1. Learn to use Google and techie-based forums effectively for the language(s) you are using - 99 times out of 100 someone else has had the same problem you are facing and has solved it, and posted the solution
2. Get in good with your network admin - this is a must if you need network stuff done in a hurry!
3. Know when to code fast and ugly, and when to code elegant - whats the point in spending 2 hours to code the elegant solution when you KNOW your code is only going to be run once, and the 10 minute ugly version with hardcoded everything will work just as well?
4. When writing classes/methods/etc, think about the programmer who comes after you in 3/6/12/18 weeks/months/years time and has to modify what you've done. In most cases, it will be you and then you have to re-figure out what you did and why you did it that way. Make method names and variable names consistent and easy to understand, use the datatype of the variable in the name, etc...simple stuff like that helps enormously. The coding books can teach that stuff.
5. Linked to point 4....Comment, Comment, Comment! But do it wisely - dont comment each and every line but comment a "block" of codelines. Describe what the block is doing, and if its relevant, WHY you chose to code that way - there may be a certain reason to do with the database maybe, or with the network setup. It explains to the reader why the code reads the way it does. It keeps down the "WTF/min" count!
6. Dont refactor just 'cos you can - quite often you will come back to a piece of your code to fix a bug, and you'll find that since you wrote it, you've learned more stuff that you know will make this piece of code fly, but it involves major rework to the code. Resist the temptation (and the temptation will be there, believe me) to do the major rework! Your boss is expecting you to fix the bug, not re-invent the entire method, and if you post a fix time of 3 hours to a job that should have taken your 15 minutes...you wont win yourself friends with your boss. Plus you are introducing a new set of code to the system that requires testing, and all the stuff that goes along with that...
7. Bide your time - the way to get onto the big, interesting projects is to do the drudgey hack work in the beginning. Do the hack work well - keep your code efficent, relatively bug free, get it done ontime and the interesting stuff will come to you.
8. Bugs happen - just like life: make a mistake, learn from it, and try not to let it happen again. It is very rare that you will have a program run bug-free first time...and the more lines of code you have, the higher the chance it wont run first-time.
I'm sure there's more stuff, but you can figure it out yourself;)
be a discussion about which theory is best, or makes sense or whatever...
Its about respecting other people's beliefs and being open to other ideas, while being secure with your own. If you are not secure with your own beliefs, then you will not accept any criticism of them, and that's when fights start. I've found that most fights start about religion because people simply arent secure about their own religious beliefs...and the same goes for scientific beliefs, particulary in cases where its all theoretical and proof is very very hard to get.
I think what the Professor was trying to get across (mainly to other teachers and educators) was that their students may come to their classes with perfectly well-formed views about the world, and as educators, they should accept that and adapt their teaching style accordingly, not just dismiss the student's point-of-view and give their own. The teacher can introduce new ideas/concepts to the student, and the student makes the choice of what to fit into their worldview....esp. if they want to pass the exam at the end;)
This now shows what runaway effect all these automated systems can now have. In light of this:
Now that Google knows what sort of effect they can start in the market place, they should be at least sidelining data their robots pickup from news sites that cant be date verified by the robot, and a human should verify it. No other way around it or they risk starting another, possibly bigger, nastier chain reaction.
Of course, people downstream of all this information should make their own changes to their own systems.
But since Google's systems started it, they should accept part of the blame.
if you are a parent, and you care about what goes into your kid's brains, then be aware of what they are doing and playing.
What platform/console a game is on doesnt matter - its the conent of said game and weather YOU feel, as a parent, that you should let your child play it. The rating systems, as flawed as they all are, give a very rough indication of the type of game it is, so then you research it - read the blogs/reviews/comments about said game because the more research you do, the better and more informed your choice will be.
We bought a Wii precisely because of the "family-friendly" nature of the games - basically, as far as I can see from the shelves, there are way more G & PG games (australian ratings) for the Wii than for the 360 or the PS3. Since I have small kids (2 years old) who are going to grow into gaming, I feel I have a wider choice of games to select from, plus I like the "interactive" nature and direction that Nietendo have taken with the Wii Remote, etc. I am also one of those parents who will research a game before letting my 9 yearold stepson play it...and I have said no to certain games, not only because of violent content, but also other factors like complexity of gameplay and plot.
If you dont want your kids to play the game, dont let them play it. Companies are going to do whatever they will to sell a game, but you dont have to buy it.
