Witty! But there is a reason no-one publishes crossplatform end user tools written in Perl. Not that there is a huge amount of end-user tools in Java, but still, Perl wouldn't make too much sense, what with the big fat interpreter and libraries which would bloat up the installation overly.
alt.binaries.e-book is not a site, you pathetic excuse for a geek, it is a newsgroup. And a darn good one at that.
Re:Python -- path dependence
on
Why not Ruby?
·
· Score: 1
Thanks for the David Korn interview link. Good stuff for shell and ksh enthusiasts.
I personally think that a good shell is superior to Perl for many quick scripting applications, just because a person can use the same syntax for long interactive commands and short scripts. I enjoy being able to do a for-do iteration on the command line, then pop it into a script (possibly by copying it from history) if it seems I might reuse it.
The original poster wrote about selling packages to homeowners. Home users do need video games and Flash and other bandwidth-intensive stuff. A corporate environment would be a better match for X.
Your cable TV idea is off the mark; today's PC video games run at video bandwidth that far exceeds a closed circuit TV system. There is no economical server-based replacement for a fast 3D video card, connected by a short cable to a hires display, and connected by a fast bus to a fast CPU. Many of the hot applications for a home PC require this setup.
Prima donna syndrome
Managing the employee who's too talented for rules
by Judith Sears
issue:
Jul - Aug 2001
Lets stipulate from the outset that programmers are allowed to be quirky. Expected to be eccentric. But were not talking about the idiosyncratically intelligent or the interestingly offbeat. Were talking about the insufferable egotist who cant or wont Play Nice.
The syndrome often is found in someone like this: a young and brilliant software developer who lives and breathes IT. A true geek, Hal spends a lot of work time in techie chat rooms engaged in in-depth UNIX conversations, sharing code and discussing programming challenges. Despite his inclination to partake in on-the-job recreation, Hal is a prolific and productive programmer. So far, so good. Just another proud member of the hacker tribe, right? But unfortunately, Hal has another side. He makes rude and disparaging comments about his coworkers. If he doesnt like a project, hell let it slide. In particular, he resists the drudgery of correcting or upgrading someone elses ugly program.
Hal also challenges managerial authority and expresses his contempt for his position. He tosses out statements like, I could be making $200 an hour doing security work, and makes other muscle-flexing gestures to show that he can do what he wants, when he wants.
Liz Rosenberg, IT director for Driehaus Capital Management [driehaus.com], an investment management firm in Chicago, recalls the Hal-type she managed a few years ago. He seemed to feel that he was this all-knowing programming god, she says. Brilliant but bratty, though, because for every technical problem he solved, he created a personnel problem for the team.
Like Hal and like most wizards, prima donnas really do have talent and a true love of IT. But, the prima donna combines this passion and expertise with arrogance or lack of concern for others. With Hal, it was constant complaining and carping. Other symptoms of prima donna syndrome include an obsessive desire for control, the attitude that the world revolves around them, and the conviction that the regular rules dont apply to them.
Control freaks
Ed Wojchiehowski, CIO of Menasha Corporation [menasha.com], a conglomerate of manufacturing and services companies headquartered in Neenah, Wisc., recalls an individual who created a very innovative logistics software package. Impressed, Wojchiehowski asked the programmer to work with others on the team to expand and modify the package to make it, oh, actually useable to the corporation.
But the programmer, call him Spock, refused to share information with other programmers. Spock claimed his innovation was too complicated to explain and that by the time he was done explaining, he could have changed the program.
Wojchiehowski concluded Spocks real agenda was control. Prima donnas hold back information or work 80 hours a week so they dont have to share information with anybody, the CIO says. Ive discovered in many cases, its almost physically painful for them to give it up.
All about me At other times, prima donnas give the impression that they believe the world and the project revolves around them. Early in the beginnings of Perseus Development Corp.,
[perseusdevelopment.com], a provider of Web-based survey software and services in Braintree, Mass., Jeffrey Henning, president of the software division, was managing a developer who took the attitude of, Im the most important person in the company, and without me, you couldnt exist. Angela refused to help other programmers with their work, yet expected them to drop their work to help her.
This developer was very valuable: Shed written most of the early versions of the companys products. Nevertheless, she was close to being more trouble than she was worth, Henning says. Her exclusive focus on her own needs was a constant obstacle for the department.
