It's like shell programming. If you know how to use "&&" or "||" you can make use of that without knowing anything else. It's all incremental. Python is not used only for major software development, so you need to know nothing at all about "pip" or the extra modules to make use of it. Just like perl, you can be a highly experienced Perl user and never once look at the CPAN stuff.
Like any scripting language, they're initially designed to be helper languages that let you get the job done on some side projects. Only later do they morph into something bigger (and monstrous) for full blown applications, and maybe even develop a community group think vastly removed from the original style.
I'm hoping they will automatically uninstall Chrome as well, since it somehow manages to reinstall itself surreptitiously so often. So many third party programs will install it during an update if you're not paying attention to which boxes to uncheck; and I know every time I go visit my mother she'll be asking about what this Chrome thing is and how to get rid of it. Most often it's the anti-malware software that puts that shit there, which is ironic since I consider anything being installed without my explicit permission to be malware. It should get rid of googlebar or whatever that's called, and all other opt-out software.
I don't ignore email, I just don't read it immediately.
I don't have a phone anymore at work, but I do have voicemail which is odd. They took away the old phone and gave some people new phones but not me. I just haven't bothered heading over to IT to bitch about getting a headset and then dealing with the hassle of figuring out how to use it. The advantage is that I don't get calls, they were all from recruiters anyway. The downside is that now coworkers think they can call me up on my personal phone at any time. Bastards. But I don't answer, I let it go to voicemail.
But if I had the phone, then voicemail would be a mandatory feature to have. How else do they contact me if I'm not at the desk? Keep calling every 3 minutes? Figure out my email address and hope that I eventually check it? Use my personal phone/email (which I'm not checking instantly either)?
I have noticed a trend on my answering machine at home is that no one bothers to leave a message. If there's no answer they just give up. The whole point of the answering machine is that I don't have to rush downstairs straight out of the shower to miss picking it up by a couple of seconds. Even on the mobile phone, I don't want to have to fumble for that thing in the middle of the night and try to figure out how to answer it when my eyes don't focus.
Imagine if email worked the same way as phones without voicemail: if you're not staring at your email inbox when the email shows up then it gets dropped...
Can you explain the difference between "voicemail" and the service that records people's calls when you don't answer the call? Because I consider those two the same thing, and I cannot not possibly imagining turning off voicemail as being productive.
Fixing things instead of buying new ones means you're stuck in old obsolete economy. We must all buy new things all the time or else the world will collapse.
The products given to schools, or given at a discount, were done in order to create future customers. The intent was never to provide any other sort of education.
And even mere coding is normally an advanced concept. Preschoolers aren't even counting properly, they most likely don't know how to add or subtract, so there is no possibility of learning to "program" even.
This is just a continuation of the decades old hysteria parents have that their kids will fall behind. Dad can't figure out how to set up the VCR, so clearly VCRs are extremely difficult concepts and they should teach that in kindergarten. Apple gloriously bamboozled the parents over that with their advertisement about the kid who flunked out of college because he didn't own an Apple II. They offered Apple II's to elementary schools, who hurriedly snatched up the free goodies, but then shelved them because they were essentially useless in the classrooms.
"Computer Science" covers a range of topics. There is actual science there in many of the topics. Especially networking is all full of science; networking isn't about knowing MAC addresses or configuration commands, it's about queueing theory, information theory, and so forth. Programming is normally either a prerequisite for computer science or else a first year course. Things like networking can be used as the weed out class because of the difficulty (assuming it is taught well and is not just a pre-corporate training class).
OK, a physicist may say that's merely mathematics, but physics is basically just mathematics partially transformed into the real world domain. Databases have finite model theory. Logic design has NP-completeness, computability, etc. Programming has complexity theory. At the core of all of computer science you can find abstract mathematics or electrical engineering.
However when people try to teach plumbing to preschoolers then you know something is broken in their heads. Worse if they get their words wrong and think they're teaching Hydrolic Engineering to preschoolers when all they're teaching is how to turn on and off the faucet.
None of this proposal is even remotely "Computer Science". When kids are still learning to count to ten then it is too early to teach even the simplest of Computer Science concepts. Boolean logic? Abstract mathematics? Even simplistic binary number base? Nonsense. There is not even one single Computer Science topic that could remotely be taught to someone at that age, unless the kid is a genius wunderkind. I think this is just a bunch of adult morons trying to pass on their idiocy to another generation. They probably think that using an a computing device counts as "computer science" ("Computers are hard! Teach kids early!")
You gotta blame players too for some of this. Fallout 4 gets announced, lots of players are excited and giddy over it, but then there's this thread from some going around asking "why are the graphics so bad???" Bleh, too many players only wanting the eye candy.
