Eh, You can develop secondary, more humanistic traits as you get older as a geek though.
And other people can get geekier as they get older, who couldn't care less when younger.
But I agree, you're either born one (pay the price and reap the rewards) or you aren't (and the same applies). That is if we're talking about assembler optimizing geeks, not those sissy SQL ones:D
I am doing the exact opposite these days from microsoft SW --- Ruby on Rails, but with Oracle (minor detail - see below)...
Rails completely hides it all - I can see a legion of kids growing up learning this stuff never knowing what a select|insert statement looks like.
It's the Access 97 mantra all over again "databases + UI [whatever the decade] are easy for us all to do!" but with the pope's blessing of open source and web2.0 and vcbuzz yay southpark's booming again yada yada yada.
Still as a programmer I feel restricted. Mind you I'm only a month into the RoR stuff but from what I seen I can just can my knowledge of SQL and let it happen behind the scenes.
But I can see where you're coming from, having been forced to use either oracle 7->10g and sql6->2000|mySQL in various work related programming the past decade [current 10g+ruby/rails]. Oracle was the first time I witnessed it's true power, grown man weepingly fast.
I would have expected SQL server 2000 to do (since oracle was doing this at least as of 1996)...but it disappointed.
Recent benchmarks of sqlserver2k5 from a biased source:
"SQL Server Now in the 1 Million Transactions-per-Minute Club--Fastest on Windows SQL Server has scaled past the barrier of 1 million transactions per minute, type "C" (tpmC)--the first to do so on Windows. Not only is SQL Server the fastest database on Windows, it is also the fastest database on Intel Itanium processors in a nonclustered environment.
In passing the 1 million tpmC barrier, SQL Server set many records:
1. Highest TPC-C result ever recorded on Windows. 2. Highest TPC-C result ever recorded on Intel's Itanium processors (scale-up). 3. Best price/performance on Windows in the top-10 TPC-C by performance.
Beats Oracle 10g on HP Superdome On similar hardware--an enterprise class server with 64 Intel Itanium 2 processors--SQL Server 2005 has 7 percent better performance and 37 percent lower cost than Oracle 10g"
So hey... good job all in Redmond who had to work you asses off for the past couple years tweaking the hell of this it to make it the fastest.
And there's zillions of project managers/and cover your ass people in the business world who would have it no other way. I have to work for them to make my keep. Okay, many in my company are great, but we have our own proprietary stuff that we won't share under the pain of losing toys over it.
Sucks. We should all get along and share code and ideas so we don't have to make mistakes that someone else has already for us.
But it's all competitive and... So that's always going to stir up the "this is mine you can't make $$$ without me having any" mindset.
Slashdot's bringing out the worst in me tonight.......
Case in point: Last employer, used well known ad-server software that we wanted to run on all front ends w/mason to do banners/blahblahblah. Tens millions of hits a day of course, so 40+mil to the main adserver.
Problem 1: No fedora 2 support. Okay, one 2+weeks of forcing to fit wasted, back to redhat (whatever the hell 2 year+ old ver they supported)...
Problem 2: Apache 1.3.x only, no 2.0....not to mention the mason libs provided were legacy (translation: d00d left the company that had an interest in making this work)
Ugh. In the end we opted for javascript called ads from a handful of out of date redhat servers just to run this. The downfall from all this is [a] we had to run the javascript ver of the ads [more % dropped], and [b] we had to waste cash on this extra cluster.
To switch gears, I really think in this arena, comparing Fedora 4 core to Win 2003 Server is a bit much....It's more like Vista [whatever current build is]. No one that matters in business matters will guarantee support for recent linux cores, or recent windows cores.
You might as well tell your boss that you're gambling with his and your career, depending on the crtiticality of the systems you run.
Warming of the ocean surface water, which happens in global warming, will increase the number and strength of hurricanes each year.
Duh!
Oh, one more thing --- did said freeper's chart include 2005? It's a little premature for 2005 numbers, when we're really just hitting the peak of seasonal hurricanes this week.
"ppl" is a one finger word --- with "people", you're switching fingers 5 times as a typist.
and this is why it's used.
why people use underscores in their variable naming (this_is_a_varible) is something that gets me riled up though. that damn _ character is way too much to repeat every 5-10 keystrokes.
U.S. is the #1 greenhouse gas polluter, and will be until at least 2030 (China will match us then). Your idiot president refuses to sign it because oil burning means co2.
"(sorry for the jumpyness of this message I wrote it in spurts over 4 hours as am busy at work:)"
Flux,
Hilarious - I do the same thing with a lot of the better email and messages I write.... I'm not dyslexic but it comes out that way after so much patchwork.
I ran a similar course to yours. I have lived and breathed programming since 12 years old, never got that degree, but have been getting paid to do it since age 20.
The only good programmers I've ever worked with were fanatics from the moment they laid eyes on their first keyboard. Everyone else is still in school-somebody-teach-me mode, lumbering along.
