Indeed, I hope they do, to light a fire under the complacent asses currently inhabiting my country - the US.
I've been hoping so too, but so far it doesn't seem to be working, so I'm growing less optimistic. I think this is the major reason: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12brooks.html... in the old days the US spent tax money on good old engineering to do great things like get people to the moon. Now it spends its money on massive bureaucracies that push paper around, for the sake of pushing paper around. And I'm afraid I don't think too many people in that system see or care about the bigger picture or bigger goals, just their next paychecks and the next department budget.
By "use it against you", you really mean "make it cheaper than you can". And if someone else is better than you *at your own game*, you have to ask yourself why.
Essentially this one of the biggest reasons why Marx predicted the fall of too capitalistic system - it is utterly unable to properly regulate itself not to damage itself
Um, except that the rise of a third major airliner manufacturer in the world isn't "damage".
Three major economies, each with a major manufacturer of airplanes, in a massive global economy with more people flying than ever before, with competitive airlines (who will be able to buy better cheaper planes, thanks to more competition) offering ever cheaper flight and ever higher economies of scale. Yeah, sounds terrible. What a disaster.
If the two Western airliners remain uncompetitive, then the worst case scenario is we still end up with a world full of airplanes, they'll just be manufactured by someone else instead. From a global perspective, that is not "damage" in any rational sense of the word. If you lose your lunch because you were unable to remain competitive, sure, then it sucks to be you, but 'the system' will not have 'failed' in any rational sense. And if you can't be competitive, you have to ask yourself why that is the case, and up your game.
The overall market is growing in size very fast. A smaller percentage of a much larger market is not a 'failure' of the system.
Having watched Airbus's struggles, launching such a manufacturing capability is not easy. China will encounter struggles along the way, so I wouldn't be too worried that all of a sudden Boeing and Airbus are going to disappear.
And this is what "free trade" gives us: US companies offshoring jobs and real assets, chasing little pieces of paper printed up by the central banks, earning hypothetical economic "profit" while actually making us all poorer in the process.
Actually, a number of things you mention are precisely because we don't actually have a "free trade" system. The number one driver for offshoring, for example, is the completely anti-free-trade minimum wage laws. Fiat currency systems where a government-mandated private monopoly institution has the power to effectively print more money and manipulate the currency is the opposite of a free trade system (to understand this you have to realise that the definition of a free trade system is one in which individuals are allowed to keep ownership of the wealth they produce and earn, and that such manipulation is antithetical to this because weakening a currency by expanding the money supply precisely takes the money you earned from you by eating a little of the value off each dollar in your pocket, and giving it to someone else). And if you are wondering why it feels like everyone is getting poorer, look no further than the very people who are taking your money and spending like there is no tomorrow, adding a trillion a year to the national debt like it's nothing, and that's the state... this is completely the opposite, again, of a "free trade" system where by definition you keep the fruits of your labor. If you are wondering why you feel poor, look where your money is going, it is as simple as that.
Point 1: If a terrorist can't blow up a plane, he'll surely try blow up something else instead, right? Elsewhere in the world, other types of targets are equally common - night clubs, hotels, etc. Anywhere where there are lots of people.
Point 2: So even if we made planes 110% safe from terrorists, you still would not be any more safe 'in general', because the same terrorists would just kill you while you were somewhere else. You can just keep on spending more and more on airline security, with no increased safety, because you would also have to add that security to every nightclub, every mall, every other place where there are lots of people.
Point 3: 9/11 aside, the number of terrorist attacks in the United States are extremely low. Where are they? Name three major terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11. I can think of.. hmm.. Fort Hood? And the odd foiled attack, like the printer cartridge.
So where are these terrorists then?
Now yes, there are some terrorists out there, and some have been caught thanks to intelligence, but there simply cannot be terribly many, or else we would see attacks regularly. There are thousands of unprotected public targets all over the US. It's a terrorists wet dream. He can pick his targets. So where are the regular bombings?
