ANd why would they want to add the complexity and fragility of multiple apps? And the extra time to do cross-app communication in a time sensitive (you need all your suggestions within milliseconds of tapping a key or you appear lagged) environment. The idea is fucking idiotic.
If you want to complain that Swype should provide a setting, I agree. If you want to complain that Android should provide per-app permissions out of the gate, I agree. But if you really expect people to jump through hoops writing a dozen apps that would need to be individually downloaded so that each provides a minimum of permissions despite having an exponential increase in complexity, you're insane. You can't realistically develop like that.
Yeah. Now in the real world multi-lingual users don't want to download multiple keyboards and switch between them, and if you release multiple keyboards with multiple feature sets you just have an organization nightmare that will confuse users. Plus you seem unprofessional- what app on your phone or your computer can't just download needed extensions automatically when you hit the install button for the feature? Nothing made in the last 10 years.
Funny, my experience is the exact opposite- when the business takes over development slows to a crawl, productivity plummets because you're now dealing with corporate BS, decisions by committee and "stakeholders", and the culture turns to shit not because it's less of a party but because nobody gives a fuck at large corporations about anything but not getting fired.
You may want to try resetting user data for the app. If for some reason your frequency data got corrupted, this would be a symptom. Of course, then you lose your library of added words.
Former Swype dev- it was originally released on Windows Mobile. It was ported to a variety of other platforms, including Android (obviously its biggest success), Symbian, and Meego.
It doesn't change your language setting. It adds words. For example, last week I was in Barcelona. A popular tourist destination is the cathedral "Sagrada Familia". Neither of those words are in English. Both were added to my dictionary automatically. It was helpful, as I did type them into my phone to access the website and buy tickets (rather than wait in a 2 hour long line). It's a useful feature, although not something that makes or breaks a keyboard.
As it should be. I don't want any company deciding what I can and can't download. Apple has been shown multiple times to stomp down on free speech or any app that they decide is to close to what they already do destroying competition (or worse, anything they plan to do soon, which they've used as a reason to pull apps several times). The app store should be a delivery man, not a decider on content. The only thing it should be screening for is malware.
Disclosure: I worked at Swype 2 years ago. I left 6 months after the buyout. At that time we didn't make any requests for location.
However, I am currently on a trip to Europe, and I use Swype. It definitely added place names (Catalunya or Palau would not be in a native english dictionary, but were swypable for me in Barcelona). It was a useful feature. There should definitely be a way to turn it off, and doing so should stop it from requesting any location information. But the explanation is reasonable.
Then again, I think Android in general needs to be more granular with permissions- I should be able to turn on and off permissions by app, and the OS should return a reasonable default or throw an exception if the permission isn't granted.
Dictionary updates can't be bundled when you have 80+ languages of over 1 MB each. OEMs and consumers complain about apk size already, and different languages will be updated at different rates. You don't want to make everyone download a new version because hinglish was updated (yes, that's a real language). Thus downloads from the internet.
Reading contacts- It suggests my contact's names a fair amount of the time. Of course I have a lot of non-english names in my contact list. The false positive rate is fairly low here. It's a useful but non-critical feature. The problem is that every other keyboard does it, so if Swype didn't it would look worse in comparison.
USB storage- this is really your micro-SD storage. ANd yes, it has to use it. Private directory data is limited on Android. The limits are per-device and not known in advance. But if a user downloads a bunch of dictionaries, they will easily go over the limit. Thus it puts them on the SD card. Look at your SD card and you'll see damn near every Android app of any size does this.
I'm only in my mid-30s, but I've worked at 2 startups with a successful exit, and am currently at a 3rd. Both of the successful ones had older programmers (the new one doesn't because it's tiny. When we hire next older programmers will be considered). They were all respected for their contribution at work. Both startups had some of the "startup atmosphere", but there was never more than friendly invitations to join in, rather than pressure to be there. If you want to join in once in a while you'd likely be welcome, and a beer with your colleagues every few weeks can be a great way to lower tensions (or in my case a soda as I watched them drink).
