"An anonymous reader writes" - What? I've been on Slashdot for a while and enough is enough. "An anonymous reader" shouldn't be able to submit articles. "Anonymous" cowards are already trolling Slashdot to dead. If you don't have the guts to post under your username, then why should you have the right to post anything?
Agreed. Pointless post. Code.org is probably irrelevant anyway as people who want to code will learn how anyway, and most other people probably don't care.
Besides coding is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a huge difference between teaching a kid how to code in school and actually writing quality code, understanding relational databases, coding for real-time transaction processing, understanding source control, having the patience to sit in front of a monitor for 8-10 hours a day, etc, etc.
Most of the people I took coding classes ( Basic on Apple II's ) with in high-school aren't even coding or in IT at all now. In fact, some of the people I went to college with have even left the field.
Firstly, "Nerds" haven't "pushed technology that cost people jobs". Corporations, business owners, and even the government push the technology to save money and increase efficiency. "nerds" are usually either the ones discovering the technology, implementing it, or debugging it, and many of us rarely get the credit or the financial rewards.
Secondly, would you rather hold back technology so everyone continue to work in factories and sustain long term medical problems from doing repetitive tasks? Or have everyone exposed harm by doing dangerous jobs like welding on car frames in factories, when a robot can do the job without putting a person in danger?
I think most people's lives are much easier today than they were 100 years ago due to technology, even if they have to retrain or educate themselves to get a job because they lost a job doing a redundant task because of technology.
The guy posting the question could code a simple game. My first 3 apps I wrote in Basic on a TRS-80 and then a commodore 64 when I was 15 were:
1. A character generator for D&D that would roll the stats and let you pick the attributes to generate a D&D character. 2. A text based Blackjack 21 game. 3. A simple shooter that had one sprite for a space ship you could move around and control with a joystick and some simple sound and graphics.
I probably learned more coding these types of app's then I learned in college. For example, to code the simple shooter I learned about sprites, peeks and pokes, using plot verse directly addressing screen memory to control graphics,writing loops, handling input real-time events from the keyboard and then a joystick, generating random numbers, data types, etc. It also started me looking into assembly language for games because Basic was so slow.
Of course, a lot has changed since then, but a simple game app would be a challenge and it would be something this guy could show off to his friends when he was done.
Actually, the hourly rate and what a contractor makes depends on a lot of factors. I've contracted a lot ( almost 10 gigs in my career ) as an LCC, Sub Chapter-S corp and as a W-2 Employee ) and basically:
1. You can setup a sub-chapter S corp and work for a company as another corporation. 2. You can just do 1099 self-employeed as sole-propritor, LLC or partnership if you have others involved. 3. You can work through a contracting company as their "employee" where they pull out the FICA, Social Security, etc and provide benefits at a cost to you and you get billed at X dollars an hour and get paid X - Y dollars an hour ( Y being the contracting companies cut ).
There are probably other options I don't know about.
So when someone says 100 bucks an hour, it doesn't mean much until you look at HOW they are earning 100 bucks an hour: W-2 or Independent as S-Corp, self-employed, etc , how they are filing their taxes, what expenses and other deductions they are taking, etc. In fact, I would say that at least in my experience I actually earned more of the rate as a sub-chapter S then any other way. Its just some extra work to keep track of all the expenses, run your own payroll, pay estimated taxes, file taxes and make sure you take all the deductions for the right expenses, etc.
Also rates depend very much on skills and demand. 100 dollars an hour is not that unrealistic. SAP and other ERP software packages and specialists can easily go over 100 an hour even being paid as a W-2 employee no matter where you are.
On the other hand, if a programming language or skill is "saturated" with a lot of programmers and the supply of talent exceeds the demand, rates drop like bricks. This seemed to happen with Java a few years back. I had some people calling me offering 30-40 bucks an hour for Java. I either ignored or laughed at most of them. Thankfully Java rates seem to be going up again, although I'm not doing much Java these days so I can't comment on what the going rates are for Java right now.
But the previous post was right. You have to "live" it. Even when I take time off between jobs, I spend some time reading technical books, checking out new languages, and writing code to keep my skills current. An hour a day probably isn't enough to learn a new language.
