It's all about the money. I.T. is economical.
nothing else pays as well for so little input. I hate the work, I hate the business, I hate the people in the business. Nobody likes their job, so why should I bother with one that pays less if I have the skills to make more?
A real programmer, to me, is someone who thinks about what they code and who sometimes has to write a better way. MOST Java programmers just regurgitate library calls. That's not programming, to me. Guys who do lower-level stuff are programmers.
"software engineer", linguistically speaking, is analogous to "sanitation engineer". the terms have the equivalent weight. They were invented by people in those fields to make themselves sound more important. Don't bother arguing.
But to be fair, many of the forgotten O/S's are now forgotten because they weren't as general purpose as Unix. Unix is the great compromise. But it's hard to strive for the best when you've already accepted compromise.
OK, you tell the CIO of [mid-sized corp] that he has to junk his $5m worth of Sun boxes because his O/S is a 'compromise'. The enterprise game is a one-shot deal. This isn't "ok, that pc is broken, ship it back to Dell" it's "you spent $500k on a machine that wasn't good enough? go find a new job".
The people that make technology decisions don't care about elegance.
World's least effective pick-up line "Hey, nice shoes, wanna fuck?" I heard an anecdote of this working, once. It was at Teikyo-Mary in Davenport IA if you want to go find her.
Personally, I fear the thought of the woman that would go along with this.
are you actually capable of having that attitude and still feeding yourself? if so, congratulations. I've never seen a development shop that allowed programmers to refuse to hang their asses out on something like that. It's either work on our project, or starve.
Today the US military's role seems to be purely "go where our interests are and blow shit up until warlord/dictator X bends over" In fact, thinking back through history, that's what every army's role has been, it's just that today with global communications more threats are detected and a nation's interests could be anywhere in the world.
It's been my experience (note: my experience, YMMV) that nobody in the tech industry truly loves their jobs. The people I know that really love programming have never done it for a living. They've only done it as a hobby. It's the same with everything in the world - nothing that you do outside of your own volition is going to satisfy you.
Furthermore, those people who program as a hobby do it in their own way. They don't have to follow a methodology, a design pattern, or document it if they don't want to. All of those [can] lead to professional-quality software that is more efficient and more robust, but they are not enjoyable. If a programmer enjoys that shit, then they're not really a programmer, they're an analyst.
Programming for a living is a nasty business. I'm a Perl guy, I do enjoy working with Perl. Not as much as I enjoy playing music, or any of my other hobbies, but it's my least-painful marketable skill. Everyone is being seduced by the Sun hype and the Oracle/IBM/Rational hype machine to abandon traditional programming and buy $millions in CASE tools and RDBMS and app servers so that they can write everything in Java. I despise Java for both personal reasons and for its objectively observed flaws. If I want to work in the business, I'm going to have to get some kind of paper that says to people "he can do Java". Talking to more experienced programmers, it seems this happens about every 5 years in software - technology shifts and you immediately become obselete.
I don't know how many other careers this applies to, but my gut feeling is that it's not many. The health care industry comes to mind.
The only reason I'm even thinking of staying in the business is for the money. I'll never be able to have the level of "wealth" or the standard of living that I want without being in technology, even though I'll end up hating 1/3rd of my life, that is, the 8 hours/day I spend at work. Most people do, so I guess I should just stop whining.
Imagine you are a doctor and you have a patient that has cancer, but he wants an aspirin based treatment. You could give it to him and cash the check or you could try to convince him of what he really needs, even if it costs more
1) Doctors are responsible for human lives. this is software. excepting the code that keeps planes in the air, missiles on target, and other obvious shit, nobody dies from a poorly-written, ugly piece of software. If you are writing those things and your customer is the DoD, remind me to be scared.
2) They're paying your salary. The customer is always right.
3) Doctors only have that choice if the customer is incapacitated. Doctors are not bound to their customer. if the customer doesn't like the treatment that s/he gets from the doctor, they can go to another one or treat themselves. The doctor is required by the oath of the AMA to recommend the best treatment. Other than that it's up to the consumer (I'm using the business terms deliberately]
today's human has been socialized to abhor violence. that it's in our nature is the subject of most peoples' struggle with morality, and criminal psychology.
