There's only been once episode (that crappy dance club, people milking episode) that truly sucked ass.
Man, that episode ruled! They let the director go all wacky with camera angles and music, it was like one long acid trip. I thought they did a really good job.
Not only that, the episode was actually a story/excuse that John and Dargo were telling to Pilot to explain where they'd been. This story was a huge exaggeration at the very least, and may have been completely untrue! This explains how weird it was, and how it didn't seem to fit with the normal course of the show.
Pair Programming can now be accomplished with only one programmer, who can pair up with his or her virtual counterpart in an alternate "many worlds" universe during development. The 2nd programmer will collapse back into nonexistence at the end of the project. As long as the length of each iteration is shorter than the company's pay period, this will save on salaries.
Do the simplest thing that could possibly work is now even simpler, since the computer doesn't even need to be turned on.
Unit tests are all that matters -- the actual code to be tested is no longer needed, since in some "possible world" it has already been written. Simply write the unit tests and run them against the still-turned-off computer. When they work, the project is finished. (Actually, in some possible universe, the unit tests are already written and working, too; but heck, you have to show management something.)
Bottom line: The gaming industry is just like the entertainment industry.
Good point. From the outside, it's all too easy to glamorize the computer gaming field. In truth, day to day it is more like "battle of the gigantic egos" and not nearly as fun as it might seem. And just like in the entertainment industry, there is far more supply than demand for people who want to be game designers / game programmers / movie stars / oscar-winning directors / rock stars.
So, what the hell is Y? If you're a Java zealot, you might say that it's strong typing and bytecode portability. Of course, a C nazi would want to tear his hair out because of how "limiting" all that strong typing is, and how infernally slow the produced code is. Meanwhile, Python geeks will sing the praises of syntactically signifigant source-code formatting, ML nuts will talk about how nifty it is to have your whole program look like it's written in EBNF, and Perl monks will spout off huge strings of acronyms which all serve to hilight the Swiss Army knife nature of their language.
Some of the things you listed are definitely not Y's. Bytecode portability is not, strictly speaking a language feature, because you could also write a Java compiler that compiled Java source to native code. And speaking as a Python zealot, syntactically signifigant indenting is also not a Y, though I do like it. It doesn't give me power to do something I couldn't have done otherwise.
Some candidates for Y's might include closures, continuations, functions as first class objects, etc. It is surely worth pondering what a Y is, and programmers may disagree over it, but I don't think just any language feature one happens to like would qualify.
"Gaming" is no more a culture than "Cars" or "Food" or "Music" or "Technology".
That's right! It's sad to see culture defined in terms of products. That's how lame our "culture" has become, that it consists of what entertainment stuff you buy. Knowing "Up up down down etc." is no more meaningful than knowing the lyrics to an advertising jingle. But for inspiration about alternatives, see Immediatism.
This is kind of a muddled analysis. If you work a lot on projects that get cancelled, then this is a problem with your management.
I'd have to disagree with this particular point. Many software projects should be cancelled, because they are misguided, pointless, screwed up, and will never succeed. But they need to be cancelled much sooner so as not to waste so much time and money.:-)
In one error discovered earlier this year, the corruption of two adjacent flags (bits in a status word) would command an air valve to open while locking out the "valve close" command; only a power cycle could reset the system and prevent all the air from leaking out.
What is the point of making things like this computerized with no manual workaround? That sounds poorly thought out. Surely a valve could be made so you could also close it by hand?? This reminds me of the models of BMW where you can't unlock the doors by hand, so if the power locks fail, you're locked in your own car (this actually happened to someone I know). Madness...
Recall that originally C++ used the Cfront compiler to generate C code which was then compiled as normal. Also, NQC for Lego Mindstorms is a replacement programming language that surpasses the functionality of the graphical programming tool Lego provides.
Perhaps someone will build a CFront-like compiler to generate YaBasic statements from a higher level language (such as Perl) allowing for more fully featured programming.
Good point. BASIC seems so dated now, though I do remember the good ol' days of C64 and Apple II hacking. I guess we can be give thanks that they didn't choose COBOL. I'd love to see a Python front end to the PS2, just to play around with.
I read this book, and though I did enjoy it, I didn't think it was worth $26. There is good information here, but it could have been presented in about 10 pages. This book felt padded, even to the point where the margins and the font size seemed big.
