Get a job. ANY JOB. Showing you have a job indicates that you are a "go getter", willing to do what it takes. Trust me.
That might not be your best move, really. Taking a job that doesn't really push your marketable skills can have the unfortunate side-effect of locking you into that kind of job in the future, especially in tech (I assume you're in tech, as this is/. and all). Consider what happened right out of school. Some of your techie classmates got lucky and landed that sweet job at the big software company. Most took that job in tech support or QA or even (shudder) doing Perl, just to pay the bills. Now, there wasn't much of a gap in talent or employability at that point, but there was after a few years. The first group got to keep up on industry trends and new tech, and the second group eventually resigned themselves to their lot in life.
My point is, don't take that stopgap job unless you really need to. The gap between the good job opportunities and the not-so-good only gets wider as you move further along in your career, and you want to be on the happy side of that curve, even if it means eating ramen-noodle dinners for a while.
I'm sorry, but I've heard this argument from software design "purists" one too many times. The term "provably correct" as applied to software *design* is laughable. For software development we have unit tests, which take some effort but are well worth the overhead. The only way to prove that a software design matches real-world requirements is to implement the design, and completely test its interaction withing the domain.
Simply put, the proof is in the pudding. You can cleanly define (and test) the interactions between separate software components, but outside the software, there're just too many variables. The real world presents an infinite number of ways to befuddle your code. It is infinitely detailed, and thus so is the problem domain.
Official court transcript, as transcribed by an IM-addled 14-year-old script kiddie:
IBM: WTF? SCO: All ur L1nux r b3long 2 us! IBM: No f'n way! SCO: Hearz the sh*t. IBM: No way, d00dz. That code iz old-skool. Jugde: SC0, 6et the fsck outta hear!
Well, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Take a look at http://www.artima.com/intv/generics2.html , specifically the section titled "Comparing C# and Java Generics". All that's happening is that the compiler is inserting those downcasts for you. Well, it's also verifying that whatever you put into the Collection is the right type, but that's at compile time, not runtime.
It'd be neat if you were right, though. Point me to your source on the no-casting solution, and it'll make my day.
Collections still contain only Objects, which must generally be downcast to be useful. Generics just automate this downcasting. If anything, generics result in *less* efficient code, as sometimes you don't need to downcast all the way to Integer when you just need a method from Number.
Okay, so maybe you're just misinterpreting the results, not lying. That's the thing about ad-hoc benchmarks: you never know quite what you're testing.
Okay, just for the record, I am typing this post from a Linux box, and am fully aware what fsck is. Geez, apparently some of us also failed "Into to Humor and Sarcasm" in 6th grade...
Ooh, that brings up another question: Who the fsck is this "Lotter Rotke" guy, and why does anyone care when he's coming out? Shouldn't that be his own personal choice?
For that matter, why the fsck does everyone on here misspell "fuck" as "fsck"? Did we all fail Vulgar English class in 3rd grade? I only spell it that way to fit in here...
Nah, don't sweat it. What kind of assinine president would spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money and put American lives at risk for some ridiculous sense of national pride?
See, umm, that's the difference between "skilled" labor and otherwise. If you can take some horse-trainer lady in off the street and have her kick ass in your company, then the position you're filling isn't really skilled labor.
OTOH, if you need someone to come into a new job that involves some pretty specific knowledge of certain areas, and you need them to get productive right away without a huge ramp-up perdiod, then you really do care about their past experience, as it pertains to the question, "Can you do this job?"
For other examples, see: lion tamer, SWAT team commando, gynecologist...
"But we have to be wary of Sun: they are not an open source company..."
And what, pray tell, is your definition of an "open source company"? One that owns no intellectual property? Could you give an example?
Yeah, so Java ain't GPL'd. Big effin' deal. The specs are freely available to anybody who wants to implement 'em. So Solaris ain't free. Neither is AIX.
"...and many of their efforts are not in the best interest of the open source community."