Neitzche's ubermenschen can never exist as long as independent thought is still allowed and eugenics-type culling of the 'flawed' (those who don't transcend their animal natures) does not occur. It's also flawed to my spiritual beliefs, because the ubermenschen [must I always italicize this?] represent pure good, and if all are ubermenschen, then there is no balance. Too much good is just as bad for the world as too much evil. then again, it all becomes relative.
anyway, back to programming. my point with all of this is that transcendence of greed in our world is counterproductive. You might have the moral high ground, but you'll die of starvation. employers and other manipulators will squeeze everything out of you. It's your right and responsibility to squeeze back. (think of a boa constrictor swallowing itself)
There -is- no peaceful coexistence between management and labor. it will always be an adversarial relationship. To think any differently is to be naive.
sadly, it's not. I wish it was, because that would make me much happier. I'm just a burnt-out tech worker.
The college kids and idealistic pseudo-philosophers, i.e. the people that have mod points, dislike my kind. They fear becoming me, and guess what - they will. Some sooner than later.
If you don't become like me, then you're the kind of sad case that is more aligned with the machine than humanity and you will be used and manipulated by those who aren't. I look like a whore, but in the end I win. Sadly they don't get that.
Killing people is not enjoyable (for non-sociopaths) but our army is good at it. They see a greater good in wholesale slaughter. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't.
If they enjoyed it, they'd be looking for the most enjoyable way to, for example, decapitate someone, instead of just making sure they were dead at the lowest loss of friendly life.
use your imaginations, if you have them, to draw the parallels between programming and other vocations.
As for "ruining it for the rest of you", tough shit. I bet you complained about the people in your college classes who set the curve on exams, too. In point of fact, I was often the one who set the curve. Or there was no curve. Grades are inconseqential, anyway.
Anyway.
That comment was kind of self-indulgent, but if you were affected by it you'd say the exact same thing, unless you're Jesus himself who is perfect and has no faults.
I point your moral indignation at my whoredom to the song "Hooker With a Penis", from the Tool album _Aenima_, (C) 1994 Maynard James Keenan.
-----
I met a boy wearing Vans,
501s, and a Dope Beastie tee,
nipple rings, new tattoos
that claimed that he was ogt
back from '92, from the first EP
and in between sips of coke
he told me that he thought
we were sellin' out
layin' down, suckin' up to the man
well now I've got
some advice for you, little buddy
before you point the finger
you should know that I'm the man
if I'm the man, then you're the man
and he's the man as well so you
can point that fuckin' finger up your ass
all you know about me is what I've sold
you dumb fuck
I sold out long before
you ever even heard my name
I sold my soul to make a record
dip shit, and you bought one
I've got some advice
for you little buddy
before you point your finger
you should know that I'm the man
if I'm the fucking man
then you're the fucking man as well
so you can point that
fucking finger up your ass
all you know about me
is what I've sold you
dumb fuck
I sold out long before
you ever even heard my name
I sold my soul to make a record
dip shit, and you bought one
all you read and wear or see
and hear on tv is a product
begging for your fat ass
dirty dollar so
shut up and
buy my new record
send more money
fuck you buddy
"Fallacy 10: Open Source is the Answer
- Economic model is doubtful
- Source code is useless
- Motivation for Open Source is inappropriate for most software
- Nerd culture is counter-productive
We write software for peer recognition. We write fancy structures because 'it's cool', but not particularly useful."
This is wisdom for the ages, here. Seriously. Don't write software because 'it's cool'. That only leads to burnout. Write it for money. At least you get something back and don't ruin the market for the rest of us.
The loss of American business to foreign countries will hurt you more than any system of immigration ever will. The world wasn't a dead piece of rock before the Internet boom, though. Sure, we didn't have this "wonderful" global village thing going on, but we did have stability and we knew what was important. I can't believe I'm thinking this way, anti-technology, but tech and tariff games and global trade has made the the USA sell out its own people.
The failure of American business culture to compete internationally and domestically will hurt you more than any immigrant ever can. Preventing immigration is not the answer. It's the soft conquest that's going to kill us. The USA, functionally speaking, owns the world. If you think of the Earth as a corporation, the USA is the majority shareholder (and 9/11 was a crazy ex-employee coming to work with an AK-47, but that's a digression). The analogy then could be drawn with a company that loses interest in its basis for existence and over-diversifies until their core is dead. Think of Eastman Kodak. I understand GE went through something like that before Welsh raped the place and started over. I could be totally off base, that was well before I could comprehend this stuff.
