Yes, he shouldn't need to Google since he should know what a SoC is since this is supposed to be a site for technological literate people not reddit rejects.
Indeed.
"SoC" is short for "State of Charge," which is, basically, the status of a battery.
I'm not sure what this has to do with C-code. Maybe these chips they're talking about are used to make battery controllers that use SoC monitoring.
You might have a point if that were the sole entry in your google results page (alongside salsa on crotch or standard occupation classification).
But, by golly, that is not the case. Guess f* what? Systems on a Chip is right at the f* top of a google page result, with two sentences describing what it means. By golly, wouldn't that be enough to guide the supposedly nerd mind towards?
Oh, let me guess, if you don't find it on your first hit, right on the top with flashing colors and dancing monkeys on animated gifs, you give up? No concept of research, even of the most superficial kind? I think we need to write "Google for Dummies" then.
Slashdot, where searching for an abreviation's meaning has become the ultimate technical challenge.
Once again, editors, we don't all know everything about everything in the tech world.
News for nerds?. Ain't that supposed to mean something?
Some of us come here to learn new things
Bro, two words: Google and wikipedia. And one more word: 2012. You should consider a career/interest change if you don't grasp the meaning conveyed by these three words.
and you guys don't make it easy.
Not to be mean, but if you want easy, there is always hamburger flipping (which I did when I was in college) or pants folding at the GAP.
TFS should at least leave me with an impression of whether or not I need to read the TFA.
But you can make that determination by simply f* googling the SoC abbreviation. About 5/6 of the sentence already tells you that this is about translating C code into something. What that something means, you search it if you don't know it. The fact is that the mere idea of translating C into something, whatever that means, should constitute enough to warrant interest (or lack thereof) depending on your technical proclivities.
Also, if you really feel that a subject line should tell you whether or not you need to read something, you should not venture that much at all out of your comfort zone instead of demanding that stuff be made easy for you to digest. Technical fields are vast and complex, ergo the use of acronyms (and tools like google to find their meaning in seconds.)
You assume that because you didn't know the meaning of SoC, that people don't make it easy for you. In reality, it is a demonstration of your lack of an inquisitive mind with a proclivity of immediate satisfaction. Let me know how that works for you as you, and I quote you, "come here to learn new things."
You don't want learning. You want spood feeding of already masticated material.
Not that SpaceX is infallible - but I think it's NASA behind this requiring an insane amount of testing. They employ the Monte Carlo method of testing which basically tests every (or at least a random sample) value of each input variable and the combinations there of. I don't care who you are, but that method of testing is going to result in "issues" coming to the surface. The problem is that the issues will be extremely rare if not practically impossible. And Musk is not in a position to criticize them, since he wants their business for cargo and crew services.
Not saying this kind of testing isn't valuable, but it doesn't lend itself well to schedules.
This is how you test mission critical systems. No, this is how you must test mission critical systems, regardless of schedules. The key adjective here is "mission critical". This ain't a Heroku web deployment just so you know.
Demand. Yes, there is a demand for highly qualified CS'tists (and STEM graduates in general.)
There's a huge demand for STEM graduates willing to work for peanuts. Universities don't care about that; they care about the demand from prospective students. How many students are demanding CS curriculae?
As I mentioned to y b4dc0d3r, my reference to "demand" was in response to DesSCorp's hypothetical question.
If there's not many students wanting to go into that field, then it makes perfect sense to cut it.
If that were to make sense, it would also make sense NOT to open a brand f*cking new university (FPU) with a BS in Information Technology and with other universities in the state expanding their CS program, wouldn't it? But that is not the case, so no, it does not make perfect sense.
Or, if there's sufficient students, but they just don't like your university
It isn't mine. I'm not a UF graduate. Nice assumption by the way. Let me know how this method of argumentation works for you.
and are skipping it to go to other universities with better-recognized CS programs, again it makes perfect sense to cut it and focus on programs your university is good at.
