Have you seen what his work PC actually loads? His experience matches mine with the shitload of crap many multinationals put on their desktops. 10 minutes in not far fetched, even with a good SATA drive. He doesn't mean that his machine is "not booted". He's most likely logged in and he can move his mouse, but actually "doing" anything is extremely slow because the machine itself is still loading so much due to the initial login.
Seems to me that will never go away, there needs to be a self check...
Has this self-check helped you in any way in the last 10 years, unless building the machine yourself? You'd think that at least the memory check would be good for something, but it isn't, otherwise we wouldn't need something like memtest. On most OEM computers, you simply get the logo of the company who made the computer... Not even the "useful", but "scary" information the computers of yonder showed you (Usually you can enable in in the BIOS to do that, but not on all machines).
Anecdote: I had this weird situation where I got a dumpster sourced laptop. It had only 256MB RAM, I played around with different sticks to see if it would boot. Booted fine, so I thought... Nice, now it has 512MB RAM, I'll install Debian... During the PXE boot install I get a big red dialog telling me that there was not enough memory. I was really "WTF!?!". Turns out that I didn't insert de DIMM deep enough and that it booted with 640K, which this particular machine had on-motherboard (which is very rare...). The OEM screen showed right, up without errors. So those self tests don't do much in the first place.
Try having a defective CPU? Won't even boot... Self test? A few beeps if you're lucky.
As a dumpster diver, I get all kinds of machines on my desk. It's always fun to find whatever failed (if something failed, often it's just a certain OS from Redmond that got heavily infected). The POST is useful to me, but not all that useful... To most end user, just a dialog "Sorry, hardware is broken" would be more than enough.
55 - 20... So you're 35? Like me? Mortgage? Married? Children? Just asking, because the latter two will stop you from doing exactly that. My wife doesn't want me to stay up until 2am studying a new language. She'll nag my ears of that I make too much noise, even though it's only quietly typing in the room next door to the sleeping room. That said, quiet noises in a quiet house do stand out and if you want to sleep... Call me "pussy whipped" if you want, once you're married a lot changes.
Yes, my father too was a developer in the mid seventies. Actually he studied economics and worked in accounting at a bank and when they set up a new branch in the country I now live in, he got the task of setting up the computer department. He did that kind of job his whole life. Times have changed, you have to realize that compared to those times employment philosophy has changed. Back in the days my dad started working, you assumed that you were hired by a company and would retire there. That changed, and my father learned the hard way being shown the door after 20 years of faithful service. For the record: he had become very expensive. I know his salary from back then, and let me tell you, even *today* that salary would be a good salary, using exactly the same numbers!
I might be mistaken, but employment culture has so drastically changed over the last 20-30 years that I wouldn't dare to compare it to what happens these days.
If you were here you might be making 80-90K in today's dollars with good benefits.
At current EUR/USD rates, I'm just short of $80K gross now, with socialized healthcare (so, it's paid for). Of course, life might just be much cheaper over there than it is here, making it it a better deal. It's nearly impossible to compare wages on pure income numbers.
Good point. Thing is, you have to realize this before you hit the expensive years. Starting up a business takes years to become really profitable. I'd wager to say that having kids, a mortgage and a life is incompatible with starting a business. Well unless you don't mind your marriage to break under the load (My father in law did exactly that... Result divorce and I can tell you that divorce still resonates hard within the psyche of my wife and her sibling. He has a successful business, though... ).
Let it be a reminder for the young'uns... Start your own business now, before you actually "start with life". We'll happily fill your jobs;-)
You want my take on it? You'll have a use for it, yes. However, not at the rates you're asking. I've seen others saying "just lower your expectations", but you and I know both that when you are used to a certain income and have built a life on that expectation, that is way harder than you'd expect.
Realize that your competition are the 20-25 year olds and they're cheaper than you (because they don't have a life yet). As I read another persons quippy remark "You can hire two 25 year old for your rate, but are you twice at productive?". Now you may be a programmer guru and the most productive person ever, but I can for myself answer to that question: No. I'm not. Mainly because I do have a life and I will not do unpaid overtime any more.
