after being left in the cold by Sony with their librie (closed format, no fw upgrades to read pdf or epub) I will stick with my ipod touch and stanza, the screen is a bit small and not as nice as the librie's e-ink one, but at least I can read every format without issues and the integration with feedbooks is awesome.
I like it, I played wow for a few years but got tired of the arena-or-raid focus (I like BGs, but it is pointless after a while because of people afking to get honor to buy gear to do arena) and decided to give war a try and I am glad I did.
It does seem very casual friendly for now at least, you can queue up for bgs from anywhere (yay) and it will port you back wherever you were afterwards (not at the battlemaster, yay). PQs are nice, and in general it seems to be the type of game that does not have intentional timesinks thrown in for no good reason (like wow, all the reputations etc.). Gear seems also much much much less the focus than wow, which works well. I also like how quests give you 'hints' on the map about where to go, and the whole tome of knowledge is nice.
If they can manage to keep a critical mass of subscribers for a few months they definitely have a good chance, the real test will be when wotlk or 3.0.2 come out, will people stick with WAR or not? I am sure blizz is going to release 3.0.2 ASAP just to get people back to play with all the new talents.
In terms of annoyances I can list not being able to activate AA (some jaggies, even at 1920), having to sit through the cinematic logos every time, having to accept the TOC every time, having to give UAC permission every time, but that's about it.
I am also pleasantly surprised by how 'well sorted' the UI feels, considering how I had 100+ add-ons in WOW and haven't felt the need of most of them in WAR (save for Grid and for being able to customize the chat window a bit more)
I have played wow off and on since about release, and it always ends up the same way: fun at the beginning, but in the end you end up having to spend too much time to do anything to have any sort of sense of progression/enjoyment. Nowadays I am spending my gaming time on TF2, since I can just join in, but I kind of miss the mmporg setting, just not its time constraints.
I would like to know if it's possible to, say, jump in for 1/2 an hour and get something done in PVE or PVP/RvR, or if it's going to be like another WOW where once you hit max level you have to start thinking in terms of 'if I can't stay logged for at least 2 hours it will be pointless' and then you just end up hanging out in shatt treating wow like a chat room basically.
The whole concept of 'open groups/quests' seems interesting, but I am wondering if it will just degenerate into people kicking people they don't know or that they perceive are not 'geared enough' etc.
Name one DRM scheme that hasn't been cracked all to hell.
Cubase4 and similarly syncrosoft-protected software: OTOH I doubt the gaming industry would move to the same kind of software protection as a $600+ music program.
It would also be pretty trivial to implement a completely unbreakable protection by leveraging something like a SecurID token + a smartcard with some certs + internet + remotely downloadable encrypted expiring executables, but of course that would be extremely consumer unfriendly.
In the end copy protection is always a balancing act, nowadays the only thing that it achieves is cutting the 'casual' copying for non-technical users (where a friend lends somebody else their game and they both install and play it), at the expense of hassling immensely everybody else.
I personally don't think that securom is that evil of a copy protection (esp. compared to say, starforce) but then again I don't care too much about spore either, so it's kind of a moot point.
To me spore is basically 'sims in space' with a lot of spin trying to make it sound a lot more complicated than it actually is; from the reviews it seems that most things you do don't really matter for anything than a cosmetic viewpoint, which does not sound fun at all...
"It could be application logic, network issues, hardware issues, integration with third party systems, a dipship systems administrator, etc"
But it wasn't any of the above. The Stock Exchange failed after a failed upgrade of the Microsoft.Net based trading platform..
not sure about anybody else here, but if I was running a stock exchange on something I wouldn't want to have to do ANY software upgrading unless a) there was an extremely valid reason and b) the upgrade would be tested on an exact copy (hardware wise) of the production system running a day behind for at least 6 months, if not a year, with no errors and no discrepancies.
The MS 'patch often' way is not something that is compatible with a stock exchange, naval destroyer, etc. where you need an OS/software package that can have an uptime measured in years, not weeks.
