Your first priority should be to interview people about their needs. Try to get one-on-one face time, and talk about what kind of challenges your company faces. By going to the end users you'll be better equipped to both help management select a suitable package, and motivat people to use it by being able to say: "Remember that problem we were talking about? You can use this software to solve it now, let me show you how."
Another very important thing is to do regular follow-up on how people are using the software. A common mistake is to provide the tool only to realize months later people aren't using it.
Far too much in IT is techology-centric. Techology should be people-centric. By going users first I can practically guarantee you'll have a greater chance of success.
Amusingly I would seldom make a mistake like that, but the kids succesfully distracted me, it seems. Must have been thinking in Finnish for an instant there.
I really really hope my kids rather watch porn than all the violent entertainment which for whatever twisted reason seems to be OK accoriding to society.
I simply don't undertand how consentual sex could possibly do more harm than violence.
The best advice about porn that I got as an adolescent was really simple: Watch all the porn you want, don't just confuse it with real life. (99% of all porn is rather unrealistic fantasy, after all.)
I find that the reasons that I favor consoles in our family is simply that it get's us in the same room around the same screen doing something that is important to human beings: Interacting socially.
Just today my kids were playing New Super Mario Bros on the Wii. Are tha graphics great? No. Is it a cutting edge and super innovative game? No. But do they get along better than one of them hogging the Android tablet and shoving the others away? Hell yes.
Do I think phones/tablets will replace consoles? Definitely. But only once we can (hopefully wirelessly) connect them to the TV and the controllers. Playing alone sucks.
I live in the Helsinki area in Finland, and while for the most part Bike access is OK it seems the winters are almost impossible to solve. I used to bike all year round, and while it's quite enjoyable with the right equipment I kept running into the problem that the roads were plowed first and the bike lanes much later in the day, or sometimes not at all.
Does anyone live in a city where the winter biking thing actually works? (One with snowfall, that is.) Just curious, really.
Why? Mostly because it causes little damage and shortens our feedback cycle, which is a significant benefit. Of course, the fact that our system is internal is a major factor. It's not really a software product in the traditional sense.
We do have a no-deployment window after 2pm and friday-sunday. That makes sure any new code is in production a couple of hours before our team is no longer on site. Deploying and leaving immidiately is not allowed.
At Verkkokauppa.com we deploy several times a day. Our team is fortunate enough to work on our own system, so for small features or bug fixes the turnaround can be as little as minutes.
For us the most important tool is Git. We have a logging mechanism in our deployments scripts whish logs who deployed which version of the code base (SHA1 hash) and when. If we do manage to break something we simply immediately return to the last known good version by checking it out and deploying it. Then we have a lockout policy that prevents futher deployment until the bug is fixed.
On rare occations we have had to do reverts, but only a couple of times over the course of several years.
Other valuable assets that keep us agile deployment-wise is having the whole team physically in one place, and most of our stakeholders in the same building. We also use Jabber internally to make it even easier to communicate on those occations when face-to-face is not possible.
We also use Scrum, but this is a rather recent development, and we did mange the same deployment policy before we switched to Scrum. A continuous integration environment is in use, and does help keep things in order. But for minor features and tweaks with few stakeholders it's not entierly uncommon to simply deploy and communicate with the users directly to check if everything works as expected.
The fact that there is one installation of the system is a major asset. We really never have to deal with versioning. The current version is simply the HEAD commit on the master branch.
I personally would like to know and hold my government responsible for things like this. In theory one might argue that given a sutable warrant it might be perfectly reasonable to monitor someone. The German people have a right to know what their government is doing IMHO.
I guess the culture in Europe vs. the U.S. is probably quite different... But no matter what the reasons transparency is almost always better than the opposite.
I don't really care that much how the trial pans out... But I do care about the fact that it seems like this trial is hurting my choices as a consumer. I like choice. From what I can see Apple is trying reeeeally hard to show that they should own a bunch of really nice UI ideas. Or that a touchscreen filling most of the user facing side of the phone is their idea? Frankly, the whole thing seems ridiculous.
Recently I've been looking at buying an IP67-grade Android phone. AFAIK Apple has no plans to make the iPhone waterproof and dustproof. So if Apple has it's way either I buy a UI-crippled phone, or an iPhone which doesn't fit my requirements?
Legislation should exist to benefit society, not to maximize profits for a select few corporate entities.
