AFAICT our profession has evolved. The sole developer doesn't exist anymore, at least not for longer than a project solving a specific problem. That means that the tasks we do as a computer expert vary very much throughout the course of our assignments. Most mundane stuff is automated and the practive of sharing code via the free open source is so commonplace, that most problems can be solved by downloading a lib from the interweb in 5 minutes.
All in all this means, for me, as a freelance developer with strong ties to FOSS, that I bill my hours and let the customer decide with my consultation where I'm best suited to bring in my moneys worth.
I've discovered that simply charging by the hour is the easyest and fairest for all involved in the long run. So that's what I do. I offer to do anything that falls into my wide field of IT expertise, decline any useful help for things I'm not good at and ask 65 - 70 Euros per hour. End of story.
Convenience stores are - wait for it - convenient.
The owner knows what people need and adjusts stock accordingly. He's basically the maintenance man of a large walk-in vending machine. One that will call the cops if there's trouble in the neighborhood or cook coffee if you want some. No way it's any glorified vending machine going to replace convenience stores and kiosks.
Just like a coffee robot will never replace the cute young ladies serving me at my favorite Cafe.
Thieves/robber will have to much pitty with you / not enough interest in the phone to steal it and nobody will ever hack it. After all, who uses Windows Phone?
I'm really not that surprised that Python appears to be the only language that continuosly grows it's popularity during the last 15 years.
It's easy to learn whilst at the same time being resonably well constructed and scalable towards larger projects. It also appears to be a language where, unlike Ruby, PHP and JS, people do *not* screw around and get their projects perfect from the beginning. There is basically one CMS written in Python and that's Plone, based on Zope, and that System has been ahead of everything else in the PHP and Ruby field in terms of architecture, design and utility ever since Zope came around in the late 90ies. Same goes for Django. One Webframework to rule them all. Unlike PHP or Ruby or JS where you have a mess of a bazillion different toolkits, every single one screwing around in their own specific quirkyness, Python appears to be the language of people who want to get shit done properly right away and then move on. Python, whilst being a very neat programming language, doesn't lend itself to self-indulgance. Maybe those twot traits are correlated.
Point in case: Python is the only language I know of that is to measurable extent being used professionaly in every field. Research, engineering, game development, media, 3D, web, custom ERP, system administration, embedded, bioengieering, robotics, process automation, etc.
IMHO it speaks volumes if a language is that easy to pick up and at the same time is used in so many fields. AFAICT it is only dominated by PHP and JS in server and client side web for historic reasons. Would people have to decide today which language should rule the client and server-side web they'd probably pick Python for that aswell.
I also think that Python is a language that remains fun to programm in even if you use it for an extended period of time. Can't say that for PHP for example.
Do not use proprietary services for anything mission critical without a total backup and fallback in place. Better yet: Do not use prorietary services. Period.
It's not that difficult, is it?
Besides, I really don't get Twitter at all. Besides the marginal case of continuos mindshare within smaller distributed teams working on one larger problem/product. A purpose it orignially was designed for. I remember when Twitter just came out. I looked into it for about 3 minutes, thought to myself "Who needs this?" and used it maybe twice ever since. And those times it was just fooling around. I fundamentally don't get it.
It's that simple. The open standards internet has been taken over by shiny services like a commercial Usenet with a web interface that Facebook is.
We need an entirely new set of services and protocols with finished implementations of working and well designed applications that support them. Firefox used to be the best usable browser. Then chrome came along and had a great fast JavaScript engine, a new platform people could build client side logic on. In many ways Chrome is the new Flash, which makes it so attractive.
We just had this issue a few weeks ago. The internet we all use needs a redo. Hard encryption and signing on the lowest app protocol layer and by default with no option out, independant namecoin DNS, asynch and offline capable base protocols and services, an interactive capable web replacement that does away with the HTML 5/CSS bloat of today and a useful optional binary app format including baked font rendering, 3D, audio and some other gadgets people want. All new email/Usenet/IRC would also build on top of said base protocols. Bye bye spam, bye bye NSA, bye bye Farcebook and WhatsCrap.