I dont know anything about airplane design (model or real) but I read the whole thread and it looks to me to be a discussion between two experts with differing opinions on a highly technical subject.
Personally, I think this is a case of "Precious Programmer" - a programmer who has got their back up when their "labour of love" gets some fairly serious, detailed crititism. I am a programmer and I understand the feeling when something you've poured your soul into gets criticised by someone who DOES know what they are talking about, and they've gone through the software with a fine-tooth comb (which is a good trait for a beta-tester hint hint).
Mind you, there's fault on both sides - the guy doing the criticism, while his views/concerns on the calculations might be valid, should understand that the intended audience for this software is the beginner/noobie model aircraft person, not the aspiring airline designer (who, I would hope, would NOT be using an online model aircraft calculator to design their planes!), so I would think some safe assumptions in the coding of this software are valid, and he should understand that (particulary if he IS a programmer like he says)
Keep the discussion to email (since 1% of your forum's users would probably understand what the hell you are both going on about!), agree to disagree, grow a thick skin, offer to use him as a beta tester(!) and continue with what you are doing if you believe in it. It looks like a good idea on the surface...
People are going to be bullied at times in their lives no matter if you are an adult, teen or child - unfortunately thats the world we live in. What should be done is providing to the children, through school and other avenues, the skills and techniques to DEAL with the bullying in a way that is positive for them. If the bullyer wants to bully, thats fine for them - what the "bully-ee" needs to do is understand that they have a choice to either ignore the bullying or to take it in and let it affect them. The trick is recoginsing that choice is there each and every time you encounter bullying behaviour - and that takes education/training (for want of a better term).
The phrase "if you're doing nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about" does not cut it any more because one of the major problems is that you have PEOPLE enforcing all of these laws. The way one officer enforces a law can be different to the way his officer-mate enforces the same law. For example - you are pulled over for just being over the the speed limit, if that officer is in a "good mood", he/she may let you go with a warning. If he/she is in bad mood, they're more likely to book you. The "letter of the law" states that the speed limit is X....but the APPLICATION of that law is what varies. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes it isnt.
The same thing applies to the way recorded data is interpreted or used by one person may not be the same as the next person.
Whats really sad is that the concept of trust is slowly leaving the world - our leaders have successfully ramped up the "culture of fear" to the point where they can do almost whatever they like and we are too busy watching our mortgage/job/neighbours to stop them. It doesn't matter if you believe their rehetoric or not, the fact is that THEY believe it, and they are the ones making the rules.
The one thing we've all forgotten is there's WAY more of us than there is of them (yes I know that's from "A Bug's Life" but it applies here). They've got us all believing that we can't do anything about it when in fact, when you get right down to it, we can all march into our places of government and physically pick them up and take them out if we REALLY wanted to.
I really wish the market forces would hurry up and deal Microsoft the reality check it deserves. I'd like the non-IT users of word processors, spreadsheeters and hobby database creators to realise that Microsoft Office isn't the only application around where you can write documents and calculate your company's P & L statement. Then those customers may actually CHOOSE their office apps for themselves, instead of Microsoft TELLING them that "you must use Office or you ain't being productive". Companies can choose to keep all of their documents in ODF format - freeing up the choices of office application that their users/customers/supplies use to create and share information.
The most important thing to the non-IT user is their data and being able to share that data - not the app that helps them create that data.
Everytime I see a story like this appear I cringe 'cos I know what will happen when slashdotters get a hold of it - you get one side saying "its all bull...games never changed me" and the other side saying "i knew it!! violent games are evil and must be destroyed".
Reading the article I dont think they are saying anything definative like "violent games make you violent" - they are pointing out that there seems to be a correlation between brain function in a certain area of the brain known to control certain behaviours, and the function changing after viewing violent images. They do say that more reasearch is needed. Anyone using a study like this to bash gamers or the industry is very misguided.....as are those who call these research findings "bull". There is certainly not enough information in the article to say one thing or the other.
Alot more this type of research HAS to be done so there is some solid, verified facts behind this subject.