The main thing is to remember to treat the younger people with respect. At a startup you'll likely hire a lot of young people because they're cheap, especially for non-critical roles. Remember that they're young, not stupid (at least most of them)- show them why they're wrong politely and show them why your way is better respectfully. There's great opportunities for mentorship there. Do that and you'll fit in just fine. You may even make friends with the more mature younger people- the age difference tends not to be as big a deal as people think.
The trick to wearables is not to have a UI. Everyone has a powerful computer with a great UI in their pocket. Wearables should leverage that by providing absolute minimal controls (no more than 1 or 2 buttons/knobs, no more than a small digital watch like display) and should transmit their data to the users phone via BLE. Then an app on the phone should provide more advanced control and display of results. The value of wearables is in providing additional sensors for apps, not in UI.
Because Civ is a single player game. It isn't meant for multiplayer, and multiplayer has always been a terrible experience. I'd prefer if they dropped it entirely and spent more time on polishing the AI or released it earlier. Because they shove in a half baked multiplayer we get a worse game.
Yeah, your post is pretty much bullshit. A CS degree from Harvard isn't worth anything more than any other college. They aren't known for their science or engineering program. One from MIT is worth more due to their reputation in the field, but no more so than a couple of other top schools like UC-Berkley or UIUC which are public (or Stanford which isn't)..
Basically there's 3 tiers of degrees. The elite CS schools (about the top 5-6) earn bonus points, but more is expected from you. Then there's a middle tier of about a dozen schools with a good reputation but not up to the elite. It may help you get to an interview, but gives you no bonus points once there. Everything else just lumps together in the yes he has a degree box.
Please note that online degrees, MOOC certs, University of Phoenix type schools, fall under no degree at all.
Maybe a better analogy than jail would be foster system. We need to take the company away from mommy and daddy for a little while (or forever) because they weren't responsible parents, and give it to someone who will follow the law.
The problem is that there's no way to do that with the current short term management techniques and high CxO salaries. If they get away with it for 1 year and make 10-20 million, which the lawsuits can't touch, they don't care. We need to change the corporate veil so it protects small investors but not those who run the company day to day.
Depends on if you care. Most likely these employees are talented programmers, and the hiring environment is good right now. For those who have a bit of money set aside losing their job is an inconvenience at worst, a nice vacation at best. Especially if they were smart enough to start shipping resumes as they took their stand.
Designers who don't code are worthless. They make horrible solutions because they're too separated from the actual problems with their designs. Senior devs should be designing, but they should still be coding most of their own designs.
Like I said- there's exceptions. Maybe you're one of them, I can't tell as I don't know you. But you'd need to prove you were an exception in the interview, because most of the people who stay that long have stagnated.
I stick by 3 months though. That's plenty of time to learn the system, if it takes longer than that you aren't really trying. If it takes you a year (as a senior, not as an intermediate or junior), you've been let go by that time. Of course your experience could be biased in some ways- the best engineers I know would avoid the kind of place where you work on 1 system for 5 years, so you may be looking at a lower overall talent pool.
May I pass up on some good talent because of this? Maybe. But I'm not particularly worried about it- passing up on a good hire is a less harmful mistake than making a bad hire. Besides which, the few exceptions that I'd miss aren't looking for new jobs anyway. And they probably wouldn't be happy at the type of company I prefer.
One other comment, I forgot in my original reply. Each year of experience doing the same thing brings diminishing returns. By branching out and doing other things, you learn additional skills and tricks that are used in other fields. I've done firmware, web services, mobile software, porting, etc in my career. I can bring knowledge from one field to bear on another. Someone who's moved has seen a variety of business practices, protocols, and development practices while someone who's stayed in place likely hasn't. So 10 years of mixed experience will very likely just be a better programmer than 10 years of staying in place.