The CS program at UF was one of the most recognized programs in the state. Sorry, the dissapearance of this department has nothing to do with the quality or demand for it, and a lot more for budget cuts that have been occuring at the state level and by academic mismanagement. But don't knock yourself trying to believe this. You are free to believe otherwise and assume it has to do with lack of educational quality or demand. Opinions != fact and all that jazz.
That's why they are opening Florida Polytechnic University, to meet the demand. Right there at the bottom of the article that you didn't read.
Who says I didn't read it? Yes, the article mentions FPU, but it also mentions state-wide budget cuts that have cause (in great part) UF to close its CS departments. My response was intended to answer DesSCorp's question, not a reference to anything said in the article. That should have been obvious if you had applied some reading comprehension skills as opposed to engaging in drive-by-posting, looking for opportunities to post a quick reply to stuff you barely read yourself.
Most likely, FPU can accommodate any student that leaves U of F.
It's pretty much the opposite of a sad indictment, and demand is being met.
Uh, read TFA, the one you claimed I didn't read, where it talks about the budget cuts across the state. FIU closed its Systems Engineering department a few years ago (a stupid thing to do considering South Florida is in desperate need to attract the Space/Defense/Engineering firms that exist in Central Florida.) Then, more budget cuts come in, and UF closes the CS department (as opposed of, I don't know, shrinking it or merging it with a larger engineering department). And all the while UF increases its Athletics budget and Rick Scotts opens a new university (as if budget cuts didn't exist..)
You live in Florida? You work in Florida? I do. I've been since 1990, and working in software there since 1994. I see things from the ground, I've seen the tech decline that has transpired for the last two decades. And yes, this is a sad indictment on the state.
I know you are speaking out of ignorance (and/or some really bad experiences with "managers"), and I wish I had time to provide more insight for you. Instead, I'll tell you why you're so wrong. Many managers (like me) are promoted from the ranks. I never really wanted to manage people - I did it before and didn't like it - but was thrown into the position anyway. I spent many years coding and implemented many successful projects. I still do that, and even dig down into code now and the, but my team does most of that. They are good at it, but they need me managing the project, running interference with upper management and business folks, designing the architectures, and many many other things that need to be done. They can't do these larger projects without me.
Frankly, I wonder if you have ever done any real software engineering - you don't seem to have much understanding of how large projects are done.
The sad part is that a lot of software engineers/programmers do work in large projects that do not get the benefit of technically proficient managers (or managers harvested from the trenches.) So, people like the AC,that's all they know. They think they are doing software engineering, when in reality, they lie at the intersection where messy cowboy hacking meets bad, uber-interfering management. If all they can measure is their output in coding (man hours, or SLOCs), obviously (and sadly), they'll think anything else is an interference (even good management, or metrics or processes.)
Very few get the chance to really work doing actual software engineering. I've been lucky to have the opportunity to work like that. And I've been equally lucky to have worked in complete clusterf7ck jobs - lucky because I've learned from them. And I've become pickier and wiser when it comes to picking up a job. I'm sure you understand this (as I understand you.)
Sadly, the AC probably doesn't. How can he if, chances are, that's all he knows? The state of the software development field is pretty pathetic when it comes to development/management quality.
No, you shuld be hiring programmers with a technical degree. CS programs don't make scientists. They don't make programmers.
Linus Torvalds. Yukihiro Matsumoto. James Gosling. Should I continue?
I've yet to figure out what good they are
Operating systems. Compilers. Database engines. Distributed algorithms. Network Protocols. Should I continue?
since they give a shitty liberal arts education
Care to name a university or two that fit that description? And once you do that, care to explain how these two examples might describe the CS departments at, say, MIT or CalTech?
which I do value (in a dollars sort of I want to hire you because you'll contribute to my company) and a shitty engineering education, and a shitty programming education.
Most of the CS graduates wasted a lot of time and money on getting nothing more than a hangover and a tech school education. However, the tech school grads went to college because they're hungry and want to make themselves better.
See, you have been waiting for a while to say this. It's been fermenting on your head, rationalizing your critique of CS as a means to pet your own ego, and now you have done it on the public interweebz, getting a hard-on in the process. Please continue, let us know how you feel.