Maybe Mozilla should put some effort into that.... Just saying.
I use the touchscreen, but I also use swipe. Way easier and faster than typing (most of the time) but can suck if I mix English with German in one textarea.
People only have so much time. And movies and cinemas are increasingly competing with online video, gaming, smartphones, etc. Cinemas will have to morph into event centers that are way more welcoming and hospitable, have realistic pricing and have more character. And even then the visitor number will decline.
Only we need them made by the right parents and properly educated. Global population is going to peak at 9 billion in two decades or so, with most people being oldtimers and then rapidly decline. Underpopulation is going to be a problem.
Besides, the planet could easyly handle 30 billion people without losing a single other species of life and zero to negilible impact on the global environment. Twice the earths population would easyly fit into Europe, including food production, heavy industry and all and we could leave the rest of the planet as nature reserve. Only we'd need to get smart about it. The smart part is where the problem is. To many dumb people around. Powerful tools in dumb hands. See Nuclear Fission, ICEs and modern mono aggriculture for some examples.
What do you propose we do with the people who can't just learn to code?
I *can* code and even I'm this short of moving out of it as a main occupation alltogether. Just went into a Docker introduction last evening at one of our numeros local evening dev meetups. Entire Infrastructure setup templates with 2 hours of initial scripting. Need a new instance of an entire ERP Appserver? A few clicks, go get some coffee, come back, finished.
Add in AI/Machine Learning and regular coding jobs are *over*.... That's why I'm about to move coding as a job into a new perspective for myself. That might include getting back into dancing. That may actually have more future than my current job. And eventhough coding pays twice as much today it might be just about free in a few years.
The fashion industry has a throughput like no other. This was only a matter of time.
The robot is amazing, btw. I like how they use the tightly spaced omni-directional conveyers to move the fabric around and stich and cut it with stationary machines, just like a human would.
Next up: A full set of top quality, taylor made garments, 5 hours after you've stepped into a 3D scanning booth. With your custom brand of choice and cheaper than any ready-made equivalent than you can get.
I feel sorry for the teenagers in bangladesh. They were sewing 12 hours a day, but at least they had a job. It's going to be toughest for them. We need to start spreading the wealth more thouroughly. Like, now.
Just get any preconfectioned gaming PC that fits your needs, preferably one that is quiet, small and relatively cheap. MSI and Acer have neat gaming PCs.
With a ready made system you won't have the hassle of fiddling with current hardware and most hardware today is perfectly sufficient for playing current games at 1080P with regular settings.
Seriously, imagine that for a moment. Everybody saying "Yeah, whatever my disposition. Load it into the cloud and let an AI figure out my best diet, my acurate life expectancy and the best treatments for the diseases and health issues I should expect."
I'm not sure that would be a Really Bad Thing(TM). The most promising cancer treatment these days is chemo therapy combined with methadone to deal with the accompaning naussea. Imagine millions of cancer datasets from all cancer patients and their treatments and the success of those treatments bundled and processed by a single medical AI. Said chemo+methadone fine-tuned to your exact physicallity and disposition and cancer type. Turning many types of cancer into something that's easyer dealt with than dengue fever. Aweseome!
Imagine being able to recognise clinical depression and proneness to drug abuse just about instantly and suggest/enforce treatments, habitual changes and career moves to that. They already can deduct depression from your surfing habits, so they say.
Now imagine the next step, an AI analysing your habits, you're mental and genetic makeup and dedcuting the right type of job and partner for you.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss all this as a nightmare. Perhaps more of a Brave New World that is actually better than anything Huxley could've imagined. If we had a society that would agree on that everybody get's the health treatment they need - you know, sort of a bit like Germany today and just about the total opposite of the US today - then making each and everybodies health data fully accesible to medical AI might actually be a very very neat solution in helping humanity move towards massive increases in overall quality of life.
Because it hasn't been rolled out to my phone yet. Just like with 1.5 Billion other android users on the planet. Ask this question in 4-5 months again.
