This also depends strongly on the project management style and customer demonstrations. Generally I get change orders for plenty of things before the software ever hits site. This is because we do design reviews throughout the project, we have a live Factory Acceptance Test with customer in a simulated and emulated environment, and we specifically structure things so that we can get requests for change earlier. Now, granted the type of system I am installing can't be piece mealed out therefore we are somewhat pigeon-holed into waterfall, but with better transparency and avoiding developers all working in silos this isn't such a problem.
Some of our core development is done more in agile style with feature specs, sprints, and such, but if a common sense approach is used waterfall does not have to be so back loaded and so much more expensive. I would argue a lot of those problems come from large organizations that allow their gears to grind much too slowly and they isolate people so that they don't actually look at the overall business problem they are trying to solve (so that they can predict what parts of the code need to be more flexible).
Granted in some scenarios I do feel agile is more well suited, because it is a good thing to allow the user to get more hands on time with the end features so things can be tested and retooled if it isn't what they want, but a project can still be managed in waterfall style as long as proper measures are taken throughout the process, at least in my opinion. I know some people are married to one style or the other, but I can't help that.
I disagree. Working at a primarily waterfall based company we have lots of change orders after systems go into production and as long as the code was designed well there really isn't an issue with adding new features. Sure, there are occasionally the huge changes that some customer decided they couldn't live without, but those types of changes hurt agile shops too. The problem you describe and "solve" is designing overly rigid code, not "agile is better than waterfall."
No I work at a privately held company. I do however agree a lot of that is wasted on what amounts to corner case extremes. The large majority of these people will split themselves eventually out of necessity, just like in times past. I've seen a few that came into companies (a couple at one of our other offices even) that really needed to split, but once the company actually started asking real things of them it was a sink or swim situation and most swam (albeit with some growing pains).
There absolutely are some crazy extreme cases (the handful I have heard where parents go to job interviews for kids come to mind), but they are way overblown and definitely not the norm. Most decent companies won't let that crap fly anyway (I know we won't, I conduct some interviews now and if that happened I would walk out and ask HR if it was a joke), and even if they did, there is absolutely no way they will make it in the environment at large. Dumping money into such a small group is extremely alarmist and frivolous imho, especially when it will resolve itself.
I won't deny that it is difficult to ignore some of the studies and data considering our general reliance on experts in fields analyzing complex trends, but this one strikes me as incorrect. Especially given we don't have the same data to compare from all the previous generations in the same manner, they are trying way too hard to explain it when, to me, it is just part of the cycle of the generations and growing up.
I disagree that the problems are as widespread as we are lead to believe. Working off of your same anecdotal evidence, at my office I have the opposite experience. Most of the developers I am working with at this point are of the millenial generation (in my office at least) and with two notable exceptions (they are *closer* to the stereotype, but not full fledged), are extremely hard working, very intelligent, and not entitled/delusion. Hell, one of my co-workers that I am still friends with just moved on to working at Microsoft as a full time senior support engineer and is excelling at his job.
Maybe it is a thing of culture, or even area, but my experience and the 'counter-research' concludes in the other direction as well. Honestly we can probably argue this both directions all day, and while I respect your experiences/opinions I stand by my statements that a large portion of this is blown out of proportion and isn't any different than previous generations. I remember specifically growing up and hearing the same stuff about GenXers and my parents can remember the same thing about the Baby Boomer generation. I've seen bad apples, I've seen ridiculous parents, I've seen entitled asshats, but I don't accept this even as the slight majority of experiences.
My post was a bit of a rant, but you can't deny that it has gotten very old how many of the previous generations just want to bash on mine. It gets old hearing it over and over again, especially when I feel this is unfair to people such as myself and many of my friends (see: not all, some of them are idiots...). I do not believe we are even close to perfect, but as I stated we're not really any different than the previous generations and just want a fair shake. Maybe you have given some of these people that fair shake and they just blew it, but not everyone
While you are completely correct on the Texas laws allowing people to be shot for basically setting foot on your property (I'm in the state so I should know), and I also agree with you on the its ridiculous to assume lawsuits will result for stupid people not paying attention, I wholeheartedly resent your 'millenials are idiots argument.'
I am part of said generation and can honestly say at this point, this generation is no different than the previous ones, it is just much easier to criticize us because of the proliferation of round the clock news and how much more documenting many of my peers do in their every day life. Every previous generation has done stupid ass crap constantly, been incredibly smug for no reason (and with little accomplishment), ran around acting like they were better than everyone else, and countless other things that most of my generation will undoubtedly bitch about just the same when the next generation comes of age. The most you can argue is that more people see it because more people want to record and post it (professional and amateur alike).
