I went through the same transition. How to put this gently...if you want to work on most modern systems, it is a prerequisite for you to be somewhat OO-capable. If you choose not to you are limiting yourself, which is your call, but you can't complain when everyone else moves on.
Much of what people consider "clean" procedural code has benefited from applying OO principles, so sticking to purely procedural development doesn't really avoid OO. You just won't recognize the traces of it.
I would suggest that what is lacking is an in-depth exposure to an OO language. Can't blame the university for that; there's a zillion free tools, tutorials and resources for you to teach yourself.
Spend 3 months on Java or some other somewhat clean OO language (not C++!) and you will view Gambas and VB in a different light.
It always boggles my mind how you can put a bunch of brilliant gifted intellects all together and they create a social structure similar to a 6th grade lunchroom. And spend a lot of time and energy navigating said structure, complete with gossip, petty battles, and cliques.
They (academics) generally seem keenly aware that their self-created environment is pathetic, which makes it even more sad that they keep doing it.
Agreed, absolutely. "Learning to learn" is the key and it doesn't take any degree to get that (and having a degree doesn't automatically confer it). However, I would tend to see a degree (of any kind) as an indication that someone is motivated in that direction; but even then there are plenty of exceptions.
The one bit I would add is that history in particular trained me (by fire I might add) to deal with massive data overload. And I find that skill very useful in IT.
I didn't pursue academia because my faculty-ass-kissing skills weren't up to snuff. *That* skill is clearly inborn, not learned---at least it wasn't learned by me.
I've got an MA in history, no BS or CS; but that's not why I was hired. I worked my way "thru the ranks" to developer, senior developer and now architect. Very few people know my academic background, and that's fine with me.
But I will say that training in history has helped, not in a subject-matter sense but the fact that history is about wading through massive amounts of data to find the interesting/relevant bits. You learn to evaluate quickly, reject the red herrings, and be open to the unexpected.
I've seen so many CS/BS types who are ineffective designers because they have tunnel vision; they won't look outside their "usual" solutions because there are so many options out there to solve a given problem. So they stick with their toolset because the alternative is to wade through lots of unfamiliar information...i.e. they don't want to do the research.
I've never seen a lawsuit filed but I have seen legal threats. I've also seen major maintenance payments and new business suspended until the vendor complies.
You're right that vendors can survive an awful lot of failure. The point is, there is a relationship at stake when a vendor screws up. When someone signs up to support Apache, etc., the relationship is not the same. Dump that support vendor, get a new one, dump them, lather rinse repeat, but forget about having your problem solved until you take over development/maintenance. Not everyone wants to be in that business for all their software.
These are two very different models. Both hashing and code-signing allows a binary to be integrity-protected; the difference is in identifying the trusted source.
Code-signing identifies the authority via a certificate, which is an offline, autonomous method. You as a user must trust the string in the certificate that says "Microsoft, Inc.".
Hashing is effectively an online operation; you as a user get your hash from a web site that you trust because the URL is "http://mozilla.com/blah". You are trusting the URL.
Neither gives you much. The first allows users to be fooled by legitimate sounding names. The second is subject to DNS cache poisoning and is not automated.
Automating the hash check would be nice. The Firefox XPI installer (or really any Firefox download operation) could attempt to pull a file with the same name as the binary but with '.md5' appended from the *original* source (not the mirror host) and automatically run a hash check.
The environment we are talking about is the enterprise, where EULAs don't apply. Instead, if a vendor doesn't support their software/hardware adequately, they get sued.
If I hire someone to do a job, I don't want to have to learn how to do it myself just so I can watch them do what I know how to do. I hire them and evaluate the results. That means trust and it means allowing them to be responsible for their work.
Otherwise I'd just do everything myself, which is not realistic in a 10,000 sq ft datacenter.
(disclaimer---my wife is the real Better Off Dead fan, but I have seen it many times. She really can't understand why it hasn't come out on DVD. I, on the other hand, can.)
I take umbrage at your description of me and my fellow Bread-Pudding-Americans. I am proud to walk in the damp, crumb-strewn footsteps of my forefathers. When will you people see that Poppin' Fresh, whom you love so much, grew up to be one of US?
We are people too. Did you ever stop to consider that we find your stiff, overly dense "skin" and "muscles" to be disgusting?
Yes, it is pointless to have mathematicians interpreting after the fact...until we discover that the lead mathematician on the group that recommended the scoring system that was used is a stark raving lunatic Republican (or Democrat, take your pick).
The uninformed press will jump all over that, because while they don't understand game theory or sets, they do understand political affiliation.