Ok, so imagine you want to teach computer architectures. Which aren't quite electrical engineering but they aren't theoretical computer science either. Which department would you assign that to?
I'd also add that any good computer architect should be skilled in both hardware and software-related issues, in electronics, electrical engineering as well as some discrete math. I don't see how you can put all those together outside of a CS department.
That class goes firmly into a Computer Engineering curriculum while being accessible as an elective for CS and EE students.
Computer science is a programme of study not an entire department.
Only if you're at a bad school.
This is absolutely silly. Why does UF have to do it the way others do it? Further, why does every single state university have to have a CS department? They don't all have law schools or medical schools. At a lot of schools, several fields are folded into larger departments, without any real loss of quality.
Demand. Yes, there is a demand for highly qualified CS'tists (and STEM graduates in general.) OTH, Florida (where I currently live) absolutely sucks when it comes to engineering jobs. Most of my acquiaintances and ex-colleagues have gone to other states for better paid, more interesting opportunities. So perhaps UF closed its CS department because there is local state demand (lots of CS grads, and very little jobs.)
Still this is sad, a sad indictment on Florida (and one more sign for me to GTFO).
There does a come a point where you have to evaluate whether a source is trustworthy. A journalists/analyst's main credential is credibility. If said person lacks it, then the information being conveyed requires extra scrutiny. Asking 'who is he?', to me, is a less strict version of 'is this person credible?' In the particular case of Brian Proffitt, a previous post by him on Hadoop showed that he completely misunderstood the technology and didn't understand the current state of the project. So my particular answer would be 'No'.
And this above would prove the point that to measure someone's POV you do so by having knowledge a-priori about him. You ask who is him by knowing a-priori that he didn't know what he was talking about. That is, you knew who he was by having done a prior analysis of his writing.
In that case, the question is not "who is he", but "why should I spend time dissecting what he wrote if he has a track record of being off the tracks?" This can still be at risk of becoming an unwarranted ad-hominem, but at least there is a measure of objectivity. This is completely different from the arrogance displayed in the AC's post I originally replied to.
Just who in the fuck is Brian Proffitt? Up until now, I'd never heard of him. I can't think of any open source software project he's worked on, or even helped lead.
Maybe I'm just ignorant about his accomplishments. If so, please inform me of them. Otherwise, can somebody tell me why I should care what he has to say about this, or anything else?
He's a tech journalist, which by itself doesn't say if he's technically capable or not. And that, technical capacity is not a function of one's visible/publicized/recognized technical accomplishments in the field in question. There are tons and tons of people out there that have never contributed to, say the Linux kernel or the GCC toolchain, but who, by usage, observation and/or academic expertise (any combination thereof) can tell any random/.er how that shit works.
Your post smacks of arrogance (as it pairs the possible validity of the argument to YOU knowing the author - I mean who are you?). Secondly, your statement has a pedestrian, juvenile ad-hominem'ey nature. One would think/.ers who think themselves acutely intellectual would recognize it as such.
You don't attack a position by saying "who is this?". You do so by asking "what is this", by analyzing the merits of the arguments being written.
If the sole measure of an argument's worthiness of your time is whether the person who makes it is a publicly accomplished figure, then man, you should go tell Muhammad Ali that he was wrong for using Angelo Dundee (who learned the trade of boxing training and being a corner man by being a "bucket boy".) Or you should go tell countless of MMA fighters not to train with Eddie Bravo (who has no MMA record.)
Strategists and analysts (even in the ethereal fields of software journalism) are not necessarily made from being in the trenches or for having delivered an opus dei recognized by the fanboi masses. To pretend otherwise is just arrogance and an inability to argue a piece's worth without having to rely on ad hominem.
I mean for all we know, Proffitt's work is shit, or people feeds him stuff that he then publicizes on his name. But you don't get to that conclusion by saying "who the fuck he is", but by saying "let me try to be a little bit intelligent and analyze this thing if it makes sense or not."
