Have the possibilities of an early European people moving east and then over Bering been ruled out? After all, Caucasians have been found everywhere from western Europe, to southern India, and Xinjiang.
It is a possibility, but it is one best confirmed with an archeological/anthropological find, not one via haplotypes. The reason for this, and using haplotype X as an example, is as follows (a pausible theory):
Some population X (called so because they carry haplotype X) at some point migrated somewhere in Asia, and from there split into several groups, of which two survived long enough for their genetic contribution to persist to the present day. One moved Westward and contributed their version of haplotype X into what would constitute the "European" gene pool. The other moved Eastward and contributed their own version of haplotype X into "some" of the Siberian immigrants that would survive and become "some" of the Paleo-Indians.
Other splinter and distinct populations from the original population X might have existed across Eurasia and the Americas, with their generic contribution nixed off the generic pool.
For all we know, haplotype X could have originated from, say, a splinter group of Australoids that went North, separated from the rest who were on their way to South Asia and eventually Australia. And the splinter group developed haplotype X (or haplotype X became extinct among the other Australoids.) The splinter group then became intermixed with some of the Eurasian population that would give birth to the the so-called "Caucasian" and "Mongoloid" populations. I'm pulling this out of my ass, but this would also be possible.
Heck, what if haplotype X is of Neanderthal or Denisovan stock. The former is almost certain to have intermixed with early Eurasians (before the Caucasian-Mongoloid split), or at least with the European/Middle Eastern precursors. The later is known (via DNA analysis) to have left a genetic heritage among the Melanesian people.
Or what if haplotype X were to come from a yet undiscovered hominid (neither Neanderthal or Denisovan)?
So the point of all this speculative soup is that we cannot ascertain a Caucasoid/European origin to haplotype X just by looking at the haplotype alone. You will need:
some archaeological evidence (artifacts known to be, or being closely related to an "European" origin far east in Siberia or the Americas dating on or prior the peopling of the Americas, or
some anthropological evidence, a fossil that is clearly of a "European" stock and with DNA evidence suggesting it being closer to the root of haplotype X (or the fossil being old enough to assume primogeniture... for lack of a better word.)
I for one find the Solutrean hypothesis of Ice Age people migrating from Europe into Eastern North America (by walking/kayaking their way along the North Atlantic Ice Sheet) very tantalizing. Hey, it could be feasible (if people were able to boat their way to Australia 50-60K years ago, why not this?) But it is one that needs archaeological evidence.
Perhaps he meant "actually has the safety that C++ pretends to have".
Indeed. I would go even further than that. C++ does not pretend to be inherently safer than C (sans a few things, like requiring prototypes.) All C++ aims to is to facilitate the building higher abstractions on a OO paradigm using a systems-level language with C compatibility in mind. If people choose C++ for safety, they are out of their minds. If safety is a primary concern, tThere are better languages (Ada or Java) that have some formalized notion of safety as one of the driving forces behind their design.
Doesn't sound like you know what OOD is. That method qualifies, and you also get inheritance and polymorphism. Perhaps you shouldn't be so smug next time?
It's not being smug when it's about pointing the folly of reinventing the wheel, poorly, out of a square block and claim that it is a wheel. You guys are the MadTV Stuarts of software development (ma, look what I can do.... with structs and pointers to callback functions.)
One could say that programming in assembly using nothing but unconditional jumps and cond jumps is just the same as structured programming because, after all, structured programming will get translated to its assembly/machine language jump-based equivalent.
Or functional programming is nothing but pointers to functions...
For that matter one could have an array of locations one can jump to in assembler and call it OO (not OOD or OOP as those are somewhat different animals stemming from OO). You can simulate inheritance, and you can simulate polymorphism... with a lot of elbow grease.
Now, I'm going to slow it down for you one more time. Here is the operative expression.... a lot of elbow grease
In the GPP's example, you have to extensively rely on programming by convention to make sure
- you call the right callback (or method if you so wish to call it)
- you obtain and truly enforce encapsulation (given that everything in in a C struct is "public")
-- you could use a pimpl-like idiom via an opaque pointer to alleviate reliance on programming by convention (and to achieve something of a "limited private" type as in Ada.) However, now you have to rely on dynamic memory allocation (which is not suitable in all contexts, and not justifiable when allocation is best done on the stack.)
- you do not have implicit self-recursion. You have to pass the this/self pointer explicitly, again by convention to make sure the pointer is addressing the right data of the right type. You have to manually create the dispatching yourself, or put a lot of elbow grease to create a dispatching mechanism via macros and other functions... and programming by convention.
- your inheritance three is constructed also by convention (via a "super" pointer or nested struct being part of the structure). You have to ensure everything is aligned (as opposed to leaving the compiler to decide how it will align it.)
- the polymorphic behavior you get is limited to method overriding (you can't have true method overloading capabilities).
since this is a fundamental part of message passing (which is the true core of object orientation), your options for creating rich models is severely impaired.
- there is no transparent run-time dispatching. Under this scheme, imagine a struct B inheriting-by-convention from struct A (via a "super" pointer or nested struct). And the super-type struct A has a method of interest to client code using B (say pointer to func "foo".) To call "foo" on struct B (to send a message "foo" to an instance of B), you cannot simply say B.foo(...). You have to say B.super.foo(...).
-- so now you have severely coupled, in an extremely explicit way, the target of message foo to only those supertypes in the inheritance tree that actually have an implementation for it. The dispatching is no longer transparent, with potential maintenance issues.
--- you better get that shit right boy, otherwise you'll be in a lot of pain down the road. This is true in every programming scheme, but it is more so in this context.
