I'm *fairly* sure he was exaggerating, and just using "code compiles the first time" as an example of how developers are, at best, imperfect, and that until they are perfect, he wouldn't let them touch production (which, speaking as a developer, strikes me as a very good idea).
With some fore-thought and some discipline an application can be developed with very robust logging techniques.
Yeah, no one has perfect foresight.
There will *always*, without fail, be a condition in production where you wished you'd chosen to log operation X at debug level, but at the time either didn't think of it, or didn't think it'd be needed...
Of course I'm exaggerating the team situation to an extreme, but it has a truth to it.
TBH, no, I really don't think it does. Some programmers are loners. Some aren't. Your statement is equivalent to me saying "All humans are taller than 6 feet", and then when challenged, saying "Okay, I'm exaggerating, but there's some truth there!".
Programming is an inherently single-person process - team programming methodologies basically boil down to "you do this bit, I'll do that bit, we'll meet in the middle to these specs"
Clearly you've never pair-programmed or spent an afternoon debugging a problem with another developer.
Programming is "single-person" in the same way that construction is "single-person". Sure, we're each hammering our own nails, but it's fundamentally a team activity.
Leave 100 programming students in a room and tell them to achieve a similarly difficult intellectual objective using their coding skills and you will have absolute chaos on your hands.
No offense, but that's just a stupid metaphor. Leave 4 programming students in a room, and tell them to achieve a difficult intellectual objective, and if they're any good, they'll work together to solve the problem.
It's a generalisation, but I've seen no end of CS students who would actually do a million times better job if you removed the team around them and asked them to do it themselves on their own.
Yeah, I just can't buy that. During my degree, labs and projects were an inherently collaborative environment. We all assisted one another in solving the assignments at hand. In fact, I would wager that many of those student may never have graduated if they'd been forced to work in a solitary environment with no one else there to work with. Hell, half the fun of working in the labs late at night was the sense of collaboration and camaradarie that you felt with your fellow classmates.
Were some of the students loans who sat in their dark basement working on assignments? Sure. But in my experience those people were a small fraction, at best.
And now, after many years working in the industry, guess what? The exact same thing is true.
The *quantity* of work achieved increases, of course, but the quality and the rate of achievement doesn't.
Huh? If the quantity of work increases, the rate of achievement must necessarily increase as well (unless you don't consider getting shit done to be achieving anything...)
*Most* people haven't heard of house music (yes, believe it or not, your tastes don't reflect those of everyone else). Using that as an example sounds like a create way to curse indie gaming into perpetual obscurity.
I can't stand running with headphones because I can't get lost in the moment.
Plus, then you can hear cars and cyclists coming.
I can't tell you how many times I've had to skirt around an idiot running or cycling on a dual-use path with their music jacked high enough they can't hear my bell...
Programmers are funny animals. Some of them work best in complete isolation. One person can pull off things that entire teams never dreamed of. A kid in their back bedroom, and a rainy summer, can generate a game quicker by any design-by-committee. Programmers don't naturally work in teams, they have to be taught - every serious CS course has a team-building component to it.
Wow, I couldn't disagree more with this. Yes, "some of them work best in complete isolation", but I completely disagree with this idea that "Programmers don't naturally work in teams". There are *plenty* of programmers out there who are extroverted, socially adept, and utterly brilliant, who enjoy the collaboration of the team environment, and appreciate multiple viewpoints on a problem.
Frankly, you seem to be working under the presumption that the flat-food programmer actually exists, or is the norm... I can only assume you're not, yourself, a programmer, or if you are, your experiences are decidedly limited.
The skill of programming a game is not about knowing Knuth off by heart, or finding mathematical shortcuts using integer arithmetic, it's about actually having a little vision and wanting to see it move around and make funny sounds.
Yup, absolutely! And any great programmer knows that a great team leads to great inspiration. Collaboration is the seed and the soil for creativity.