I should ask interview questions like "describe what you did last weekend" instead of "what's the difference between static and virtual members in c++"
That doesn't mean they shouldn't try. They have competent developers too (even though not enough are working on the IE7 project IMO).
IE doesnt force you to have MSN as a start page, any more than Opera forces you to opera.com, etc. etc. It's just a default, and people love their defaults.
What I wish some browsers would do is figure out which pages you go to most often, and either (a) let you decide or (b) because many, many users don't care what their computer does, let it decide for them based on popularity.
I really don't use the firefox "google start" page either, I like them to be blank.
Does it work with the Simpsons when the Christian Coalition does it?
And they (networks) have advertising dollars to lose by the boycott. Browser makers lose money developing browsers (even Mozilla was paid for).
I say use the browser you like.
The Opera people have had it up to their noses with everyone else saying "IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, RoXors!", when technically Opera is the superior browser, and have been for years.
is inline base64 encoding part of the CSS 2.1 standard, or just an Request For Comments (RFC)? I thought the latter. It's one of the things that would throw up.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice one.
Don't worry, our tax dollars are going to make it happen soon.
I for one, welcome our radioactive million degree overlords ("he was a cruel overlord; but fair")
You are an idiot --- it's been the heaviest hurricane season ever, subtracting the tropicals.
And the guy you voted for is an idiot too.
Excelsior,
You are so friggen right on this one [mobile wifi thin clients for the masses], I had to stop and say so. Picassa, heavy ajax use, now opera rumors?
GoogleZon awaits!
You don't even need to use the mouse in Windows - it can all be done with the keyboard.
I can't believe Unix has LESS key bindings than Win2k GUI.
To each his own I guess...
Eh, You can develop secondary, more humanistic traits as you get older as a geek though.
:D
And other people can get geekier as they get older, who couldn't care less when younger.
But I agree, you're either born one (pay the price and reap the rewards) or you aren't (and the same applies). That is if we're talking about assembler optimizing geeks, not those sissy SQL ones
Other planets are warming up too? I have not heard this one.
Oh man MagicMerlin, you struck a cord.
I am doing the exact opposite these days from microsoft SW --- Ruby on Rails, but with Oracle (minor detail - see below)...
Rails completely hides it all - I can see a legion of kids growing up learning this stuff never knowing what a select|insert statement looks like.
It's the Access 97 mantra all over again "databases + UI [whatever the decade] are easy for us all to do!" but with the pope's blessing of open source and web2.0 and vcbuzz yay southpark's booming again yada yada yada.
Still as a programmer I feel restricted. Mind you I'm only a month into the RoR stuff but from what I seen I can just can my knowledge of SQL and let it happen behind the scenes.
I wish I was more of an SQL geek Scott,
c .mspx
But I can see where you're coming from, having been forced to use either oracle 7->10g and sql6->2000|mySQL in various work related programming the past decade [current 10g+ruby/rails]. Oracle was the first time I witnessed it's true power, grown man weepingly fast.
I would have expected SQL server 2000 to do (since oracle was doing this at least as of 1996)...but it disappointed.
Recent benchmarks of sqlserver2k5 from a biased source:
TPC-C and TPC-H Benchmark Results for SQL Server (nov 7)
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/compare/tpc
"SQL Server Now in the 1 Million Transactions-per-Minute Club--Fastest on Windows
SQL Server has scaled past the barrier of 1 million transactions per minute, type "C" (tpmC)--the first to do so on Windows. Not only is SQL Server the fastest database on Windows, it is also the fastest database on Intel Itanium processors in a nonclustered environment.
In passing the 1 million tpmC barrier, SQL Server set many records:
1. Highest TPC-C result ever recorded on Windows.
2. Highest TPC-C result ever recorded on Intel's Itanium processors (scale-up).
3. Best price/performance on Windows in the top-10 TPC-C by performance.
Beats Oracle 10g on HP Superdome
On similar hardware--an enterprise class server with 64 Intel Itanium 2 processors--SQL Server 2005 has 7 percent better performance and 37 percent lower cost than Oracle 10g"
So hey... good job all in Redmond who had to work you asses off for the past couple years tweaking the hell of this it to make it the fastest.
PS: we all wish you would open source it, btw
Right.
... So that's always going to stir up the "this is mine you can't make $$$ without me having any" mindset.
And there's zillions of project managers/and cover your ass people in the business world who would have it no other way. I have to work for them to make my keep. Okay, many in my company are great, but we have our own proprietary stuff that we won't share under the pain of losing toys over it.
Sucks. We should all get along and share code and ideas so we don't have to make mistakes that someone else has already for us.
But it's all competitive and
Slashdot's bringing out the worst in me tonight.......
To goes beyond that a little...
Case in point: Last employer, used well known ad-server software that we wanted to run on all front ends w/mason to do banners/blahblahblah. Tens millions of hits a day of course, so 40+mil to the main adserver.
