I wish I had mod points to downvote such a negative and bigoted post. From the viewpoint that you wrote, it sounds like you are not a programmer yourself but look from the outside in. I'm actually quite sorry that you've only run into the bad programmers out there (and the implication that you've never met a good one). More likely than not, I'm inclined to believe that you just weren't able to appreciate the good ones. There's a mix of good and bad out there. Different people have different strengths and making sure that the programmers with the right skills are doing the right job is usually not the responsibility of the programmers themselves but of HR and management. So, when you're mad that the programmer making the UI for something isn't a good UI designer, remember to place some of that blame on the party that hired them or the manager that isn't evaluating the strengths/weaknesses of his employees.
Something to also remember since you seem to not be a programmer yourself is that what seems easy to you is often the most complicated stuff to implement. Programmers are not monkeys, but problem solvers. You give a programmer a problem to solve and they let you know what they see as the easiest/most scalable/best longterm (all depending on the goals that they are trying to accomplish) solution. If you have no respect for them, then go find someone that you do respect to solve your problem. It's difficult to work with people that you don't respect and if you're being difficult, then you can't blame the programmer then can you? You're going to have to at least share the blame for problems that occur when you contribute to the issues.
Most of the funding is provided by US tax payers in the form of grants to Universities. Drug companies perform a very small fraction of the R&D that goes into the drugs they hold patents on. Universities then sell the patents generated by their students to these drug companies for fractions of the R&D costs to us taxpayers.
Drug companies spend most of their budgets on marketing...commercials...sending reps to Doctor Offices to give them samples/tell them about the drugs/push them to use the drug in lieu of other solutions (wife's personal experience).
AFAIK that's actually disputed evidence. I don't think we have a clear picture of what actually happened there. What IS clear, however, is that Mark took that concept and ran with it and created something that worked. AFTER it was successful, we have these accusers claiming that because they were in on the idea, that they should get to reap the profits of the EFFORT that Mark put in. A social networking site was NOT even close to an original idea. Even the individual features Facebook had were not original. Facebook worked hard to put together a complete package and market it better than their competitors.
The end result is that Facebook became what it is because of work and adaptation, not an idea. Granted, ideas are important, but ideas themselves are only a piece of the puzzle.
I'm actually considered the most stubborn of all the developers here. As the 2nd most senior and 2nd highest paid, i still am expected to take as much bullshit as my more senior counterpart (who is technically my boss, but since this is a small company, the CEO loves micromanaging).
Thanks for the advice however lol. I am working on getting a job where I'm treated a little less like trash.
Oddly enough...I am:) My wife and I recently decided that it was just plain a good time to move on (after the review). I just recently started posting my resume and am looking. Thanks for the affirmation though. I was just posting my personal experience to supplement the parent comment.
I've been out of school for about 4 years now and already see that attitude. My company highly values the work I do (probably because I come very cheap compared to what it would cost to replace me) because I've adapted to the bullshit that has gone on here for four years. I'm already working an average of 50-60 hours a week, but my last review from my boss was "I need you to be available more". My jaw pretty much dropped to the floor. I'm salaried at way under my paygrade and have been a workhorse for the past few years just making the things that others break work and spending my evenings for the company. All the company has to say is "You're not doing enough".
Damned companies.
This...this will probably be the best way to determine whether or not these new implements confer an advantage. If athletes are willing to put their own bodies on the line to win because they feel that getting these blades will help, then we know what we're looking at. Right now, it's really hard to tell it seems...at least from the outside looking in.
I think the point might be that it would just cost more money in the end.
On the other hand, you would have an arms race - the companies would begin to pay more to outpace the regulatory body and the body would have to come up with more money as the whole thing spiraled...not sure it is a feasible solution...
There's also a question of who would be unable to afford the cost first - government or industry?
So what you're saying is, you think the early adopter stage is gone...whereas GP thinks the early adopter stage is currently going on...sounds like you're trolling him...his main point was not that we're in the early adopter stage, but that it's difficult to tell where exactly that middle ground is.
While I agree with you that we're probably fast approaching that middle ground or there potentially, I think it's arrogant to argue that you can see that we're there already. Leave that for history to decide when we look back in 5-10 years with a slightly more clear picture.
