Actually, I don't necessarily take "unprofessional" as
an insult. Some of the greatest accomplishments in software
have been from amateurs.
Perhaps you're one of that rare breed that actually
brings "process" to the table from day 1, and doesn't do
it in a way that merely produces rheems of design documents
without code to show for it. I've heard of this happening,
but I haven't seen it in action.
I wager such programmers are rare, to the point where
you're better off looking for those who will simply put
forth effort, simply because you're far more likely to find
them and get the job done.
For a far more eloquent and respected essay along these
lines, please read The Duct Tape Programmer
by Joel Spolsky, and let me know what you think.
Some people may protest this. They might even form a movement to protest it. Now... if I could just think of a name for people who protest actions of the Catholic church... hmmm...
This is sheer BS, and a common view I have come across in, well what can only be described as average developers, unprofessional devs.
There's no need to resort to ad hominem attacks.
You don't say exactly what kind of company you're working
at. I wager you're in an established industry, and perhaps
you're producing mission critical software such as missile
guidance or medical systems. Your company already has the contract,
and low defect code is more important.
My experience includes startups. That's an entirely
different world.
I'm a "9-5 developer" (as you so eloquently put it) and I deliver quality code (although not always without bugs) and ALL functionality requested on time. OTOH, I have worked with devs who have admitted to deliberately taking longer to deliver, so that they can rack up the overtime pay!
There is no "overtime pay" in a startup. I had
just as much equity and salary regardless of how long
I took. If I "finished" before 6 PM, the
boss would have come back with "OK, now let's think
of some new features". There really is no "finished".
That was the mentality. Work
as hard as possible, aim high, kill the competition, and
maybe (just maybe) win the lottery... or at least a favorable
exit strategy.
It depends on the urgency of the situation,
the relationship with the employees, and the
style of the developer.
When there is some code that needs to be demo'd
the next day, and you may have to omit some features
or make some things less functional the boss MUST STAY
until it's fit for demo. His input will be needed to
decide what's OK to leave out, what must be finished.
If it's less urgent, and the deadline is spread out over days
and the developers work better without interference, then the
boss can just check during regular hours.
It's a judgement call, just like anything else.
And yes, the manager should definitely buy pizza if he stays.
It's just common courtesy. It also builds the team, and
aside from that I find that pizza is fantastic energy food
for late-night coding.
Oh, and ideally the manager should have figured out how
not to have it come down to late-night; but we don't live
in an ideal world. The team that works into the night will
win, even if their code has bugs. The 9-5 coders with no
bugs will be late to the market, late to the VCs who funded
the later-nighters project, etc.
The number of things that can be used along side php for web-related things and the number of api's in-built to php just mean witty is never even going to be viable as an alternative. Lets also not forget there are millions of people round the globe using php for web stuff - which ultimately leads to php being a good web language (i.e. security problems being found, optimizations, etc etc).
In other words, PHP is "good enough" and more popular.
It's the winnner.
We see this a lot in computing. In order for people to
consider switching, the technology has to be more than incrementally
better. Switching costs are HIGH.
When switching does occur, it occurs slowly. People didn't
just snap their fingers and ditch their expensive Sun boxes for
commodity Intel hardware. That switch is taking years. Even
when the Sun box cost 10x as much as the Intel+Linux setup, if you
had already paid for the Sun hardware, you were not going to switch.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're chowing 255.
Tell 'em you're at this very chic new place, the one
in SF that has the $50,000 machine that's supposed
to make the perfect espresso. They probably won't
be able to track your actual location.
What's really needed is a Boston CD party.
I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool anti-IP person; for
me it's more about defeating corporatism. Their
manipulation of IP law is just one facet of that problem.
So some guy rotting in prison pulled some legal shenanagans (a popular
passtime in there, based on several other stories I've seen) and it managed
to reach all the way into my living room, via Slashdot. Sheesh! Prisoners
file bogus legal claims all the time. You'd think that journalists would
recognize the pattern by now, and just stop reporting on it.
First print off a copy of everything you've ever said online and send it so they can check it for anything embarrassing. I gather that's what one of their pre-screening requirements was. Which is to say, they want people who have never used the internet for their security czar.
How much time will pass before everybody is naked, drunk and stoned
on their MyBooooook page, so that we can get over all this nonsense about being
persecuted for stuff everybody knows happens?
I'll take it. I've even worked
in security, although as a programmer not
as an executive or highly respected author and lecturer
(e.g., Bruce Schneier) which is what I imagine they want
and will never get.
I am a journalist, and I will not be denied the right
to use "bathing the cosmos". It is, in my view, and elegant
turn of phrase. Please do not bother me with all this
science nonsense about sensors.