The last part is the most important one. Message is the meat of OO. Everything else is just gravy. And the transparent message dispatching mechanism that makes OO economical is being thrown out of the window (along a lot of other things) with the GPP's supposedly good example.
Now, there are situations where this approach is useful (I've used it myself for building plugga
And, for a view somewhat less harsh about C++, but still not a case of "C++ roolz, C droolz!", see The Old Man and the C, the abstract of which says
"You can't teach an old dog new tricks" goes the old proverb. This is a story about a pack of old dogs (C programmers) and their odyssey of trying to learn new tricks (C++ programming).
It is a good story and a good experience, but I certainly and strongly disagree with the following:
We never gave consts much thought. Looking back
we do not recall any situations in which consts would
have saved us. Still, they seem like a reasonable
feature, especially in interfaces to class libraries. If an
interface rigorously uses consts in its declarations,
then users can know which parameters may be
modified by which routines. This looks like another
feature which is more valuable when producing a
public API.
There is a reason why modern languages typically default-qualify parameters and attributes as const (and/or const ref). Having everything const by default makes life a shitload easier for software of any size.
The GP wasn't advocating deregulation, but rather that the government stop changing the rules.
Rules sometimes changes for a reason. Think SOX compliance regulations for example. As imperfect these regulations might be, the rules that preceded them, though in place, were not sufficient to prevent some major shenanigans which SOX tries to prevent (however, imperfectly the try-out might be.)
Go further back in time and remember Standard Oil. Rules had to change to cope with it.
Rules are not panacea fixed in the sky around which the clouds of business arrange themselves in cooperative harmony. And an economy, however free it might be, it should operate within the context of national interest.
The day you can iron-out rules that can remain unchanged forever while being capable of handling every economic evolutionary twist (and/or new organized fraud/criminal schemes), then your argument will be a good one.
To play devil's advocate, what reason do they have to deny it if they did it?
They have reason to deny it because it makes them look like backwards savages to the rest of the world
The Taliban has never cared to be seen as backward savages by, in their own view, immoral infidels. These are the people who blew the Bamiyan's Bhuddas to pieces, who whipped women to shreds, who planned to give yellow armbands to the local Hindus for ease of identification, and were quite ok with committing acts of genocide against the Hazaras. They are too fucking illiterate to even realize the type of bestial savagery they represent.
Any concessions they give now is because they have been under the gun for quite sometime. Otherwise, rest assure they'd back to their shit-on-the-ground, bestial shenanigans.
There is a protectionist culture in the northeast and far west, but no such shared culture in the Deep South or midwest,
Who's homogenizing now?
His generalization does have a certain ring of truth, but pointed inaccuratedly. I'd argue that, from what I've witnessed, American suburbanites tend to have too much of a protectionist culture (which is made up for their concentration in civics and scholastic achievements.) OTH, in rural areas, kids do get their hands dirty and participate in all types of physical activities. But the variety of visual/cultural stimulus is somewhat limited (more to geographical isolations and demographics than actual cultural faults.)
One can argue that I'm homogenizing as well, but many would objectively agree that this generalization is sufficiently accurate.
The one thing that always shocks me is how kids are never taught to use a knife - first rule I learned was to always cut away, and when putting knives away, to always leave the pointing ends down (never up or in a direction where someone might fall into them by accident). I've consistently seen people of all walks of life putting knifes with the pointy ends up in the drainer, and I've always thought to myself "wtf?"
In my country, we all carried pocket knives from an early age. We used them as pencil sharpeners and for carving stuff out of wood during playtime. And no, I never saw any stabbings (lots of fist fighting as anyone would expect from kids, but no stabbings.)
I believe this country has a plethora of opportunities for those determined to break a sweat for them. But some really basic life stuff when it comes to experience the world (the good and the bad) is severely missing. And that's a shame.
For noobs, those pocket references are more like throwing a pile of parts on the ground and telling the guy one by one exactly what each part is and each part does.
OK, now build a helicopter.
The noobs of old were able to start up with those spartanly small books. Did the noobs of today became dumber? No, not really. But what has happened is that we have lowered the expectations on what people need to do to become proficient. Part of learning programming was in the struggle of deciphering material and making this work. That on itself is a critical part in developing the critical analytical/thinkering process required for successful application of programming (let alone software development/engineering). If you wanted, you had to work for it (and that was the best programming/hacking lesson of them all.)
Now, noobs (and even graduates working in the wild) expect to be spoon-fed an answer whenever they post "how do open file? please send me codes." Worse still, ask any random noob to debug a program on paper, and they'll go "wut?". Not that I'm elite or anything (far from it), but it was common in my time (not long ago) for students to debug or trace the state changes of (sometimes pretty large) programs on paper. That was one hell of a way to replace the "magic happens here" with concrete cause/effect examples on how instructions change state. You rarely see that anymore (unless you are very lucky to have a good professor or you are in a pretty damn good CS school.)
Just as not everybody is naturally gifted or apt of fine arts (God knows if I try to draw a chicken, I end up with a pig/octopus hybrid), not everyone is naturally gifted/apt for software development.
People have talents in different areas, partly due to personality differences, and partly on their educational upbringing. By lowering the expections on what it takes for learning programming, we don't anyone a service. Are we going to do the same with Mathematics, with Fine Arts?
Books that try too hard to look approachable by being cute, informal, with pictures of dudes looking at you from the cover page with crooked necks won't make up for people's strengths or weaknesses.
That's just the thing: In the US at least, they typically don't.
Yes they do. For comparison, go work south of the border. I know, I was born there, and I know what it is to work as a cargo mule for rich patrons. People who complain the US labor laws are not sufficient need to take a trip to a less developed world for a reality check. Granted that there are other countries with somewhat better laws, but to use that and say our labor laws are not effective, that's just being deliberately obstuse.
