The last thing programmers need is a power grubbing QA task manager on top of the idiot scrum manager, in addition to whoever else wants to run things. Quality starts with planning and thinking before coding and not rushing code out the door. A better approach would be not allowing non software people the ability to make statements of quality, cost and capability about software, via legal fiat. Let software engineers as individuals sign off on it.
Folks there's a lot less science, predictability and consensus in the legal profession. People need a license to cut hair. If software as a profession isn't to be regulated, neither of those professions should be as well.
For the record some of us HATE this idea. I don't want to be that close to my coworkers. I can't work with people staring over my shoulder. I need a reasonable amount of privacy. Since I spend over a third of my life there, I want to be able to bring a couple of personal things and not move them around all the time.
What makes people think professionals known for introversion want to have absolutely NO privacy?
Hey, lets start trashing other careers by giving them a 6 week course before a large paycheck.
Plumbers Attorneys Accountants Electricians...
Why is it software engineering is the one field people say is over paid, requires next to no training or experience. If you're an SE, you should stand up to these insults as well.
Somehow there's money rolling into the development of these browsers. If memory serves, Opera is purchased. The others are all free downloads. Yet there's no ads.
My question is, where is the money for these coming from and why? There must be some large donor base somewhere that really drives the feature set.
I admire the attempt at consistency with the K everywhere. Well, sort of. The commentary below doesn't apply to necessarily to this specific release or grouping of work. I also concede that it's time spent and in some cases money. Further, I admit that many will actually like it.
I'm probably not one of them. I order regular coffee and have it black. I don't get the Frappe/Crape or whatever stuff gets put in.
But really, I'm getting older. I don't want to learn someone's new paradigm for user interfaces. I don't care if it looks like Windows with enhancements. Sue me for liking some things about Windows. At least they were consistent. I like that release after release, the same Window D command brings me to the desktop (I don't know about Win 8).
Coming up with new "skins", tabs just irritates me. What I really want is a windowing system that's fast, and doesn't get in my way. When I tell it to go to the desktop, I want it NOW, and not spend time thrashing the hard drive trying to get to it. Same thing with the run command. Really, I don't need all these things as a user. Dammit stop it already. If you're working on KDE trying to change everything again for the 15th time in hopes that the world will all switch over to Linux and your own flavor of windowing manager, just give up. Let it be. Use your developer talents on something that really improves computing for people. Make the computer do something it hasn't before.
Oh, and whatever you do, stop trying to make it slower and more complicated. Did anyone ever hear of that simplicity concept? Bear in mind, this does not have to be run like an IBM product. You do not need to rewrite all your widgets in some bastard dujour's Javascript library on top of some javascript engine which then dynamically compiles the widget into something native only to be displayed 10 minutes later. Honestly, if you ran software from 10-15 years ago, much of it would be faster on today's machines.
In case you're wondering, I run Ubuntu at home and use Windows at work. I just try to make everything come as close to the old "Start Me Up" Windows paradigm. Yes, it's old. But so was the song even when Bill Gates used it for Win 95. Just because something is old does not mean it should be replaced. There should be a reason, and, unless this is for the sake of art, that reason should be practical or at least logical.
I still want to continue using Linux along with a decent window manager, though mostly for the command line capabilities. I just don't want to learn something new unless it's going to give me more time away from the computer.
This triggers my rant reflex... I started my career in native development, and only in the last say 5 years have I done almost exclusively Java based web development, mostly due to market demands and needing a paycheck. I miss the quick response times, quicker builds and simplicity where it was appropriate. I suspect the best hope for any native development now is maintaining legacy systems and mobile apps. People used to be in client/server development, but that's largely been replaced by the SaaS model due to comparative simplicity, but now we have a myriad of new technologies and frameworks globbed together. The industry's answer to any amount of complexity is yet another platform or framework and more indirection. It's hard to secure and know that it's done properly, and harder to know that someone else did it properly.
Go ahead and shoot me, but I miss the real native development days, regardless of the platform.
I sympathize with the above. I've been hearing for years here in the US about "nursing shortages". There's been plenty of nursing programs in schools in our area which issue nursing degrees at various levels such as a 1 year LPN, 2 year associate and then the 4 year RN (I believe I got the names and years correct). The thing is, there's been a waiting list to get into these programs because people believed there was a shortage, and it's been this way for years even before the great recession. It smelled like a bubble, but Johnson and Johnson kept running ads about how nurses are kind hearted people who care implying the viewer should drop everything and enroll in the saintly nursing profession.
A similar thing seems to be happening on a site for American Actuaries. Apparently, the main site was touting extreme demand, but graduates were still having a hard time. We in the IT field keep hearing about an IT shortage from IT publications, but as has been discussed previously, the reasoning is to get more H1B or similar visa people in so that companies can pay a fraction of the US market based wage. People in the US cost more because it costs more for them to live.