In fact it is. Your statement is completely at the odds with the fundamental basis of modern economics. This, however, occurs at the systemic level over larger periods of time and protects individuals at any particular time point not at all. Economics divorced from the society in which it applies is suicidal. The people ARE the economy. Without us the economy wouldn't exist. Take care of us and the economy will take care of itself.
While I understand how [facing unemployment]stings -- and I sympathize! -- being stung does not in any special way demonstrate that a perceived solution that would have prevented a particular sting would be the best for the overall nation of individuals. Who cares about them?!?! the world revolves around me!!:)
Hell, even having a sense of humor is hard right now.
I'm sorry you're going through a tough time. Yeah, so am I. I was stupid and counted on luck and made the fundamental mistake of relying too much on people that had no reason to support me. All of which are personal issues.
Well if we're bringing people over here, and there leaving from over there, and these people have higher IQs on average, there is at least one long term argument which suggests that their brain drain is our brain gain. They take food from the mouths of Americans. I'm sorry. Like I said, I like the people, but I have to take care of #1.
Ultimately we can't prevent companies from outsourcing entirely to foreign countries, so it follows that having smart foreigners come here to become citizens has its benefits in comparison to the alternatives. Who benefits? Society? American culture? Who cares? As someone facing unemployment soon, I can say, it sure as hell isn't me that benefits.
Before you chide me for being selfish, let me state that it's hard to care about your nation's culture developing when you might be bankrupt or unemployed for a while. If you want science behind it, Maslow serves the purpose.
In the topsy turvy world of economics, when more players enter the playing field, there actually ends up being more for everyone. Spoken like someone who has it easy at the point in time in which they speak.
Economics is not a synergistic game. No system reaches >100% efficiency. There's always loss in any system, and that includes a nation-state's socioeconomic system. When your country hangs you out to dry, it's real hard to care about its well-being. Taliban, anyone?
This can be a sour pill to swallow, of course, when you're one of the ones who's currently not in the more for everyone category. "Everyone" means everyone, and includes me and all the other lame-ducks and unemployed. Please rephrase.
not enough xenophobia, AFAIC. With the fall of the dot coms there is NO shortage of domestic labor, there's a glut. that drives my salary down one notch. then come the H1Bs, driving my salary down another notch while filling the gaps that I used to fill.
Same thing happened in every other industry. My dad works for one of the few surviving big steel companies, They're half-Japanese now. Jap steel was far cheaper when Reagan dropped the tariffs.
fortunately, I'll be out of this chickenshit industry in a few years, at the most.
Damn, Joe, you're everywhere. I used to post on a newsgroup you frequented back then. hint: email address.
I have to disagree. First of all, it being illegal to pay them less means nothing. I think there's a loophole with consulting companies. They can bill at the same rate as citizen, but pay the slave^H^H^H^H^Hconsultant whatever they want.
I think the work visas should be limited, period. This is going to show my redneck heritage, but I believe this - we can't afford to have a bunch of non-citizens in the USA stealing jobs from citizens by undercutting us in every way. They're often young enough that they can get by without even requiring health benefits, too.
What we have with the H1Bs is the recipe to economic collapse, rapid inflation, etc. Just look at the early 20th century immigration boom. That eventually led to the great depression, which led to WWII. The only difference is that those people came to stay - what happens when companies get dependent on bottom-of-the-barrel cheap labor and can't remain profitable without it? if the cheap labor gets taken away, they go bankrupt, and that screws the economy, too.
There are no easy answers here, and I hate it, because most folks I've met from India have been fine people.
"OK, I admit it: My girlfriend's just an object to me. Unfortunately, there is some information hiding, but thankfully, she's fairly encapsulated, nicely modular, and has a very well defined interface!
Anyone who would get this joke doesn't need to worry about girlfriend issues at all, I'd imagine:)
Slashdot Mirror
who cares. bribe me. I could use the money. by the time someone's rich enough to get elected to a federal job they've got enough money.
It's all about the money. I.T. is economical.
nothing else pays as well for so little input. I hate the work, I hate the business, I hate the people in the business. Nobody likes their job, so why should I bother with one that pays less if I have the skills to make more?
A real programmer, to me, is someone who thinks about what they code and who sometimes has to write a better way. MOST Java programmers just regurgitate library calls. That's not programming, to me. Guys who do lower-level stuff are programmers.