I do not have a beef with companies making violent games, nor with the people who play them - I've played alot of games myself growing up. I think alot of responsibility needs to lie with parents being aware of what is going into their kid's brains. While I do not think it is right that a 6/7/8 year old should play, or see, a game like Manhunt being played because alot of the concepts required to UNDERSTAND the game are not really within their grasp (yes major generalisation), allowing a 13/14 year to play should require a discussion between parent and child so the parent is ok with the child playing hte game...or the child understands why the parent does not what them to play the game. This would require the parent to be familer with the game's content...and THIS is where the game companies could REALLY help out about being more completely upfront about concepts appear in their game as someone plays it, instead of the parent relying on the short description on the backcover of the game and/or the rating on the cover.
Slashdot Mirror
Some stuff I've learned over the years:
;)
1. Learn to use Google and techie-based forums effectively for the language(s) you are using - 99 times out of 100 someone else has had the same problem you are facing and has solved it, and posted the solution
2. Get in good with your network admin - this is a must if you need network stuff done in a hurry!
3. Know when to code fast and ugly, and when to code elegant - whats the point in spending 2 hours to code the elegant solution when you KNOW your code is only going to be run once, and the 10 minute ugly version with hardcoded everything will work just as well?
4. When writing classes/methods/etc, think about the programmer who comes after you in 3/6/12/18 weeks/months/years time and has to modify what you've done. In most cases, it will be you and then you have to re-figure out what you did and why you did it that way. Make method names and variable names consistent and easy to understand, use the datatype of the variable in the name, etc...simple stuff like that helps enormously. The coding books can teach that stuff.
5. Linked to point 4....Comment, Comment, Comment! But do it wisely - dont comment each and every line but comment a "block" of codelines. Describe what the block is doing, and if its relevant, WHY you chose to code that way - there may be a certain reason to do with the database maybe, or with the network setup. It explains to the reader why the code reads the way it does. It keeps down the "WTF/min" count!
6. Dont refactor just 'cos you can - quite often you will come back to a piece of your code to fix a bug, and you'll find that since you wrote it, you've learned more stuff that you know will make this piece of code fly, but it involves major rework to the code. Resist the temptation (and the temptation will be there, believe me) to do the major rework! Your boss is expecting you to fix the bug, not re-invent the entire method, and if you post a fix time of 3 hours to a job that should have taken your 15 minutes...you wont win yourself friends with your boss. Plus you are introducing a new set of code to the system that requires testing, and all the stuff that goes along with that...
7. Bide your time - the way to get onto the big, interesting projects is to do the drudgey hack work in the beginning. Do the hack work well - keep your code efficent, relatively bug free, get it done ontime and the interesting stuff will come to you.
8. Bugs happen - just like life: make a mistake, learn from it, and try not to let it happen again. It is very rare that you will have a program run bug-free first time...and the more lines of code you have, the higher the chance it wont run first-time.
I'm sure there's more stuff, but you can figure it out yourself
be a discussion about which theory is best, or makes sense or whatever...
Its about respecting other people's beliefs and being open to other ideas, while being secure with your own. If you are not secure with your own beliefs, then you will not accept any criticism of them, and that's when fights start. I've found that most fights start about religion because people simply arent secure about their own religious beliefs...and the same goes for scientific beliefs, particulary in cases where its all theoretical and proof is very very hard to get.
I think what the Professor was trying to get across (mainly to other teachers and educators) was that their students may come to their classes with perfectly well-formed views about the world, and as educators, they should accept that and adapt their teaching style accordingly, not just dismiss the student's point-of-view and give their own. The teacher can introduce new ideas/concepts to the student, and the student makes the choice of what to fit into their worldview....esp. if they want to pass the exam at the end ;)
This now shows what runaway effect all these automated systems can now have. In light of this:
Now that Google knows what sort of effect they can start in the market place, they should be at least sidelining data their robots pickup from news sites that cant be date verified by the robot, and a human should verify it. No other way around it or they risk starting another, possibly bigger, nastier chain reaction.
Of course, people downstream of all this information should make their own changes to their own systems.
But since Google's systems started it, they should accept part of the blame.
if you are a parent, and you care about what goes into your kid's brains, then be aware of what they are doing and playing.
What platform/console a game is on doesnt matter - its the conent of said game and weather YOU feel, as a parent, that you should let your child play it. The rating systems, as flawed as they all are, give a very rough indication of the type of game it is, so then you research it - read the blogs/reviews/comments about said game because the more research you do, the better and more informed your choice will be.