Like I said in my original post most if not all of the people using this app have already provided a lot of personal information to Delta. Seriously, you need a sky miles ID to log in and do most things, so most users of this app are just tying back to a Sky miles account with information that has already been provided. So they aren't really "collecting" any data that they don't already have.
They never required a picture from me to board a plane or nor have I ever had to use this app if I didn't want to. And I have flown delta more than 100 times in the last 10 years. The app isn't a requirement to board a flight or purchase a ticket. Much ado about nothing.
One other point. Cities are going bankrupt in California and they just had to raise taxes to help met a budget shortfall. Shouldn't the State of California focus on solving its internal problems managing money, instead of going after airlines because they write apps that ask for your personal information to HELP you keep track of the flights you are on? What a mis-directed use of state government time and resources this is.
I have this app on my iPhone. You can use it as a guest, but really its for frequent flyers that already have Delta sky miles accounts. The majority of people using this app have already provided most of the mentioned personal information, if not more because they have a SkyMiles Account and they have bought plane tickets. So this lawsuit is kind of silly in my opinion.
"yet fails to slam the US for its practice of applying the 'engineer' label to sanitation workers, building janitors, boiler operators, FaceSpace coders, MSCEs and DeVry graduates."
I went to DeVry a while back and it was no cake-walk. To earn my CIS degree, the was a while back, but we had courses covering programming, databases, online systems, systems analysis.
I was a CIS graduate.
We wrote a ton of programs and we used 6 programming languages that I remember and wrote mainframe as well as Unix and MS-DOS programs.
So I'm not an "Engineer" because I graduated from DeVry with a CIS degree, but I've held the software engineering title several times in my career and I've had to mentor and supervise ( and fix bad code written by ) grads with CS and EE degrees ( even one 2 guys with CS doctorates ) from universities?
Come on, they could make it here if they wanted to. BMW makes cars/SUV's in South Carolina. Boeing makes jumbo jets in Washington state. I'm sure if Amazon shopped around they could find someone the US that could make it and import the parts that could not be manufactured here.
It might be more expensive, yes. but it could be made here.
I would keep learning. I've been in the Industry about 20 years. I started with Cobol, then RPG, then C, then C++, then Java, and now I'm doing some Groovy and Ruby and lots of SQL. Also, Its funny, I still work a lot with C and there is still a lot of C code out there.
In my humble opinion, you would probably get the best results learning Java, Groovy, and Ruby. And of course keep your SQL skills strong.
I would also stay away from PM work. I have done some Project Management and some Business Analysis. I hardly ever get recruiters asking me about PM jobs or Business Analyst jobs.
On the other hand, regardless of what anyone tells me about outsourcing, etc, recruiters still call me and email me about coding jobs all the time. I'm a US Citizen, 40 something years old, and I haven't been out of work more than 2 weeks in 20 years by staying technical and coding.
Empty Threats? Do you have any statistics to back that statement up?
I for one am a Netflix subscriber that used to be 5 DVD a month - when they had that plan. But I have downgraded 3 times. First when they started throttling movies and I wasn't get my DVD's in a reasonable time. Then I was at 3 a month. I dropped to 2 a month when they pulled the Blu-Ray "bait and switch" and started charging more for Blu-Rays.
Now this. So I dropped them to streaming only and I am considering canceling.
I don't think its empty threats. A lot of us have been with Netflix for a while and we have long memories. Each time the Netflix Management pulls one of these stunts, some of us cancel and some of us downgrade.
I came very close to canceling this time.
And its not about the money, its about being treated like a "customer" and not a "moran".
I think they really f'd it up this time and I think a lot of those threats of cancellation were not idle.
"The reviews I've seen have tried (and failed) to cast C.L.U. as a clueless (pun intended) bad guy. But he wasn't a bad guy, he was Flynn's idealism wrapped up in a program. The movie is more about idealism and the folly of trying to attain perfection than it is about any sort of struggle between good and evil."
Exactly. Its more about unobtainable perfection and order verse chaos, rather then simple good verse evil.
