This is not an issue that plagues OSS, it is one that has been present in every workplace in the world. Who has ever worked in an environment where everyone agreed all the time? I personally left a company after disagreeing with some of the stances taken by a manager of mine, and that was in the closed source, commercial world.
The only difference I see is that given the nature of OSS the players tend to have some very strong feelings about the subject material or they wouldn't have started the project to begin with. No one would undertake a project for zero pay, long hours, and constant hand (and brain) cramps just out of the good nature of their heart. They start they projects because they feel they need the tool at hand. When others join the cause, the goals of the project migrate with the masses; which is not always the exact direction the founder may have envisioned.
Given the founders original vision of the project, and the nature of OSS being so visable and publicized today, any falling out amoungst the developers is going to be louder than a closed source model.
But to sum it up; this happens everywhere, it is just that it is more visable for public projects!
I love my external firewire writer, the only negative I have about it is that external drives have their own powersupply and cooling and combined with the noise of the drive, it gets quite LOUD.
I used to use EditPlus as well and it is a decent editor but hasn't advanced in the slightest in 4 years...
Then I switched to Kawa, but that hasn't advanced much lately either...Also, now it is being cut by the company that bought the application (well, they aquired it as part of the Allaire purchase)... no more Kawa.
Then I switched to NetBeans (the open source basis for Sun's Forte) and it is a very nice IDE with all the features and since it is open source, it gets updated daily. They are also getting close to a new release (version 3.3 is in beta right now).
But when all is said and done, I think I rely most on vim. The new features of Vim 6.0 are awesome and let's face it, sometimes the most productive editors are those that you know the best and are the simplest. Since it is built for almost any platform, there is no excuse and with a little tweaking you can get it to do almost anything that the big IDEs do (I'm not quite sure how to get the code completion going, anyone know if there is a plugin that will do this for you???) The smart indentation and tabbing combined with abbreviations means it is the most productive editor in the repotiore.
I have to disagree -- there is always something interesting to do at just about every company out there. Just like everything in life, you get out of it what you put into it. My experiences in undergrad were different than the original poster's; I had a great time! But regardless, like I said, everything in life is what you make of it. If you look at every assignment as ditch digging (and don't get me wrong, a lot of tasks are exactly that if left as is) if you apply a different solution to a problem the otherwise boring can become quite another thing indeed.
Also, don't forget that there are chances to step out of the mold at every corner in the work force. If you see a problem that looks interesting, by all means, take the initiative to resolve it and derive you fun from the job in that way. If you just take a list of requirements and implement the barebones and don't push the envelope a little here and there, then yes, the job can be excruciatingly boring. But, that is true for every job!
In my oppinion, there isn't another job on the planet that is nearly as exciting as software. Finding the perfect architecture or framework for the problem or squashing that pesky bug that no one else in your group could figure out or coding something faster or better than the next engineer is sometimes reward enough and makes every day more interesting.
Also, don't forget that CS is a never ending road of new discoveries. I have been working in the industry for almost 7 years now and each week brings with it the next new thing. Learning about it and then applying that knowledge (if applicable) makes the day-to-day of the job new.
I just can't imagine doing my wife's job -- crunching numbers in the finance department and cutting payroll checks sounds something akin to torture to me. How about my father's job of selling construction -- where your salary depends on a never ending task of talking someone into buying something. If you don't sell, you don't get paid. Ick. Not to mention all the labor jobs out there where once you get old, there is no longer a job for you.
No thanks, I'll stick to the best job in the world!
I can't help laughing, sitting here at my desk reading this article. It reminds me too much about that story about the MIT AI lab where they built the robot arm to swat ping-pong balls and then Minsky walked into the lap and nearly got brained by the robot arm thinking his shiny head was a ping-pong ball.
I'm still laughing.
Does this sound like a somewhat trivial problem to solve in the field of robotics? Haven't they been doing this for a while?
How long do you suppose it will be before Loki takes the big plunge into in-house game development from scratch?
What they have accomplished (and the quality of the end product) is amazing -- I would just like to know from Loki themselves whether they plan on ever producing a game of their own. It seems to me that this would be the next logical step...
Suppose it is time for a patented Ask Loki question and answer session by Slashdot?
While going to school, I had the same question. This is my take in a nutshell: Figure out what it is you really like about computers, let that decide for you.
I started out as a Computer Engineer but changed to Computer Science after a semester because I found I had the most fun when programming. The electrical engineering portion of computer engineering was boring to me because I found that it was more fun to "tinker" with software immediately and see the effects. I got the same thrill of creating something whether it was software or hardware but I got to do it immediately with software -- I didn't have to wait until I was a junior or senior before I got to create something for real.
