you can say the same about business analyst jobs - understand the customer's problem, design a solution (preferably one that dosn't require large rewrites) and understand how to get the solution in that doesn't screw the existing system. It can be a lot harder than cutting code!
I think the OP would prefer a job in test, he likes helping people out and a good tester is just that - someone who helps development make better code by pointing out the errors and problems with their code. He;d also get some interaction with code, even if its just to write test harnesses and tools.
ah, but at least with software the GPL forces derived products to still be free, if you gift an idea to Google, they get to keep it as if it was theirs all along.
I wonder if the T&C of the product idea site says you have to cede copyright and any patents to them?
so what, every MS developer will tell you that memory is cheap. Compare javascript performance, which I'd say is much more significant to your browsing experience than memory usage. Get a heavy JS site and both click OK at the same time... it can be quite a difference (we tried this when Chrome came out, it is more than a 'couple of seconds' for some sites)
Also, how much memory is IE actually using, MS changed the Vista task manager to avoid telling you the correct number, and they've always hidden part of the memory usage away in the OS because its "part of the OS".
however, businesses don't need *new* software, and that is where the problem lies. MS has seen this itself with Vista, where companies may have bought the new OS, but still use XP. Its not an issue for MS in the short term, but will be if they don't buy new "productivity" software as well. If a company still uses XP, chance are they're still using Office 2003. If they don't feel the need to upgrade to Vista, chances are they won't upgrade to Office 2007 either.
Some will also decide that they don't need to buy new server OSs either, perhaps they'll buy Linux or perhaps they'll make do with what they have. This goes double for RAM, as although its currently cheap, the DRAM manufacturers have massively ramped up their fabs to produce RMA for Vista that is not being used... they'll close those fabs and layoff workers and the price of RAM will shoot up just when people decide that they need more of it.
However, for the rest of us, we generally have jobs making custom software for businesses, not shrink wrap. We'll be able to manage for a long time, as all that code still needs maintenance and changes.
It gets even worse. The TSA is actively working to ensure pilots are now screened before they can enter the tarmac/airplane or leave the tarmac/airplane to enter the a terminal area.
You mean they'll be breathalysed instead of the usual 'smell n steady' check the stewardesses currently perform?
well, if they can add any number of adverts that are smaller than the 'OMG we're broke, give us cash' banner that's currently on wikipedia, I will be happy.
Paying people to contribute (another way of putting the argument of rewarding people who contribute) will encourage the wrong kind of contributors, we don't want that. Stick 1 or 2 little adverts on and have done with it.
why did they miss number 6? The latest court case (Vista ready)(or yet another anti-competitive one to be seen here soon) finally finds MS overstepped the mark and is totally untrustworthy and needs to be broken up into 5 or so Mini-Microsofts.
It nearly happened last time, stranger things have happened.
remember that MS said all versions of software running on their cloud will be the latest version only. They will not support previous versions, so your nightmare world is likely to be true.
That said, they'll probably change their mind when it comes down to it.
I think the better question is... is W7 actually "snappier",
apparently so, but there's a ton of variance in that statement. I heard that MS was less than impressed with the "usability performance" of Vista, so they've tweaked loads of areas to make it appear faster - the actual work still takes the same amount of time, but the user gets told quicker. Perhaps they have a UI thread pool where work is sent to complete, and the user is responded to immediately. The exact opposite of the file-copy dialog in fact.
Alternatively, they just altered the code to get rid of a load of 'candy' that no-one really noticed (eg dynamically updating progress bars etc).
Of course, I'd have to use it to see if it actually works. Mac OS X's Dock works the way it does due to the way Mac handles applications - each application gets a single instance and has a single menu bar but can have multiple windows. Windows does it differently - each window is essentially its own application. So directly ripping off the Dock probably won't work.
Is that single window per application, unless its Excel where its single window per document but closing one takes them all down? Now that's innovative design:-)
task manager is just another app - if your CPU hits 100%, it can take ages for Task manager to appear, if at all. On an unstable system it doesn't get the priority it used to.
yeah, I second that - it is good once you've gotten used to it. Its a bitch if you don't have the search service running all the time though, it can lose installed apps and then you're bu**ered. In fact, I'd get rid of the list of installed apps as it seems to be pretty rubbish, no hierarchy or fly-out menus, just a simplified explorer listview in a not-intuitive default sort order.