Detrimental, degenerating, cartel of nepotism. That's just what unions are like in Brazil
I think his point was that in Brazil, employee legal protections may be so few that having a union and the associated waste, overhead, and corruption is the lesser of two evils.
Pretty much that's my point (and I know from first-hand experience because... tada, I was born south of the border). Sadly, the point is typically lost in the degenerate quest for emotional rhetoric that is so common among slashdot posters. Kinda makes me wonder wtf is in there to even try. It's like trying to teach chess to a pineapple.
Unions work better in Germany because most German companies value their employees, and don't simply see them as "resources", like a lot of companies over here do.
Exactly. When a employer does not see a union as the enemy, the union should reciprocate in kind. In essence, the rhetoric of "employers are evil" or "unions are evil" are more suitable to 3rd grade verbal fights.
The main reason a union might look at the company as the enemy is because the company started looking at labor as an enemy first.
Not necessarily. For example, how did the Big Three in the auto industry looked at unions at the enemy? Auto workers for decades were the best paid machinists in the world. The AWU pretty much latched on the Big Three like a tick to a fat cow. Now, there is a lot to blame on the Big Three management for the way they mishandled overseas competition, but the AWU had a lot of blame on it, demanding perks that were no longer justifiable (and balking like spoiled brats, with the "employer is the enemy" mantra when things went south when the globalization shit hit the proverbial fan).
A better example, how does the "employer started it first" justifies the behavior exhibited by the NYH longshoremen's union refusal to certify fairness in its hiring practices? How does it justify that you will never get a job as a tugboat crewman (in almost any union-lobbied port) without being related to a union worker? Or longshoremen union workers verbally assaulting the media and destroying private property, acting like thugs? How much employers' culpability is required to justify such acts?
One cannot have an objective analysis of the pros and cons of union-employer relations without first dropping any facade of innocence by either party.
Another example is the Rosario silver mines in Honduras (where I lived in the 80's). The Rosario company gave excellent salaries to the workers (relative to salaries in Honduras at the time), and many other benefits. The company treated them well, but the union insisted in raises to the point that the company could no longer operate in the country.
Despite economic evidence to the contrary, local part-time Che Guevaras of the time, from the comfort of their University cubicles away in the capital insisted that the unions could and must push the envelope. Strike after salary increase after strike after salary increase. Finally the company had no choice but to close operations. The triving mining town with its company-built school and clinic soon turned into a ghost town, with miners having no recourse but to join the millions others that live in poverty (after decades of solid, stable jobs.) The union leaders and the university che-guevaras? They are doing well, thanks for asking.
Don't be so quick to say who started first in general terms. Any generalization that you can think of (regarless of what side of the fence you sit on), I can guarantee you to find a counter-example.
Generalizations like this (employers started it) are excellent simple justifications for quasi-romantic ideals. But if you are honestly for objective analysis of things, that shit doesn't apply.
Just look at how unions operate in Germany for example. They work in excellent synergy with the private sector. The rhetoric of companies being the enemy does not do any services in these modern times.
Your bias is showing.
Nice strawman. Since you assume I have a bias, then it must be so. How can I possibly post a counter-argument against such flawless logic.
I seem to think that the only rhetoric I veiledly attribute to you for the sake of strawman building is that companies are the enemy of the people and that there's no corresponding rhetoric about the evils of unions.
--Jeremy
There. Fixed that for you.
Independently of whether anti-union rhetoric exists, it does not condone or justify the rhetoric that employers are the enemy, a rhetoric that many of you slashdoters seem to relish all to readily.
When you see anti-union rhetoric, then you address it on a case-by-case basis. Similarly, when you see anti-employers rhetoric, you address it on a case-by-case basis as well.
The kind counterargument you are making pretty much justifies the "they are idiots, so I'm going to be an idiot, too" modus operandi.
In which world do you live? In mine 'sane' companies have only one responsibility - to the shareholders. Workers be damned. If they can get a few extra dollars per share by jacking around the employees then so be it. I wish I live in your rose-colored world, boy/
My experience in the US has not been like that. True that companies have responsibility to the shareholders (and I've seen my share of layoffs), but I've never this methodical cannibalism against workers (specially more so with talented workers.) I won't say that it doesn't exist, but to presume that this is the general modus operandi of the private sector is a bit of a stretch. Simple explanations to perceived problems sound appealing. But their appeal does not guarantee their soundness.
Unions become a problem when they start to see companies as being the enemy, rather than something they're in partnership with.
If you study the history of the labor movement and management/labor relations in the U.S., you'd realize how absurd that statement is. Owners, management, and labor are all eating from the same plate. It's the job of owners and management to keep the workers' share as small as possible, and this is best done by keeping them afraid of losing what little they've got.
This is true (and originally identified by Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations"). However, the point of unions wasn't just simply to increase wages (and in many cases, it was not at all). It was first and foremost, about better working conditions (.ie. not being required to work on a coal mine 7 days a week) and protection from unreasonable termination (.ie. because you refused to or physically couldn't work another sunday after working 7 days a week for months.)
It doesn't matter what the genesis of the unions was. What matter is the role of unions with respect to the private enterprise once reasonable labor laws are in effect TODAY. At that point, stewbacca's statement is right: a union's place is to be in partnership with companies, not to act as enemies. After all, it is companies who supply their jobs, and labor laws ensure abuses do not take place. So absent of corner cases and violations, a union's insistence in seeing a company as its enemy is simply not acceptable.
Just look at how unions operate in Germany for example. They work in excellent synergy with the private sector. The rhetoric of companies being the enemy does not do any services in these modern times.
You are either from the USA or bizarrely uninformed - possibly both.