I use that method of subtraction today, and have since grade school. I just typically do it in reverse- figure out what numbers I need to add to the smaller number to make the bigger number, and typically with larger numbers. Its a solid way of doing the math, there's no reason it shouldn't be taught to them.
I agree that the term shouldn't be taught to them. Its something educators should know so they can discuss techniques. Although you will find that term in a lot of math textbooks these days.
I see 10 years of experience as a valuable thing, you've been around long enough to see a lot of mistakes and know to avoid them. 10 years in one place isn't- you're likely stuck in your ways. The fact that you were willing to do the same job for 10 years shows a lack of ambition or mental curiosity in other realms in the field of programming.
In fact your post proves me right. "Stable job" "all the way to retirement". You're looking for safe over interesting, over doing something worthwhile. Those aren't the types of companies I would even interview at, and not the type of programmer I'd hire. You're even looking at it in terms of doing it for a salary increase- my last job change was a pay cut to go to a startup. Not because I expect to become rich (I know that at best I'll break even), but because its more interesting, more fun, an idea that could really make things better, and I have more leeway to do things how I want and define how this company runs. You might be technically competent, but unlikely to be a culture fit.
And ignoring the culture fit part- most people I know who want safety that much require it because they're average to below average and don't want to risk being on the job market, and depend on institutional knowledge to be useful. There's a few exceptions, but I'd say that goes for 80-90% of them. I wouldn't refuse to interview someone like that to see if they are the exception, but it would be a yellow flag and I'd need to be convinced otherwise in the interview to give them an offer.
I don't care if you have a bear or not, it doesn't effect your ability to code. Same with the hair cut. As or the suit- if you need to try and impress me with how you dress, I assume its because you can't impress me with your code. You can overcome that, but it won't help you and may hurt you.
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ANd why would they want to add the complexity and fragility of multiple apps? And the extra time to do cross-app communication in a time sensitive (you need all your suggestions within milliseconds of tapping a key or you appear lagged) environment. The idea is fucking idiotic.
If you want to complain that Swype should provide a setting, I agree. If you want to complain that Android should provide per-app permissions out of the gate, I agree. But if you really expect people to jump through hoops writing a dozen apps that would need to be individually downloaded so that each provides a minimum of permissions despite having an exponential increase in complexity, you're insane. You can't realistically develop like that.
Yeah. Now in the real world multi-lingual users don't want to download multiple keyboards and switch between them, and if you release multiple keyboards with multiple feature sets you just have an organization nightmare that will confuse users. Plus you seem unprofessional- what app on your phone or your computer can't just download needed extensions automatically when you hit the install button for the feature? Nothing made in the last 10 years.
Funny, my experience is the exact opposite- when the business takes over development slows to a crawl, productivity plummets because you're now dealing with corporate BS, decisions by committee and "stakeholders", and the culture turns to shit not because it's less of a party but because nobody gives a fuck at large corporations about anything but not getting fired.
You may want to try resetting user data for the app. If for some reason your frequency data got corrupted, this would be a symptom. Of course, then you lose your library of added words.
Former Swype dev- it was originally released on Windows Mobile. It was ported to a variety of other platforms, including Android (obviously its biggest success), Symbian, and Meego.
It doesn't change your language setting. It adds words. For example, last week I was in Barcelona. A popular tourist destination is the cathedral "Sagrada Familia". Neither of those words are in English. Both were added to my dictionary automatically. It was helpful, as I did type them into my phone to access the website and buy tickets (rather than wait in a 2 hour long line). It's a useful feature, although not something that makes or breaks a keyboard.
As it should be. I don't want any company deciding what I can and can't download. Apple has been shown multiple times to stomp down on free speech or any app that they decide is to close to what they already do destroying competition (or worse, anything they plan to do soon, which they've used as a reason to pull apps several times). The app store should be a delivery man, not a decider on content. The only thing it should be screening for is malware.
