In my opinion some of the reasons behind bad coding are as follows:
Some people have trouble finding relations between things that are not visibly linked. Thus, while for some it's obvious that (copy&paste coding = more code) AND (doing the implementation => very likelly doing the maintenance) THUS (copy&paste coding => very likelly maintaining more code). Others are unable to see it.
Sacrificing long term beneficts for short term gains - the pressure to deliver is "certain", "clear" and "immediate" while bug-fixing and maintenance are "probable", "unclear" and "not here yet". It takes a cool-mind to stop and think before you code, experience to be able to figure out when do the long term rewards outweight the short term gains and courage to "fight against the tide". Managers are faced with a similar set of choices (which goes a long way to explain why there are so few good managers)
Are you really sure that the brand name product you bought that cost twice as much as the Wal-Mart one isn't exactly the same thing done by the same seven year old Bangalori kid only with a different brand label?
Last time i saw companies that make brand name products are just as likelly to move its manufacturing jobs to a country that has a more "business-friendly" view of environmental and worker safety regulations as the other ones are.
I recently read an article on a newspaper about the "world's most expensive dress". It's price is not because of it being designed by some high fashion designer, or being an antiquity, or being made of precious metals and stones - nope, it is so expensive because it's completly made out of brand labels (and it doesn't even look that good). Kinda makes you thing what exactly one pays for when buying a branded good...
If you can have a better mousetrap built, then you better do it before your competitors do. That's really all there is to it. Some of the examples cited (such as Walmart) are quite good examples of companies seeking out this "better mousetrap" and using it to great competitive advantage.
That's the prevailing view inside the IT industry.
On the other hand, customers of the IT industry are starting to ask themselfs "How exactly will the latest and greatest, ten times as expensive, solar powered, neon illuminated saying 'Sorry for the inconvenience' just before traping the mouse mousetrap help us catch more mice?"
Much of a store's profits are made on strategy. When this kind of data is released, it cuts into the ability of a business to price things appropriately to the demand.
I'm not saying the DMCA oughta cover this, but this is definitely something that can hurt business.
There is no such thing as a right to profit.
Businesses will try to get as much money as they can from their customers, while customers will try to get what they need/want for the cheapest price.
Using the DMCA to deny a customer's right to find a beter bargain is just another sympthom of how much the system is skewed in favor of business.
Maybe beter than seeing the computer as a very complex tool one should look at it as a work environment for tool usage.
Under this methaphor, the user aquires a tool and brings it to his work environment. In that environment the users uses the tool to do something. Power users will even make new tools utilizing other tools in the work environment.
In computer terms it can be something like: A user aquires a word processor and installs it in his computer. He uses the word processor in that computer to write a book. Power users will even make new programs by utilizing other programs (such as a C compiler and a text editor) in the computer.
----
So why exactly should (non-power) users need to learn how to make new tools?
As a side note, in the 4 (increasing) levels of knowledge:
data
information
knowledge
wisdom
the "how" is in "knowledge" and the "why" in "wisdom"
<RANT state="sad&disapointed">
It's my experience that a lot of developers out there know a lot of "hows" (how is this done; how does this work; how do we install it) but few or no "whys" (why is this designed like this; why are we doing this; why do we use this languquage/os)
</RANT>
When a brand name has become a negative influence in the decision process that make consumers use (or not) a product, a standart industry strategy is to change the brand name.
It makes all sense for them to do it. On the other hand it also shows that the Gator brand name has aquired negative associations in people's minds (or so the Gator, now Claria, corporation believes) - this is a victory of sorts for those that tried to inform people about the evils of Gator products.
To maintain the pressure on this company, a possible strategy to follow is to inform people that Claria = Gator, thus maintaining the negative association in people's minds.
PS: I suspect they paid some expensive marketing consultant that told them that "Claria" brings sub-conscious mental associations with Clarity.
Re:but, the "real" programmers"
on
Software Exorcism
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Office politics is when: - The new and impressive system that you've been coding (with love and tenderness) for the last 3 months gets shelved just before regression test phase is over because some middle manager changed his mind.
A crappy manager can easily undo the work of a thousand first rate coders.
If you stick to coding and don't look around (like an oostrich with it's head on the sand), you will constantly be hit by surprises at work (a lot of them not nice).
Pop your head once in awhile and smell the air - you might just see that out of control freight train coming your way in time to dodge it.
Yes indeed, ladies and gents - i am going to share with you all, free of charge, the ultimate spam filtering method, guaranteed to catch 100% of all incoming spam mail.
All you have to do is redirect all incoming e-mail to the trashcan.