"software engineer", linguistically speaking, is analogous to "sanitation engineer". the terms have the equivalent weight. They were invented by people in those fields to make themselves sound more important. Don't bother arguing.
if you need the long names to remember what you're doing, you're not a programmer, you're a monkey with a keyboard.
AMEN TO THAT. Someone mod him up +1 zillion insightful.
Java is a language for typists, not programmers. one brain, many code monkeys.
But to be fair, many of the forgotten O/S's are now forgotten because they weren't as general purpose as Unix. Unix is the great compromise. But it's hard to strive for the best when you've already accepted compromise.
OK, you tell the CIO of [mid-sized corp] that he has to junk his $5m worth of Sun boxes because his O/S is a 'compromise'. The enterprise game is a one-shot deal. This isn't "ok, that pc is broken, ship it back to Dell" it's "you spent $500k on a machine that wasn't good enough? go find a new job".
The people that make technology decisions don't care about elegance.
World's least effective pick-up line "Hey, nice shoes, wanna fuck?"
I heard an anecdote of this working, once. It was at Teikyo-Mary in Davenport IA if you want to go find her.
Personally, I fear the thought of the woman that would go along with this.
I'm not a dork, I'm a geek. Ask my girlfriend.
the girlfriend represents the difference between 'dork' and 'geek'.
are you actually capable of having that attitude and still feeding yourself? if so, congratulations. I've never seen a development shop that allowed programmers to refuse to hang their asses out on something like that. It's either work on our project, or starve.
Today the US military's role seems to be purely "go where our interests are and blow shit up until warlord/dictator X bends over" In fact, thinking back through history, that's what every army's role has been, it's just that today with global communications more threats are detected and a nation's interests could be anywhere in the world.
It's been my experience (note: my experience, YMMV) that nobody in the tech industry truly loves their jobs. The people I know that really love programming have never done it for a living. They've only done it as a hobby. It's the same with everything in the world - nothing that you do outside of your own volition is going to satisfy you.
Furthermore, those people who program as a hobby do it in their own way. They don't have to follow a methodology, a design pattern, or document it if they don't want to. All of those [can] lead to professional-quality software that is more efficient and more robust, but they are not enjoyable. If a programmer enjoys that shit, then they're not really a programmer, they're an analyst.
Programming for a living is a nasty business. I'm a Perl guy, I do enjoy working with Perl. Not as much as I enjoy playing music, or any of my other hobbies, but it's my least-painful marketable skill. Everyone is being seduced by the Sun hype and the Oracle/IBM/Rational hype machine to abandon traditional programming and buy $millions in CASE tools and RDBMS and app servers so that they can write everything in Java. I despise Java for both personal reasons and for its objectively observed flaws. If I want to work in the business, I'm going to have to get some kind of paper that says to people "he can do Java". Talking to more experienced programmers, it seems this happens about every 5 years in software - technology shifts and you immediately become obselete.
I don't know how many other careers this applies to, but my gut feeling is that it's not many. The health care industry comes to mind.
The only reason I'm even thinking of staying in the business is for the money. I'll never be able to have the level of "wealth" or the standard of living that I want without being in technology, even though I'll end up hating 1/3rd of my life, that is, the 8 hours/day I spend at work. Most people do, so I guess I should just stop whining.
Imagine you are a doctor and you have a patient that has cancer, but he wants an aspirin based treatment. You could give it to him and cash the check or you could try to convince him of what he really needs, even if it costs more
1) Doctors are responsible for human lives. this is software. excepting the code that keeps planes in the air, missiles on target, and other obvious shit, nobody dies from a poorly-written, ugly piece of software. If you are writing those things and your customer is the DoD, remind me to be scared.
2) They're paying your salary. The customer is always right.
3) Doctors only have that choice if the customer is incapacitated. Doctors are not bound to their customer. if the customer doesn't like the treatment that s/he gets from the doctor, they can go to another one or treat themselves. The doctor is required by the oath of the AMA to recommend the best treatment. Other than that it's up to the consumer (I'm using the business terms deliberately]
today's human has been socialized to abhor violence. that it's in our nature is the subject of most peoples' struggle with morality, and criminal psychology.