The idea that somehow all millenials are idiots, irresponsible, don't go out, entitled, etc. is just outrageous. Yes, there are people within this generation like that, but there were people just like that in other generations as well. Please stop acting like we (millenials) are all the same. I am a college graduate, doing perfectly well and in fact taking care of multiple of members my family members in my own home (I know, such a reversal of expectations!), while not posting my entire life to social media and acting like an entitled dick (I do not feel I am better or worse than anyone, just different). I enjoy video games and many of the other things my generation does, while still going out and working on side projects that involve skills including electrical work, carpentry and many other 'practical skills' that apparently 'no millenial learns'. I have many friends that do the same and while may not be in the same position I am, they are still good people that work hard and just got hit with their own burdens. Hell many of us even go outside, and yes I have enjoyed playing Pokemon Go as many others have as well.
Bottom line, not everyone in the generation is like you and others want to stereotype, just a loud and idiotic minority that somehow people believe is a 'spokesman group' for the rest of us when they're not. Stop complaining about all of us please and just realize that some people are morons/assholes/entitled/whatever regardless of age or any other factor./rant off
This is what I'm working on now. I'm exploring different options for OSs now to make it more robust (Chromium will probably be great once they iron out the implementation and Google finishes getting their Android app support put into it). Very open and if you shop around you can easily get into it for under $100 (hell, $50 if you're very crafty).
The other thing I am looking into now is the system-on-a-sticks from Intel. They have a surprising variety of hardware and even multiple OSs. Some come preloaded with full Win10 or a Linux distro, not sure which, and they even have a couple that are load your own OS. They have middle tier models that are under $100 and then high end that are close to $500. Reviews and reports from people is they are about as good as the SBCs in performance, they support streaming pretty well, have full 1080p, and even expandable storage on top of the onboard 32GB+. USB ports allow for using the media keyboards that are getting popular (I bought a Rii for my RPi3 and its pretty cool) and even plugging in thumb drives/external hard drives (even has a USB 3.0 port).
The only drawback I really would consider is they can only do a wifi connection (least the intel ones, maybe others can do more) so it can be less reliable or some people just prefer hard wire, but they support all the way up to ac wireless and some have bluetooth.
Those are what I would recommend looking into. Kodi on a firestick is a pretty low cost option too, significantly more limited in expandibility, but much easier to setup (though not like the others are THAT hard...).
Pretty much exactly this. Apple is and always has been a HARDWARE company. Removing these things and creating a walled garden on even the equipment that is usable with their devices just feeds right into that model, but goes against the rest of the industry giants (mostly anyway). Problem is this will eventually kill them if they can't keep coming up with revolutionary ideas (and be first to market with them), because everyone can do it cheaper while still making money and being compatible with everything else.
That is the point of the drone registration yes, but that doesn't actually have anything to do with the database being public or private which is what TFA is about...
If you own a house your name and home address is already on public records and easily searchable. All this adds is you also have a drone at said address...
Yea I discovered that thanks to the AC that posted. Pretty awesome, I hadn't heard they added one. I'm already working on what I need to sit for the exam myself:D.
Oh awesome, a quick bit of searching around and this is indeed a recognized P.E. now even by the national/state boards. Lot of research to do on this! Thanks whoever you are.
Interesting. I had not heard of this before. I wonder if the PE is recognized by the national bodies yet? Definitely something to look into, but I know the legal definition hasn't changed yet (my title at work is software engineer to customers and I do work with public/government entities so it would matter).
Actually even private entities it can apply to if there is contract stipulations properly written into the agreement (which actually happens a lot). US is the same way as Canada, engineering legality is all about public, but it applies to advertising and such as well (go try to register a company that touts engineering and see how fast the regulatory boards get the state up your ass if you have no licensing for the work). There is legal recourse, its just like how accountants are governed by a non-profit board and there is legal recourse if someone does work that is not signed off on by a CPA.
Most people have no clue unless they have gotten involved in some type of engineering work or a company. Now I will give you a lot of people do use the term and get away with it, but if the state found out they can get into some serious shit for it.