The term prima donna comes from a difficult leading woman soloist in an opera, Henning reflects. I think soloist is a key word. A lot of prima donnas act like soloists they dont work well with the team, and they think their voice is the most important.
Beyond the rules Some prima donnas behave as though ordinary rules, such as work schedules, dont apply to them. Andy Andretta, a senior partner with Daprex
[daprex.com], a software evaluation firm in Stamford, Conn., recalls a prima donna who found just showing up to work regularly a problem. The employee, who held a second-level support position for a software product, often worked magic fixing bugs when he was there. But, as Andretta points out, hes not too valuable if hes not there, which was quite a lot.
The situation only deteriorated as the manager continued to accommodate the delinquent, Andretta says. To complicate matters, the prima donna had a shrewd sense of timing and organizational politics. Like the Lone Ranger, hed ride in just in time to play the hero in emergencies and take the credit. Hed put the bow on the package, Andretta says.
When the manager finally decided hed tolerated enough shenanigans, he confronted a loss of face and credibility with his superiors. Why? Because he had to tell upper management: I want to get rid of the most talented person Ive got. And his bosses thought hed lost his mind.
Theyre very smart, Andretta says of prima donnas. And they know who their audience is upper management and they play to them very well.
Seeing it from the prima donnas perspective The trick for the IT manager is that some of these charges could also be made, to a lesser extent, against positive, contributing employees. For example, playing games or spending time in techie chatrooms is common and can help many programmers to be more productive. As Peter Seebach, a member of the technical staff of BSDI.com, a firm providing Internet infrastructure-grade systems, software and solutions in Berkeley, Calif., writes at his Web site The Care and Feeding of Your Hacker
[http://web.demigod.org/~zak/geek/hack.shtml], Hackers, writers and painters all need some amount of time to spend percolating, that is, doing something else to let their subconscious work on a problem.
Menashas Wojchiehowski agrees that this kind of putzing around while searching for an idea is perfectly acceptable. I dont worry if theyre playing a game, he says. And, I dont have any problem with walking into somebodys office and finding them with their feet on their desk staring at the ceiling. They may be thinking about the problem.
Its also true that the best programmers drive for excellence can leave them understandably curt when others seem less committed. Eric Haddan, a self-described recovering prima donna, has been frustrated when working with team members who seem more motivated by opportunism than a true love of programming. The market is flooded with a bunch of people who just took some classes, but theyre not really into it, says Haddan, a software development manager for eSynch Corp.
[esynch.com], a Tustin, Calif., firm which provides video delivery tools, streaming media services, and software utilities. They have a degree and theyve heard the moneys good.
As for the charge of arrogance or rudeness, some hackers argue that its just as big a failing for others to be too tender or defensive. I used to be a lot meaner to co-workers than I am now, Seebach, the hacker translator, reveals. People say, They worked hard on it, so dont trash it, but on the other hand, would you like to drive over a bridge with the assurance that people worked hard on it? Or do you want to know they got it right? A complete refusal to acknowledge either side of that constitutes failing to play well with others.
Signs that theyre going prima So how do you tell the difference between someone whos just creative and frustrated and someone whos suffering from a bad case of prima donna syndrome? The true prima donna, according to managers, wont work with you or for you. Andretta believes that prima donna syndrome is marked by denial. They do not accept the fact that they are wrong, he says. Its not them, its everyone else.
As a result, a prima donna often leaves havoc in his wake. Not least is the damage to morale. Seeing someone else, no matter how talented, disregard the rules that others must follow can be dismaying to employees who are working hard and playing by the book. Once you start with favoritism you turn good people sour, Daprexs Andretta contends. Its never worth it.
Besides seeing someone get away with murder, colleagues may wind up doing the prima donnas work, which really causes resentment. In Andrettas situation, other employees often had to pick up the work of the AWOL programmer, delaying the completion of their own assignments. It affected our work load and morale, Andretta recalls.
CIO Wojchiehowski points out other hazards. The controlling prima donna who holds onto information will eventually move on leaving others to figure out what the blazes they were doing. Not surprisingly, such an event can delay or even doom projects completely. In either case, the company loses face with its clients. Its just negative in all aspects, he says.