Real people (not Mitt Romney's idea of one), like the almighty corporations which we're supposed to praise, love and worship, are chasing what they believe to be the best opportunity for them based on the best information they are given. The thing is, when these same entities rig the system with false information about supply and demand for their own benefit it's no longer a fair game. Then they have the gall to rig the bankruptcy code in their favor, which makes things even worse for real people.
In the meantime, the US government subsidizes the so called risk of lending to students, making credit even easier. Schools see this and raise their tuition with each increase in US government lending limits. At my MBA school, each student graduates after paying over $90k. They get this amount times about 1000 students, yet they still ask for alumni gifts. There's just no way it costs that much to run the school. This mentality of schools charging the maximum of whatever a student's borrowing abilities are exacerbates the problem.
The system is rigged and we in the US are just suckers playing a game many of us are loosing it.
I think the biggest business risk for outsourcing isn't always secrecy, with the notable exception being China. There are examples of corporate secrets not being widely divulged, such as the recipe for Coca Cola; available in India and China, but exact ingredients are still a mystery. Also, somehow IBM manages to keep its z/OS operating system away from software pirates even though there's emulators to run it on an Intel platform.
A bigger risk not much talked about here is the issue of enforcement of contracts. I'm sure there's some degree of enforcement abilities within the Indian legal system, there's arguably less in China. It just makes life more difficult if you're attempting to manage a long term engagement of resources with a defined outcome if your system for contract enforcement is nebulous, weak or non-existent. Note that this is an argument against offshoring unless you have significant resources to manage it, like say IBM.
I worked for a company which does a lot of in-house software development. They constantly had problems with the project management side of their off shore resources, mostly due to inexperience, time zones and communication abilities. The market for Indian off shore developers was so hot that they had a hard time hiring experienced developers because they kept leaving for more money. On the other hand, they had as much control as they could muster over their local resources, ensuring a level of quality, and ease of communication. It was quicker to get things done on site than offshore, despite having an offshore liaison. They also didn't pay exorbitant contractor rates or over pay for some commercial framework that could have been written locally cheaper.
It's all who you know. It's an exclusive club that won't just anyone in - kind of like an aristocracy.
Why, no one really thinks we're upwardly mobile in the US, do they?
If you think that you can be smart, work hard, and show ambition and get to that level, well, I have a lottery ticket from Nigeria that'll pay millions of dollars and all you have to do is send me $5,000 for fees and bribes and you can have the ticket because if I cash it in, I'll lose my spot as the next king.
It would be nice if companies would promote people on the basis of having at least some inkling of experience in what they're managing. I can't tell you how many "project managers" I've worked for that could never program their way out of a paper bag, and therefore have no sense of scheduling. I got an MBA so that I could use my experience in development to move up *just one* level in an IT organization. But no. No amount of relevant experience and credentials were enough to break the glass ceiling. The decision makers are even proud of their ignorance of technology.
We live in a society where leaders have been replaced with MBAs and empty-headed politicos who look good on camera, and rule number one is 'Pass The Buck!'. Once you realise that, most of the seemingly insane behaviour of modern 'leaders' makes perfect sense.
Actually, the MBA no longer matters anymore to get into the country club. In a recent showing of "I Almost Got Away With It", a con man with only a GED read a few books on finance, learned some lingo and forged a resume and credentials to become CFO of a medium sized company. Had he not embezzled from them, he would have been kept on, as the CEO said he was one of the best CFO's they've ever had!
If you gave me the prestige and pay of those that wore suits, I would wear that suit. I'll wear a suit in exchange for:
* Not having unqualified people making statements about the work I and other qualified people do (ie. pretending that accountants are more qualified to fully analyze the inner workings of accounting software). * Stop pretending software engineering is skill that can be acquired in a semester of high school education. * Value my opinion and other's that are qualified.
Yes, I'd like higher pay, and I'd love to stop pretending that software engineers are like simpleton woodworkers whose work is delightfully shipped to the cheapest parts of the world. But I'd settle for the respect for now. A national license structure would do that. For that, yes, I'll wear a suit.
A better approach would be a licensure board for the profession. This is not the same thing as unionization but it would cut the labor supply which is horrendously high. One of the main contentions of the Programmer's Guild (lobbying group/not union) is that tech companies release false claims of a low supply of labor so H1B visas can be increased. Meanwhile, domestic talent finds it hard to be employed.
Of those who claim to be self taught, remember that whatever claim to skill or knowledge you have, it must be demonstrated repeatedly each time you change jobs. Any other person can make the same claim.
