Yes, kids still enjoy programming, but not all kids. It isn't all that long since I gradutated high school, and I can say that in my experience it's an issue of earlier specialization among geeks. Those who are interested in a topic are becoming more focused on that topic at earlier levels of education as opposed to not until college. What this leads to is the branching that you used to see later in life.
To phrase it another way, if you are interested in some other hard science and not a do-it-all genius type, why devote the kind of time it takes to be a good programmer if you have little or no plans of needing it later in life? Even at that early stage, you ask your programmer geek buddy to code what you need. You just need to learn to be good at giving specs, not writing code.
Before the flames and such start, I'm not saying this is a correct view, but it seems to be a prevailing one. To some extent, I find myself in this view as well. I'm a sysadmin, but I know a little programming. However, if I need anything beyond a basic script, I'm going to go to a real programmer to get the job done. Why? Because I've become specialized and I don't have the time and/or brilliance (and when it comes to programming, frankly the inclination) to master other fields.
That's why Google is providing the 900,000 page cache and some C++ source that (I'm assuming) includes the method for interfacing the database. I'm not going to re-write the terms as it's been done several times above... Just scroll up and read from the previous comments.
I'm honestly curious as to what kind of useful programs could be run on that collection of pages and still be interesting? Statistical Analysis? Boring! Or maybe market analysis? Again, BORING! Some of the more trivial interesting things, like how much of phrase or word x appears on the internet couldn't really be termed useful... Hopefully, somebody will prove me wrong. Good luck to all you developers...
Re:This particular outsourcing company is horrid
on
XBox Defects Draw Ire
·
· Score: 1
If anyone is actually still reading this thread, you can see the amazing quality of the people who work that account. They are cowards who cannot contribute intellectual discussion. They can only lash out in an attempt to hurt. BTW, I'm a virgin by choice. I have religious convictions controlling that. And while I may have a problem with my weight, it is not in the vicinity of 300. *sigh* morons like this are why I hate the world.
This particular outsourcing company is horrid
on
XBox Defects Draw Ire
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The main reason X-Box support ranks so low right now is that it is outsourced to Harte-Hanks in Austin. Believe me, I've worked there. Despite the best intentions of the companies that hire them, somewhere down the overly deep trail of managers, the intentions get twisted into "screw the customer."
The employees are undertrained high school students, college students, and poor saps like me who just couldn't find anything better at the time. Since management is never very forthcoming with information, and eventually, a phone tech gets tired of having to dig for information that should be readily available. So we give up, we lose any joy in our jobs, and the customer loses any hope of decent support. Welcome to the outsourced call center.
In fact, having worked the Sega account there, I can sqarely place a large chunk of the blame for death of the Dreamcast on Harte-Hanks. As much as I dislike Microsoft's general business practices, the XBox is still a very nice system and I'd hate to see HH kill it, too.
Fry's isn't JUST buying your customer info from Egghead.com. They are BUYING Egghead.com. According to a speech given by Randy Fry (President) in Austin at the Grand Opening of the first Fry's in town a couple of weeks ago.
He mentioned that while Fry's had never had an online presence, it was time to develop one. And he felt the best way to do that was to purchase Egghead rather than building from scratch.
BTW, how do I know this? I was working for Fry's at the time and was able to catch this handy little tidbit...
Okay, this one got me at first... I actually had to read the FAQ before I realized it... Hey! You try reading Slashdot on the morning of April fools day when you haven't slept in 36 hours! Then you just might have the right to laugh at me as hard as I'm laughing at myself right now...:-)
No. We do not need to use their system. Then again, they bought ICQ, added banners to it, but that's easily cracked.
And some of us are forced to use AIM as a workplace tool. (scary, I know)
In short, do we need to use AIM? No. Do we want to use it? For most of us, no. Are we stuck using it for lack of alternative? Unfortunately, yes.
That is why this hurts so badly. They are trying to kill off all chance of a reasonable alternative for those of us that loathe AOL but just can't help but like one of the two chat systems they control.
That's right, I actually did a little detective work! Not all of us Rednecks in Texas are gonna take this sitting down!! Small businesses (as usual) are going to get stomped on by this. And as a partner in a small business, I REFUSE to vote for any state representative who votes yes on these bills. And I'll get my family to do the same... Heck, around here that's half the county!!:-)
But seriously, here is the information promised. It won't allow direct linking to a bill, but go to this page and search for "Uniform Computer Information"
The Bills are:
House Bill 1785
Senate Bill 709
Now, concerned Texans, write your representative! And if you need help visit AFFECT.
