While your course is better than nothing, the difference between what they teach you and what happens in industry (and, indeed, what *should* happen in industry) is very large.
One of the main differences is size. The *biggest* program I looked at/developed at uni was around 10000 lines. The *smallest* I've worked on since has been over 50000. Hell, I write 30000 lines of PL/SQL in the first few months of last year!
My 'credentials': I read CS at Durham just over four years ago (we had a similar course) and am now a software engineer (/developer/programmer/whatever).
> The problems with software engineering are fundamentally a management problem
Just as management have a responsibility to define the requirements as clearly as they can and define reasonable dead-lines, you have a responsibility to tell them when what they demand is impossible.
If they want to throw more people onto a late project, don't just tell them it won't work. Tell them *why*, quote Fred Brookes, *reason* with them.
> Gantt charts and org charts are something that programmers should never see
Disagree. To do a good job, you need to know where your piece of the machine fits in, what it affects if you deliver late (if you have to make a compromise, is it better to devliver late or slightly incomplete?).
If you want to stick your head in the sand about management issues, that's fine too. But there's still a lot you can do. I'm sure you've seen the figures about the difference between the most and least productive developers. It's not magic, you can *learn* many of the techniques that the most effective developers use.
Read the books your manager doesn't and educate them! Not all companies are that bad. I work for a FTSE100 company and only have a small number of management horror stories.
Yeah, this series has been much better now that all the robots are battering each other right from the first round.
I like it when hugely expensive robots get beaten by something much cheaper too. It's interetsing to note the patterns: the simple 'flip' machines always seem to do better than the ones that go out to destroy everything. Less entertaining but more successful.
But my highlight of the series is Philippa Forrester making suggestive comments about "his chopper." The poor chap was so focussed on his robot that he failed to notice.
I think a reasonable summary of my previous post would be "Now no matter how smart your people are, there is an upper limit on how complex a system they can comprehend."
This means that on a small project with many technologies it has lots of points to recommend it. The peer review is good; the release early/often is good. With lots of technologies, integration is a major effort, so getting it working early and keeping it working is a good way to keep costs down.
The project I was working on had more than forty people at its peak, and the specialisms (?) required in each technology were such that most people would have difficulty keeping track of more than a couple.
While I can see it working well in a number of circumstances, most of the projects that I've worked on it wouldn't work very well.
Project type 1 where is wouldn't work is any large project, say over fifteen developers (plus management). Any system that big and complex will not be understandable by everyone. Cross-fertilisation is a nice idea, but when things get too complex you need an expert or a keeper.
I guess you could have several experts, but you come up against the cost aspects very quickly.
Project type 2 are those with varying technologies. One I worked on recently used Oracle, Unix, NT, LotusScript (Domino), NotesPump, VBScript, JScript and HTML. I would argue that you can't be an expert in all of them. I do Oracle and Unix and have an appreciation of the others, but I couldn't really add much when I reviewed the work in other teams.
Again you could switch around each team once in a while, but any good team-leader would do that if they could anyway.
And that's before you even get into the 'egoless' bits, and the fact that management like people to be responsible. How can you have a scape-goat if it's everyones fault?!
Anyway, that's enough. Nice idea, but it wouldn't work in real life.
I tend to boycot the 1-click feature. Not because of any patent issues, but because it's dangerous. I'd buy *way* too many books if it was left switched on.
I think it's important that there's a response to the issue. Jon's article may be a 'worst case' but it's not unreasonable.
My take on this is that it's a bad thing, but if we have to do it (calming the nerves of worried parents is a perfectly valid reason) then its better than many of the alternatives. I'd rather have a computer doing the initial finger pointing. A machine doesn't discriminate on anything other than what it 'sees.' People are far less objective.
... unfortunately Linux doesn't support raw devices without a patch. Since it's not a standard part of Linux, Oracle -- which also supports raw partitions -- won't support it.
It does work, though, although the performance gain isn't huge.
If you're putting 40Gb of data on a machine, you're going to have to do some tuning, or at least vaguely know what you're doing, no matter which database you use.
I've played about with Postgres and, while it's more 'professional' than MySQL, I still wouldn't like to bet a large amount of data and my company on it. I'd be quite happy putting that volume of data on Oracle, though.
Suspect an Intel-based PC, even a big server, is going to have a bit of difficulty with that much data. Have you thought of getting a Sun or an Alpha?
The only time I ever post seems to be to point to what other people have said about the subject...
This time its a Bruce Sterling book called 'The Hacker Crackdown.' As I remember (it's some time ago since I read it), it goes into some detail on the Mitnick case and lots of others. Definately worth reading -- I rate Sterling more as a journalist than a writer!
I think he published it on the web, too. Anyone have a URL?
I think we should expect Linux to be slower than NT on 'enterprise-class' machines like that.