Also, let's not belittle the profession so much as to think that the 4 year degree isn't worth anything. That would make the university and college system the one of the biggest scam artists in the IT world. One could say, I never used the stuff I learned in school so therefore it isn't valuable. On the other hand, one could say, it wasn't used because the employer didn't bother to learn the value of the skills aquired, and therefore underutilized the educated person's skills.
I fail to see why a hair dresser, real estate appraiser and other jobs require a license but not software professionals.
A better approach would be to license not the ability to do work, but the ability to make claims on that work. In otherwords, put the licensed software professional on the hook for work done either by him or her, or a lesser skilled person by signing his or her name. Legally preclude non-licensed people from making statements about that software, despite having an MD, MBA, JD, etc. That gives the trained individual the respect they deserve, rather than saying, hey, I studied basket weaving and read a book on C++, now I'm a software professional. As it is now, there is *no* standard level of comparison.
Companies win because the overall quality of software would have to rise. Software professionals win because everyone's brother couldn't falsely claim they knew what they were doing. Pay would rise to reasonable levels and working conditions would also improve. Not everything could be outsourced because companies would demand the licensed software professional be located domestically where he or she could be held accountable, just like attorneys, CPA's, etc.
Having said all that, I'm leaving the profession because I've learned that the vast majority of people doing this work love the anarchy of it. They love the low entry barriers which destroy their economic rent. They think it's great to let other professions make far more money despite an equivalent amount of education and talent. They love the lack of prestige bestowed upon them, preferring pejoratives like "Geek", "Hacker", and "Nerd" instead of professional.
In case there's someone who doesn't know how... To do searching try clicking on View->Search this view, from the menu bar. There should be a text box that you can type text into to search for, which seems to search the whole document, not just the subject. I say seems, because I'm not sure exactly how much it does search. I think this is called Full Text Searching, in Notes parlance, which can be enabled for each database you care to full text search. To enable this, go to the database properties, click the tab with the magnifying glass, and click the Create Full Text Index. The View->Search this view option seemed to work without creating the Full Text index.
"Eventually it just leaves you wanting to find the person who gave you said pocketknife, and stab them with the little corkscrew, in the hopes that next time they'll give you a proper chisel." -- True, insightful and funny.
FWIW, I've made several comments and suggestions to the GnuCash user list and I always get a helpful response. No one treats me like an idiot, has an axe to grind or the like. Most of the time, someone named Derek is the one responding who I believe is an MIT graduate and writes very clear English. In general, I dislike the quality of most OSS software, but I like the way GnuCash is run, especially considering how few people actually contribute to it.
I can certainly relate to your experience with Quicken, although mine is with an AT&T VPN dialer. When it refused to work after an upgrade, I had to re-explain my problem over and over again, and their perspective, even after spending hours on the phone with me, was that *I* was the one doing something wrong. I've gotten better tech support by calling Microsoft, if you can believe it.
Best wishes anyway. ~Boring
Re:Wishes for the next VIM and why use Vim
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Vim 6.4 Released
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· Score: 1
I did mean multiple code pages, and not split screens which I do use regularly. I have occaisional need to edit text files in UTF-16, EBCDIC, and other code pages.
Regards, Boring.
Wishes for the next VIM and why use Vim
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Vim 6.4 Released
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· Score: 5, Interesting
First, I use VIM not so much because I think it's the best text editor, but because it's corrupted my thought process so much that I keep using those cryptic Vi commands in other programs when typing more than a few words. That said, I do feel most productive in Vim or Vi on systems which don't have Vim (such as z/OS). People don't understand why one would use Vi, until they've mastered it so well that they can nearly look at a point in the screen or think of where they want to be, and the cursor arrives there without remembering which keystrokes got them there. One of my biggest reasons for using it is that there is *no* project, workspace, solution or whatever, that I have to set up before being able to do real work. I like that.
As for wishes: 1. Better language completion, if any, language completion. 2. Better editing of binary files. 3. Support for multiple code pages. This may be possible already, but I haven't deciphered the manual enough to figure out how. 4. Support for working with change control systems. I'd like to be able to edit a file in a CCS and have the title bar reflect the release, level, etc that I'm editing, rather than a cryptic temporary file. 5. A better head on my own shoulders to remember all the set commands needed to operate it.
I really can't complain though, because if the above never got implemented, I'd still use it. I've used the editor for years, and still keep learning it.
I've spent a few years programming on mainframes or for software that will eventually be ported to them. My university actually did teach computer science fundamentals on a mainframe. So what do I make of this?
First, when I've look for mainframe jobs in the past, there were far fewer of them compared to almost any other newer technology. It takes longer to learn the ropes of the mainframe, but yet they pay less. I think that while it may be hard for recruiters/employers to find mainframe people, it's even harder for mainframers to find recruiters/employers. Higher supply than demand I believe.
