Putting them all together "to improve productivity" works - they'll produce MORE conflict, MORE stupid mistakes, MORE distractions, and MORE crap.
Everyone needs the equivalent of a sheet of plywood (32 s.f.) in work surface space for maximum productivity - this can be divided between a desk or table (6' x 2-1/2' gives you 15 s.f.), shelf space for books, manuals, "papers that I need", and storage (like a half-height filing cabinet that you can also throw ancillary equipment on.
Add a chair (only one, to discourage others from hanging around), a white board and a cork board, and a minimum of 2 screens. 1920x1200 each. They'll pay for themselves and then some.
BTW, the 32 s.f. rule is from Scott Adams, he of Dilbert fame, from before he found his true calling. And people have been using dual-monitor setups for more than 2 decades to increase productivity - even DOS products like dBase and Turbo C supported dual monitors, FFS.
No, what's really stupid is the two design errors I initially pointed out - that Java made everything a class (mistake #1, which we all learned was a dumb move by 1990, so there really was no excuse...) and the lack of a preprocessor (instead implementing parts of one in javac for things like anonymous classes).
FIXED: If you insist on the "everything is a class" paradigm (because it's kind of hard to undo the mistake at this stage of the game), hide the messier parts.
DONE: the use of of a pre-processor should be an integral part of the language
INFO: Never use an imports statement - polluting the namespace was a dumb idea, and required everyone to pick unique names throughout the standard class hierarchy.
IN PROGRESS: Just as not every class doesn't HAVE to look like a class, not every function call has to look like a function call. Make them into statements when there are no parameters, and save those endangered parenthesis...
COMPLETED: StopWithTheExtraLongClassAndMethodNameStupidity - I went through EVERY single class (except the interfaces - I'll get to them soon) in 1.6, and was able to reduce ALL the classnames to unique syms of 31 characters or less.
COMPLETED: A Window is a Window is a Window. Don't call it a JFrame because you screwed up the namespace with the AWT and expect people to be entirely happy.
IN PROGRESS: gui applications shouldn't require a huge machine to run a bloated IDE and/or a fancy runtime framework.
Heck, if you're a php programmer, or just doing a single-class app, you can run c2jmain instead of c2j and hello world becomes a one-line program: echo("Hello,World!"); No includes, no imports, not even <?php and ?> tags.
Why is having an application with one button and minimal configurations a goal?
Macintosh Mouse Envy?
And like the one-button mouse, obsolete. Wipe it down and install a real distro already... one that's not so fugly and not so "we want to be the Windows Experience of the Linux world."
When I first heard it I thought "that's the stupidest fucking name I've ever heard".
I believe that distinction goes Ogg Vorbis, with The Gimp after it.
No, Micro-Soft has you all beat there. Forget "Bob" and "Clippy" - just naming your company after your penis' two distinguishing features leaves the rest WAY behind.
Any ideas on who might want to take over the domains
"Hello, I represent Mr. Kopyambi, who died recently and left $28 million unclaimed. If you wish to claim a portion of this amount as a handling fee, just set the domain name administrator to Pytor Molotov, Russian Business Network, St. Petersburg"
No, I don't believe it. Because those diagrams ultimately end up with lines all over the place, looking like circuit board traces. If you can't explain it concisely in text, perhaps you need to work on either your naming conventions or on making things more modular. Managing complexity by having that complexity reflected in complex diagrams doesn't work.
When you start taking your 4x6 cards, scanning them, and sharing them on the same server as your source code repository so that anybody with access to the latter also has access to the former, then we can compare. Otherwise it doesn't do anybody else any good when they are in your drawer, especially in a distributed project with contributors across the world.
You can have my 4x6 Entity-Relationship-Attribute index cards when you pry them from my cold dead hands.
In the meantime, it prevents every "idjit" from adding yet another field/table/broken relationship to the database - and that is a Good Thing. It's also a hard-copy backup, which even today we still need. And it uses that great interface - the pen. Think of it as "pen computing 1.0" - it just works. And it's a lot easier to shuffle through a card deck than it is to scroll all over the place on-screen. 2 decades later, diagrams still suck.