I think this is unfortunately related to how computers now are something that has no mystique whatsoever, way back when people in white coats dealt with them there was respect and technical decisions were left to highly technically savvy people.
Now that everybody has several PCs around, and 'Johnny is running a network at home', there is a lot less respect towards 'hard' environments requirements-wise, and so sales & marketing are running the show even where they shouldn't.
>It's called redundancy. Yes, a single router will fail. 2 at once? Likely not. 3? No.
Saw triply redundant systems fail twice in my career as a net admin.
I'm willing to bet your life on the reliability of triple redundancy.
was the triply redundant system running different routers from different manufacturers on completely separate power/ac/everything? Running 3 boxes from the same vendor with likely the same firmware rev and sometimes built the same day (since they were purchased/upgraded together) is not 'triply redundant'.
'but I will wait until a patch is available that turns off the DRM.'
if it's a patch it means you have already installed the original with its DRM: ideally you could use the patch to install from the original DVD without having to install the original DRM'd executable, odds of this happening? not very high.
pretty much the same, before google I used to use a mix of altavista/hotbot/yahoo but after I tried it a couple of times I was hooked given how incredibly better their search results were. Wish I had thought about applying to work there back then, it must have been quite a lot of fun.
Only thing I wasn't happy about at all was when they acquired deja, as I thought the original deja interface was better. Nowadays very few folks are on usenet anymore unfortunately, so it is a moot point.
Hey google, what about creating a new search type along the lines of 'look for this search only on messageboards and forums'? It would make it a lot simpler when you want to know what people think about something, and I bet it would be quite easy to code from the back-end perspective where I bet you have pages tagged as 'this is a forum/message board' already: maybe a filetype:messageboard overload?
Even in the middle of winter, sure it'll have clouds and light rain for half the day, but the other half will be at least partly sunny.
I don't think you really live up here in the PNW, it is not that unusual to not see the sun at all for weeks at a time in winter, I remember reading somewhere that from Dec-Feb there were something like 20-25 hours of sunshine IN TOTAL.
The weather here would be perfect if we could have 1-2 days of sunshine a week year round, even half days would be great, I am this close to moving to the midwest: colder winters but at least sunny; you don't hear of people with SAD in wisconsin...
huh? what computer are you trying to run this on? I have been running ME on vista 64 in 1920x1200 maxed out on a fairly pedestrian Q6600 with an 8800GT, not crashed even once, no hassles, solid frame rate and a great experience (nearly done with my first playthrough, looking forward to replaying this a few times)
I have to say the installation sucked, though, as it would just hang and have weird errors until I disabled UAC for it (and re-enabled it right after) which is definitely not that good.
... for the past couple of years, or a webhosting firm (generating ssl certs), etc. etc.
I really can't believe somebody would be mucking with the OpenSSL code at all: it's a crypto rng, if you haven't written it or don't understand it fully it's definitely one of those things to LEAVE ALONE.
this is exactly what I did, as soon as Warner capitulated I went out and got a PS3 99% for playing blu-ray content. I will likely buy a few games for it during its lifetime (burnout paradise today, for example) but the main reason I got it is because it's the only expandable and guaranteed 2.0 compatible blu-ray player out.
what is the tipping point between post cost and extras cost? It's not like extras make any money really, the big expense is costumes and pyro/explosions anyways... if it takes the expensive post guys months to composite and add fx (compositing with waves crashing on the beach and syncing things is not exactly easy) it might make a lot more financial sense to hire a couple thousand extras and do things the traditional way, not to mention that with real extras it's a lot easier to see what the final result will look like. That or just go digital all the way (read: lotr) and don't even bother with compositing/post.
way to put things in my mouth: FYI in my current job I have a fairly private two-person office (with cubicle walls between us) with a nice big window and peace & quiet, however it has not always been this way, and also when the vast vast majority of companies are into cubicle farms or open space concepts (heck, even google does that, so much about rewarding employees by putting them in the best possible surroundings so they can be the most productive) people might not have any choice, and have to decide between paying the mortgage or waiting for a job where developers get offices.
bingo, this is one of the few good things google does for their employees, allowing them 20% of their time to research new stuff, because in the end the company benefits allowing all their employees to keep updating their skills: it makes for a much more motivated, happy and competent workforce.
agile and pair programming are just like open spaces, some people thrive in them, some people (me included) can't get any meaningful work done in that situation.