Actually, Sega of America (support center in Texas) is 24/7. If you call at what was 11PM in Redmond, you would probably be talking to my sorry butt at 9PM Central right before my lunch break. So don't talk long!
I work in a call center in Texas for a rather large international company. I handle calls from all over the U.S. and Canada as well as from immigrants. I can understand all of their English perfectly well, and they have no trouble with my Texas drawl...
Look no further than the US. Take that South Dakotan and place him in the South Side of Chichago. Do you think he is going to understand a word...
In a word, YES, from experience, I think he will. I speak daily to people from that area, as well as people from Philadelphia, Compton, the Deep South (Georgia, Arkansas, etc.) and even Canada, and I have ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM conversing with these people. I'm not unusual. In my office are hundreds of other Texans who do the exact same thing.
Rome and the Latin language didn't have telephones and the communications industry that we have today. This language splintering theory is ridiculous without the isolation of cultures required to produce the split.
Let's face it. Americans, we're, well... stubborn and lazy. Most of us won't even learn another language... Do you think we would actually write in a programming language that required us to first learn a foreign language then learn to program based on it?
I REALLY don't think so.
Besides, since everyone else is so accomodating as to learn English, why should we bother to learn other languages?;-)
As a new sys-admin I definitely have to agree with Jonathan. I want to see our good buddy sips try to get a pissy SPARC10 running Solaris back up after some clueless jerk in the IT department of your data center decides the best way to turn an alarm off is to kill power to the entire building. (Does this sort of thing happen to everyone?)
Anyway, right on, Jonathan! And would you like to borrow my big huge Redneck2000 Shotgun to punk this guy with?:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, kids still enjoy programming, but not all kids. It isn't all that long since I gradutated high school, and I can say that in my experience it's an issue of earlier specialization among geeks. Those who are interested in a topic are becoming more focused on that topic at earlier levels of education as opposed to not until college. What this leads to is the branching that you used to see later in life.
To phrase it another way, if you are interested in some other hard science and not a do-it-all genius type, why devote the kind of time it takes to be a good programmer if you have little or no plans of needing it later in life? Even at that early stage, you ask your programmer geek buddy to code what you need. You just need to learn to be good at giving specs, not writing code.
Before the flames and such start, I'm not saying this is a correct view, but it seems to be a prevailing one. To some extent, I find myself in this view as well. I'm a sysadmin, but I know a little programming. However, if I need anything beyond a basic script, I'm going to go to a real programmer to get the job done. Why? Because I've become specialized and I don't have the time and/or brilliance (and when it comes to programming, frankly the inclination) to master other fields.
That's why Google is providing the 900,000 page cache and some C++ source that (I'm assuming) includes the method for interfacing the database. I'm not going to re-write the terms as it's been done several times above... Just scroll up and read from the previous comments.
I'm honestly curious as to what kind of useful programs could be run on that collection of pages and still be interesting? Statistical Analysis? Boring! Or maybe market analysis? Again, BORING! Some of the more trivial interesting things, like how much of phrase or word x appears on the internet couldn't really be termed useful... Hopefully, somebody will prove me wrong. Good luck to all you developers...
If anyone is actually still reading this thread, you can see the amazing quality of the people who work that account. They are cowards who cannot contribute intellectual discussion. They can only lash out in an attempt to hurt. BTW, I'm a virgin by choice. I have religious convictions controlling that. And while I may have a problem with my weight, it is not in the vicinity of 300. *sigh* morons like this are why I hate the world.
The main reason X-Box support ranks so low right now is that it is outsourced to Harte-Hanks in Austin. Believe me, I've worked there. Despite the best intentions of the companies that hire them, somewhere down the overly deep trail of managers, the intentions get twisted into "screw the customer."
The employees are undertrained high school students, college students, and poor saps like me who just couldn't find anything better at the time. Since management is never very forthcoming with information, and eventually, a phone tech gets tired of having to dig for information that should be readily available. So we give up, we lose any joy in our jobs, and the customer loses any hope of decent support. Welcome to the outsourced call center.