Some people over-normalize. Some people under-normalize. Some people create insane relationships "because they can".
Ever been in a call center during the graveyard shift. I walked into one (to get through to the section where I was writing the point-of-sale software) and most of the cubbies were empty. Anyone could have kept their headset on and stretched out to the next cubby and jimmied open a box with no problem. They would even have "proof" that they couldn't have been the ones to do it, since they were always jacked in and able to take a call.
Also, the higher-ups have even less of a clue to security - they leave laptops on the roof of cars and then drive away... or sitting on the front seat. Or did you miss all those stories about military secrets getting leaked by cthe clueless. Also, I don't need anything more than a wire probe to get into your network - no need to unplug anything, even for a second.
Maybe you don't understand. Toddlers have racial biases. Even babies just a few months old will prefer to look at a picture of someone with the same skin color as them.
I don't think so, Clyde. Kids don't know what colour they are when they're born. They don't even grok that the themb they're sucking is connected to them.
So can my stack of 4x6 index cards. It might be old school, but it works, and I can wrap a rubber band around the stack, throw it in a drawer, and forget about it until I need it.
Most modern printers also have ethernet connections, it's called network printing. Saves us a fortune on printers because we can share them.
Here, let me fix that for you.
"Most modern printers also have ethernet connections, it's called network printing. Costs us a fortune on printers and consumables because we can share them."
I can go months without printing. Whatever happened to the paperless office?
A friend of mine did that to a waitress one time. She added up the bill - it was really simple - and he looked at her and said "Are you sure about that?" She re-did it. He asked her again. After the third time, she wasn't sure. Then she started getting wrong answers. Then she had to do it with a calculator - and getting MORE wrong answers (it was only 3 items). Finally, he clued her in.
It's the same with one-offs. You can be sure, but then you second-guess yourself... and then you go "I *know" the index starts at 0, and I've accounted for it... but...."
Try it some time. You'll end up with people counting on their fingers, they'll be so perturbed.
They can't find developers anywhere that want the work (its like a black mark on your cv *)
Are you KIDDING? The porn industry is, and has always been, at the cutting edge of tech. They were streaming multiple live video streams while Youtube was a "sometime in the future" thing. porn and gambling might be smutty, but they certainly don't hurt your cv as a developer.
they rarely have offices
not true.
and I doubt their management has any set work hours (usually managed by the sole owner).
I talked with one of the largest porn operators back at the turn of the century when he stopped in where I was working - he makes enough $$$ that he pays other people to do the "work hours" thing. Good money, good working conditions, projects that are interesting from a technical standpoint... (but it was a Windows shop... blech! You have to pay me double to work with Windows, simply because of the higher level of frustration and cluelessness).
If its the right week you could do 169 - (middle of march in the southern hemisphere, october in the northern hemisphere)
Really? So, on the day when we turn the clocks back, we gain two hours? (there are only 167 hours in a week - the original post had an off-by-one error, and so does youers)
coding by trial-and-error? Remind me not to ever hire this guy.
You obviously never debugged anyone else's code. You can either take the time to learn the whole code-base, or follow a hunch. If you have the nose for it, your hunches pay of most of the time. If you don't have the nose for it you haven't written enough code, and made enough mistakes, to understand the term "code smell".
Oh, right, all your code compiles, links, and runs as expected the first time. No trail and error for YOU! So, when are you going to extend that "HelloWorld" class to actually DO something?
Okay, maybe that was harsh, but seriously, our current engineering knowledge is based on discoveries that came from trial and error. So is our medical knowledge. The first 10 heart transplants didn't work out so hot, you know - "the operation was a success but the patient died". And while Edison didn't invent the light-bulb, he DID try over 1,000 different filaments before he hit on one that worked.
Trial-and-error is part of engineering. And part of art. And programming is both.
It is vague. If there is a range that defines coding, it falls between playing video games and designing an algorithm. Any healthy programmers can play games for days nonstop, but designing an algorithm? They can easily hit a wall and have to stop.