I don't think they're out to humiliate anyone, I think they just like spending more and more money to create lots of pointless bureaucracies that look like they're doing something useful, because otherwise all these useless folk would be on the street.
Yes, and all those terrorists saw the TSA policies, and decided to instead live out the rest of their lives peacefully, instead of simply plotting to commit terror in other ways against the thousands of other possible targets.
Come on, really, imagine you were a terrorist, and wanted to destroy the infidel, do you really honestly think you'd be incapable of imagining anything other than an aeroplane as a target? Really? You would just give up, and say "oh dear, the TSA has foiled us completely, praise Allah"?
The fact is there aren't that many terrorists. If there were, there would be trains and malls and e.g. tourist hotspots exploding every other month in the US. But, terrorists do exist and always will. The primary question is finding an appropriate balance of safety (true additional safety, not security theater) versus the cost (both financial, and in terms of public inconvenience and humiliation etc.). If money were infinite we could have the luxury of adding as many security policies as we want, the reality is not only is money not infinite, but we are in difficult times.
Sigh, another one taking offense at the truth. VB.net is kept going because there is still a huge programmer base for it, but mark my words, VB was never a very good language (because it evolved from BASIC), and C# is basically Microsoft's idea of "a better VB" - sure it was also meant to compete with Java, but C# was meant to fill a particular niche well, which is why it's so popular and why it grew in popularity incredibly quickly.
I've been in and watched this job market for over 15 years, and I've watched what used to be millions of VB jobs in the market, be replaced almost overnight with millions of C# jobs, and people hardly talk about VB now. C# is now 'the' language for EXACTLY the same types of jobs that VB used to be 'the' language for. I'm definitely not saying it cannot be and isn't used for more advanced things, sure, but the majority of its use - simply by virtue of that being the most common industry demand - is that type of application. VB was actually more than just "RAD glue" too, both environments allow relatively advanced and complex things 'if you know what you are doing'. That's not my point, and if you thought it was, you didn't read my post. So you saw "VB" and took it as an insult, what I was saying was just "it's the new VB", but "it's a BETTER VB".
Please use a language in a real world project before commenting on it.
Oh please, I've used all these languages in real-world projects, for major projects for major customers in major industries.
C# is not a beginner or medium level language. It requires great skill and some of the best C# programmers I know were originally C, C++ and Java developers.
Sigh, you didn't really read what I wrote properly, or you don't understand the complexity differences. Being *good* at C# requires great skill, sure. I'm not taking that away, and I have met some very good programmers who simply liked.NET. Being mediocre at it requires very little skill though. The entry level is much lower than C++. That's the whole point of it, it's by design. It's easy to ignore some of its more advanced features, like reflection. You don't have to understand things like pointers to start writing applications. My main language is C++, but I am doing a project in.NET at the moment. Sorry, but it is an absolute breeze compared to C++.
While it true that there are plenty of bad C# developers; that is pretty much the same in all languages.
Nope, the proportions ARE different for the simple reason I stated, C++ is far less *forgiving* to newcomers. With.NET, you can open the development and start coding without much difficulty. With C++, unless you know what you are doing, you will struggle to get your programs to compile, and this will continue for a long time until you become good. The typical 'first experiences' in C++ are 'I can't get anything to compile', even for someone good at another language, like.NET. Whereas if you are good at say C++, it's all downhill from there; a good C++ programmer will get up and running quickly in.NET. A 'bad C++ programmer' won't last at all. And to be a good C++ programmer, you practically have to have an understanding of what assembly language the compiler generates. C++ has been jokingly referred to at times as 'the most advanced assembly language'.
The number of areas where there are still breakthroughs of garage companies is small and decreasing
Citation needed. I'm honestly curious how you back that up. Google was also started by 'just a couple of guys' and was founded just 12 years ago, taking off like a rocket right through the dot-com bust. Facebook was started by 'basically one dude coding away' only 6 years ago. Twitter is just four years old and was started by basically just one dude, and was pretty damn simple. And Farmville, wtf, could've been started by *anyone*.