Don't buy proprietary lock-in platforms, such as PS, XBox, etc.
We need a console that doesn't suck and lasts for a little longer than just a few years. I'm kinda hoping the new Atari reboot will be that. Ouya was a faliure, sadly. The emphasised to much on the "free" aspect AFAICT.
1) Zero fuss + reasonable safety and privacy: Apple iCloud + big fat Timevault. It's a hideously expensive setup but it's about as safe and easy and reliable as it gets.... This is, of course, when you're in the Apple ecosystem already.
2) Google + automated takeaway downloads. There is a huge advantage and a huge disadvantage with Google, and both spell out exactly the same way: Google watches over you. Price-performance is second to none with Google, but, of course, here you have to be part of the ecosystem aswell for it to make sense in any reasonable way.
3) rented server/nas on three internet+ local storage + rsync scripts. Future safe, zero lock-in, cheap, total control but requires a little work and someone who knows what he's/she's doing.
Other than that I don't have enough experience to recommend anything else. Either way I would always keep an on premises copy of anything mission critical, no matter what service I'm using.
Regular programming: Editor CLI Python What does a computer actually do? What's this "programming" thing everyone is talking about? What is a variable? What is a value? What is a comparsion? What is an assignment? What is a condition? What is a loop?
Accelerated Programming: How do I filter text? Regular expressions How to I save a file? Let's process some text. How to I draw a colored block on the screen? How do I play a sound? Let's build Tetris/Snake/Whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
Chrome is a pillar of Googles strategy against Apple, Facebook and MicroSoft. They'd be stupid to let things slide with Chrome.
... big bullshitty PR drumroll. A completely staged pseudo-controversy. Nothing else.
AFAICT our profession has evolved. The sole developer doesn't exist anymore, at least not for longer than a project solving a specific problem. That means that the tasks we do as a computer expert vary very much throughout the course of our assignments. Most mundane stuff is automated and the practive of sharing code via the free open source is so commonplace, that most problems can be solved by downloading a lib from the interweb in 5 minutes.
All in all this means, for me, as a freelance developer with strong ties to FOSS, that I bill my hours and let the customer decide with my consultation where I'm best suited to bring in my moneys worth.
I've discovered that simply charging by the hour is the easyest and fairest for all involved in the long run. So that's what I do. I offer to do anything that falls into my wide field of IT expertise, decline any useful help for things I'm not good at and ask 65 - 70 Euros per hour. End of story.
I'd love to see them use Polymer for the Dashboard. It's the better toolkit anyway, IMHO.
Thus explaining "crazy cat lady" syndrome.
Yes, that's exactly what it explains. No joke.
Convenience stores are - wait for it - convenient.
The owner knows what people need and adjusts stock accordingly. He's basically the maintenance man of a large walk-in vending machine. One that will call the cops if there's trouble in the neighborhood or cook coffee if you want some. No way it's any glorified vending machine going to replace convenience stores and kiosks.
Just like a coffee robot will never replace the cute young ladies serving me at my favorite Cafe.
... reasonably implementing them is where the hard work is.
I've got 200+ ideas on stock. If somebody lacks any, they can ring me up.
...
Just a wild guess here.
Glad I could help.
Thieves/robber will have to much pitty with you / not enough interest in the phone to steal it and nobody will ever hack it. After all, who uses Windows Phone?
And I'm not even joking that much.
I'm really not that surprised that Python appears to be the only language that continuosly grows it's popularity during the last 15 years.
It's easy to learn whilst at the same time being resonably well constructed and scalable towards larger projects. It also appears to be a language where, unlike Ruby, PHP and JS, people do *not* screw around and get their projects perfect from the beginning. There is basically one CMS written in Python and that's Plone, based on Zope, and that System has been ahead of everything else in the PHP and Ruby field in terms of architecture, design and utility ever since Zope came around in the late 90ies. Same goes for Django. One Webframework to rule them all. Unlike PHP or Ruby or JS where you have a mess of a bazillion different toolkits, every single one screwing around in their own specific quirkyness, Python appears to be the language of people who want to get shit done properly right away and then move on. Python, whilst being a very neat programming language, doesn't lend itself to self-indulgance. Maybe those twot traits are correlated.
