most motivated, and those who really believed in the game).
Out of the remaining 70%, all are completely burnt out, and they won't be able to work for one month, so they are forced to take a vacation.
After this month, they are immediately assigned to a new project, since companies like to believe that busy workers do not think too much (or at least do not complain too much, due to overwork).
What is left for fixing the bugs on the released game are junior coders or those who didn't get burnt during the project (the lead coders don't want to spend even a minute on the finished project).
This is why you have bugs fixed so slowly and so badly.
(and yes, I was a game developer)
See that nice dressed business woman? She's stealing your data.
You are wrong, they mention man-in-the-middle-style, not woman-in-the-middle-style.
cause a lot of trouble just to suqeeze the maximum amount of money out of their targets
Did you mean suck or squeeze ?
Windows is setup like a toll booth where you have to pay extra to get it to do anything useful or keep it running.
Not exactly.
It's mainly for educating users, I mean consumers.
Educating users that software is not cheap and must be bought to do anything useful.
It's better to teach them as soon as they start using computers, so they'll continue paying when they'll be more experienced, the more the merrier !
And in the same process, they learn that free software is a bad thing:
this software is free, and this one costs $30 ? Sure, give me the one at $30, its cost surely means that it's better !
Anything that is good for Microsoft is good for the software industry, right ?
Blocking a political party because "sex" is in the name is wrong. If you can't figure out why, you're part of the problem with those that want to stomp on democracy.
This is a side effect.
This has nothing to do with democracy, and everything to do with bandwidth availability.
At my company, we set up DansGuardian, which is probably the same filter used here.
DansGuardian can block sites based on their URL (or reverse DNS), by keywords filtering (a word can block a link), and content filtering.
Because we have bandwidth problems (in this case, people at work abusing it), DansGuardian was installed.
It was first configured to use all the possible filters, but after a few days, we realized that it was not possible to do anything because of the settings.
So now, there is no more keyword filtering nor content filtering.
However, we are trying to monitor the bandwith to find who abuses the system.
Recently, one of the employees streamed 800 megabytes, meaning that he watched something on TV during 2 hours during work hours !
Now, this site is blocked, and I'm pretty sure it contains political insights, but frankly, why do you consult such sites AT WORK ?
Accessing sex from work could be dangerous for your job.
If you really want to watch sex, just do it from your home.
Here are 2 other examples of harmless words that are filtered by DansGuardian (which is the filter we use in my company, and probably the one used here):
cluster -> because of 'lust' (there is one link on Microsoft's site with this word in the URL)
ptit (which is a contraction of the word petit in french) -> because of 'tit'.
After that, we disabled keyword and content filtering, because of the false positives, but we are keeping the sex filters anyway.
BTW, if you want to have nice links, just download DansGuardian's blacklists ;-)
And sometimes they don't take into account certain potential problems, such as malware preventing one file from updating, making the system Bluescreen at boot.
You are mixing 2 events in your memory:
1) blue-screen due to a malware which modified a driver.
2) continuous reboots when updating an antivirus.
These have nothing to do with Microsoft !
In these cases, I'm siding with Microsoft: it's not their responsability to be compatible with third-party software (malware and antivirus) !
MS needs to regression test each and every combination.
Frankly, this argument just proves how bad their testing method is.
At my job (and at Google's company too), we are using agile methodologies, and especially TDD (and also more complete regression tests).
TDD implies that you write the tests before writing code, and this allows to quickly test any kind of components automatically.
Regression tests are automated too, in order to early locate any kind of problem, and we are doing it with virtual machines, to avoid installing tons of computers.
From my point of view:
- prioritizing the bug will probably take 2-3 days (prioritizing means that the bug will determine when the bug will be fixed).
- fixing the problem will probably take one week to several programmers (using pair-commiting)
- testing all the versions will probably take 2 weeks to a group of people (and this process can be distributed between different teams)
Presumably, this process is continuous, so this means that you have teams already working 100% of their time on fixing the bugs, so fixing the problems doesn't need to start building teams, etc...
If the management process is longer than 2 months, it means that Microsoft has serious problems with their methodology.
And if Microsoft doesn't use such automation to test the stability of their releases, then shame on them !