1. Tell that to the UAW.
2. How long have you been waiting for an opportunity to say that?
If existing labor laws protect me sufficiently, why would I want to join a union? Yes, unions have their place (in particular where labor laws have been defficient), but their place is not universal (and in our recent history, they have proved to be detrimental, degenerating themselves from worker unions down to self-perpetuating cartels of nepotism.) I have no problems with unions in, say, Brazil. But here (the way many unions act), you bet I do have a problem.
Don't just look from the POV of your country's conditions. Look at it from our current conditions. We Americans typically get accused of looking at the world strictly from our biased eyes, but you don't seem capable of acting differently (at least in this particular topic.)
Shout all you like that the problem with health care is the US government, nobody can hold up an example country with fully privatized health care which is being run well (Well as in, people dont die early or have to live with treatable health problems for lack of income, not well as in it makes corporates boatload of money).
I hear what you are saying, and I tend to agree with you (having been in Japan, I know what good health care is, and how bad we have it here in the USA.) However, @roman_mir does have a point. Fully privatized health care DID work.
The problem here is not whether health care is privatized, or whether other countries have better health care systems with some type of government intervention. The root of the problem is the collusion of government and health care firms, which have created a self-perpetuating carcinogenic mass of middle man sitting between the patient and the physician.
Not all private enterprises are created equal. There are those that compete freely (with price controls dictated by supply and demand), and there are cartels. Two solutions to the problem exist:
1. Have a government-sponsored health care system as found in Japan or Germany
2. Have the goverment dismantle the health care middlemen cartels, forcing them to compete freely.
Either one will work, and both require goverment intervention of some form. People need to stop looking at goverment vs private enterprise as if both formed a zero-sum game, a black-n-white, matter-antimatter dichotomy. They are not. Such parrochial black-n-white window painting serve well to pander simple solutions to the simple-minded masses on both sides of the political fence, but that's the extend of its usability.
How to be rich and successful in corporate America: be a selfish, backstabbing cunt with no conscience!
Err, Warren Buffett? Sergey Brin? Jeff Bezos? Bill Hewlett? David Packard? Steve Wozniak?
I know some of you goddamned./ dorks like to cliche the fuck out of things with cheap generalizations for shits and giggles, but c'mon. Even by/. lowbrow geek-wannabe standards, this is pretty pathetic.
I'm guessing that this leads to more and more limited time service based rights to use a software. That is, the software is licensed as a part of limited time service and not as-is. This decision just expedites the already ongoing transformation of the software market.
^^^ This. My thoughts exactly. This will simply expedite the shift from stand-alone software (the piece sold) to software as an entry point to services accessed on a token/access-code basis.
Game developers already have a solution. Make the game require internet access with a single use code. You can sell the game but it is worthless without a new code.
In that case the following logical step would be to sue companies who disallow transferring the code/account to another user. Never stop fighting for your rights.
Who told you that's your right? That code is like a ticket. You get one ticket to see one movie. Can give the ticket (or in this code) away, but you can't use it and re-use it, or attempt to use it for more than one person.
The right that you have is not to partake in that scheme of things if you don't like how it is conducted.
Now, if purchasing that game was compulsory, if you didn't have an option, but to buy it, then you have a case to demand greater flexibility on the code. But that is not the case, so this conversation is moot.
No one forces you to buy that game, and it is not your right to demand a private company to sell you access to his stuff in your terms. Your rights come along your responsibilities in your own decision-making process.
Feelings of entitlement =/= rights.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is an interesting ruling (after all, in general, I should be able to re-sell the things I own). But to call what you are describing as a "right", that's just uninformed is/ought wishful thinking.
I am wondering what the best way would be for me to stay employable in the coming years?"
IMO, remain technical. Regardless of whether you move up the managerial ladder, remain technical.
"1. Should I stay technical, and be ready to work as consultant/contractor? How does medical insurance work in that case?"
Depends on the contracting agency. If you go completely solo (1099), it will come out of your pocket. If you go with a big contacting agency, they tend to have health plans for their contractors.
2. Should I capitalize on the domain knowledge, and move onto business/managerial side?
That's another possibility provided the business has room to go up.
3. Will the MBA degree or alternate career help?
A MBA, or MIS or Engineering Management degree certainly helps provided that you remain highly technical. By itself, such a degree does not necessarily help.
4. Any other suggestions?
For starters, remaining technical does not mean simply to become a contractor. You can also move to another company with your skills, for a better salary.
Always sharpen your technical skills. Seek out what's new, and carve your own niche. If you stay in the "enterprise" realm, go for a MIS and then a MBA. If you stay/go the more engineering oriented fields, get a graduate degree.
Also, never sell yourself before the level of senior. That is, at our age (and with the experience employers will rightfully expect from us), it is no longer appropriate to sell ourselves as just programmers. Aim for a senior/principal software engineering/architect or team lead position and climb up from there.
The most important thing is to have a vision (your plan A and plan B and plan...). Where do you want to be, and what you need to do (work/study) and then go for it.
Harking back again on the technical, as seniors, we are expected to know about agility, refactoring, domain driven design, modeling, software architecture, project management, some sysadmin skills at least, and good OO and functional design skills (knowing for example *what* makes a class uncohesive for example.) That's where seniority and experience come to shine.
The worst thing we above the 40-year old bracket is to work just as a programmer/developer. That's a function that a person at the start of his career can do as well (and for less money)... or so that's how management sees it. So being in that position is being in the danger zone.
C++ is not a bloated obscenity. It is an excellent language.
I am not claiming it is a language without warts, but I challenge any one who modded the parent post up to provide a coherent argument as to why C++ is bloated and what features you could therefore remove without detracting from the effectiveness of the language.