Homing in on that giant ego If youve determined that youve got a true prima donna on your staff, the next step is figuring out what to do. Sometimes you can make some management moves that rein in the runaway ego. But you must move quickly. I can assure you, prima donnas only get worse with time, warns Wojchiehowski.
If the individual is productive, but lacks elementary social skills, telecommuting may be an option. In other cases, selective delegation and assignments may give the individual enough challenge to keep them out of too much trouble. The best programmers, prima donnas or not, dislike repetitive tasks. Designing prototypes, for example, can be a good assignment for many of these very bright individuals. But Henning stresses that they are best assigned to prototypes, not actual products. Products, he points out, require team input.
Former prima donna Haddan suggests keeping a regular flow of applicants coming in for interviews. In other words, keep the feet of difficult techies to the fire. If you do find someone good, move her in and start weeding out the bad ones. I am willing to bet you would have to do this only one time, he says. If the attitude persists, repeat the process.
Straight talk express, tech-style But, sooner rather than later, the employee will have to be confronted directly. Perseus Henning had been on the verge of firing Angela, but gave the situation one last try with a blunt performance review. He catalogued and congratulated her strengths and also described explicitly where her performance was failing. The review seemed to help Angela settle down. I think part of her behavior was insecurity, Henning says. She was afraid that she wasnt really valued.
Angelas successful turnaround appears to be rare, however. In the end, most managers arent optimistic about salvaging prima donnas. Instead, they aggressively rid their staffs of them as quickly as possible. Im a strong believer in people and am willing to invest in their development, Wojchiehowski explains. But, frankly, as soon as I understand that its a prima donna situation, I work to eliminate it. You work with those who are team players. And those who arent, well, in the most loving manner, you help them exit.
Daprexs Andretta dismisses the idea that a prima donnas talent makes the extra grief worthwhile. It doesnt matter how smart they are, they will hurt you, he warns. And, the smarter they are, the more they can hurt you. He believes that its better to invest in bright but not brilliant people and train them to be more productive. You can buy talent, he says. Personality, by which I mean a good attitude, really cant be bought. Ill take a team player any day.
I did go to school for CS. Ask me what a DFA is and what it is used for, and (without needing to review) I'll say:
the acronym is deterministic finite automaton;
a working definition is: a state machine which moves from a start state, through intermediate states, to an accept or error state, by accepting tokens;
the standard application is to decide whether a candidate string is a member of a particular regular language;
and this finds real world applications in string processing of all kinds, for example in grep, perl, awk, sed, vi, emacs.
I would love to know how the self-taught people do on this question. I would expect that few would have an idea of the relationship of finite automata to much of anything. I guess some would have read Mastering Regular Expressions and would have some clue. But anyone who remembers a theoretical CS class should have no trouble reeling off DFA stuff.
Give each kid directions on how to log in or FTP in and how to chmod the files in ~/public_html
I have personally had to assist several young, computer-savvy college graduates through this process. It is not usable for the average ten-to-fourteen-year-old, or whoever you hope will take advantage of this idea. They would need extensive command line indoctrination and practice first. Good luck with that, you'll need it with current end user attitudes toward CLIs.
It should also be said that your suggestion to distribute CDRs with Linux on them won't be too helpful to the typical kid or parent, either. The CD is not the problem. Most folks need extensive handholding, documentation and a kick in the ass (external motivation) to tackle a complex new computer system or application.
Long-term, I'm actually as enthusiastic as you are about using reliable, free software in the education system. But I'm afraid that for Linux, the home and educational markets are going to be even tougher than the business desktop from a usability perspective. At home you have to be your own sysadmin, which is the largest usability failure area on Linux.
I think the original poster just didn't know what he was talking about. Another note: a language like Lisp, with its redefinable syntax, has an edge on C-like languages in this respect. The C enthusiast would no doubt point to the savings in typing from C's more compact syntax. But if the Lisp developer finds it necessary to use a particular bit of syntax frequently, relief is just a macro or read-macro away.
In this way the syntax-happy Lisp fan can have compact, cryptic operators, or long, English ones, as he pleases. He can even stick in some crazy stuff like Perl's innovations in the area of syntax if he likes. At the same time, the core language does not suffer from C and Perl's trademark similar-but-very-different syntax pairs.
