From my vantage point, I don't see Android killing the PC just yet. It's got a long way to go as far as serious apps for business. The play store is wrought with Spam, and there are still no capable dev tools how many years later? So, we're figured out how to root the damned things, but that doesn't really do us any good unless there's something good to run on them. It's only the last two years that reasonable office suites have begun to emerge. Quality code editors and debuggers are seriously lagging.
Believe me, if I could replace my PC with a tablet, I would. I'm just not ready to throw away the monster desktop just yet, though.
Not all nicotine products stink. Patches don't stink, nicotine inhalers don't stink, tubes don't stink, snus don't stink, e-cigarettes don't stink (ecigarattes usually smell like candy). Why is it the least bit acceptable for employers to be able to dictate your personal vices, or anything you do on your own time? This is unacceptable.
Depends on the market you're in. At this point in your career a degree isn't going to do you a ton of good. People like to over sell the whole academic experience. Just be careful that school doesn't absolutely destroy your existing skills. I've seen it happen to experienced guys. They come out of school, and they're as useless as the twenty three year olds that they studied with. Be careful.
In terms of problem solving, you're probably a better programmer now than you've ever been, even if you haven't done it for awhile. Programming is like any other kind of art that way. If you were any good during the.net 2.0 era, you're probably better now, even if you don't feel your skills are fresh. That's part of the problem working with Microsoft languages. You've also made it to 40, and you haven't totally lost your mind, or moved to the woods yet. This is also a good thing. There's hope.
There's a lot of ageism on Slashdot. A lot of 20 somethings that are very nervous about getting older. This is pervasive in the industry, and you shouldn't let the rhetoric get to you. Some of the best programmers with the freshest skillsets that I know are in their 50's or older. It's truly the kind of thing you can do until you die... if you want to.
As far as updating the skillset, I happen to know for a fact that there is still a lot of.net 2.0 development going on. VB hasn't really changed a lot since the first.net. The api is a little more sophisticated now, but it's nothing to be afraid of. If you're feeling burnt on Microsoft technologies, you might want to check out Python. There's this great book called "Learn Python the Hard Way" by Zed Shaw. It's a thing of beauty. Of the popular open source languages, it's always been my feeling that Python is the easiest to learn if you're coming from a VB background. There are moments where it feels like VB short hand. And it's incredibly trendy right now. Lots of work in and around it at the moment.
So anyway, my point is, you'll be fine. Just don't stop having fun with it.
Dude, Captchas don't really accomplish much. They're sloppy security, and they're hacked around all the time. In China, they have whole rooms of people that do nothing but fill out captcha forms all day for spammers. Sure, it's useful for the one off, but it's not a long term security fix. It's invasive to your user experience, and it's fundamentally flawed in that it only stops pure, script based robots. You're leaning on Captchas as a security solution, but you're making a serious mistake if you do that. If you're popular, someone will either figure out a way around the captchas, or they'll figure out a way around your captchas. Either that, or you create a captcha so good, that no human can read it either. And then you have no problem at all, because you'll have no users.
I really wish people would get more creative with this, and realize that captchas are not a silver bullet. They're a makeshift solution, that's good for when your site is getting bombed by bots. Beyond that, you need to think about real solutions that don't hurt your user experience, but still keep spammers gone. There are many of them out there. There are other practices that work. Slashdot has a marvelous system of limiting spam. The only time you ever see a cpatcha here is when you sign up. Why not learn from that?
From the look of it, they make calls too. So all you really need to do is take the Simcard out of it, and put it in a new t-mobile phone. Wish I had known about this earlier.
Right? As long as everyone uses their real name on Facebook, this kind of system totally makes sense. As for me, I think I'll go to England, call myself Patrick Stuart, and apply for a passport. Hep hep, righto and such.
I think their biggest problem was setting up a kickstarter page before actually writing a prototype. Had they waited until the prototype was ready before starting the media blitz, they could have been humble about the current state of their code, and been honest about where they want to go. When it comes to software hype, capturing people's imaginations is key. They did that. But they didn't leave themselves any wiggle room. I've been there. Done that kind of thing. I totally feel for them, and what they went through. Everybody has to learn this stuff eventually.
Wow! Crazy how much this looks like the Adobe/Mozilla actionscript/javascript3 that Microsoft flat out rejected in standards talks with the ECMA a few years back. I liked it when Adobe came up with it. I like it now that Microsoft is claiming to have come up with the idea. This kind of thing is needed badly by serious developers.
I bring it up because I heard the pet store was selling them for a penny a piece. Don't you find this odd? Considering how expensive monkeys usually are. I'm actually on my way there now. Going to get one and name him Freud. Might even let him drive. Only time will tell. Take care.
Look. Everyone is entitled to express an opinion. What really gets me about this is that the film clearly depicted Muslims as blood thirsty terrorists that aimlessly kill for no good reason. So how does the Arab world handle this? Rather than get up and speak peacefully, and talk about how this kind of thing is hate speech, which they cannot tolerate... they set American embassies on fire, and further propagate the sentiment that created this video in the first place. I think the Arab world in general needs a good PR person, a publicist (well, one other than CNN). This whole business of burning shit up whenever someone says anything on youtube that they don't like is only making the problem worse.