I wonder when people will start figuring out that programming is an art, like making music: some people thrive by composing with all their bandmates (say, guitarists starts a riff, drummer joins in, singer starts noodling, there you go, a typical bullpen/open office), others prefer a duet (say, simon & garfunkel, here is paired programming), and others prefer to write in their room with a piano or a guitar (say, sting, and here you go with a private office).
An enlightened boss would realize this, and have a flexible working arrangement where everybody could choose the environment they are more productive in: if people stopped seeing 'having an office' as a status symbol, then everybody would naturally pick what they need instead of what they think they should.
Managers should start by giving the example, as any manager should be right in the middle of the bullpen, using an office/conference room only during 1-to-1 meetings and phone calls, but guess what, 99% managers will get an office and then go on about how 'my door is always open': if your door is always open you shouldn't have an office, and leave it to somebody who will use it with the door closed to get some work done instead of losing concentration every 5 minutes because somebody is talking to somebody else about an unrelated issue to what you were thinking about.
Sweet, point me to the next building with 200 offices for 200 programmers.
how much office space could you rent with 20% of the pay of the average CEO? Wild guess you could have every employee in a private office with an aeron chair, two 24" monitors, a quad core, a window, soundproofing, etc. etc. and still save plenty of money.
I don't see why CEOs are 'supposed' to get corner offices, gobs of money, lots of travel perks etc. etc. and developers are treated like assembly line workers. If music companies treated musicians like developers nobody would compose anything, and yet we're supposed to come in to work day after day and be creative despite not being allowed an environment that fosters creativity, but we have to conform to the cubicle farm because it's "too expensive" to give everybody the option of individual offices.
The programmers quickly learn to tune out the noise, and only attend to what's relevant, like someone calling out their name. Humans are good at that
wow, really nice to hear that we are all the same and there is absolutely no individual variation for, say, folks like some I know who thrive in an open space environments, and folks like me who are 1000% more productive in an office with a window and a closed door.
Also according to the same yardstick we could also all live chained to our desks 24/7, we'd soon learn to tune out everything else and attend to what's relevant, like somebody handing out some bread & water, or somebody else whipping us if we don't produce enough LoC during the 16 hour workday.
Just because humans can adapt to abysmal environments it doesn't mean that we should be made to.
We have project based work - so it comes and it goes. Everyone needs downtime for sure. There are times - "go" time if you will - where sleep is a wish and the notion of being on an island alone for a year is a plesant one.
oh, I do agree, I am not against the 'final push' type of thing, even in the best run projects 2-3 times a year you get to a point where most people have to work 10-12 hours a day for a week or two w/ends included, that's just the nature of software development I think. On the other hand the difference between a good and a bad company is how you deal with this, in good companies you get comp-time to use right after the milestone/release (1:1, for every hour you worked extra before, you get an hour off, so typically for two weeks of crunch you get a full week off, or even a little more), in bad companies you get no comp-time at all, and get reassigned immediately to something else with no downtime at all and be expected to still be 100% productive.
there is no feedback mechanism to correct really poor coding, worse yet, problem solving abilities.
I agree, one of the big issues of outsourcing is also that they have a huge, huge, huge turnover rate, so over the life of your project you might have people working on it being in a constant state of ramp-up and thus delivering poor quality software. I have trained my replacement at a previous company I worked for that decided to outsource our whole dev center to India, the folks were bright, and they did have some generic knowledge, but what they were given was some very specialized vertical software, and there was really no way for them to pick it up 100% in the limited 'handover' phase, not to mention that likely after a few months the people we trained moved on thus making things even worse.