Not entirely true. When I took Engineering Ethics in college we went over this and the legal definition (in the US and Canada at least) is actually either a person who holds a P.E. in their respective discipline or someone working under the guide of a person holding a P.E (guide can mean they just review your work, we have to do this all the time at my company since P.E.s are not valid in a state unless issued by that state's P.E. authority). Software engineering is the only legal exception. Since no software P.E. actually exists a person can legally call themselves a software engineer if they hold a mild amount of experience (which is legally fuzzy) and there is no recourse if they screw something up. You can read all about it on the National Society of Professional Engineers website www.nspe.org/
All that said, many (including myself) have argued for years software engineers should have a P.E. simply because it holds the people that wrote the code much more accountable for their actions. This way you can't leave a glaring security bug in the code that you knew about but just didn't want to fix and get away without any consequence for it. Texas, Florida and the Canadian boards have all actually supported this, but without the support from the broader group across North America it won't take any time soon. The standards probably would not be any where near as rigorous as other disciplines just because it is too difficult to check/prove/test software like other fields, but a baseline standard would help tremendously.
So no the dictionary definition may not indicate that, but the legal definitions do.
Yea agreed, working in the airline industry for my career there is definitely a huge difference in systems that my company has to deliver and systems the average tech company pushes out. We spend more time developing the specifications, test plans, and running through them than I've ever heard from other people working in other software fields. Not only that, but when anything we have even has a hiccup (and a lot of times not our fault) our support group is immediately engaged and sometimes spends hours on the phone helping them limp along and fix the issue (the systems we deliver are not allowed to have downtime, most of them have to run for a decade with maybe a couple of hours a night to do cleanup/maintenance). When working with physical equipment and having to maintain extreme high availability/fault tolerance it qualifies as engineering in my opinion.
That all said, I actually feel like there should be engineering oversight and regulations for software because allowing it to be the wild west and letting morons sling code out like crazy is exactly why we have all these security issues and such. I've argued for years that no matter how hard it is there should be some basic standards developed for software in general, but people either don't want it because it makes development more costly or they just dismiss it as impossible. I will conceit that it would be very difficult to develop standards equivalent to that of electrical or structural engineering, but it is definitely possible to at least create some to eliminate the morons that don't even know how to organize their code from spewing bug riddled messes out...
Or when you get it install DD-WRT, Tomato, etc. and use the very nice hardware they packaged for you but not the terrible and feature deprived firmware... Seriously, no reason a router should no be able to support things like standard VPN access and yet none of the companies build this into half their high end routers... I like netgear, but their firmware blows ass...
My high school offered it as an elective and my brother convinced me to take it my sophomore year (I was already interested in engineering, just wasn't sure what field). Out of the entire nearly 2000 students there was ONE class (both CS 1 and CS 2 combined) with less than 50 people taking it over the course of 3 years. There were about 8 of us that were actually any good, out of them I believe 3 (including myself) turned it into a career. The rest pretty much cheated off us or we had to help them through the assignments and tests. Our teacher was very aware of this and didn't have much choice but to curve things and ignore the cheating otherwise most of the class would have bombed out.
My senior year I had completed the 2 allowed years of the class, but I was still on the programming team for the school so I was somewhat involved with the new class that year. We had a large group of AP students that realized they could take the elective to improve their GPA (since AP classes were weighted higher), so they did. I had 90% of the class coming to me for help and most of them even by the end of the year straight up said they have no idea how I even understood most of the class, much less excelled. The first two weeks consisted of alternative number bases and how to do math in them, their minds were collectively blown (admittedly mine was when I first learned about binary too) and they had serious problems getting a handle on that within the first semester. These were people in the top 10% of my graduating class at a NATIONALLY RANKED public high school (several of them were in the top 20). They were not idiots by any stretch, but even they had problems just comprehending the subject...
Pretty spot on. I keep hearing this parroted over and over again and it seems to gain steam more from people that don't understand the engineering involved in proper programming. The best example I have heard is cars are ubiquitous in our society but does that mean everyone needs to learn how to work on them? I can drive a car, extremely well even, without having hardly any clue how it actually operates. Even if we teach "baseline" programming skills, so? What is the end game?
I didn't learn enough in high school to do much beyond create a few small scale applications, games, and scripts that were not of much use to anyone but me (and even then, they weren't major improvements). After college, different story but I majored in CS and now work as a full time software engineer. Even people getting into the field at entry level have issues making a proper application from the ground up. You want to see bug riddled applications that are security nightmares and totally unmaintainable? Let someone who has the high school level of education try to write a basic application and that is what you will get. Hell I remember going to UIL competitions and hearing people from other schools who had 2 years in a CS program start asking 'Alright, now what are these class things again?'
This 'programming should be a basic skill' crap needs to stop. Half of it boils down to companies hoping to flood the market with cheap labor to drive software developers wages down, but it won't happen. They want top skill for bottom dollar. Instead we will end up with a mess of people that know just enough to be dangerous and fuck things up repeatedly because they were 'taught this as a basic skill!'