Hmm, a perfectly reasonable new computer costs $500... reasonable used 586 system $200... Nope, can't say that I do know anyone who can't afford one. I do know plenty of people who don't have the interest or inclination, just the same as with other toys that require a certain amount of commitment to use. But I wouldn't think anyone who can afford a roof over his head in the US can't afford a computer if he wants one.
It sounds nice but there are a couple of details missing. X on a shared server is not a solution for high performance video games, or even for CPU hogging stuff like hires video playback or Flash playback or Java program. You can't buy Quicken for Linux.
Very little of the consumer software available on the Web is Linux compatible which is a bit of a bummer. Staroffice ain't Office. Mozilla ain't IE5, in terms of compatibility with existing sites.
Sun's whole corporate history shows their commitment to avoiding the vendor lock-in you are accusing them of. The decision to market Unix systems in the first place, the open specification of Sparc, the open licensing of NFS and NIS, the adoption of SVR4c the participation in CDE, and the Java spec development process all illustrate this,
This is a company that plays ball with the rest of the industry instead of following 70s-IBM and 90s-MS tactics. Sure, they have a good story on binary compatibility through a large range of hardware, better than anyone else's. But lock-in through binary compatibility is not where Sun is at.
Ah, but it's a Tragedy Of The Commons type of situation. If you were to avoid the cache while your fellow users made use of it, you would win. But if everyone avoided it, or if the cache didn't exist at all, the result would very likely be slower access for everyone.
Certainly it would be better for business and end users if they would use adequate resources to make the cache fast, though.
Oh, this is garbage thinking. @home is "choosing" to piss off their customers, some number of whom will certainly raise hell and/or switch to other providers. No one would make such a business decision without the threat of legal action. Let's get real.
If you are a company doing software development for hire, it is undesirable to lose your users! It ain't feudalism, it's making choices in order to maintain the customer relationship. The GPL offers insurance against a competitor who wants to unfairly reuse your work while keeping his own work proprietary. There is someone out there with a vested interest in taking away your users and you would be foolish to ignore that fact when selecting a license.
Well, yes, those are problems and VNC solves them. I would add that screen(1) solves the same problems for console applications with lower overhead of all types. But I was replying to the original claim that VNC solves the problem of running an X based application on a remote system for a long time. You don't need VNC for that; you can do it cheaper just with X.
Assuming you have a permanent network connection to the remote host, you can open up an X application on the remote host with the display on the local host and keep it open as long as you want. VNC is nice if the connection or the local system has problems. But otherwise, why bother with the extra overhead that VNC imposes?
Hey, if you're referring to the roff typesetting language as antique, watch out. Maybe it's not state of the art but it is still in everyday use at all Unix installations for online documentation. It is handy to have one file (with equations, tables, type effects) that can be viewed in a console and also beautifully typeset. (Gnu info is great for this too.) You can go from POD or SDF to roff, from roff to HTML, from roff to various typesetting-only languages. It is also the language used to typeset such Unix classics as The Unix Programming Environment and Stevens' books, and I'm sure others by serious Unix-heads. Maybe the professor in question just preferred to continue using an efficient and capable tool that he was familiar with. There's nothing wrong with using it in preference to other Unix-friendly typesetting tools like TeX.
Your comment makes sense as far as it goes. However, that would be a goddamned evil way to design an object! You would be setting yourself up for unnecessary bugs when you call a method and the internal flip-flop happens to be in the wrong state at the time. Just as in Perl 6.
As pointless and misleading as the connected dots were in these graphs, turning it into a set of bar graphs would not improve matters. I think you were more correct when you proposed dots. OTOH the data is more or less meaningless, complicating the problem of how best to display it...
I remember paying about $12 in 1983 for a box of 10 Fuji 5 1/4" floppies, capacity 180 kilobytes each. That was for a Commodore 1541 floppy drive. Of course you would want to slice a notch in the side of each disk to make it work double sided, doubling the capacity to 360K.
So about 3x10^0 dollars per megabyte, versus 3x10^-4 dollars per megabyte for today's Comp-USA CDR spindle purchase. Mmmm... four orders of magnitude price drop...