Though there are millions of examples of where quality does not matter. At the end of the day - if the application works properly the builders job got done.
yes and no, yes, you 'got your job done' in terms of delivering that particular release. But software being the way it is (nobody is EVER happy with a software product, there will ALWAYS be requests for improvements and changes) if you don't do it right the first time when it's time to add functionality you end up in spaghetti hell... of course if you are job hopping then you never have to deal with this, hence why I think a sign of a good candidate is having at least one 3-4+ years position in one company, meaning that they had to deal with several lifecycles (upgrades, enhancements, etc.) of a software product.
The high school guys are perfectly acceptable so long as they a) write good code b) willing to learn c) are motivated.
I somehow disagree with this, because it is very hard to 'write good code' without a good solid foundation in computational theory and having worked on several things in university. Unless you want to just have a warm body working under the super close supervision of a senior dev or architect for several years, and even then in the end I don't think it'd work out as well. Call me education-ist, but I do believe that nowadays a B.Sc. in a scientific major (biology, chemistry, engineering,...) is definitely worth pursuing for any developer that wants to go the junior-senior-principal-tech directory route. Of course if your ideal career arc is junior-senior-middle manager-manager then I think you can do well even with just a high-school degree and an evening-MBA.
it's about finding those that have the innate talent and enthusiasm and perhaps got lost on the road that society deems the "proper" route through life.
here we slightly disagree as well: the fact that somebody was able and willing to slog out a university degree, where everybody ends up with a significant % of coursework they hate, is a good indicator that the person will be willing to work
I think you need to change GTK with Motif... on the other hand after a few years working in it for my thesis (I even managed to correctly subclass the Motif Text widget to create one with rectangular highlighting, now that was a interesting piece of coding given the usual lack of documentation on motif widget subclassing) I ended up kind of enjoying it, pity by the time I entered the workforce nobody seemed to use it anymore, oh well!
Slashdot Mirror
after being left in the cold by Sony with their librie (closed format, no fw upgrades to read pdf or epub) I will stick with my ipod touch and stanza, the screen is a bit small and not as nice as the librie's e-ink one, but at least I can read every format without issues and the integration with feedbooks is awesome.
I like it, I played wow for a few years but got tired of the arena-or-raid focus (I like BGs, but it is pointless after a while because of people afking to get honor to buy gear to do arena) and decided to give war a try and I am glad I did.
It does seem very casual friendly for now at least, you can queue up for bgs from anywhere (yay) and it will port you back wherever you were afterwards (not at the battlemaster, yay). PQs are nice, and in general it seems to be the type of game that does not have intentional timesinks thrown in for no good reason (like wow, all the reputations etc.). Gear seems also much much much less the focus than wow, which works well. I also like how quests give you 'hints' on the map about where to go, and the whole tome of knowledge is nice.
If they can manage to keep a critical mass of subscribers for a few months they definitely have a good chance, the real test will be when wotlk or 3.0.2 come out, will people stick with WAR or not? I am sure blizz is going to release 3.0.2 ASAP just to get people back to play with all the new talents.
In terms of annoyances I can list not being able to activate AA (some jaggies, even at 1920), having to sit through the cinematic logos every time, having to accept the TOC every time, having to give UAC permission every time, but that's about it.
I am also pleasantly surprised by how 'well sorted' the UI feels, considering how I had 100+ add-ons in WOW and haven't felt the need of most of them in WAR (save for Grid and for being able to customize the chat window a bit more)
check the prices page, it explains it quite well
http://www.wingware.com/store/prices
I have played wow off and on since about release, and it always ends up the same way: fun at the beginning, but in the end you end up having to spend too much time to do anything to have any sort of sense of progression/enjoyment. Nowadays I am spending my gaming time on TF2, since I can just join in, but I kind of miss the mmporg setting, just not its time constraints.