(standart disclaimer: this system will have about 10% false positives for most users)
Just for curiosity, i did crosscheck prices with other GSM providers in Europe (more specifically KPN-mobile in Holland). Also i'm under the impression that most things in England tend to be more expensive than in mainland Europe.
I found out as follows: [KPN-mobile Holland] Hi 30 30 EUR = $34.44 USD Don't pay for incoming calls 200h or SMS's at Peak or non-peak (calls or sms's beyond the free minutes cost 0.22 EUR = $0.25 USD per-minute/per-sms) GPRS 1Mb bundle - 10 EUR = $11.48 USD No Long-Distance in Holland (ie all calls are local) No Roaming in Holland, 0.59 EUR = $0.67 USD in rest of Europe Notes: - There are other plans available, from Hi 20 to Hi 80. - Prices are per-minute but calls charges are determined per-second after the 1st minute (ie a 1m23s call will cost you 1 + 23/60 minutes). - Roaming in Europe prices are per minute for calls within the country (peak or non-peak). Only checked France and Britain, prices might be different in other countries in Europe. For roaming calls you can choose your local provider, i only listed the cheapest prices found.
The conclusions are still very much the ones of RzUpAnmsCwrds, even if not quite so outrageously.
However, all over Europe prepaid plans are available. This means no monthly charges, no free minutes and more expensive per-minute/per-sms costs. On the other hand, receiving calls is still free. For those that mostly receive calls (and make few calls from the mobile), this turns out to be incredibly cheap (still, the calling side pays mobile charges even if from a fixed phone).
It's not by chance that in Western Europe, 1998, prepaid subscribers represented 37% of all subscribers (check here). The forecast (found in the same place) forsees that by 2008 about half of all mobile phone subscribesr will be prepaid.
The law is totally different. There is no "work at will" (or whatever) law. Even time-limited contracts (for example, six months, renewable work contract) can only be renewed x times before the employee turns permanent.
Firing a permanent employee is very difficult: - There needs to be a legally accepted reason - It involves the payment of a compensation amount (which is proportional to the length of time the person was employed in the company) to the employee
In practice, a middle manager can't just fire someone, they need a pretty damn good reason to justify it to the courts and to justify the expense to the upper management - "i don't like him/her" is hardly enough.
Uncertain duration contracts do exist, but typically, a "contractor" (an employee under such a system) gets 2 to 3 times as much money per hour worked than a permanent employee - in practice, it's a bigger salary than you could get in the USA for the same position.
In practice the Green Bag piece is attacking the judge for both publicly criticising the (admitedly not competent) counsel and for not being serious (there's quite a number of references in the article to "bad jokes").
I came out of reading this article with a sense that a member of the "mainstream" judicial profession was criticizing another for not acting like the majority.
Personally, even though i'm far removed from the judicial circles, i found Judge Kent's memorandum both original and refreshing. My (admitedly limited) contact with members of the judicial professions has mostly shown me a ritualized and self-effacing behaviour which i found most repelent.
It's those small things that made me choose to stick around in Europe (though moving to another country) instead of trying the USA (at the time it was easy enough to get a work permit).
I suspect one of the most frustrating things in life is when you're a (really) good worker, giving a very positive contribution to your company and get fired 'cause somebody in the company with the power to fire you decided he or she doesn't like you (for whatever reason).
The chances of that happening here in Holland are close to nil.
So you want the EU to spend billions of dollars on a redundant system to augment a system which is going to be backed up by a military only navigation system, because the first navigation system *might* be degraded during a war, even though there have been multiple conflicts in multiple theatres of operation and it's not been degraded ever?
Forget about financial responsability. There is a simple, 2 part solution:
Make available and easily accessible in your intranet the resources to keep their systems up-to-date and virus free - patches, Anti-virus, personal firewalls
Publish in the most visibile place in the dorm buildings weekly compilations with the names of the "Most inept computer users in this dorm". Maybe you can spice it up with an introductory text that gives the impression that when you're saying "most inept" you actually mean "dumb as a door-knob"
Naturally, if you're the BOFH type of network admin you can skip the first part...
Also, if you have multiple bosses asking for your time make them fight it out amongst themselfs (ie "Sorry Sam, but i'll be fully occupied with this project for John for the coming 2 weeks. Maybe you can talk to hime about it?"). It's majorly entertaining.