As much as it would be great to be able to prevent horrible events like this, it is important to remember that at some point we have to accept that a certain amount of evil has to be tolerated if we want to live in a free society. A locked down police state would likely not be a state worth living in.
Regardless, I offer my condoleances to the families affected by this horrible attack.
The argument being made is that the PC is going to be replaced with a mobile device, that can connect wirelessly to any keyboard, mouse, screen(s) at hand. This makes perfect sense. If I can essentially carry a PC in my pocket and wield all that power both while on the move (on the device itself) and through wireless docking, why not?
Granted, there are a lot of obstacles to overcome. But I don't have a need for a huge box under my desk if it fits in my pocket and does the same thing.
The description of the Swiss mentality sounds quite normal to me as a Finn. Is the US really as bad as the article implies?
If so, what happened? Is it the insane damages you can sue for in the US that caused a climate of fear?
My kids have played with hammers saws and knives too, obviously being guided how to use those tools first. Just today my 5-year-old son was chopping carrots while we were preparing food. Had to stop him once when his big brother went WOW in front of the TV and he was about to run and check with the blade pointing in front of him. Now he probably remembers to put down the knife the next time.:)
Now this means when I break my phone I can't use the cracked screen anymore.
Talk about whining for the sake of whining...
According to TFA the top layer is flexible, so for all we know these screens might be a more durable alternative in the future? It's too early to tell for sure, but something like this is more or less the holy grail of dynamically configurable user interfaces. I hope they make it work.
Then it isn't truly free speech. If your thoughts are extreme, but extreme ideas are censored, then in Europe, you are not free to express yourself, thus there is not really free speech.
My point is that free speech is a different concept in parts of Europe. Just as the word God will be interpreted differently depending on context, the same applies for any other word. I'm not trying to say what is right or wrong. But a lot of people in Europe do view the US as more oppressive than our own governments desipte the "lack" of free speech.
The UN contains many countries with little conception of free speech. Even allies of the US like Canada and Britain have substantially less free speech than the US does. In the case of Britain libel although being reformed is still very much a danger. In Canada, speech which specifically targets minorities or criticizes religions can be labeled as hate speech with fines given. And most of the world, is much much worse.
While it is completely true that there are many countries in the UN that definitely don't have proper free speech your comment highlights a major difference in the European and American interpretation of the term "free speech". In most of Europe free speech means the freedom to express your thoughts and opinions. Free speech is not considered the freedom to say anything you please.
For example if I were to set up a web site proclaiming that all black people are simply not human and that black women should be raped at will on the streets because they deserve it it would not be considered to be protected under free speech in (most of) Europe. A site like that would be taken down and I would be fined at least.
Frankly I'm not sure how a web site like that would fare in the US. Anyone care to enlighten me?
Unfortunately moving here is not a trivial process, and the language is a huge hurdle. But I do love it, personally. Still, there are a lot of other good options too.:)
I have a 200Mbps connection at home, and for now it's fine for, well, everything. But it's really hard to tell what kind of speeds will be useful in the future. Let's imagine a virtual tailor service... Assume that you could go online, image yourself with a high res 3D webcam, and order custom clothes, complete with a virtual mirror to try them on. I'm guessing my 200Mbps connection would fall short at that point.
This is the kind of chicken and egg problem we have with broadband right now. The next generation of online services can't be profitable because the infrastructure isn't there, and at the same time there is "no demand" for really high speed connections, since there are no services that need them.
But at least one can stay positive and hope for cool sci-fi tech, right?;)
Python is fun, intuitive, and shares most concepts with a lot of popular languages.
Javascript on the other hand is much more powerful than a lot of people realize. It lends itself to both functional and event driven programming, and has an object model which will let you do a lot of interesting things. It also runs anywhere you have a modern browser, and with the way HTML5 is developing will let you develop full applications better and better every day.
I don't see how you could go wrong with any of those. I'd go with learning both.
Slashdot Mirror
Your first priority should be to interview people about their needs. Try to get one-on-one face time, and talk about what kind of challenges your company faces. By going to the end users you'll be better equipped to both help management select a suitable package, and motivat people to use it by being able to say: "Remember that problem we were talking about? You can use this software to solve it now, let me show you how."
Another very important thing is to do regular follow-up on how people are using the software. A common mistake is to provide the tool only to realize months later people aren't using it.
Far too much in IT is techology-centric. Techology should be people-centric. By going users first I can practically guarantee you'll have a greater chance of success.
Why does the summary claim "sites" when the TFA clearly says any two pages? Oh well...
