I think its more of a total pipeline issue. When you look at software development tools coming from a largely US based company (MS for example) you've got a defined pipeline for development process. You've got IDE project templates. You've got command line tools that you can batch process files on as part of your build process. It's just more integrated. Looking at the solutions that come from Sony or Nintendo (though Nintendo is way better at this than Sony) you tend to get a loose collection of tools that aren't really integrated. This means you have to create all of the glue in-between each layer. That takes time and engineering effort. Sometimes this means greater flexibility, but again, it's all about how much time do you want to spend for your flexibility?
Honestly, developers don't want to re-create the wheel each time for their build processes, but these kinds of things end up forcing that on them. The first chance they have to jettison it, they're going to.
I don't think he means that we don't know how it works (VB Voodoo).
I think he means that by the time a system is designed and "completed", we don't actually know how the whole system came about. Why we made the decisions we did. Why were the design decisions we made the ones we did? What did we try that didn't work? What API's did we have to work around to get the thing to work in the first place? Remember stepping through the debugger looking at the return values from that one library, that wasn't doing what you thought it would, but you figured out what it was handing you back? That's what he's getting at. Sure in a large project there isn't anyone that knows about how the whole darn things works, but that isn't the point.
This is honestly where I think good social science research can be of use to software developers. Or at least social scientists with a flare for the technical. My current research on video game development would certainly support what Stroustrup is saying here.
I thought Apple was evil and torpedoing the OSS efforts on OS X, because they don't want their Intel work to see the day of light, cause someone would hack OS and get it to run on home-brew hardware. Oh, or were people just being bitchy?
But, if an auther/producer established up front that there was going to be a real relationship and not a "do as your told" kind of thing going on...you might just be able to.
Right. And right now about the only people with "freedom isn't free" ribbon bumper stickers are people who support Bush. Those things piss me off royally, because this administration has done more to make me less free than any other, and it just keeps getting worse.
However that ~50.5% of the people who voted for Bush are going to read this and think, "oh, that liberal press," or "they'll (? who is they anyway ?) say anything to make little old Bush look bad," or "but he just seems no nice and down to earth." Really, we just don't want to hear anything that doesn't fit with our already held beliefs.
Yes, AT&T jerked my chain by changing my long-distance rates without notice. When I went through all of the "managers" at the customer service location, and they were still unwilling to fix things, I contacted the FCC. Two weeks later the problem was resolved.
I think the author of this article should have taken this into account when he said, "not many people watched it live." Many school kids were. Who cares if cable wasn't that big. While I respect that many people didn't see it live, a comment like that in a way de-values what many of us did see.
The official version of xCode 2.2 (which makes fat binaries) was released last week. And remember, it isn't supposed to matter if you don't have the fat binary.
When I got an old PowerBook, I tried Linux for a while. Sorry, but it isn't as slick as Mac OS X running on the same machine. I wanted to make the move...but after running Linux for six months, I tried out Tiger on the same machine. No going back.
Speaking of roadmaps and prepping...I'm wondering if the iBook might be the first Apple/Intel Mac. My thoughts are this. The current iBook is way overdue for a revision. MacWorld is coming up in July. A Centrino based iMac might just be the perfect ticket for showing how ready they were for a move...
Yeah, or how the structure of many organizations leaves you in a Dilbert like position, wondering where the hell you're going to be in 20 years, other than stuck under the same a**hole boss whose salary is probably 4-5 times yours.
Re:Looking at the distribution ...
on
Women Leaving I.T.
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
> Unless of course they are including people > who use computers to do their job rather > than technical IT positions?
Sorry, I know you probably didn't mean for this statement to be interpreted and picked on, but this kind of elitism is precisely part of the problem.
Now, I agree there are different degrees of knowledge and expertise amongst people working in IT, and calling yourself a programmer, because you can use formulas in Excel might tick off those of us with a lot more time and experience on the job. However, don't discount those other areas of expertise. Just because you don't consider a job to be 'worthy' of the title of IT, doesn't mean you're right.
