Nah, it has less to do with IT's hatred towards you and IT's love towards supporting old and/or crappy machines. and more with tight budgets and accounting suspiciously looking at IT's attempts to get rid of perfectly workable 15 year old P-III 800s.
Supporting crappy hardware is not sugar for IT staff as well, but someone up there said "We ain't got that kind of money, surely you can do cheaper" and now everyone's having a fun time.
IT won't have any money for upgrades unless your management, probably working together with IT management, shows higher-ups how much more money they'd be making for company with better machines.
Everyone doesn't need Flash, you do. I'm pretty sure IT will comply to reasonable request from section managers to install Flash on web dev's machine/marketing machines/that guy from procurement who needs that seller's shitty 90s website, but I'm pretty sure that it's unreasonable demand to have Flash everywhere.
That's why you replace incompetent helpdesk monkeys, who make troubleshooting costs rocket from 0.5 hr*((End User's Lost Productivity)+(Helpdesk Payrate)) to 8hr*(End User's Lost Productivity)+2hr*(Helpdesk Payrate)+1hr*(Sysadmin's Payrate)
Well, then you should be telling this to your boss, and he should be telling this to CTO and after he talks with others and if finances allow for this, it'll get back to tech support guys, who'll have to install and support this.
Oh, and speaking about finances - are you sure you're "bringing in $1k/hour"? All those dev guys from recently restructured companies were making hundreds dollars per hour as well, right up to the moment they got axed. Unless you're working on a next major release that will bring in new sales, you might be "being a cost center wasting $1k/hour to provide support and fix bugs", and if you're an in-house developer, you're pretty much "a cost center" anyways.
Err, no, if those toys help him make $2k/hour instead of $1k/hour, _then_ he may have them. On the other hand, if he's as productive as before, he's now effectively bringing in ($1k-running costs of new hard and soft)/hour.
Why, sure, take all these customer records and sync them to your Dropbox folder on your nephew's PC while you're visiting, we don't mind. That's what we in sales would call productivity.
Yes, because "you, developers" have no relation to IT whatsoever and your seniors conjured 32-core NUMA system out of thin air, but forgot to conjure a W7 disk to go with it, sure.
And no, I wasn't talking about developers with 32-core NUMA systems, and no again, 99% of developers don't have and don't need 32-core NUMA systems, and when they do, it WILL have appropriate software.
As you might have noticed, GP talks about desktop systems ("Windows XP" might have hinted you, if you weren't so blinded by rage) - when all desktops will be 32-core monsters, then we'll surely afford W7 from the change left from buying those machines.
Because really, for IDE, VCS and debug every developer needs a 32-core NUMA system.
Yes, and your company will appreciate the bills and the speeds when every computer goes to download security updates from MS servers and then whole net gets pwned in seconds by a new worm because 95% of users thought "Damn, it's downloading too slow, I'll cancel it and do that tomorrow".
And if you had IT staff, you'd have WSUS, automatic updates without any popping up warnings and adequately protected net.
"It works on my home PC, why wouldn't it work in 500 PC network?"
"I can handle my Ford, why couldn't I handle this Caterpillar?"
Let me rephrase it: "My communication skills are poor blah blah blah".
99% of support calls aren't your enemies, they're just tired and they need to finish this report and their boss is nagging and this damn thing is broken again and they want to cry but they can't because that'll ruin the make-up and customers won't appreciate that and and and T___T
A bit more empathy, and people will love you. They'll even most probably listen to you, after you've listened to what they have to say.
Support is at least half about working with people, if you find it hard - find a job where you'll be talking to irrational people less and to rational hardware more.
User asking for some random piece of software out of the blue is like:
- Hey, I found this nifty silicone pads, can you install them for me? I'm sure it'll help me rack in some sales. - No, that's a wonderfully bad idea. You'd better talk about it with your boss, if he agrees, our corporate plastic surgeon could do something for you. - They won't be of that attractive shape, and I need them yesterday and you, as a cost center, should just listen to me and do that!