Point in case: Python is the only language I know of that is to measurable extent being used professionaly in every field.
Research, engineering, game development, media, 3D, web, custom ERP, system administration, embedded, bioengieering, robotics, process automation, etc.
IMHO it speaks volumes if a language is that easy to pick up and at the same time is used in so many fields. AFAICT it is only dominated by PHP and JS in server and client side web for historic reasons. Would people have to decide today which language should rule the client and server-side web they'd probably pick Python for that aswell.
I also think that Python is a language that remains fun to programm in even if you use it for an extended period of time. Can't say that for PHP for example.
My 2 cents.
Brought to you by Captain Obvious Research Institute.
Do not use proprietary services for anything mission critical without a total backup and fallback in place.
Better yet:
Do not use prorietary services. Period.
It's not that difficult, is it?
Besides, I really don't get Twitter at all. Besides the marginal case of continuos mindshare within smaller distributed teams working on one larger problem/product. A purpose it orignially was designed for. I remember when Twitter just came out. I looked into it for about 3 minutes, thought to myself "Who needs this?" and used it maybe twice ever since. And those times it was just fooling around. I fundamentally don't get it.
It's that simple. The open standards internet has been taken over by shiny services like a commercial Usenet with a web interface that Facebook is.
We need an entirely new set of services and protocols with finished implementations of working and well designed applications that support them. Firefox used to be the best usable browser. Then chrome came along and had a great fast JavaScript engine, a new platform people could build client side logic on. In many ways Chrome is the new Flash, which makes it so attractive.
We just had this issue a few weeks ago. The internet we all use needs a redo. Hard encryption and signing on the lowest app protocol layer and by default with no option out, independant namecoin DNS, asynch and offline capable base protocols and services, an interactive capable web replacement that does away with the HTML 5/CSS bloat of today and a useful optional binary app format including baked font rendering, 3D, audio and some other gadgets people want. All new email/Usenet/IRC would also build on top of said base protocols. Bye bye spam, bye bye NSA, bye bye Farcebook and WhatsCrap.
Maybe Mozilla should put some effort into that. ... Just saying.
I use the touchscreen, but I also use swipe. Way easier and faster than typing (most of the time) but can suck if I mix English with German in one textarea.
"Part of the hiring problem, Chamberlain says, lies in company hiring policies."
Well, no shit.
People only have so much time. And movies and cinemas are increasingly competing with online video, gaming, smartphones, etc. Cinemas will have to morph into event centers that are way more welcoming and hospitable, have realistic pricing and have more character. And even then the visitor number will decline.
Wait until what happens when VR takes off.
Only we need them made by the right parents and properly educated. Global population is going to peak at 9 billion in two decades or so, with most people being oldtimers and then rapidly decline. Underpopulation is going to be a problem.
Besides, the planet could easyly handle 30 billion people without losing a single other species of life and zero to negilible impact on the global environment. Twice the earths population would easyly fit into Europe, including food production, heavy industry and all and we could leave the rest of the planet as nature reserve. Only we'd need to get smart about it. The smart part is where the problem is. To many dumb people around. Powerful tools in dumb hands. See Nuclear Fission, ICEs and modern mono aggriculture for some examples.
What do you propose we do with the people who can't just learn to code?
I *can* code and even I'm this short of moving out of it as a main occupation alltogether. Just went into a Docker introduction last evening at one of our numeros local evening dev meetups. Entire Infrastructure setup templates with 2 hours of initial scripting. Need a new instance of an entire ERP Appserver? A few clicks, go get some coffee, come back, finished.
Add in AI/Machine Learning and regular coding jobs are *over*. ... That's why I'm about to move coding as a job into a new perspective for myself. That might include getting back into dancing. That may actually have more future than my current job. And eventhough coding pays twice as much today it might be just about free in a few years.
