There's no clear evidence that different human languages are radically different in expressiveness or utility for various tasks. With programming languages, there are good reasons to be fluent in several. Even with human languages, fluency in several can certainly help you communicate and think... But once you've done that, it's not obvious that switching between them gives you a huge win in expressiveness. You don't find yourself writing a book and think "well, Latin's a great choice for the introduction, but I really need to use French for the first chapter because it's closer to the problem space."
On the other hand, the cost of using multiple human languages for a project is MUCH higher than the cost of using several programming languages -- and the cost of learning a new human language is much, much, higher than the cost of learning a new programming language.
So, pragmatically, it becomes useful to pick a single standard language and use it as much as possible. It's like which side of the road you drive on; either answer can work fine, but life's easier if all the cars in a given area agree.
I think English won simply because everything's in it, and none of the other languages offer unambiguous improvements, let alone unambiguous improvements sufficient to justify the cost of trying to transition.
Maybe an in-game thing saying "be sure to check questhelper.com for updates and information", and put the donation stuff there?
I'd think that would get you SOME help, anyway. (I don't know, I have to admit I haven't been good about donations to other authors. I am thinking about going and doing some donations now, though, because this reminded me.)
I think on the whole I like the change, but I do want to see ways for people like you to get enough donations to keep your addons going. One thing to consider would be to give some kinds of statistics for people -- say, your hourly wage over the past month, or whatever. Something to let them get a feel for how much time you put in -- especially combined with a comparison of how much of their time you expect them to save?
FWIW, next time I get paid, I'll toss you some money.
The game is playable without addons, even if it's not ideal.
I write addons because I want to have them. I clean them up for other people to be friendly. I have no problem with this. It's FUN. It's a HOBBY. I know this may sound crazy, but I ENJOY PROGRAMMING.
As someone who both writes and uses addons, I have no problem with this at all. None.
It is their game. Their license agreement covers this stuff. There's nothing comparable to Windows here -- I can play other games, for instance. Or not play games.
I think this will make my life better, not worse. I have been screwed by obfuscated addon code before, so I'm glad to see that going. I'm also fine with them restricting the secondary market, banning ads, and so on. Works for me.
Look at the rate at which they've been able to get Scientology stuff banned from eBay (such as 100% legit e-meters)... Because if there's a used market, the CoS doesn't make as much money.
A friend of mine pointed out that the example is very hard to accept. There are lots of things you can get away with. Sexual harassment, though, is one of the things where there's enough regulations that I have a really hard time believing this.
I honestly don't believe that "Josh", as described, ever existed. I think he's a hyperbolic example from someone whose writing suggests that he resents the existence of people who are good at what they do without being interchangeable. Sadly, the world's smallest violinist was fired for wearing an offensive t-shirt, and cannot play.
All I see is a one-line summary saying the judge decided against a jury trial. That isn't the same as dismissing the case. There's such a thing as a trial with a judge instead of a jury, common for civil cases. Where's the actual dismissal?
They would prefer that a project *definately* take 16 weeks instead of taking 2 to 9 weeks.
Then they're morons.
If they'd prefer a *definite* 10 weeks to a *probable* 5 weeks, with variance from 2 to 12, then that's rational. But in the case you describe, it's stupid. Solution is to budget for a definite 10 weeks, then assign extra time to additional projects that aren't part of the planned requirements, cleanup, or other bonus development. You're still six weeks ahead *plus* whatever bonus time you get.
Predictability is important, but if you're fast enough that your worst-case is better than the "predictable" case, then you're STILL better. (The same thing's happened to a lot of real-time systems; if you can't guarantee which millisecond something will be done, but it's always done in between a tenth and a third of the time you have available, that is good enough surprisingly often.)
So you're saying you can't tell real geniuses from fake ones?
Sorry, but I don't buy it. The "hero" programmers I've seen make other programmers more productive. If they aren't doing that, they're obviously not really "hero" programmers, they're just talking a lot.
I certainly wrote unmaintainable code back when I was in college. These days, the stuff I produce is mostly intended to be fairly simple and clearly documented. It's not 100% simple-and-self-documenting, but if I do anything remotely tricky, I explain what it is, how it works, and why it's a good fit for the problem. I'm still fast.:)
Genius developers like that should be employed as designers, not coders. By the time you start writing code, there should be no problems left that take even an afternoon, much less a month, to solve.