So, if the choice is between "have no income at all" and "do web development at the rates of an inexperienced programmer", I'll take the second one... However, if the choice is between "have a well paid job which I don't really like but allows me to live life comfortably" and "do web development, which I like, but barely be able to pull my family through", I know what I choose. It won't be the web development.
You (as you are the person who asked the question) have at least the option to do something you don't really like but is paid well. I, on the other hand, as a pure IT person, is pretty much screwed in the long run.
Ah, you're mixing up programming language and frameworks. You do realize that the type of guys we are talking about have seen frameworks come and go? Heck, I've seen frameworks come and go and I'm only 34. Remember Enterprise Java Beans? I'm not saying that they aren't used any more, but they were all the hype back when I was a young programmer.
It is true that programming has more become like Lego. Stick together the parts in the right combination and that's it. I am however convinced that someone with the "development way of thinking" who is give correct documentation about the required frameworks, can figure it out. Perhaps not as quickly as a language itself, but the odds are that an experience developer has seen something similar somewhere someday.
Try going in to a job interview and saying "No, I don't have 5 years of this language, but give me a week, some small changes to work on and access to google and I'll be able to program it as well as most of your other developers"
Oh, I have tried... Doesn't work. However, this stems of a fundamental misunderstanding of recruiters/HR what a developer must know. To them, you should have the bullet points on your CV. To me (and many developers), a developer *is* the person who knows my statement to be true and realizes that programming is a way of thinking.
I'd have gathered that anyone with a computer science background knows these languages. That's where I come from. I'm not surprised you see them as fundamentally different, but they aren't. It's another way of thinking, but they are Turing-Complete and not as alien as you might think.
Is he an IT person? I ask this, because I can see people with "other" skills being more valuable as developers. A doctor, biologist or $profession with years of experience getting into development brings an "extra", namely their extensive field-expertise. That's what many developers miss and I'm well aware of that because I have been a developer in many fields (mainly banking, but I did other fields) and the reasons for doing something some specific way often was totally opaque to me.
because if you aren't in line to be a VP or a Director you ain't gonna make it at this point.
Which means, most of us will end up on the street if we want to stay developers or system engineers.
I'm nearly 35, and I'm started to feel it. Like you, I have years of development under my belt and a nice amount of system engineering. I have a nice job, but management has changed and I see the first signs of decline. I've been looking around and... basically, everywhere where I show up, I'm told I'm too expensive.
I have another 5 years left in the field and I'm aware of it.... I have no idea what I'll have to do after that. Project Management? I don't think I could do it, I'll be rooting for the devs all the time because I understand them better than the users. I can't do it...
I wonder what will happen if all a whole generation of IT people are out of work because they are "too expensive". Keep in mind that the age I'm in, means I'm basically starting my "life"... Married, mortgage, kids (or thinking of kids). The prospect of being out of a job in 5 years frightens me to no end.
However, for the original question: If you could program one language, you can program in any language. It's inherent on the Turing-completeness of programming languages. It's all just a matter of syntax. Sure, mastering a language takes time, but you've probably see already much things and that means you can easily apply what you know to the knew languages.
Web development, Classic development, or "App" development. Doesn't matter, pick your poison. In the end, you always end up writing to fuzzy customer specs and management that wants a Ferrari for the price of a Yugo.
Now I had my coffee, I might shed some light on why the way of looking at computers changed. I'll use as a reference PC-Specialist, which is pretty close to what you'll get as a "mom 'n pop" store. First things first, from their website, I can gather that a virus-removal is 79€, hardware upgrade is free (provided you buy the hardware with them) Now, you have an old crusty P-IV that is virus infested and you'd like to have 2GB RAM instead of the 512MB it came with. Two 1GB DDR sticks will set you back around 44€ (Online shop in Germany, but prices won't differ that much). This means, you're looking at a 123€ bill to get an old machine running again and probably the person working at the shop will tell you it's not worth it. Thing is, he's most likely right. From the "Angebote" PDF at PC Specialist, you'll find on the first page a laptop for 379€ with a Core i3 and 3GB RAM that'll kick your old machine at any task conceivable. Want no laptop and reuse your old screen, keyboard and mouse? See page 4 for a 249€ desktop, Pentium E5700 , 2GB RAM or page 349€ for a Core i3 with 4GB RAM.