If you don't have the time to do that, why do you bother asking "who the fuck is he". I mean, who the fuck are you to feel the necessity to say that? That's just being embarrassingly childish and sadly spiteful.
And what's the ultimate goal? To build an aircraft that goes faster than the previous ones? With enough money you can always best the previous record, but after a while it becomes pointless, just like those record speed cars that are basically just a rocket on wheels. This is basically just a rocket on wings.
If Anonymous/LulzSec, etc. does it against an American company, then they're heroes here on/. This guy does it against Iranian businesses and he's a villain.
I agree with you on this, Evil is as Evil does regardless of where it does it.
Slashdot posters are typically full of it, but I have never seen a situation where Anon/LulzSec get generally praised in/. for dumping millions of American bank user accounts info to the plain web for all to see. Citations plz?
Nobody's making him out to be a hero, but tossing all the blame on him is a cop out. "Poor helpless banks were victimized by no good hacker"... that misses the entire point, which should be that security needs to be fixed.
I'm not sure how you logically derived that line above that you wrote from what the other AC posted (and which you were replying to):
Sorry, the banks are negligent and should be hauled over coals for this, but that makes him the fucking villain of it.
"Among the highlights emanating from U.S. District Court in San Francisco courtroom 8 today was Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's response to a question regarding the status of the Java programming language, which his company acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010. Asked by Google's lead attorney, Robert Van Nest, if the Java language is free, Ellison was slow to respond. Judge William Alsup pushed Ellison to answer with a yes or no. As ZDNet reporter Rachel King observed in the courtroom, Ellison resisted and huffed, 'I don't know.'"
I find it incredible that Larry Ellison wasn't prepared for a question like that. It is one of the crucial questions around Java 0 in some ways (.ie. usage) it is free, in other ways (.ie. language spec, the trademarked name) it is not. For all the love or hate towards this person, Ellison is a very sharp individual, so it is really baffling that he wasn't prepared for this question at all.
Time will tell if this was a fatal blunder or not.
It would be very hard to visualize a 300-line long spagetti wall-of-text-function;)
Not much harder then visualizing 300 line long functions (plus one more to glue them together).
This IDE sounds all exciting as long as you're working on a program that displays "Hey Chris!", not so much if you think of larger projects.
You are missing the point (the one about size of unit of code and complexity): A system consisting of 300-line long functions/methods/proc/anything is a PITA to work with. Yes, it could be visualized, but it will be of little help to the poor soul that happens to inherit such a system.
Or maybe I am misunderstanding the point you are trying to make. I'm being honest, we could be talking about completely different things.
So, that is the trick, in the delivery of the concept. But the concept itself, it is not computationally impossible, not even with a PL where textual order matters.
Responding/adding to my self:
1. Why does the screen shots have to sample LISP code?:)
2. Tools like this *might* enforce people to functions and methods that are smaller, with lower cyclomatic complexity and with better composition, cohesion and structure. It would be very hard to visualize a 300-line long spagetti wall-of-text-function;)
Which would (and can) still be retained in the underlying source code files. The visual representation at the IDE level *does not have* to be viz-a-viz with actual physical textual ordering of definitions and declarations.
How to get that in a useful manner, that's another question. After all, tools and enviroments like VB, VFP and PowerBuilder attempted to show code in snippets as opposed to walls of text. Attempted they did and the results were mixed. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it got in the way.
So, that is the trick, in the delivery of the concept. But the concept itself, it is not computationally impossible, not even with a PL where textual order matters.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, he shouldn't need to Google since he should know what a SoC is since this is supposed to be a site for technological literate people not reddit rejects.
Indeed.
"SoC" is short for "State of Charge," which is, basically, the status of a battery.
I'm not sure what this has to do with C-code. Maybe these chips they're talking about are used to make battery controllers that use SoC monitoring.
You might have a point if that were the sole entry in your google results page (alongside salsa on crotch or standard occupation classification).
But, by golly, that is not the case. Guess f* what? Systems on a Chip is right at the f* top of a google page result, with two sentences describing what it means. By golly, wouldn't that be enough to guide the supposedly nerd mind towards?