Yeah, they're a publicly-traded company, just like IBM or RedHat. They do what's in the best interest of their stockholders.
Yeah, umm, try it on a linear scale. That logarithmic scale that Yahoo uses by default can lead to some incorrect conclusions unless you're wary of it.
The tagline is 100% accurate. The dude wrote a paper critical of Microsoft. He was fired. These two events happened sequentially, suggesting *some* kind of cause-and-effect relationship. This man published a report bashing one of his employer's business partners. If I were him, I'd expect to at least be reprimanded. If I were the employer, I'd have fired him too, whether or not our partner asked us to do it.
What irks me is when you Microsoft apologists bitch about the biased reporting on Slashdot. Yes, there's a bias. Damn near everyone here knows this. Looking here for unbiased tech reporting is like looking to Rush Limbaugh for even-handed political commentary. If you don't like it, go check out MSNBC.
As romantic as it sounds, you can't have coders working for free for the common good w/o ultimate payment.
You heard it here first, folks! Coders of free software are now demanding a reward in the afterlife for their good deeds. Without the promise of eternal happiness in Heaven, or coming back in the next life as something really cool like a dolhpin, free software authors will soon reach the conclusion that it simply ain't worth it. Unless we can assure the free software community that they will, in fact, get to meet Turing after they die, open-source innovation is nearing the end. Barring divine intervention, it's been a good run...
Re:The problem is: that's not the problem
on
Does C# Measure Up?
·
· Score: 1
But the really bright folks figured out how to do things RIGHT
Doing things "RIGHT" is a moving target. The "RIGHT" way to do something is defined by the person who pays the programmer. If the person cutting the paychecks wants you to code in such a way that you generate less efficient, potentially buggier code that's going to be done by the ship date that the marketing drones aggreed on over martinis, then it's your _job_ to comply. Everything's a tradeoff, and it's all about the bottom line.
We probably need to build intelligent software that can optimize itself, because WE NEVER WILL.
Modern compilers are way ahead of you. Remember that -O3 option? Granted, it's nowhere as efficient as a hardcore bit-flipping egghead inserting snippets of incomprehensible-to-everyone-but-him(or her) assembly into their C code, but it's a whole lot better than nothing.
Re:Java, success, failure
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 1
Yes, Java has evolved. It started as one platform and has kinda-sorta branched out into 3 spaces: small, medium and large. The "large" spec, for use on "large" server-type computers, is J2EE. The whole J2EE spec is online, and free to anybody who feels like implementing it. It takes time and energy to have Sun "certify" that it meets the spec, and so they charge to become certified, but JBoss did just fine without for a good long time. True, Applets are passe now, (partially/mostly because of the shitty JVM's that came stock in IE for so long) but Java is not going anywhere for a long time to come.
The "base" of the logic is really a pointless distinction. If you have a computing task you want done, it's just a matter of how to "encode" the task such that the computer can accomplish it, and how efficiently (money- and time-wise) that machine can accomplish that task. Every base is isomorphic (can be represented in) to every other base. I mean, your computer has libraries to print out integers in base 10, even though the internal representation is binary. True and false, and even 0 and 1 are human ideas. Computers deal in voltages.
The point is that the dealers pretty much know what the count is, and can tell pretty easily who's adjusting their bets based on the count. The dealers don't really care that you count, though. If anything, they want you to like them so that you'll give them a nice tip if/when you win.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, to say nothing of your sperm/egg cells...
That might not be your best move, really. Taking a job that doesn't really push your marketable skills can have the unfortunate side-effect of locking you into that kind of job in the future, especially in tech (I assume you're in tech, as this is /. and all). Consider what happened right out of school. Some of your techie classmates got lucky and landed that sweet job at the big software company. Most took that job in tech support or QA or even (shudder) doing Perl, just to pay the bills. Now, there wasn't much of a gap in talent or employability at that point, but there was after a few years. The first group got to keep up on industry trends and new tech, and the second group eventually resigned themselves to their lot in life.