In fact, having worked the Sega account there, I can sqarely place a large chunk of the blame for death of the Dreamcast on Harte-Hanks. As much as I dislike Microsoft's general business practices, the XBox is still a very nice system and I'd hate to see HH kill it, too.
Fry's isn't JUST buying your customer info from Egghead.com. They are BUYING Egghead.com. According to a speech given by Randy Fry (President) in Austin at the Grand Opening of the first Fry's in town a couple of weeks ago.
He mentioned that while Fry's had never had an online presence, it was time to develop one. And he felt the best way to do that was to purchase Egghead rather than building from scratch.
BTW, how do I know this? I was working for Fry's at the time and was able to catch this handy little tidbit...
Yep, they'll most likely be changing it...
;-)
RepTile is a program by Sausage Software, producers of HotDog.
While the functionality is totally different, I'm betting Sausage done went and trademarked the name Reptile for a piece of software...
Legal problems involving software names can REALLY suck. *cough* *Adobe* *cough*
Okay, this one got me at first... I actually had to read the FAQ before I realized it... :-)
Hey! You try reading Slashdot on the morning of April fools day when you haven't slept in 36 hours! Then you just might have the right to laugh at me as hard as I'm laughing at myself right now...
No. We do not need to use their system. Then again, they bought ICQ, added banners to it, but that's easily cracked.
And some of us are forced to use AIM as a workplace tool. (scary, I know)
In short, do we need to use AIM? No. Do we want to use it? For most of us, no. Are we stuck using it for lack of alternative? Unfortunately, yes.
That is why this hurts so badly. They are trying to kill off all chance of a reasonable alternative for those of us that loathe AOL but just can't help but like one of the two chat systems they control.
That's right, I actually did a little detective work! Not all of us Rednecks in Texas are gonna take this sitting down!! Small businesses (as usual) are going to get stomped on by this. And as a partner in a small business, I REFUSE to vote for any state representative who votes yes on these bills. And I'll get my family to do the same... Heck, around here that's half the county!! :-)
But seriously, here is the information promised. It won't allow direct linking to a bill, but go to this page and search for "Uniform Computer Information"
The Bills are:
House Bill 1785
Senate Bill 709
Now, concerned Texans, write your representative! And if you need help visit AFFECT.
Actually, Sega of America (support center in Texas) is 24/7. If you call at what was 11PM in Redmond, you would probably be talking to my sorry butt at 9PM Central right before my lunch break. So don't talk long!
I work in a call center in Texas for a rather large international company. I handle calls from all over the U.S. and Canada as well as from immigrants. I can understand all of their English perfectly well, and they have no trouble with my Texas drawl...
Look no further than the US. Take that South Dakotan and place him in the South Side of Chichago. Do you think he is going to understand a word...
In a word, YES, from experience, I think he will. I speak daily to people from that area, as well as people from Philadelphia, Compton, the Deep South (Georgia, Arkansas, etc.) and even Canada, and I have ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM conversing with these people. I'm not unusual. In my office are hundreds of other Texans who do the exact same thing.
Rome and the Latin language didn't have telephones and the communications industry that we have today. This language splintering theory is ridiculous without the isolation of cultures required to produce the split.
Can anyone say ARPANET??
Let's face it. Americans, we're, well... stubborn and lazy. Most of us won't even learn another language... Do you think we would actually write in a programming language that required us to first learn a foreign language then learn to program based on it?
;-)
I REALLY don't think so.
Besides, since everyone else is so accomodating as to learn English, why should we bother to learn other languages?
As a new sys-admin I definitely have to agree with Jonathan. I want to see our good buddy sips try to get a pissy SPARC10 running Solaris back up after some clueless jerk in the IT department of your data center decides the best way to turn an alarm off is to kill power to the entire building. (Does this sort of thing happen to everyone?)
:-)
Anyway, right on, Jonathan! And would you like to borrow my big huge Redneck2000 Shotgun to punk this guy with?
heh...
:)
I have to agree with the coward... with the "no benefits" part. I don't condone mass slaughter for any reason.
And yes, the author of that article was pushing his own agenda. Us Rednecks's don't take too kindly to his type in these here parts...
This isn't an advertising forum...
/. should be drug out into the street and shot!
Jerks who post stuff like this on
Illiad has NSI pegged with this one...
Sunday's User Friendly