I would also add that in my opinion Clu represents "Yang" - Order through force, while Flynn in his old age had become the more "Yin" and passive.
Didn't any of you notice the "Black" and "White" of every program/user in the Grid, as opposed to the "colors" in the old tron?
I think that represented the system had "split" into imbalance between Order and Perfection ( Clu ) and Chaos and Acceptance of imperfectness ( Older Flynn ). Balance was restored at the end destroying both Clu and the older Flynn.
"They are rational, calculating, and smarter than naive Westerners."
Huh??? If they are "rational, calculating, and smarter than naive Westerners", why are they building a huge hotel when: 1. nobody wants to even visit North Korea. 2. even if you want to visit they probably won't let you in anyway?
You are correct that they are a troll and great at playing the Cold War game and I'm sure the average North Korean is as intelligent as anyone else. But I would have to say that the leadership in North Korea is neither intelligent or rational or calculating. they tend to behave "childishly" ( hey, look at me, my people are starving, but I got nukes! I got nukes! ) and they are just trying to maintain power using the old cold war games in a different world.
But its not 1960, 1970 or 1980 anymore. I doubt the Chinese or any of the countries that were part of the former Soviet Union would help them out if it came to war. In addition, I doubt their military would fair well at all against the more modern South Korean forces, especially with help from the US and other allies. Its not a "1950's" world anymore. A large army doesn't always win wars. For example, the Iraqis had a large amount of troops and the republican guard, but moral doesn't hold up very well when your solders are attacked by much more modern equipment.
The North Korean leadership is just another relic of the cold war. A "pseudo-communist" fascist dictatorship that used to be propped up by the former Soviet Union and China that is becoming less and less relevant. T
Hey, I got news for you. I've got border line depression sometimes too. And I have to force myself to do everything - exercise, eating right, not drinking too much, going out and meeting people, etc. Its life. In fact, if you read a lot you will find that many great and successful people also have to "force" themselves to do what they do.
Abe Lincoln is an example of a great man that fought depression.
In fact, I think people that are never depressed aren't normal. I've met people like this, and I actually pity them because they don't have the ability to "relish" and "savor" the good times. Because only if you have been through the "bad" times and had some depression - can you really, really see the light when life is good.
So don't let it hold you back. I know there are days where I lay in bed for an hour, not even wanting to get up. But I beat it most of the time.
In other news, research shows that goal setting, eating right, exercising, going outdoors and getting sun light, and having friends and maybe a girlfriend/boyfriend also helps with Starcraft Addiction and reduces the time spent playing the game.
Come on, its not rocket science. Anti-depressants work, but they are all "profit" based, as is probably this research. A little change in lifestyle can probably do just as much, except in the most extreme cases where mental illness is involved.
Based on what EA did to C&C 4 - basically destroying the original concept of the C&C franchise - i.e. no tiberium harvesting and base building, I can only imagine that this will also be worse than the original Spore.
EA - frankly you are the worst software company in the world because you buy great software companies and take great games written by them - and slowly destroy the games.
Is this some kind of marketing scam or FUD against Apple? I still see My Frame 1.2 at least in iTunes. Seems a fishy attempt to me to draw attention to the application.
1. Bring the laptop if you want, but internet cafes are all over London last time I was there. If you do bring the laptop, all you need is a plug adapter for your power adapter, if your power adapter handles 220 volts that's all you need. 2. Buy Lonely Planet and some of the other guides and read up before you go. Bring them with you. Find some things you want to see in Lonely Planet. 3. Ride the crazy double decker tourist buses first. This will help you learn the city. 4. Go see what you want. 5. If you like Indian/Pakistani cuisine - go to Brick Lane in East London. There are at least 30 curry restaurants on that one street.
I can't believe how much people over-analyze vacations. Just go and do it. Don't sweat the details. You can find the most amazing things just walking around London without any major plans or agendas.
Slashdot Mirror
"An anonymous reader writes" - What? I've been on Slashdot for a while and enough is enough. "An anonymous reader" shouldn't be able to submit articles. "Anonymous" cowards are already trolling Slashdot to dead. If you don't have the guts to post under your username, then why should you have the right to post anything?