If you do have the search service running, performance can be a bit awkward and your electricity bill is quite higher as the disk seems to grind away all the damn time, unless its one of the other 200 scheduled tasks they have in there.
In fact, that's my biggest issue with Vista - its way too complex now. Take a look at the scheduled tasks and see just what's in there! Take a look in your even log and see how many entries you get on boot, compare that to NT4. Take a look at the WinSxS directory and see how many Gb it takes up. (7Gb on my Vista box at the mo)
Oh and explorer is just pants for simple performance and responsiveness. As is Task Manager - which is pretty, but just a monitoring tool now, not the 'emergency' system button it used to be.
no, they only trust the root certificate authorities, who in turn trust their partners, who in turn trust their resellers, who in turn trust their friends, who in turn trusts Vladimir 'the violator' Ilvymich.
So, how long before someone buys a Microsoft.com certificate and supplies some critical 'updates'?
That doesn't begin to answer the question. I know IPv4 is running out, I know my hosted server has 6 IP addresses.
I know if I am a business consolidating several servers onto 1, they're all on a local subnet and I have as many addresses as a class A/8 can give me, its not a problem.
What is a problem, even in a hosted environment, is that if I consolidate 10 web servers to 1, and they all sit behind a NAT box - only one of them is then a webserver, the others are effectively 'firewalled' into oblivion. So in both circumstances, NAT is not the option you want.
The only time NAT works is when you're running several different servers locally. NAT works for me at home, as there's only me who needs the 1 IP my ISP gives me, its not really a good solution for most VMs.
and it has the extra effect that criminals find it harder to drive to their next 'job'. Generally the criminals are 'fighting back' by using 'pool cars', disposable knackered old bangers that are left in the local estate and used by whoever wants to use it as needed - the police don't know who owns these, so they can flag them up if spotted and they will always get done, but the police can do little if you're stopped except issue the usual fine/points on licence and let you go (unless they find the stolen goods in there too).
The ANPR stuff is a passive system, it doesn't store who was stopped, only that you're wanted or not legal.
ah, but you just say you're his brother and you're fine.. assuming you have insurance to drive that vehicle...
the UK police's PDA things (ANPR - Automated Number Plate Recognition) is also tied into an insurance database and the Police National Computer, so if you have no insurance, they'll pull you over, and if you're a criminal, you won't have MOT either, and will probably have enough other reasons for you to be arrested. Criminals don't obey driving laws too - who'd have thought!
Traffic cops are one of the most effective means of law enforcement.
wrong, they always optimise your code without thinking about the consequences - so it uses more memory than you'd ever use, or it'd be more inefficient then yopu could code yourself. that's the problem with generic systems, they're always done for the common case, not what you wanted.
and then you look at the TPC benchmarks and see that the cluster does eventually outperform the single mainframe. However, for your anecdote your boss was quite right, optimise where needed and appropriate only - nearly always the best approach is to maintain what you have instead of a complete rewrite.
The biggest problem is that poorly optimised software can be ok (everyone runs Java or.NET acceptably, and they're not exactly resource light), but some poorly written software can be dreadfully slow - so much so that throwing more hardware at it will never work.
You know, the websites written as a single jpeg image cut into 100 pieces, the loops that iterate over themselves several times to get 1 piece of data, etc etc. I'm sure we've all seen stuff that makes us gawk in wonder that someone actually did it like that. (if not, take a look at TheDailyWTF).
So, although hardware is much more powerful that it makes some sense to run 'easy' languages like java, C# or a scripting language, that still doesn't mean you can get away with cheap, poor programmers. (if you think it does, you can hire someone for $100 to rewrite your entire app on rentacoder, assuming you find one who knows the right codez:).
Something that no-one considers in this 'hardware cost v programmer cost' is the user. If you have an app that is used by 10 users, it could be that you don't care so much about software quality. If it's used by 10 million users, you'd be saving the wrong pennies by not spending the money on writing it with as much skill as you can hire.
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you can say the same about business analyst jobs - understand the customer's problem, design a solution (preferably one that dosn't require large rewrites) and understand how to get the solution in that doesn't screw the existing system. It can be a lot harder than cutting code!
I think the OP would prefer a job in test, he likes helping people out and a good tester is just that - someone who helps development make better code by pointing out the errors and problems with their code. He;d also get some interaction with code, even if its just to write test harnesses and tools.
So QA or Test is my recommendation.
ah, but at least with software the GPL forces derived products to still be free, if you gift an idea to Google, they get to keep it as if it was theirs all along.