You should just figure out what is fun for you and chose it. There is a huge difference between creating software and creating hardware. Although either major gives you the chance to land the same job after school, it is getting through the long hours of homework and four (five? six?) years of undergrad that is the more challenging...
One last issue as well -- it depends on some of the other classes as well. If you have no problems taking some boring engineering sciences classes (Thermo, Dynamics, E+M) or any of the prereq. math classes (Differential Equations) then go for computer engineering, it is a tough major in both schools since it combines electrical engineering and computer science. I certainly notice the difference in the two majors when I hire young employees...
Also, I believe that the waving of the flag is based on some chaos algorithm in that it was totally random. A slick peice of programming for a small easter egg.
Having been a developer out there for a few years, I can give this perspective -- developing the easter egg is fun. There isn't often chances in your career where you can actually play at work. Closed source programs don't give most developers the chance to give themselves credit for creating -- easter eggs allow this, even if they are unsanctioned by the company that is creating the software. One of the products we developed had an easter egg that included pictures of the three developers that would flash up on the screen. It was great.:-)
It is a shame that this egg was removed when Jobs returned to Apple and decided to put a more business type attitude to Applet software.
Additionally, Before this easter egg, you used to be able to play pong in earlier versions of the OS.
I just went through a public offering last fall myself. I know from my situation a few things that might be useful:
Get the share price on paper. Get the company to justify that price.
Ask around what a standard grant is at the company in question. I was told when I joined the company I currently work for that when I joined (6 months before IPO) that my shares would most likely be around $8. After joining the company, those same shares (1000) were granted to me at a whopping $18.90 -- a much different than my expectations. Later, the company went public at $11/share. Effectively making my options worth nothing until the stock price climbed to above my grant price.
Know the math.
I know this sounds stupid, but work the price out on paper. A standard approach by employers is the Here is a $30,000 in stock options that could make you a millionaire. That same $30,000 might actually be signifigantly less under normal circumstances. A grant of $5/share * 1000 shares = $5000 that you have to put up front to get the stocks you are vested in. The company may believe that they can warrant a $30/share price (which is reasonable), hence the $30,000 estimate. The real world is a little more complicated: The real price in the above example is $30,000 - $5,000 = $25,000. Granted, in this example, that is a nice investment. If you only plan on staying with that company for two years (assuming 4 year vesting period) and will only get vested in 50% of those stocks.
Have realistic expectations. Red Hat and VA Linux are exceptions to the rule.
Although we have all been amazed (or maybe not very surprised) by the spectacular success recently of Red Hat and VA, these companies are most definately exceptions to the rule. While the tech industry was surprised when the IPO's of these companies were as successful as they were, the investment community was dumbfounded. Most companies IPO somewhere between $10-$20 a share and generally open around that price or slightly above before settling near the IPO price. That is because CFO's and investment bankers aren't dumb and will have a good feeling for what the company can support for a stock price.
There is no garentee with stock options.
As stated previously, it is a great gamble and can pay off immensely but it is not money in the bank. Keep your whits when examing a company based on possible stock options. One company offerred me 10,000 shares @ ~.30 share while another offerred me 1000 @ ~$18 and I took the $18 for several reasons. First, while the first company's offer was certainly better given just those figures, you have to look at the time frame involved. Company A wanted to go public eventually but it would not likely happen for at least 5 years. Company B was on the verge of an IPO (it happened 6 months later) and was much more of a sure thing. Five years versus 6 months was a great selling point. Also, be aware that most companies will never go public! Either they will go under or will never have the earnings or size to support itself in public trading.
Know your taxes and the tax laws of your state and federal goverment.
Be acutely aware of short term versus long term capitol gains. Consult a CPA if you are really unsure of the financial implications of stocks. Believe me, there are many. Short term capitol gains will impact the bottom dollar quite a bit. In the above example I gave, the above $25,000 ($30,000 in market price minus $5,000 to buy the options) you would actually receive around $15,000 (this will vary depending on your state) if you sold in the first year. That same $25,000 will be worth $20,000 if you wait more than one year after buying your vested options before selling them. Believe me, it gets worse. People make careers out of fiddling with these numbers.
I hope some of this helps. Be aware, I am a developer not a CPA or business person or upper management so take everything above and research your own answers and apply it to your situation.
Slashdot Mirror
- A Vacation
- More caffiene
- A Suntan
- Lose 20 pounds
- No more hand cramps
- A raise
- No more eye strain
- An empty bug list
- A caffeine detox center.
Damn, I just realized I am a developer.But ultimately, I'm just glad I still have my job.
Microstar makes some motherboards using cool colors...