That's when you get up and go for a walk. Or take a 10-minute power nap (which most of the time, you end up lying there feeling guilty about trying to take a nap and then enlightenment strikes and you have the basis of another avenue of investigation).
Just the mere act of getting away from the keyboard for 15 minutes every so often more than pays for itself in less buggy code that has to be re-written.
Interesting, just one nitpick, people in sweatshops can quit
Not always. There are still places where they lock the doors, and at night you go to your company cot, and if you're seen even TALKING to an outsider, you're fined.
Except for the fact that UML is for people who can't draw!
Because that's what it is - like an etch-a-sketch for adults.
It's one more layer of mis-communications and stuff that never stays in synch anyway. If you have time to draw pretty diagrams - DO THE REAL DOCUMENTATION INSTEAD.
Slashdot Mirror
Putting them all together "to improve productivity" works - they'll produce MORE conflict, MORE stupid mistakes, MORE distractions, and MORE crap.
Everyone needs the equivalent of a sheet of plywood (32 s.f.) in work surface space for maximum productivity - this can be divided between a desk or table (6' x 2-1/2' gives you 15 s.f.), shelf space for books, manuals, "papers that I need", and storage (like a half-height filing cabinet that you can also throw ancillary equipment on.
Add a chair (only one, to discourage others from hanging around), a white board and a cork board, and a minimum of 2 screens. 1920x1200 each. They'll pay for themselves and then some.
BTW, the 32 s.f. rule is from Scott Adams, he of Dilbert fame, from before he found his true calling. And people have been using dual-monitor setups for more than 2 decades to increase productivity - even DOS products like dBase and Turbo C supported dual monitors, FFS.
No, what's really stupid is the two design errors I initially pointed out - that Java made everything a class (mistake #1, which we all learned was a dumb move by 1990, so there really was no excuse ...) and the lack of a preprocessor (instead implementing parts of one in javac for things like anonymous classes).
This is how java SHOULD have been designed from the ground up - instead of me having to implement it ...
Heck, if you're a php programmer, or just doing a single-class app, you can run c2jmain instead of c2j and hello world becomes a one-line program: echo("Hello,World!"); No includes, no imports, not even <?php and ?> tags.
Both Fedora and opensuse have more users. And with the latest b0rkage ...
Macintosh Mouse Envy?
And like the one-button mouse, obsolete. Wipe it down and install a real distro already ... one that's not so fugly and not so "we want to be the Windows Experience of the Linux world."
Here - let me fix that for you : "I've even heard that some of its users are (gasp) .NET programmers".
No, Micro-Soft has you all beat there. Forget "Bob" and "Clippy" - just naming your company after your penis' two distinguishing features leaves the rest WAY behind.
If upgrades are a server issue, maybe you should be using bsd. Just saying ...
They could get rid of that OTHER back alley of seamy, scummy crap known as craigslist.
"Hello, I represent Mr. Kopyambi, who died recently and left $28 million unclaimed. If you wish to claim a portion of this amount as a handling fee, just set the domain name administrator to Pytor Molotov, Russian Business Network, St. Petersburg"
No, I don't believe it. Because those diagrams ultimately end up with lines all over the place, looking like circuit board traces. If you can't explain it concisely in text, perhaps you need to work on either your naming conventions or on making things more modular. Managing complexity by having that complexity reflected in complex diagrams doesn't work.
You can have my 4x6 Entity-Relationship-Attribute index cards when you pry them from my cold dead hands.
In the meantime, it prevents every "idjit" from adding yet another field/table/broken relationship to the database - and that is a Good Thing. It's also a hard-copy backup, which even today we still need. And it uses that great interface - the pen. Think of it as "pen computing 1.0" - it just works. And it's a lot easier to shuffle through a card deck than it is to scroll all over the place on-screen. 2 decades later, diagrams still suck.
Some people over-normalize. Some people under-normalize. Some people create insane relationships "because they can".