That means that for a mere 126€ more (took the page 4, 249€ desktop for the calculation), you get a significant upgrade that is trouble free from the start, with warranty. Sure, you pay more, but you definitely get more too and are going to be fine with the machine for at least a couple of years, which is not guaranteed with your old P-IV (the powersupply might blow two days after repairs and that will set you back again).
Look, I'm a dumpster diver. I take what people throw out and try to get it working again. Mixing and matching components to make out of two or three PC, one that is good. It's a hobby and when I give away a PC, I don't ask anything for them. However, considering the age of the machines, I couldn't even ask 100€ for them. It's hard enough to give them away for free and it takes a lot of time to get them running (depending on the find and the mix-and-match I can do) I only do it because it's a fun hobby, but it definitely has no economic sense.
Yes, back in 1994 customer service was important as computers were expensive relative to income, which I suspect is still the case in the countries you mention. For us that's not the case anymore. Computers have become commodities like TVs, cameras, etc... People just buy a new one if the old one acts up. That explains the AMD64s and the occasional Core 2 Duo in the dumpsters at my local recycling centre. They are not defective, they just need a reinstall.
That's what I guessed. Expect the mom 'n pops to die out in the future. It's what happened here. I remember that in 1994, I still went to a mom 'n pop store. Now I would be hard pressed to find one.
Central Europe as defined by Wikipedia? You can then definitely exclude Germany and Switzerland because there you get your computer from something like Media Markt or Saturn or... Aldi. Which means you get an OEM computer. For Western Europe (France, Belgium, The Netherlands, etc...) you can bet on OEM too. The small pop 'n pop stores where you can pick your components are dwarfed by the sales in big box retail stores. I'd wager to bet that every larger supermarket sells OEM computers.
Indeed... I think that was my point, no? Upgrade if you can (or want) with discarded old gear (at no cost, or minimal cost for RAM) and be happy with what you have.
Well, I'm a dumpster diver and my experience really is what I described. You see, in dumpster sourced machines, you mostly get OEM stuff and those are low cost components, hence the two slots. For both 754 and 939 socket, the only boards that had three or four slots were those I bought myself. Still, my point stands: given a 754 or 939 socket machine, you can only have a maximum of 4GB RAM (939, 4 slots) or 3GB RAM (754, 3 slots... clocked down). As such there is pretty much no advantage to running a 64-bit system.
In this class of systems, buffered RAM (and I have seen 2GB buffered DDR400) is a non-option. They don't support it and even if they did, it would be prohibitively expensive to upgrade such machines from a consumer point of view.
Depending on how good you know Windows, you can easily secure it using Limited User accounts and avoiding Microsoft Software like the plague. Worked fine for me for years until I switched to Linux. I'm well aware that securing Windows XP is out of range of most Windows users, but once it's done, it's done.
The usability is very relative. I personally know XP's GUI very well and how they mixed up everything again, makes me angry. Years of experience on for the recycle bin.
Try the following... Older AMD64 motherboards are typically socket 754 or 939. In the case of 939 you might have four memory slots, but those are very rare: most 939s sport 2 slots. The 754 sockets only have two or three slots, and when there are three the speed is clocked lower than DDR400. Now go and look for DDR sticks, and tell me what the biggest stick you can get is. Yup, that would be 1GB. So, assuming two slots, that's 2GB RAM max, on a single channel 754 system with three slots, it would be 3GB but rarely at DDR400. Finally, for those lucky enough (as I say, they are rare), you can get up to 4GB RAM.
So, yes, the motherboard limits how much RAM you can have, regardless if the chip supports more. For motherboards of that generation, you can as a rule assume 2GB max.
Now, for the 24/7 case. My anecdotal evidence is completely inverse of yours. We could start bickering, but unless a comprehensive study is done, neither of use can really claim to know.
You're underestimating those little Atoms. A Z530 at 1.6GHz is a single core CPU from 2008 and it's about on-par with a Pentium 4 2.5GHz. That's a pretty "old" Atom. Take for example a Atom D510 at 1.6GHz, which is dual core, it is about as fast as a Pentium 4 3.80GHz (which is single-core, granted). Heck it matches about the performance of a Core 2 Duo L7100 at 1.2GHz.