I wonder if the T&C of the product idea site says you have to cede copyright and any patents to them?
so what, every MS developer will tell you that memory is cheap. Compare javascript performance, which I'd say is much more significant to your browsing experience than memory usage. Get a heavy JS site and both click OK at the same time... it can be quite a difference (we tried this when Chrome came out, it is more than a 'couple of seconds' for some sites)
Also, how much memory is IE actually using, MS changed the Vista task manager to avoid telling you the correct number, and they've always hidden part of the memory usage away in the OS because its "part of the OS".
Yeah, almost a dupe on /., but under a different subject. See the 2nd link.
however, businesses don't need *new* software, and that is where the problem lies. MS has seen this itself with Vista, where companies may have bought the new OS, but still use XP. Its not an issue for MS in the short term, but will be if they don't buy new "productivity" software as well. If a company still uses XP, chance are they're still using Office 2003. If they don't feel the need to upgrade to Vista, chances are they won't upgrade to Office 2007 either.
Some will also decide that they don't need to buy new server OSs either, perhaps they'll buy Linux or perhaps they'll make do with what they have. This goes double for RAM, as although its currently cheap, the DRAM manufacturers have massively ramped up their fabs to produce RMA for Vista that is not being used... they'll close those fabs and layoff workers and the price of RAM will shoot up just when people decide that they need more of it.
However, for the rest of us, we generally have jobs making custom software for businesses, not shrink wrap. We'll be able to manage for a long time, as all that code still needs maintenance and changes.
It gets even worse. The TSA is actively working to ensure pilots are now screened before they can enter the tarmac/airplane or leave the tarmac/airplane to enter the a terminal area.
You mean they'll be breathalysed instead of the usual 'smell n steady' check the stewardesses currently perform?
This coming from the can't-feel-my-toes department? Put it outside!
This coming from the order-of-importance dept: cold beer, internet, all other stuff.
well, if they can add any number of adverts that are smaller than the 'OMG we're broke, give us cash' banner that's currently on wikipedia, I will be happy.
Paying people to contribute (another way of putting the argument of rewarding people who contribute) will encourage the wrong kind of contributors, we don't want that. Stick 1 or 2 little adverts on and have done with it.
Or contact the Gates foundation :)
why did they miss number 6? The latest court case (Vista ready)(or yet another anti-competitive one to be seen here soon) finally finds MS overstepped the mark and is totally untrustworthy and needs to be broken up into 5 or so Mini-Microsofts.
It nearly happened last time, stranger things have happened.
remember that MS said all versions of software running on their cloud will be the latest version only. They will not support previous versions, so your nightmare world is likely to be true.
That said, they'll probably change their mind when it comes down to it.
I think the better question is ... is W7 actually "snappier",
apparently so, but there's a ton of variance in that statement. I heard that MS was less than impressed with the "usability performance" of Vista, so they've tweaked loads of areas to make it appear faster - the actual work still takes the same amount of time, but the user gets told quicker. Perhaps they have a UI thread pool where work is sent to complete, and the user is responded to immediately. The exact opposite of the file-copy dialog in fact.
Alternatively, they just altered the code to get rid of a load of 'candy' that no-one really noticed (eg dynamically updating progress bars etc).
Blaming them is putting the blame in the wrong place.
It is if MS demands a "Vista Ready" certification programme from the vendors before said vendors can claim its suitable for Vista.
Of course, I'd have to use it to see if it actually works. Mac OS X's Dock works the way it does due to the way Mac handles applications - each application gets a single instance and has a single menu bar but can have multiple windows. Windows does it differently - each window is essentially its own application. So directly ripping off the Dock probably won't work.
Is that single window per application, unless its Excel where its single window per document but closing one takes them all down? Now that's innovative design :-)
task manager is just another app - if your CPU hits 100%, it can take ages for Task manager to appear, if at all. On an unstable system it doesn't get the priority it used to.
yeah, I second that - it is good once you've gotten used to it. Its a bitch if you don't have the search service running all the time though, it can lose installed apps and then you're bu**ered. In fact, I'd get rid of the list of installed apps as it seems to be pretty rubbish, no hierarchy or fly-out menus, just a simplified explorer listview in a not-intuitive default sort order.
If you do have the search service running, performance can be a bit awkward and your electricity bill is quite higher as the disk seems to grind away all the damn time, unless its one of the other 200 scheduled tasks they have in there.