Now excuse me, I have to get off to my 2nd job. It's
not easy being a journalist these days. The paper could go
belly-up any time. I moonlight writing advertising copy
for real estate agents. There are tiny cabins that need
to be described as "cozy", and houses needing tree work that
need to be described as "nestled in the woods".
Easier said than done, since he would have either had to buy
up all the parcels fronting the right-of-way, or bought easements
for a utility right-of-way from all the owners. There's a signficant
legal and time expense in negotiating that, aside from the actual
negotiated price. Also, if just ONE owner held out, you have nothing.
The utility, OTOH, can obtain easements for "public benefit".
Famous people and/or well-connected people
have been getting "gifts" from companies for ages.
Some of the very first wheels were probably given
to the chief with the big spear, while the guy in
the cave next door had to give saber-tooth cat pelts
in exchange.
Would it pass in California? Probably not.
You see two-stroke scooters around here sometimes.
I don't know if they're legal or not, but I know
they STINK when they go by, especially if they're not
well maintained.
Odds seem slim that California would ever allow
a production two-stroke automobile on the road, unless
they could prove that it throws out less emissions than
a regular car. They are already quite strict about Diesels
from my understanding (although you can still get them if you
really want one). Part of the Diesel requirements are that
you have to prove an older engine doesn't become a heavy
polluter under regular use. Two-strokes would probably
have a similar procedure.
Getting energy into space is easy.
You can grab it from nearby stars, or
you can carry a nuclear reactor with you.
Because a nuclear reactor converts mass
to energy via E=Mc^2, it produces a lot
of energy from a small mass.
The real problem is reaction mass.
You have to have something to push against
in order to move. Getting a lot of reaction mass
into space is difficult. If you can push against
the vacuum of space, that problem is solved.
I went to YouTube. I watched the first 10 minute
segment. I got a few minutes into the 2nd segment.
I paused it and googled around and found out it was
a FULL LENGTH MOVIE. I was flabbergasted. 90+ minutes.
I have utter admiration for anybody who can sit through
the whole thing. Maybe the meaning of life is revealed
in minute 89, and nobody has ever gotten that far. I
gave up right where I paused on the 2nd segment. No Enlightenment
for me. It's not worth it. I'm going to drink heavily now.
...there should be compulsory licensing
for all the green patents. In other words,
you have to license the technology. To make that
practical, I'd also stipulate that you have to
license it at a reasonable rate and I'd base that
on a fixed percentage of the sales price of the
items made by the licensees.
This would also lay to rest all the "big oil
companies bought the patent on the green tech
so they could suppress it" conspiracies.
Actually, I think there should be compulsory
licensing on ALL patents (ie, no suppressive patents),
but we have to start someplace, and if this turns
out to be more trouble than it's worth for some
reason, it's good
to start with just a subset of patents so it's easier
to step back.
Although most malware probably doesn't go that far,
it seems like if I really wanted to "pwn yur box", I'd
at least patch rm to not delete my executable and instead
simply fool the user into thinking it was gone. Patch
ps to not display the process.... and general other rootkit
mischief. I'm not terribly familiar with that kind of thing,
but I assume there are people who have made it their life's work
to hide executables on Linux, whereas I KNOW there are people
who've made it their life's work on Windows.
The only real solution, IMHO, is to drop-kick the computer
out the door and use parchment and a quil pen for all your correspondance.
Let's see 'em hack the Amish.
Monkey syntax errors aren't so bad
on
Monkeys With Syntax
·
· Score: 5, Funny
We've got excess gold on Earth. That's why
most of it is in vaults. What about something useful
like uranium? How much of that is in asteroids?
If we could get over the nuclear jitters, then having
a rock full of uranium and/or deposits on Mars would
be a great thing. That and water of course, but don't comets
supply plenty of water? Snagging resources from low-gravity
bodies seems like the first potentially profitable venture
in planetary space.
I thought about this a bit more after I posted. I came to the conclusion
that reputation is for triage. In other words, reputation isn't useless as I
implied.
So, reading peer-reviewed journals isn't a bad idea. In fact, it's a start;
but if you were only equipped to start and not finish... then it's not much help.
Also, what's being questioned by a lot of people is the whole "peer review" process.
I don't think you have to be a conspiracy nut to question that. Anybody who says
the scientific community isn't strongly biased towards "liberal" ideology is, to use
their own language, a denialist.
To me, "peer review" sounds way too much like "what the cool kids think". I've been
an AGW sceptic from way back though, and taken a lot of s*** for it. Fortunately,
I'm not a career academic so the s*** was some sour looks and (believe it
or not) a girl who wouldn't even have coffee with me!