Oh, let me guess, if you don't find it on your first hit, right on the top with flashing colors and dancing monkeys on animated gifs, you give up? No concept of research, even of the most superficial kind? I think we need to write "Google for Dummies" then.
Or can we expect our ANSI C code to be automagically implemented in a SoC in such a short time?
How about you tell us what SoC stands for first?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=SoC
Slashdot, where searching for an abreviation's meaning has become the ultimate technical challenge.
Once again, editors, we don't all know everything about everything in the tech world.
News for nerds?. Ain't that supposed to mean something?
Some of us come here to learn new things
Bro, two words: Google and wikipedia. And one more word: 2012. You should consider a career/interest change if you don't grasp the meaning conveyed by these three words.
and you guys don't make it easy.
Not to be mean, but if you want easy, there is always hamburger flipping (which I did when I was in college) or pants folding at the GAP.
TFS should at least leave me with an impression of whether or not I need to read the TFA.
But you can make that determination by simply f* googling the SoC abbreviation. About 5/6 of the sentence already tells you that this is about translating C code into something. What that something means, you search it if you don't know it. The fact is that the mere idea of translating C into something, whatever that means, should constitute enough to warrant interest (or lack thereof) depending on your technical proclivities.
Also, if you really feel that a subject line should tell you whether or not you need to read something, you should not venture that much at all out of your comfort zone instead of demanding that stuff be made easy for you to digest. Technical fields are vast and complex, ergo the use of acronyms (and tools like google to find their meaning in seconds.)
You assume that because you didn't know the meaning of SoC, that people don't make it easy for you. In reality, it is a demonstration of your lack of an inquisitive mind with a proclivity of immediate satisfaction. Let me know how that works for you as you, and I quote you, "come here to learn new things."
You don't want learning. You want spood feeding of already masticated material.
Buggered if I know, the poster didn't explain the acronyms. WTF is SoC?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=SoC
Slashdot, where searching for an acronym's meaning is the next technical challenge.
Not that SpaceX is infallible - but I think it's NASA behind this requiring an insane amount of testing. They employ the Monte Carlo method of testing which basically tests every (or at least a random sample) value of each input variable and the combinations there of. I don't care who you are, but that method of testing is going to result in "issues" coming to the surface. The problem is that the issues will be extremely rare if not practically impossible. And Musk is not in a position to criticize them, since he wants their business for cargo and crew services.
Not saying this kind of testing isn't valuable, but it doesn't lend itself well to schedules.
This is how you test mission critical systems. No, this is how you must test mission critical systems, regardless of schedules. The key adjective here is "mission critical". This ain't a Heroku web deployment just so you know.
Better they found it now and missed the deadline than went anyhow and exploded. You do not get too many second chances in space.
In Space No One Can Hear You Scream.
Demand. Yes, there is a demand for highly qualified CS'tists (and STEM graduates in general.)
There's a huge demand for STEM graduates willing to work for peanuts. Universities don't care about that; they care about the demand from prospective students. How many students are demanding CS curriculae?
As I mentioned to y b4dc0d3r, my reference to "demand" was in response to DesSCorp's hypothetical question.
If there's not many students wanting to go into that field, then it makes perfect sense to cut it.
If that were to make sense, it would also make sense NOT to open a brand f*cking new university (FPU) with a BS in Information Technology and with other universities in the state expanding their CS program, wouldn't it? But that is not the case, so no, it does not make perfect sense.
Or, if there's sufficient students, but they just don't like your university
It isn't mine. I'm not a UF graduate. Nice assumption by the way. Let me know how this method of argumentation works for you.
and are skipping it to go to other universities with better-recognized CS programs, again it makes perfect sense to cut it and focus on programs your university is good at.
The CS program at UF was one of the most recognized programs in the state. Sorry, the dissapearance of this department has nothing to do with the quality or demand for it, and a lot more for budget cuts that have been occuring at the state level and by academic mismanagement. But don't knock yourself trying to believe this. You are free to believe otherwise and assume it has to do with lack of educational quality or demand. Opinions != fact and all that jazz.