Linux was (and is being) developed to scratch an itch, and run on the hardware available. Therefore Linux should run best on *personal* computers, as that's what normal people have.
MS, on the other hand, can buy (or be given by Compaq / IBM / whatever) quad processor PIII's.
Anyway, serving static pages proves nothing. How many intranet pages are static? Almost none I suspect.
One solution that I quite liked was suggested by Esther Dyson in Release 2.1 (although I'm sure it's been suggested by someone before that). She said that if you charged people for sending you email then spamming would either stop or at least become more targetted.
Of course, there is currently no method of doing this (I doubt sending the spammer and invoice for your lost time would work:), but it's an interesting thought.
I'm certainly tempted to read it, but I'll probably wait for the paperback!
Definately worth reading if you like internet politics-type stuff is his daughters (Esther Dyson) book, Release 2.1. More near-term future than 'The Sun, Genome and Internet,' but interesting.
As that Neal Stephenson essay pointed out, Microsoft are not there to serve customers. Bill Gates job is to please the share-holders.
If they don't manage to sell *something* new this year -- since we all know that Win2K is going to be delayed -- there's going to be a lot of annoyed share-holders.
I think that's very unfair to Gates. (No, I don't work for MS and no, I don't worship the ground he walks on.)
Most people, and almost all businesses, in the mid-seventies thought that microcomputers were toys, a complete waste of space. But Gates made the company motto 'A PC on every desk and every home all running MS software' (I paraphrase). It seems obvious now, but it wasn't then.
Secondly, whether or not the hackers were improving the software, they *were* in breach of the licence agreement. If they didn't agree with those conditions they should not have used the software.
Gates *has* been very lucky, but I don't think MS would be as successful as they are if that was his only skill.
As has already been established, one skill he *doesn't* have is writing. Read 'Being Digital' or 'Release 2.1' instead. They're definately worth looking at.
Who knew it was so easy to be a journalist?
on
Linux on CNN
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps they *prefer* writing English to C? Money isn't everything!
Steve (who writes reviews of Linux applications for his web site, despite being perfectly capable of writing code)
What's been added to WindowMaker since 0.20.0? I reviewed that version on my Linux application review site (URL above) about six months ago and couldn't find any significant holes in its functionality then!
(I wasn't so impressed with BlackBox, but I reviewed that, too.)
Slashdot Mirror
While your course is better than nothing, the difference between what they teach you and what happens in industry (and, indeed, what *should* happen in industry) is very large.
One of the main differences is size. The *biggest* program I looked at/developed at uni was around 10000 lines. The *smallest* I've worked on since has been over 50000. Hell, I write 30000 lines of PL/SQL in the first few months of last year!
My 'credentials': I read CS at Durham just over four years ago (we had a similar course) and am now a software engineer (/developer/programmer/whatever).
> The problems with software engineering are fundamentally a management problem
Just as management have a responsibility to define the requirements as clearly as they can and define reasonable dead-lines, you have a responsibility to tell them when what they demand is impossible.
If they want to throw more people onto a late project, don't just tell them it won't work. Tell them *why*, quote Fred Brookes, *reason* with them.
> Gantt charts and org charts are something that programmers should never see
Disagree. To do a good job, you need to know where your piece of the machine fits in, what it affects if you deliver late (if you have to make a compromise, is it better to devliver late or slightly incomplete?).
If you want to stick your head in the sand about management issues, that's fine too. But there's still a lot you can do. I'm sure you've seen the figures about the difference between the most and least productive developers. It's not magic, you can *learn* many of the techniques that the most effective developers use.
Read the books your manager doesn't and educate them! Not all companies are that bad. I work for a FTSE100 company and only have a small number of management horror stories.
Yeah, this series has been much better now that all the robots are battering each other right from the first round.
I like it when hugely expensive robots get beaten by something much cheaper too. It's interetsing to note the patterns: the simple 'flip' machines always seem to do better than the ones that go out to destroy everything. Less entertaining but more successful.
But my highlight of the series is Philippa Forrester making suggestive comments about "his chopper." The poor chap was so focussed on his robot that he failed to notice.
I think a reasonable summary of my previous post would be "Now no matter how smart your people are, there is an upper limit on how complex a system they can comprehend."
This means that on a small project with many technologies it has lots of points to recommend it. The peer review is good; the release early/often is good. With lots of technologies, integration is a major effort, so getting it working early and keeping it working is a good way to keep costs down.
The project I was working on had more than forty people at its peak, and the specialisms (?) required in each technology were such that most people would have difficulty keeping track of more than a couple.
Yes, it can work. No, it's not useless.
But, to shamelessly steal, it's no silver bullet.
While I can see it working well in a number of circumstances, most of the projects that I've worked on it wouldn't work very well.
Project type 1 where is wouldn't work is any large project, say over fifteen developers (plus management). Any system that big and complex will not be understandable by everyone. Cross-fertilisation is a nice idea, but when things get too complex you need an expert or a keeper.