But if the pizza man really loves that woman, why is he spanking her?
D/s / BDSM is a complex subject, and porn is a really poor model for that. I suggest Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission for a fairly well rounded look into that particular subculture.
Amusingly I would seldom make a mistake like that, but the kids succesfully distracted me, it seems. Must have been thinking in Finnish for an instant there.
I really really hope my kids rather watch porn than all the violent entertainment which for whatever twisted reason seems to be OK accoriding to society.
I simply don't undertand how consentual sex could possibly do more harm than violence.
The best advice about porn that I got as an adolescent was really simple: Watch all the porn you want, don't just confuse it with real life. (99% of all porn is rather unrealistic fantasy, after all.)
I find that the reasons that I favor consoles in our family is simply that it get's us in the same room around the same screen doing something that is important to human beings: Interacting socially.
Just today my kids were playing New Super Mario Bros on the Wii. Are tha graphics great? No. Is it a cutting edge and super innovative game? No. But do they get along better than one of them hogging the Android tablet and shoving the others away? Hell yes.
Do I think phones/tablets will replace consoles? Definitely. But only once we can (hopefully wirelessly) connect them to the TV and the controllers. Playing alone sucks.
I live in the Helsinki area in Finland, and while for the most part Bike access is OK it seems the winters are almost impossible to solve. I used to bike all year round, and while it's quite enjoyable with the right equipment I kept running into the problem that the roads were plowed first and the bike lanes much later in the day, or sometimes not at all.
Does anyone live in a city where the winter biking thing actually works? (One with snowfall, that is.) Just curious, really.
Why? Mostly because it causes little damage and shortens our feedback cycle, which is a significant benefit. Of course, the fact that our system is internal is a major factor. It's not really a software product in the traditional sense.
We do have a no-deployment window after 2pm and friday-sunday. That makes sure any new code is in production a couple of hours before our team is no longer on site. Deploying and leaving immidiately is not allowed.
At Verkkokauppa.com we deploy several times a day. Our team is fortunate enough to work on our own system, so for small features or bug fixes the turnaround can be as little as minutes.
For us the most important tool is Git. We have a logging mechanism in our deployments scripts whish logs who deployed which version of the code base (SHA1 hash) and when. If we do manage to break something we simply immediately return to the last known good version by checking it out and deploying it. Then we have a lockout policy that prevents futher deployment until the bug is fixed.
On rare occations we have had to do reverts, but only a couple of times over the course of several years.
Other valuable assets that keep us agile deployment-wise is having the whole team physically in one place, and most of our stakeholders in the same building. We also use Jabber internally to make it even easier to communicate on those occations when face-to-face is not possible.
We also use Scrum, but this is a rather recent development, and we did mange the same deployment policy before we switched to Scrum. A continuous integration environment is in use, and does help keep things in order. But for minor features and tweaks with few stakeholders it's not entierly uncommon to simply deploy and communicate with the users directly to check if everything works as expected.
The fact that there is one installation of the system is a major asset. We really never have to deal with versioning. The current version is simply the HEAD commit on the master branch.
I personally would like to know and hold my government responsible for things like this. In theory one might argue that given a sutable warrant it might be perfectly reasonable to monitor someone. The German people have a right to know what their government is doing IMHO.
I guess the culture in Europe vs. the U.S. is probably quite different... But no matter what the reasons transparency is almost always better than the opposite.
Often telling people what to do is worse than having a well defined vision and inspiring a self-organising team to work towards it.
But there are no silver bullets in software development. The hard stuff is still what it is, hard.
I don't really care that much how the trial pans out... But I do care about the fact that it seems like this trial is hurting my choices as a consumer. I like choice. From what I can see Apple is trying reeeeally hard to show that they should own a bunch of really nice UI ideas. Or that a touchscreen filling most of the user facing side of the phone is their idea? Frankly, the whole thing seems ridiculous.
Recently I've been looking at buying an IP67-grade Android phone. AFAIK Apple has no plans to make the iPhone waterproof and dustproof. So if Apple has it's way either I buy a UI-crippled phone, or an iPhone which doesn't fit my requirements?
Legislation should exist to benefit society, not to maximize profits for a select few corporate entities.
As much as it would be great to be able to prevent horrible events like this, it is important to remember that at some point we have to accept that a certain amount of evil has to be tolerated if we want to live in a free society. A locked down police state would likely not be a state worth living in.
Regardless, I offer my condoleances to the families affected by this horrible attack.