Some people are much better at it than others, doesn't make a software developer any smarter or more intelligent than those that are not good at it, it is just a different skillset. Other engineering disciplines are equally as intelligent as I am, but I have electrical engineers in my office that fucking program PLCs still not able to grasp everything that my software does... Hell even opposite end of the spectrum with people doing liberal arts work, I've known English majors that I would consider down right brilliant, but they didn't know a damn thing about programming and some said they couldn't learn if they tried...
Bottom line, dumbass talking heads and politicians need to shut up about things they don't understand. And the ass holes at tech companies that keep spouting this needs to be taught to everyone are mostly just greedy. Not saying all though, some programs are actually geared toward giving opportunity to those that wouldn't even have it, but they are not trying to shove it down the populations throat.
Most of the solutions for this sort of thing I have done involve wired HDMI extenders over Cat6 and a wireless USB mouse/keyboard. There are "wireless" solutions but all of them are way overpriced for residential use and many are limited in application because they HOG bandwidth. Technically you can do it, but it won't be very responsive without using ac wifi. I personally ran my own extender to do this at my house, was actually really easy to do with some fish tape/firebreak drill bits. That is what I would recommend and just make it modular so you can use the outlet jacks for whatever (I actually set mine up to have keystones in the wall and at the top of the attic boards where they come out so you can move the actual cable between wall jack without splicing and re-terminating constantly).
Standard Cat6 is not that much more expensive than Cat5e and has the extra headroom for go up to 10 gbps later on (I'm thinking like 30+ years ahead type of thing). While Cat6A or 'Cat7' would be literally triple the cost for the same amount (I'm not kidding at all I was able to get 1000 feet for about $150 and my buddy who gets pricing through AT&T gets Cat6A at $450 for 1000 feet). Your standard household probably doesn't have a need for over 1, but considering MY network is actually being designed for in home media streaming, VPNing and a development network on the side etc., yes I actually can utilize 10 in the future if it becomes standard.
That said, its hard to predict what the future may hold even for a standard consumer need in a standard household, and for a minimal cost increase on Cat6, I would just go ahead and use it. The installation isn't that difficult (punch down and crimp on Cat6 certified RJ45 plugs and connectors is really quick, no different than Cat5e to Cat5e connectors) and you are covered in case a need does arise later. Achieving the proper distance for full speeds isn't really that hard either, very few homes are going to have 150 to 200+ feet runs where you would actually lose speed if conditions are not right. Even in my long ass house I only have one run that goes over 150, and its only by 15 feet.
Cat7 is not considered a true standard yet as TIA does not recognize it. Not only that it is extremely expensive for only a minimal upgrade from Cat6A (which is a huge pain to work with, I have some of it). Very few homes would need 100m run of cable that needs to run at 10 gbps and Cat7 anything is REALLY expensive (so is Cat6A to be fair). Many standard pieces are also not made to support wiring that thick, I have enough issues trying to crimp a Cat6A cable (with connectors that are rated for 6A even...). No reason to use Cat7 especially when it is difficult to ensure it is actually following that "standard." Now the conduit access is a good idea so you can run extra cables or later on replace them, but no need to run anything more than standard Cat6 imho.
I've been working on the cat6 upgrade in my house for a bit now and I found three to be a good number for almost all rooms (a few varied from that). One for a main PC, one for TV (lots of providers have boxes with ethernet jacks in them), and one to allow for a small unmanaged switch to use if the room needs more expansion. My logic was basically only two devices really could use full gigabit speeds (even then the TV could be done with a lot less if you have a router that can handle the traffic correctly), the rest should easily be able to exist with ~100 mbps if the switch is filled (I have a bunch of eight ports I got for free). Even if more bandwidth is needed, the switch/router is the limiting factor in speeds since I kept all the runs within proper limits for 10 gbps speeds and consumer won't have/need/want those for a while.
Few of the rooms I ran extra, such as centrally there will be APs for wireless only devices and guests, but three is pretty much the smartest number I came up with. Plus with three wires you can comfortably drop them through a 3/4'' hole (9/16'' if you REALLY want to tug) so that you minimize how big a hole you put in structural supports. The firebreaks made it a pain for me, but a $35 drill bit from Home Depot fixed that and keeps it in code technically I think (although firebreaks are not required where I live, mine are just nice fluff from the original home builder).
I see motorcycles just as well as cars that way. Way too many friends that ride, wouldn't do it if I couldn't see them. I want to start riding myself, so no it isn't an issue.