Slashdot Mirror
Witty! But there is a reason no-one publishes crossplatform end user tools written in Perl. Not that there is a huge amount of end-user tools in Java, but still, Perl wouldn't make too much sense, what with the big fat interpreter and libraries which would bloat up the installation overly.
alt.binaries.e-book is not a site, you pathetic excuse for a geek, it is a newsgroup. And a darn good one at that.
Thanks for the David Korn interview link. Good stuff for shell and ksh enthusiasts.
I personally think that a good shell is superior to Perl for many quick scripting applications, just because a person can use the same syntax for long interactive commands and short scripts. I enjoy being able to do a for-do iteration on the command line, then pop it into a script (possibly by copying it from history) if it seems I might reuse it.
The original poster wrote about selling packages to homeowners. Home users do need video games and Flash and other bandwidth-intensive stuff. A corporate environment would be a better match for X.
Your cable TV idea is off the mark; today's PC video games run at video bandwidth that far exceeds a closed circuit TV system. There is no economical server-based replacement for a fast 3D video card, connected by a short cable to a hires display, and connected by a fast bus to a fast CPU. Many of the hot applications for a home PC require this setup.
Managing the employee who's too talented for rules
by Judith Sears
issue:
Jul - Aug 2001
Lets stipulate from the outset that programmers are allowed to be quirky. Expected to be eccentric. But were not talking about the idiosyncratically intelligent or the interestingly offbeat. Were talking about the insufferable egotist who cant or wont Play Nice.
The syndrome often is found in someone like this: a young and brilliant software developer who lives and breathes IT. A true geek, Hal spends a lot of work time in techie chat rooms engaged in in-depth UNIX conversations, sharing code and discussing programming challenges. Despite his inclination to partake in on-the-job recreation, Hal is a prolific and productive programmer.
So far, so good. Just another proud member of the hacker tribe, right? But unfortunately, Hal has another side. He makes rude and disparaging comments about his coworkers. If he doesnt like a project, hell let it slide. In particular, he resists the drudgery of correcting or upgrading someone elses ugly program.
Hal also challenges managerial authority and expresses his contempt for his position. He tosses out statements like, I could be making $200 an hour doing security work, and makes other muscle-flexing gestures to show that he can do what he wants, when he wants.
Liz Rosenberg, IT director for Driehaus Capital Management [driehaus.com], an investment management firm in Chicago, recalls the Hal-type she managed a few years ago. He seemed to feel that he was this all-knowing programming god, she says. Brilliant but bratty, though, because for every technical problem he solved, he created a personnel problem for the team.
Like Hal and like most wizards, prima donnas really do have talent and a true love of IT. But, the prima donna combines this passion and expertise with arrogance or lack of concern for others. With Hal, it was constant complaining and carping. Other symptoms of prima donna syndrome include an obsessive desire for control, the attitude that the world revolves around them, and the conviction that the regular rules dont apply to them.
Control freaks
Ed Wojchiehowski, CIO of Menasha Corporation [menasha.com], a conglomerate of manufacturing and services companies headquartered in Neenah, Wisc., recalls an individual who created a very innovative logistics software package. Impressed, Wojchiehowski asked the programmer to work with others on the team to expand and modify the package to make it, oh, actually useable to the corporation.
But the programmer, call him Spock, refused to share information with other programmers. Spock claimed his innovation was too complicated to explain and that by the time he was done explaining, he could have changed the program.
Wojchiehowski concluded Spocks real agenda was control. Prima donnas hold back information or work 80 hours a week so they dont have to share information with anybody, the CIO says. Ive discovered in many cases, its almost physically painful for them to give it up.
All about me
At other times, prima donnas give the impression that they believe the world and the project revolves around them. Early in the beginnings of Perseus Development Corp., [perseusdevelopment.com], a provider of Web-based survey software and services in Braintree, Mass., Jeffrey Henning, president of the software division, was managing a developer who took the attitude of, Im the most important person in the company, and without me, you couldnt exist. Angela refused to help other programmers with their work, yet expected them to drop their work to help her.
This developer was very valuable: Shed written most of the early versions of the companys products. Nevertheless, she was close to being more trouble than she was worth, Henning says. Her exclusive focus on her own needs was a constant obstacle for the department.
The term prima donna comes from a difficult leading woman soloist in an opera, Henning reflects. I think soloist is a key word. A lot of prima donnas act like soloists they dont work well with the team, and they think their voice is the most important.