Presumably sometime there will be a drop-off in this kind of opportunity, but it definitely hasn't started yet.
I suppose at each stage people make the claim "OK that's it now, that was the last such opportunity"... until someone else comes up with a great idea and is able to follow it through.
Something I've come to see and realize over the years (yeah I'm getting a little older) is that as long as the market is free, there will always be competition. Always. No matter how big, no matter how dominant a company might seem, there is always some other equally big and successful company - usually in a slightly different market and looking for new opportunities.
And they are particularly attracted when a market has "fat" in it - which is usually the case when de facto cartels or monopolies have formed. But even in low-margin businesses, it remains the case. People are always scared that some big company is going to take over everything. The free market can seem 'scary' in that regard - but isn't.
Competition acts a bit slower than we'd usually like, but it always acts.
I find the article a bit ridiculous actually, and its basic premises are completely false... the author claims there is monopoly domination, and proceeds to "prove" this by giving a long list of all strong companies that compete with one another, some fiercely. Apple, Google, Microsoft, all fierce competitors, all quite capable of providing similar services to the others. And the very existence of both Google and Facebook ARE textbook cases of how the Internet has allowed one or two 'garage coders' to become billionaires and compete with the other major players practically overnight. Apple, also started in a garage in the first place, was also almost dead very recently, and re-started itself afresh. These companies are proof of how incredibly competitive the industry is, and how easy it is for new small players to get in and grow.
Facebook had competition even when it launched, from services like MySpace and Friendster, both still going, and would step in in a minute. Google Buzz is another potential competitor to Facebook. They are everywhere. If Facebook disappeared, users would simply migrate to another service.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but just a semi-correction, I re-read and may have jumped to the conclusion from his wording that the submitter conflated C# and.NET - that isn't necessarily evident from the wording.
Speaking of staying relevant. While there are certainly languages that are way down there in terms of jobs, I take the general view that if you keep yourself *good* at whatever language you choose, you will have a job. That is certainly true of PHP, of C++, and probably will stay true of Java for a long time. Still, I suppose not everyone can be motivated enough to stay top of their game.
Submitter also doesn't seem to realise.NET isn't a language, it's a platform (more akin to an API than a language), and you can code for.NET using many different languages, and you can't code "in.NET", since there isn't such a language. I presume he made the common beginner mistake of conflating "C#" with ".NET", and I'll infer he meant C#.
As anti-MS as I am, it seems odd to me to avoid C# if you like Java though, given it's probably more similar to Java than anything else. Also, from what little I know of it, technically it seems like quite a decent language (and the API much better than the old Win32.NET replaces), with quite a decent development environment too. It didn't really replace the C++ 'niche' though, it replaced the VB segment... C# is basically "the new VB"; rapid medium-skilled and medium-complexity development with a broader pool of (on average) less highly-skilled programmers to choose from (not dissing the good C# programmers that do exist, but it's certainly a more forgiving environment to less technically skilled programmers than say C++).
If you're really good at what you do, then you can afford to be picky about your "ideology" and avoid a particular language. If not (which I more suspect to be the case here) then I would recommend to the question asker to best keep more options open. Otherwise it just seems more like a bad carpenter blaming the job environment.
Me, I love C++, and I haven't noticed jobs drying up, on the contrary, my C++ skills continue to open interesting doors for me, I can literally go almost anywhere in the world.
There are lots of C# jobs out there, and lots of C# programmers; while you can be an excellent C# programmer, I'd say it's probably slightly easier to 'distinguish yourself' in the C++ world.
PHP is still also massive though, and will be for a long time.
This should have a few effects: first of all completely overburdening the government approval system.
Unfortunately this would be counterproductive; you can't "overburden" a government department, on the contrary, they will just tax the populace even higher and hire a whole extra building full of paper-pushers to handle the additional red tape. AND, they will actually love it too, since the department heads would then be able to brag that they run an even bigger department.