Lets go back to my Excel example for a minute...
What if you've got a female administrative assistant who uses Access to keep track of materials, and has developed a front end for the database to track all of the data, and simplify entry. What if this same person makes word and excel templates that automate typical business processes, and standardises presentation formats. What if this woman has worked with a programmer in the office to cooperatively produce an application processing system.
Does she count as 'IT'? She's pretty technically savvy, but she's just an 'administrative assistant' to everyone on the programming staff minus the one guy she's worked with who probably appreciates her knowledge and expertise (including technical know-how).
Is she a 'programmer'? Probably not. Is she an IT worker? Hell ya.
Many social scientists have gone to jail to protect their sources. Interesting to me that the code of ethics that many of us (social scientists) subscribe to require us to protect our sources from harm. Of course hopefully we would have forseen the danger to our sources and not published it in the first place...
But, the implications for all sorts of research are a little freaky.
Instead of waiting it out I went back to school full-time. The pay sucks, but the community, work, and lifestyle makes up for it in spades.
No kids thankfully, but several people in the department here have had them along the way....Nothing like knowing a great deal about a very small piece of the world...:)
One wonders why someone that can't afford food would have spent money on a computer on which to play these games
Am I the only one that found this particular element of the comment particularly condesending?
Maybe they got a computer because someone out there realized that technological knowledge is important for under privelaged kids to have, and that gaining access to said technology would be beneficial?
Having seen this particular program at work in my community, I've been impressed. They have the kids learn how to build computers, install all the software, and learn how to use common applications. At the end of the summer, they get to take a computer home with them. Pretty sweet.
I'm also in the same graduate department as James, so this is a bit of a shameless plug. However, he's put a ton of time and effort into it, and it is pretty neat that they are providing resources to kids that need them.
Now, these probably aren't your Quake 3 running machines, but who cares.
The number of job postings on Dice.com that required some type of Linux expertise increased 190% over the past year to over 2,200 positions.
Not to pooh pooh this kind of increase, but it isn't as cool as jobs actually doing Linux development, or other OSS development. That would be even more exciting. Just because a job has need for Linux experience, doesn't mean that you'll actually have time to work on your favorite OSS project as part of your work. It may just mean that the company is using Linux to power some solution that you'll be working with.
On the other hand, I've seen data that does show that more developers are getting paid for OSS work. I would like to see a 190% jump there next year.
The wxWidget list serve has been hard hit, and I suspect the same is true for other listserves that also post to newsgroups or other generally accessible format (and don't diguise the email addresses).
Pretty nasty though so far, just a lot of garbage in the in-box. I suspect that anyone with an email address up on a web-site that recieves a reasonable amount of traffic (so probably ranked reasonably well by google) will also see some mail from this approach.
I've been using wxWidgets for quite a while. I must admit that it took a little getting used to, but I don't think the parent post does wx justice. Sure wx isn't as mature as Qt, but it is Open Source (which/. ers should like), it can be used in commercial apps (which people that like selling software should like), and the guys working on it put in a ton of time making a great library. The differences between wx 2.4.2 and 2.5.2 are quite impressive, and their current MacOS guy seems to be making an effort to bring wxMac along by leaps and bounds.
Resizing isn't as tough as you think, look into wxSizer objects. If you want a more robust basic tree control, take a look at wxTreeMultiCtrl, or sub-class wxTreeCtrl and make your own. It's the beauty of the system. I've used tree controls in several applications without such pains.
It's always a bit of a trip learning a new GUI toolkit, but the sheer volume of great tools included in wxWidgets overshadows any pitfalls found right now.
Slashdot Mirror
I think its more of a total pipeline issue. When you look at software development tools coming from a largely US based company (MS for example) you've got a defined pipeline for development process. You've got IDE project templates. You've got command line tools that you can batch process files on as part of your build process. It's just more integrated. Looking at the solutions that come from Sony or Nintendo (though Nintendo is way better at this than Sony) you tend to get a loose collection of tools that aren't really integrated. This means you have to create all of the glue in-between each layer. That takes time and engineering effort. Sometimes this means greater flexibility, but again, it's all about how much time do you want to spend for your flexibility?