If you haven't worked on a mainframe, here's what you probably can expect. First, extreme discipline. Development tends to favor spending months making sure all problems can survive a lightning bolt striking the machine, vs having only slightly less reliability and more features.
Second, everything is harder to work with. Datasets must be allocated before used, for instance. The Unix System Services has made much of this either easier or obsolete, because it has provided a rudimentary korn shell and UNIX type file system, but there's still the legacy environment left.
Get used to names for everything having a three letter prefix and being limited to no more than 8 characters, usually not connected with the product or concept name itself. I find this to be the most irritating aspect of this, and based on the way the OS was designed decades ago, I don't think this will ever change. It's nice to call an apple an apple, but that won't happen on a mainframe. Also, the user password is 8 characters, which is surprising for a platform proponents would lead you to believe is perfectly secure.
I'd also comment that true development from scratch is much less common. It seems much more likely that people make tiny changes for fear of breaking something (mainframers can be extremely conservative in this way).
Btw, you can learn mainframe skills on the job, but it will take a few months at least. It is radically different from *NIX and Windows in many ways. Still, you'd be better off with a good CS education than specific training in any one vendor's product, including mainframes.
This reminds me of the term "Best Practices". Usually I rather hate the term because typically stuff labeled as such receives little to no public scrutiny. I'm left wondering, how does one know they really are "the best", and who is the author to say they are "the best."
In sciences like chemistry or physics, or other disciplines, knowledgeable people peer-review ideas before they get published, or widely at least. Those ideas are more measurable or provable, and seem to amount to more than a heap of words without any mathematical basis. The same is mostly not true in computing.
Instead, I think what defines standards have little to do with technical merit, and much more to with money. If you want to know what's a standard, look towards how much money companies have spent either creating, promoting or using it. If the idea is bad enough, it'll probably be financed by someone.
I've used Eclipse on a program that uses both Java and C++ through a JNI layer. The Java side was pretty good, though I had to get used to the keys. The C++ side needed some help though. It's obvious that whoever dreamed up Eclipse thought of it as a Java project IDE and anything else second. And yes, there is a C++ plugin, but that doesn't go nearly as far as the Java tools built into the program, such as refactoring.
I'd heard that IBM had a developers agreement whereby you might license the z/OS current software for a fee. I'm not sure how much it was, but it was in the thousands of dollars. It may have even been open only to IBM employees, but I'm not sure of the details. This was *not* the same deal large installations got, because you had to submit your development plans to IBM and it probably wasn't good for high performance, either. Mostly it was for users of the P390 or R390.
That said, I think I can tell you from some experience what you will find when/if you do get some exposure to it:
* Mainframes of the S/390 flavor typically use one of these OS/s: z/OS (most likely) z/VM, z/VSE or Linux. If they use Linux, they may also use z/VM as something akin to VMWare (I believe) to allow multiple OS images (of any type) to run simultaneously. All of the above operating systems are substantially different from each other, although z/VM and z/OS are closer to each other than they are to Linux, or any other OS for that matter.
* If you were interested in learning Linux on the S/390, you might be able to still open a free image (not just an account), on one of IBM's sites: try developerworks off the IBM.com site. This was there about a year ago, not sure if it still exists. Maybe this would be sufficient, but it would be free to you.
* Get used to mainframe file concepts, such as QSAM files, blocking, VSAM, etc. Things operate differently in this world, and certainly in a much more structured and manual way.
* Look around for a COBOL class at a local community college. If you find one, ask what machine they do their compiles on. Maybe it'll be a z/OS machine.
* Perhaps most of all, even though you may find employment doing this, always keep a resume around that doesn't mention mainframes in anyway.
*Begin Rant* I'm not about to say this or any of the other ideas referenced are bad, at least not always. It just seems like an idea that needs more proof, evidence, or something beyond an opinion.
In physics, chemistry, and other hard sciences, ideas are submitted to far more scrutiny than many of todays ideas. We can come much closer to proving the ideal gas law than theorists have bothered to do with design patterns, OO, concepts, extreme programming, etc. Too often in computing today, an idea is "proven" when some analyst, poohbah or Slashdot has referenced it.
Since there really isn't any hard math, evidence and such, the idea is much closer to opinion than fact, and as such won't last very long.
I'd submit that the best approach to programming is to hire good people, and keep them once they learn the product. Give them a real budget with realistic deadlines. Listen to the developers. Think twice before shoving methodology dujour onto the development team. A good team probably can function more efficiently and effectively without unsubstantiated opinions. When something is *really* substantiated, then developers should and would listen. *End Rant*
This has got to be the first *useful* ask slashdot in a really long time. It's the first one I'm actually saving, since theres lots of good responses to a problem I've always hated.