Slashdot Mirror
...they bust down your door to take out your pot grow, only to discover that it's WHEAT.
Apology accepted.
Actually, I don't necessarily take "unprofessional" as an insult. Some of the greatest accomplishments in software have been from amateurs.
Perhaps you're one of that rare breed that actually brings "process" to the table from day 1, and doesn't do it in a way that merely produces rheems of design documents without code to show for it. I've heard of this happening, but I haven't seen it in action.
I wager such programmers are rare, to the point where you're better off looking for those who will simply put forth effort, simply because you're far more likely to find them and get the job done.
For a far more eloquent and respected essay along these lines, please read The Duct Tape Programmer by Joel Spolsky, and let me know what you think.
Some people may protest this. They might even form a movement to protest it. Now... if I could just think of a name for people who protest actions of the Catholic church... hmmm...
This is sheer BS, and a common view I have come across in, well what can only be described as average developers, unprofessional devs.
There's no need to resort to ad hominem attacks.
You don't say exactly what kind of company you're working at. I wager you're in an established industry, and perhaps you're producing mission critical software such as missile guidance or medical systems. Your company already has the contract, and low defect code is more important.
My experience includes startups. That's an entirely different world.
I'm a "9-5 developer" (as you so eloquently put it) and I deliver quality code (although not always without bugs) and ALL functionality requested on time. OTOH, I have worked with devs who have admitted to deliberately taking longer to deliver, so that they can rack up the overtime pay!
There is no "overtime pay" in a startup. I had just as much equity and salary regardless of how long I took. If I "finished" before 6 PM, the boss would have come back with "OK, now let's think of some new features". There really is no "finished". That was the mentality. Work as hard as possible, aim high, kill the competition, and maybe (just maybe) win the lottery... or at least a favorable exit strategy.
It depends on the urgency of the situation, the relationship with the employees, and the style of the developer.
When there is some code that needs to be demo'd the next day, and you may have to omit some features or make some things less functional the boss MUST STAY until it's fit for demo. His input will be needed to decide what's OK to leave out, what must be finished.
If it's less urgent, and the deadline is spread out over days and the developers work better without interference, then the boss can just check during regular hours.
It's a judgement call, just like anything else. And yes, the manager should definitely buy pizza if he stays. It's just common courtesy. It also builds the team, and aside from that I find that pizza is fantastic energy food for late-night coding.
Oh, and ideally the manager should have figured out how not to have it come down to late-night; but we don't live in an ideal world. The team that works into the night will win, even if their code has bugs. The 9-5 coders with no bugs will be late to the market, late to the VCs who funded the later-nighters project, etc.
The number of things that can be used along side php for web-related things and the number of api's in-built to php just mean witty is never even going to be viable as an alternative. Lets also not forget there are millions of people round the globe using php for web stuff - which ultimately leads to php being a good web language (i.e. security problems being found, optimizations, etc etc).
In other words, PHP is "good enough" and more popular. It's the winnner.
We see this a lot in computing. In order for people to consider switching, the technology has to be more than incrementally better. Switching costs are HIGH.
When switching does occur, it occurs slowly. People didn't just snap their fingers and ditch their expensive Sun boxes for commodity Intel hardware. That switch is taking years. Even when the Sun box cost 10x as much as the Intel+Linux setup, if you had already paid for the Sun hardware, you were not going to switch.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're chowing 255. Tell 'em you're at this very chic new place, the one in SF that has the $50,000 machine that's supposed to make the perfect espresso. They probably won't be able to track your actual location.
What's really needed is a Boston CD party. I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool anti-IP person; for me it's more about defeating corporatism. Their manipulation of IP law is just one facet of that problem.
So some guy rotting in prison pulled some legal shenanagans (a popular passtime in there, based on several other stories I've seen) and it managed to reach all the way into my living room, via Slashdot. Sheesh! Prisoners file bogus legal claims all the time. You'd think that journalists would recognize the pattern by now, and just stop reporting on it.
How much time will pass before everybody is naked, drunk and stoned on their MyBooooook page, so that we can get over all this nonsense about being persecuted for stuff everybody knows happens?
I'll take it. I've even worked in security, although as a programmer not as an executive or highly respected author and lecturer (e.g., Bruce Schneier) which is what I imagine they want and will never get.
Where do I send my resumé?
I am a journalist, and I will not be denied the right to use "bathing the cosmos". It is, in my view, and elegant turn of phrase. Please do not bother me with all this science nonsense about sensors.