I would like to know if it's possible to, say, jump in for 1/2 an hour and get something done in PVE or PVP/RvR, or if it's going to be like another WOW where once you hit max level you have to start thinking in terms of 'if I can't stay logged for at least 2 hours it will be pointless' and then you just end up hanging out in shatt treating wow like a chat room basically.
The whole concept of 'open groups/quests' seems interesting, but I am wondering if it will just degenerate into people kicking people they don't know or that they perceive are not 'geared enough' etc.
Name one DRM scheme that hasn't been cracked all to hell.
Cubase4 and similarly syncrosoft-protected software: OTOH I doubt the gaming industry would move to the same kind of software protection as a $600+ music program.
It would also be pretty trivial to implement a completely unbreakable protection by leveraging something like a SecurID token + a smartcard with some certs + internet + remotely downloadable encrypted expiring executables, but of course that would be extremely consumer unfriendly.
In the end copy protection is always a balancing act, nowadays the only thing that it achieves is cutting the 'casual' copying for non-technical users (where a friend lends somebody else their game and they both install and play it), at the expense of hassling immensely everybody else.
I personally don't think that securom is that evil of a copy protection (esp. compared to say, starforce) but then again I don't care too much about spore either, so it's kind of a moot point.
To me spore is basically 'sims in space' with a lot of spin trying to make it sound a lot more complicated than it actually is; from the reviews it seems that most things you do don't really matter for anything than a cosmetic viewpoint, which does not sound fun at all...
"It could be application logic, network issues, hardware issues, integration with third party systems, a dipship systems administrator, etc"
But it wasn't any of the above. The Stock Exchange failed after a failed upgrade of the Microsoft .Net based trading platform ..
not sure about anybody else here, but if I was running a stock exchange on something I wouldn't want to have to do ANY software upgrading unless a) there was an extremely valid reason and b) the upgrade would be tested on an exact copy (hardware wise) of the production system running a day behind for at least 6 months, if not a year, with no errors and no discrepancies.
The MS 'patch often' way is not something that is compatible with a stock exchange, naval destroyer, etc. where you need an OS/software package that can have an uptime measured in years, not weeks.
I think this is unfortunately related to how computers now are something that has no mystique whatsoever, way back when people in white coats dealt with them there was respect and technical decisions were left to highly technically savvy people.
Now that everybody has several PCs around, and 'Johnny is running a network at home', there is a lot less respect towards 'hard' environments requirements-wise, and so sales & marketing are running the show even where they shouldn't.
>It's called redundancy. Yes, a single router will fail. 2 at once? Likely not. 3? No.
Saw triply redundant systems fail twice in my career as a net admin.
I'm willing to bet your life on the reliability of triple redundancy.
was the triply redundant system running different routers from different manufacturers on completely separate power/ac/everything? Running 3 boxes from the same vendor with likely the same firmware rev and sometimes built the same day (since they were purchased/upgraded together) is not 'triply redundant'.
'but I will wait until a patch is available that turns off the DRM.'
if it's a patch it means you have already installed the original with its DRM: ideally you could use the patch to install from the original DVD without having to install the original DRM'd executable, odds of this happening? not very high.
pretty much the same, before google I used to use a mix of altavista/hotbot/yahoo but after I tried it a couple of times I was hooked given how incredibly better their search results were. Wish I had thought about applying to work there back then, it must have been quite a lot of fun.
Only thing I wasn't happy about at all was when they acquired deja, as I thought the original deja interface was better. Nowadays very few folks are on usenet anymore unfortunately, so it is a moot point.
Hey google, what about creating a new search type along the lines of 'look for this search only on messageboards and forums'? It would make it a lot simpler when you want to know what people think about something, and I bet it would be quite easy to code from the back-end perspective where I bet you have pages tagged as 'this is a forum/message board' already: maybe a filetype:messageboard overload?