We bought a Wii precisely because of the "family-friendly" nature of the games - basically, as far as I can see from the shelves, there are way more G & PG games (australian ratings) for the Wii than for the 360 or the PS3. Since I have small kids (2 years old) who are going to grow into gaming, I feel I have a wider choice of games to select from, plus I like the "interactive" nature and direction that Nietendo have taken with the Wii Remote, etc. I am also one of those parents who will research a game before letting my 9 yearold stepson play it...and I have said no to certain games, not only because of violent content, but also other factors like complexity of gameplay and plot.
If you dont want your kids to play the game, dont let them play it. Companies are going to do whatever they will to sell a game, but you dont have to buy it.
I dont know anything about airplane design (model or real) but I read the whole thread and it looks to me to be a discussion between two experts with differing opinions on a highly technical subject.
Personally, I think this is a case of "Precious Programmer" - a programmer who has got their back up when their "labour of love" gets some fairly serious, detailed crititism. I am a programmer and I understand the feeling when something you've poured your soul into gets criticised by someone who DOES know what they are talking about, and they've gone through the software with a fine-tooth comb (which is a good trait for a beta-tester hint hint).
Mind you, there's fault on both sides - the guy doing the criticism, while his views/concerns on the calculations might be valid, should understand that the intended audience for this software is the beginner/noobie model aircraft person, not the aspiring airline designer (who, I would hope, would NOT be using an online model aircraft calculator to design their planes!), so I would think some safe assumptions in the coding of this software are valid, and he should understand that (particulary if he IS a programmer like he says)
Keep the discussion to email (since 1% of your forum's users would probably understand what the hell you are both going on about!), agree to disagree, grow a thick skin, offer to use him as a beta tester(!) and continue with what you are doing if you believe in it. It looks like a good idea on the surface...
The same thing applies to the way recorded data is interpreted or used by one person may not be the same as the next person.
Whats really sad is that the concept of trust is slowly leaving the world - our leaders have successfully ramped up the "culture of fear" to the point where they can do almost whatever they like and we are too busy watching our mortgage/job/neighbours to stop them. It doesn't matter if you believe their rehetoric or not, the fact is that THEY believe it, and they are the ones making the rules.
The one thing we've all forgotten is there's WAY more of us than there is of them (yes I know that's from "A Bug's Life" but it applies here). They've got us all believing that we can't do anything about it when in fact, when you get right down to it, we can all march into our places of government and physically pick them up and take them out if we REALLY wanted to.
I really wish the market forces would hurry up and deal Microsoft the reality check it deserves. I'd like the non-IT users of word processors, spreadsheeters and hobby database creators to realise that Microsoft Office isn't the only application around where you can write documents and calculate your company's P & L statement. Then those customers may actually CHOOSE their office apps for themselves, instead of Microsoft TELLING them that "you must use Office or you ain't being productive". Companies can choose to keep all of their documents in ODF format - freeing up the choices of office application that their users/customers/supplies use to create and share information. The most important thing to the non-IT user is their data and being able to share that data - not the app that helps them create that data.
Everytime I see a story like this appear I cringe 'cos I know what will happen when slashdotters get a hold of it - you get one side saying "its all bull...games never changed me" and the other side saying "i knew it!! violent games are evil and must be destroyed". Reading the article I dont think they are saying anything definative like "violent games make you violent" - they are pointing out that there seems to be a correlation between brain function in a certain area of the brain known to control certain behaviours, and the function changing after viewing violent images. They do say that more reasearch is needed. Anyone using a study like this to bash gamers or the industry is very misguided.....as are those who call these research findings "bull". There is certainly not enough information in the article to say one thing or the other. Alot more this type of research HAS to be done so there is some solid, verified facts behind this subject. I do not have a beef with companies making violent games, nor with the people who play them - I've played alot of games myself growing up. I think alot of responsibility needs to lie with parents being aware of what is going into their kid's brains. While I do not think it is right that a 6/7/8 year old should play, or see, a game like Manhunt being played because alot of the concepts required to UNDERSTAND the game are not really within their grasp (yes major generalisation), allowing a 13/14 year to play should require a discussion between parent and child so the parent is ok with the child playing hte game...or the child understands why the parent does not what them to play the game. This would require the parent to be familer with the game's content...and THIS is where the game companies could REALLY help out about being more completely upfront about concepts appear in their game as someone plays it, instead of the parent relying on the short description on the backcover of the game and/or the rating on the cover.