Honestly, developers don't want to re-create the wheel each time for their build processes, but these kinds of things end up forcing that on them. The first chance they have to jettison it, they're going to.
I don't think he means that we don't know how it works (VB Voodoo).
I think he means that by the time a system is designed and "completed", we don't actually know how the whole system came about. Why we made the decisions we did. Why were the design decisions we made the ones we did? What did we try that didn't work? What API's did we have to work around to get the thing to work in the first place? Remember stepping through the debugger looking at the return values from that one library, that wasn't doing what you thought it would, but you figured out what it was handing you back? That's what he's getting at. Sure in a large project there isn't anyone that knows about how the whole darn things works, but that isn't the point.
This is honestly where I think good social science research can be of use to software developers. Or at least social scientists with a flare for the technical. My current research on video game development would certainly support what Stroustrup is saying here.
Yes, it's called a loss-leader. And I don't think it's going to pay dividends.
Maybe they should listen to developers AHEAD of time next time. Instead of forging ahead blindly based upon their own hubris.
I just use Backup for OS X. I guess it requires a .Mac account and a place to put the files. Has made backing up painless for me.
I thought Apple was evil and torpedoing the OSS efforts on OS X, because they don't want their Intel work to see the day of light, cause someone would hack OS and get it to run on home-brew hardware. Oh, or were people just being bitchy?
But, if an auther/producer established up front that there was going to be a real relationship and not a "do as your told" kind of thing going on...you might just be able to.
People are already using a CPU that's being released at the end of August?
Right. And right now about the only people with "freedom isn't free" ribbon bumper stickers are people who support Bush. Those things piss me off royally, because this administration has done more to make me less free than any other, and it just keeps getting worse.
However that ~50.5% of the people who voted for Bush are going to read this and think, "oh, that liberal press," or "they'll (? who is they anyway ?) say anything to make little old Bush look bad," or "but he just seems no nice and down to earth." Really, we just don't want to hear anything that doesn't fit with our already held beliefs.
Yes, AT&T jerked my chain by changing my long-distance rates without notice. When I went through all of the "managers" at the customer service location, and they were still unwilling to fix things, I contacted the FCC. Two weeks later the problem was resolved.
There must be a simple answer out there.
Readers
I think the author of this article should have taken this into account when he said, "not many people watched it live." Many school kids were. Who cares if cable wasn't that big. While I respect that many people didn't see it live, a comment like that in a way de-values what many of us did see.
I will be adding some extra security to the system. But the average user cannot do what I will be doing.
Why don't you enlighten us oh gifted one?
The official version of xCode 2.2 (which makes fat binaries) was released last week. And remember, it isn't supposed to matter if you don't have the fat binary.
When I got an old PowerBook, I tried Linux for a while. Sorry, but it isn't as slick as Mac OS X running on the same machine. I wanted to make the move...but after running Linux for six months, I tried out Tiger on the same machine. No going back.
Speaking of roadmaps and prepping...I'm wondering if the iBook might be the first Apple/Intel Mac. My thoughts are this. The current iBook is way overdue for a revision. MacWorld is coming up in July. A Centrino based iMac might just be the perfect ticket for showing how ready they were for a move...
Just a thought I had.
You're post was right on...Minus:
> "forced" to turn to third-world dirt-hut coders
Yeah, or how the structure of many organizations leaves you in a Dilbert like position, wondering where the hell you're going to be in 20 years, other than stuck under the same a**hole boss whose salary is probably 4-5 times yours.
> Unless of course they are including people
> who use computers to do their job rather
> than technical IT positions?
Sorry, I know you probably didn't mean for this statement to be interpreted and picked on, but this kind of elitism is precisely part of the problem.