Regarding the IPv6 "bugs"...Unless he's referring to the general issue of lack of anonymity built into IPv6 (due to unique IP addresses), I myself would like to know what bugs he is referring to...
Regardless, the general tone of your post I felt was extremely out of line and uncalled for, no matter my own personal standing on the matter. Maybe you felt affronted by the charges that he made of the IT guy trying to pad his resume or the Manager spiel, but I didn't really see those as intentional slaps - just exaggerations based off of his personal experiences intended to narrate (remember that high school English class where you learned about hyperbole?).
Agreed. I'm a Vocal music major. I've been working as a programmer for 3 years now and am now one of the senior programmers due to what I have done rather than my qualifications.
Queue theory...one of the oddest choices for a topic to cover in operating systems class in college, but the most intriguing and useful thing I ever got out of all of my classes - honestly probably the only thing that I use day to day that I learned in class and not from teaching myself. The concept of analyzing a process that can be described with a queue (such as a datacenter or the telephone operators) and then finding an efficient means of handling the queue, including managing desirable wait times and total time in queue is incredibly applicable in corporate environments. Personally, I think queue theory would probably be more useful to business people than most of the other things that they teach them.
Someone doesn't have a sense of humor...Parent should be modded funny, not troll. At worst it's at BP's expense and maybe less funny, but sounds to me like it was intended as a joke.
Someone already mentioned that this stream is broadcast with flash. There are actually some flash-based versions of multicast type technologies...I remember an octoshape(?) that was used to enable the broadcast of President Obama's swear-in over CNN if I remember correctly. There are also features built in to version 10+ of flash that basically make the above-mentioned structure possible. Needless to say, I will be happy to leave this coding house for a job where I don't have to code in the Flash world. Why did we ever as a society let marketing departments be in charge of ANYTHING??!!??!?
Agreed. The funny part is that it's a little frustrating to see all of our past classmates who couldn't tell pointers or variables from the teacher's red pen to save their lives, but got pushed through school (probably so the school doesn't look bad) getting all the comfortable jobs where they can drone on every day, doing the same things they did in school while we're stuck just trying to get by on our crap compensation, slaving away on our projects...why? Oh, cuz we care a little bit about what we do./rant
Sometimes, these things do make me wonder...
Slashdot is also full of adults who have never created anything of value in their lives and see nothing wrong with taking compensation for sitting on their arses. The kids are just tired of feeling like they are paying for something that they never get. I feel for them.
Perhaps those in the gunship don't know telephoto lenses when they see them...especially if they see RPGs day after day and are expecting more of them because their lives are potentially in danger all of the time. As far as the pilot crying out that they are under RPG fire, he was calling that out right as you watched the guy with the "rpg" crouch right behind the corner of the building. Not only is that a perfectly reasonable assumption in a war-zone, but he was acting preemptively when lives might potentially be in danger. Moreover, the video made reference to a previous enemy engagement nearby, putting the entire episode in that context for any viewers that are paying attention
While the actions concerning the van are a little more difficult to justify (I can honestly say I'm a little torn as I saw the actions as being a little more drastic; however, if I was to assume that I had just shot some terrorists, then maybe it could have been somewhat logical that those who came to collect the wounded were sympathizers and could, potentially be hostile as well), they also do not strike me as being out of control either. War is Hell - mistakes will be made and innocent lives will be lost. To expect otherwise from someone is idealism blinding someone to rational thinking.
This, in NO way, excuses the actions of our government or the conclusions of that opinion piece which are quite extreme, but the actions of those there in the situation at the time seem to be at least reasonable given the fact that most of them probably aren't reporters of any kind. I would suggest you re-watch the video again, trying to see the video from the eyes of someone making decisions based off of the fact that people are potentially in real-life danger, not sitting cozy in the United States reading slash-dot all day. Get a grip man. While we deal with the oppressiveness of our home government, they act, aware or not, as the face of our government, and some people want to rip them a new one over there. Those reporters were not wearing anything easily identifiable to make themselves known and they or the people they were with were carrying what appeared (to the soldiers) to potentially be weapons. These were soldiers who were probably looking for remnants of a recent engagement and saw what they were expecting when it wasn't there. Fault needs to be dealt with on both sides - it's a pity that we, as a culture can't seem to realize that blame doesn't have to all fall on one entity's shoulders all the time...