Serious question: How are you going to exploit those over the Internet? A trojan, yes, but if you're already running the binaries, it doesn't matter any more.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you seen what his work PC actually loads? His experience matches mine with the shitload of crap many multinationals put on their desktops. 10 minutes in not far fetched, even with a good SATA drive. He doesn't mean that his machine is "not booted". He's most likely logged in and he can move his mouse, but actually "doing" anything is extremely slow because the machine itself is still loading so much due to the initial login.
Has this self-check helped you in any way in the last 10 years, unless building the machine yourself? You'd think that at least the memory check would be good for something, but it isn't, otherwise we wouldn't need something like memtest. On most OEM computers, you simply get the logo of the company who made the computer... Not even the "useful", but "scary" information the computers of yonder showed you (Usually you can enable in in the BIOS to do that, but not on all machines).
Anecdote: I had this weird situation where I got a dumpster sourced laptop. It had only 256MB RAM, I played around with different sticks to see if it would boot. Booted fine, so I thought... Nice, now it has 512MB RAM, I'll install Debian... During the PXE boot install I get a big red dialog telling me that there was not enough memory. I was really "WTF!?!". Turns out that I didn't insert de DIMM deep enough and that it booted with 640K, which this particular machine had on-motherboard (which is very rare...). The OEM screen showed right, up without errors. So those self tests don't do much in the first place.
Try having a defective CPU? Won't even boot... Self test? A few beeps if you're lucky.
As a dumpster diver, I get all kinds of machines on my desk. It's always fun to find whatever failed (if something failed, often it's just a certain OS from Redmond that got heavily infected). The POST is useful to me, but not all that useful... To most end user, just a dialog "Sorry, hardware is broken" would be more than enough.
Sounds reasonable... Been thinking doing that myself. That or become a bus driver, or something like that.
I always wanted to, but never found an employer having it on his "required" skills ;-)
55 - 20... So you're 35? Like me? Mortgage? Married? Children? Just asking, because the latter two will stop you from doing exactly that. My wife doesn't want me to stay up until 2am studying a new language. She'll nag my ears of that I make too much noise, even though it's only quietly typing in the room next door to the sleeping room. That said, quiet noises in a quiet house do stand out and if you want to sleep... Call me "pussy whipped" if you want, once you're married a lot changes.
Yes, my father too was a developer in the mid seventies. Actually he studied economics and worked in accounting at a bank and when they set up a new branch in the country I now live in, he got the task of setting up the computer department. He did that kind of job his whole life. Times have changed, you have to realize that compared to those times employment philosophy has changed. Back in the days my dad started working, you assumed that you were hired by a company and would retire there. That changed, and my father learned the hard way being shown the door after 20 years of faithful service. For the record: he had become very expensive. I know his salary from back then, and let me tell you, even *today* that salary would be a good salary, using exactly the same numbers!
I might be mistaken, but employment culture has so drastically changed over the last 20-30 years that I wouldn't dare to compare it to what happens these days.
At current EUR/USD rates, I'm just short of $80K gross now, with socialized healthcare (so, it's paid for). Of course, life might just be much cheaper over there than it is here, making it it a better deal. It's nearly impossible to compare wages on pure income numbers.
Good point. Thing is, you have to realize this before you hit the expensive years. Starting up a business takes years to become really profitable. I'd wager to say that having kids, a mortgage and a life is incompatible with starting a business. Well unless you don't mind your marriage to break under the load (My father in law did exactly that... Result divorce and I can tell you that divorce still resonates hard within the psyche of my wife and her sibling. He has a successful business, though... ).
Let it be a reminder for the young'uns... Start your own business now, before you actually "start with life". We'll happily fill your jobs ;-)
You want my take on it? You'll have a use for it, yes. However, not at the rates you're asking. I've seen others saying "just lower your expectations", but you and I know both that when you are used to a certain income and have built a life on that expectation, that is way harder than you'd expect.
Realize that your competition are the 20-25 year olds and they're cheaper than you (because they don't have a life yet). As I read another persons quippy remark "You can hire two 25 year old for your rate, but are you twice at productive?". Now you may be a programmer guru and the most productive person ever, but I can for myself answer to that question: No. I'm not. Mainly because I do have a life and I will not do unpaid overtime any more.