That's why they are opening Florida Polytechnic University, to meet the demand. Right there at the bottom of the article that you didn't read.
Who says I didn't read it? Yes, the article mentions FPU, but it also mentions state-wide budget cuts that have cause (in great part) UF to close its CS departments. My response was intended to answer DesSCorp's question, not a reference to anything said in the article. That should have been obvious if you had applied some reading comprehension skills as opposed to engaging in drive-by-posting, looking for opportunities to post a quick reply to stuff you barely read yourself.
Most likely, FPU can accommodate any student that leaves U of F.
It's pretty much the opposite of a sad indictment, and demand is being met.
Uh, read TFA, the one you claimed I didn't read, where it talks about the budget cuts across the state. FIU closed its Systems Engineering department a few years ago (a stupid thing to do considering South Florida is in desperate need to attract the Space/Defense/Engineering firms that exist in Central Florida.) Then, more budget cuts come in, and UF closes the CS department (as opposed of, I don't know, shrinking it or merging it with a larger engineering department). And all the while UF increases its Athletics budget and Rick Scotts opens a new university (as if budget cuts didn't exist..)
You live in Florida? You work in Florida? I do. I've been since 1990, and working in software there since 1994. I see things from the ground, I've seen the tech decline that has transpired for the last two decades. And yes, this is a sad indictment on the state.
I know you are speaking out of ignorance (and/or some really bad experiences with "managers"), and I wish I had time to provide more insight for you. Instead, I'll tell you why you're so wrong. Many managers (like me) are promoted from the ranks. I never really wanted to manage people - I did it before and didn't like it - but was thrown into the position anyway. I spent many years coding and implemented many successful projects. I still do that, and even dig down into code now and the, but my team does most of that. They are good at it, but they need me managing the project, running interference with upper management and business folks, designing the architectures, and many many other things that need to be done. They can't do these larger projects without me.
Frankly, I wonder if you have ever done any real software engineering - you don't seem to have much understanding of how large projects are done.
The sad part is that a lot of software engineers/programmers do work in large projects that do not get the benefit of technically proficient managers (or managers harvested from the trenches.) So, people like the AC ,that's all they know. They think they are doing software engineering, when in reality, they lie at the intersection where messy cowboy hacking meets bad, uber-interfering management. If all they can measure is their output in coding (man hours, or SLOCs), obviously (and sadly), they'll think anything else is an interference (even good management, or metrics or processes.)
Very few get the chance to really work doing actual software engineering. I've been lucky to have the opportunity to work like that. And I've been equally lucky to have worked in complete clusterf7ck jobs - lucky because I've learned from them. And I've become pickier and wiser when it comes to picking up a job. I'm sure you understand this (as I understand you.)
Sadly, the AC probably doesn't. How can he if, chances are, that's all he knows? The state of the software development field is pretty pathetic when it comes to development/management quality.
No, you shuld be hiring programmers with a technical degree. CS programs don't make scientists. They don't make programmers.
Linus Torvalds. Yukihiro Matsumoto. James Gosling. Should I continue?
I've yet to figure out what good they are
Operating systems. Compilers. Database engines. Distributed algorithms. Network Protocols. Should I continue?
since they give a shitty liberal arts education
Care to name a university or two that fit that description? And once you do that, care to explain how these two examples might describe the CS departments at, say, MIT or CalTech?
which I do value (in a dollars sort of I want to hire you because you'll contribute to my company) and a shitty engineering education, and a shitty programming education.
Most of the CS graduates wasted a lot of time and money on getting nothing more than a hangover and a tech school education. However, the tech school grads went to college because they're hungry and want to make themselves better.
See, you have been waiting for a while to say this. It's been fermenting on your head, rationalizing your critique of CS as a means to pet your own ego, and now you have done it on the public interweebz, getting a hard-on in the process. Please continue, let us know how you feel.