Beyond the rules
Some prima donnas behave as though ordinary rules, such as work schedules, dont apply to them. Andy Andretta, a senior partner with Daprex [daprex.com], a software evaluation firm in Stamford, Conn., recalls a prima donna who found just showing up to work regularly a problem. The employee, who held a second-level support position for a software product, often worked magic fixing bugs when he was there. But, as Andretta points out, hes not too valuable if hes not there, which was quite a lot.
The situation only deteriorated as the manager continued to accommodate the delinquent, Andretta says. To complicate matters, the prima donna had a shrewd sense of timing and organizational politics. Like the Lone Ranger, hed ride in just in time to play the hero in emergencies and take the credit. Hed put the bow on the package, Andretta says.
When the manager finally decided hed tolerated enough shenanigans, he confronted a loss of face and credibility with his superiors. Why? Because he had to tell upper management: I want to get rid of the most talented person Ive got. And his bosses thought hed lost his mind.
Theyre very smart, Andretta says of prima donnas. And they know who their audience is upper management and they play to them very well.
Seeing it from the prima donnas perspective
The trick for the IT manager is that some of these charges could also be made, to a lesser extent, against positive, contributing employees. For example, playing games or spending time in techie chatrooms is common and can help many programmers to be more productive. As Peter Seebach, a member of the technical staff of BSDI.com, a firm providing Internet infrastructure-grade systems, software and solutions in Berkeley, Calif., writes at his Web site The Care and Feeding of Your Hacker [http://web.demigod.org/~zak/geek/hack.shtml], Hackers, writers and painters all need some amount of time to spend percolating, that is, doing something else to let their subconscious work on a problem.
Menashas Wojchiehowski agrees that this kind of putzing around while searching for an idea is perfectly acceptable. I dont worry if theyre playing a game, he says. And, I dont have any problem with walking into somebodys office and finding them with their feet on their desk staring at the ceiling. They may be thinking about the problem.
Its also true that the best programmers drive for excellence can leave them understandably curt when others seem less committed. Eric Haddan, a self-described recovering prima donna, has been frustrated when working with team members who seem more motivated by opportunism than a true love of programming. The market is flooded with a bunch of people who just took some classes, but theyre not really into it, says Haddan, a software development manager for eSynch Corp. [esynch.com], a Tustin, Calif., firm which provides video delivery tools, streaming media services, and software utilities. They have a degree and theyve heard the moneys good.
As for the charge of arrogance or rudeness, some hackers argue that its just as big a failing for others to be too tender or defensive. I used to be a lot meaner to co-workers than I am now, Seebach, the hacker translator, reveals. People say, They worked hard on it, so dont trash it, but on the other hand, would you like to drive over a bridge with the assurance that people worked hard on it? Or do you want to know they got it right? A complete refusal to acknowledge either side of that constitutes failing to play well with others.
Signs that theyre going prima
So how do you tell the difference between someone whos just creative and frustrated and someone whos suffering from a bad case of prima donna syndrome? The true prima donna, according to managers, wont work with you or for you. Andretta believes that prima donna syndrome is marked by denial. They do not accept the fact that they are wrong, he says. Its not them, its everyone else.
As a result, a prima donna often leaves havoc in his wake. Not least is the damage to morale. Seeing someone else, no matter how talented, disregard the rules that others must follow can be dismaying to employees who are working hard and playing by the book. Once you start with favoritism you turn good people sour, Daprexs Andretta contends. Its never worth it.
Besides seeing someone get away with murder, colleagues may wind up doing the prima donnas work, which really causes resentment. In Andrettas situation, other employees often had to pick up the work of the AWOL programmer, delaying the completion of their own assignments. It affected our work load and morale, Andretta recalls.
CIO Wojchiehowski points out other hazards. The controlling prima donna who holds onto information will eventually move on leaving others to figure out what the blazes they were doing. Not surprisingly, such an event can delay or even doom projects completely. In either case, the company loses face with its clients. Its just negative in all aspects, he says.
Homing in on that giant ego
If youve determined that youve got a true prima donna on your staff, the next step is figuring out what to do. Sometimes you can make some management moves that rein in the runaway ego. But you must move quickly. I can assure you, prima donnas only get worse with time, warns Wojchiehowski.