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This also depends strongly on the project management style and customer demonstrations. Generally I get change orders for plenty of things before the software ever hits site. This is because we do design reviews throughout the project, we have a live Factory Acceptance Test with customer in a simulated and emulated environment, and we specifically structure things so that we can get requests for change earlier. Now, granted the type of system I am installing can't be piece mealed out therefore we are somewhat pigeon-holed into waterfall, but with better transparency and avoiding developers all working in silos this isn't such a problem.
Some of our core development is done more in agile style with feature specs, sprints, and such, but if a common sense approach is used waterfall does not have to be so back loaded and so much more expensive. I would argue a lot of those problems come from large organizations that allow their gears to grind much too slowly and they isolate people so that they don't actually look at the overall business problem they are trying to solve (so that they can predict what parts of the code need to be more flexible).
Granted in some scenarios I do feel agile is more well suited, because it is a good thing to allow the user to get more hands on time with the end features so things can be tested and retooled if it isn't what they want, but a project can still be managed in waterfall style as long as proper measures are taken throughout the process, at least in my opinion. I know some people are married to one style or the other, but I can't help that.
I disagree. Working at a primarily waterfall based company we have lots of change orders after systems go into production and as long as the code was designed well there really isn't an issue with adding new features. Sure, there are occasionally the huge changes that some customer decided they couldn't live without, but those types of changes hurt agile shops too. The problem you describe and "solve" is designing overly rigid code, not "agile is better than waterfall."
No I work at a privately held company. I do however agree a lot of that is wasted on what amounts to corner case extremes. The large majority of these people will split themselves eventually out of necessity, just like in times past. I've seen a few that came into companies (a couple at one of our other offices even) that really needed to split, but once the company actually started asking real things of them it was a sink or swim situation and most swam (albeit with some growing pains).
There absolutely are some crazy extreme cases (the handful I have heard where parents go to job interviews for kids come to mind), but they are way overblown and definitely not the norm. Most decent companies won't let that crap fly anyway (I know we won't, I conduct some interviews now and if that happened I would walk out and ask HR if it was a joke), and even if they did, there is absolutely no way they will make it in the environment at large. Dumping money into such a small group is extremely alarmist and frivolous imho, especially when it will resolve itself.
I won't deny that it is difficult to ignore some of the studies and data considering our general reliance on experts in fields analyzing complex trends, but this one strikes me as incorrect. Especially given we don't have the same data to compare from all the previous generations in the same manner, they are trying way too hard to explain it when, to me, it is just part of the cycle of the generations and growing up.
I disagree that the problems are as widespread as we are lead to believe. Working off of your same anecdotal evidence, at my office I have the opposite experience. Most of the developers I am working with at this point are of the millenial generation (in my office at least) and with two notable exceptions (they are *closer* to the stereotype, but not full fledged), are extremely hard working, very intelligent, and not entitled/delusion. Hell, one of my co-workers that I am still friends with just moved on to working at Microsoft as a full time senior support engineer and is excelling at his job.
Maybe it is a thing of culture, or even area, but my experience and the 'counter-research' concludes in the other direction as well. Honestly we can probably argue this both directions all day, and while I respect your experiences/opinions I stand by my statements that a large portion of this is blown out of proportion and isn't any different than previous generations. I remember specifically growing up and hearing the same stuff about GenXers and my parents can remember the same thing about the Baby Boomer generation. I've seen bad apples, I've seen ridiculous parents, I've seen entitled asshats, but I don't accept this even as the slight majority of experiences.
My post was a bit of a rant, but you can't deny that it has gotten very old how many of the previous generations just want to bash on mine. It gets old hearing it over and over again, especially when I feel this is unfair to people such as myself and many of my friends (see: not all, some of them are idiots...). I do not believe we are even close to perfect, but as I stated we're not really any different than the previous generations and just want a fair shake. Maybe you have given some of these people that fair shake and they just blew it, but not everyone
While you are completely correct on the Texas laws allowing people to be shot for basically setting foot on your property (I'm in the state so I should know), and I also agree with you on the its ridiculous to assume lawsuits will result for stupid people not paying attention, I wholeheartedly resent your 'millenials are idiots argument.'
I am part of said generation and can honestly say at this point, this generation is no different than the previous ones, it is just much easier to criticize us because of the proliferation of round the clock news and how much more documenting many of my peers do in their every day life. Every previous generation has done stupid ass crap constantly, been incredibly smug for no reason (and with little accomplishment), ran around acting like they were better than everyone else, and countless other things that most of my generation will undoubtedly bitch about just the same when the next generation comes of age. The most you can argue is that more people see it because more people want to record and post it (professional and amateur alike).