I certainly don't find reporters reporting on crimes perpetrated by the American military to be Anti-American, but I think it is dishonest if they don't take the time to consider more than just their own personal viewpoint on an issue of this caliber. There are certainly more than enough plausible explanations to the actions of those involved that your outrage is a little quick to the punch. Nonetheless, IMHO, I think we do deserve an explanation for the actions of the government in covering this up.
Re:These techniques are horrid for maintainability
on
Metaprogramming Ruby
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· Score: 1
There are multiple kinds of development shops - i assume that you are referring to the kind of shop where you are given ample time (or at least sufficient time) to complete projects and where quality and few bugs are valued over having it done in a short period of time. There are other kinds of shops (like the one I've worked in for quite a while), where the management is less organized and goals include - get it done yesterday! Code tends to become a little less maintainable anyway in these types of situations...to the developers working on these types of projects, sometimes, well-documented macros and other such meta-programming aids become the only means of keeping the code-base they maintain organized for themselves under their time constraints. Unfortunately for management, the skilled programmers who are capable of succeeding in these types of environments tend to want to leave as they feel abused, overworked, and underpaid.
Sadly, I think these kinds of shops are actually becoming more and more common. so, these techniques may, one day, even become almost the norm...
It doesn't make sense to grant a monopoly to market, if the monopoly holder isn't going to sell to that market. If they're going to abstain from doing business (either by refraining from selling DRM-free media, or by making it illegal to use DRMed media), then they have no stake in the market to lose (they'll lose $0 per year due to piracy); granting them copyright is not only pointless, but it will be violated.
And that's the whole crux of the argument against the huge fines imposed - they aren't losing money because they are not even providing a product in the market that the pirates are serving. Hence, the damage supposedly caused is actually non-existent.
Agreed...because I work for a small company that tries to do more than it really is capable of, I find myself with another project dropped into my lap that needs to be done yesterday that I can only conceivably complete by temporarily adding another state or condition to the code that I already have (in small companies, scalability is NEVER a concern - only accomplishing the task...it sucks...but it is reality). Finite State Machines are my friends. I probably have an entire stack of papers floating around my desk full of my state machine drawings that I used to organize various problems that I've had to solve over the course of my time here.
As for the original post, being a half university taught and half self-taught programmer, I would say that it definitely depends on the person. I don't know how it works exactly, but the BEST and brightest programmers (i.e. problem solvers) I've met have all worked for small companies or doing contract work. However, the best code-writers all seem to work for the big corporations (obviously this is based only on anecdotal evidence...). I guess it makes sense though - the corporations need the good code writers to maintain their scalability and the small companies definitely need the good problem solvers to deal with the daily emergencies that just evolve from the natural overconfidence of a small company with growing pains. Maybe people just kinda gravitate where their skills are most useful.
It's nice to see a couple people who paid attention in either their college virtual memory course or got some real life experience. Memory usage is, quite often, a useless statistic without other qualifying statistics to help interpret it. The first thing that I do when checking out a computer with problems is add page faults to the visible columns in the task manager. I don't think the article demonstrates that the TSA either has the knowledge or use of the proper statistics for making the conclusions they made. While possible that they may not have released all the data they have or something similar, it definitely sounds like an instance of someone spouting off their mouth before acquiring the data they need to draw reasonable conclusions and/or incompetence at some level. The fact that their data could not determine whether the memory usage was due to OS or application usage is also another sign that they may be jumping to conclusions.
Sadly, my experience has been that the liberal arts people are far more "My view is RIGHT" than the engineers that I have come across...instead of mathematical or scientific certainties, however, their views tend to center around values or philosophies - and woe to the person who is obviously a bigot/racist or is intolerant.
All of these examples really are anecdotal. I can only shake my head at those who think that some social group or another contains more of these hard-headed, "Always Right" people. I think that some people are just stuck up, set in their ways, and unwilling to accept any wrongdoing or error on their part. I find these people in all walks of life. It just takes a LOT of patience, time, and effort to deal with these people.
I'm not convinced that engineers make good terrorists because of their personalities, but I COULD see engineers making good terrorists because of their skillsets. Heck, anyone with a good skillset would make a good terrorist. Maybe we should jail all of them just in case!!?!?!?!?