Soon some crackpot math prof working at East Bovine U will get headlines by claiming that the scoring system was flawed. The press has no way to judge his/her credentials, so it will get front page billing....
And soon after that it will be dubbed Mathgate.
Then some Ivy-league populist/demagogue what-me-worry politician will score lots of ha-ha points by calling it "fuzzy math." End of story.
But perhaps I am cynical. Ask me again in 48 hours (or days, more likely).
I just read thru some of the content on electionmethods and I have a MAJOR dispute with it...Concordet voting is simple but tabulating the results is not, and there are multiple competing methods, each with its own flavor, and for god's sake the site even invokes NASH...and we thought Florida was bad. What happens when mathematicians are called in to "interpret" the results instead of judges?
After 15 years of this kind of voting, each party would be rerunning past elections with different scoring algorithms, and then advocating a modification to the scoring system that benefits them....
That stuff is fine for the condo board down at the Geek Estates, but not for national elections.
Those two examples couldn't be more different. Abstaining from a treaty is one thing, invading a country is another.
For people who use this reasoning, I always ask: could you please list the top ten regimes that we should overthrow, in order? Is North Korea first, or third? Where does Saudi Arabia fall on the list? Does Libya deserve a spot anymore or can we wait on them?
I'm sure nobody would argue that they belong on a "bad guys" list---I'm sure I wouldn't. But if you're going to be a proud bully you're going to have to maintain your reputation. And that means lots more "liberating" or the rest of the world might think we've turned soft.
The responses here look like a perfect cross-section of what goes wrong in IT projects: - suggestions by people who haven't bothered to read the question, just the headline ("ignoring user requirements") - suggestions by people who have read the question, but haven't understood the scenario ("misinterpreting user requirements") - suggestions by people who have read the question, but have inserted elements that nobody asked for ("imagining user requirements") - gloom-and-doom comments by people who predict disaster ("fatalistic developers")
My two cents is that this guy needs to spell out in more detail how this thing is supposed to work, and to leave out stuff like "command line only" when the real issue is "limited hardware power"---there could be web-based tools that could do the job. Does it need to support playlists? Which file formats are required? etc.
Infants communicate through sound. Clear, compressed audio is the only important thing. As a new parent you will develop an awareness of your baby's normal sounds and cries etc.
I went through this same process of trying to create a IR-capable video setup; turned out we had twins, I never finished it, but by the time they were a week old I realized I didn't need it.
By the time your kids can do stuff you want to see, you can *hear* what they are doing. Then they talk, and they tell you. Then they get old enough to try to hide stuff from you, at which point you should be thinking about privacy anyway.
Now here's the unfortunate part---baby audio monitors absolutely suck.
I'm thinking it might be a bit more complicated than that...the human voice is unfortunately far too expressive.
Have the same person read the same passage ten times the same way and you will get ten very different results. Ask them to change tones/emotions and it will be even different.
"Never mind the fact that plenty of presidents have won without taking the popular vote."
Really? How do you define "taking"? I understood that in only one case had the candidate with the most votes NOT won. There have been plenty of cases where the winner didn't get over 50%, due to third party candidates etc.
Care to name a few presidents to support that statement?
Recipe: some water some cornstarch Instructions: add water to cornstarch, stirring. At the right ratio, any quick motion with the spoon will freeze the solution into a solid. Once you stop pushing on the spoon it melts into a liquid.
Where's *my* Nobel prize?
(for the humor impaired, I understand that this article is about something different...just want to point out that a similar property has been demonstrated before)
The issue we have had with third-party support is that the support people (from Accenture or Deloitte or whatever) may disagree with the vendor on what to do and that inevitably gets back to the customer. So "getting the job done" means two different things, and it's up to the customer to bring the bickering companies to an agreement...which is really a temporary truce until the next disagreement.
IMO, the vendor needs the resources to cut through all that by providing their own people. Without that capability they are always at the mercy of the integrator. Oblix sure was.
Slashdot Mirror
I went through the same transition. How to put this gently...if you want to work on most modern systems, it is a prerequisite for you to be somewhat OO-capable. If you choose not to you are limiting yourself, which is your call, but you can't complain when everyone else moves on.
Much of what people consider "clean" procedural code has benefited from applying OO principles, so sticking to purely procedural development doesn't really avoid OO. You just won't recognize the traces of it.
I would suggest that what is lacking is an in-depth exposure to an OO language. Can't blame the university for that; there's a zillion free tools, tutorials and resources for you to teach yourself.