1. The need for making constructors explicit for one. There shouldn't be any automatic conversions.
2. The need to have private method declarations in the hpp.
I understand the reasoning behind #2 (compiler limitations of the time.) It is still very painful when you have to refactor common code out of existing methods, yet that common code is an implementation detail of no use to the class' user. If the refactored common code operates only on parameters, then it can sit as a function static to the cpp. But if the refactored common code acts on the class state, then you have to make it a method, a private method. But to do that, then you have to change the interface, the hpp, the thing you supply to your class' users. A pimpl might ameliorate things, but not completely. Using ABCs might ameliorate things as well... but only some of the time.
An implementation detail change of that tpe should not cause a change in the class interface. But in C++, it does. The insistence in having to declare your private functions (implementation details), virtual or otherwise, in the header does put a hiccup in the evolution and maintainability of a class. It is not an unresolved problem, but it can be a PITA nonetheless.
Slashdot Mirror
Have the possibilities of an early European people moving east and then over Bering been ruled out? After all, Caucasians have been found everywhere from western Europe, to southern India, and Xinjiang.
It is a possibility, but it is one best confirmed with an archeological/anthropological find, not one via haplotypes. The reason for this, and using haplotype X as an example, is as follows (a pausible theory):
Some population X (called so because they carry haplotype X) at some point migrated somewhere in Asia, and from there split into several groups, of which two survived long enough for their genetic contribution to persist to the present day. One moved Westward and contributed their version of haplotype X into what would constitute the "European" gene pool. The other moved Eastward and contributed their own version of haplotype X into "some" of the Siberian immigrants that would survive and become "some" of the Paleo-Indians.
Other splinter and distinct populations from the original population X might have existed across Eurasia and the Americas, with their generic contribution nixed off the generic pool.
For all we know, haplotype X could have originated from, say, a splinter group of Australoids that went North, separated from the rest who were on their way to South Asia and eventually Australia. And the splinter group developed haplotype X (or haplotype X became extinct among the other Australoids.) The splinter group then became intermixed with some of the Eurasian population that would give birth to the the so-called "Caucasian" and "Mongoloid" populations. I'm pulling this out of my ass, but this would also be possible.
Heck, what if haplotype X is of Neanderthal or Denisovan stock. The former is almost certain to have intermixed with early Eurasians (before the Caucasian-Mongoloid split), or at least with the European/Middle Eastern precursors. The later is known (via DNA analysis) to have left a genetic heritage among the Melanesian people.
Or what if haplotype X were to come from a yet undiscovered hominid (neither Neanderthal or Denisovan)?
So the point of all this speculative soup is that we cannot ascertain a Caucasoid/European origin to haplotype X just by looking at the haplotype alone. You will need:
I for one find the Solutrean hypothesis of Ice Age people migrating from Europe into Eastern North America (by walking/kayaking their way along the North Atlantic Ice Sheet) very tantalizing. Hey, it could be feasible (if people were able to boat their way to Australia 50-60K years ago, why not this?) But it is one that needs archaeological evidence.
Perhaps he meant "actually has the safety that C++ pretends to have".
Indeed. I would go even further than that. C++ does not pretend to be inherently safer than C (sans a few things, like requiring prototypes.) All C++ aims to is to facilitate the building higher abstractions on a OO paradigm using a systems-level language with C compatibility in mind. If people choose C++ for safety, they are out of their minds. If safety is a primary concern, tThere are better languages (Ada or Java) that have some formalized notion of safety as one of the driving forces behind their design.
Doesn't sound like you know what OOD is. That method qualifies, and you also get inheritance and polymorphism. Perhaps you shouldn't be so smug next time?
It's not being smug when it's about pointing the folly of reinventing the wheel, poorly, out of a square block and claim that it is a wheel. You guys are the MadTV Stuarts of software development (ma, look what I can do.... with structs and pointers to callback functions.)
One could say that programming in assembly using nothing but unconditional jumps and cond jumps is just the same as structured programming because, after all, structured programming will get translated to its assembly/machine language jump-based equivalent.
Or functional programming is nothing but pointers to functions...
For that matter one could have an array of locations one can jump to in assembler and call it OO (not OOD or OOP as those are somewhat different animals stemming from OO). You can simulate inheritance, and you can simulate polymorphism... with a lot of elbow grease.
Now, I'm going to slow it down for you one more time. Here is the operative expression.... a lot of elbow grease In the GPP's example, you have to extensively rely on programming by convention to make sure
The last part is the most important one. Message is the meat of OO. Everything else is just gravy. And the transparent message dispatching mechanism that makes OO economical is being thrown out of the window (along a lot of other things) with the GPP's supposedly good example.
Now, there are situations where this approach is useful (I've used it myself for building plugga
And, for a view somewhat less harsh about C++, but still not a case of "C++ roolz, C droolz!", see The Old Man and the C, the abstract of which says
Power and syntax of C, safety of C++, useful compiler errors like Java. NO HEADER FILES!!!
Wut?
typedef struct { int (*open)(void *self, char *fspec); int (*close)(void *self); int (*read)(void *self, void *buff, size_t max_sz, size_t *p_act_sz); int (*write)(void *self, void *buff, size_t max_sz, size_t *p_act_sz); // And data goes here.
} tCommClass;
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/351733/can-you-write-object-oriented-code-in-c
So, you think that is object-orientation? Oh boy.
The barriers to entry in a market are created by the government in the first place.
Should I quote recent software history (in slashdot of all places) as a counter-example against your statement?
The GP wasn't advocating deregulation, but rather that the government stop changing the rules.