Ok, so imagine you want to teach computer architectures. Which aren't quite electrical engineering but they aren't theoretical computer science either. Which department would you assign that to?
I'd also add that any good computer architect should be skilled in both hardware and software-related issues, in electronics, electrical engineering as well as some discrete math. I don't see how you can put all those together outside of a CS department.
That class goes firmly into a Computer Engineering curriculum while being accessible as an elective for CS and EE students.
Computer science is a programme of study not an entire department.
Only if you're at a bad school.
This is absolutely silly. Why does UF have to do it the way others do it? Further, why does every single state university have to have a CS department? They don't all have law schools or medical schools. At a lot of schools, several fields are folded into larger departments, without any real loss of quality.
Demand. Yes, there is a demand for highly qualified CS'tists (and STEM graduates in general.) OTH, Florida (where I currently live) absolutely sucks when it comes to engineering jobs. Most of my acquiaintances and ex-colleagues have gone to other states for better paid, more interesting opportunities. So perhaps UF closed its CS department because there is local state demand (lots of CS grads, and very little jobs.)
Still this is sad, a sad indictment on Florida (and one more sign for me to GTFO).
Because the job of the University of Florida is to make money, not educate students. Now I know to discount any degree I see from that state.
Even if it is from FIT, USF or UCF? Your logic is flawless.
There does a come a point where you have to evaluate whether a source is trustworthy. A journalists/analyst's main credential is credibility. If said person lacks it, then the information being conveyed requires extra scrutiny. Asking 'who is he?', to me, is a less strict version of 'is this person credible?' In the particular case of Brian Proffitt, a previous post by him on Hadoop showed that he completely misunderstood the technology and didn't understand the current state of the project. So my particular answer would be 'No'.
And this above would prove the point that to measure someone's POV you do so by having knowledge a-priori about him. You ask who is him by knowing a-priori that he didn't know what he was talking about. That is, you knew who he was by having done a prior analysis of his writing.
In that case, the question is not "who is he", but "why should I spend time dissecting what he wrote if he has a track record of being off the tracks?" This can still be at risk of becoming an unwarranted ad-hominem, but at least there is a measure of objectivity. This is completely different from the arrogance displayed in the AC's post I originally replied to.
Just who in the fuck is Brian Proffitt? Up until now, I'd never heard of him. I can't think of any open source software project he's worked on, or even helped lead.
Maybe I'm just ignorant about his accomplishments. If so, please inform me of them. Otherwise, can somebody tell me why I should care what he has to say about this, or anything else?
He's a tech journalist, which by itself doesn't say if he's technically capable or not. And that, technical capacity is not a function of one's visible/publicized/recognized technical accomplishments in the field in question. There are tons and tons of people out there that have never contributed to, say the Linux kernel or the GCC toolchain, but who, by usage, observation and/or academic expertise (any combination thereof) can tell any random /.er how that shit works.
Your post smacks of arrogance (as it pairs the possible validity of the argument to YOU knowing the author - I mean who are you?). Secondly, your statement has a pedestrian, juvenile ad-hominem'ey nature. One would think /.ers who think themselves acutely intellectual would recognize it as such.
You don't attack a position by saying "who is this?". You do so by asking "what is this", by analyzing the merits of the arguments being written.
If the sole measure of an argument's worthiness of your time is whether the person who makes it is a publicly accomplished figure, then man, you should go tell Muhammad Ali that he was wrong for using Angelo Dundee (who learned the trade of boxing training and being a corner man by being a "bucket boy".) Or you should go tell countless of MMA fighters not to train with Eddie Bravo (who has no MMA record.)
Strategists and analysts (even in the ethereal fields of software journalism) are not necessarily made from being in the trenches or for having delivered an opus dei recognized by the fanboi masses. To pretend otherwise is just arrogance and an inability to argue a piece's worth without having to rely on ad hominem.
I mean for all we know, Proffitt's work is shit, or people feeds him stuff that he then publicizes on his name. But you don't get to that conclusion by saying "who the fuck he is", but by saying "let me try to be a little bit intelligent and analyze this thing if it makes sense or not."