Check out this board for single Athlons or this board for single P4's.
The font page has some more examples as well.
This is not an issue that plagues OSS, it is one that has been present in every workplace in the world. Who has ever worked in an environment where everyone agreed all the time? I personally left a company after disagreeing with some of the stances taken by a manager of mine, and that was in the closed source, commercial world.
The only difference I see is that given the nature of OSS the players tend to have some very strong feelings about the subject material or they wouldn't have started the project to begin with. No one would undertake a project for zero pay, long hours, and constant hand (and brain) cramps just out of the good nature of their heart. They start they projects because they feel they need the tool at hand. When others join the cause, the goals of the project migrate with the masses; which is not always the exact direction the founder may have envisioned.
Given the founders original vision of the project, and the nature of OSS being so visable and publicized today, any falling out amoungst the developers is going to be louder than a closed source model.
But to sum it up; this happens everywhere, it is just that it is more visable for public projects!
I love my external firewire writer, the only negative I have about it is that external drives have their own powersupply and cooling and combined with the noise of the drive, it gets quite LOUD.
I used to use EditPlus as well and it is a decent editor but hasn't advanced in the slightest in 4 years...
Then I switched to Kawa, but that hasn't advanced much lately either...Also, now it is being cut by the company that bought the application (well, they aquired it as part of the Allaire purchase)... no more Kawa.
Then I switched to NetBeans (the open source basis for Sun's Forte) and it is a very nice IDE with all the features and since it is open source, it gets updated daily. They are also getting close to a new release (version 3.3 is in beta right now).
But when all is said and done, I think I rely most on vim. The new features of Vim 6.0 are awesome and let's face it, sometimes the most productive editors are those that you know the best and are the simplest. Since it is built for almost any platform, there is no excuse and with a little tweaking you can get it to do almost anything that the big IDEs do (I'm not quite sure how to get the code completion going, anyone know if there is a plugin that will do this for you???) The smart indentation and tabbing combined with abbreviations means it is the most productive editor in the repotiore.
Good luck!
You're the coolest.
Now, as a stock holder... should I sell or should I hold out and hope for that Via buy out???
This is the story of my portfolio. I still haven't managed to recover from my Lucent losses!!!
I have to disagree -- there is always something interesting to do at just about every company out there. Just like everything in life, you get out of it what you put into it. My experiences in undergrad were different than the original poster's; I had a great time! But regardless, like I said, everything in life is what you make of it. If you look at every assignment as ditch digging (and don't get me wrong, a lot of tasks are exactly that if left as is) if you apply a different solution to a problem the otherwise boring can become quite another thing indeed.
Also, don't forget that there are chances to step out of the mold at every corner in the work force. If you see a problem that looks interesting, by all means, take the initiative to resolve it and derive you fun from the job in that way. If you just take a list of requirements and implement the barebones and don't push the envelope a little here and there, then yes, the job can be excruciatingly boring. But, that is true for every job!
In my oppinion, there isn't another job on the planet that is nearly as exciting as software. Finding the perfect architecture or framework for the problem or squashing that pesky bug that no one else in your group could figure out or coding something faster or better than the next engineer is sometimes reward enough and makes every day more interesting.
Also, don't forget that CS is a never ending road of new discoveries. I have been working in the industry for almost 7 years now and each week brings with it the next new thing. Learning about it and then applying that knowledge (if applicable) makes the day-to-day of the job new.
I just can't imagine doing my wife's job -- crunching numbers in the finance department and cutting payroll checks sounds something akin to torture to me. How about my father's job of selling construction -- where your salary depends on a never ending task of talking someone into buying something. If you don't sell, you don't get paid. Ick. Not to mention all the labor jobs out there where once you get old, there is no longer a job for you.
No thanks, I'll stick to the best job in the world!
It is from Steven Levy's classic, Hackers. This is the best link I could find to the text, Enjoy!!!
I can't help laughing, sitting here at my desk reading this article. It reminds me too much about that story about the MIT AI lab where they built the robot arm to swat ping-pong balls and then Minsky walked into the lap and nearly got brained by the robot arm thinking his shiny head was a ping-pong ball.
I'm still laughing.
Does this sound like a somewhat trivial problem to solve in the field of robotics? Haven't they been doing this for a while?
How long do you suppose it will be before Loki takes the big plunge into in-house game development from scratch?
What they have accomplished (and the quality of the end product) is amazing -- I would just like to know from Loki themselves whether they plan on ever producing a game of their own. It seems to me that this would be the next logical step...
Suppose it is time for a patented Ask Loki question and answer session by Slashdot?