I'm not sure are you deliberately obtuse or not, but you definitely missed all the points.
But I don't mind, let's go over them one by one.
First of all, "troubleshooting a computer" is to sysadmin is as "troubleshooting a common cold" is to surgeon. First is done by user or tech support, not a sysadmin, second is done by patient or general practitioner, not a surgeon.
"Surgeon" treating common colds is certainly paid not as much as surgeon removing appendices. "Sysadmin" troubleshooting computers is certainly paid not as much as sysadmin managing a corporate network. More than that, I'm pretty sure "managing corporate networks" pay is quite comparable to "removing appendices" pay.
Yeah, doing IT is much easier when "discuss plans for new hardware with CEO" translates to "Hey, Joe, Bob here wants this new doodad, we got any spare change?"
Not necessarily quite like this, but smaller companies tend to be more humane at all levels.
And the bigger it gets the more chances to get your head chopped off for being too helpful, either when you fuck up not seeing the bigger picture, or when you didn't fill in the requisition forms 7712-1, 4223-2 and 3141-5 to replace a broken mouse.
No offense, but I'm pretty sure more system administrators could learn how to troubleshoot a common cold than surgeons could learn to manage a Windows domain. And they get paid accordingly.
But when you're still providing us with Windows XP in 2011, you are doing it wrong.
Yeah, sure, because Windows 7 can do _so much more_ than Windows XP. Really, there are just a few new features that could enhance productivity for your average user, so yeah, it's totally worth it to throw away stable and tested system and drop $many bucks for an upgrade to all new and better Aero theme^W^WWindows 7.
I may not like that I can't just install Linux, but I understand why you can't let me! But in that case, you need at least to let me have Cygwin or something.
Why? Really. 99.9% of things you can do in Linux and you can do in Cygwin, but not on Windows are developing in languages that don't have a stable Windows implementation - in which case you're surely in a wrong place, because either they don't know what they're doing, making you develop on Windows when they really need Linux, or you don't know what you're doing, trying to drag a "new and cool language" where it's not needed.
Anyways, what you should do is come to your boss and/or the IT and tell them "I need to do X". They'll figure it out.
Except some of SNES games, for example, used different copy-protection schemes which had to be bypassed and reimplemented for emulation, google earthbound+drm or s-dd1+emulation for some insight.
Except we're not talking just about abstract code projects, we're talking about specific app. You can go grab the source code and see it in all its copy-pastish beauty.
It's hard to see it as something worth $50-100k of taxpayers money, when it's something a pair of students could slap together as a weekend project.
That part about "never written anything more complex than an Excel Macro" probably explains why programming is hard for you.
Any job is hard for unskilled person, but for anyone with programming experience looking at such contracts amount of kickbacks is pretty obvious.
The estimation of those $106467 as $467 for an undergrad to write the actual crapplication (did you even look at the app's description? That's something out of "hack together with some JS and PHP for my homepage after reading For Dummies book" category), $1000 for his manager, $5000 for manager's boss and $100000 to split between the guy who approved the contract and the guy promising the kickback looks pretty plausible.
This kind of government contract kickbacks are rather popular, as general public doesn't know shit about IT, except "It's hightech and buzzwordy, so must be real complicated and expensive" and actual project costs can be brought rather low with most limiting factor being cost of the hardware.
Do you know how to call the scripts you got to write for Flash? ECMA script. Wait... ECMA script, isn't this javascript?
Nope, not really. Modern Flash's ActionScript 3 is based on ECMAScript 4th edition, which was too radical and so got scraped (with parts salvaged for ECMAScript 5 - current iteration of Javascript in most browsers, and ES.Harmony, whih is a future planned standard). It differs from JS as it has static typing (which makes it _much_ easier to optimize) and class-based OOP (which makes it much easier for programmers unacustomed to prototype-based OOP)
All in all very nice language, and no, modern JS engines still aren't fast enough, though they're working on it.