Spend 3 months on Java or some other somewhat clean OO language (not C++!) and you will view Gambas and VB in a different light.
It always boggles my mind how you can put a bunch of brilliant gifted intellects all together and they create a social structure similar to a 6th grade lunchroom. And spend a lot of time and energy navigating said structure, complete with gossip, petty battles, and cliques.
They (academics) generally seem keenly aware that their self-created environment is pathetic, which makes it even more sad that they keep doing it.
Agreed, absolutely. "Learning to learn" is the key and it doesn't take any degree to get that (and having a degree doesn't automatically confer it). However, I would tend to see a degree (of any kind) as an indication that someone is motivated in that direction; but even then there are plenty of exceptions.
The one bit I would add is that history in particular trained me (by fire I might add) to deal with massive data overload. And I find that skill very useful in IT.
I didn't pursue academia because my faculty-ass-kissing skills weren't up to snuff. *That* skill is clearly inborn, not learned---at least it wasn't learned by me.
I've got an MA in history, no BS or CS; but that's not why I was hired. I worked my way "thru the ranks" to developer, senior developer and now architect. Very few people know my academic background, and that's fine with me.
But I will say that training in history has helped, not in a subject-matter sense but the fact that history is about wading through massive amounts of data to find the interesting/relevant bits. You learn to evaluate quickly, reject the red herrings, and be open to the unexpected.
I've seen so many CS/BS types who are ineffective designers because they have tunnel vision; they won't look outside their "usual" solutions because there are so many options out there to solve a given problem. So they stick with their toolset because the alternative is to wade through lots of unfamiliar information...i.e. they don't want to do the research.
I've never seen a lawsuit filed but I have seen legal threats. I've also seen major maintenance payments and new business suspended until the vendor complies.
You're right that vendors can survive an awful lot of failure. The point is, there is a relationship at stake when a vendor screws up. When someone signs up to support Apache, etc., the relationship is not the same. Dump that support vendor, get a new one, dump them, lather rinse repeat, but forget about having your problem solved until you take over development/maintenance. Not everyone wants to be in that business for all their software.
These are two very different models. Both hashing and code-signing allows a binary to be integrity-protected; the difference is in identifying the trusted source.
Code-signing identifies the authority via a certificate, which is an offline, autonomous method. You as a user must trust the string in the certificate that says "Microsoft, Inc.".
Hashing is effectively an online operation; you as a user get your hash from a web site that you trust because the URL is "http://mozilla.com/blah". You are trusting the URL.
Neither gives you much. The first allows users to be fooled by legitimate sounding names. The second is subject to DNS cache poisoning and is not automated.
Automating the hash check would be nice. The Firefox XPI installer (or really any Firefox download operation) could attempt to pull a file with the same name as the binary but with '.md5' appended from the *original* source (not the mirror host) and automatically run a hash check.
The environment we are talking about is the enterprise, where EULAs don't apply. Instead, if a vendor doesn't support their software/hardware adequately, they get sued.
If I hire someone to do a job, I don't want to have to learn how to do it myself just so I can watch them do what I know how to do. I hire them and evaluate the results. That means trust and it means allowing them to be responsible for their work.
Otherwise I'd just do everything myself, which is not realistic in a 10,000 sq ft datacenter.
That's exactly right. What's your point? "Blame" is just the flip side of "accountability."
Why is that a problem? People who know what they are responsible for are more likely to do a good job.
Alright, the spouse will enjoy getting the DVD for Xmas even more than the usual TV dinners.
You can't even get real drugs in this town!
That's a waste of a perfectly good white boy.
It's got raisins! You LIKE raisins!
Christmas! CHRISTMASSSSSS!!!!
(disclaimer---my wife is the real Better Off Dead fan, but I have seen it many times. She really can't understand why it hasn't come out on DVD. I, on the other hand, can.)
So, they *tried* to sound smart, and you....? Did you feel anything hit you in the back of the head after the prof said you had the right answer?
Dear Ignorant Person:
I take umbrage at your description of me and my fellow Bread-Pudding-Americans. I am proud to walk in the damp, crumb-strewn footsteps of my forefathers. When will you people see that Poppin' Fresh, whom you love so much, grew up to be one of US?
We are people too. Did you ever stop to consider that we find your stiff, overly dense "skin" and "muscles" to be disgusting?
Goopily yours,
Juice E. Loaf
Yes, it is pointless to have mathematicians interpreting after the fact...until we discover that the lead mathematician on the group that recommended the scoring system that was used is a stark raving lunatic Republican (or Democrat, take your pick).