Just sayin'.
The fashion industry has a throughput like no other. This was only a matter of time.
The robot is amazing, btw. I like how they use the tightly spaced omni-directional conveyers to move the fabric around and stich and cut it with stationary machines, just like a human would.
Next up:
A full set of top quality, taylor made garments, 5 hours after you've stepped into a 3D scanning booth. With your custom brand of choice and cheaper than any ready-made equivalent than you can get.
I feel sorry for the teenagers in bangladesh. They were sewing 12 hours a day, but at least they had a job. It's going to be toughest for them.
We need to start spreading the wealth more thouroughly. Like, now.
Just get any preconfectioned gaming PC that fits your needs, preferably one that is quiet, small and relatively cheap. MSI and Acer have neat gaming PCs.
With a ready made system you won't have the hassle of fiddling with current hardware and most hardware today is perfectly sufficient for playing current games at 1080P with regular settings.
My 2 cents.
Seriously, imagine that for a moment. Everybody saying "Yeah, whatever my disposition. Load it into the cloud and let an AI figure out my best diet, my acurate life expectancy and the best treatments for the diseases and health issues I should expect."
I'm not sure that would be a Really Bad Thing(TM). The most promising cancer treatment these days is chemo therapy combined with methadone to deal with the accompaning naussea. Imagine millions of cancer datasets from all cancer patients and their treatments and the success of those treatments bundled and processed by a single medical AI. Said chemo+methadone fine-tuned to your exact physicallity and disposition and cancer type. Turning many types of cancer into something that's easyer dealt with than dengue fever. Aweseome!
Imagine being able to recognise clinical depression and proneness to drug abuse just about instantly and suggest/enforce treatments, habitual changes and career moves to that. They already can deduct depression from your surfing habits, so they say.
Now imagine the next step, an AI analysing your habits, you're mental and genetic makeup and dedcuting the right type of job and partner for you.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss all this as a nightmare. Perhaps more of a Brave New World that is actually better than anything Huxley could've imagined. If we had a society that would agree on that everybody get's the health treatment they need - you know, sort of a bit like Germany today and just about the total opposite of the US today - then making each and everybodies health data fully accesible to medical AI might actually be a very very neat solution in helping humanity move towards massive increases in overall quality of life.
Just sayin'.
My 2 eurocents.
Because it hasn't been rolled out to my phone yet. Just like with 1.5 Billion other android users on the planet. Ask this question in 4-5 months again.
Don't buy proprietary lock-in platforms, such as PS, XBox, etc.
We need a console that doesn't suck and lasts for a little longer than just a few years. I'm kinda hoping the new Atari reboot will be that. Ouya was a faliure, sadly. The emphasised to much on the "free" aspect AFAICT.
1) Zero fuss + reasonable safety and privacy: Apple iCloud + big fat Timevault. It's a hideously expensive setup but it's about as safe and easy and reliable as it gets. ... This is, of course, when you're in the Apple ecosystem already.
2) Google + automated takeaway downloads. There is a huge advantage and a huge disadvantage with Google, and both spell out exactly the same way: Google watches over you. Price-performance is second to none with Google, but, of course, here you have to be part of the ecosystem aswell for it to make sense in any reasonable way.
3) rented server/nas on three internet+ local storage + rsync scripts. Future safe, zero lock-in, cheap, total control but requires a little work and someone who knows what he's/she's doing.
Other than that I don't have enough experience to recommend anything else. Either way I would always keep an on premises copy of anything mission critical, no matter what service I'm using.
My 2 cents.
Regular programming:
Editor
CLI
Python
What does a computer actually do?
What's this "programming" thing everyone is talking about?
What is a variable?
What is a value?
What is a comparsion?
What is an assignment?
What is a condition?
What is a loop?
Accelerated Programming:
How do I filter text?
Regular expressions
How to I save a file?
Let's process some text.
How to I draw a colored block on the screen?
How do I play a sound?
Let's build Tetris/Snake/Whatever.
You're welcome. Glad I could help.