Just my opinion.
Agreed. Pointless post. Code.org is probably irrelevant anyway as people who want to code will learn how anyway, and most other people probably don't care.
Besides coding is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a huge difference between teaching a kid how to code in school and actually writing quality code, understanding relational databases, coding for real-time transaction processing, understanding source control, having the patience to sit in front of a monitor for 8-10 hours a day, etc, etc.
Most of the people I took coding classes ( Basic on Apple II's ) with in high-school aren't even coding or in IT at all now. In fact, some of the people I went to college with have even left the field.
Firstly, "Nerds" haven't "pushed technology that cost people jobs". Corporations, business owners, and even the government push the technology to save money and increase efficiency. "nerds" are usually either the ones discovering the technology, implementing it, or debugging it, and many of us rarely get the credit or the financial rewards.
Secondly, would you rather hold back technology so everyone continue to work in factories and sustain long term medical problems from doing repetitive tasks? Or have everyone exposed harm by doing dangerous jobs like welding on car frames in factories, when a robot can do the job without putting a person in danger?
I think most people's lives are much easier today than they were 100 years ago due to technology, even if they have to retrain or educate themselves to get a job because they lost a job doing a redundant task because of technology.
The guy posting the question could code a simple game. My first 3 apps I wrote in Basic on a TRS-80 and then a commodore 64 when I was 15 were:
1. A character generator for D&D that would roll the stats and let you pick the attributes to generate a D&D character.
2. A text based Blackjack 21 game.
3. A simple shooter that had one sprite for a space ship you could move around and control with a joystick and some simple sound and graphics.
I probably learned more coding these types of app's then I learned in college. For example, to code the simple shooter I learned about sprites, peeks and pokes, using plot verse directly addressing screen memory to control graphics,writing loops, handling input real-time events from the keyboard and then a joystick, generating random numbers, data types, etc. It also started me looking into assembly language for games because Basic was so slow.
Of course, a lot has changed since then, but a simple game app would be a challenge and it would be something this guy could show off to his friends when he was done.
Actually, the hourly rate and what a contractor makes depends on a lot of factors. I've contracted a lot ( almost 10 gigs in my career ) as an LCC, Sub Chapter-S corp and as a W-2 Employee ) and basically:
1. You can setup a sub-chapter S corp and work for a company as another corporation.
2. You can just do 1099 self-employeed as sole-propritor, LLC or partnership if you have others involved.
3. You can work through a contracting company as their "employee" where they pull out the FICA, Social Security, etc and provide benefits at a cost to you and you get billed at X dollars an hour and get paid X - Y dollars an hour ( Y being the contracting companies cut ).
There are probably other options I don't know about.
So when someone says 100 bucks an hour, it doesn't mean much until you look at HOW they are earning 100 bucks an hour: W-2 or Independent as S-Corp, self-employed, etc , how they are filing their taxes, what expenses and other deductions they are taking, etc. In fact, I would say that at least in my experience I actually earned more of the rate as a sub-chapter S then any other way. Its just some extra work to keep track of all the expenses, run your own payroll, pay estimated taxes, file taxes and make sure you take all the deductions for the right expenses, etc.
Also rates depend very much on skills and demand. 100 dollars an hour is not that unrealistic. SAP and other ERP software packages and specialists can easily go over 100 an hour even being paid as a W-2 employee no matter where you are.
On the other hand, if a programming language or skill is "saturated" with a lot of programmers and the supply of talent exceeds the demand, rates drop like bricks. This seemed to happen with Java a few years back. I had some people calling me offering 30-40 bucks an hour for Java. I either ignored or laughed at most of them. Thankfully Java rates seem to be going up again, although I'm not doing much Java these days so I can't comment on what the going rates are for Java right now.
But the previous post was right. You have to "live" it. Even when I take time off between jobs, I spend some time reading technical books, checking out new languages, and writing code to keep my skills current. An hour a day probably isn't enough to learn a new language.
By the way, there is a link to the privacy policy on the first page of the app.