Profit margins aren't that big though in many cases. Especially if you're a smaller studio and the bosses are the big name game publishers. If you're on a console then most of those console makers will skim off a lot of the profits as well. A few games will make a good profit but they tend to be rare, most of the AAA games spent so much on production that it eats the profits. Overall the big companies make money because they have so many games being churned out to a fan base that will play each one for a couple weeks before moving on.
I've had it a few times, but crunch time is supposed to be rare (ie, once a year). It's when there's a huge bug affecting customers, shipping has stopped cold, some unexpected failure of parts shortly before the ship date, etc. If you go along with crunch time in those cases it does help your career because people see that you are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty when necessary. But if you do crunch time all the time then you are training management to expect that of you all the time.
You can be flexible without constantly being flexed to prove it.
It's not just developers by the way, the artists are overworked and underpaid as well. There are a lot of those fresh out with a visual design degree who get exploited. And even the developers aren't doing as much actual programming as their used to be in the past. The same game engine gets reused by many game studios who only need one or two programmers, but they need lots of people to do new art, sound, story, writing scripts to tie it all together, etc.
Every time I hear someone says "but I'm on call!" I feel a bit sorry for them. I know people who've been on call every weekend that they've worked at their company. Time to get a new job if someone's in that situation.
But a lot of people have to put up with it because they don't yet have the experience or training to do something better. So that's one time I think it is worth working longer hours, is if that's spent learning something new because that will give you job mobility or a chance to move up the ladder. Ie, expanding the envelope instead of staying within the closely defined job duties.
That's why getting a job where the market is glutted is a bad thing, because there's always someone who is better and/or cheaper than you waiting to take that job. If you're good at it then you may pick up a similar job again very shortly, but the downside is that you'll be doing that a lot. That's why I see fields like IT all congealing around a sort of conformist view about the world; the managers like interchangeable employees and the workers like being able to migrate their skills to another job without learning anything new.
We don't care how many hours you work, as long as you deliver this massive project under budget and within this ridiculously short deadline. But don't worry, since you're a game dev you stand a good chance of being laid off when the project is over no matter how good or bad your performance was.
Slashdot Mirror
He's a professor of law, so maybe not.
Start with 0s and 1s, and everything else derives from that. (except for functional languages, where you start with S and K)
How much Slashdot do we need to know in order to be called a geek?
It's like shell programming. If you know how to use "&&" or "||" you can make use of that without knowing anything else. It's all incremental. Python is not used only for major software development, so you need to know nothing at all about "pip" or the extra modules to make use of it. Just like perl, you can be a highly experienced Perl user and never once look at the CPAN stuff.
Like any scripting language, they're initially designed to be helper languages that let you get the job done on some side projects. Only later do they morph into something bigger (and monstrous) for full blown applications, and maybe even develop a community group think vastly removed from the original style.
But he'll have the world's longest suicide note.
And make sure it does not install itself in the first place without your explicit opt-in permission. Otherwise I consider it malware.
I'm hoping they will automatically uninstall Chrome as well, since it somehow manages to reinstall itself surreptitiously so often. So many third party programs will install it during an update if you're not paying attention to which boxes to uncheck; and I know every time I go visit my mother she'll be asking about what this Chrome thing is and how to get rid of it. Most often it's the anti-malware software that puts that shit there, which is ironic since I consider anything being installed without my explicit permission to be malware. It should get rid of googlebar or whatever that's called, and all other opt-out software.
I don't ignore email, I just don't read it immediately.
I don't have a phone anymore at work, but I do have voicemail which is odd. They took away the old phone and gave some people new phones but not me. I just haven't bothered heading over to IT to bitch about getting a headset and then dealing with the hassle of figuring out how to use it. The advantage is that I don't get calls, they were all from recruiters anyway. The downside is that now coworkers think they can call me up on my personal phone at any time. Bastards. But I don't answer, I let it go to voicemail.
But if I had the phone, then voicemail would be a mandatory feature to have. How else do they contact me if I'm not at the desk? Keep calling every 3 minutes? Figure out my email address and hope that I eventually check it? Use my personal phone/email (which I'm not checking instantly either)?
I have noticed a trend on my answering machine at home is that no one bothers to leave a message. If there's no answer they just give up. The whole point of the answering machine is that I don't have to rush downstairs straight out of the shower to miss picking it up by a couple of seconds. Even on the mobile phone, I don't want to have to fumble for that thing in the middle of the night and try to figure out how to answer it when my eyes don't focus.
Imagine if email worked the same way as phones without voicemail: if you're not staring at your email inbox when the email shows up then it gets dropped...
Can you explain the difference between "voicemail" and the service that records people's calls when you don't answer the call? Because I consider those two the same thing, and I cannot not possibly imagining turning off voicemail as being productive.
At which point I now expect the Republican presidential candidates to start bitching about this abuse of executive power.