While going to school, I had the same question. This is my take in a nutshell: Figure out what it is you really like about computers, let that decide for you.
I started out as a Computer Engineer but changed to Computer Science after a semester because I found I had the most fun when programming. The electrical engineering portion of computer engineering was boring to me because I found that it was more fun to "tinker" with software immediately and see the effects. I got the same thrill of creating something whether it was software or hardware but I got to do it immediately with software -- I didn't have to wait until I was a junior or senior before I got to create something for real.
You should just figure out what is fun for you and chose it. There is a huge difference between creating software and creating hardware. Although either major gives you the chance to land the same job after school, it is getting through the long hours of homework and four (five? six?) years of undergrad that is the more challenging...
One last issue as well -- it depends on some of the other classes as well. If you have no problems taking some boring engineering sciences classes (Thermo, Dynamics, E+M) or any of the prereq. math classes (Differential Equations) then go for computer engineering, it is a tough major in both schools since it combines electrical engineering and computer science. I certainly notice the difference in the two majors when I hire young employees...
Also, I believe that the waving of the flag is based on some chaos algorithm in that it was totally random. A slick peice of programming for a small easter egg.
:-)
Having been a developer out there for a few years, I can give this perspective -- developing the easter egg is fun. There isn't often chances in your career where you can actually play at work. Closed source programs don't give most developers the chance to give themselves credit for creating -- easter eggs allow this, even if they are unsanctioned by the company that is creating the software. One of the products we developed had an easter egg that included pictures of the three developers that would flash up on the screen. It was great.
It is a shame that this egg was removed when Jobs returned to Apple and decided to put a more business type attitude to Applet software.
Additionally, Before this easter egg, you used to be able to play pong in earlier versions of the OS.
Get the share price on paper. Get the company to justify that price.
Ask around what a standard grant is at the company in question. I was told when I joined the company I currently work for that when I joined (6 months before IPO) that my shares would most likely be around $8. After joining the company, those same shares (1000) were granted to me at a whopping $18.90 -- a much different than my expectations. Later, the company went public at $11/share. Effectively making my options worth nothing until the stock price climbed to above my grant price.
Know the math.
I know this sounds stupid, but work the price out on paper. A standard approach by employers is the Here is a $30,000 in stock options that could make you a millionaire. That same $30,000 might actually be signifigantly less under normal circumstances. A grant of $5/share * 1000 shares = $5000 that you have to put up front to get the stocks you are vested in. The company may believe that they can warrant a $30/share price (which is reasonable), hence the $30,000 estimate. The real world is a little more complicated: The real price in the above example is $30,000 - $5,000 = $25,000. Granted, in this example, that is a nice investment. If you only plan on staying with that company for two years (assuming 4 year vesting period) and will only get vested in 50% of those stocks.
Have realistic expectations. Red Hat and VA Linux are exceptions to the rule.
Although we have all been amazed (or maybe not very surprised) by the spectacular success recently of Red Hat and VA, these companies are most definately exceptions to the rule. While the tech industry was surprised when the IPO's of these companies were as successful as they were, the investment community was dumbfounded. Most companies IPO somewhere between $10-$20 a share and generally open around that price or slightly above before settling near the IPO price. That is because CFO's and investment bankers aren't dumb and will have a good feeling for what the company can support for a stock price.
There is no garentee with stock options.
As stated previously, it is a great gamble and can pay off immensely but it is not money in the bank. Keep your whits when examing a company based on possible stock options. One company offerred me 10,000 shares @ ~.30 share while another offerred me 1000 @ ~$18 and I took the $18 for several reasons. First, while the first company's offer was certainly better given just those figures, you have to look at the time frame involved. Company A wanted to go public eventually but it would not likely happen for at least 5 years. Company B was on the verge of an IPO (it happened 6 months later) and was much more of a sure thing. Five years versus 6 months was a great selling point. Also, be aware that most companies will never go public! Either they will go under or will never have the earnings or size to support itself in public trading.
Know your taxes and the tax laws of your state and federal goverment.
Be acutely aware of short term versus long term capitol gains. Consult a CPA if you are really unsure of the financial implications of stocks. Believe me, there are many. Short term capitol gains will impact the bottom dollar quite a bit. In the above example I gave, the above $25,000 ($30,000 in market price minus $5,000 to buy the options) you would actually receive around $15,000 (this will vary depending on your state) if you sold in the first year. That same $25,000 will be worth $20,000 if you wait more than one year after buying your vested options before selling them. Believe me, it gets worse. People make careers out of fiddling with these numbers.
I hope some of this helps. Be aware, I am a developer not a CPA or business person or upper management so take everything above and research your own answers and apply it to your situation.