To people who wonder why Flash is bad, or at least can be:
* It gives the web developer way too much control over the user's screen, sometimes taking over the whole screen. * Rarely is used for anything useful, except for animations in my online chemistry course. * Is hard to temporarily disable, until this question was posted. Just do a google search on disabling flash. See how many hits will tell you how to do the exact opposite.
Slashdot Mirror
The last thing programmers need is a power grubbing QA task manager on top of the idiot scrum manager, in addition to whoever else wants to run things. Quality starts with planning and thinking before coding and not rushing code out the door. A better approach would be not allowing non software people the ability to make statements of quality, cost and capability about software, via legal fiat. Let software engineers as individuals sign off on it.
Folks there's a lot less science, predictability and consensus in the legal profession. People need a license to cut hair. If software as a profession isn't to be regulated, neither of those professions should be as well.
For the record some of us HATE this idea. I don't want to be that close to my coworkers. I can't work with people staring over my shoulder. I need a reasonable amount of privacy. Since I spend over a third of my life there, I want to be able to bring a couple of personal things and not move them around all the time.
What makes people think professionals known for introversion want to have absolutely NO privacy?
Hey, lets start trashing other careers by giving them a 6 week course before a large paycheck.
Plumbers
Attorneys
Accountants
Electricians...
Why is it software engineering is the one field people say is over paid, requires next to no training or experience. If you're an SE, you should stand up to these insults as well.
Somehow there's money rolling into the development of these browsers. If memory serves, Opera is purchased. The others are all free downloads. Yet there's no ads.
My question is, where is the money for these coming from and why? There must be some large donor base somewhere that really drives the feature set.
I admire the attempt at consistency with the K everywhere. Well, sort of. The commentary below doesn't apply to necessarily to this specific release or grouping of work. I also concede that it's time spent and in some cases money. Further, I admit that many will actually like it.
I'm probably not one of them. I order regular coffee and have it black. I don't get the Frappe/Crape or whatever stuff gets put in.
But really, I'm getting older. I don't want to learn someone's new paradigm for user interfaces. I don't care if it looks like Windows with enhancements. Sue me for liking some things about Windows. At least they were consistent. I like that release after release, the same Window D command brings me to the desktop (I don't know about Win 8).
Coming up with new "skins", tabs just irritates me. What I really want is a windowing system that's fast, and doesn't get in my way. When I tell it to go to the desktop, I want it NOW, and not spend time thrashing the hard drive trying to get to it. Same thing with the run command. Really, I don't need all these things as a user. Dammit stop it already. If you're working on KDE trying to change everything again for the 15th time in hopes that the world will all switch over to Linux and your own flavor of windowing manager, just give up. Let it be. Use your developer talents on something that really improves computing for people. Make the computer do something it hasn't before.
Oh, and whatever you do, stop trying to make it slower and more complicated. Did anyone ever hear of that simplicity concept? Bear in mind, this does not have to be run like an IBM product. You do not need to rewrite all your widgets in some bastard dujour's Javascript library on top of some javascript engine which then dynamically compiles the widget into something native only to be displayed 10 minutes later. Honestly, if you ran software from 10-15 years ago, much of it would be faster on today's machines.
In case you're wondering, I run Ubuntu at home and use Windows at work. I just try to make everything come as close to the old "Start Me Up" Windows paradigm. Yes, it's old. But so was the song even when Bill Gates used it for Win 95. Just because something is old does not mean it should be replaced. There should be a reason, and, unless this is for the sake of art, that reason should be practical or at least logical.
I still want to continue using Linux along with a decent window manager, though mostly for the command line capabilities. I just don't want to learn something new unless it's going to give me more time away from the computer.
This triggers my rant reflex...
I started my career in native development, and only in the last say 5 years have I done almost exclusively Java based web development, mostly due to market demands and needing a paycheck. I miss the quick response times, quicker builds and simplicity where it was appropriate. I suspect the best hope for any native development now is maintaining legacy systems and mobile apps. People used to be in client/server development, but that's largely been replaced by the SaaS model due to comparative simplicity, but now we have a myriad of new technologies and frameworks globbed together. The industry's answer to any amount of complexity is yet another platform or framework and more indirection. It's hard to secure and know that it's done properly, and harder to know that someone else did it properly.
Go ahead and shoot me, but I miss the real native development days, regardless of the platform.
I sympathize with the above. I've been hearing for years here in the US about "nursing shortages". There's been plenty of nursing programs in schools in our area which issue nursing degrees at various levels such as a 1 year LPN, 2 year associate and then the 4 year RN (I believe I got the names and years correct). The thing is, there's been a waiting list to get into these programs because people believed there was a shortage, and it's been this way for years even before the great recession. It smelled like a bubble, but Johnson and Johnson kept running ads about how nurses are kind hearted people who care implying the viewer should drop everything and enroll in the saintly nursing profession.