That said, large groups in a corporate environment do not lead to creativity. Anyone in the industry will tell you that the perfect programming team is a tightly knit group of 4-6 people, tops. Anything more and you threaten to stifle creativity with process and procedure, simply so you can manage the complexity of the group.
Games today are like was music in the 90's, on the cusp of change.
Weird you make that comparison, given that the music industry of the 90's was still dominated by big record labels, as it's always been. Sure, there was a renaissance in rock during that decade, but it had little to do with some sea-change in the way music was made, or some groundswell in indie rock. Hell, Nirvana never saw large-scale success until they signed on with a major record label. Rather, the change in the music reflected a change in the culture, as the definition of "mainstream" shifted away from the pop of the 80s to the rock of the 90s.
Also correct! Wow, you ACs are two for two! Once again, the unions are not people. The members of the unions are. The members have a right to free speech.
If only there was a federal government commission to manage elections.
While you're probably being sarcastic, ironically enough, this is very nearly a good idea. Except, instead of "federal government commission", you should've said "independent, transparent, accountable agency". Then you'd have Elections Canada, which is considered by many to be an excellent organization, and is responsible for, among other things, enforcing campaign finance rules.
My hypothesis is that the link may be of the 'A causes B and C' kind rather than the 'B causes C' kind.
Except, of course, that current observations make that unlikely, as seasonal correlation means that whatever A is, it'd have to be somehow related to the earths orbital position around the sun.
Consequently, you have no idea whether the idea of neutrinos...
Nope, I don't. Neither does anyone else. That's why it's a fucking *hypothesis*. But all evidence points to the sun being the cause, and neutrinos are a good first idea given current observations.
Your supposition, OTOH, has absolutely no evidence to support it at all, and in fact existing observations suggest it's probably not correct.
But you're right, my expectation that these scientists aren't idiots, and have come to their hypothesis based on a rational examination of current observations, is clearly a sign that *I'm* the arrogant one...
Ah, truly a logical argument at it's finest: the statement with absolutely no supporting evidence. Truthiness in its purest form. I'm sure you'll be modded +5 insightful in no time!
Did you read the article? It's crap. That have wild speculation based on an observed pattern in a random event.
WTF... the event is supposed to be random. Then you detect the *same pattern* in multiple, independent observations, *and* you find the effect is correlated in time, and with external events. And this somehow qualifies as "wild speculation"?
Suppose you had a detonated a 'nuclear fusion bomb' on the earth, close enough that its effects locally rivaled or exceed that of the sun. Would you expect to see decay rates affected? I've never heard of such a thing.
That doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It just means it hasn't been detected or observed.
If you don't yet have a plausible description of how particles emitted from the sun may be causing the decay change, then you are dealing with a 'mysterious unknown force' anyway.
No, you're not. There are a series of correlations which strongly suggest solar involvement. The effect is transparent to the earth itself. The only thing that makes sense, here, is to hypothesize neutrino involvement. There's nothing "mysterious" about it.
The question, then, is, how are neutrinos affecting radioactive decay rates? *That* is an excellent question. But it's hardly on the same level of woo as throwing away these correlations in favour of some mysterious, hidden variable.
My guess, which I described as 'poorly informed', was that the effects of the sun are too small.
Why would you assume that at all? That's a *huge* assumption on your part. And, in fact, flies in the face of the current evidence.
Meanwhile, you're actively choosing to ignore known data simply because it doesn't fit your preconceived notions. "Poorly informed" would be an understatement.
So please lay out your description of how the sun may be causing the decay change
Don't be obtuse. Hypothesizing a link based on evidence suggesting a relationship is not the same thing as claiming to have an explanation for the observed phenomena.
OTOH, choosing to disbelieve said hypothesis, despite the evidence suggesting it has merit, simply because you just think it's, like, wrong and stuff, is deeply unscientific.
but for a summer day hike on dry terrain, why not?
Because you're clearly not hardcore enough! It's analogous to those cyclists you see riding around in tight spandex biking outfit, and custom shoes clipped into the pedals of their multi-thousand-dollar bikes that they're using on their 30-minute ride to and from work...