Unfortunately governments actually love extra pointless bureaucracy and paperwork, it's exactly what keeps them employed, "justifies" their payrolls, and keeps their departments and budgets "growing". That's one of the reasons they pass these economy-harming laws in the first place. Nothing would terrify a government department more than finding itself with little in the way of work to do... come budget allocation time, that means cuts, and who wants to run a shrinking department?
It's almost as if the American people are committing economic suicide.
And ooh look at this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10150118.. wonderful system the Europeans have there, America should definitely aim to emulate that instead. I mean who wouldn't want unemployment to almost hit 20% in some areas.
This is actually total horseshit. For most high-paid jobs that end up in the top brackets, there are way more people willing to do the job than positions available.
Um, you need to be both willing and qualified. If there were "way more people" available for the jobs (meaning, supply vastly outstripping demand) the value of that labor would plummet, that is simple price elasticity. The reality is there a dearth of skilled people in all major economies, which is why virtually all developed economies' immigration policies are heavily skewed towards highly skilled / paid jobs (and remained so even through the recession).
Yes, such "dire economic straits" that it remains the largest economy in the world, continues to lead most global industries, has an HDI ranking of 4th, and has unemployment roughly on par with Europe (and slowly improving once again). Dire indeed. A true 'house of cards'.
Meanwhile Europe emerged totally unscathed, of course, from the financial crisis --- major European banks didn't collapse, Europe didn't also go into recession and experience major job losses, there was no Euro crisis earlier this year, and the massive 'austerity measures' (and other moves in a more American-style direction) currently being put in place to rescue many major Western-European states from the verge of bankruptcy don't exist. (cf. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10162176 - e.g. "The Chancellor, George Osborne, told parliament that 490,000 public sector jobs would be cut over four years because the country had "run out of money". Experts predict a similar number of job losses in the private sector.")
Your post has all the right crowd-pleasing rhetoric and buzzphrases, but I'm afraid upon analysis it doesn't hold up against reality. But please do continue to be "amused" while you look down your nose at the US and speak, I'll be generous, basically fiction.
It's not an internally contradictory moral framework if you realize that the common thread in the reasoning is that 'big companies are evil, the little guy is good'. Not saying anything about whether or not that's correct, just that it's not really hypocritical or contradictory (at least not if one assumes the 'big companies evil' to be axiomatic... personally I don't think they are, but they can be... corporations are just groups of people).
Your right to be able to defend your very own life and limb is a 'natural right'; you have it automatically by virtue of existing as a human on Earth. Governments can do one of two things only: Either immorally infringe this right, or rightfully allow you to exercise it.
http://bostonreview.net/BR24.2/waldron.html
"Inalienable is not just a pretty word, inserted by Thomas Jefferson into the Declaration of Independence for rhetorical effect. It means rights that may not be given away by those who have them, and therefore that no system of absolute power may ever be defended on the ground that reasonable people would have found it prudent, in certain circumstances, to alienate these rights. Meares and Kahan say that "we ordinarily think of rights as belonging to individuals," with the implication that of course they can be sold or bargained away like any other form of property. In fact, there was a century or two of controversy in early modern rights theory about that very point. Some sixteenth century theorists defended slavery, for example, on what we would recognize as Hobbesian grounds: it would be rational for a person or a whole people to sell themselves into subjection in order to better preserve their life and security. Insistence on the inalienability of rights was a way of opposing such contracts, and it was this opposing conception-the idea of rights held in trust and the right-bearer as steward rather than owner of his rights-that triumphed in works of John Locke and the formulations of Jefferson"
This distinction is also why I love the US, because only one country in the world seems to 'get it' and has codified this distinction into the most core documents forming the foundation of its legal system, and even after 230+ years, no other country has 'gotten' this and emulated it, in spite of its success on so many levels, even if the implementation is imperfect.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, I hope they do, to light a fire under the complacent asses currently inhabiting my country - the US.