My point is, don't take that stopgap job unless you really need to. The gap between the good job opportunities and the not-so-good only gets wider as you move further along in your career, and you want to be on the happy side of that curve, even if it means eating ramen-noodle dinners for a while.
I'm sorry, but I've heard this argument from software design "purists" one too many times. The term "provably correct" as applied to software *design* is laughable. For software development we have unit tests, which take some effort but are well worth the overhead. The only way to prove that a software design matches real-world requirements is to implement the design, and completely test its interaction withing the domain.
Simply put, the proof is in the pudding. You can cleanly define (and test) the interactions between separate software components, but outside the software, there're just too many variables. The real world presents an infinite number of ways to befuddle your code. It is infinitely detailed, and thus so is the problem domain.
At a place I used to work, we had saying about guys who drove huge trucks:
"inversely proportional"
And yes, even though it almost goes without saying here on slashdot, I did work among geeks..
Official court transcript, as transcribed by an IM-addled 14-year-old script kiddie:
IBM: WTF?
SCO: All ur L1nux r b3long 2 us!
IBM: No f'n way!
SCO: Hearz the sh*t.
IBM: No way, d00dz. That code iz old-skool.
Jugde: SC0, 6et the fsck outta hear!
[T]he type-cast is completely omitted.
Wrong!
Well, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Take a look at http://www.artima.com/intv/generics2.html , specifically the section titled "Comparing C# and Java Generics". All that's happening is that the compiler is inserting those downcasts for you. Well, it's also verifying that whatever you put into the Collection is the right type, but that's at compile time, not runtime.
It'd be neat if you were right, though. Point me to your source on the no-casting solution, and it'll make my day.
Umm, yeah, I call shenanigans.
Collections still contain only Objects, which must generally be downcast to be useful. Generics just automate this downcasting. If anything, generics result in *less* efficient code, as sometimes you don't need to downcast all the way to Integer when you just need a method from Number.
Okay, so maybe you're just misinterpreting the results, not lying. That's the thing about ad-hoc benchmarks: you never know quite what you're testing.
Okay, just for the record, I am typing this post from a Linux box, and am fully aware what fsck is. Geez, apparently some of us also failed "Into to Humor and Sarcasm" in 6th grade...
Ooh, that brings up another question: Who the fsck is this "Lotter Rotke" guy, and why does anyone care when he's coming out? Shouldn't that be his own personal choice?
For that matter, why the fsck does everyone on here misspell "fuck" as "fsck"? Did we all fail Vulgar English class in 3rd grade? I only spell it that way to fit in here...
Wow, is there a moderation for "bitchy, bitter and resentful"? Is it a -1 or a +1?
Cool! Now if you leave voice mail over 2 minutes long, instead of an annoying beep, you get root access!
Love those buffer exploits...
Sweet! Finally, the Olympics, the circus and the X Games come together for the most exciting simian sporting event ever! I can hardly wait!
Oh, wait...
Nah, don't sweat it. What kind of assinine president would spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money and put American lives at risk for some ridiculous sense of national pride?
See, umm, that's the difference between "skilled" labor and otherwise. If you can take some horse-trainer lady in off the street and have her kick ass in your company, then the position you're filling isn't really skilled labor.
OTOH, if you need someone to come into a new job that involves some pretty specific knowledge of certain areas, and you need them to get productive right away without a huge ramp-up perdiod, then you really do care about their past experience, as it pertains to the question, "Can you do this job?"
For other examples, see: lion tamer, SWAT team commando, gynecologist...
Nope. I was wondering how they were going to use a Buick to stop fish from reproducing too much.
1 word: Gentoo. Not to come off as another Gentoo zealot or anything, but it's easy as "emerge mythtv" when you're running Gentoo.