Extensions to JS like typed arrays - which work like JS arrays, but are backed by primitive-typed native arrays, so they're quasi-statically-typed and in theory give quite a boost to number-crunching parts of algorithms - show that dynamic-typed languages aren't all that hot when they get to heavy interactive multimedia stuff.
Choking != freezing. Browser != Mozilla (with IE pre-9.0 still taking almost half of market, btw, good luck with SVG there). Me != GGP, so I can't provide you those, but it's easy to find SVGs in 1.5Mb size range, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Anime_Girl.svg for example.
After testing on that image, I see why you mentioned FF - it takes about 8-10 seconds to render in FF8 here, with Opera and Chrome and Opera Mobile on Android netbook doing it in 2-3 seconds, with loading time excluded. What's worse it hogs the CPU on each redraw of that tab - WTF, is caching not invented in Mozilla world?
Wouldn't help with "average webbrowser would grind to a halt" part, it'll still have to parse and render same number of svg nodes, with most time wasted by parsing.
Yeah, because software developers, unlike designers, think only about user's comfort and not, say, stuffing all hundred features on a single preferences page just to show them off and tick an item in their checklist.
I still rememeber how Windows taskbar buttons used to be shifted one pixel up from screen border so it was fucking frustrating when you couldn't just flick mouse down the screen when you needed to click something in the taskbar and had to adjust it upwards.
Usability should be left to someone who doesn't get sidetracked neither by "i gotta tweak this gradient first" nor "i'll just add this small feature and then i'll get started on screen layout"
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Nah, it has less to do with IT's hatred towards you and IT's love towards supporting old and/or crappy machines. and more with tight budgets and accounting suspiciously looking at IT's attempts to get rid of perfectly workable 15 year old P-III 800s.
Supporting crappy hardware is not sugar for IT staff as well, but someone up there said "We ain't got that kind of money, surely you can do cheaper" and now everyone's having a fun time.
IT won't have any money for upgrades unless your management, probably working together with IT management, shows higher-ups how much more money they'd be making for company with better machines.
Everyone doesn't need Flash, you do. I'm pretty sure IT will comply to reasonable request from section managers to install Flash on web dev's machine/marketing machines/that guy from procurement who needs that seller's shitty 90s website, but I'm pretty sure that it's unreasonable demand to have Flash everywhere.
That's why you replace incompetent helpdesk monkeys, who make troubleshooting costs rocket from 0.5 hr*((End User's Lost Productivity)+(Helpdesk Payrate)) to 8hr*(End User's Lost Productivity)+2hr*(Helpdesk Payrate)+1hr*(Sysadmin's Payrate)
And what if your job is compatibility testing; making sure something works across a "zoo" of different environments?
You say that like if this is not yet another target for automation.
All in all, you're just proving that it's not "every developer needs root on his machine", but "some developers need a test VM for their job"
Yes, and sysadmins don't troubleshoot computers, that's what help desk does. Exactly the point.
Well, then you should be telling this to your boss, and he should be telling this to CTO and after he talks with others and if finances allow for this, it'll get back to tech support guys, who'll have to install and support this.
Oh, and speaking about finances - are you sure you're "bringing in $1k/hour"? All those dev guys from recently restructured companies were making hundreds dollars per hour as well, right up to the moment they got axed. Unless you're working on a next major release that will bring in new sales, you might be "being a cost center wasting $1k/hour to provide support and fix bugs", and if you're an in-house developer, you're pretty much "a cost center" anyways.
Err, no, if those toys help him make $2k/hour instead of $1k/hour, _then_ he may have them. On the other hand, if he's as productive as before, he's now effectively bringing in ($1k-running costs of new hard and soft)/hour.
Why, sure, take all these customer records and sync them to your Dropbox folder on your nephew's PC while you're visiting, we don't mind. That's what we in sales would call productivity.
And you're an example "why IT hates us".