I've been hoping so too, but so far it doesn't seem to be working, so I'm growing less optimistic. I think this is the major reason: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12brooks.html ... in the old days the US spent tax money on good old engineering to do great things like get people to the moon. Now it spends its money on massive bureaucracies that push paper around, for the sake of pushing paper around. And I'm afraid I don't think too many people in that system see or care about the bigger picture or bigger goals, just their next paychecks and the next department budget.
Unless you're Chinese, and live in China. Or you live in any of the other developing nations where airline safety is less of a priority.
By "use it against you", you really mean "make it cheaper than you can". And if someone else is better than you *at your own game*, you have to ask yourself why.
Essentially this one of the biggest reasons why Marx predicted the fall of too capitalistic system - it is utterly unable to properly regulate itself not to damage itself
Um, except that the rise of a third major airliner manufacturer in the world isn't "damage".
Three major economies, each with a major manufacturer of airplanes, in a massive global economy with more people flying than ever before, with competitive airlines (who will be able to buy better cheaper planes, thanks to more competition) offering ever cheaper flight and ever higher economies of scale. Yeah, sounds terrible. What a disaster.
If the two Western airliners remain uncompetitive, then the worst case scenario is we still end up with a world full of airplanes, they'll just be manufactured by someone else instead. From a global perspective, that is not "damage" in any rational sense of the word. If you lose your lunch because you were unable to remain competitive, sure, then it sucks to be you, but 'the system' will not have 'failed' in any rational sense. And if you can't be competitive, you have to ask yourself why that is the case, and up your game.
The overall market is growing in size very fast. A smaller percentage of a much larger market is not a 'failure' of the system.
Having watched Airbus's struggles, launching such a manufacturing capability is not easy. China will encounter struggles along the way, so I wouldn't be too worried that all of a sudden Boeing and Airbus are going to disappear.
And this is what "free trade" gives us: US companies offshoring jobs and real assets, chasing little pieces of paper printed up by the central banks, earning hypothetical economic "profit" while actually making us all poorer in the process.
Actually, a number of things you mention are precisely because we don't actually have a "free trade" system. The number one driver for offshoring, for example, is the completely anti-free-trade minimum wage laws. Fiat currency systems where a government-mandated private monopoly institution has the power to effectively print more money and manipulate the currency is the opposite of a free trade system (to understand this you have to realise that the definition of a free trade system is one in which individuals are allowed to keep ownership of the wealth they produce and earn, and that such manipulation is antithetical to this because weakening a currency by expanding the money supply precisely takes the money you earned from you by eating a little of the value off each dollar in your pocket, and giving it to someone else). And if you are wondering why it feels like everyone is getting poorer, look no further than the very people who are taking your money and spending like there is no tomorrow, adding a trillion a year to the national debt like it's nothing, and that's the state ... this is completely the opposite, again, of a "free trade" system where by definition you keep the fruits of your labor. If you are wondering why you feel poor, look where your money is going, it is as simple as that.
Point 1: If a terrorist can't blow up a plane, he'll surely try blow up something else instead, right? Elsewhere in the world, other types of targets are equally common - night clubs, hotels, etc. Anywhere where there are lots of people.
Point 2: So even if we made planes 110% safe from terrorists, you still would not be any more safe 'in general', because the same terrorists would just kill you while you were somewhere else. You can just keep on spending more and more on airline security, with no increased safety, because you would also have to add that security to every nightclub, every mall, every other place where there are lots of people.
Point 3: 9/11 aside, the number of terrorist attacks in the United States are extremely low. Where are they? Name three major terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11. I can think of .. hmm .. Fort Hood? And the odd foiled attack, like the printer cartridge.
So where are these terrorists then?
Now yes, there are some terrorists out there, and some have been caught thanks to intelligence, but there simply cannot be terribly many, or else we would see attacks regularly. There are thousands of unprotected public targets all over the US. It's a terrorists wet dream. He can pick his targets. So where are the regular bombings?