If you don't have the time to do that, why do you bother asking "who the fuck is he". I mean, who the fuck are you to feel the necessity to say that? That's just being embarrassingly childish and sadly spiteful.
Pen and paper, combined with relentless phone calls will eventually get you the contact you seek.
And what's the ultimate goal? To build an aircraft that goes faster than the previous ones? With enough money you can always best the previous record, but after a while it becomes pointless, just like those record speed cars that are basically just a rocket on wheels. This is basically just a rocket on wings.
Get to LEO with an air-breathing engine?
If Anonymous/LulzSec, etc. does it against an American company, then they're heroes here on /. This guy does it against Iranian businesses and he's a villain.
I agree with you on this, Evil is as Evil does regardless of where it does it.
Slashdot posters are typically full of it, but I have never seen a situation where Anon/LulzSec get generally praised in /. for dumping millions of American bank user accounts info to the plain web for all to see. Citations plz?
Nobody's making him out to be a hero, but tossing all the blame on him is a cop out. "Poor helpless banks were victimized by no good hacker"... that misses the entire point, which should be that security needs to be fixed.
I'm not sure how you logically derived that line above that you wrote from what the other AC posted (and which you were replying to):
Sorry, the banks are negligent and should be hauled over coals for this, but that makes him the fucking villain of it.
Damn, their shit is explosive!
Time will tell if this was a fatal blunder or not.
Responding to myself, on second thought, this might be a very Machiavelian answer. Can't wait to see how the whole enchilada unravels.
"Among the highlights emanating from U.S. District Court in San Francisco courtroom 8 today was Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's response to a question regarding the status of the Java programming language, which his company acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010. Asked by Google's lead attorney, Robert Van Nest, if the Java language is free, Ellison was slow to respond. Judge William Alsup pushed Ellison to answer with a yes or no. As ZDNet reporter Rachel King observed in the courtroom, Ellison resisted and huffed, 'I don't know.'"
I find it incredible that Larry Ellison wasn't prepared for a question like that. It is one of the crucial questions around Java 0 in some ways (.ie. usage) it is free, in other ways (.ie. language spec, the trademarked name) it is not. For all the love or hate towards this person, Ellison is a very sharp individual, so it is really baffling that he wasn't prepared for this question at all.
Time will tell if this was a fatal blunder or not.
when you go for a "business" or "acquintance" lunch.. do you ask everyone to sign nda's right there and then? I bet not. that's what this is about..
You don't discuss NDA-stuff over lunch.
It would be very hard to visualize a 300-line long spagetti wall-of-text-function ;)
Not much harder then visualizing 300 line long functions (plus one more to glue them together).
This IDE sounds all exciting as long as you're working on a program that displays "Hey Chris!", not so much if you think of larger projects.
You are missing the point (the one about size of unit of code and complexity): A system consisting of 300-line long functions/methods/proc/anything is a PITA to work with. Yes, it could be visualized, but it will be of little help to the poor soul that happens to inherit such a system.
Or maybe I am misunderstanding the point you are trying to make. I'm being honest, we could be talking about completely different things.
So, that is the trick, in the delivery of the concept. But the concept itself, it is not computationally impossible, not even with a PL where textual order matters.
Responding/adding to my self:
1. Why does the screen shots have to sample LISP code? :)
2. Tools like this *might* enforce people to functions and methods that are smaller, with lower cyclomatic complexity and with better composition, cohesion and structure. It would be very hard to visualize a 300-line long spagetti wall-of-text-function ;)
In C++, textual order matters.
Which would (and can) still be retained in the underlying source code files. The visual representation at the IDE level *does not have* to be viz-a-viz with actual physical textual ordering of definitions and declarations.
How to get that in a useful manner, that's another question. After all, tools and enviroments like VB, VFP and PowerBuilder attempted to show code in snippets as opposed to walls of text. Attempted they did and the results were mixed. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it got in the way.
So, that is the trick, in the delivery of the concept. But the concept itself, it is not computationally impossible, not even with a PL where textual order matters.