I have been using the azure3 / SkyBlue4 fg/bg combo for many, many years and it's always been great to work with
Even in the middle of winter, sure it'll have clouds and light rain for half the day, but the other half will be at least partly sunny.
I don't think you really live up here in the PNW, it is not that unusual to not see the sun at all for weeks at a time in winter, I remember reading somewhere that from Dec-Feb there were something like 20-25 hours of sunshine IN TOTAL.
The weather here would be perfect if we could have 1-2 days of sunshine a week year round, even half days would be great, I am this close to moving to the midwest: colder winters but at least sunny; you don't hear of people with SAD in wisconsin...
huh? what computer are you trying to run this on? I have been running ME on vista 64 in 1920x1200 maxed out on a fairly pedestrian Q6600 with an 8800GT, not crashed even once, no hassles, solid frame rate and a great experience (nearly done with my first playthrough, looking forward to replaying this a few times)
I have to say the installation sucked, though, as it would just hang and have weird errors until I disabled UAC for it (and re-enabled it right after) which is definitely not that good.
no way, he plays a mage, after all how many buttons does it take to bind 'conjure water'?
... for the past couple of years, or a webhosting firm (generating ssl certs), etc. etc.
I really can't believe somebody would be mucking with the OpenSSL code at all: it's a crypto rng, if you haven't written it or don't understand it fully it's definitely one of those things to LEAVE ALONE.
you are kidding right? Even programming a very simple algorithm along the lines of
bigger eyes, beauty++
highly symmetrical face, beauty++
triangular or oval shaped face, beauty++
clear skin, beauty++
will give you a pretty good set of matches
and let 'buyers' & 'sellers' leave feedback on each others' profiles... what could possibly go wrong!
this is exactly what I did, as soon as Warner capitulated I went out and got a PS3 99% for playing blu-ray content. I will likely buy a few games for it during its lifetime (burnout paradise today, for example) but the main reason I got it is because it's the only expandable and guaranteed 2.0 compatible blu-ray player out.
not to mention:
what is the tipping point between post cost and extras cost? It's not like extras make any money really, the big expense is costumes and pyro/explosions anyways... if it takes the expensive post guys months to composite and add fx (compositing with waves crashing on the beach and syncing things is not exactly easy) it might make a lot more financial sense to hire a couple thousand extras and do things the traditional way, not to mention that with real extras it's a lot easier to see what the final result will look like. That or just go digital all the way (read: lotr) and don't even bother with compositing/post.
way to put things in my mouth: FYI in my current job I have a fairly private two-person office (with cubicle walls between us) with a nice big window and peace & quiet, however it has not always been this way, and also when the vast vast majority of companies are into cubicle farms or open space concepts (heck, even google does that, so much about rewarding employees by putting them in the best possible surroundings so they can be the most productive) people might not have any choice, and have to decide between paying the mortgage or waiting for a job where developers get offices.
bingo, this is one of the few good things google does for their employees, allowing them 20% of their time to research new stuff, because in the end the company benefits allowing all their employees to keep updating their skills: it makes for a much more motivated, happy and competent workforce.
agile and pair programming are just like open spaces, some people thrive in them, some people (me included) can't get any meaningful work done in that situation.
I wonder when people will start figuring out that programming is an art, like making music: some people thrive by composing with all their bandmates (say, guitarists starts a riff, drummer joins in, singer starts noodling, there you go, a typical bullpen/open office), others prefer a duet (say, simon & garfunkel, here is paired programming), and others prefer to write in their room with a piano or a guitar (say, sting, and here you go with a private office).
An enlightened boss would realize this, and have a flexible working arrangement where everybody could choose the environment they are more productive in: if people stopped seeing 'having an office' as a status symbol, then everybody would naturally pick what they need instead of what they think they should.