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I had mod points to downvote such a negative and bigoted post. From the viewpoint that you wrote, it sounds like you are not a programmer yourself but look from the outside in. I'm actually quite sorry that you've only run into the bad programmers out there (and the implication that you've never met a good one). More likely than not, I'm inclined to believe that you just weren't able to appreciate the good ones. There's a mix of good and bad out there. Different people have different strengths and making sure that the programmers with the right skills are doing the right job is usually not the responsibility of the programmers themselves but of HR and management. So, when you're mad that the programmer making the UI for something isn't a good UI designer, remember to place some of that blame on the party that hired them or the manager that isn't evaluating the strengths/weaknesses of his employees. Something to also remember since you seem to not be a programmer yourself is that what seems easy to you is often the most complicated stuff to implement. Programmers are not monkeys, but problem solvers. You give a programmer a problem to solve and they let you know what they see as the easiest/most scalable/best longterm (all depending on the goals that they are trying to accomplish) solution. If you have no respect for them, then go find someone that you do respect to solve your problem. It's difficult to work with people that you don't respect and if you're being difficult, then you can't blame the programmer then can you? You're going to have to at least share the blame for problems that occur when you contribute to the issues.
Most of the funding is provided by US tax payers in the form of grants to Universities. Drug companies perform a very small fraction of the R&D that goes into the drugs they hold patents on. Universities then sell the patents generated by their students to these drug companies for fractions of the R&D costs to us taxpayers. Drug companies spend most of their budgets on marketing...commercials...sending reps to Doctor Offices to give them samples/tell them about the drugs/push them to use the drug in lieu of other solutions (wife's personal experience).
AFAIK that's actually disputed evidence. I don't think we have a clear picture of what actually happened there. What IS clear, however, is that Mark took that concept and ran with it and created something that worked. AFTER it was successful, we have these accusers claiming that because they were in on the idea, that they should get to reap the profits of the EFFORT that Mark put in. A social networking site was NOT even close to an original idea. Even the individual features Facebook had were not original. Facebook worked hard to put together a complete package and market it better than their competitors. The end result is that Facebook became what it is because of work and adaptation, not an idea. Granted, ideas are important, but ideas themselves are only a piece of the puzzle.
Assuming the paying customers stick around. GP is stating that he may or may not have even had those customers without the free-loaders.
I'm actually considered the most stubborn of all the developers here. As the 2nd most senior and 2nd highest paid, i still am expected to take as much bullshit as my more senior counterpart (who is technically my boss, but since this is a small company, the CEO loves micromanaging). Thanks for the advice however lol. I am working on getting a job where I'm treated a little less like trash.
Oddly enough...I am :) My wife and I recently decided that it was just plain a good time to move on (after the review). I just recently started posting my resume and am looking. Thanks for the affirmation though. I was just posting my personal experience to supplement the parent comment.
I've been out of school for about 4 years now and already see that attitude. My company highly values the work I do (probably because I come very cheap compared to what it would cost to replace me) because I've adapted to the bullshit that has gone on here for four years. I'm already working an average of 50-60 hours a week, but my last review from my boss was "I need you to be available more". My jaw pretty much dropped to the floor. I'm salaried at way under my paygrade and have been a workhorse for the past few years just making the things that others break work and spending my evenings for the company. All the company has to say is "You're not doing enough". Damned companies.
claiming my comment
This...this will probably be the best way to determine whether or not these new implements confer an advantage. If athletes are willing to put their own bodies on the line to win because they feel that getting these blades will help, then we know what we're looking at. Right now, it's really hard to tell it seems...at least from the outside looking in.
I think the point might be that it would just cost more money in the end.
On the other hand, you would have an arms race - the companies would begin to pay more to outpace the regulatory body and the body would have to come up with more money as the whole thing spiraled...not sure it is a feasible solution...
There's also a question of who would be unable to afford the cost first - government or industry?