If the individual is productive, but lacks elementary social skills, telecommuting may be an option. In other cases, selective delegation and assignments may give the individual enough challenge to keep them out of too much trouble. The best programmers, prima donnas or not, dislike repetitive tasks. Designing prototypes, for example, can be a good assignment for many of these very bright individuals. But Henning stresses that they are best assigned to prototypes, not actual products. Products, he points out, require team input.
Former prima donna Haddan suggests keeping a regular flow of applicants coming in for interviews. In other words, keep the feet of difficult techies to the fire. If you do find someone good, move her in and start weeding out the bad ones. I am willing to bet you would have to do this only one time, he says. If the attitude persists, repeat the process.
Straight talk express, tech-style
But, sooner rather than later, the employee will have to be confronted directly. Perseus Henning had been on the verge of firing Angela, but gave the situation one last try with a blunt performance review. He catalogued and congratulated her strengths and also described explicitly where her performance was failing. The review seemed to help Angela settle down. I think part of her behavior was insecurity, Henning says. She was afraid that she wasnt really valued.
Angelas successful turnaround appears to be rare, however. In the end, most managers arent optimistic about salvaging prima donnas. Instead, they aggressively rid their staffs of them as quickly as possible. Im a strong believer in people and am willing to invest in their development, Wojchiehowski explains. But, frankly, as soon as I understand that its a prima donna situation, I work to eliminate it. You work with those who are team players. And those who arent, well, in the most loving manner, you help them exit.
Daprexs Andretta dismisses the idea that a prima donnas talent makes the extra grief worthwhile. It doesnt matter how smart they are, they will hurt you, he warns. And, the smarter they are, the more they can hurt you.
He believes that its better to invest in bright but not brilliant people and train them to be more productive. You can buy talent, he says. Personality, by which I mean a good attitude, really cant be bought. Ill take a team player any day.
Sears (searscomm@aol.com) is a contributing writer in Washington, D.C. Know a prima donna? Tell us your most unbelievable anecdotes at editor@itrecruitermag.com.
- the acronym is deterministic finite automaton;
- a working definition is: a state machine which moves from a start state, through intermediate states, to an accept or error state, by accepting tokens;
- the standard application is to decide whether a candidate string is a member of a particular regular language;
- and this finds real world applications in string processing of all kinds, for example in grep, perl, awk, sed, vi, emacs.
I would love to know how the self-taught people do on this question. I would expect that few would have an idea of the relationship of finite automata to much of anything. I guess some would have read Mastering Regular Expressions and would have some clue. But anyone who remembers a theoretical CS class should have no trouble reeling off DFA stuff.I have personally had to assist several young, computer-savvy college graduates through this process. It is not usable for the average ten-to-fourteen-year-old, or whoever you hope will take advantage of this idea. They would need extensive command line indoctrination and practice first. Good luck with that, you'll need it with current end user attitudes toward CLIs.
It should also be said that your suggestion to distribute CDRs with Linux on them won't be too helpful to the typical kid or parent, either. The CD is not the problem. Most folks need extensive handholding, documentation and a kick in the ass (external motivation) to tackle a complex new computer system or application.
Long-term, I'm actually as enthusiastic as you are about using reliable, free software in the education system. But I'm afraid that for Linux, the home and educational markets are going to be even tougher than the business desktop from a usability perspective. At home you have to be your own sysadmin, which is the largest usability failure area on Linux.
I think the original poster just didn't know what he was talking about. Another note: a language like Lisp, with its redefinable syntax, has an edge on C-like languages in this respect. The C enthusiast would no doubt point to the savings in typing from C's more compact syntax. But if the Lisp developer finds it necessary to use a particular bit of syntax frequently, relief is just a macro or read-macro away.
In this way the syntax-happy Lisp fan can have compact, cryptic operators, or long, English ones, as he pleases. He can even stick in some crazy stuff like Perl's innovations in the area of syntax if he likes. At the same time, the core language does not suffer from C and Perl's trademark similar-but-very-different syntax pairs.
Hmm, a perfectly reasonable new computer costs $500... reasonable used 586 system $200... Nope, can't say that I do know anyone who can't afford one. I do know plenty of people who don't have the interest or inclination, just the same as with other toys that require a certain amount of commitment to use. But I wouldn't think anyone who can afford a roof over his head in the US can't afford a computer if he wants one.