Rules sometimes changes for a reason. Think SOX compliance regulations for example. As imperfect these regulations might be, the rules that preceded them, though in place, were not sufficient to prevent some major shenanigans which SOX tries to prevent (however, imperfectly the try-out might be.)
Go further back in time and remember Standard Oil. Rules had to change to cope with it.
Rules are not panacea fixed in the sky around which the clouds of business arrange themselves in cooperative harmony. And an economy, however free it might be, it should operate within the context of national interest.
The day you can iron-out rules that can remain unchanged forever while being capable of handling every economic evolutionary twist (and/or new organized fraud/criminal schemes), then your argument will be a good one.
To play devil's advocate, what reason do they have to deny it if they did it?
They have reason to deny it because it makes them look like backwards savages to the rest of the world
The Taliban has never cared to be seen as backward savages by, in their own view, immoral infidels. These are the people who blew the Bamiyan's Bhuddas to pieces, who whipped women to shreds, who planned to give yellow armbands to the local Hindus for ease of identification, and were quite ok with committing acts of genocide against the Hazaras. They are too fucking illiterate to even realize the type of bestial savagery they represent.
Any concessions they give now is because they have been under the gun for quite sometime. Otherwise, rest assure they'd back to their shit-on-the-ground, bestial shenanigans.
Any Turing-complete language is a legitimate data analysis tool.
Legitimately =/= feasible without regards to cost.
Otherwise, let's use assembly to write our own analytics package.</rollseyes>
There is a protectionist culture in the northeast and far west, but no such shared culture in the Deep South or midwest,
Who's homogenizing now?
His generalization does have a certain ring of truth, but pointed inaccuratedly. I'd argue that, from what I've witnessed, American suburbanites tend to have too much of a protectionist culture (which is made up for their concentration in civics and scholastic achievements.) OTH, in rural areas, kids do get their hands dirty and participate in all types of physical activities. But the variety of visual/cultural stimulus is somewhat limited (more to geographical isolations and demographics than actual cultural faults.)
One can argue that I'm homogenizing as well, but many would objectively agree that this generalization is sufficiently accurate.
The one thing that always shocks me is how kids are never taught to use a knife - first rule I learned was to always cut away, and when putting knives away, to always leave the pointing ends down (never up or in a direction where someone might fall into them by accident). I've consistently seen people of all walks of life putting knifes with the pointy ends up in the drainer, and I've always thought to myself "wtf?"
In my country, we all carried pocket knives from an early age. We used them as pencil sharpeners and for carving stuff out of wood during playtime. And no, I never saw any stabbings (lots of fist fighting as anyone would expect from kids, but no stabbings.)
I believe this country has a plethora of opportunities for those determined to break a sweat for them. But some really basic life stuff when it comes to experience the world (the good and the bad) is severely missing. And that's a shame.
For noobs, those pocket references are more like throwing a pile of parts on the ground and telling the guy one by one exactly what each part is and each part does.
OK, now build a helicopter.
The noobs of old were able to start up with those spartanly small books. Did the noobs of today became dumber? No, not really. But what has happened is that we have lowered the expectations on what people need to do to become proficient. Part of learning programming was in the struggle of deciphering material and making this work. That on itself is a critical part in developing the critical analytical/thinkering process required for successful application of programming (let alone software development/engineering). If you wanted, you had to work for it (and that was the best programming/hacking lesson of them all.)
Now, noobs (and even graduates working in the wild) expect to be spoon-fed an answer whenever they post "how do open file? please send me codes." Worse still, ask any random noob to debug a program on paper, and they'll go "wut?". Not that I'm elite or anything (far from it), but it was common in my time (not long ago) for students to debug or trace the state changes of (sometimes pretty large) programs on paper. That was one hell of a way to replace the "magic happens here" with concrete cause/effect examples on how instructions change state. You rarely see that anymore (unless you are very lucky to have a good professor or you are in a pretty damn good CS school.)
Just as not everybody is naturally gifted or apt of fine arts (God knows if I try to draw a chicken, I end up with a pig/octopus hybrid), not everyone is naturally gifted/apt for software development.
People have talents in different areas, partly due to personality differences, and partly on their educational upbringing. By lowering the expections on what it takes for learning programming, we don't anyone a service. Are we going to do the same with Mathematics, with Fine Arts?
Books that try too hard to look approachable by being cute, informal, with pictures of dudes looking at you from the cover page with crooked necks won't make up for people's strengths or weaknesses.
If existing labor laws protect me sufficiently
That's just the thing: In the US at least, they typically don't.
Yes they do. For comparison, go work south of the border. I know, I was born there, and I know what it is to work as a cargo mule for rich patrons. People who complain the US labor laws are not sufficient need to take a trip to a less developed world for a reality check. Granted that there are other countries with somewhat better laws, but to use that and say our labor laws are not effective, that's just being deliberately obstuse.
I think his point was that in Brazil, employee legal protections may be so few that having a union and the associated waste, overhead, and corruption is the lesser of two evils.
Pretty much that's my point (and I know from first-hand experience because... tada, I was born south of the border). Sadly, the point is typically lost in the degenerate quest for emotional rhetoric that is so common among slashdot posters. Kinda makes me wonder wtf is in there to even try. It's like trying to teach chess to a pineapple.
Unions work better in Germany because most German companies value their employees, and don't simply see them as "resources", like a lot of companies over here do.
Exactly. When a employer does not see a union as the enemy, the union should reciprocate in kind. In essence, the rhetoric of "employers are evil" or "unions are evil" are more suitable to 3rd grade verbal fights.
The main reason a union might look at the company as the enemy is because the company started looking at labor as an enemy first.