Except under that theory as well, the world was supposed to end already.
Fixing things instead of buying new ones means you're stuck in old obsolete economy. We must all buy new things all the time or else the world will collapse.
The products given to schools, or given at a discount, were done in order to create future customers. The intent was never to provide any other sort of education.
Well when someone describes Salesforce.com as a "tech company" then it's easy to discount anything further that they say.
Software engineering is mostly just about software management. There's almost no engineering involved.
And even mere coding is normally an advanced concept. Preschoolers aren't even counting properly, they most likely don't know how to add or subtract, so there is no possibility of learning to "program" even.
This is just a continuation of the decades old hysteria parents have that their kids will fall behind. Dad can't figure out how to set up the VCR, so clearly VCRs are extremely difficult concepts and they should teach that in kindergarten. Apple gloriously bamboozled the parents over that with their advertisement about the kid who flunked out of college because he didn't own an Apple II. They offered Apple II's to elementary schools, who hurriedly snatched up the free goodies, but then shelved them because they were essentially useless in the classrooms.
"Computer Science" covers a range of topics. There is actual science there in many of the topics. Especially networking is all full of science; networking isn't about knowing MAC addresses or configuration commands, it's about queueing theory, information theory, and so forth. Programming is normally either a prerequisite for computer science or else a first year course. Things like networking can be used as the weed out class because of the difficulty (assuming it is taught well and is not just a pre-corporate training class).
OK, a physicist may say that's merely mathematics, but physics is basically just mathematics partially transformed into the real world domain. Databases have finite model theory. Logic design has NP-completeness, computability, etc. Programming has complexity theory. At the core of all of computer science you can find abstract mathematics or electrical engineering.
However when people try to teach plumbing to preschoolers then you know something is broken in their heads. Worse if they get their words wrong and think they're teaching Hydrolic Engineering to preschoolers when all they're teaching is how to turn on and off the faucet.
None of this proposal is even remotely "Computer Science". When kids are still learning to count to ten then it is too early to teach even the simplest of Computer Science concepts. Boolean logic? Abstract mathematics? Even simplistic binary number base? Nonsense. There is not even one single Computer Science topic that could remotely be taught to someone at that age, unless the kid is a genius wunderkind. I think this is just a bunch of adult morons trying to pass on their idiocy to another generation. They probably think that using an a computing device counts as "computer science" ("Computers are hard! Teach kids early!")
Right, one rock star for every 10,000 burned out slags.
You gotta blame players too for some of this. Fallout 4 gets announced, lots of players are excited and giddy over it, but then there's this thread from some going around asking "why are the graphics so bad???" Bleh, too many players only wanting the eye candy.
Profit margins aren't that big though in many cases. Especially if you're a smaller studio and the bosses are the big name game publishers. If you're on a console then most of those console makers will skim off a lot of the profits as well. A few games will make a good profit but they tend to be rare, most of the AAA games spent so much on production that it eats the profits. Overall the big companies make money because they have so many games being churned out to a fan base that will play each one for a couple weeks before moving on.
I've had it a few times, but crunch time is supposed to be rare (ie, once a year). It's when there's a huge bug affecting customers, shipping has stopped cold, some unexpected failure of parts shortly before the ship date, etc. If you go along with crunch time in those cases it does help your career because people see that you are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty when necessary. But if you do crunch time all the time then you are training management to expect that of you all the time.
You can be flexible without constantly being flexed to prove it.
It's not just developers by the way, the artists are overworked and underpaid as well. There are a lot of those fresh out with a visual design degree who get exploited. And even the developers aren't doing as much actual programming as their used to be in the past. The same game engine gets reused by many game studios who only need one or two programmers, but they need lots of people to do new art, sound, story, writing scripts to tie it all together, etc.
Every time I hear someone says "but I'm on call!" I feel a bit sorry for them. I know people who've been on call every weekend that they've worked at their company. Time to get a new job if someone's in that situation.
But a lot of people have to put up with it because they don't yet have the experience or training to do something better. So that's one time I think it is worth working longer hours, is if that's spent learning something new because that will give you job mobility or a chance to move up the ladder. Ie, expanding the envelope instead of staying within the closely defined job duties.
That's why getting a job where the market is glutted is a bad thing, because there's always someone who is better and/or cheaper than you waiting to take that job. If you're good at it then you may pick up a similar job again very shortly, but the downside is that you'll be doing that a lot. That's why I see fields like IT all congealing around a sort of conformist view about the world; the managers like interchangeable employees and the workers like being able to migrate their skills to another job without learning anything new.
We don't care how many hours you work, as long as you deliver this massive project under budget and within this ridiculously short deadline. But don't worry, since you're a game dev you stand a good chance of being laid off when the project is over no matter how good or bad your performance was.