A similar thing seems to be happening on a site for American Actuaries. Apparently, the main site was touting extreme demand, but graduates were still having a hard time. We in the IT field keep hearing about an IT shortage from IT publications, but as has been discussed previously, the reasoning is to get more H1B or similar visa people in so that companies can pay a fraction of the US market based wage. People in the US cost more because it costs more for them to live.
Real people (not Mitt Romney's idea of one), like the almighty corporations which we're supposed to praise, love and worship, are chasing what they believe to be the best opportunity for them based on the best information they are given. The thing is, when these same entities rig the system with false information about supply and demand for their own benefit it's no longer a fair game. Then they have the gall to rig the bankruptcy code in their favor, which makes things even worse for real people.
In the meantime, the US government subsidizes the so called risk of lending to students, making credit even easier. Schools see this and raise their tuition with each increase in US government lending limits. At my MBA school, each student graduates after paying over $90k. They get this amount times about 1000 students, yet they still ask for alumni gifts. There's just no way it costs that much to run the school. This mentality of schools charging the maximum of whatever a student's borrowing abilities are exacerbates the problem.
The system is rigged and we in the US are just suckers playing a game many of us are loosing it.
I think the biggest business risk for outsourcing isn't always secrecy, with the notable exception being China. There are examples of corporate secrets not being widely divulged, such as the recipe for Coca Cola; available in India and China, but exact ingredients are still a mystery. Also, somehow IBM manages to keep its z/OS operating system away from software pirates even though there's emulators to run it on an Intel platform.
A bigger risk not much talked about here is the issue of enforcement of contracts. I'm sure there's some degree of enforcement abilities within the Indian legal system, there's arguably less in China. It just makes life more difficult if you're attempting to manage a long term engagement of resources with a defined outcome if your system for contract enforcement is nebulous, weak or non-existent. Note that this is an argument against offshoring unless you have significant resources to manage it, like say IBM.
I worked for a company which does a lot of in-house software development. They constantly had problems with the project management side of their off shore resources, mostly due to inexperience, time zones and communication abilities. The market for Indian off shore developers was so hot that they had a hard time hiring experienced developers because they kept leaving for more money. On the other hand, they had as much control as they could muster over their local resources, ensuring a level of quality, and ease of communication. It was quicker to get things done on site than offshore, despite having an offshore liaison. They also didn't pay exorbitant contractor rates or over pay for some commercial framework that could have been written locally cheaper.
It's all who you know. It's an exclusive club that won't just anyone in - kind of like an aristocracy.
Why, no one really thinks we're upwardly mobile in the US, do they?
If you think that you can be smart, work hard, and show ambition and get to that level, well, I have a lottery ticket from Nigeria that'll pay millions of dollars and all you have to do is send me $5,000 for fees and bribes and you can have the ticket because if I cash it in, I'll lose my spot as the next king.
It would be nice if companies would promote people on the basis of having at least some inkling of experience in what they're managing. I can't tell you how many "project managers" I've worked for that could never program their way out of a paper bag, and therefore have no sense of scheduling. I got an MBA so that I could use my experience in development to move up *just one* level in an IT organization. But no. No amount of relevant experience and credentials were enough to break the glass ceiling. The decision makers are even proud of their ignorance of technology.
We live in a society where leaders have been replaced with MBAs and empty-headed politicos who look good on camera, and rule number one is 'Pass The Buck!'. Once you realise that, most of the seemingly insane behaviour of modern 'leaders' makes perfect sense.
Actually, the MBA no longer matters anymore to get into the country club. In a recent showing of "I Almost Got Away With It", a con man with only a GED read a few books on finance, learned some lingo and forged a resume and credentials to become CFO of a medium sized company. Had he not embezzled from them, he would have been kept on, as the CEO said he was one of the best CFO's they've ever had!
If you gave me the prestige and pay of those that wore suits, I would wear that suit. I'll wear a suit in exchange for:
* Not having unqualified people making statements about the work I and other qualified people do (ie. pretending that accountants are more qualified to fully analyze the inner workings of accounting software).
* Stop pretending software engineering is skill that can be acquired in a semester of high school education.
* Value my opinion and other's that are qualified.
Yes, I'd like higher pay, and I'd love to stop pretending that software engineers are like simpleton woodworkers whose work is delightfully shipped to the cheapest parts of the world. But I'd settle for the respect for now. A national license structure would do that. For that, yes, I'll wear a suit.
A better approach would be a licensure board for the profession. This is not the same thing as unionization but it would cut the labor supply which is horrendously high. One of the main contentions of the Programmer's Guild (lobbying group/not union) is that tech companies release false claims of a low supply of labor so H1B visas can be increased. Meanwhile, domestic talent finds it hard to be employed.