So, if the choice is between "have no income at all" and "do web development at the rates of an inexperienced programmer", I'll take the second one... However, if the choice is between "have a well paid job which I don't really like but allows me to live life comfortably" and "do web development, which I like, but barely be able to pull my family through", I know what I choose. It won't be the web development.
You (as you are the person who asked the question) have at least the option to do something you don't really like but is paid well. I, on the other hand, as a pure IT person, is pretty much screwed in the long run.
Ah, you're mixing up programming language and frameworks. You do realize that the type of guys we are talking about have seen frameworks come and go? Heck, I've seen frameworks come and go and I'm only 34. Remember Enterprise Java Beans? I'm not saying that they aren't used any more, but they were all the hype back when I was a young programmer.
It is true that programming has more become like Lego. Stick together the parts in the right combination and that's it. I am however convinced that someone with the "development way of thinking" who is give correct documentation about the required frameworks, can figure it out. Perhaps not as quickly as a language itself, but the odds are that an experience developer has seen something similar somewhere someday.
Oh, I have tried... Doesn't work. However, this stems of a fundamental misunderstanding of recruiters/HR what a developer must know. To them, you should have the bullet points on your CV. To me (and many developers), a developer *is* the person who knows my statement to be true and realizes that programming is a way of thinking.
But you knew that as well as I do.
I'd have gathered that anyone with a computer science background knows these languages. That's where I come from. I'm not surprised you see them as fundamentally different, but they aren't. It's another way of thinking, but they are Turing-Complete and not as alien as you might think.
Is he an IT person? I ask this, because I can see people with "other" skills being more valuable as developers. A doctor, biologist or $profession with years of experience getting into development brings an "extra", namely their extensive field-expertise. That's what many developers miss and I'm well aware of that because I have been a developer in many fields (mainly banking, but I did other fields) and the reasons for doing something some specific way often was totally opaque to me.
Which means, most of us will end up on the street if we want to stay developers or system engineers.
I'm nearly 35, and I'm started to feel it. Like you, I have years of development under my belt and a nice amount of system engineering. I have a nice job, but management has changed and I see the first signs of decline. I've been looking around and ... basically, everywhere where I show up, I'm told I'm too expensive.
I have another 5 years left in the field and I'm aware of it.... I have no idea what I'll have to do after that. Project Management? I don't think I could do it, I'll be rooting for the devs all the time because I understand them better than the users. I can't do it...
I wonder what will happen if all a whole generation of IT people are out of work because they are "too expensive". Keep in mind that the age I'm in, means I'm basically starting my "life"... Married, mortgage, kids (or thinking of kids). The prospect of being out of a job in 5 years frightens me to no end.
However, for the original question: If you could program one language, you can program in any language. It's inherent on the Turing-completeness of programming languages. It's all just a matter of syntax. Sure, mastering a language takes time, but you've probably see already much things and that means you can easily apply what you know to the knew languages.
Web development, Classic development, or "App" development. Doesn't matter, pick your poison. In the end, you always end up writing to fuzzy customer specs and management that wants a Ferrari for the price of a Yugo.
Now I had my coffee, I might shed some light on why the way of looking at computers changed. I'll use as a reference PC-Specialist, which is pretty close to what you'll get as a "mom 'n pop" store. First things first, from their website, I can gather that a virus-removal is 79€, hardware upgrade is free (provided you buy the hardware with them) Now, you have an old crusty P-IV that is virus infested and you'd like to have 2GB RAM instead of the 512MB it came with. Two 1GB DDR sticks will set you back around 44€ (Online shop in Germany, but prices won't differ that much). This means, you're looking at a 123€ bill to get an old machine running again and probably the person working at the shop will tell you it's not worth it. Thing is, he's most likely right. From the "Angebote" PDF at PC Specialist, you'll find on the first page a laptop for 379€ with a Core i3 and 3GB RAM that'll kick your old machine at any task conceivable. Want no laptop and reuse your old screen, keyboard and mouse? See page 4 for a 249€ desktop, Pentium E5700 , 2GB RAM or page 349€ for a Core i3 with 4GB RAM.
That means that for a mere 126€ more (took the page 4, 249€ desktop for the calculation), you get a significant upgrade that is trouble free from the start, with warranty. Sure, you pay more, but you definitely get more too and are going to be fine with the machine for at least a couple of years, which is not guaranteed with your old P-IV (the powersupply might blow two days after repairs and that will set you back again).