Additionaly i would like to address the Try to help them to get their task done themselves quicker than you doing it. thingie: - Some people (for example, the "one specialist in a certain code base" or the "fireman of the company/department/group", or just anybody that's good at solving problems and is helpful) will be constantly interrupted and asked to "help me out with something for a moment" or "I can't get this to work, can you help me?" or "can you explain this to me?". - Although this might at first make one feel good (you're "needed", you're "important"), it soon becomes to much and starts eating you your time like crazy - 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there, 20 minutes somewhere else soon adds up to a lot of time. - Now, the problem with "helping others time" is that it's not in the budget. No mater how much usefull your helpfulnes is (and sometimes it's counter productive because it can breed a culture of dependency), you still have the same amount of project work to do (just less time to do it). - That's were the "help others help themselfs" thing comes in. It's the single most efficient way i know of actually helping others while wasting the smallest possible amount of time.
The things to note with the "help others help themselfs" system: - At first it will eat more of your time than just "doing it yourself". "Doing it yourself" will fix the problem faster but only this time around - the people you just helped don't actually learn anything from it and will come back again (and again and again) whenever the same or a similar problem pops-up (plus they won't be able to help others with that problem) - Thus the gain in time for using the "help others help themselfs" system comes with recurring problems/questions/whatever. - Also note that even when you teach people how to solve a problem, a lot of them still tend to come back to you to have you solve it for them. That's because for them it's easier and simpler to just get you to do it. To solve this, just make it harder to get your help for those you have already taught how to solve the problem (for example ask: "Have you tried what i told you last time?" "No" "Go and try it, if it doesn't work come back to me with it")
There is a lot more stuff about time management and avoiding overwork - however, this will help contain some of the "sneaky time wasting" stuff.
1) SRAM is actually Static RAM. It's very vast but it also requires a LOT more transistors per bit than DRAM - Dynamic RAM. I do believe that SRAM also consumes more energy than DRAM (i'm not absolutly sure). Don't expect SRAM to be use in Main Memory anytime soon (unless people are willing to pay the same for 100M as they pay today for 1G - and i'm being optimistic here)
1b) Note that EDO memory, DRAM, SDRAM, DDRAM are all different technologies based around Dynamic RAM. The biguest difference between them is not the way the bits are stored but the way they are accessed - both the "comunications protocol" with the memory chips and the speed with which they respond to requests (there is more to memory than just MHz)
2) Actually, improvements like pipelining don't affect the maximum clock frequency of a microprocessor (the GHz thing) very much. What they do improve is the average ammount of processing work that can be done per-clock-cycle. To put things in another way, if somebody made a 3GHz 386 processor it would have less than 1/10 of the processing power of a 3GHz Pentium 4 even though the clock speed would be the same.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you really sure that the brand name product you bought that cost twice as much as the Wal-Mart one isn't exactly the same thing done by the same seven year old Bangalori kid only with a different brand label?
...
Last time i saw companies that make brand name products are just as likelly to move its manufacturing jobs to a country that has a more "business-friendly" view of environmental and worker safety regulations as the other ones are.
I recently read an article on a newspaper about the "world's most expensive dress". It's price is not because of it being designed by some high fashion designer, or being an antiquity, or being made of precious metals and stones - nope, it is so expensive because it's completly made out of brand labels (and it doesn't even look that good).
Kinda makes you thing what exactly one pays for when buying a branded good
If you can have a better mousetrap built, then you better do it before your competitors do. That's really all there is to it. Some of the examples cited (such as Walmart) are quite good examples of companies seeking out this "better mousetrap" and using it to great competitive advantage.
... or so i hope.
That's the prevailing view inside the IT industry.
On the other hand, customers of the IT industry are starting to ask themselfs "How exactly will the latest and greatest, ten times as expensive, solar powered, neon illuminated saying 'Sorry for the inconvenience' just before traping the mouse mousetrap help us catch more mice?"
Hype is out - realism is in
Much of a store's profits are made on strategy. When this kind of data is released, it cuts into the ability of a business to price things appropriately to the demand.
I'm not saying the DMCA oughta cover this, but this is definitely something that can hurt business.
There is no such thing as a right to profit.
Businesses will try to get as much money as they can from their customers, while customers will try to get what they need/want for the cheapest price.
Using the DMCA to deny a customer's right to find a beter bargain is just another sympthom of how much the system is skewed in favor of business.
Cogito Ergo Sun - I think therefore i am
...
...
The most know piece of philosophy from Descartes.
I do believe he started the trend
Then again, maybe it was the Romans
Maybe beter than seeing the computer as a very complex tool one should look at it as a work environment for tool usage.
Under this methaphor, the user aquires a tool and brings it to his work environment. In that environment the users uses the tool to do something. Power users will even make new tools utilizing other tools in the work environment.