Disclosure: I worked at Swype 2 years ago. I left 6 months after the buyout. At that time we didn't make any requests for location.
However, I am currently on a trip to Europe, and I use Swype. It definitely added place names (Catalunya or Palau would not be in a native english dictionary, but were swypable for me in Barcelona). It was a useful feature. There should definitely be a way to turn it off, and doing so should stop it from requesting any location information. But the explanation is reasonable.
Then again, I think Android in general needs to be more granular with permissions- I should be able to turn on and off permissions by app, and the OS should return a reasonable default or throw an exception if the permission isn't granted.
You're wrong on a lot of levels.
Dictionary updates can't be bundled when you have 80+ languages of over 1 MB each. OEMs and consumers complain about apk size already, and different languages will be updated at different rates. You don't want to make everyone download a new version because hinglish was updated (yes, that's a real language). Thus downloads from the internet.
Reading contacts- It suggests my contact's names a fair amount of the time. Of course I have a lot of non-english names in my contact list. The false positive rate is fairly low here. It's a useful but non-critical feature. The problem is that every other keyboard does it, so if Swype didn't it would look worse in comparison.
USB storage- this is really your micro-SD storage. ANd yes, it has to use it. Private directory data is limited on Android. The limits are per-device and not known in advance. But if a user downloads a bunch of dictionaries, they will easily go over the limit. Thus it puts them on the SD card. Look at your SD card and you'll see damn near every Android app of any size does this.
I'm only in my mid-30s, but I've worked at 2 startups with a successful exit, and am currently at a 3rd. Both of the successful ones had older programmers (the new one doesn't because it's tiny. When we hire next older programmers will be considered). They were all respected for their contribution at work. Both startups had some of the "startup atmosphere", but there was never more than friendly invitations to join in, rather than pressure to be there. If you want to join in once in a while you'd likely be welcome, and a beer with your colleagues every few weeks can be a great way to lower tensions (or in my case a soda as I watched them drink).
The main thing is to remember to treat the younger people with respect. At a startup you'll likely hire a lot of young people because they're cheap, especially for non-critical roles. Remember that they're young, not stupid (at least most of them)- show them why they're wrong politely and show them why your way is better respectfully. There's great opportunities for mentorship there. Do that and you'll fit in just fine. You may even make friends with the more mature younger people- the age difference tends not to be as big a deal as people think.
Unless its a late stage startup, there's unlikely to be room for an architect role. Leadership roles yes, but not a dedicated architect.
The data gets off it via bluetooth to a more powerful device. So yes, no UI at all.
The trick to wearables is not to have a UI. Everyone has a powerful computer with a great UI in their pocket. Wearables should leverage that by providing absolute minimal controls (no more than 1 or 2 buttons/knobs, no more than a small digital watch like display) and should transmit their data to the users phone via BLE. Then an app on the phone should provide more advanced control and display of results. The value of wearables is in providing additional sensors for apps, not in UI.
Because Civ is a single player game. It isn't meant for multiplayer, and multiplayer has always been a terrible experience. I'd prefer if they dropped it entirely and spent more time on polishing the AI or released it earlier. Because they shove in a half baked multiplayer we get a worse game.
Yeah, your post is pretty much bullshit. A CS degree from Harvard isn't worth anything more than any other college. They aren't known for their science or engineering program. One from MIT is worth more due to their reputation in the field, but no more so than a couple of other top schools like UC-Berkley or UIUC which are public (or Stanford which isn't)..
Basically there's 3 tiers of degrees. The elite CS schools (about the top 5-6) earn bonus points, but more is expected from you. Then there's a middle tier of about a dozen schools with a good reputation but not up to the elite. It may help you get to an interview, but gives you no bonus points once there. Everything else just lumps together in the yes he has a degree box.
Please note that online degrees, MOOC certs, University of Phoenix type schools, fall under no degree at all.