Yes, 3D games are supposed to be, uh, challenging. If it takes you 4 or 5 tries to get Lara Croft to go across the narrow ledge and up the wall, then that's part of the fun. But as a base interface for a web site, what's the point? If I want to order a book online, I want to type in the name, check out the price and maybe some reviews, and order it. I don't want to walk through a maze of 3D aisles and shelves, pull the book out, and then have to bring it over to the 3D cash register on the other side of the room.
The boss' cluelessness, Miller says, typically led him to make promises to company honchos that left the IT staff scrambling to meet impossible deadlines.
Often the difference between a successful project and a stressful disaster is simply whether the schedule was realistic in the first place. So a year-long project can actually "fail" on its very first day, if the person in charge decides to call it a six month project instead.
"Formal methods" falls down because using them assumes that we can specify accurately and precisely what the system should do. And you have to do that specification up front. Such exacting up front specification poses more of a problem than iterative development by service packs and patches.
Very good point! This article has a great in-depth discussion of this kind of issue.
In general, if a specification is detailed enough and unambiguous enough to write all the code from, then that specification basically is the code expressed in a different form, and writing it is essentially the same task (perhaps in disguise) as writing the code. On the other hand, any specification that can be written more easily than writing the code must leave out a lot of information, and that very vagueness leads to "defects", "bugs" and "misunderstandings" when the code is eventually written.
This is where software is really, really different from most other things. A recipe is not a meal: if you eat the recipe, it doesn't taste good. A blueprint is not a house: you can't live in a blueprint. But a complete and full description of what a program ought to do is the program (though perhaps expressed in a different set of symbols). Let's all meditate on this:-)
parents this is aimed at are happy to rely on MegaCorp to raise their child for them
You just hit upon the real problem here. Some parents these days want to rely on anyone (staff at Wal-Mart, etc.), and anything (V-Chips, etc.) to supervise their children for them, because they just aren't around to do it. I'm going to sound old-fashioned here, but what happened to supervising your children yourself? When I was growing up, my parents didn't need all sorts of regulations and technology to keep track of me, because they spent time with me and knew what I was doing.
If people are so busy that they can't supervise their kids, and need to rely on all these external mechanisms to "police" them... well, maybe they shouldn't have children in the first place. A child is not a parrot, where you can just push some food in the cage every so often and walk away (on second thought, that would be an awful life even for a parrot).
I don't think they're saying it's illegal for minors to buy these games. I think they're setting a store policy that they don't want to sell these games to minors, which is probably their right to decide.
I've seen a local hardware store that refuses to sell cans of spray paint to minors (on the grounds, I guess, that they could be used for vandalism). This is the same kind of store policy. Nobody is claiming it's illegal for minors to own spray paint.
The NYT article says: Companies could train older programmers in less time than it takes to process visas for cheaper foreign workers.
This is silly. There is a huge difference between waiting for a visa to be processed, and spending my time training someone. If I had time to train someone who didn't have the skills to do the job, I could use that time to do the job myself! How about if the "older programmers" go learn up-to-date skills on their own instead of waiting for others to train them?
I'm always amazed that people might actually believe statements like the one about how software "could tell the difference between art and pornography."
Personally, I'm working on FlatMaster(tm), a huge Python script that can tell the difference between flattery and a sincere compliment. Just filter your incoming email through it and find out who to believe! Pre-order yours now!
Even if VUIs work perfectly, there are two major drawbacks that will make many people prefer GUIs:
1. Privacy. Do you really want to be saying things like "browse to pervert site dot com" or "send bankruptcy memo" out loud? Typing and clicking are more discreet.
2. Annoying others. I don't want to be in an office full of people babbling at their computers. I also don't want to be on a plane or in a restaurant near somebody babbling commands at his laptop. It's bad enough already with cell phones.
That being said, there will be a place for VUIs in critical hands-free situations such as in cars.
This is meant as a friendly warning, not an insult...
Tech employers tend to like young gurus and visionaries better than old gurus and visionaries. Why? Because young gurus and visionaries are often more gullible and more easily manipulated. They are more willing to work more hours for the same pay, work under stressful conditions, and give up "having a life" for putting everything into their job. See the book "Net Slaves" for examples.
So be careful out there. Don't get too cocky. There are skilled tech people of all ages, and if the older ones aren't found doing a certain kind of job, possibly they are avoiding it because they are crafty and wise, not because they don't get it.