Solar flare, maybe, but seasonal? That sounds like an artifact.
Sounds to me like you just didn't read the article, or alternatively, didn't comprehend its contents.
If neutrino flux is the cause, seasonal variation would be expected, as flux would increase and decrease as the earth orbits the sun (due to variations in distance between the two).
Another possibility would be that some other influence is affecting both the decay rates and the solar activity. If I had to make a poorly informed guess, I would pick that over the idea of the sun influencing the decay rates.
Dear god, why? Let's see, we could explain the effect with this giant nuclear fusion bomb millions of kilometers away, based on the fact that there's clear seasonal variations which make it seemingly obviously that the sun is somehow the source of this effect (if it was something else, you wouldn't expect seasonal correlation).
Or we could assume some mysterious, unknown force is doing it.
Yes, yours is definitely the more rational position...
Nothing, but if we always did the sensible thing we'd miss out on much of the good software that we have today, such as Linux. There was a time that when it offered very little.
Oh come on, that's revisionist history at best. When it was first released, it offered an alternative to Minix, and was one of the few protected-mode-capable Unix clones available for x86. As it progressed, it offered the first kernel (sorry Hurd) for a GNU-based OS.
Linux *always* had a niche to fill. I can't see how the same is true of OpenSolaris.
Yeah, if you can't see the difference between this level of gaming addiction (ffs, people have *died*), and watching TV for an evening, there's no hope for you, you're just too fucking stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm *fairly* sure he was exaggerating, and just using "code compiles the first time" as an example of how developers are, at best, imperfect, and that until they are perfect, he wouldn't let them touch production (which, speaking as a developer, strikes me as a very good idea).
With some fore-thought and some discipline an application can be developed with very robust logging techniques.
Yeah, no one has perfect foresight.
There will *always*, without fail, be a condition in production where you wished you'd chosen to log operation X at debug level, but at the time either didn't think of it, or didn't think it'd be needed...
Of course I'm exaggerating the team situation to an extreme, but it has a truth to it.
TBH, no, I really don't think it does. Some programmers are loners. Some aren't. Your statement is equivalent to me saying "All humans are taller than 6 feet", and then when challenged, saying "Okay, I'm exaggerating, but there's some truth there!".
Programming is an inherently single-person process - team programming methodologies basically boil down to "you do this bit, I'll do that bit, we'll meet in the middle to these specs"
Clearly you've never pair-programmed or spent an afternoon debugging a problem with another developer.
Programming is "single-person" in the same way that construction is "single-person". Sure, we're each hammering our own nails, but it's fundamentally a team activity.
Leave 100 programming students in a room and tell them to achieve a similarly difficult intellectual objective using their coding skills and you will have absolute chaos on your hands.
No offense, but that's just a stupid metaphor. Leave 4 programming students in a room, and tell them to achieve a difficult intellectual objective, and if they're any good, they'll work together to solve the problem.
It's a generalisation, but I've seen no end of CS students who would actually do a million times better job if you removed the team around them and asked them to do it themselves on their own.
Yeah, I just can't buy that. During my degree, labs and projects were an inherently collaborative environment. We all assisted one another in solving the assignments at hand. In fact, I would wager that many of those student may never have graduated if they'd been forced to work in a solitary environment with no one else there to work with. Hell, half the fun of working in the labs late at night was the sense of collaboration and camaradarie that you felt with your fellow classmates.
Were some of the students loans who sat in their dark basement working on assignments? Sure. But in my experience those people were a small fraction, at best.
And now, after many years working in the industry, guess what? The exact same thing is true.
The *quantity* of work achieved increases, of course, but the quality and the rate of achievement doesn't.
Huh? If the quantity of work increases, the rate of achievement must necessarily increase as well (unless you don't consider getting shit done to be achieving anything...)