In fact, that's my biggest issue with Vista - its way too complex now. Take a look at the scheduled tasks and see just what's in there! Take a look in your even log and see how many entries you get on boot, compare that to NT4. Take a look at the WinSxS directory and see how many Gb it takes up. (7Gb on my Vista box at the mo)
Oh and explorer is just pants for simple performance and responsiveness. As is Task Manager - which is pretty, but just a monitoring tool now, not the 'emergency' system button it used to be.
* Why does an admin need to choose "Run as admin" for some things?
Simply because sometimes, on Vista, an administrator is not enough of an administrator to perform some tasks.
See, told you it was simple answer. F**ked up problem, but a simple answer.
no, they only trust the root certificate authorities, who in turn trust their partners, who in turn trust their resellers, who in turn trust their friends, who in turn trusts Vladimir 'the violator' Ilvymich.
So, how long before someone buys a Microsoft.com certificate and supplies some critical 'updates'?
That doesn't begin to answer the question. I know IPv4 is running out, I know my hosted server has 6 IP addresses.
I know if I am a business consolidating several servers onto 1, they're all on a local subnet and I have as many addresses as a class A /8 can give me, its not a problem.
What is a problem, even in a hosted environment, is that if I consolidate 10 web servers to 1, and they all sit behind a NAT box - only one of them is then a webserver, the others are effectively 'firewalled' into oblivion. So in both circumstances, NAT is not the option you want.
The only time NAT works is when you're running several different servers locally. NAT works for me at home, as there's only me who needs the 1 IP my ISP gives me, its not really a good solution for most VMs.
interesting.. though I think most people using VMs to consolidate servers on a single host would want them all to be publicly viewable, not NAT-ted.
I'd expect it can be done, strange that they went for the NAT option by default.
So, keeping future scalability in mind as you lay out your software stack can make it amazingly easy to do so when the time comes.
and that's when you realise that having those expensive experienced programmers wasn't such a cost after all!
and it has the extra effect that criminals find it harder to drive to their next 'job'. Generally the criminals are 'fighting back' by using 'pool cars', disposable knackered old bangers that are left in the local estate and used by whoever wants to use it as needed - the police don't know who owns these, so they can flag them up if spotted and they will always get done, but the police can do little if you're stopped except issue the usual fine/points on licence and let you go (unless they find the stolen goods in there too).
The ANPR stuff is a passive system, it doesn't store who was stopped, only that you're wanted or not legal.
ah, but you just say you're his brother and you're fine.. assuming you have insurance to drive that vehicle...
the UK police's PDA things (ANPR - Automated Number Plate Recognition) is also tied into an insurance database and the Police National Computer, so if you have no insurance, they'll pull you over, and if you're a criminal, you won't have MOT either, and will probably have enough other reasons for you to be arrested. Criminals don't obey driving laws too - who'd have thought!
Traffic cops are one of the most effective means of law enforcement.
wrong, they always optimise your code without thinking about the consequences - so it uses more memory than you'd ever use, or it'd be more inefficient then yopu could code yourself. that's the problem with generic systems, they're always done for the common case, not what you wanted.
and then you look at the TPC benchmarks and see that the cluster does eventually outperform the single mainframe. However, for your anecdote your boss was quite right, optimise where needed and appropriate only - nearly always the best approach is to maintain what you have instead of a complete rewrite.
The biggest problem is that poorly optimised software can be ok (everyone runs Java or .NET acceptably, and they're not exactly resource light), but some poorly written software can be dreadfully slow - so much so that throwing more hardware at it will never work.
You know, the websites written as a single jpeg image cut into 100 pieces, the loops that iterate over themselves several times to get 1 piece of data, etc etc. I'm sure we've all seen stuff that makes us gawk in wonder that someone actually did it like that. (if not, take a look at TheDailyWTF).
So, although hardware is much more powerful that it makes some sense to run 'easy' languages like java, C# or a scripting language, that still doesn't mean you can get away with cheap, poor programmers. (if you think it does, you can hire someone for $100 to rewrite your entire app on rentacoder, assuming you find one who knows the right codez :).
Something that no-one considers in this 'hardware cost v programmer cost' is the user. If you have an app that is used by 10 users, it could be that you don't care so much about software quality. If it's used by 10 million users, you'd be saving the wrong pennies by not spending the money on writing it with as much skill as you can hire.