Like I said in my original post most if not all of the people using this app have already provided a lot of personal information to Delta. Seriously, you need a sky miles ID to log in and do most things, so most users of this app are just tying back to a Sky miles account with information that has already been provided. So they aren't really "collecting" any data that they don't already have.
They never required a picture from me to board a plane or nor have I ever had to use this app if I didn't want to. And I have flown delta more than 100 times in the last 10 years. The app isn't a requirement to board a flight or purchase a ticket. Much ado about nothing.
One other point. Cities are going bankrupt in California and they just had to raise taxes to help met a budget shortfall. Shouldn't the State of California focus on solving its internal problems managing money, instead of going after airlines because they write apps that ask for your personal information to HELP you keep track of the flights you are on? What a mis-directed use of state government time and resources this is.
I have this app on my iPhone. You can use it as a guest, but really its for frequent flyers that already have Delta sky miles accounts. The majority of people using this app have already provided most of the mentioned personal information, if not more because they have a SkyMiles Account and they have bought plane tickets. So this lawsuit is kind of silly in my opinion.
Building software is like building other stuff. Its engineering dude - whether its "accredited" as engineering or not...
smile++
"yet fails to slam the US for its practice of applying the 'engineer' label to sanitation workers, building janitors, boiler operators, FaceSpace coders, MSCEs and DeVry graduates."
I went to DeVry a while back and it was no cake-walk. To earn my CIS degree, the was a while back, but we had courses covering programming, databases, online systems, systems analysis.
I was a CIS graduate.
We wrote a ton of programs and we used 6 programming languages that I remember and wrote mainframe as well as Unix and MS-DOS programs.
So I'm not an "Engineer" because I graduated from DeVry with a CIS degree, but I've held the software engineering title several times in my career and I've had to mentor and supervise ( and fix bad code written by ) grads with CS and EE degrees ( even one 2 guys with CS doctorates ) from universities?
Come on, they could make it here if they wanted to. BMW makes cars/SUV's in South Carolina. Boeing makes jumbo jets in Washington state. I'm sure if Amazon shopped around they could find someone the US that could make it and import the parts that could not be manufactured here.
It might be more expensive, yes. but it could be made here.
I would keep learning. I've been in the Industry about 20 years. I started with Cobol, then RPG, then C, then C++, then Java, and now I'm doing some Groovy and Ruby and lots of SQL. Also, Its funny, I still work a lot with C and there is still a lot of C code out there.
In my humble opinion, you would probably get the best results learning Java, Groovy, and Ruby. And of course keep your SQL skills strong.
I would also stay away from PM work. I have done some Project Management and some Business Analysis. I hardly ever get recruiters asking me about PM jobs or Business Analyst jobs.
On the other hand, regardless of what anyone tells me about outsourcing, etc, recruiters still call me and email me about coding jobs all the time. I'm a US Citizen, 40 something years old, and I haven't been out of work more than 2 weeks in 20 years by staying technical and coding.
Good luck...
Mostly men and software geeks:
http://mashable.com/2011/07/14/google-plus-male/
Wow - that's fun and diverse. Its just like Slashdot...
Empty Threats? Do you have any statistics to back that statement up?
I for one am a Netflix subscriber that used to be 5 DVD a month - when they had that plan. But I have downgraded 3 times. First when they started throttling movies and I wasn't get my DVD's in a reasonable time. Then I was at 3 a month. I dropped to 2 a month when they pulled the Blu-Ray "bait and switch" and started charging more for Blu-Rays.
Now this. So I dropped them to streaming only and I am considering canceling.
I don't think its empty threats. A lot of us have been with Netflix for a while and we have long memories. Each time the Netflix Management pulls one of these stunts, some of us cancel and some of us downgrade.
I came very close to canceling this time.
And its not about the money, its about being treated like a "customer" and not a "moran".
I think they really f'd it up this time and I think a lot of those threats of cancellation were not idle.
"The reviews I've seen have tried (and failed) to cast C.L.U. as a clueless (pun intended) bad guy. But he wasn't a bad guy, he was Flynn's idealism wrapped up in a program. The movie is more about idealism and the folly of trying to attain perfection than it is about any sort of struggle between good and evil."
Exactly. Its more about unobtainable perfection and order verse chaos, rather then simple good verse evil.