Not necessarily. For example, how did the Big Three in the auto industry looked at unions at the enemy? Auto workers for decades were the best paid machinists in the world. The AWU pretty much latched on the Big Three like a tick to a fat cow. Now, there is a lot to blame on the Big Three management for the way they mishandled overseas competition, but the AWU had a lot of blame on it, demanding perks that were no longer justifiable (and balking like spoiled brats, with the "employer is the enemy" mantra when things went south when the globalization shit hit the proverbial fan).
A better example, how does the "employer started it first" justifies the behavior exhibited by the NYH longshoremen's union refusal to certify fairness in its hiring practices? How does it justify that you will never get a job as a tugboat crewman (in almost any union-lobbied port) without being related to a union worker? Or longshoremen union workers verbally assaulting the media and destroying private property, acting like thugs? How much employers' culpability is required to justify such acts?
One cannot have an objective analysis of the pros and cons of union-employer relations without first dropping any facade of innocence by either party.
Another example is the Rosario silver mines in Honduras (where I lived in the 80's). The Rosario company gave excellent salaries to the workers (relative to salaries in Honduras at the time), and many other benefits. The company treated them well, but the union insisted in raises to the point that the company could no longer operate in the country.
Despite economic evidence to the contrary, local part-time Che Guevaras of the time, from the comfort of their University cubicles away in the capital insisted that the unions could and must push the envelope. Strike after salary increase after strike after salary increase. Finally the company had no choice but to close operations. The triving mining town with its company-built school and clinic soon turned into a ghost town, with miners having no recourse but to join the millions others that live in poverty (after decades of solid, stable jobs.) The union leaders and the university che-guevaras? They are doing well, thanks for asking.
Don't be so quick to say who started first in general terms. Any generalization that you can think of (regarless of what side of the fence you sit on), I can guarantee you to find a counter-example.
Generalizations like this (employers started it) are excellent simple justifications for quasi-romantic ideals. But if you are honestly for objective analysis of things, that shit doesn't apply.
Just look at how unions operate in Germany for example. They work in excellent synergy with the private sector. The rhetoric of companies being the enemy does not do any services in these modern times.
Your bias is showing.
Nice strawman. Since you assume I have a bias, then it must be so. How can I possibly post a counter-argument against such flawless logic.
I seem to think that the only rhetoric I veiledly attribute to you for the sake of strawman building is that companies are the enemy of the people and that there's no corresponding rhetoric about the evils of unions.
--Jeremy
There. Fixed that for you.
Independently of whether anti-union rhetoric exists, it does not condone or justify the rhetoric that employers are the enemy, a rhetoric that many of you slashdoters seem to relish all to readily.
When you see anti-union rhetoric, then you address it on a case-by-case basis. Similarly, when you see anti-employers rhetoric, you address it on a case-by-case basis as well.
The kind counterargument you are making pretty much justifies the "they are idiots, so I'm going to be an idiot, too" modus operandi.
In which world do you live? In mine 'sane' companies have only one responsibility - to the shareholders. Workers be damned. If they can get a few extra dollars per share by jacking around the employees then so be it. I wish I live in your rose-colored world, boy/
My experience in the US has not been like that. True that companies have responsibility to the shareholders (and I've seen my share of layoffs), but I've never this methodical cannibalism against workers (specially more so with talented workers.) I won't say that it doesn't exist, but to presume that this is the general modus operandi of the private sector is a bit of a stretch. Simple explanations to perceived problems sound appealing. But their appeal does not guarantee their soundness.
Unions become a problem when they start to see companies as being the enemy, rather than something they're in partnership with.
If you study the history of the labor movement and management/labor relations in the U.S., you'd realize how absurd that statement is. Owners, management, and labor are all eating from the same plate. It's the job of owners and management to keep the workers' share as small as possible, and this is best done by keeping them afraid of losing what little they've got.
This is true (and originally identified by Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations"). However, the point of unions wasn't just simply to increase wages (and in many cases, it was not at all). It was first and foremost, about better working conditions (.ie. not being required to work on a coal mine 7 days a week) and protection from unreasonable termination (.ie. because you refused to or physically couldn't work another sunday after working 7 days a week for months.)
It doesn't matter what the genesis of the unions was. What matter is the role of unions with respect to the private enterprise once reasonable labor laws are in effect TODAY. At that point, stewbacca's statement is right: a union's place is to be in partnership with companies, not to act as enemies. After all, it is companies who supply their jobs, and labor laws ensure abuses do not take place. So absent of corner cases and violations, a union's insistence in seeing a company as its enemy is simply not acceptable.
Just look at how unions operate in Germany for example. They work in excellent synergy with the private sector. The rhetoric of companies being the enemy does not do any services in these modern times.
Nobody wants a union.
You are either from the USA or bizarrely uninformed - possibly both.
1. Tell that to the UAW.
2. How long have you been waiting for an opportunity to say that?
If existing labor laws protect me sufficiently, why would I want to join a union? Yes, unions have their place (in particular where labor laws have been defficient), but their place is not universal (and in our recent history, they have proved to be detrimental, degenerating themselves from worker unions down to self-perpetuating cartels of nepotism.) I have no problems with unions in, say, Brazil. But here (the way many unions act), you bet I do have a problem.
Don't just look from the POV of your country's conditions. Look at it from our current conditions. We Americans typically get accused of looking at the world strictly from our biased eyes, but you don't seem capable of acting differently (at least in this particular topic.)
Shout all you like that the problem with health care is the US government, nobody can hold up an example country with fully privatized health care which is being run well (Well as in, people dont die early or have to live with treatable health problems for lack of income, not well as in it makes corporates boatload of money).
I hear what you are saying, and I tend to agree with you (having been in Japan, I know what good health care is, and how bad we have it here in the USA.) However, @roman_mir does have a point. Fully privatized health care DID work.