Managers should start by giving the example, as any manager should be right in the middle of the bullpen, using an office/conference room only during 1-to-1 meetings and phone calls, but guess what, 99% managers will get an office and then go on about how 'my door is always open': if your door is always open you shouldn't have an office, and leave it to somebody who will use it with the door closed to get some work done instead of losing concentration every 5 minutes because somebody is talking to somebody else about an unrelated issue to what you were thinking about.
how much office space could you rent with 20% of the pay of the average CEO? Wild guess you could have every employee in a private office with an aeron chair, two 24" monitors, a quad core, a window, soundproofing, etc. etc. and still save plenty of money.
I don't see why CEOs are 'supposed' to get corner offices, gobs of money, lots of travel perks etc. etc. and developers are treated like assembly line workers. If music companies treated musicians like developers nobody would compose anything, and yet we're supposed to come in to work day after day and be creative despite not being allowed an environment that fosters creativity, but we have to conform to the cubicle farm because it's "too expensive" to give everybody the option of individual offices.
wow, really nice to hear that we are all the same and there is absolutely no individual variation for, say, folks like some I know who thrive in an open space environments, and folks like me who are 1000% more productive in an office with a window and a closed door.
Also according to the same yardstick we could also all live chained to our desks 24/7, we'd soon learn to tune out everything else and attend to what's relevant, like somebody handing out some bread & water, or somebody else whipping us if we don't produce enough LoC during the 16 hour workday.
Just because humans can adapt to abysmal environments it doesn't mean that we should be made to.
oh, I do agree, I am not against the 'final push' type of thing, even in the best run projects 2-3 times a year you get to a point where most people have to work 10-12 hours a day for a week or two w/ends included, that's just the nature of software development I think. On the other hand the difference between a good and a bad company is how you deal with this, in good companies you get comp-time to use right after the milestone/release (1:1, for every hour you worked extra before, you get an hour off, so typically for two weeks of crunch you get a full week off, or even a little more), in bad companies you get no comp-time at all, and get reassigned immediately to something else with no downtime at all and be expected to still be 100% productive.
I agree, one of the big issues of outsourcing is also that they have a huge, huge, huge turnover rate, so over the life of your project you might have people working on it being in a constant state of ramp-up and thus delivering poor quality software. I have trained my replacement at a previous company I worked for that decided to outsource our whole dev center to India, the folks were bright, and they did have some generic knowledge, but what they were given was some very specialized vertical software, and there was really no way for them to pick it up 100% in the limited 'handover' phase, not to mention that likely after a few months the people we trained moved on thus making things even worse.
yes and no, yes, you 'got your job done' in terms of delivering that particular release. But software being the way it is (nobody is EVER happy with a software product, there will ALWAYS be requests for improvements and changes) if you don't do it right the first time when it's time to add functionality you end up in spaghetti hell... of course if you are job hopping then you never have to deal with this, hence why I think a sign of a good candidate is having at least one 3-4+ years position in one company, meaning that they had to deal with several lifecycles (upgrades, enhancements, etc.) of a software product.
I somehow disagree with this, because it is very hard to 'write good code' without a good solid foundation in computational theory and having worked on several things in university. Unless you want to just have a warm body working under the super close supervision of a senior dev or architect for several years, and even then in the end I don't think it'd work out as well. Call me education-ist, but I do believe that nowadays a B.Sc. in a scientific major (biology, chemistry, engineering, ...) is definitely worth pursuing for any developer that wants to go the junior-senior-principal-tech directory route. Of course if your ideal career arc is junior-senior-middle manager-manager then I think you can do well even with just a high-school degree and an evening-MBA.
here we slightly disagree as well: the fact that somebody was able and willing to slog out a university degree, where everybody ends up with a significant % of coursework they hate, is a good indicator that the person will be willing to work
I think you need to change GTK with Motif... on the other hand after a few years working in it for my thesis (I even managed to correctly subclass the Motif Text widget to create one with rectangular highlighting, now that was a interesting piece of coding given the usual lack of documentation on motif widget subclassing) I ended up kind of enjoying it, pity by the time I entered the workforce nobody seemed to use it anymore, oh well!