This just ain't so. The notion that everything should be in design and code should be done by interchangeable monkeys doesn't work. It is really popular with people who want a more predictable world, but wishing don't make it so. In the real world, the programming work can be genuinely hard, not because the design is flawed, but because the underlying task requires some amount of coherent thought.
Your assumption that "brilliant" code is badly-written is unsupported. Brilliant code need not be hard to understand; in fact, it's often simple to understand. What's hard is realizing that there's an easy-to-understand way to do something complicated.
Basically, it sounds to me like you've either never seen, or never understood, actual genius-level work. It isn't the same stuff, only faster. While the factor of 160 sounds a bit high, there are certainly plenty of cases of brilliant developers being able to trim days or weeks off of project schedules by finding elegant solutions to problems which looked like they would require a long and painful slog.
If this were true, you might have a point. It ain't.
I was recognized as "highly intelligent and gifted" in school, as a result of which... uh... Well, basically, I got treated pretty badly, the closest I got to "coddling" was that my parents got me into a slightly better school.
This coddling you speak of doesn't exist. Honestly, I'd have settled for coursework that taught me something more than one day in five.
A ton of software isn't that big and has no reason to be.
If you can get someone with ten times the productivity of other developers (and yes, ten times is a real performance differential), there's likely to be some project or projects where that person is worth a lot of money.
I'm one of those fairly bright, fairly quirky, sorts.
A while back, one of the managers explained to me in engineering terms how it is useful to other people if I explain what's up, give them status information, warn them about possible deadline problems, and so on. And I spent some time reading about, and writing about, usability. Net result? I'm still weird, I still occasionally say things that are offensive -- but my coworkers appear to like me and I cooperate well with others.
So far as I can tell, the problem is often simply that no one has explained why this matters. Seriously, it's not always obvious. I have warned my coworkers that I have a clinical diagnosis of a mental disorder, and that if I say something offensive it's probably not intentionally-offensive, and they cut me a bit of slack -- but I do make an effort to avoid offending, because it's just common courtesy and all that.
Please name an emulator which works on the PS3 today and didn't in 2007.
"Explosion" implies that there are many such emulators, and that they all showed up recently. In fact, I don't know of any at all, and it's hardly an "explosion" for a Linux system to have access to a bunch of common Linux packages. What next? "Emulator explosion on the Eee" headlines because my specific Eee has access to more emulators than it did when I bought it?
I don't buy all this hate. I don't think Metallica's done much to stop new artists from entering the system.
I also wouldn't say the music is "ever-shittier". I didn't care for St. Anger, but I really, really, like Death Magnetic. One of my favorite metal albums.
Probably more a question of "since you're probably writing in PHP, here's some security stuff". PHP's not my favorite language for security-related things; it doesn't necessarily do much to encourage or help with sanity checks.
Cell was designed when multicore was large and expensive, and GPUs weren't very good.
Now, Cell's going to always have higher development costs than conventional multicore chips, and not much payoff for developers.
Look at the difference between consumer-oriented video games and supercomputing. Supercomputing clusters can cost enough money that their power bill alone vastly exceeds the cost of all the software development ever done for them. Spending a bunch extra on development can pay off hugely if it reduces runtime -- so a hard-to-target architecture pays off.
Now look at video games. Development costs are huge and out of control, and you don't get paid by the polygon anyway, so extra work on performance doesn't necessarily pay off. A console which pushes fewer polygons but is cheaper to develop for makes you more money.
I don't see how the union weighs into that -- people who want to do a good job often do anyway.
Old and established unions, like any other established institution, eventually end up focused on their own continued existence. They will create conflict if needed to make themselves seem "relevant".
It ain't perfect, and it took a couple of tweaks to get it running the way I wanted it, but...
I have to say it's pretty good. Just Works, repos have plenty of usable software. I can browse the web, read PDFs, and (with only a bit of manual compiling to get current versions) have a full local Ruby on Rails install.
I am planning to stick with this for the forseeable future.
Slashdot Mirror
I asked about tethering, they sold me a phone with a data plan. It works. They told me I could use it tethered.
WTF?
