Great argument. So the implication is again that users are stupid, right? Hmm, maybe they are. But they BUY things. In turn companies make MONEY. Then developers get PAID. When developers get PAID, they are more willing to do boring things like design GUI's and think about the user experience. Hence CONSUMERS BUY more of the PRODUCT...
Now as for blue screens yes they suck. But:
1. It also sucks trying to set up/etc/xxx.conf based on a man page and an outdated web site.
2. Spending an afternoon trying to get a kernel built sucks.
3. Not having my devices work sucks.
4. Netscape sucks.
5. Star office sucks.
6. cvs sucks.
7. Any IDE I have ever seen on *NIX sucks next to VC++. (But non-ansi compilers kind of suck too)
8. CORBA sucks
Besides, I actually have not seen 1 blue screen since installing W2k last year.
Instead of bitching about MS why not look at the things they have done right and try to learn why consumers buy MS products. Bill Gates didn't hold a gun to my head to make me install Win2k and I am fully capable of maintaining a Linux box (probably more so then some of the 31337 hackerz that post here). I like windows, and office, and exchange, and ie, and vc++, and atl, and com, and (god help me) even vb. (Well maybe not vb, but it is usefull sometimes.)
I'm a little biased, my degree is in math and I picked up CS on the side. However, I am a developer and was a technical manager at my last job. From my observations, people who are good at math make good developers, people who aren't don't.
While linear algebra is useful at times, it's not really the skills acquired from math that matters. Rather it is a set of common traits of mathematicians and programmers that indicates to me that the two fields are linked. Both need to have analytic minds, patience, and commitment to be really good at their jobs.
Like many other engineering disciplines, math is used in a CS program to cull those people who lack the required mindset from the rest of the herd. It's not likely that a CS student will get a chance to work on a major project before his or her junior or senior year. By then it would be rather late for that student to find out they hate their field. The University forces engineering students to take math classes in order to let them decide early whether they should rethink their choice of careers.
Your University believes (as do I) that if you can't get through the core math classes you aren't cut out to be a programmer, engineer, or systems administrator for that matter. I do know several people who don't have degrees at all and are great programmers. However, each of them could have easily completed the Math part of a CS degree; they just didn't feel like taking Social Science, English, etc.
As for management, I don't think I would work for a company that lacked real programming experience and analytic skills in its management. The technology moves very quickly, development is riddled with unknowns, and programmers tend to walk out mid-stream on pointy haired bosses. A lack of experience from above is a recipe for disaster.
With that said, you will probably get a decent job with a CIS degree. Someone has to maintain the Intranet, develop the Enterprise Visual Basic apps, and QA the product. But you won't get the prestige, promotions, and babes (jk) the guys with the CS degrees get.
Before I get flamed, yes I do know Linux and FreeBSD are different OSs but the RedHat ftp install did suck. I gave up and went to FreeBSD (plus the ports collection kicks the crap out of RPM in my view). I also have already have gotten flack for using an EIDE drive on a file server from my friends. The key word here is economy not scalability though. Since this is a 1 person file server EIDE is good enough. Finally NT does suck but it pays the bills so get over it. I think I've hit all the possible flames for my post.
Ok this isn't as pretty (but I happen to like it). I bought a pentium with 32 megs memory and a 1 gig drive, slapped in a network card, a 20 gig eide hard drive, and my old sound blaster. I had a half burned out 8 yr old View Sonic monitor lying around so I jacked that in. There is only one IDE controller so no cdrom but I loaded FreeBSD off of ftp (RedHat sucks). After a kernel rebuild and getting Samba up and running (I'm a win developer so my primary is a NT box, sorry) I have a network mp3 appliance plugged into my stereo through the video in RCA jacks. For a user interface I'm using cmp3 (curses based) so I can run from anywhere in the world via telnet. Total cost $70 for the computer, $150 for the hard drive at onsale. Even if you have to buy the other cards and stuff the total should still be about $300.