I don't think they're out to humiliate anyone, I think they just like spending more and more money to create lots of pointless bureaucracies that look like they're doing something useful, because otherwise all these useless folk would be on the street.
Yes, and all those terrorists saw the TSA policies, and decided to instead live out the rest of their lives peacefully, instead of simply plotting to commit terror in other ways against the thousands of other possible targets.
Come on, really, imagine you were a terrorist, and wanted to destroy the infidel, do you really honestly think you'd be incapable of imagining anything other than an aeroplane as a target? Really? You would just give up, and say "oh dear, the TSA has foiled us completely, praise Allah"?
The fact is there aren't that many terrorists. If there were, there would be trains and malls and e.g. tourist hotspots exploding every other month in the US. But, terrorists do exist and always will. The primary question is finding an appropriate balance of safety (true additional safety, not security theater) versus the cost (both financial, and in terms of public inconvenience and humiliation etc.). If money were infinite we could have the luxury of adding as many security policies as we want, the reality is not only is money not infinite, but we are in difficult times.
Sigh, another one taking offense at the truth. VB.net is kept going because there is still a huge programmer base for it, but mark my words, VB was never a very good language (because it evolved from BASIC), and C# is basically Microsoft's idea of "a better VB" - sure it was also meant to compete with Java, but C# was meant to fill a particular niche well, which is why it's so popular and why it grew in popularity incredibly quickly.
I've been in and watched this job market for over 15 years, and I've watched what used to be millions of VB jobs in the market, be replaced almost overnight with millions of C# jobs, and people hardly talk about VB now. C# is now 'the' language for EXACTLY the same types of jobs that VB used to be 'the' language for. I'm definitely not saying it cannot be and isn't used for more advanced things, sure, but the majority of its use - simply by virtue of that being the most common industry demand - is that type of application. VB was actually more than just "RAD glue" too, both environments allow relatively advanced and complex things 'if you know what you are doing'. That's not my point, and if you thought it was, you didn't read my post. So you saw "VB" and took it as an insult, what I was saying was just "it's the new VB", but "it's a BETTER VB".
Please use a language in a real world project before commenting on it.
Oh please, I've used all these languages in real-world projects, for major projects for major customers in major industries.
C# is not a beginner or medium level language. It requires great skill and some of the best C# programmers I know were originally C, C++ and Java developers.
Sigh, you didn't really read what I wrote properly, or you don't understand the complexity differences. Being *good* at C# requires great skill, sure. I'm not taking that away, and I have met some very good programmers who simply liked .NET. Being mediocre at it requires very little skill though. The entry level is much lower than C++. That's the whole point of it, it's by design. It's easy to ignore some of its more advanced features, like reflection. You don't have to understand things like pointers to start writing applications. My main language is C++, but I am doing a project in .NET at the moment. Sorry, but it is an absolute breeze compared to C++.
While it true that there are plenty of bad C# developers; that is pretty much the same in all languages.
Nope, the proportions ARE different for the simple reason I stated, C++ is far less *forgiving* to newcomers. With .NET, you can open the development and start coding without much difficulty. With C++, unless you know what you are doing, you will struggle to get your programs to compile, and this will continue for a long time until you become good. The typical 'first experiences' in C++ are 'I can't get anything to compile', even for someone good at another language, like .NET. Whereas if you are good at say C++, it's all downhill from there; a good C++ programmer will get up and running quickly in .NET. A 'bad C++ programmer' won't last at all. And to be a good C++ programmer, you practically have to have an understanding of what assembly language the compiler generates. C++ has been jokingly referred to at times as 'the most advanced assembly language'.
All unregulated markets devolve into monopolies
Yeah, that's why we get all our services today from one big company. /sarcasm
The number of areas where there are still breakthroughs of garage companies is small and decreasing
Citation needed. I'm honestly curious how you back that up. Google was also started by 'just a couple of guys' and was founded just 12 years ago, taking off like a rocket right through the dot-com bust. Facebook was started by 'basically one dude coding away' only 6 years ago. Twitter is just four years old and was started by basically just one dude, and was pretty damn simple. And Farmville, wtf, could've been started by *anyone*.