Yes, because "you, developers" have no relation to IT whatsoever and your seniors conjured 32-core NUMA system out of thin air, but forgot to conjure a W7 disk to go with it, sure.
And no, I wasn't talking about developers with 32-core NUMA systems, and no again, 99% of developers don't have and don't need 32-core NUMA systems, and when they do, it WILL have appropriate software.
As you might have noticed, GP talks about desktop systems ("Windows XP" might have hinted you, if you weren't so blinded by rage) - when all desktops will be 32-core monsters, then we'll surely afford W7 from the change left from buying those machines.
Because really, for IDE, VCS and debug every developer needs a 32-core NUMA system.
Yes, and your company will appreciate the bills and the speeds when every computer goes to download security updates from MS servers and then whole net gets pwned in seconds by a new worm because 95% of users thought "Damn, it's downloading too slow, I'll cancel it and do that tomorrow".
And if you had IT staff, you'd have WSUS, automatic updates without any popping up warnings and adequately protected net.
"It works on my home PC, why wouldn't it work in 500 PC network?"
"I can handle my Ford, why couldn't I handle this Caterpillar?"
Let me rephrase it: "My communication skills are poor blah blah blah".
99% of support calls aren't your enemies, they're just tired and they need to finish this report and their boss is nagging and this damn thing is broken again and they want to cry but they can't because that'll ruin the make-up and customers won't appreciate that and and and T___T
A bit more empathy, and people will love you. They'll even most probably listen to you, after you've listened to what they have to say.
Support is at least half about working with people, if you find it hard - find a job where you'll be talking to irrational people less and to rational hardware more.
Or let's expand on your medical analogy.
User asking for some random piece of software out of the blue is like:
- Hey, I found this nifty silicone pads, can you install them for me? I'm sure it'll help me rack in some sales.
- No, that's a wonderfully bad idea. You'd better talk about it with your boss, if he agrees, our corporate plastic surgeon could do something for you.
- They won't be of that attractive shape, and I need them yesterday and you, as a cost center, should just listen to me and do that!
I'm not sure are you deliberately obtuse or not, but you definitely missed all the points.
But I don't mind, let's go over them one by one.
First of all, "troubleshooting a computer" is to sysadmin is as "troubleshooting a common cold" is to surgeon. First is done by user or tech support, not a sysadmin, second is done by patient or general practitioner, not a surgeon.
"Surgeon" treating common colds is certainly paid not as much as surgeon removing appendices. "Sysadmin" troubleshooting computers is certainly paid not as much as sysadmin managing a corporate network. More than that, I'm pretty sure "managing corporate networks" pay is quite comparable to "removing appendices" pay.
Yeah, doing IT is much easier when "discuss plans for new hardware with CEO" translates to "Hey, Joe, Bob here wants this new doodad, we got any spare change?"
Not necessarily quite like this, but smaller companies tend to be more humane at all levels.
And the bigger it gets the more chances to get your head chopped off for being too helpful, either when you fuck up not seeing the bigger picture, or when you didn't fill in the requisition forms 7712-1, 4223-2 and 3141-5 to replace a broken mouse.
No offense, but I'm pretty sure more system administrators could learn how to troubleshoot a common cold than surgeons could learn to manage a Windows domain. And they get paid accordingly.
But when you're still providing us with Windows XP in 2011, you are doing it wrong.
Yeah, sure, because Windows 7 can do _so much more_ than Windows XP. Really, there are just a few new features that could enhance productivity for your average user, so yeah, it's totally worth it to throw away stable and tested system and drop $many bucks for an upgrade to all new and better Aero theme^W^WWindows 7.
I may not like that I can't just install Linux, but I understand why you can't let me! But in that case, you need at least to let me have Cygwin or something.
Why? Really. 99.9% of things you can do in Linux and you can do in Cygwin, but not on Windows are developing in languages that don't have a stable Windows implementation - in which case you're surely in a wrong place, because either they don't know what they're doing, making you develop on Windows when they really need Linux, or you don't know what you're doing, trying to drag a "new and cool language" where it's not needed.