The problem here is not whether health care is privatized, or whether other countries have better health care systems with some type of government intervention. The root of the problem is the collusion of government and health care firms, which have created a self-perpetuating carcinogenic mass of middle man sitting between the patient and the physician.
Not all private enterprises are created equal. There are those that compete freely (with price controls dictated by supply and demand), and there are cartels. Two solutions to the problem exist:
1. Have a government-sponsored health care system as found in Japan or Germany
2. Have the goverment dismantle the health care middlemen cartels, forcing them to compete freely.
Either one will work, and both require goverment intervention of some form. People need to stop looking at goverment vs private enterprise as if both formed a zero-sum game, a black-n-white, matter-antimatter dichotomy. They are not. Such parrochial black-n-white window painting serve well to pander simple solutions to the simple-minded masses on both sides of the political fence, but that's the extend of its usability.
How to be rich and successful in corporate America: be a selfish, backstabbing cunt with no conscience!
Err, Warren Buffett? Sergey Brin? Jeff Bezos? Bill Hewlett? David Packard? Steve Wozniak?
I know some of you goddamned ./ dorks like to cliche the fuck out of things with cheap generalizations for shits and giggles, but c'mon. Even by /. lowbrow geek-wannabe standards, this is pretty pathetic.
This has enormous implications
I'm guessing that this leads to more and more limited time service based rights to use a software. That is, the software is licensed as a part of limited time service and not as-is. This decision just expedites the already ongoing transformation of the software market.
^^^ This. My thoughts exactly. This will simply expedite the shift from stand-alone software (the piece sold) to software as an entry point to services accessed on a token/access-code basis.
Game developers already have a solution. Make the game require internet access with a single use code. You can sell the game but it is worthless without a new code.
In that case the following logical step would be to sue companies who disallow transferring the code/account to another user. Never stop fighting for your rights.
Who told you that's your right? That code is like a ticket. You get one ticket to see one movie. Can give the ticket (or in this code) away, but you can't use it and re-use it, or attempt to use it for more than one person.
The right that you have is not to partake in that scheme of things if you don't like how it is conducted.
Now, if purchasing that game was compulsory, if you didn't have an option, but to buy it, then you have a case to demand greater flexibility on the code. But that is not the case, so this conversation is moot.
No one forces you to buy that game, and it is not your right to demand a private company to sell you access to his stuff in your terms. Your rights come along your responsibilities in your own decision-making process.
Feelings of entitlement =/= rights.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is an interesting ruling (after all, in general, I should be able to re-sell the things I own). But to call what you are describing as a "right", that's just uninformed is/ought wishful thinking.
I am still looking at 25 long years of career.
Welcome to the club :)
I am wondering what the best way would be for me to stay employable in the coming years?"
IMO, remain technical. Regardless of whether you move up the managerial ladder, remain technical.
"1. Should I stay technical, and be ready to work as consultant/contractor? How does medical insurance work in that case?"
Depends on the contracting agency. If you go completely solo (1099), it will come out of your pocket. If you go with a big contacting agency, they tend to have health plans for their contractors.
2. Should I capitalize on the domain knowledge, and move onto business/managerial side?
That's another possibility provided the business has room to go up.
3. Will the MBA degree or alternate career help?
A MBA, or MIS or Engineering Management degree certainly helps provided that you remain highly technical. By itself, such a degree does not necessarily help.
4. Any other suggestions?
For starters, remaining technical does not mean simply to become a contractor. You can also move to another company with your skills, for a better salary.
Always sharpen your technical skills. Seek out what's new, and carve your own niche. If you stay in the "enterprise" realm, go for a MIS and then a MBA. If you stay/go the more engineering oriented fields, get a graduate degree.
Also, never sell yourself before the level of senior. That is, at our age (and with the experience employers will rightfully expect from us), it is no longer appropriate to sell ourselves as just programmers. Aim for a senior/principal software engineering/architect or team lead position and climb up from there.
The most important thing is to have a vision (your plan A and plan B and plan ...). Where do you want to be, and what you need to do (work/study) and then go for it.
Harking back again on the technical, as seniors, we are expected to know about agility, refactoring, domain driven design, modeling, software architecture, project management, some sysadmin skills at least, and good OO and functional design skills (knowing for example *what* makes a class uncohesive for example.) That's where seniority and experience come to shine.
The worst thing we above the 40-year old bracket is to work just as a programmer/developer. That's a function that a person at the start of his career can do as well (and for less money)... or so that's how management sees it. So being in that position is being in the danger zone.
It's not the bloated obscenity that is C++.
C++ is not a bloated obscenity. It is an excellent language.
I am not claiming it is a language without warts, but I challenge any one who modded the parent post up to provide a coherent argument as to why C++ is bloated and what features you could therefore remove without detracting from the effectiveness of the language.
1. The need for making constructors explicit for one. There shouldn't be any automatic conversions.
2. The need to have private method declarations in the hpp.
I understand the reasoning behind #2 (compiler limitations of the time.) It is still very painful when you have to refactor common code out of existing methods, yet that common code is an implementation detail of no use to the class' user. If the refactored common code operates only on parameters, then it can sit as a function static to the cpp. But if the refactored common code acts on the class state, then you have to make it a method, a private method. But to do that, then you have to change the interface, the hpp, the thing you supply to your class' users. A pimpl might ameliorate things, but not completely. Using ABCs might ameliorate things as well... but only some of the time.
An implementation detail change of that tpe should not cause a change in the class interface. But in C++, it does. The insistence in having to declare your private functions (implementation details), virtual or otherwise, in the header does put a hiccup in the evolution and maintainability of a class. It is not an unresolved problem, but it can be a PITA nonetheless.