It sounds nice but there are a couple of details missing. X on a shared server is not a solution for high performance video games, or even for CPU hogging stuff like hires video playback or Flash playback or Java program. You can't buy Quicken for Linux.
Very little of the consumer software available on the Web is Linux compatible which is a bit of a bummer. Staroffice ain't Office. Mozilla ain't IE5, in terms of compatibility with existing sites.
Sun's whole corporate history shows their commitment to avoiding the vendor lock-in you are accusing them of. The decision to market Unix systems in the first place, the open specification of Sparc, the open licensing of NFS and NIS, the adoption of SVR4c the participation in CDE, and the Java spec development process all illustrate this,
This is a company that plays ball with the rest of the industry instead of following 70s-IBM and 90s-MS tactics. Sure, they have a good story on binary compatibility through a large range of hardware, better than anyone else's. But lock-in through binary compatibility is not where Sun is at.
Google groups alt.binaries.news-server-comparison
Ah, but it's a Tragedy Of The Commons type of situation. If you were to avoid the cache while your fellow users made use of it, you would win. But if everyone avoided it, or if the cache didn't exist at all, the result would very likely be slower access for everyone.
Certainly it would be better for business and end users if they would use adequate resources to make the cache fast, though.
Oh, this is garbage thinking. @home is "choosing" to piss off their customers, some number of whom will certainly raise hell and/or switch to other providers. No one would make such a business decision without the threat of legal action. Let's get real.
If you are a company doing software development for hire, it is undesirable to lose your users! It ain't feudalism, it's making choices in order to maintain the customer relationship. The GPL offers insurance against a competitor who wants to unfairly reuse your work while keeping his own work proprietary. There is someone out there with a vested interest in taking away your users and you would be foolish to ignore that fact when selecting a license.
Well, yes, those are problems and VNC solves them. I would add that screen(1) solves the same problems for console applications with lower overhead of all types. But I was replying to the original claim that VNC solves the problem of running an X based application on a remote system for a long time. You don't need VNC for that; you can do it cheaper just with X.
Assuming you have a permanent network connection to the remote host, you can open up an X application on the remote host with the display on the local host and keep it open as long as you want. VNC is nice if the connection or the local system has problems. But otherwise, why bother with the extra overhead that VNC imposes?
Don't be pedantic. 'Assembler' is commonly substituted for 'assembly language', as in 'this section was rewritten in assembler'.
Hey, if you're referring to the roff typesetting language as antique, watch out. Maybe it's not state of the art but it is still in everyday use at all Unix installations for online documentation. It is handy to have one file (with equations, tables, type effects) that can be viewed in a console and also beautifully typeset. (Gnu info is great for this too.) You can go from POD or SDF to roff, from roff to HTML, from roff to various typesetting-only languages. It is also the language used to typeset such Unix classics as The Unix Programming Environment and Stevens' books, and I'm sure others by serious Unix-heads. Maybe the professor in question just preferred to continue using an efficient and capable tool that he was familiar with. There's nothing wrong with using it in preference to other Unix-friendly typesetting tools like TeX.
I would expect compression that is specific to the application to out-compress generic lossless compression.
Thanks for your time.
s/Myer/Meier
How did the OP manage to spell the guy's name both right and wrong in the post? And it's potato. Dammit.
Your comment makes sense as far as it goes. However, that would be a goddamned evil way to design an object! You would be setting yourself up for unnecessary bugs when you call a method and the internal flip-flop happens to be in the wrong state at the time. Just as in Perl 6.
As pointless and misleading as the connected dots were in these graphs, turning it into a set of bar graphs would not improve matters. I think you were more correct when you proposed dots. OTOH the data is more or less meaningless, complicating the problem of how best to display it...
I remember paying about $12 in 1983 for a box of 10 Fuji 5 1/4" floppies, capacity 180 kilobytes each. That was for a Commodore 1541 floppy drive. Of course you would want to slice a notch in the side of each disk to make it work double sided, doubling the capacity to 360K.
So about 3x10^0 dollars per megabyte, versus 3x10^-4 dollars per megabyte for today's Comp-USA CDR spindle purchase. Mmmm... four orders of magnitude price drop...