The uninformed press will jump all over that, because while they don't understand game theory or sets, they do understand political affiliation.
Soon some crackpot math prof working at East Bovine U will get headlines by claiming that the scoring system was flawed. The press has no way to judge his/her credentials, so it will get front page billing....
And soon after that it will be dubbed Mathgate.
Then some Ivy-league populist/demagogue what-me-worry politician will score lots of ha-ha points by calling it "fuzzy math." End of story.
But perhaps I am cynical. Ask me again in 48 hours (or days, more likely).
I just read thru some of the content on electionmethods and I have a MAJOR dispute with it...Concordet voting is simple but tabulating the results is not, and there are multiple competing methods, each with its own flavor, and for god's sake the site even invokes NASH...and we thought Florida was bad. What happens when mathematicians are called in to "interpret" the results instead of judges?
After 15 years of this kind of voting, each party would be rerunning past elections with different scoring algorithms, and then advocating a modification to the scoring system that benefits them....
That stuff is fine for the condo board down at the Geek Estates, but not for national elections.
Those two examples couldn't be more different. Abstaining from a treaty is one thing, invading a country is another.
For people who use this reasoning, I always ask: could you please list the top ten regimes that we should overthrow, in order? Is North Korea first, or third? Where does Saudi Arabia fall on the list? Does Libya deserve a spot anymore or can we wait on them?
I'm sure nobody would argue that they belong on a "bad guys" list---I'm sure I wouldn't. But if you're going to be a proud bully you're going to have to maintain your reputation. And that means lots more "liberating" or the rest of the world might think we've turned soft.
The responses here look like a perfect cross-section of what goes wrong in IT projects:
- suggestions by people who haven't bothered to read the question, just the headline ("ignoring user requirements")
- suggestions by people who have read the question, but haven't understood the scenario ("misinterpreting user requirements")
- suggestions by people who have read the question, but have inserted elements that nobody asked for ("imagining user requirements")
- gloom-and-doom comments by people who predict disaster ("fatalistic developers")
My two cents is that this guy needs to spell out in more detail how this thing is supposed to work, and to leave out stuff like "command line only" when the real issue is "limited hardware power"---there could be web-based tools that could do the job. Does it need to support playlists? Which file formats are required? etc.
Infants communicate through sound. Clear, compressed audio is the only important thing. As a new parent you will develop an awareness of your baby's normal sounds and cries etc.
I went through this same process of trying to create a IR-capable video setup; turned out we had twins, I never finished it, but by the time they were a week old I realized I didn't need it.
By the time your kids can do stuff you want to see, you can *hear* what they are doing. Then they talk, and they tell you. Then they get old enough to try to hide stuff from you, at which point you should be thinking about privacy anyway.
Now here's the unfortunate part---baby audio monitors absolutely suck.
To me it means DC hardcore---"State of Alert"---somewhere in the basement is my Teen Idles/SOA 12"...good times...
Anybody wanna peanut?
Oh come on, all the cool kids call that "SOX"!!!
With a very few lines of code you can have some of the "cast avoidance" of 1.5's generics.
class StringToStringMap extends HashMap {
public String get (String key) {
return (String) get((Object)key);
}
}
but as you say it is no help with iterators. Which is no surprise as iterators really don't make sense without generics.
I'm thinking it might be a bit more complicated than that...the human voice is unfortunately far too expressive.
Have the same person read the same passage ten times the same way and you will get ten very different results. Ask them to change tones/emotions and it will be even different.
"Never mind the fact that plenty of presidents have won without taking the popular vote."
Really? How do you define "taking"? I understood that in only one case had the candidate with the most votes NOT won. There have been plenty of cases where the winner didn't get over 50%, due to third party candidates etc.
Care to name a few presidents to support that statement?
Recipe:
some water
some cornstarch
Instructions:
add water to cornstarch, stirring. At the right ratio, any quick motion with the spoon will freeze the solution into a solid. Once you stop pushing on the spoon it melts into a liquid.
Where's *my* Nobel prize?
(for the humor impaired, I understand that this article is about something different...just want to point out that a similar property has been demonstrated before)
Okay, that would suck...
The issue we have had with third-party support is that the support people (from Accenture or Deloitte or whatever) may disagree with the vendor on what to do and that inevitably gets back to the customer. So "getting the job done" means two different things, and it's up to the customer to bring the bickering companies to an agreement...which is really a temporary truce until the next disagreement.
IMO, the vendor needs the resources to cut through all that by providing their own people. Without that capability they are always at the mercy of the integrator. Oblix sure was.