So what you're saying is, you think the early adopter stage is gone...whereas GP thinks the early adopter stage is currently going on...sounds like you're trolling him...his main point was not that we're in the early adopter stage, but that it's difficult to tell where exactly that middle ground is. While I agree with you that we're probably fast approaching that middle ground or there potentially, I think it's arrogant to argue that you can see that we're there already. Leave that for history to decide when we look back in 5-10 years with a slightly more clear picture. Regarding the IPv6 "bugs"...Unless he's referring to the general issue of lack of anonymity built into IPv6 (due to unique IP addresses), I myself would like to know what bugs he is referring to... Regardless, the general tone of your post I felt was extremely out of line and uncalled for, no matter my own personal standing on the matter. Maybe you felt affronted by the charges that he made of the IT guy trying to pad his resume or the Manager spiel, but I didn't really see those as intentional slaps - just exaggerations based off of his personal experiences intended to narrate (remember that high school English class where you learned about hyperbole?).
Agreed. I'm a Vocal music major. I've been working as a programmer for 3 years now and am now one of the senior programmers due to what I have done rather than my qualifications.
Queue theory...one of the oddest choices for a topic to cover in operating systems class in college, but the most intriguing and useful thing I ever got out of all of my classes - honestly probably the only thing that I use day to day that I learned in class and not from teaching myself. The concept of analyzing a process that can be described with a queue (such as a datacenter or the telephone operators) and then finding an efficient means of handling the queue, including managing desirable wait times and total time in queue is incredibly applicable in corporate environments. Personally, I think queue theory would probably be more useful to business people than most of the other things that they teach them.
Someone doesn't have a sense of humor...Parent should be modded funny, not troll. At worst it's at BP's expense and maybe less funny, but sounds to me like it was intended as a joke.
Someone already mentioned that this stream is broadcast with flash. There are actually some flash-based versions of multicast type technologies...I remember an octoshape(?) that was used to enable the broadcast of President Obama's swear-in over CNN if I remember correctly. There are also features built in to version 10+ of flash that basically make the above-mentioned structure possible. Needless to say, I will be happy to leave this coding house for a job where I don't have to code in the Flash world. Why did we ever as a society let marketing departments be in charge of ANYTHING??!!??!?
Pretty much...Copyright violations have replaced all other deadly sins...
Agreed. The funny part is that it's a little frustrating to see all of our past classmates who couldn't tell pointers or variables from the teacher's red pen to save their lives, but got pushed through school (probably so the school doesn't look bad) getting all the comfortable jobs where they can drone on every day, doing the same things they did in school while we're stuck just trying to get by on our crap compensation, slaving away on our projects...why? Oh, cuz we care a little bit about what we do. /rant
Sometimes, these things do make me wonder...
Slashdot is also full of adults who have never created anything of value in their lives and see nothing wrong with taking compensation for sitting on their arses. The kids are just tired of feeling like they are paying for something that they never get. I feel for them.
Funny how much has to be assumed for the argument to be valid...
Perhaps those in the gunship don't know telephoto lenses when they see them...especially if they see RPGs day after day and are expecting more of them because their lives are potentially in danger all of the time. As far as the pilot crying out that they are under RPG fire, he was calling that out right as you watched the guy with the "rpg" crouch right behind the corner of the building. Not only is that a perfectly reasonable assumption in a war-zone, but he was acting preemptively when lives might potentially be in danger. Moreover, the video made reference to a previous enemy engagement nearby, putting the entire episode in that context for any viewers that are paying attention
While the actions concerning the van are a little more difficult to justify (I can honestly say I'm a little torn as I saw the actions as being a little more drastic; however, if I was to assume that I had just shot some terrorists, then maybe it could have been somewhat logical that those who came to collect the wounded were sympathizers and could, potentially be hostile as well), they also do not strike me as being out of control either. War is Hell - mistakes will be made and innocent lives will be lost. To expect otherwise from someone is idealism blinding someone to rational thinking.
This, in NO way, excuses the actions of our government or the conclusions of that opinion piece which are quite extreme, but the actions of those there in the situation at the time seem to be at least reasonable given the fact that most of them probably aren't reporters of any kind. I would suggest you re-watch the video again, trying to see the video from the eyes of someone making decisions based off of the fact that people are potentially in real-life danger, not sitting cozy in the United States reading slash-dot all day. Get a grip man. While we deal with the oppressiveness of our home government, they act, aware or not, as the face of our government, and some people want to rip them a new one over there. Those reporters were not wearing anything easily identifiable to make themselves known and they or the people they were with were carrying what appeared (to the soldiers) to potentially be weapons. These were soldiers who were probably looking for remnants of a recent engagement and saw what they were expecting when it wasn't there. Fault needs to be dealt with on both sides - it's a pity that we, as a culture can't seem to realize that blame doesn't have to all fall on one entity's shoulders all the time...