Now excuse me, I have to get off to my 2nd job. It's not easy being a journalist these days. The paper could go belly-up any time. I moonlight writing advertising copy for real estate agents. There are tiny cabins that need to be described as "cozy", and houses needing tree work that need to be described as "nestled in the woods".
Easier said than done, since he would have either had to buy up all the parcels fronting the right-of-way, or bought easements for a utility right-of-way from all the owners. There's a signficant legal and time expense in negotiating that, aside from the actual negotiated price. Also, if just ONE owner held out, you have nothing. The utility, OTOH, can obtain easements for "public benefit".
Famous people and/or well-connected people have been getting "gifts" from companies for ages. Some of the very first wheels were probably given to the chief with the big spear, while the guy in the cave next door had to give saber-tooth cat pelts in exchange.
At first I thought Flamebait was inappropriate moderation. Then I realized.... hemp... flame...
This thread is the price we pay for freedom of speech.
Either that, or "five dolla".
Would it pass in California? Probably not. You see two-stroke scooters around here sometimes. I don't know if they're legal or not, but I know they STINK when they go by, especially if they're not well maintained.
Odds seem slim that California would ever allow a production two-stroke automobile on the road, unless they could prove that it throws out less emissions than a regular car. They are already quite strict about Diesels from my understanding (although you can still get them if you really want one). Part of the Diesel requirements are that you have to prove an older engine doesn't become a heavy polluter under regular use. Two-strokes would probably have a similar procedure.
Getting energy into space is easy. You can grab it from nearby stars, or you can carry a nuclear reactor with you. Because a nuclear reactor converts mass to energy via E=Mc^2, it produces a lot of energy from a small mass.
The real problem is reaction mass. You have to have something to push against in order to move. Getting a lot of reaction mass into space is difficult. If you can push against the vacuum of space, that problem is solved.
I went to YouTube. I watched the first 10 minute segment. I got a few minutes into the 2nd segment. I paused it and googled around and found out it was a FULL LENGTH MOVIE. I was flabbergasted. 90+ minutes. I have utter admiration for anybody who can sit through the whole thing. Maybe the meaning of life is revealed in minute 89, and nobody has ever gotten that far. I gave up right where I paused on the 2nd segment. No Enlightenment for me. It's not worth it. I'm going to drink heavily now.
...there should be compulsory licensing for all the green patents. In other words, you have to license the technology. To make that practical, I'd also stipulate that you have to license it at a reasonable rate and I'd base that on a fixed percentage of the sales price of the items made by the licensees.
This would also lay to rest all the "big oil companies bought the patent on the green tech so they could suppress it" conspiracies.
Actually, I think there should be compulsory licensing on ALL patents (ie, no suppressive patents), but we have to start someplace, and if this turns out to be more trouble than it's worth for some reason, it's good to start with just a subset of patents so it's easier to step back.
You forgot to verify the BIOS checksum.
Although most malware probably doesn't go that far, it seems like if I really wanted to "pwn yur box", I'd at least patch rm to not delete my executable and instead simply fool the user into thinking it was gone. Patch ps to not display the process.... and general other rootkit mischief. I'm not terribly familiar with that kind of thing, but I assume there are people who have made it their life's work to hide executables on Linux, whereas I KNOW there are people who've made it their life's work on Windows.
The only real solution, IMHO, is to drop-kick the computer out the door and use parchment and a quil pen for all your correspondance. Let's see 'em hack the Amish.
But when they throw "exceptions", look out!
We've got excess gold on Earth. That's why most of it is in vaults. What about something useful like uranium? How much of that is in asteroids? If we could get over the nuclear jitters, then having a rock full of uranium and/or deposits on Mars would be a great thing. That and water of course, but don't comets supply plenty of water? Snagging resources from low-gravity bodies seems like the first potentially profitable venture in planetary space.
No, you weren't shrooming. That's the actual movie.
I thought about this a bit more after I posted. I came to the conclusion that reputation is for triage. In other words, reputation isn't useless as I implied.
So, reading peer-reviewed journals isn't a bad idea. In fact, it's a start; but if you were only equipped to start and not finish... then it's not much help.
Also, what's being questioned by a lot of people is the whole "peer review" process. I don't think you have to be a conspiracy nut to question that. Anybody who says the scientific community isn't strongly biased towards "liberal" ideology is, to use their own language, a denialist.
To me, "peer review" sounds way too much like "what the cool kids think". I've been an AGW sceptic from way back though, and taken a lot of s*** for it. Fortunately, I'm not a career academic so the s*** was some sour looks and (believe it or not) a girl who wouldn't even have coffee with me!