Great! Consign Indie gaming to underground clubs in Europe. That'll lead to a vibrant, innovating gaming industry...
Ever heared about house music
*Most* people haven't heard of house music (yes, believe it or not, your tastes don't reflect those of everyone else). Using that as an example sounds like a create way to curse indie gaming into perpetual obscurity.
I can't stand running with headphones because I can't get lost in the moment.
Plus, then you can hear cars and cyclists coming.
I can't tell you how many times I've had to skirt around an idiot running or cycling on a dual-use path with their music jacked high enough they can't hear my bell...
Programmers are funny animals. Some of them work best in complete isolation. One person can pull off things that entire teams never dreamed of. A kid in their back bedroom, and a rainy summer, can generate a game quicker by any design-by-committee. Programmers don't naturally work in teams, they have to be taught - every serious CS course has a team-building component to it.
Wow, I couldn't disagree more with this. Yes, "some of them work best in complete isolation", but I completely disagree with this idea that "Programmers don't naturally work in teams". There are *plenty* of programmers out there who are extroverted, socially adept, and utterly brilliant, who enjoy the collaboration of the team environment, and appreciate multiple viewpoints on a problem.
Frankly, you seem to be working under the presumption that the flat-food programmer actually exists, or is the norm... I can only assume you're not, yourself, a programmer, or if you are, your experiences are decidedly limited.
The skill of programming a game is not about knowing Knuth off by heart, or finding mathematical shortcuts using integer arithmetic, it's about actually having a little vision and wanting to see it move around and make funny sounds.
Yup, absolutely! And any great programmer knows that a great team leads to great inspiration. Collaboration is the seed and the soil for creativity.
That said, large groups in a corporate environment do not lead to creativity. Anyone in the industry will tell you that the perfect programming team is a tightly knit group of 4-6 people, tops. Anything more and you threaten to stifle creativity with process and procedure, simply so you can manage the complexity of the group.
Games today are like was music in the 90's, on the cusp of change.
Weird you make that comparison, given that the music industry of the 90's was still dominated by big record labels, as it's always been. Sure, there was a renaissance in rock during that decade, but it had little to do with some sea-change in the way music was made, or some groundswell in indie rock. Hell, Nirvana never saw large-scale success until they signed on with a major record label. Rather, the change in the music reflected a change in the culture, as the definition of "mainstream" shifted away from the pop of the 80s to the rock of the 90s.
Also correct! Wow, you ACs are two for two! Once again, the unions are not people. The members of the unions are. The members have a right to free speech.
Again, how is this controversial?
That's exactly right. It's the journalists that have a right to free speech. The paper just provides a means for them to have their words read.
What... you thought you were saying something controversial?
If only there was a federal government commission to manage elections.
While you're probably being sarcastic, ironically enough, this is very nearly a good idea. Except, instead of "federal government commission", you should've said "independent, transparent, accountable agency". Then you'd have Elections Canada, which is considered by many to be an excellent organization, and is responsible for, among other things, enforcing campaign finance rules.
My hypothesis is that the link may be of the 'A causes B and C' kind rather than the 'B causes C' kind.
Except, of course, that current observations make that unlikely, as seasonal correlation means that whatever A is, it'd have to be somehow related to the earths orbital position around the sun.
Consequently, you have no idea whether the idea of neutrinos...
Nope, I don't. Neither does anyone else. That's why it's a fucking *hypothesis*. But all evidence points to the sun being the cause, and neutrinos are a good first idea given current observations.
Your supposition, OTOH, has absolutely no evidence to support it at all, and in fact existing observations suggest it's probably not correct.
But you're right, my expectation that these scientists aren't idiots, and have come to their hypothesis based on a rational examination of current observations, is clearly a sign that *I'm* the arrogant one...
Ah, truly a logical argument at it's finest: the statement with absolutely no supporting evidence. Truthiness in its purest form. I'm sure you'll be modded +5 insightful in no time!
First, why should it matter who exercises free speech?