The idea that somehow all millenials are idiots, irresponsible, don't go out, entitled, etc. is just outrageous. Yes, there are people within this generation like that, but there were people just like that in other generations as well. Please stop acting like we (millenials) are all the same. I am a college graduate, doing perfectly well and in fact taking care of multiple of members my family members in my own home (I know, such a reversal of expectations!), while not posting my entire life to social media and acting like an entitled dick (I do not feel I am better or worse than anyone, just different). I enjoy video games and many of the other things my generation does, while still going out and working on side projects that involve skills including electrical work, carpentry and many other 'practical skills' that apparently 'no millenial learns'. I have many friends that do the same and while may not be in the same position I am, they are still good people that work hard and just got hit with their own burdens. Hell many of us even go outside, and yes I have enjoyed playing Pokemon Go as many others have as well.
Bottom line, not everyone in the generation is like you and others want to stereotype, just a loud and idiotic minority that somehow people believe is a 'spokesman group' for the rest of us when they're not. Stop complaining about all of us please and just realize that some people are morons/assholes/entitled/whatever regardless of age or any other factor. /rant off
This is what I'm working on now. I'm exploring different options for OSs now to make it more robust (Chromium will probably be great once they iron out the implementation and Google finishes getting their Android app support put into it). Very open and if you shop around you can easily get into it for under $100 (hell, $50 if you're very crafty).
The other thing I am looking into now is the system-on-a-sticks from Intel. They have a surprising variety of hardware and even multiple OSs. Some come preloaded with full Win10 or a Linux distro, not sure which, and they even have a couple that are load your own OS. They have middle tier models that are under $100 and then high end that are close to $500. Reviews and reports from people is they are about as good as the SBCs in performance, they support streaming pretty well, have full 1080p, and even expandable storage on top of the onboard 32GB+. USB ports allow for using the media keyboards that are getting popular (I bought a Rii for my RPi3 and its pretty cool) and even plugging in thumb drives/external hard drives (even has a USB 3.0 port).
The only drawback I really would consider is they can only do a wifi connection (least the intel ones, maybe others can do more) so it can be less reliable or some people just prefer hard wire, but they support all the way up to ac wireless and some have bluetooth.
Those are what I would recommend looking into. Kodi on a firestick is a pretty low cost option too, significantly more limited in expandibility, but much easier to setup (though not like the others are THAT hard...).
Pretty much exactly this. Apple is and always has been a HARDWARE company. Removing these things and creating a walled garden on even the equipment that is usable with their devices just feeds right into that model, but goes against the rest of the industry giants (mostly anyway). Problem is this will eventually kill them if they can't keep coming up with revolutionary ideas (and be first to market with them), because everyone can do it cheaper while still making money and being compatible with everything else.
That is the point of the drone registration yes, but that doesn't actually have anything to do with the database being public or private which is what TFA is about...
If you own a house your name and home address is already on public records and easily searchable. All this adds is you also have a drone at said address...
Yea I discovered that thanks to the AC that posted. Pretty awesome, I hadn't heard they added one. I'm already working on what I need to sit for the exam myself :D.
Oh awesome, a quick bit of searching around and this is indeed a recognized P.E. now even by the national/state boards. Lot of research to do on this! Thanks whoever you are.
Interesting. I had not heard of this before. I wonder if the PE is recognized by the national bodies yet? Definitely something to look into, but I know the legal definition hasn't changed yet (my title at work is software engineer to customers and I do work with public/government entities so it would matter).
Actually even private entities it can apply to if there is contract stipulations properly written into the agreement (which actually happens a lot). US is the same way as Canada, engineering legality is all about public, but it applies to advertising and such as well (go try to register a company that touts engineering and see how fast the regulatory boards get the state up your ass if you have no licensing for the work). There is legal recourse, its just like how accountants are governed by a non-profit board and there is legal recourse if someone does work that is not signed off on by a CPA.
Most people have no clue unless they have gotten involved in some type of engineering work or a company. Now I will give you a lot of people do use the term and get away with it, but if the state found out they can get into some serious shit for it.
Definitely agree with this, but good luck getting everyone else to. Almost everyone it is an all or nothing thing...
I swear once a month I just tell HR my title should be magician because it explains more to people than software developer/engineer/monkey...