Most clients I work with have had good and bad experiences with programmers. That said, they almost never have source control set up.
So I ask them if they've ever been ripped off, or had someone disappear with the source. If so, it's a good reason to use source control. If not, it could happen any time if you don't use source control. As a client, all you need to know is that every line of what you pay for is stored, locked away, and safe, the minute you install GIT or Subversion. Oh, and that I'm awesome for suggesting it. You're welcome.
Maybe. I know it's unusual for Slasdhot, but I'm not afraid to acknowledge when I'm wrong. But it's been my observation that there are two things that will always start flame wars on Slashdot. The first is talking about Javascript as though it's a serious language (which is funny, because I believe it is). And the other is talking about how awesome php is (which draws the ire of everyone who can't figure out how to write php responsibly). I was just saying that I think it's funny when you see many of the same people with the former opinion suddenly change their minds the minute you insinuate that amateurs can do it. After all, we were all amateurs once.
I get the maintenance argument. You're right... in theory. But I'm honestly shrugging my shoulders as to why you wouldn't just throw code away if it was awful. If you've got something that you need to maintain, anything that you need to maintain, and you haven't had a serious rewrite in the last two years, there's something very wrong with the project.
Everyone has to start somewhere. And in production, it doesn't really matter if javascript is clean. It just needs to work. Everyone has to start somewhere. And everyone should at least know how to do it. I don't get people on Slashdot. When you're talking about running it as a server side language, everyone complains that it's not a real programming language anyway, and how running server javascript is a dumb idea. But, dear god, if amateurs even think about writing it... they'll never be able to work with a programming language as sophisticated as js and be able to write readable code. So which is it guys? How about some philosophical consistency?
Look, the super rich have been working very hard for generations now, in order to shield themselves (and us) from liability, should we choose to take advantage of it. A well constructed net of anonymous offshore holding and operating companies can make this kind of litigation into a long, very expensive game of Whack-a-mole. It is their gift, the legacy the super rich have left to us. And it's totally legal. Think TOR for business.
Slashdot Mirror
From my vantage point, I don't see Android killing the PC just yet. It's got a long way to go as far as serious apps for business. The play store is wrought with Spam, and there are still no capable dev tools how many years later? So, we're figured out how to root the damned things, but that doesn't really do us any good unless there's something good to run on them. It's only the last two years that reasonable office suites have begun to emerge. Quality code editors and debuggers are seriously lagging.
Believe me, if I could replace my PC with a tablet, I would. I'm just not ready to throw away the monster desktop just yet, though.
Not all nicotine products stink. Patches don't stink, nicotine inhalers don't stink, tubes don't stink, snus don't stink, e-cigarettes don't stink (ecigarattes usually smell like candy). Why is it the least bit acceptable for employers to be able to dictate your personal vices, or anything you do on your own time? This is unacceptable.
Depends on the market you're in. At this point in your career a degree isn't going to do you a ton of good. People like to over sell the whole academic experience. Just be careful that school doesn't absolutely destroy your existing skills. I've seen it happen to experienced guys. They come out of school, and they're as useless as the twenty three year olds that they studied with. Be careful.
In terms of problem solving, you're probably a better programmer now than you've ever been, even if you haven't done it for awhile. Programming is like any other kind of art that way. If you were any good during the .net 2.0 era, you're probably better now, even if you don't feel your skills are fresh. That's part of the problem working with Microsoft languages. You've also made it to 40, and you haven't totally lost your mind, or moved to the woods yet. This is also a good thing. There's hope.
.net 2.0 development going on. VB hasn't really changed a lot since the first .net. The api is a little more sophisticated now, but it's nothing to be afraid of. If you're feeling burnt on Microsoft technologies, you might want to check out Python. There's this great book called "Learn Python the Hard Way" by Zed Shaw. It's a thing of beauty. Of the popular open source languages, it's always been my feeling that Python is the easiest to learn if you're coming from a VB background. There are moments where it feels like VB short hand. And it's incredibly trendy right now. Lots of work in and around it at the moment.
There's a lot of ageism on Slashdot. A lot of 20 somethings that are very nervous about getting older. This is pervasive in the industry, and you shouldn't let the rhetoric get to you. Some of the best programmers with the freshest skillsets that I know are in their 50's or older. It's truly the kind of thing you can do until you die... if you want to.
As far as updating the skillset, I happen to know for a fact that there is still a lot of
So anyway, my point is, you'll be fine. Just don't stop having fun with it.
Take care.
I didn't think it was that bad. A little naive if he seriously thinks captchas solve anything, but not that bad.
Dude, Captchas don't really accomplish much. They're sloppy security, and they're hacked around all the time. In China, they have whole rooms of people that do nothing but fill out captcha forms all day for spammers. Sure, it's useful for the one off, but it's not a long term security fix. It's invasive to your user experience, and it's fundamentally flawed in that it only stops pure, script based robots. You're leaning on Captchas as a security solution, but you're making a serious mistake if you do that. If you're popular, someone will either figure out a way around the captchas, or they'll figure out a way around your captchas. Either that, or you create a captcha so good, that no human can read it either. And then you have no problem at all, because you'll have no users.