Problem 1: No fedora 2 support. Okay, one 2+weeks of forcing to fit wasted, back to redhat (whatever the hell 2 year+ old ver they supported)...
Problem 2: Apache 1.3.x only, no 2.0....not to mention the mason libs provided were legacy (translation: d00d left the company that had an interest in making this work)
Ugh. In the end we opted for javascript called ads from a handful of out of date redhat servers just to run this. The downfall from all this is [a] we had to run the javascript ver of the ads [more % dropped], and [b] we had to waste cash on this extra cluster.
To switch gears, I really think in this arena, comparing Fedora 4 core to Win 2003 Server is a bit much....It's more like Vista [whatever current build is]. No one that matters in business matters will guarantee support for recent linux cores, or recent windows cores.
You might as well tell your boss that you're gambling with his and your career, depending on the crtiticality of the systems you run.
Sucks damn it.
We're using Rails at work for an application with Oracle 10.... Bah to those who say you can only use MySQL, we haven't used it once!
Warming of the ocean surface water, which happens in global warming, will increase the number and strength of hurricanes each year.
Duh!
Oh, one more thing --- did said freeper's chart include 2005? It's a little premature for 2005 numbers, when we're really just hitting the peak of seasonal hurricanes this week.
"ppl" is a one finger word --- with "people", you're switching fingers 5 times as a typist.
and this is why it's used.
why people use underscores in their variable naming (this_is_a_varible) is something that gets me riled up though. that damn _ character is way too much to repeat every 5-10 keystrokes.
U.S. is the #1 greenhouse gas polluter, and will be until at least 2030 (China will match us then). Your idiot president refuses to sign it because oil burning means co2.
"(sorry for the jumpyness of this message I wrote it in spurts over 4 hours as am busy at work :)"
Flux,
Hilarious - I do the same thing with a lot of the better email and messages I write.... I'm not dyslexic but it comes out that way after so much patchwork.
Right, titles are meaningless.
I call myself a programmer. Its faster and gets the point across that I spent a lot of my time reading and writing/testing code.
We used to have a guy who was "chief scientist" at the web company where I worked in the late 90s. He couldn't even code: how sorry is that?
AC [you should get a handle],
Good rundown.
I ran a similar course to yours. I have lived and breathed programming since 12 years old, never got that degree, but have been getting paid to do it since age 20.
The only good programmers I've ever worked with were fanatics from the moment they laid eyes on their first keyboard. Everyone else is still in school-somebody-teach-me mode, lumbering along.
I should ask interview questions like "describe what you did last weekend" instead of "what's the difference between static and virtual members in c++"
That doesn't mean they shouldn't try. They have competent developers too (even though not enough are working on the IE7 project IMO).
IE doesnt force you to have MSN as a start page, any more than Opera forces you to opera.com, etc. etc. It's just a default, and people love their defaults.
What I wish some browsers would do is figure out which pages you go to most often, and either (a) let you decide or (b) because many, many users don't care what their computer does, let it decide for them based on popularity.
I really don't use the firefox "google start" page either, I like them to be blank.
Excellent idea!
Let's have Slashdot throw the first stone on this little money maker.
My boss would fire me for even thinking this --- we would all be out of work in about a week.
Come on Slashdot --- you post this dribble, put your actions where your mouth is.
Does it work with the Simpsons when the Christian Coalition does it?
And they (networks) have advertising dollars to lose by the boycott. Browser makers lose money developing browsers (even Mozilla was paid for).
I say use the browser you like.
The Opera people have had it up to their noses with everyone else saying "IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, RoXors!", when technically Opera is the superior browser, and have been for years.
Oh that would play out well out work.
Boss: "What happened to our friday numbers? We owe Audi 200,000 more impressions and we'll never make it"
Me: "Oh, that! It's the Microsoft-Free Fridays Apache module."
(grumbling and hushed tones)
Me: Didn't know you'd be such a d1ck about it. Okay, I'll get my things....
Cause Mozilla wasn't doing it too.
Kindof like XSL/XML/CSS display bullshite circa 2003:
In the Firefox/Mozilla camp, CSS was the only way for a long time to manipulate XML for display.
In the Internet explorer camp, XSL was the only way to manipulate XML for display.
Hopefully we can get XML to display with CSS 100% in IE7, cause you can't in IE6. I think Mozilla has XSL embedded in the browser now (I hope).
is inline base64 encoding part of the CSS 2.1 standard, or just an Request For Comments (RFC)? I thought the latter. It's one of the things that would throw up.
During the .com boom, Netscape 4.7x was the only other game in town, besides IE.
NN4.x is the biggest pile of junk ever written. So why would anyone want to code for it?
YI - there was no BLINK tag implementation for IE, and never will be. It's nonstandard HTML.
However, you'll find it's still alive and well in Mozilla/Firefox.
and since safari and firefox come from the same code base, web developers world over rejoice!