New surveys suggest that ubiquitous technological tools are killing off leisure time, especially for younger workers and students -- that would be you -- who are working longer hours, taking fewer and shorter vacations
This article (link) explains that annual working hours for America are around 2000, whereas "Dutch and Norwegian workers average around 1400 hours per year, or about two-thirds of the US level." The Dutch have cell phones and computers too, so this would seem to indicate that technology does not inevitably lead to more work and less free time. It may have this effect on Americans, though. So what's wrong with us?
How will this cater for the extra features that are propsed for WAP such as location detection, or hyperlinks that call telephone numbers?
For calling telephone numbers, parsing could still do the job. I imagine I'd go to a (normal HTML) site that had a telephone number on it, and press DIAL. The client could recognize the pattern of a telephone number on the page and dial it (asking for confirmation first, of course, so you wouldn't be making a long-distance or 900-number call you didn't intend to make). This might not work perfectly, but it would be ok. For location detection, I guess I'd be out of luck:-).
Now a handset that can handle BOTH wap and slimmed-down HTML... now you're talking!
You're absolutely right, this would be best of all.
Right now, maybe spending the $8 is more convenient than waiting two days on a 33.3 modem. When high bandwidth lines are commonplace, however, that will no longer be the case.
Higher bandwidth may help the unknown artist more than it hurts. Right now, it's a risk to spend a half hour downloading something you've never heard of and might not like. I've often taken the chance and been disappointed, and felt like I wasted my time. So right now, it's a safer bet to download a song by a band I've already heard. But if that same download took 3 seconds, then even if I listen to the song and hate it I won't care as much. I'll keep sampling until I find a band I like, then I'll order the $8 CD from the artist.
Asking content-providers to support a whole new protocol just for certain devices is the wrong approach. The right approach is to intelligently parse normal HTML and try to format it for the specific needs of the device, or ignore elements that can't be rendered on the device. For example, AvantGo does this for the Palm devices and other handhelds. It can automatically strip out images and tables (depending on setup). Web page designers can put in a meta tag "HandheldFriendly" to tell AvantGo to leave the tables in because they are designed to look ok on the Palm. This is pretty convenient, and I've used it successfully with some of my own dynamically generated pages.
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There's only been once episode (that crappy dance club, people milking episode) that truly sucked ass.
Man, that episode ruled! They let the director go all wacky with camera angles and music, it was like one long acid trip. I thought they did a really good job.
Not only that, the episode was actually a story/excuse that John and Dargo were telling to Pilot to explain where they'd been. This story was a huge exaggeration at the very least, and may have been completely untrue! This explains how weird it was, and how it didn't seem to fit with the normal course of the show.
Extreme Programming for Quantum Computers:
Why is it whenever I hear the term "extreme programming," I picture some guy jumping out of a plane with a parachute and a laptop?
. . . with the chute controlled by software on the laptop so it will only open after the code passes the unit tests.
Bottom line: The gaming industry is just like the entertainment industry.
Good point. From the outside, it's all too easy to glamorize the computer gaming field. In truth, day to day it is more like "battle of the gigantic egos" and not nearly as fun as it might seem. And just like in the entertainment industry, there is far more supply than demand for people who want to be game designers / game programmers / movie stars / oscar-winning directors / rock stars.
So, what the hell is Y? If you're a Java zealot, you might say that it's strong typing and bytecode portability. Of course, a C nazi would want to tear his hair out because of how "limiting" all that strong typing is, and how infernally slow the produced code is. Meanwhile, Python geeks will sing the praises of syntactically signifigant source-code formatting, ML nuts will talk about how nifty it is to have your whole program look like it's written in EBNF, and Perl monks will spout off huge strings of acronyms which all serve to hilight the Swiss Army knife nature of their language.
Some of the things you listed are definitely not Y's. Bytecode portability is not, strictly speaking a language feature, because you could also write a Java compiler that compiled Java source to native code. And speaking as a Python zealot, syntactically signifigant indenting is also not a Y, though I do like it. It doesn't give me power to do something I couldn't have done otherwise.
Some candidates for Y's might include closures, continuations, functions as first class objects, etc. It is surely worth pondering what a Y is, and programmers may disagree over it, but I don't think just any language feature one happens to like would qualify.
Opera has an "Allow documents to create windows" option that you can set.