There is nothing new under the sun, or so I've heard. Open Source development has a parallel in the computer industry. All you have to do is look at the development of the PC in the 70's and early 80's. PC's started out as homemade custom toys for electrical engineers and hobbyists. They were made to be functional but not pretty. Then somebody said "Hey let's get everyone in on this, maybe we can even make some money on it too." The next phase involved a lot of small companies marketing there own machines and arguing over standards. Lot's of money was made and then lost because the ideas were good but the marketing and business plans sucked. Then Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak came along and said let's make a user friendly machine. Average people got interested and more money was made and this time kept (for a while). IBM woke up one day and said "Hey there might be something to this PC thing, I think I'd like to take a crack at it." So the company that everyone thought of as The Computer Company got into the act. Now IBM looked at what was going on and realized that the thing that was making Apple strong was the ability for third party developers to write software for there machine. So it came to pass that the veil of secrecy that IBM had kept around most of it's projects was dropped. The PC would be open to other developers and peripheral makers. But a clever young boy named Bill came up with another hook. A hook that would allow his company to dominate the industry without controlling the hardware as IBM had. He was able to keep control of DOS and yet initially leverage IBMs name to become the foundation of the PC industry. So what is my point? Linux is right now passing out of the hobbiest stage. It is evolving at internet time into the small start up stage. Now the push is for a user friendly environment. Already the big boys are starting to notice it's potential. In time maybe even MS will want a piece. I really don't think this last bit is terribly far fetched especially if the applications division is split from the OS division by the DOJ. With the PC, IBM (and others) started out with the intention of an open system (at least from a hardware and API perspective). But a clever little man found a new way to control the industry regardless. Maybe it will be MS, maybe it will be Corel, maybe it will be a startup that doesn't even exist yet, but someone will find a way to corner a large section of the industry and take it away from the hobbiests/gnu hackers. That someone just needs to find the common denominator, something everyone needs. In this case it probably won't even be the OS. More then likely it will applications or an IDE. Now I am being expository here. I am not offering solutions or really even stating there any of this is a problem. It is just the way it is, the Zen of capitalism. Anything new and cool, be it clothes, music, culture, or technology, that goes mainstream looses the original flavor it held for it's creators. It stops being exciting and starts being commercial. Even the people who are responsible for Linux's original growth are growing up themselves and they want to make money now. What the author of this article is telling the Linux community (and what I am elaborating on here) is that you are getting your wish. Linux is being adopted by people. Now here is what it is going to cost you.
I look forward to the day when I can insert a 1 GigaFlop anal suppository with a scrotal feedback module it to my rectum. This is the future of computing, and seeing as I am among the few eL1t3 developers working on this very technology, I will make millions. You will all bow to my superior mind after the IPO.
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Great argument. So the implication is again that users are stupid, right? Hmm, maybe they are. But they BUY things. In turn companies make MONEY. Then developers get PAID. When developers get PAID, they are more willing to do boring things like design GUI's and think about the user experience. Hence CONSUMERS BUY more of the PRODUCT ...
Now as for blue screens yes they suck. But:
1. It also sucks trying to set up /etc/xxx.conf based on a man page and an outdated web site.
2. Spending an afternoon trying to get a kernel built sucks.
3. Not having my devices work sucks.
4. Netscape sucks.
5. Star office sucks.
6. cvs sucks.
7. Any IDE I have ever seen on *NIX sucks next to VC++. (But non-ansi compilers kind of suck too)
8. CORBA sucks
Besides, I actually have not seen 1 blue screen since installing W2k last year.
Instead of bitching about MS why not look at the things they have done right and try to learn why consumers buy MS products. Bill Gates didn't hold a gun to my head to make me install Win2k and I am fully capable of maintaining a Linux box (probably more so then some of the 31337 hackerz that post here). I like windows, and office, and exchange, and ie, and vc++, and atl, and com, and (god help me) even vb. (Well maybe not vb, but it is usefull sometimes.)
I'm a little biased, my degree is in math and I picked up CS on the side. However, I am a developer and was a technical manager at my last job. From my observations, people who are good at math make good developers, people who aren't don't. While linear algebra is useful at times, it's not really the skills acquired from math that matters. Rather it is a set of common traits of mathematicians and programmers that indicates to me that the two fields are linked. Both need to have analytic minds, patience, and commitment to be really good at their jobs. Like many other engineering disciplines, math is used in a CS program to cull those people who lack the required mindset from the rest of the herd. It's not likely that a CS student will get a chance to work on a major project before his or her junior or senior year. By then it would be rather late for that student to find out they hate their field. The University forces engineering students to take math classes in order to let them decide early whether they should rethink their choice of careers. Your University believes (as do I) that if you can't get through the core math classes you aren't cut out to be a programmer, engineer, or systems administrator for that matter. I do know several people who don't have degrees at all and are great programmers. However, each of them could have easily completed the Math part of a CS degree; they just didn't feel like taking Social Science, English, etc. As for management, I don't think I would work for a company that lacked real programming experience and analytic skills in its management. The technology moves very quickly, development is riddled with unknowns, and programmers tend to walk out mid-stream on pointy haired bosses. A lack of experience from above is a recipe for disaster. With that said, you will probably get a decent job with a CIS degree. Someone has to maintain the Intranet, develop the Enterprise Visual Basic apps, and QA the product. But you won't get the prestige, promotions, and babes (jk) the guys with the CS degrees get.