Presumably sometime there will be a drop-off in this kind of opportunity, but it definitely hasn't started yet.
I suppose at each stage people make the claim "OK that's it now, that was the last such opportunity" ... until someone else comes up with a great idea and is able to follow it through.
Something I've come to see and realize over the years (yeah I'm getting a little older) is that as long as the market is free, there will always be competition. Always. No matter how big, no matter how dominant a company might seem, there is always some other equally big and successful company - usually in a slightly different market and looking for new opportunities.
And they are particularly attracted when a market has "fat" in it - which is usually the case when de facto cartels or monopolies have formed. But even in low-margin businesses, it remains the case. People are always scared that some big company is going to take over everything. The free market can seem 'scary' in that regard - but isn't.
Competition acts a bit slower than we'd usually like, but it always acts.
I find the article a bit ridiculous actually, and its basic premises are completely false ... the author claims there is monopoly domination, and proceeds to "prove" this by giving a long list of all strong companies that compete with one another, some fiercely. Apple, Google, Microsoft, all fierce competitors, all quite capable of providing similar services to the others. And the very existence of both Google and Facebook ARE textbook cases of how the Internet has allowed one or two 'garage coders' to become billionaires and compete with the other major players practically overnight. Apple, also started in a garage in the first place, was also almost dead very recently, and re-started itself afresh. These companies are proof of how incredibly competitive the industry is, and how easy it is for new small players to get in and grow.
Facebook had competition even when it launched, from services like MySpace and Friendster, both still going, and would step in in a minute. Google Buzz is another potential competitor to Facebook. They are everywhere. If Facebook disappeared, users would simply migrate to another service.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but just a semi-correction, I re-read and may have jumped to the conclusion from his wording that the submitter conflated C# and .NET - that isn't necessarily evident from the wording.
Speaking of staying relevant. While there are certainly languages that are way down there in terms of jobs, I take the general view that if you keep yourself *good* at whatever language you choose, you will have a job. That is certainly true of PHP, of C++, and probably will stay true of Java for a long time. Still, I suppose not everyone can be motivated enough to stay top of their game.
Submitter also doesn't seem to realise .NET isn't a language, it's a platform (more akin to an API than a language), and you can code for .NET using many different languages, and you can't code "in .NET", since there isn't such a language. I presume he made the common beginner mistake of conflating "C#" with ".NET", and I'll infer he meant C#.
As anti-MS as I am, it seems odd to me to avoid C# if you like Java though, given it's probably more similar to Java than anything else. Also, from what little I know of it, technically it seems like quite a decent language (and the API much better than the old Win32 .NET replaces), with quite a decent development environment too. It didn't really replace the C++ 'niche' though, it replaced the VB segment ... C# is basically "the new VB"; rapid medium-skilled and medium-complexity development with a broader pool of (on average) less highly-skilled programmers to choose from (not dissing the good C# programmers that do exist, but it's certainly a more forgiving environment to less technically skilled programmers than say C++).
If you're really good at what you do, then you can afford to be picky about your "ideology" and avoid a particular language. If not (which I more suspect to be the case here) then I would recommend to the question asker to best keep more options open. Otherwise it just seems more like a bad carpenter blaming the job environment.
Me, I love C++, and I haven't noticed jobs drying up, on the contrary, my C++ skills continue to open interesting doors for me, I can literally go almost anywhere in the world.
There are lots of C# jobs out there, and lots of C# programmers; while you can be an excellent C# programmer, I'd say it's probably slightly easier to 'distinguish yourself' in the C++ world.
PHP is still also massive though, and will be for a long time.
This should have a few effects: first of all completely overburdening the government approval system.
Unfortunately this would be counterproductive; you can't "overburden" a government department, on the contrary, they will just tax the populace even higher and hire a whole extra building full of paper-pushers to handle the additional red tape. AND, they will actually love it too, since the department heads would then be able to brag that they run an even bigger department.