I myself hold many pointless records, as far as I have been able to verify:
* Most pencils held on face while facing south-southeast and humming Kraftwerk's "The Robots" - 8
* Largest lint ball created from other, smaller lintballs found on blue and green sweaters given for Christmas 1996 - 3.5" (diameter)
* Most drawn-out, sarcastic post ever by me - this one
And what, pray tell, is your definition of an "open source company"? One that owns no intellectual property? Could you give an example?
Yeah, so Java ain't GPL'd. Big effin' deal. The specs are freely available to anybody who wants to implement 'em. So Solaris ain't free. Neither is AIX.
"...and many of their efforts are not in the best interest of the open source community."
Yeah, they're a publicly-traded company, just like IBM or RedHat. They do what's in the best interest of their stockholders.
Be "wary" of ill-informed blanket statements...
Yeah, umm, try it on a linear scale. That logarithmic scale that Yahoo uses by default can lead to some incorrect conclusions unless you're wary of it.
The tagline is 100% accurate. The dude wrote a paper critical of Microsoft. He was fired. These two events happened sequentially, suggesting *some* kind of cause-and-effect relationship. This man published a report bashing one of his employer's business partners. If I were him, I'd expect to at least be reprimanded. If I were the employer, I'd have fired him too, whether or not our partner asked us to do it.
What irks me is when you Microsoft apologists bitch about the biased reporting on Slashdot. Yes, there's a bias. Damn near everyone here knows this. Looking here for unbiased tech reporting is like looking to Rush Limbaugh for even-handed political commentary. If you don't like it, go check out MSNBC.
As romantic as it sounds, you can't have coders working for free for the common good w/o ultimate payment.
You heard it here first, folks! Coders of free software are now demanding a reward in the afterlife for their good deeds. Without the promise of eternal happiness in Heaven, or coming back in the next life as something really cool like a dolhpin, free software authors will soon reach the conclusion that it simply ain't worth it. Unless we can assure the free software community that they will, in fact, get to meet Turing after they die, open-source innovation is nearing the end. Barring divine intervention, it's been a good run...
But the really bright folks figured out how to do things RIGHT
Doing things "RIGHT" is a moving target. The "RIGHT" way to do something is defined by the person who pays the programmer. If the person cutting the paychecks wants you to code in such a way that you generate less efficient, potentially buggier code that's going to be done by the ship date that the marketing drones aggreed on over martinis, then it's your _job_ to comply. Everything's a tradeoff, and it's all about the bottom line.
We probably need to build intelligent software that can optimize itself, because WE NEVER WILL.
Modern compilers are way ahead of you. Remember that -O3 option? Granted, it's nowhere as efficient as a hardcore bit-flipping egghead inserting snippets of incomprehensible-to-everyone-but-him(or her) assembly into their C code, but it's a whole lot better than nothing.
Yes, Java has evolved. It started as one platform and has kinda-sorta branched out into 3 spaces: small, medium and large. The "large" spec, for use on "large" server-type computers, is J2EE. The whole J2EE spec is online, and free to anybody who feels like implementing it. It takes time and energy to have Sun "certify" that it meets the spec, and so they charge to become certified, but JBoss did just fine without for a good long time. True, Applets are passe now, (partially/mostly because of the shitty JVM's that came stock in IE for so long) but Java is not going anywhere for a long time to come.
The "base" of the logic is really a pointless distinction. If you have a computing task you want done, it's just a matter of how to "encode" the task such that the computer can accomplish it, and how efficiently (money- and time-wise) that machine can accomplish that task. Every base is isomorphic (can be represented in) to every other base. I mean, your computer has libraries to print out integers in base 10, even though the internal representation is binary. True and false, and even 0 and 1 are human ideas. Computers deal in voltages.
The point is that the dealers pretty much know what the count is, and can tell pretty easily who's adjusting their bets based on the count. The dealers don't really care that you count, though. If anything, they want you to like them so that you'll give them a nice tip if/when you win.