Before I get flamed, yes I do know Linux and FreeBSD are different OSs but the RedHat ftp install did suck. I gave up and went to FreeBSD (plus the ports collection kicks the crap out of RPM in my view). I also have already have gotten flack for using an EIDE drive on a file server from my friends. The key word here is economy not scalability though. Since this is a 1 person file server EIDE is good enough. Finally NT does suck but it pays the bills so get over it. I think I've hit all the possible flames for my post.
Ok this isn't as pretty (but I happen to like it). I bought a pentium with 32 megs memory and a 1 gig drive, slapped in a network card, a 20 gig eide hard drive, and my old sound blaster. I had a half burned out 8 yr old View Sonic monitor lying around so I jacked that in. There is only one IDE controller so no cdrom but I loaded FreeBSD off of ftp (RedHat sucks). After a kernel rebuild and getting Samba up and running (I'm a win developer so my primary is a NT box, sorry) I have a network mp3 appliance plugged into my stereo through the video in RCA jacks. For a user interface I'm using cmp3 (curses based) so I can run from anywhere in the world via telnet. Total cost $70 for the computer, $150 for the hard drive at onsale. Even if you have to buy the other cards and stuff the total should still be about $300.
There is nothing new under the sun, or so I've heard. Open Source development has a parallel in the computer industry. All you have to do is look at the development of the PC in the 70's and early 80's. PC's started out as homemade custom toys for electrical engineers and hobbyists. They were made to be functional but not pretty. Then somebody said "Hey let's get everyone in on this, maybe we can even make some money on it too." The next phase involved a lot of small companies marketing there own machines and arguing over standards. Lot's of money was made and then lost because the ideas were good but the marketing and business plans sucked. Then Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak came along and said let's make a user friendly machine. Average people got interested and more money was made and this time kept (for a while). IBM woke up one day and said "Hey there might be something to this PC thing, I think I'd like to take a crack at it." So the company that everyone thought of as The Computer Company got into the act. Now IBM looked at what was going on and realized that the thing that was making Apple strong was the ability for third party developers to write software for there machine. So it came to pass that the veil of secrecy that IBM had kept around most of it's projects was dropped. The PC would be open to other developers and peripheral makers. But a clever young boy named Bill came up with another hook. A hook that would allow his company to dominate the industry without controlling the hardware as IBM had. He was able to keep control of DOS and yet initially leverage IBMs name to become the foundation of the PC industry. So what is my point? Linux is right now passing out of the hobbiest stage. It is evolving at internet time into the small start up stage. Now the push is for a user friendly environment. Already the big boys are starting to notice it's potential. In time maybe even MS will want a piece. I really don't think this last bit is terribly far fetched especially if the applications division is split from the OS division by the DOJ. With the PC, IBM (and others) started out with the intention of an open system (at least from a hardware and API perspective). But a clever little man found a new way to control the industry regardless. Maybe it will be MS, maybe it will be Corel, maybe it will be a startup that doesn't even exist yet, but someone will find a way to corner a large section of the industry and take it away from the hobbiests/gnu hackers. That someone just needs to find the common denominator, something everyone needs. In this case it probably won't even be the OS. More then likely it will applications or an IDE. Now I am being expository here. I am not offering solutions or really even stating there any of this is a problem. It is just the way it is, the Zen of capitalism. Anything new and cool, be it clothes, music, culture, or technology, that goes mainstream looses the original flavor it held for it's creators. It stops being exciting and starts being commercial. Even the people who are responsible for Linux's original growth are growing up themselves and they want to make money now. What the author of this article is telling the Linux community (and what I am elaborating on here) is that you are getting your wish. Linux is being adopted by people. Now here is what it is going to cost you.
I look forward to the day when I can insert a 1 GigaFlop anal suppository with a scrotal feedback module it to my rectum. This is the future of computing, and seeing as I am among the few eL1t3 developers working on this very technology, I will make millions. You will all bow to my superior mind after the IPO.