I really wish people would get more creative with this, and realize that captchas are not a silver bullet. They're a makeshift solution, that's good for when your site is getting bombed by bots. Beyond that, you need to think about real solutions that don't hurt your user experience, but still keep spammers gone. There are many of them out there. There are other practices that work. Slashdot has a marvelous system of limiting spam. The only time you ever see a cpatcha here is when you sign up. Why not learn from that?
From the look of it, they make calls too. So all you really need to do is take the Simcard out of it, and put it in a new t-mobile phone. Wish I had known about this earlier.
Sounds like an Alice Cooper song.
Blast!
Where are my cheese eating death machines?
And wait five minutes for the next one, which will of course sight different evidence, and say the opposite thing.
Right? As long as everyone uses their real name on Facebook, this kind of system totally makes sense. As for me, I think I'll go to England, call myself Patrick Stuart, and apply for a passport. Hep hep, righto and such.
I think their biggest problem was setting up a kickstarter page before actually writing a prototype. Had they waited until the prototype was ready before starting the media blitz, they could have been humble about the current state of their code, and been honest about where they want to go. When it comes to software hype, capturing people's imaginations is key. They did that. But they didn't leave themselves any wiggle room. I've been there. Done that kind of thing. I totally feel for them, and what they went through. Everybody has to learn this stuff eventually.
Wow! Crazy how much this looks like the Adobe/Mozilla actionscript/javascript3 that Microsoft flat out rejected in standards talks with the ECMA a few years back. I liked it when Adobe came up with it. I like it now that Microsoft is claiming to have come up with the idea. This kind of thing is needed badly by serious developers.
I bring it up because I heard the pet store was selling them for a penny a piece. Don't you find this odd? Considering how expensive monkeys usually are. I'm actually on my way there now. Going to get one and name him Freud. Might even let him drive. Only time will tell. Take care.
Look. Everyone is entitled to express an opinion. What really gets me about this is that the film clearly depicted Muslims as blood thirsty terrorists that aimlessly kill for no good reason. So how does the Arab world handle this? Rather than get up and speak peacefully, and talk about how this kind of thing is hate speech, which they cannot tolerate... they set American embassies on fire, and further propagate the sentiment that created this video in the first place. I think the Arab world in general needs a good PR person, a publicist (well, one other than CNN). This whole business of burning shit up whenever someone says anything on youtube that they don't like is only making the problem worse.
Since when do we care about what Jihadists think?
Oh! I had forgotten about that one! Corel Linux was cool. Too bad it didn't last long. I was a redhat user at the time.
Redhat 6
Suse
Mandrake 7
Mandrake 8
Debian
Fedora
Ubuntu 5
Ubuntu 6
Ubuntu 8
Ubnuntu 10
Ubuntu 11 (with unity)
Unity drove me back to Windows.
Most clients I work with have had good and bad experiences with programmers. That said, they almost never have source control set up. So I ask them if they've ever been ripped off, or had someone disappear with the source. If so, it's a good reason to use source control. If not, it could happen any time if you don't use source control. As a client, all you need to know is that every line of what you pay for is stored, locked away, and safe, the minute you install GIT or Subversion. Oh, and that I'm awesome for suggesting it. You're welcome.
Maybe. I know it's unusual for Slasdhot, but I'm not afraid to acknowledge when I'm wrong. But it's been my observation that there are two things that will always start flame wars on Slashdot. The first is talking about Javascript as though it's a serious language (which is funny, because I believe it is). And the other is talking about how awesome php is (which draws the ire of everyone who can't figure out how to write php responsibly). I was just saying that I think it's funny when you see many of the same people with the former opinion suddenly change their minds the minute you insinuate that amateurs can do it. After all, we were all amateurs once.
I get the maintenance argument. You're right... in theory. But I'm honestly shrugging my shoulders as to why you wouldn't just throw code away if it was awful. If you've got something that you need to maintain, anything that you need to maintain, and you haven't had a serious rewrite in the last two years, there's something very wrong with the project.
Everyone has to start somewhere. And in production, it doesn't really matter if javascript is clean. It just needs to work. Everyone has to start somewhere. And everyone should at least know how to do it. I don't get people on Slashdot. When you're talking about running it as a server side language, everyone complains that it's not a real programming language anyway, and how running server javascript is a dumb idea. But, dear god, if amateurs even think about writing it... they'll never be able to work with a programming language as sophisticated as js and be able to write readable code. So which is it guys? How about some philosophical consistency?
You'll find that there are only two kinds of people in the world. People who can parse and replace tokens in their head, and those that can't.
It's actually not too bad. You could build an maintain one for about $5000 a year.
Look, the super rich have been working very hard for generations now, in order to shield themselves (and us) from liability, should we choose to take advantage of it. A well constructed net of anonymous offshore holding and operating companies can make this kind of litigation into a long, very expensive game of Whack-a-mole. It is their gift, the legacy the super rich have left to us. And it's totally legal. Think TOR for business.