Of those who claim to be self taught, remember that whatever claim to skill or knowledge you have, it must be demonstrated repeatedly each time you change jobs. Any other person can make the same claim.
Also, let's not belittle the profession so much as to think that the 4 year degree isn't worth anything. That would make the university and college system the one of the biggest scam artists in the IT world. One could say, I never used the stuff I learned in school so therefore it isn't valuable. On the other hand, one could say, it wasn't used because the employer didn't bother to learn the value of the skills aquired, and therefore underutilized the educated person's skills.
I fail to see why a hair dresser, real estate appraiser and other jobs require a license but not software professionals.
A better approach would be to license not the ability to do work, but the ability to make claims on that work. In otherwords, put the licensed software professional on the hook for work done either by him or her, or a lesser skilled person by signing his or her name. Legally preclude non-licensed people from making statements about that software, despite having an MD, MBA, JD, etc. That gives the trained individual the respect they deserve, rather than saying, hey, I studied basket weaving and read a book on C++, now I'm a software professional. As it is now, there is *no* standard level of comparison.
Companies win because the overall quality of software would have to rise. Software professionals win because everyone's brother couldn't falsely claim they knew what they were doing. Pay would rise to reasonable levels and working conditions would also improve. Not everything could be outsourced because companies would demand the licensed software professional be located domestically where he or she could be held accountable, just like attorneys, CPA's, etc.
Having said all that, I'm leaving the profession because I've learned that the vast majority of people doing this work love the anarchy of it. They love the low entry barriers which destroy their economic rent. They think it's great to let other professions make far more money despite an equivalent amount of education and talent. They love the lack of prestige bestowed upon them, preferring pejoratives like "Geek", "Hacker", and "Nerd" instead of professional.
Thanks, that helps. :)
At the risk of asking a dumb question, how do you specify a user agent? Is there an easy way of doing this?
Thanks,
mb
In case there's someone who doesn't know how...
To do searching try clicking on View->Search this view, from the menu bar. There should be a text box that you can type text into to search for, which seems to search the whole document, not just the subject. I say seems, because I'm not sure exactly how much it does search. I think this is called Full Text Searching, in Notes parlance, which can be enabled for each database you care to full text search. To enable this, go to the database properties, click the tab with the magnifying glass, and click the Create Full Text Index.
The View->Search this view option seemed to work without creating the Full Text index.
"Eventually it just leaves you wanting to find the person who gave you said pocketknife, and stab them with the little corkscrew, in the hopes that next time they'll give you a proper chisel." -- True, insightful and funny.
FWIW, I've made several comments and suggestions to the GnuCash user list and I always get a helpful response. No one treats me like an idiot, has an axe to grind or the like. Most of the time, someone named Derek is the one responding who I believe is an MIT graduate and writes very clear English. In general, I dislike the quality of most OSS software, but I like the way GnuCash is run, especially considering how few people actually contribute to it.
I can certainly relate to your experience with Quicken, although mine is with an AT&T VPN dialer. When it refused to work after an upgrade, I had to re-explain my problem over and over again, and their perspective, even after spending hours on the phone with me, was that *I* was the one doing something wrong. I've gotten better tech support by calling Microsoft, if you can believe it.
Best wishes anyway.
~Boring
I did mean multiple code pages, and not split screens which I do use regularly. I have occaisional need to edit text files in UTF-16, EBCDIC, and other code pages.
Regards,
Boring.
As for wishes:
1. Better language completion, if any, language completion.
2. Better editing of binary files.
3. Support for multiple code pages. This may be possible already, but I haven't deciphered the manual enough to figure out how.
4. Support for working with change control systems. I'd like to be able to edit a file in a CCS and have the title bar reflect the release, level, etc that I'm editing, rather than a cryptic temporary file.
5. A better head on my own shoulders to remember all the set commands needed to operate it.
I really can't complain though, because if the above never got implemented, I'd still use it. I've used the editor for years, and still keep learning it.
First, when I've look for mainframe jobs in the past, there were far fewer of them compared to almost any other newer technology. It takes longer to learn the ropes of the mainframe, but yet they pay less. I think that while it may be hard for recruiters/employers to find mainframe people, it's even harder for mainframers to find recruiters/employers. Higher supply than demand I believe.
If you haven't worked on a mainframe, here's what you probably can expect. First, extreme discipline. Development tends to favor spending months making sure all problems can survive a lightning bolt striking the machine, vs having only slightly less reliability and more features.
Second, everything is harder to work with. Datasets must be allocated before used, for instance. The Unix System Services has made much of this either easier or obsolete, because it has provided a rudimentary korn shell and UNIX type file system, but there's still the legacy environment left.