There's no clear evidence that different human languages are radically different in expressiveness or utility for various tasks. With programming languages, there are good reasons to be fluent in several. Even with human languages, fluency in several can certainly help you communicate and think... But once you've done that, it's not obvious that switching between them gives you a huge win in expressiveness. You don't find yourself writing a book and think "well, Latin's a great choice for the introduction, but I really need to use French for the first chapter because it's closer to the problem space."
On the other hand, the cost of using multiple human languages for a project is MUCH higher than the cost of using several programming languages -- and the cost of learning a new human language is much, much, higher than the cost of learning a new programming language.
So, pragmatically, it becomes useful to pick a single standard language and use it as much as possible. It's like which side of the road you drive on; either answer can work fine, but life's easier if all the cars in a given area agree.
I think English won simply because everything's in it, and none of the other languages offer unambiguous improvements, let alone unambiguous improvements sufficient to justify the cost of trying to transition.
Yes, it is.
Marginal cost of ECC for my desktop: Probably thirty bucks.
Cost of a single reboot when I'm working: More than thirty bucks.
Cost of a day or two of running memtest and swapping parts: More than the cost of the machine.
It's not as though people haven't been trying.
We should NEVER have developed human-cotton hybrids.
Maybe an in-game thing saying "be sure to check questhelper.com for updates and information", and put the donation stuff there?
I'd think that would get you SOME help, anyway. (I don't know, I have to admit I haven't been good about donations to other authors. I am thinking about going and doing some donations now, though, because this reminded me.)
I think on the whole I like the change, but I do want to see ways for people like you to get enough donations to keep your addons going. One thing to consider would be to give some kinds of statistics for people -- say, your hourly wage over the past month, or whatever. Something to let them get a feel for how much time you put in -- especially combined with a comparison of how much of their time you expect them to save?
FWIW, next time I get paid, I'll toss you some money.
The game is playable without addons, even if it's not ideal.
I write addons because I want to have them. I clean them up for other people to be friendly. I have no problem with this. It's FUN. It's a HOBBY. I know this may sound crazy, but I ENJOY PROGRAMMING.
So I'm fine with this.
As someone who both writes and uses addons, I have no problem with this at all. None.
It is their game. Their license agreement covers this stuff. There's nothing comparable to Windows here -- I can play other games, for instance. Or not play games.
I think this will make my life better, not worse. I have been screwed by obfuscated addon code before, so I'm glad to see that going. I'm also fine with them restricting the secondary market, banning ads, and so on. Works for me.
Look at the rate at which they've been able to get Scientology stuff banned from eBay (such as 100% legit e-meters)... Because if there's a used market, the CoS doesn't make as much money.
A friend of mine pointed out that the example is very hard to accept. There are lots of things you can get away with. Sexual harassment, though, is one of the things where there's enough regulations that I have a really hard time believing this.
I honestly don't believe that "Josh", as described, ever existed. I think he's a hyperbolic example from someone whose writing suggests that he resents the existence of people who are good at what they do without being interchangeable. Sadly, the world's smallest violinist was fired for wearing an offensive t-shirt, and cannot play.
Where's the dismissal?
All I see is a one-line summary saying the judge decided against a jury trial. That isn't the same as dismissing the case. There's such a thing as a trial with a judge instead of a jury, common for civil cases. Where's the actual dismissal?
Then they're morons.
If they'd prefer a *definite* 10 weeks to a *probable* 5 weeks, with variance from 2 to 12, then that's rational. But in the case you describe, it's stupid. Solution is to budget for a definite 10 weeks, then assign extra time to additional projects that aren't part of the planned requirements, cleanup, or other bonus development. You're still six weeks ahead *plus* whatever bonus time you get.
Predictability is important, but if you're fast enough that your worst-case is better than the "predictable" case, then you're STILL better. (The same thing's happened to a lot of real-time systems; if you can't guarantee which millisecond something will be done, but it's always done in between a tenth and a third of the time you have available, that is good enough surprisingly often.)
So you're saying you can't tell real geniuses from fake ones?
Sorry, but I don't buy it. The "hero" programmers I've seen make other programmers more productive. If they aren't doing that, they're obviously not really "hero" programmers, they're just talking a lot.