You could have bothered to even skim TFA.
The argument being made is that the PC is going to be replaced with a mobile device, that can connect wirelessly to any keyboard, mouse, screen(s) at hand. This makes perfect sense. If I can essentially carry a PC in my pocket and wield all that power both while on the move (on the device itself) and through wireless docking, why not?
Granted, there are a lot of obstacles to overcome. But I don't have a need for a huge box under my desk if it fits in my pocket and does the same thing.
The description of the Swiss mentality sounds quite normal to me as a Finn. Is the US really as bad as the article implies?
If so, what happened? Is it the insane damages you can sue for in the US that caused a climate of fear?
My kids have played with hammers saws and knives too, obviously being guided how to use those tools first. Just today my 5-year-old son was chopping carrots while we were preparing food. Had to stop him once when his big brother went WOW in front of the TV and he was about to run and check with the blade pointing in front of him. Now he probably remembers to put down the knife the next time. :)
Wait until next spring for Season II to start on YLE, or pirate. (I'm not prepared to get a cable package for one show.)
I'm waiting actually, mostly because I have very little free time. I suspect a lot of people are less patient here, a lot of my friends seem to be.
Now this means when I break my phone I can't use the cracked screen anymore.
Talk about whining for the sake of whining...
According to TFA the top layer is flexible, so for all we know these screens might be a more durable alternative in the future? It's too early to tell for sure, but something like this is more or less the holy grail of dynamically configurable user interfaces. I hope they make it work.
The Chinese have an incredibly rich tousands of years old culture. I seriously don't get why they don't draw their inspiration from there?
Then it isn't truly free speech. If your thoughts are extreme, but extreme ideas are censored, then in Europe, you are not free to express yourself, thus there is not really free speech.
My point is that free speech is a different concept in parts of Europe. Just as the word God will be interpreted differently depending on context, the same applies for any other word. I'm not trying to say what is right or wrong. But a lot of people in Europe do view the US as more oppressive than our own governments desipte the "lack" of free speech.
The UN contains many countries with little conception of free speech. Even allies of the US like Canada and Britain have substantially less free speech than the US does. In the case of Britain libel although being reformed is still very much a danger. In Canada, speech which specifically targets minorities or criticizes religions can be labeled as hate speech with fines given. And most of the world, is much much worse.
While it is completely true that there are many countries in the UN that definitely don't have proper free speech your comment highlights a major difference in the European and American interpretation of the term "free speech". In most of Europe free speech means the freedom to express your thoughts and opinions. Free speech is not considered the freedom to say anything you please.
For example if I were to set up a web site proclaiming that all black people are simply not human and that black women should be raped at will on the streets because they deserve it it would not be considered to be protected under free speech in (most of) Europe. A site like that would be taken down and I would be fined at least.
Frankly I'm not sure how a web site like that would fare in the US. Anyone care to enlighten me?
I'm pretty sure the virtual tailor service thing could be done quite easily with less than 200 Mbps.
For a simple implementation: Definitely. For photo-realistic real time images mirroring you posing in real time? Maybe, maybe not.
I don't claim to be an expert on these things. :)
Like some pointed out, Finland.
Unfortunately moving here is not a trivial process, and the language is a huge hurdle. But I do love it, personally. Still, there are a lot of other good options too. :)
I have a 200Mbps connection at home, and for now it's fine for, well, everything. But it's really hard to tell what kind of speeds will be useful in the future. Let's imagine a virtual tailor service... Assume that you could go online, image yourself with a high res 3D webcam, and order custom clothes, complete with a virtual mirror to try them on. I'm guessing my 200Mbps connection would fall short at that point.
This is the kind of chicken and egg problem we have with broadband right now. The next generation of online services can't be profitable because the infrastructure isn't there, and at the same time there is "no demand" for really high speed connections, since there are no services that need them.
But at least one can stay positive and hope for cool sci-fi tech, right? ;)
This could be pretty cool for when you have your hands dirty and don't need your keyboard to be too. Scrolling recipes, for example.
PS. Que the porn jokes...
Python and Javascript are both good choices.
Python is fun, intuitive, and shares most concepts with a lot of popular languages.
Javascript on the other hand is much more powerful than a lot of people realize. It lends itself to both functional and event driven programming, and has an object model which will let you do a lot of interesting things. It also runs anywhere you have a modern browser, and with the way HTML5 is developing will let you develop full applications better and better every day.
I don't see how you could go wrong with any of those. I'd go with learning both.