I guess you could have several experts, but you come up against the cost aspects very quickly.
Project type 2 are those with varying technologies. One I worked on recently used Oracle, Unix, NT, LotusScript (Domino), NotesPump, VBScript, JScript and HTML. I would argue that you can't be an expert in all of them. I do Oracle and Unix and have an appreciation of the others, but I couldn't really add much when I reviewed the work in other teams.
Again you could switch around each team once in a while, but any good team-leader would do that if they could anyway.
And that's before you even get into the 'egoless' bits, and the fact that management like people to be responsible. How can you have a scape-goat if it's everyones fault?!
Anyway, that's enough. Nice idea, but it wouldn't work in real life.
I tend to boycot the 1-click feature. Not because of any patent issues, but because it's dangerous. I'd buy *way* too many books if it was left switched on.
Second note to tourists: don't rely on the taxis. There are about two of them and they never turn up when you want.
Last time I was there I spent an hour in the univerity car park waiting for a taxi, getting very cold.
Sorry, I'm just bitter.
I think it's important that there's a response to the issue. Jon's article may be a 'worst case' but it's not unreasonable.
My take on this is that it's a bad thing, but if we have to do it (calming the nerves of worried parents is a perfectly valid reason) then its better than many of the alternatives. I'd rather have a computer doing the initial finger pointing. A machine doesn't discriminate on anything other than what it 'sees.' People are far less objective.
... unfortunately Linux doesn't support raw devices without a patch. Since it's not a standard part of Linux, Oracle -- which also supports raw partitions -- won't support it.
It does work, though, although the performance gain isn't huge.
If you're putting 40Gb of data on a machine, you're going to have to do some tuning, or at least vaguely know what you're doing, no matter which database you use.
I've played about with Postgres and, while it's more 'professional' than MySQL, I still wouldn't like to bet a large amount of data and my company on it. I'd be quite happy putting that volume of data on Oracle, though.
Suspect an Intel-based PC, even a big server, is going to have a bit of difficulty with that much data. Have you thought of getting a Sun or an Alpha?
The only time I ever post seems to be to point to what other people have said about the subject...
This time its a Bruce Sterling book called 'The Hacker Crackdown.' As I remember (it's some time ago since I read it), it goes into some detail on the Mitnick case and lots of others. Definately worth reading -- I rate Sterling more as a journalist than a writer!
I think he published it on the web, too. Anyone have a URL?
I think we should expect Linux to be slower than NT on 'enterprise-class' machines like that.
Linux was (and is being) developed to scratch an itch, and run on the hardware available. Therefore Linux should run best on *personal* computers, as that's what normal people have.
MS, on the other hand, can buy (or be given by Compaq / IBM / whatever) quad processor PIII's.
Anyway, serving static pages proves nothing. How many intranet pages are static? Almost none I suspect.
One solution that I quite liked was suggested by Esther Dyson in Release 2.1 (although I'm sure it's been suggested by someone before that). She said that if you charged people for sending you email then spamming would either stop or at least become more targetted.
:), but it's an interesting thought.
Of course, there is currently no method of doing this (I doubt sending the spammer and invoice for your lost time would work
I'm certainly tempted to read it, but I'll probably wait for the paperback!
Definately worth reading if you like internet politics-type stuff is his daughters (Esther Dyson) book, Release 2.1. More near-term future than 'The Sun, Genome and Internet,' but interesting.
As that Neal Stephenson essay pointed out, Microsoft are not there to serve customers. Bill Gates job is to please the share-holders.
If they don't manage to sell *something* new this year -- since we all know that Win2K is going to be delayed -- there's going to be a lot of annoyed share-holders.
I think that's very unfair to Gates. (No, I don't work for MS and no, I don't worship the ground he walks on.)
Most people, and almost all businesses, in the mid-seventies thought that microcomputers were toys, a complete waste of space. But Gates made the company motto 'A PC on every desk and every home all running MS software' (I paraphrase). It seems obvious now, but it wasn't then.
Secondly, whether or not the hackers were improving the software, they *were* in breach of the licence agreement. If they didn't agree with those conditions they should not have used the software.
Gates *has* been very lucky, but I don't think MS would be as successful as they are if that was his only skill.
As has already been established, one skill he *doesn't* have is writing. Read 'Being Digital' or 'Release 2.1' instead. They're definately worth looking at.
Perhaps they *prefer* writing English to C? Money isn't everything!
Steve (who writes reviews of Linux applications for his web site, despite being perfectly capable of writing code)
What's been added to WindowMaker since 0.20.0? I reviewed that version on my Linux application review site (URL above) about six months ago and couldn't find any significant holes in its functionality then!
(I wasn't so impressed with BlackBox, but I reviewed that, too.)