Neitzche's ubermenschen can never exist as long as independent thought is still allowed and eugenics-type culling of the 'flawed' (those who don't transcend their animal natures) does not occur. It's also flawed to my spiritual beliefs, because the ubermenschen [must I always italicize this?] represent pure good, and if all are ubermenschen, then there is no balance. Too much good is just as bad for the world as too much evil. then again, it all becomes relative.
anyway, back to programming. my point with all of this is that transcendence of greed in our world is counterproductive. You might have the moral high ground, but you'll die of starvation. employers and other manipulators will squeeze everything out of you. It's your right and responsibility to squeeze back. (think of a boa constrictor swallowing itself)
There -is- no peaceful coexistence between management and labor. it will always be an adversarial relationship. To think any differently is to be naive.
sadly, it's not. I wish it was, because that would make me much happier. I'm just a burnt-out tech worker.
The college kids and idealistic pseudo-philosophers, i.e. the people that have mod points, dislike my kind. They fear becoming me, and guess what - they will. Some sooner than later.
If you don't become like me, then you're the kind of sad case that is more aligned with the machine than humanity and you will be used and manipulated by those who aren't. I look like a whore, but in the end I win. Sadly they don't get that.
enjoyment of work leads to lack of quality.
Killing people is not enjoyable (for non-sociopaths) but our army is good at it. They see a greater good in wholesale slaughter. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't.
If they enjoyed it, they'd be looking for the most enjoyable way to, for example, decapitate someone, instead of just making sure they were dead at the lowest loss of friendly life.
use your imaginations, if you have them, to draw the parallels between programming and other vocations.
As for "ruining it for the rest of you", tough shit. I bet you complained about the people in your college classes who set the curve on exams, too.
In point of fact, I was often the one who set the curve. Or there was no curve. Grades are inconseqential, anyway.
Anyway.
That comment was kind of self-indulgent, but if you were affected by it you'd say the exact same thing, unless you're Jesus himself who is perfect and has no faults.
I point your moral indignation at my whoredom to the song "Hooker With a Penis", from the Tool album _Aenima_, (C) 1994 Maynard James Keenan.
-----
I met a boy wearing Vans,
501s, and a Dope Beastie tee,
nipple rings, new tattoos
that claimed that he was ogt
back from '92, from the first EP
and in between sips of coke
he told me that he thought
we were sellin' out
layin' down, suckin' up to the man
well now I've got
some advice for you, little buddy
before you point the finger
you should know that I'm the man
if I'm the man, then you're the man
and he's the man as well so you
can point that fuckin' finger up your ass
all you know about me is what I've sold
you dumb fuck
I sold out long before
you ever even heard my name
I sold my soul to make a record
dip shit, and you bought one
I've got some advice
for you little buddy
before you point your finger
you should know that I'm the man
if I'm the fucking man
then you're the fucking man as well
so you can point that
fucking finger up your ass
all you know about me
is what I've sold you
dumb fuck
I sold out long before
you ever even heard my name
I sold my soul to make a record
dip shit, and you bought one
all you read and wear or see
and hear on tv is a product
begging for your fat ass
dirty dollar so
shut up and
buy my new record
send more money
fuck you buddy
"Fallacy 10: Open Source is the Answer
- Economic model is doubtful
- Source code is useless
- Motivation for Open Source is inappropriate for most software
- Nerd culture is counter-productive
We write software for peer recognition. We write fancy structures because 'it's cool', but not particularly useful."
This is wisdom for the ages, here. Seriously. Don't write software because 'it's cool'. That only leads to burnout. Write it for money. At least you get something back and don't ruin the market for the rest of us.
depends on the size of the shot you load your shotgun with. I'd be more inclined to use molotov cocktails, the heat will fry them.
France. They never win anything :)
at which point I call my local PD and let them sort out details of search warrants and the like.
The BSA is not a law-enforcement organization sanctioned by any government and as such has no power over me.
The loss of American business to foreign countries will hurt you more than any system of immigration ever will.
:)
The world wasn't a dead piece of rock before the Internet boom, though. Sure, we didn't have this "wonderful" global village thing going on, but we did have stability and we knew what was important. I can't believe I'm thinking this way, anti-technology, but tech and tariff games and global trade has made the the USA sell out its own people.
The failure of American business culture to compete internationally and domestically will hurt you more than any immigrant ever can. Preventing immigration is not the answer.