Ever been in a call center during the graveyard shift. I walked into one (to get through to the section where I was writing the point-of-sale software) and most of the cubbies were empty. Anyone could have kept their headset on and stretched out to the next cubby and jimmied open a box with no problem. They would even have "proof" that they couldn't have been the ones to do it, since they were always jacked in and able to take a call.
Also, the higher-ups have even less of a clue to security - they leave laptops on the roof of cars and then drive away ... or sitting on the front seat. Or did you miss all those stories about military secrets getting leaked by cthe clueless. Also, I don't need anything more than a wire probe to get into your network - no need to unplug anything, even for a second.
I don't think so, Clyde. Kids don't know what colour they are when they're born. They don't even grok that the themb they're sucking is connected to them.
So can my stack of 4x6 index cards. It might be old school, but it works, and I can wrap a rubber band around the stack, throw it in a drawer, and forget about it until I need it.
Here, let me fix that for you.
"Most modern printers also have ethernet connections, it's called network printing. Costs us a fortune on printers and consumables because we can share them."
I can go months without printing. Whatever happened to the paperless office?
Psych! Made you look :-)
A friend of mine did that to a waitress one time. She added up the bill - it was really simple - and he looked at her and said "Are you sure about that?" She re-did it. He asked her again. After the third time, she wasn't sure. Then she started getting wrong answers. Then she had to do it with a calculator - and getting MORE wrong answers (it was only 3 items). Finally, he clued her in.
It's the same with one-offs. You can be sure, but then you second-guess yourself ... and then you go "I *know" the index starts at 0, and I've accounted for it ... but ...."
Try it some time. You'll end up with people counting on their fingers, they'll be so perturbed.
Are you KIDDING? The porn industry is, and has always been, at the cutting edge of tech. They were streaming multiple live video streams while Youtube was a "sometime in the future" thing. porn and gambling might be smutty, but they certainly don't hurt your cv as a developer.
not true.
I talked with one of the largest porn operators back at the turn of the century when he stopped in where I was working - he makes enough $$$ that he pays other people to do the "work hours" thing. Good money, good working conditions, projects that are interesting from a technical standpoint ... (but it was a Windows shop ... blech! You have to pay me double to work with Windows, simply because of the higher level of frustration and cluelessness).
Like SCO paid Novell? Oh, wait ...
Really? So, on the day when we turn the clocks back, we gain two hours? (there are only 167 hours in a week - the original post had an off-by-one error, and so does youers)
"We are NOT fish, you insensitive clod!"
-- the dolphins.
You obviously never debugged anyone else's code. You can either take the time to learn the whole code-base, or follow a hunch. If you have the nose for it, your hunches pay of most of the time. If you don't have the nose for it you haven't written enough code, and made enough mistakes, to understand the term "code smell".
Oh, right, all your code compiles, links, and runs as expected the first time. No trail and error for YOU! So, when are you going to extend that "HelloWorld" class to actually DO something?
Okay, maybe that was harsh, but seriously, our current engineering knowledge is based on discoveries that came from trial and error. So is our medical knowledge. The first 10 heart transplants didn't work out so hot, you know - "the operation was a success but the patient died". And while Edison didn't invent the light-bulb, he DID try over 1,000 different filaments before he hit on one that worked.
Trial-and-error is part of engineering. And part of art. And programming is both.
That's when you get up and go for a walk. Or take a 10-minute power nap (which most of the time, you end up lying there feeling guilty about trying to take a nap and then enlightenment strikes and you have the basis of another avenue of investigation).
Just the mere act of getting away from the keyboard for 15 minutes every so often more than pays for itself in less buggy code that has to be re-written.
Not always. There are still places where they lock the doors, and at night you go to your company cot, and if you're seen even TALKING to an outsider, you're fined.
Except for the fact that UML is for people who can't draw!
Because that's what it is - like an etch-a-sketch for adults.
It's one more layer of mis-communications and stuff that never stays in synch anyway. If you have time to draw pretty diagrams - DO THE REAL DOCUMENTATION INSTEAD.