Now, I agree there are different degrees of knowledge and expertise amongst people working in IT, and calling yourself a programmer, because you can use formulas in Excel might tick off those of us with a lot more time and experience on the job. However, don't discount those other areas of expertise. Just because you don't consider a job to be 'worthy' of the title of IT, doesn't mean you're right.
Lets go back to my Excel example for a minute...
What if you've got a female administrative assistant who uses Access to keep track of materials, and has developed a front end for the database to track all of the data, and simplify entry. What if this same person makes word and excel templates that automate typical business processes, and standardises presentation formats. What if this woman has worked with a programmer in the office to cooperatively produce an application processing system.
Does she count as 'IT'? She's pretty technically savvy, but she's just an 'administrative assistant' to everyone on the programming staff minus the one guy she's worked with who probably appreciates her knowledge and expertise (including technical know-how).
Is she a 'programmer'? Probably not. Is she an IT worker? Hell ya.
Many social scientists have gone to jail to protect their sources. Interesting to me that the code of ethics that many of us (social scientists) subscribe to require us to protect our sources from harm. Of course hopefully we would have forseen the danger to our sources and not published it in the first place...
But, the implications for all sorts of research are a little freaky.
I feel your pain.
...Nothing like knowing a great deal about a very small piece of the world... :)
Instead of waiting it out I went back to school full-time. The pay sucks, but the community, work, and lifestyle makes up for it in spades.
No kids thankfully, but several people in the department here have had them along the way.
One wonders why someone that can't afford food would have spent money on a computer on which to play these games
Am I the only one that found this particular element of the comment particularly condesending?
Maybe they got a computer because someone out there realized that technological knowledge is important for under privelaged kids to have, and that gaining access to said technology would be beneficial?
Having seen this particular program at work in my community, I've been impressed. They have the kids learn how to build computers, install all the software, and learn how to use common applications. At the end of the summer, they get to take a computer home with them. Pretty sweet.
I'm also in the same graduate department as James, so this is a bit of a shameless plug. However, he's put a ton of time and effort into it, and it is pretty neat that they are providing resources to kids that need them.
Now, these probably aren't your Quake 3 running machines, but who cares.
Just one possible solution...
The number of job postings on Dice.com that required some type of Linux expertise increased 190% over the past year to over 2,200 positions.
Not to pooh pooh this kind of increase, but it isn't as cool as jobs actually doing Linux development, or other OSS development. That would be even more exciting. Just because a job has need for Linux experience, doesn't mean that you'll actually have time to work on your favorite OSS project as part of your work. It may just mean that the company is using Linux to power some solution that you'll be working with.
On the other hand, I've seen data that does show that more developers are getting paid for OSS work. I would like to see a 190% jump there next year.
CKO
The wxWidget list serve has been hard hit, and I suspect the same is true for other listserves that also post to newsgroups or other generally accessible format (and don't diguise the email addresses).
Pretty nasty though so far, just a lot of garbage in the in-box. I suspect that anyone with an email address up on a web-site that recieves a reasonable amount of traffic (so probably ranked reasonably well by google) will also see some mail from this approach.
I've been using wxWidgets for quite a while. I must admit that it took a little getting used to, but I don't think the parent post does wx justice. Sure wx isn't as mature as Qt, but it is Open Source (which /. ers should like), it can be used in commercial apps (which people that like selling software should like), and the guys working on it put in a ton of time making a great library. The differences between wx 2.4.2 and 2.5.2 are quite impressive, and their current MacOS guy seems to be making an effort to bring wxMac along by leaps and bounds.
Resizing isn't as tough as you think, look into wxSizer objects. If you want a more robust basic tree control, take a look at wxTreeMultiCtrl, or sub-class wxTreeCtrl and make your own. It's the beauty of the system. I've used tree controls in several applications without such pains.
It's always a bit of a trip learning a new GUI toolkit, but the sheer volume of great tools included in wxWidgets overshadows any pitfalls found right now.
Just MHO.