Look, I'm a dumpster diver. I take what people throw out and try to get it working again. Mixing and matching components to make out of two or three PC, one that is good. It's a hobby and when I give away a PC, I don't ask anything for them. However, considering the age of the machines, I couldn't even ask 100€ for them. It's hard enough to give them away for free and it takes a lot of time to get them running (depending on the find and the mix-and-match I can do) I only do it because it's a fun hobby, but it definitely has no economic sense.
I find it stupid too, hence I take what I can get and repair it and hope to find someone who wants to have it.
Yes, back in 1994 customer service was important as computers were expensive relative to income, which I suspect is still the case in the countries you mention. For us that's not the case anymore. Computers have become commodities like TVs, cameras, etc... People just buy a new one if the old one acts up. That explains the AMD64s and the occasional Core 2 Duo in the dumpsters at my local recycling centre. They are not defective, they just need a reinstall.
That's what I guessed. Expect the mom 'n pops to die out in the future. It's what happened here. I remember that in 1994, I still went to a mom 'n pop store. Now I would be hard pressed to find one.
Central Europe as defined by Wikipedia? You can then definitely exclude Germany and Switzerland because there you get your computer from something like Media Markt or Saturn or... Aldi. Which means you get an OEM computer. For Western Europe (France, Belgium, The Netherlands, etc...) you can bet on OEM too. The small pop 'n pop stores where you can pick your components are dwarfed by the sales in big box retail stores. I'd wager to bet that every larger supermarket sells OEM computers.
Indeed... I think that was my point, no? Upgrade if you can (or want) with discarded old gear (at no cost, or minimal cost for RAM) and be happy with what you have.
Well, I'm a dumpster diver and my experience really is what I described. You see, in dumpster sourced machines, you mostly get OEM stuff and those are low cost components, hence the two slots. For both 754 and 939 socket, the only boards that had three or four slots were those I bought myself. Still, my point stands: given a 754 or 939 socket machine, you can only have a maximum of 4GB RAM (939, 4 slots) or 3GB RAM (754, 3 slots... clocked down). As such there is pretty much no advantage to running a 64-bit system.
In this class of systems, buffered RAM (and I have seen 2GB buffered DDR400) is a non-option. They don't support it and even if they did, it would be prohibitively expensive to upgrade such machines from a consumer point of view.
Depending on how good you know Windows, you can easily secure it using Limited User accounts and avoiding Microsoft Software like the plague. Worked fine for me for years until I switched to Linux. I'm well aware that securing Windows XP is out of range of most Windows users, but once it's done, it's done.
The usability is very relative. I personally know XP's GUI very well and how they mixed up everything again, makes me angry. Years of experience on for the recycle bin.
Try the following... Older AMD64 motherboards are typically socket 754 or 939. In the case of 939 you might have four memory slots, but those are very rare: most 939s sport 2 slots. The 754 sockets only have two or three slots, and when there are three the speed is clocked lower than DDR400. Now go and look for DDR sticks, and tell me what the biggest stick you can get is. Yup, that would be 1GB. So, assuming two slots, that's 2GB RAM max, on a single channel 754 system with three slots, it would be 3GB but rarely at DDR400. Finally, for those lucky enough (as I say, they are rare), you can get up to 4GB RAM.
So, yes, the motherboard limits how much RAM you can have, regardless if the chip supports more. For motherboards of that generation, you can as a rule assume 2GB max.
Now, for the 24/7 case. My anecdotal evidence is completely inverse of yours. We could start bickering, but unless a comprehensive study is done, neither of use can really claim to know.
You're underestimating those little Atoms. A Z530 at 1.6GHz is a single core CPU from 2008 and it's about on-par with a Pentium 4 2.5GHz. That's a pretty "old" Atom. Take for example a Atom D510 at 1.6GHz, which is dual core, it is about as fast as a Pentium 4 3.80GHz (which is single-core, granted). Heck it matches about the performance of a Core 2 Duo L7100 at 1.2GHz.
Serious question: How are you going to exploit those over the Internet? A trojan, yes, but if you're already running the binaries, it doesn't matter any more.