I certainly wrote unmaintainable code back when I was in college. These days, the stuff I produce is mostly intended to be fairly simple and clearly documented. It's not 100% simple-and-self-documenting, but if I do anything remotely tricky, I explain what it is, how it works, and why it's a good fit for the problem. I'm still fast. :)
This just ain't so. The notion that everything should be in design and code should be done by interchangeable monkeys doesn't work. It is really popular with people who want a more predictable world, but wishing don't make it so. In the real world, the programming work can be genuinely hard, not because the design is flawed, but because the underlying task requires some amount of coherent thought.
Your assumption that "brilliant" code is badly-written is unsupported. Brilliant code need not be hard to understand; in fact, it's often simple to understand. What's hard is realizing that there's an easy-to-understand way to do something complicated.
Basically, it sounds to me like you've either never seen, or never understood, actual genius-level work. It isn't the same stuff, only faster. While the factor of 160 sounds a bit high, there are certainly plenty of cases of brilliant developers being able to trim days or weeks off of project schedules by finding elegant solutions to problems which looked like they would require a long and painful slog.
If this were true, you might have a point. It ain't.
I was recognized as "highly intelligent and gifted" in school, as a result of which... uh... Well, basically, I got treated pretty badly, the closest I got to "coddling" was that my parents got me into a slightly better school.
This coddling you speak of doesn't exist. Honestly, I'd have settled for coursework that taught me something more than one day in five.
How does that make these people not valuable?
A ton of software isn't that big and has no reason to be.
If you can get someone with ten times the productivity of other developers (and yes, ten times is a real performance differential), there's likely to be some project or projects where that person is worth a lot of money.
I'm one of those fairly bright, fairly quirky, sorts.
A while back, one of the managers explained to me in engineering terms how it is useful to other people if I explain what's up, give them status information, warn them about possible deadline problems, and so on. And I spent some time reading about, and writing about, usability. Net result? I'm still weird, I still occasionally say things that are offensive -- but my coworkers appear to like me and I cooperate well with others.
So far as I can tell, the problem is often simply that no one has explained why this matters. Seriously, it's not always obvious. I have warned my coworkers that I have a clinical diagnosis of a mental disorder, and that if I say something offensive it's probably not intentionally-offensive, and they cut me a bit of slack -- but I do make an effort to avoid offending, because it's just common courtesy and all that.
Huh. I wonder what happened; we've been talking about them on PS3 sites for years.
Please name an emulator which works on the PS3 today and didn't in 2007.
"Explosion" implies that there are many such emulators, and that they all showed up recently. In fact, I don't know of any at all, and it's hardly an "explosion" for a Linux system to have access to a bunch of common Linux packages. What next? "Emulator explosion on the Eee" headlines because my specific Eee has access to more emulators than it did when I bought it?
I don't buy all this hate. I don't think Metallica's done much to stop new artists from entering the system.
I also wouldn't say the music is "ever-shittier". I didn't care for St. Anger, but I really, really, like Death Magnetic. One of my favorite metal albums.
Probably more a question of "since you're probably writing in PHP, here's some security stuff". PHP's not my favorite language for security-related things; it doesn't necessarily do much to encourage or help with sanity checks.
I don't think they'll bother.
Cell was designed when multicore was large and expensive, and GPUs weren't very good.
Now, Cell's going to always have higher development costs than conventional multicore chips, and not much payoff for developers.
Look at the difference between consumer-oriented video games and supercomputing. Supercomputing clusters can cost enough money that their power bill alone vastly exceeds the cost of all the software development ever done for them. Spending a bunch extra on development can pay off hugely if it reduces runtime -- so a hard-to-target architecture pays off.
Now look at video games. Development costs are huge and out of control, and you don't get paid by the polygon anyway, so extra work on performance doesn't necessarily pay off. A console which pushes fewer polygons but is cheaper to develop for makes you more money.
No change in design from the original "Dual Shock" (released as a PS1 accessory) and the "Dual Shock 3" used with the PS3.
Other consoles have improved noticably...
I don't see how the union weighs into that -- people who want to do a good job often do anyway.
Old and established unions, like any other established institution, eventually end up focused on their own continued existence. They will create conflict if needed to make themselves seem "relevant".
It ain't perfect, and it took a couple of tweaks to get it running the way I wanted it, but...
I have to say it's pretty good. Just Works, repos have plenty of usable software. I can browse the web, read PDFs, and (with only a bit of manual compiling to get current versions) have a full local Ruby on Rails install.
I am planning to stick with this for the forseeable future.