Anyways, what you should do is come to your boss and/or the IT and tell them "I need to do X". They'll figure it out.
And no, "I need to install Cygwin" is not a reasonable first request.
20+ year old ROM dumps which didn't have DRM.
That's exactly the point.
Except some of SNES games, for example, used different copy-protection schemes which had to be bypassed and reimplemented for emulation, google earthbound+drm or s-dd1+emulation for some insight.
Moron.
Except we're not talking just about abstract code projects, we're talking about specific app. You can go grab the source code and see it in all its copy-pastish beauty.
It's hard to see it as something worth $50-100k of taxpayers money, when it's something a pair of students could slap together as a weekend project.
Boston. Autumn. Heat index 140 sounds about right, s-sure.
The "quality of the code" was one of the things that started it all. It couldn't even correctly report the temperature.
Anyways, here's the source code of the app in question disclosed per FoIA.
Didn't yet really look in it, but it's 2k SLoC of what seems to be moderately shitty Java for Android version, for example.
That part about "never written anything more complex than an Excel Macro" probably explains why programming is hard for you.
Any job is hard for unskilled person, but for anyone with programming experience looking at such contracts amount of kickbacks is pretty obvious.
The estimation of those $106467 as $467 for an undergrad to write the actual crapplication (did you even look at the app's description? That's something out of "hack together with some JS and PHP for my homepage after reading For Dummies book" category), $1000 for his manager, $5000 for manager's boss and $100000 to split between the guy who approved the contract and the guy promising the kickback looks pretty plausible.
This kind of government contract kickbacks are rather popular, as general public doesn't know shit about IT, except "It's hightech and buzzwordy, so must be real complicated and expensive" and actual project costs can be brought rather low with most limiting factor being cost of the hardware.
Do you know how to call the scripts you got to write for Flash? ECMA script. Wait ... ECMA script, isn't this javascript?
Nope, not really. Modern Flash's ActionScript 3 is based on ECMAScript 4th edition, which was too radical and so got scraped (with parts salvaged for ECMAScript 5 - current iteration of Javascript in most browsers, and ES.Harmony, whih is a future planned standard). It differs from JS as it has static typing (which makes it _much_ easier to optimize) and class-based OOP (which makes it much easier for programmers unacustomed to prototype-based OOP)
All in all very nice language, and no, modern JS engines still aren't fast enough, though they're working on it.
Extensions to JS like typed arrays - which work like JS arrays, but are backed by primitive-typed native arrays, so they're quasi-statically-typed and in theory give quite a boost to number-crunching parts of algorithms - show that dynamic-typed languages aren't all that hot when they get to heavy interactive multimedia stuff.
Choking != freezing. Browser != Mozilla (with IE pre-9.0 still taking almost half of market, btw, good luck with SVG there). Me != GGP, so I can't provide you those, but it's easy to find SVGs in 1.5Mb size range, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Anime_Girl.svg for example.
After testing on that image, I see why you mentioned FF - it takes about 8-10 seconds to render in FF8 here, with Opera and Chrome and Opera Mobile on Android netbook doing it in 2-3 seconds, with loading time excluded. What's worse it hogs the CPU on each redraw of that tab - WTF, is caching not invented in Mozilla world?
Wouldn't help with "average webbrowser would grind to a halt" part, it'll still have to parse and render same number of svg nodes, with most time wasted by parsing.
Yeah, because software developers, unlike designers, think only about user's comfort and not, say, stuffing all hundred features on a single preferences page just to show them off and tick an item in their checklist.
I still rememeber how Windows taskbar buttons used to be shifted one pixel up from screen border so it was fucking frustrating when you couldn't just flick mouse down the screen when you needed to click something in the taskbar and had to adjust it upwards.
Usability should be left to someone who doesn't get sidetracked neither by "i gotta tweak this gradient first" nor "i'll just add this small feature and then i'll get started on screen layout"