Not entirely true. When I took Engineering Ethics in college we went over this and the legal definition (in the US and Canada at least) is actually either a person who holds a P.E. in their respective discipline or someone working under the guide of a person holding a P.E (guide can mean they just review your work, we have to do this all the time at my company since P.E.s are not valid in a state unless issued by that state's P.E. authority). Software engineering is the only legal exception. Since no software P.E. actually exists a person can legally call themselves a software engineer if they hold a mild amount of experience (which is legally fuzzy) and there is no recourse if they screw something up. You can read all about it on the National Society of Professional Engineers website www.nspe.org/
All that said, many (including myself) have argued for years software engineers should have a P.E. simply because it holds the people that wrote the code much more accountable for their actions. This way you can't leave a glaring security bug in the code that you knew about but just didn't want to fix and get away without any consequence for it. Texas, Florida and the Canadian boards have all actually supported this, but without the support from the broader group across North America it won't take any time soon. The standards probably would not be any where near as rigorous as other disciplines just because it is too difficult to check/prove/test software like other fields, but a baseline standard would help tremendously.
So no the dictionary definition may not indicate that, but the legal definitions do.
Yea agreed, working in the airline industry for my career there is definitely a huge difference in systems that my company has to deliver and systems the average tech company pushes out. We spend more time developing the specifications, test plans, and running through them than I've ever heard from other people working in other software fields. Not only that, but when anything we have even has a hiccup (and a lot of times not our fault) our support group is immediately engaged and sometimes spends hours on the phone helping them limp along and fix the issue (the systems we deliver are not allowed to have downtime, most of them have to run for a decade with maybe a couple of hours a night to do cleanup/maintenance). When working with physical equipment and having to maintain extreme high availability/fault tolerance it qualifies as engineering in my opinion.
That all said, I actually feel like there should be engineering oversight and regulations for software because allowing it to be the wild west and letting morons sling code out like crazy is exactly why we have all these security issues and such. I've argued for years that no matter how hard it is there should be some basic standards developed for software in general, but people either don't want it because it makes development more costly or they just dismiss it as impossible. I will conceit that it would be very difficult to develop standards equivalent to that of electrical or structural engineering, but it is definitely possible to at least create some to eliminate the morons that don't even know how to organize their code from spewing bug riddled messes out...
Or when you get it install DD-WRT, Tomato, etc. and use the very nice hardware they packaged for you but not the terrible and feature deprived firmware... Seriously, no reason a router should no be able to support things like standard VPN access and yet none of the companies build this into half their high end routers... I like netgear, but their firmware blows ass...
My high school offered it as an elective and my brother convinced me to take it my sophomore year (I was already interested in engineering, just wasn't sure what field). Out of the entire nearly 2000 students there was ONE class (both CS 1 and CS 2 combined) with less than 50 people taking it over the course of 3 years. There were about 8 of us that were actually any good, out of them I believe 3 (including myself) turned it into a career. The rest pretty much cheated off us or we had to help them through the assignments and tests. Our teacher was very aware of this and didn't have much choice but to curve things and ignore the cheating otherwise most of the class would have bombed out.
My senior year I had completed the 2 allowed years of the class, but I was still on the programming team for the school so I was somewhat involved with the new class that year. We had a large group of AP students that realized they could take the elective to improve their GPA (since AP classes were weighted higher), so they did. I had 90% of the class coming to me for help and most of them even by the end of the year straight up said they have no idea how I even understood most of the class, much less excelled. The first two weeks consisted of alternative number bases and how to do math in them, their minds were collectively blown (admittedly mine was when I first learned about binary too) and they had serious problems getting a handle on that within the first semester. These were people in the top 10% of my graduating class at a NATIONALLY RANKED public high school (several of them were in the top 20). They were not idiots by any stretch, but even they had problems just comprehending the subject...
Pretty spot on. I keep hearing this parroted over and over again and it seems to gain steam more from people that don't understand the engineering involved in proper programming. The best example I have heard is cars are ubiquitous in our society but does that mean everyone needs to learn how to work on them? I can drive a car, extremely well even, without having hardly any clue how it actually operates. Even if we teach "baseline" programming skills, so? What is the end game?
I didn't learn enough in high school to do much beyond create a few small scale applications, games, and scripts that were not of much use to anyone but me (and even then, they weren't major improvements). After college, different story but I majored in CS and now work as a full time software engineer. Even people getting into the field at entry level have issues making a proper application from the ground up. You want to see bug riddled applications that are security nightmares and totally unmaintainable? Let someone who has the high school level of education try to write a basic application and that is what you will get. Hell I remember going to UIL competitions and hearing people from other schools who had 2 years in a CS program start asking 'Alright, now what are these class things again?'
This 'programming should be a basic skill' crap needs to stop. Half of it boils down to companies hoping to flood the market with cheap labor to drive software developers wages down, but it won't happen. They want top skill for bottom dollar. Instead we will end up with a mess of people that know just enough to be dangerous and fuck things up repeatedly because they were 'taught this as a basic skill!'