Get used to names for everything having a three letter prefix and being limited to no more than 8 characters, usually not connected with the product or concept name itself. I find this to be the most irritating aspect of this, and based on the way the OS was designed decades ago, I don't think this will ever change. It's nice to call an apple an apple, but that won't happen on a mainframe. Also, the user password is 8 characters, which is surprising for a platform proponents would lead you to believe is perfectly secure.
I'd also comment that true development from scratch is much less common. It seems much more likely that people make tiny changes for fear of breaking something (mainframers can be extremely conservative in this way).
Btw, you can learn mainframe skills on the job, but it will take a few months at least. It is radically different from *NIX and Windows in many ways. Still, you'd be better off with a good CS education than specific training in any one vendor's product, including mainframes.
This reminds me of the term "Best Practices". Usually I rather hate the term because typically stuff labeled as such receives little to no public scrutiny. I'm left wondering, how does one know they really are "the best", and who is the author to say they are "the best."
In sciences like chemistry or physics, or other disciplines, knowledgeable people peer-review ideas before they get published, or widely at least. Those ideas are more measurable or provable, and seem to amount to more than a heap of words without any mathematical basis. The same is mostly not true in computing.
Instead, I think what defines standards have little to do with technical merit, and much more to with money. If you want to know what's a standard, look towards how much money companies have spent either creating, promoting or using it.
If the idea is bad enough, it'll probably be financed by someone.
I've used Eclipse on a program that uses both Java and C++ through a JNI layer. The Java side was pretty good, though I had to get used to the keys. The C++ side needed some help though. It's obvious that whoever dreamed up Eclipse thought of it as a Java project IDE and anything else second. And yes, there is a C++ plugin, but that doesn't go nearly as far as the Java tools built into the program, such as refactoring.
I'd heard that IBM had a developers agreement whereby you might license the z/OS current software for a fee. I'm not sure how much it was, but it was in the thousands of dollars. It may have even been open only to IBM employees, but I'm not sure of the details. This was *not* the same deal large installations got, because you had to submit your development plans to IBM and it probably wasn't good for high performance, either. Mostly it was for users of the P390 or R390.
That said, I think I can tell you from some experience what you will find when/if you do get some exposure to it:
* Mainframes of the S/390 flavor typically use one of these OS/s: z/OS (most likely) z/VM,
z/VSE or Linux. If they use Linux, they may also use z/VM as something akin to VMWare (I believe) to allow multiple OS images (of any type) to run simultaneously. All of the above operating systems are substantially different from each other, although z/VM and z/OS are closer to each other than they are to Linux, or any other OS for that matter.
* If you were interested in learning Linux on the S/390, you might be able to still open a free image (not just an account), on one of IBM's sites: try developerworks off the IBM.com site. This was there about a year ago, not sure if it still exists. Maybe this would be sufficient, but it would be free to you.
* Get used to mainframe file concepts, such as QSAM files, blocking, VSAM, etc. Things operate differently in this world, and certainly in a much more structured and manual way.
* Look around for a COBOL class at a local community college. If you find one, ask what machine they do their compiles on. Maybe it'll be a z/OS machine.
* Perhaps most of all, even though you may find employment doing this, always keep a resume around that doesn't mention mainframes in anyway.
Anyone know what OS they want, or does it have it's own built in?
*Begin Rant*
I'm not about to say this or any of the other ideas referenced are bad, at least not always. It just seems like an idea that needs more proof, evidence, or something beyond an opinion.
In physics, chemistry, and other hard sciences, ideas are submitted to far more scrutiny than many of todays ideas. We can come much closer to proving the ideal gas law than theorists have bothered to do with design patterns, OO, concepts, extreme programming, etc. Too often in computing today, an idea is "proven" when some analyst, poohbah or Slashdot has referenced it.
Since there really isn't any hard math, evidence and such, the idea is much closer to opinion than fact, and as such won't last very long.
I'd submit that the best approach to programming is to hire good people, and keep them once they learn the product. Give them a real budget with realistic deadlines. Listen to the developers. Think twice before shoving methodology dujour onto the development team. A good team probably can function more efficiently and effectively without unsubstantiated opinions. When something is *really* substantiated, then developers should and would listen.
*End Rant*
This has got to be the first *useful* ask slashdot in a really long time. It's the first one I'm actually saving, since theres lots of good responses to a problem I've always hated.
To people who wonder why Flash is bad, or at least can be:
* It gives the web developer way too much control over the user's screen, sometimes taking over the whole screen.
* Rarely is used for anything useful, except for animations in my online chemistry course.
* Is hard to temporarily disable, until this question was posted. Just do a google search on disabling flash. See how many hits will tell you how to do the exact opposite.