Maybe a better analogy than jail would be foster system. We need to take the company away from mommy and daddy for a little while (or forever) because they weren't responsible parents, and give it to someone who will follow the law.
This april fools is believable.
The problem is that there's no way to do that with the current short term management techniques and high CxO salaries. If they get away with it for 1 year and make 10-20 million, which the lawsuits can't touch, they don't care. We need to change the corporate veil so it protects small investors but not those who run the company day to day.
Depends on if you care. Most likely these employees are talented programmers, and the hiring environment is good right now. For those who have a bit of money set aside losing their job is an inconvenience at worst, a nice vacation at best. Especially if they were smart enough to start shipping resumes as they took their stand.
Designers who don't code are worthless. They make horrible solutions because they're too separated from the actual problems with their designs. Senior devs should be designing, but they should still be coding most of their own designs.
Like I said- there's exceptions. Maybe you're one of them, I can't tell as I don't know you. But you'd need to prove you were an exception in the interview, because most of the people who stay that long have stagnated.
I stick by 3 months though. That's plenty of time to learn the system, if it takes longer than that you aren't really trying. If it takes you a year (as a senior, not as an intermediate or junior), you've been let go by that time. Of course your experience could be biased in some ways- the best engineers I know would avoid the kind of place where you work on 1 system for 5 years, so you may be looking at a lower overall talent pool.
May I pass up on some good talent because of this? Maybe. But I'm not particularly worried about it- passing up on a good hire is a less harmful mistake than making a bad hire. Besides which, the few exceptions that I'd miss aren't looking for new jobs anyway. And they probably wouldn't be happy at the type of company I prefer.
One other comment, I forgot in my original reply. Each year of experience doing the same thing brings diminishing returns. By branching out and doing other things, you learn additional skills and tricks that are used in other fields. I've done firmware, web services, mobile software, porting, etc in my career. I can bring knowledge from one field to bear on another. Someone who's moved has seen a variety of business practices, protocols, and development practices while someone who's stayed in place likely hasn't. So 10 years of mixed experience will very likely just be a better programmer than 10 years of staying in place.
I use that method of subtraction today, and have since grade school. I just typically do it in reverse- figure out what numbers I need to add to the smaller number to make the bigger number, and typically with larger numbers. Its a solid way of doing the math, there's no reason it shouldn't be taught to them.
I agree that the term shouldn't be taught to them. Its something educators should know so they can discuss techniques. Although you will find that term in a lot of math textbooks these days.
I see 10 years of experience as a valuable thing, you've been around long enough to see a lot of mistakes and know to avoid them. 10 years in one place isn't- you're likely stuck in your ways. The fact that you were willing to do the same job for 10 years shows a lack of ambition or mental curiosity in other realms in the field of programming.
In fact your post proves me right. "Stable job" "all the way to retirement". You're looking for safe over interesting, over doing something worthwhile. Those aren't the types of companies I would even interview at, and not the type of programmer I'd hire. You're even looking at it in terms of doing it for a salary increase- my last job change was a pay cut to go to a startup. Not because I expect to become rich (I know that at best I'll break even), but because its more interesting, more fun, an idea that could really make things better, and I have more leeway to do things how I want and define how this company runs. You might be technically competent, but unlikely to be a culture fit.
And ignoring the culture fit part- most people I know who want safety that much require it because they're average to below average and don't want to risk being on the job market, and depend on institutional knowledge to be useful. There's a few exceptions, but I'd say that goes for 80-90% of them. I wouldn't refuse to interview someone like that to see if they are the exception, but it would be a yellow flag and I'd need to be convinced otherwise in the interview to give them an offer.
Horrible advice.
I don't care if you have a bear or not, it doesn't effect your ability to code. Same with the hair cut. As or the suit- if you need to try and impress me with how you dress, I assume its because you can't impress me with your code. You can overcome that, but it won't help you and may hurt you.