"Gaming" is no more a culture than "Cars" or "Food" or "Music" or "Technology".
That's right! It's sad to see culture defined in terms of products. That's how lame our "culture" has become, that it consists of what entertainment stuff you buy. Knowing "Up up down down etc." is no more meaningful than knowing the lyrics to an advertising jingle. But for inspiration about alternatives, see Immediatism.
This is kind of a muddled analysis. If you work a lot on projects that get cancelled, then this is a problem with your management.
I'd have to disagree with this particular point. Many software projects should be cancelled, because they are misguided, pointless, screwed up, and will never succeed. But they need to be cancelled much sooner so as not to waste so much time and money. :-)
In one error discovered earlier this year, the corruption of two adjacent flags (bits in a status word) would command an air valve to open while locking out the "valve close" command; only a power cycle could reset the system and prevent all the air from leaking out.
What is the point of making things like this computerized with no manual workaround? That sounds poorly thought out. Surely a valve could be made so you could also close it by hand?? This reminds me of the models of BMW where you can't unlock the doors by hand, so if the power locks fail, you're locked in your own car (this actually happened to someone I know). Madness...
Recall that originally C++ used the Cfront compiler to generate C code which was then compiled as normal. Also, NQC for Lego Mindstorms is a replacement programming language that surpasses the functionality of the graphical programming tool Lego provides. Perhaps someone will build a CFront-like compiler to generate YaBasic statements from a higher level language (such as Perl) allowing for more fully featured programming.
Good point. BASIC seems so dated now, though I do remember the good ol' days of C64 and Apple II hacking. I guess we can be give thanks that they didn't choose COBOL. I'd love to see a Python front end to the PS2, just to play around with.
I read this book, and though I did enjoy it, I didn't think it was worth $26. There is good information here, but it could have been presented in about 10 pages. This book felt padded, even to the point where the margins and the font size seemed big.
Yes, 3D games are supposed to be, uh, challenging. If it takes you 4 or 5 tries to get Lara Croft to go across the narrow ledge and up the wall, then that's part of the fun. But as a base interface for a web site, what's the point? If I want to order a book online, I want to type in the name, check out the price and maybe some reviews, and order it. I don't want to walk through a maze of 3D aisles and shelves, pull the book out, and then have to bring it over to the 3D cash register on the other side of the room.
The boss' cluelessness, Miller says, typically led him to make promises to company honchos that left the IT staff scrambling to meet impossible deadlines.
Often the difference between a successful project and a stressful disaster is simply whether the schedule was realistic in the first place. So a year-long project can actually "fail" on its very first day, if the person in charge decides to call it a six month project instead.
"Formal methods" falls down because using them assumes that we can specify accurately and precisely what the system should do. And you have to do that specification up front. Such exacting up front specification poses more of a problem than iterative development by service packs and patches.
Very good point! This article has a great in-depth discussion of this kind of issue.
In general, if a specification is detailed enough and unambiguous enough to write all the code from, then that specification basically is the code expressed in a different form, and writing it is essentially the same task (perhaps in disguise) as writing the code. On the other hand, any specification that can be written more easily than writing the code must leave out a lot of information, and that very vagueness leads to "defects", "bugs" and "misunderstandings" when the code is eventually written.
This is where software is really, really different from most other things. A recipe is not a meal: if you eat the recipe, it doesn't taste good. A blueprint is not a house: you can't live in a blueprint. But a complete and full description of what a program ought to do is the program (though perhaps expressed in a different set of symbols). Let's all meditate on this :-)
parents this is aimed at are happy to rely on MegaCorp to raise their child for them
You just hit upon the real problem here. Some parents these days want to rely on anyone (staff at Wal-Mart, etc.), and anything (V-Chips, etc.) to supervise their children for them, because they just aren't around to do it. I'm going to sound old-fashioned here, but what happened to supervising your children yourself? When I was growing up, my parents didn't need all sorts of regulations and technology to keep track of me, because they spent time with me and knew what I was doing.
If people are so busy that they can't supervise their kids, and need to rely on all these external mechanisms to "police" them ... well, maybe they shouldn't have children in the first place. A child is not a parrot, where you can just push some food in the cage every so often and walk away (on second thought, that would be an awful life even for a parrot).
So how the heck can they legally enforce this?