Unfortunately governments actually love extra pointless bureaucracy and paperwork, it's exactly what keeps them employed, "justifies" their payrolls, and keeps their departments and budgets "growing". That's one of the reasons they pass these economy-harming laws in the first place. Nothing would terrify a government department more than finding itself with little in the way of work to do ... come budget allocation time, that means cuts, and who wants to run a shrinking department?
Sounds more like a case of Bread and Circuses to me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses).
... Newton's mechanics ... is quite usefull for some applications.
Talk about an understatement.
Troll!? Yeah right, definitely a biased moderator there. Guess somebody wants to keep facts from being seen.
Read up on the science behind low-carbohydrate eating, you actually don't have to starve to lose weight.
It's almost as if the American people are committing economic suicide.
And ooh look at this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10150118 .. wonderful system the Europeans have there, America should definitely aim to emulate that instead. I mean who wouldn't want unemployment to almost hit 20% in some areas.
And wait, what's this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11701486 ... yeah, just look at the consequences of that 'economic suicide' - so terrible.
Precisely, comrade!
has left it in such dire economic straits
Yes, such "dire economic straits" that it remains the largest economy in the world, continues to lead most global industries, has an HDI ranking of 4th, and has unemployment roughly on par with Europe (and slowly improving once again). Dire indeed. A true 'house of cards'.
Meanwhile Europe emerged totally unscathed, of course, from the financial crisis --- major European banks didn't collapse, Europe didn't also go into recession and experience major job losses, there was no Euro crisis earlier this year, and the massive 'austerity measures' (and other moves in a more American-style direction) currently being put in place to rescue many major Western-European states from the verge of bankruptcy don't exist. (cf. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10162176 - e.g. "The Chancellor, George Osborne, told parliament that 490,000 public sector jobs would be cut over four years because the country had "run out of money". Experts predict a similar number of job losses in the private sector.")
Your post has all the right crowd-pleasing rhetoric and buzzphrases, but I'm afraid upon analysis it doesn't hold up against reality. But please do continue to be "amused" while you look down your nose at the US and speak, I'll be generous, basically fiction.
It's not an internally contradictory moral framework if you realize that the common thread in the reasoning is that 'big companies are evil, the little guy is good'. Not saying anything about whether or not that's correct, just that it's not really hypocritical or contradictory (at least not if one assumes the 'big companies evil' to be axiomatic ... personally I don't think they are, but they can be... corporations are just groups of people).
+1
Your right to be able to defend your very own life and limb is a 'natural right'; you have it automatically by virtue of existing as a human on Earth. Governments can do one of two things only: Either immorally infringe this right, or rightfully allow you to exercise it.
http://bostonreview.net/BR24.2/waldron.html
"Inalienable is not just a pretty word, inserted by Thomas Jefferson into the Declaration of Independence for rhetorical effect. It means rights that may not be given away by those who have them, and therefore that no system of absolute power may ever be defended on the ground that reasonable people would have found it prudent, in certain circumstances, to alienate these rights. Meares and Kahan say that "we ordinarily think of rights as belonging to individuals," with the implication that of course they can be sold or bargained away like any other form of property. In fact, there was a century or two of controversy in early modern rights theory about that very point. Some sixteenth century theorists defended slavery, for example, on what we would recognize as Hobbesian grounds: it would be rational for a person or a whole people to sell themselves into subjection in order to better preserve their life and security. Insistence on the inalienability of rights was a way of opposing such contracts, and it was this opposing conception-the idea of rights held in trust and the right-bearer as steward rather than owner of his rights-that triumphed in works of John Locke and the formulations of Jefferson"
This distinction is also why I love the US, because only one country in the world seems to 'get it' and has codified this distinction into the most core documents forming the foundation of its legal system, and even after 230+ years, no other country has 'gotten' this and emulated it, in spite of its success on so many levels, even if the implementation is imperfect.