Huh? Money != speech. Quit drinking the kool-aid, dumbass.
Did you read the article? It's crap. That have wild speculation based on an observed pattern in a random event.
WTF... the event is supposed to be random. Then you detect the *same pattern* in multiple, independent observations, *and* you find the effect is correlated in time, and with external events. And this somehow qualifies as "wild speculation"?
Please.
Suppose you had a detonated a 'nuclear fusion bomb' on the earth, close enough that its effects locally rivaled or exceed that of the sun. Would you expect to see decay rates affected? I've never heard of such a thing.
That doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It just means it hasn't been detected or observed.
If you don't yet have a plausible description of how particles emitted from the sun may be causing the decay change, then you are dealing with a 'mysterious unknown force' anyway.
No, you're not. There are a series of correlations which strongly suggest solar involvement. The effect is transparent to the earth itself. The only thing that makes sense, here, is to hypothesize neutrino involvement. There's nothing "mysterious" about it.
The question, then, is, how are neutrinos affecting radioactive decay rates? *That* is an excellent question. But it's hardly on the same level of woo as throwing away these correlations in favour of some mysterious, hidden variable.
My guess, which I described as 'poorly informed', was that the effects of the sun are too small.
Why would you assume that at all? That's a *huge* assumption on your part. And, in fact, flies in the face of the current evidence.
Meanwhile, you're actively choosing to ignore known data simply because it doesn't fit your preconceived notions. "Poorly informed" would be an understatement.
So please lay out your description of how the sun may be causing the decay change
Don't be obtuse. Hypothesizing a link based on evidence suggesting a relationship is not the same thing as claiming to have an explanation for the observed phenomena.
OTOH, choosing to disbelieve said hypothesis, despite the evidence suggesting it has merit, simply because you just think it's, like, wrong and stuff, is deeply unscientific.
but for a summer day hike on dry terrain, why not?
Because you're clearly not hardcore enough! It's analogous to those cyclists you see riding around in tight spandex biking outfit, and custom shoes clipped into the pedals of their multi-thousand-dollar bikes that they're using on their 30-minute ride to and from work...
It's $65 and it's for all ambulance calls.
Actually, it almost certainly varies from province to province (healthcare is provincially administered).
Solar flare, maybe, but seasonal? That sounds like an artifact.
Sounds to me like you just didn't read the article, or alternatively, didn't comprehend its contents.
If neutrino flux is the cause, seasonal variation would be expected, as flux would increase and decrease as the earth orbits the sun (due to variations in distance between the two).
Another possibility would be that some other influence is affecting both the decay rates and the solar activity. If I had to make a poorly informed guess, I would pick that over the idea of the sun influencing the decay rates.
Dear god, why? Let's see, we could explain the effect with this giant nuclear fusion bomb millions of kilometers away, based on the fact that there's clear seasonal variations which make it seemingly obviously that the sun is somehow the source of this effect (if it was something else, you wouldn't expect seasonal correlation).
Or we could assume some mysterious, unknown force is doing it.
Yes, yours is definitely the more rational position...
ZFS.
That's not a niche, that's a technology, and one easily co-opted (the BSD port will improve eventually) or superceded (btrfs).
Is it really that hard to understand negrospeak
ROFL, wow... *please* tell me you're just trolling.
Nothing, but if we always did the sensible thing we'd miss out on much of the good software that we have today, such as Linux. There was a time that when it offered very little.
Oh come on, that's revisionist history at best. When it was first released, it offered an alternative to Minix, and was one of the few protected-mode-capable Unix clones available for x86. As it progressed, it offered the first kernel (sorry Hurd) for a GNU-based OS.
Linux *always* had a niche to fill. I can't see how the same is true of OpenSolaris.
Yeah, or treating a bacterial addiction with antibiotics. Or an HIV addiction with antivirals!
Yeah, if you can't see the difference between this level of gaming addiction (ffs, people have *died*), and watching TV for an evening, there's no hope for you, you're just too fucking stupid.