I don't think they're saying it's illegal for minors to buy these games. I think they're setting a store policy that they don't want to sell these games to minors, which is probably their right to decide.
I've seen a local hardware store that refuses to sell cans of spray paint to minors (on the grounds, I guess, that they could be used for vandalism). This is the same kind of store policy. Nobody is claiming it's illegal for minors to own spray paint.
The NYT article says: Companies could train older programmers in less time than it takes to process visas for cheaper foreign workers.
This is silly. There is a huge difference between waiting for a visa to be processed, and spending my time training someone. If I had time to train someone who didn't have the skills to do the job, I could use that time to do the job myself! How about if the "older programmers" go learn up-to-date skills on their own instead of waiting for others to train them?
Ten billion gigabytes of data can be stored in this vial . . .
. . . but it can't be retrieved, making this the world's first Nano Write Only Memory.
I'm always amazed that people might actually believe statements like the one about how software "could tell the difference between art and pornography."
Personally, I'm working on FlatMaster(tm), a huge Python script that can tell the difference between flattery and a sincere compliment. Just filter your incoming email through it and find out who to believe! Pre-order yours now!
Even if VUIs work perfectly, there are two major drawbacks that will make many people prefer GUIs:
1. Privacy. Do you really want to be saying things like "browse to pervert site dot com" or "send bankruptcy memo" out loud? Typing and clicking are more discreet.
2. Annoying others. I don't want to be in an office full of people babbling at their computers. I also don't want to be on a plane or in a restaurant near somebody babbling commands at his laptop. It's bad enough already with cell phones.
That being said, there will be a place for VUIs in critical hands-free situations such as in cars.
This is meant as a friendly warning, not an insult ...
Tech employers tend to like young gurus and visionaries better than old gurus and visionaries. Why? Because young gurus and visionaries are often more gullible and more easily manipulated. They are more willing to work more hours for the same pay, work under stressful conditions, and give up "having a life" for putting everything into their job. See the book "Net Slaves" for examples.
So be careful out there. Don't get too cocky. There are skilled tech people of all ages, and if the older ones aren't found doing a certain kind of job, possibly they are avoiding it because they are crafty and wise, not because they don't get it.
New surveys suggest that ubiquitous technological tools are killing off leisure time, especially for younger workers and students -- that would be you -- who are working longer hours, taking fewer and shorter vacations
This article (link) explains that annual working hours for America are around 2000, whereas "Dutch and Norwegian workers average around 1400 hours per year, or about two-thirds of the US level." The Dutch have cell phones and computers too, so this would seem to indicate that technology does not inevitably lead to more work and less free time. It may have this effect on Americans, though. So what's wrong with us?
How will this cater for the extra features that are propsed for WAP such as location detection, or hyperlinks that call telephone numbers?
For calling telephone numbers, parsing could still do the job. I imagine I'd go to a (normal HTML) site that had a telephone number on it, and press DIAL. The client could recognize the pattern of a telephone number on the page and dial it (asking for confirmation first, of course, so you wouldn't be making a long-distance or 900-number call you didn't intend to make). This might not work perfectly, but it would be ok. For location detection, I guess I'd be out of luck :-).
Now a handset that can handle BOTH wap and slimmed-down HTML... now you're talking!
You're absolutely right, this would be best of all.
Right now, maybe spending the $8 is more convenient than waiting two days on a 33.3 modem. When high bandwidth lines are commonplace, however, that will no longer be the case.
Higher bandwidth may help the unknown artist more than it hurts. Right now, it's a risk to spend a half hour downloading something you've never heard of and might not like. I've often taken the chance and been disappointed, and felt like I wasted my time. So right now, it's a safer bet to download a song by a band I've already heard. But if that same download took 3 seconds, then even if I listen to the song and hate it I won't care as much. I'll keep sampling until I find a band I like, then I'll order the $8 CD from the artist.
Asking content-providers to support a whole new protocol just for certain devices is the wrong approach. The right approach is to intelligently parse normal HTML and try to format it for the specific needs of the device, or ignore elements that can't be rendered on the device. For example, AvantGo does this for the Palm devices and other handhelds. It can automatically strip out images and tables (depending on setup). Web page designers can put in a meta tag "HandheldFriendly" to tell AvantGo to leave the tables in because they are designed to look ok on the Palm. This is pretty convenient, and I've used it successfully with some of my own dynamically generated pages.