It's the soft conquest that's going to kill us. The USA, functionally speaking, owns the world. If you think of the Earth as a corporation, the USA is the majority shareholder (and 9/11 was a crazy ex-employee coming to work with an AK-47, but that's a digression). The analogy then could be drawn with a company that loses interest in its basis for existence and over-diversifies until their core is dead. Think of Eastman Kodak. I understand GE went through something like that before Welsh raped the place and started over. I could be totally off base, that was well before I could comprehend this stuff.
In fact it is. Your statement is completely at the odds with the fundamental basis of modern economics. This, however, occurs at the systemic level over larger periods of time and protects individuals at any particular time point not at all.
Economics divorced from the society in which it applies is suicidal. The people ARE the economy. Without us the economy wouldn't exist. Take care of us and the economy will take care of itself.
While I understand how [facing unemployment]stings -- and I sympathize! -- being stung does not in any special way demonstrate that a perceived solution that would have prevented a particular sting would be the best for the overall nation of individuals.
Who cares about them?!?! the world revolves around me!!
Hell, even having a sense of humor is hard right now.
I'm sorry you're going through a tough time.
Yeah, so am I. I was stupid and counted on luck and made the fundamental mistake of relying too much on people that had no reason to support me. All of which are personal issues.
most people use Word docs at work.
people are scared to death of their employers and will do anything to make them happy.
thus, people will always say 'yes' on anything involving work.
See Also: Enron's 401k plan.
Well if we're bringing people over here, and there leaving from over there, and these people have higher IQs on average, there is at least one long term argument which suggests that their brain drain is our brain gain.
They take food from the mouths of Americans. I'm sorry. Like I said, I like the people, but I have to take care of #1.
Ultimately we can't prevent companies from outsourcing entirely to foreign countries, so it follows that having smart foreigners come here to become citizens has its benefits in comparison to the alternatives.
Who benefits? Society? American culture? Who cares? As someone facing unemployment soon, I can say, it sure as hell isn't me that benefits.
Before you chide me for being selfish, let me state that it's hard to care about your nation's culture developing when you might be bankrupt or unemployed for a while. If you want science behind it, Maslow serves the purpose.
In the topsy turvy world of economics, when more players enter the playing field, there actually ends up being more for everyone.
Spoken like someone who has it easy at the point in time in which they speak.
Economics is not a synergistic game. No system reaches >100% efficiency. There's always loss in any system, and that includes a nation-state's socioeconomic system. When your country hangs you out to dry, it's real hard to care about its well-being. Taliban, anyone?
This can be a sour pill to swallow, of course, when you're one of the ones who's currently not in the more for everyone category.
"Everyone" means everyone, and includes me and all the other lame-ducks and unemployed. Please rephrase.
- Josh
not enough xenophobia, AFAIC. With the fall of the dot coms there is NO shortage of domestic labor, there's a glut. that drives my salary down one notch. then come the H1Bs, driving my salary down another notch while filling the gaps that I used to fill.
Same thing happened in every other industry. My dad works for one of the few surviving big steel companies, They're half-Japanese now. Jap steel was far cheaper when Reagan dropped the tariffs.
fortunately, I'll be out of this chickenshit industry in a few years, at the most.
Damn, Joe, you're everywhere. I used to post on a newsgroup you frequented back then. hint: email address.
I have to disagree. First of all, it being illegal to pay them less means nothing. I think there's a loophole with consulting companies. They can bill at the same rate as citizen, but pay the slave^H^H^H^H^Hconsultant whatever they want.
I think the work visas should be limited, period. This is going to show my redneck heritage, but I believe this - we can't afford to have a bunch of non-citizens in the USA stealing jobs from citizens by undercutting us in every way. They're often young enough that they can get by without even requiring health benefits, too.
What we have with the H1Bs is the recipe to economic collapse, rapid inflation, etc. Just look at the early 20th century immigration boom. That eventually led to the great depression, which led to WWII. The only difference is that those people came to stay - what happens when companies get dependent on bottom-of-the-barrel cheap labor and can't remain profitable without it? if the cheap labor gets taken away, they go bankrupt, and that screws the economy, too.
There are no easy answers here, and I hate it, because most folks I've met from India have been fine people.
"OK, I admit it: My girlfriend's just an object to me. Unfortunately, there is some information hiding, but thankfully, she's fairly encapsulated, nicely modular, and has a very well defined interface!
:)
Anyone who would get this joke doesn't need to worry about girlfriend issues at all, I'd imagine