I certainly don't find reporters reporting on crimes perpetrated by the American military to be Anti-American, but I think it is dishonest if they don't take the time to consider more than just their own personal viewpoint on an issue of this caliber. There are certainly more than enough plausible explanations to the actions of those involved that your outrage is a little quick to the punch. Nonetheless, IMHO, I think we do deserve an explanation for the actions of the government in covering this up.
There are multiple kinds of development shops - i assume that you are referring to the kind of shop where you are given ample time (or at least sufficient time) to complete projects and where quality and few bugs are valued over having it done in a short period of time. There are other kinds of shops (like the one I've worked in for quite a while), where the management is less organized and goals include - get it done yesterday! Code tends to become a little less maintainable anyway in these types of situations...to the developers working on these types of projects, sometimes, well-documented macros and other such meta-programming aids become the only means of keeping the code-base they maintain organized for themselves under their time constraints. Unfortunately for management, the skilled programmers who are capable of succeeding in these types of environments tend to want to leave as they feel abused, overworked, and underpaid. Sadly, I think these kinds of shops are actually becoming more and more common. so, these techniques may, one day, even become almost the norm...
It doesn't make sense to grant a monopoly to market, if the monopoly holder isn't going to sell to that market. If they're going to abstain from doing business (either by refraining from selling DRM-free media, or by making it illegal to use DRMed media), then they have no stake in the market to lose (they'll lose $0 per year due to piracy); granting them copyright is not only pointless, but it will be violated.
And that's the whole crux of the argument against the huge fines imposed - they aren't losing money because they are not even providing a product in the market that the pirates are serving. Hence, the damage supposedly caused is actually non-existent.
Agreed...because I work for a small company that tries to do more than it really is capable of, I find myself with another project dropped into my lap that needs to be done yesterday that I can only conceivably complete by temporarily adding another state or condition to the code that I already have (in small companies, scalability is NEVER a concern - only accomplishing the task...it sucks...but it is reality). Finite State Machines are my friends. I probably have an entire stack of papers floating around my desk full of my state machine drawings that I used to organize various problems that I've had to solve over the course of my time here.
As for the original post, being a half university taught and half self-taught programmer, I would say that it definitely depends on the person. I don't know how it works exactly, but the BEST and brightest programmers (i.e. problem solvers) I've met have all worked for small companies or doing contract work. However, the best code-writers all seem to work for the big corporations (obviously this is based only on anecdotal evidence...). I guess it makes sense though - the corporations need the good code writers to maintain their scalability and the small companies definitely need the good problem solvers to deal with the daily emergencies that just evolve from the natural overconfidence of a small company with growing pains. Maybe people just kinda gravitate where their skills are most useful.
It's nice to see a couple people who paid attention in either their college virtual memory course or got some real life experience. Memory usage is, quite often, a useless statistic without other qualifying statistics to help interpret it. The first thing that I do when checking out a computer with problems is add page faults to the visible columns in the task manager. I don't think the article demonstrates that the TSA either has the knowledge or use of the proper statistics for making the conclusions they made. While possible that they may not have released all the data they have or something similar, it definitely sounds like an instance of someone spouting off their mouth before acquiring the data they need to draw reasonable conclusions and/or incompetence at some level. The fact that their data could not determine whether the memory usage was due to OS or application usage is also another sign that they may be jumping to conclusions.
Sadly, my experience has been that the liberal arts people are far more "My view is RIGHT" than the engineers that I have come across...instead of mathematical or scientific certainties, however, their views tend to center around values or philosophies - and woe to the person who is obviously a bigot/racist or is intolerant.
All of these examples really are anecdotal. I can only shake my head at those who think that some social group or another contains more of these hard-headed, "Always Right" people. I think that some people are just stuck up, set in their ways, and unwilling to accept any wrongdoing or error on their part. I find these people in all walks of life. It just takes a LOT of patience, time, and effort to deal with these people.
I'm not convinced that engineers make good terrorists because of their personalities, but I COULD see engineers making good terrorists because of their skillsets. Heck, anyone with a good skillset would make a good terrorist. Maybe we should jail all of them just in case!!?!?!?!?