In computer terms it can be something like:
A user aquires a word processor and installs it in his computer. He uses the word processor in that computer to write a book. Power users will even make new programs by utilizing other programs (such as a C compiler and a text editor) in the computer.
----
So why exactly should (non-power) users need to learn how to make new tools?
- data
- information
- knowledge
- wisdom
the "how" is in "knowledge" and the "why" in "wisdom"<RANT state="sad&disapointed">
It's my experience that a lot of developers out there know a lot of "hows" (how is this done; how does this work; how do we install it) but few or no "whys" (why is this designed like this; why are we doing this; why do we use this languquage/os)
</RANT>
When a brand name has become a negative influence in the decision process that make consumers use (or not) a product, a standart industry strategy is to change the brand name.
It makes all sense for them to do it. On the other hand it also shows that the Gator brand name has aquired negative associations in people's minds (or so the Gator, now Claria, corporation believes) - this is a victory of sorts for those that tried to inform people about the evils of Gator products.
To maintain the pressure on this company, a possible strategy to follow is to inform people that Claria = Gator, thus maintaining the negative association in people's minds.
PS: I suspect they paid some expensive marketing consultant that told them that "Claria" brings sub-conscious mental associations with Clarity.
Office politics is when:
- The new and impressive system that you've been coding (with love and tenderness) for the last 3 months gets shelved just before regression test phase is over because some middle manager changed his mind.
A crappy manager can easily undo the work of a thousand first rate coders.
If you stick to coding and don't look around (like an oostrich with it's head on the sand), you will constantly be hit by surprises at work (a lot of them not nice).
Pop your head once in awhile and smell the air - you might just see that out of control freight train coming your way in time to dodge it.
Somebody wired him to a lie detector and made him a lot of embarassing questions.
Yes indeed, ladies and gents - i am going to share with you all, free of charge, the ultimate spam filtering method, guaranteed to catch 100% of all incoming spam mail.
All you have to do is redirect all incoming e-mail to the trashcan.
(standart disclaimer: this system will have about 10% false positives for most users)
... i would like to point out to everyone that a computer "shuts up" when it "shuts down"
... out of respect for the family of the just deceased web-server, no slashdotting jokes please.
Just for curiosity, i did crosscheck prices with other GSM providers in Europe (more specifically KPN-mobile in Holland). Also i'm under the impression that most things in England tend to be more expensive than in mainland Europe.
I found out as follows:
[KPN-mobile Holland]
Hi 30
30 EUR = $34.44 USD
Don't pay for incoming calls
200h or SMS's at Peak or non-peak (calls or sms's beyond the free minutes cost 0.22 EUR = $0.25 USD per-minute/per-sms)
GPRS 1Mb bundle - 10 EUR = $11.48 USD
No Long-Distance in Holland (ie all calls are local)
No Roaming in Holland, 0.59 EUR = $0.67 USD in rest of Europe
Notes:
- There are other plans available, from Hi 20 to Hi 80.
- Prices are per-minute but calls charges are determined per-second after the 1st minute (ie a 1m23s call will cost you 1 + 23/60 minutes).
- Roaming in Europe prices are per minute for calls within the country (peak or non-peak). Only checked France and Britain, prices might be different in other countries in Europe. For roaming calls you can choose your local provider, i only listed the cheapest prices found.
The conclusions are still very much the ones of RzUpAnmsCwrds, even if not quite so outrageously.
However, all over Europe prepaid plans are available. This means no monthly charges, no free minutes and more expensive per-minute/per-sms costs. On the other hand, receiving calls is still free.
For those that mostly receive calls (and make few calls from the mobile), this turns out to be incredibly cheap (still, the calling side pays mobile charges even if from a fixed phone).
It's not by chance that in Western Europe, 1998, prepaid subscribers represented 37% of all subscribers (check here). The forecast (found in the same place) forsees that by 2008 about half of all mobile phone subscribesr will be prepaid.
Please no more smoke - it's interfering with the entangled photons on my quantum encrypted flashlight signals.
The law is totally different. There is no "work at will" (or whatever) law. Even time-limited contracts (for example, six months, renewable work contract) can only be renewed x times before the employee turns permanent.
Firing a permanent employee is very difficult:
- There needs to be a legally accepted reason
- It involves the payment of a compensation amount (which is proportional to the length of time the person was employed in the company) to the employee
In practice, a middle manager can't just fire someone, they need a pretty damn good reason to justify it to the courts and to justify the expense to the upper management - "i don't like him/her" is hardly enough.
Uncertain duration contracts do exist, but typically, a "contractor" (an employee under such a system) gets 2 to 3 times as much money per hour worked than a permanent employee - in practice, it's a bigger salary than you could get in the USA for the same position.