Some people are much better at it than others, doesn't make a software developer any smarter or more intelligent than those that are not good at it, it is just a different skillset. Other engineering disciplines are equally as intelligent as I am, but I have electrical engineers in my office that fucking program PLCs still not able to grasp everything that my software does... Hell even opposite end of the spectrum with people doing liberal arts work, I've known English majors that I would consider down right brilliant, but they didn't know a damn thing about programming and some said they couldn't learn if they tried...
Bottom line, dumbass talking heads and politicians need to shut up about things they don't understand. And the ass holes at tech companies that keep spouting this needs to be taught to everyone are mostly just greedy. Not saying all though, some programs are actually geared toward giving opportunity to those that wouldn't even have it, but they are not trying to shove it down the populations throat.
Most of the solutions for this sort of thing I have done involve wired HDMI extenders over Cat6 and a wireless USB mouse/keyboard. There are "wireless" solutions but all of them are way overpriced for residential use and many are limited in application because they HOG bandwidth. Technically you can do it, but it won't be very responsive without using ac wifi. I personally ran my own extender to do this at my house, was actually really easy to do with some fish tape/firebreak drill bits. That is what I would recommend and just make it modular so you can use the outlet jacks for whatever (I actually set mine up to have keystones in the wall and at the top of the attic boards where they come out so you can move the actual cable between wall jack without splicing and re-terminating constantly).
Standard Cat6 is not that much more expensive than Cat5e and has the extra headroom for go up to 10 gbps later on (I'm thinking like 30+ years ahead type of thing). While Cat6A or 'Cat7' would be literally triple the cost for the same amount (I'm not kidding at all I was able to get 1000 feet for about $150 and my buddy who gets pricing through AT&T gets Cat6A at $450 for 1000 feet). Your standard household probably doesn't have a need for over 1, but considering MY network is actually being designed for in home media streaming, VPNing and a development network on the side etc., yes I actually can utilize 10 in the future if it becomes standard.
That said, its hard to predict what the future may hold even for a standard consumer need in a standard household, and for a minimal cost increase on Cat6, I would just go ahead and use it. The installation isn't that difficult (punch down and crimp on Cat6 certified RJ45 plugs and connectors is really quick, no different than Cat5e to Cat5e connectors) and you are covered in case a need does arise later. Achieving the proper distance for full speeds isn't really that hard either, very few homes are going to have 150 to 200+ feet runs where you would actually lose speed if conditions are not right. Even in my long ass house I only have one run that goes over 150, and its only by 15 feet.
Cat7 is not considered a true standard yet as TIA does not recognize it. Not only that it is extremely expensive for only a minimal upgrade from Cat6A (which is a huge pain to work with, I have some of it). Very few homes would need 100m run of cable that needs to run at 10 gbps and Cat7 anything is REALLY expensive (so is Cat6A to be fair). Many standard pieces are also not made to support wiring that thick, I have enough issues trying to crimp a Cat6A cable (with connectors that are rated for 6A even...). No reason to use Cat7 especially when it is difficult to ensure it is actually following that "standard." Now the conduit access is a good idea so you can run extra cables or later on replace them, but no need to run anything more than standard Cat6 imho.
I've been working on the cat6 upgrade in my house for a bit now and I found three to be a good number for almost all rooms (a few varied from that). One for a main PC, one for TV (lots of providers have boxes with ethernet jacks in them), and one to allow for a small unmanaged switch to use if the room needs more expansion. My logic was basically only two devices really could use full gigabit speeds (even then the TV could be done with a lot less if you have a router that can handle the traffic correctly), the rest should easily be able to exist with ~100 mbps if the switch is filled (I have a bunch of eight ports I got for free). Even if more bandwidth is needed, the switch/router is the limiting factor in speeds since I kept all the runs within proper limits for 10 gbps speeds and consumer won't have/need/want those for a while.
Few of the rooms I ran extra, such as centrally there will be APs for wireless only devices and guests, but three is pretty much the smartest number I came up with. Plus with three wires you can comfortably drop them through a 3/4'' hole (9/16'' if you REALLY want to tug) so that you minimize how big a hole you put in structural supports. The firebreaks made it a pain for me, but a $35 drill bit from Home Depot fixed that and keeps it in code technically I think (although firebreaks are not required where I live, mine are just nice fluff from the original home builder).
I see motorcycles just as well as cars that way. Way too many friends that ride, wouldn't do it if I couldn't see them. I want to start riding myself, so no it isn't an issue.