I would also add that in my opinion Clu represents "Yang" - Order through force, while Flynn in his old age had become the more "Yin" and passive.
Didn't any of you notice the "Black" and "White" of every program/user in the Grid, as opposed to the "colors" in the old tron?
I think that represented the system had "split" into imbalance between Order and Perfection ( Clu ) and Chaos and Acceptance of imperfectness ( Older Flynn ). Balance was restored at the end destroying both Clu and the older Flynn.
"They are rational, calculating, and smarter than naive Westerners."
Huh??? If they are "rational, calculating, and smarter than naive Westerners", why are they building a huge hotel when:
1. nobody wants to even visit North Korea.
2. even if you want to visit they probably won't let you in anyway?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel
You are correct that they are a troll and great at playing the Cold War game and I'm sure the average North Korean is as intelligent as anyone else. But I would have to say that the leadership in North Korea is neither intelligent or rational or calculating. they tend to behave "childishly" ( hey, look at me, my people are starving, but I got nukes! I got nukes! ) and they are just trying to maintain power using the old cold war games in a different world.
But its not 1960, 1970 or 1980 anymore. I doubt the Chinese or any of the countries that were part of the former Soviet Union would help them out if it came to war. In addition, I doubt their military would fair well at all against the more modern South Korean forces, especially with help from the US and other allies. Its not a "1950's" world anymore. A large army doesn't always win wars. For example, the Iraqis had a large amount of troops and the republican guard, but moral doesn't hold up very well when your solders are attacked by much more modern equipment.
The North Korean leadership is just another relic of the cold war. A "pseudo-communist" fascist dictatorship that used to be propped up by the former Soviet Union and China that is becoming less and less relevant. T
China: "We made the fastest super-computer!!!"
Intel and NVidia: "Uh - no you didn't, We are own all your processors!!!"
Hey,
I got news for you. I've got border line depression sometimes too. And I have to force myself to do everything - exercise, eating right, not drinking too much, going out and meeting people, etc. Its life. In fact, if you read a lot you will find that many great and successful people also have to "force" themselves to do what they do.
Abe Lincoln is an example of a great man that fought depression.
In fact, I think people that are never depressed aren't normal. I've met people like this, and I actually pity them because they don't have the ability to "relish" and "savor" the good times. Because only if you have been through the "bad" times and had some depression - can you really, really see the light when life is good.
So don't let it hold you back. I know there are days where I lay in bed for an hour, not even wanting to get up. But I beat it most of the time.
Just my 2 cents.
In other news, research shows that goal setting, eating right, exercising, going outdoors and getting sun light, and having friends and maybe a girlfriend/boyfriend also helps with Starcraft Addiction and reduces the time spent playing the game.
Come on, its not rocket science. Anti-depressants work, but they are all "profit" based, as is probably this research. A little change in lifestyle can probably do just as much, except in the most extreme cases where mental illness is involved.
Based on what EA did to C&C 4 - basically destroying the original concept of the C&C franchise - i.e. no tiberium harvesting and base building, I can only imagine that this will also be worse than the original Spore.
EA - frankly you are the worst software company in the world because you buy great software companies and take great games written by them - and slowly destroy the games.
Ultima II, right?
Is this some kind of marketing scam or FUD against Apple? I still see My Frame 1.2 at least in iTunes. Seems a fishy attempt to me to draw attention to the application.
Dude,
It ain't that hard.
1. Bring the laptop if you want, but internet cafes are all over London last time I was there. If you do bring the laptop, all you need is a plug adapter for your power adapter, if your power adapter handles 220 volts that's all you need.
2. Buy Lonely Planet and some of the other guides and read up before you go. Bring them with you. Find some things you want to see in Lonely Planet.
3. Ride the crazy double decker tourist buses first. This will help you learn the city.
4. Go see what you want.
5. If you like Indian/Pakistani cuisine - go to Brick Lane in East London. There are at least 30 curry restaurants on that one street.
I can't believe how much people over-analyze vacations. Just go and do it. Don't sweat the details. You can find the most amazing things just walking around London without any major plans or agendas.