In practice the Green Bag piece is attacking the judge for both publicly criticising the (admitedly not competent) counsel and for not being serious (there's quite a number of references in the article to "bad jokes").
I came out of reading this article with a sense that a member of the "mainstream" judicial profession was criticizing another for not acting like the majority.
Personally, even though i'm far removed from the judicial circles, i found Judge Kent's memorandum both original and refreshing. My (admitedly limited) contact with members of the judicial professions has mostly shown me a ritualized and self-effacing behaviour which i found most repelent.
Good ol' US of A.
It's those small things that made me choose to stick around in Europe (though moving to another country) instead of trying the USA (at the time it was easy enough to get a work permit).
I suspect one of the most frustrating things in life is when you're a (really) good worker, giving a very positive contribution to your company and get fired 'cause somebody in the company with the power to fire you decided he or she doesn't like you (for whatever reason).
The chances of that happening here in Holland are close to nil.
The damn sofa has a fatal design flaw:
...
- It will recognize you from your weight
- It will help you get fatter
People will need to constantly reprogram the thing
So you want the EU to spend billions of dollars on a redundant system to augment a system which is going to be backed up by a military only navigation system, because the first navigation system *might* be degraded during a war, even though there have been multiple conflicts in multiple theatres of operation and it's not been degraded ever?
It's called prevention.
No, no, no, you got it all wrong.
Wine helps your hearth.
Beer helps your belly (if you believe bigger is beter)
Naturally, if you're the BOFH type of network admin you can skip the first part
I second this.
Also, if you have multiple bosses asking for your time make them fight it out amongst themselfs (ie "Sorry Sam, but i'll be fully occupied with this project for John for the coming 2 weeks. Maybe you can talk to hime about it?"). It's majorly entertaining.
Additionaly i would like to address the Try to help them to get their task done themselves quicker than you doing it. thingie:
- Some people (for example, the "one specialist in a certain code base" or the "fireman of the company/department/group", or just anybody that's good at solving problems and is helpful) will be constantly interrupted and asked to "help me out with something for a moment" or "I can't get this to work, can you help me?" or "can you explain this to me?".
- Although this might at first make one feel good (you're "needed", you're "important"), it soon becomes to much and starts eating you your time like crazy - 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there, 20 minutes somewhere else soon adds up to a lot of time.
- Now, the problem with "helping others time" is that it's not in the budget. No mater how much usefull your helpfulnes is (and sometimes it's counter productive because it can breed a culture of dependency), you still have the same amount of project work to do (just less time to do it).
- That's were the "help others help themselfs" thing comes in. It's the single most efficient way i know of actually helping others while wasting the smallest possible amount of time.
The things to note with the "help others help themselfs" system:
- At first it will eat more of your time than just "doing it yourself". "Doing it yourself" will fix the problem faster but only this time around - the people you just helped don't actually learn anything from it and will come back again (and again and again) whenever the same or a similar problem pops-up (plus they won't be able to help others with that problem)
- Thus the gain in time for using the "help others help themselfs" system comes with recurring problems/questions/whatever.
- Also note that even when you teach people how to solve a problem, a lot of them still tend to come back to you to have you solve it for them. That's because for them it's easier and simpler to just get you to do it. To solve this, just make it harder to get your help for those you have already taught how to solve the problem (for example ask: "Have you tried what i told you last time?" "No" "Go and try it, if it doesn't work come back to me with it")
There is a lot more stuff about time management and avoiding overwork - however, this will help contain some of the "sneaky time wasting" stuff.
Damn - i forgot about them CMOS technologies ...
I would like to point out 2 things:
1) SRAM is actually Static RAM. It's very vast but it also requires a LOT more transistors per bit than DRAM - Dynamic RAM. I do believe that SRAM also consumes more energy than DRAM (i'm not absolutly sure). Don't expect SRAM to be use in Main Memory anytime soon (unless people are willing to pay the same for 100M as they pay today for 1G - and i'm being optimistic here)
1b) Note that EDO memory, DRAM, SDRAM, DDRAM are all different technologies based around Dynamic RAM. The biguest difference between them is not the way the bits are stored but the way they are accessed - both the "comunications protocol" with the memory chips and the speed with which they respond to requests (there is more to memory than just MHz)
2) Actually, improvements like pipelining don't affect the maximum clock frequency of a microprocessor (the GHz thing) very much. What they do improve is the average ammount of processing work that can be done per-clock-cycle.
To put things in another way, if somebody made a 3GHz 386 processor it would have less than 1/10 of the processing power of a 3GHz Pentium 4 even though the clock speed would be the same.