Imagine earning the equivalent of US$160 every month.
I don't know if you're in India, but while we're at it, I want to fix this:
I read somewhere that an average Indian programmer would cost $20/hr while an American would cost $65/hr. This is the cost to the company, including the cost of the resources used by the programmer. For example, the WAN link from the US to India would be charged to the Indian programmer (for the purpose of this calculation).
Now... $20/hr is a dream in India. Our salaries are more like $2/hr. I was surprised to read those figures myself, until I realised the "cost to company" concept. I still find it hard to believe my company spends $20/hr on me, where I am taking home only $2/hr (where is the rest of the money?!).
The guy I work for right now has me work on all sorts of projects for him, including producing and editing a computer training video he wants to use in-house. I do all of the work on this video at home, and keep track of my hours. When I get back in to work though, he forces me to religiously punch in and out on a time clock! So basically, I end up with a time card full of handwritten notes about hours I worked outside the office, plus all the time-stamps on it when I came in. Ridiculous - but another case of a boss who can't quite adjust to giving employees control.
This is my 4th job in 3 years;-) and I've been through this a few times, esp near the beginning of my career. Just follow Tao. Don't try to push against the stream, but instead flow with the stream. Why do you want to work on that thing at home?!!
I used to take work home initially, but I never got rewarded for extra hours put in. Instead, if I came in late or left early some day, I was frowned upon by my (jealous) colleagues and (troubled, confused) manager. Then I started coming in on time, leaving *on time* (tough one), and *not* taking home any work. I would go to the gym, or hang around with my friends, go watch a movie, read a (possibly technical) book, etc. Follow this, and you'll be fine.
WTF kind of car are you driving? My MR2 spyder costs me $390/mo and it's hardly an econobox. Hell, you can get a pretty damn nice used car for $7k and that's about $200/mo.
Guys!!!:-)) I don't mean to hurt your sentiments here, but I'm 24, Indian, computer programmer, and never driven a car in my life:-) Ok???
I've hear that, in the US, having a car is a MUST. I don't understand then, howcome in India we are able to live without personal cars? Why did we build such excellent public transport?
I think I understand that we Indians have accepted lower standards of living, as compared with the US. So it's not surprising that we should cost less. For once, you have to think that you're not competing on price, but on standard on living.
Oracle 9iAS RAC(clustering)
Dell RAID array for share storage of the cluster nodes
RedHat 9.1 Advance Server(I wish I'd use something else but Oracle only support RH)
That's 2.1, not 9.1!
And BTW Oracle supports SuSE SLES 7+, and basically United Linux.
No future price hikes because Linux is free. Price for each version won't change.
Linux is NOT free! It costs money to develop, and people *are* getting paid for it. How could it be otherwise?
You'll kill Linux by proclaiming it free (as-in-beer).
No planned obscelescence, you're in control. Run kernel 2.2 and use KDE 2.2 untill the end of time if you want.
But who's going to support kernel 2.2 and KDE 2.2 until the end of time? And why not run SCO until the end of time?! This point is really so very moot.
Upgrades are free. Security patches are free. It's ALL free.
No one ever bought that argument. NOTHING is free in this world. Any sound businessman knows this.
It's TRUELY open. You have a problem? Your techs can look at the code to see what's going on. You don't need to call in an expert from SCO.
Yeah, right. You need to call in an expert from Red Hat, or <my linux vendor>
Not tied to a company. What happens if/when SCO goes out of business? You have to find a new company for support (costs more $$$), you'll have to switch to a different OS (costs more $$$).
What if Red Hat goes out of business? Does SuSE support Red Hat Linux? Honestly, does SuSE support Red Hat Linux?
If they are affraid of the who SCO vs Linux thing, why not go with FreeBSD or OpenBSD?
That's not a reason for choosing Linux. Disqualified.
How long is the SCO EULA? Have your lawyers read everything in there? With Linux, all you have to fear is the GPL, and that's nothing to fear as it's harmless.
GPL is NOT a EULA! GPL is a redistribution license. If I'm not wrong, commercial Linux vendors have their own EULAs in addition to the GPL. (The GPL applies to the kernel, and some of the other software that comes with the distro.)
Heck, I'm so dependent on Firebird and Thunderbird now, I can't work without these tools. Can't some of us who are employed contribute small parts of our paychecks towards the Mozilla Foundation?
One majour thing preventing the shift is the lack of high quality english in those countries , right now (even with my english as you can no doubt tell is very 31337)
Your English rocks, man! There's no way the average Indian programmer can write any better.
allows me to win some contracts because I can accuractetly understand the proposal
And obviously the average Indian programmer can't understand proposals written in (that kind of) English. Power to you!
Copyright, patent, and tradmark laws are not uniformly followed in the various off-shore programming destinations. You'd be unlikely to see "Intellectual Property" (their term, not mine -- don't flame me) concious companys sending serious development work offshore for fear of it being hijacked.
Wow! You cooked you some nice theory!
Reality, however, is different. I work for a large software house with its 2,000-strong technical workforce in India. Several portions of its flagshipproducts are developed here.
Why do you Americans keep trying to convince yourselves that the tech jobs will somehow stay back there? Either we non-Americans can't speak/write English, or we're incompetent, or we don't have good IP laws, or <insert favourite consolation>
However, it's naive at best to think that Mozilla Mail can replace Outlook all by itself.
I work at a large corporation (one of the largest in the world)--and guess what?--we're standardised on Netscape 4.x for email! Outlook is not supported by the IT department, and its use for email is generally discouraged. Being a software company of programmers, testers, and other odd techies, any viruses spreading from an employee's workstation are the responsibility of the employee. Thus, we all decide to stick with Netscape 4!
Sounds wierd, eh? Every company (small or big) I've worked at before this had the same rules--use Netscape for email.
What's the natural successor to Netscape Messenger (the mail client)? Mozilla Mail (Thunderbird) of course. I think the "browser wars" are largely overhyped vis-a-vis corporate usage. Email is at least as important as the WWW, and I don't see why no one ever bothers evangelising Mozilla Mail, considering Netscape 4 still lives on corporate desktops just for the sake of email.
This is what I've learnt over the years. If you're into commercial software development, your main objective is to make money. And always think short-term. If you want to write good software, you're better off in the research department (and quite a few large corporations can afford one).
The amount of money your program makes will be inversely proportional to the life/quality of the program (don't pack too many features, or too much robustness (aka bullet-proofness) into the first release!).
It is better to do the quick thing and greatly increase the chance of $uccess now, or to do the correct thing and avoid pain later (assuming there is money to pay for the pain later).
An older language has had more lines of code written for it, so its weaknesses are better known, and more likely published.
And, armed with that knowledge, we create new languages, that *don't* have the _same_ weaknesses.
An older language tends to have more developers, which means any random volunteer is more likely to know it already.
Then why do we have more number of Java programmers (than C, or C++, or Fortran, or Smalltalk, or Ada)? How many random volunteers program in Assembler? What about those random Perl/CGI hackers of the 90's? The new generation of Python/Ruby programmers?
An older language has already fought "battles" for survival, and has been squeezed out of applications for which it is ill-suited, and continues to exist for a good Darwinian reason.
And the old language (C++) evolves into a new one (Java).
An older language is more likely to be standardized, and more widely ported.
With new languages, internationalisation, localisation, multi-threading, abstract data types, networking, IDE-friendliness, adherence to standards, and portability are NOT afterthoughts. Perl, Java, Python.
Esp. for open source projects, we'd rather see people use these "new languages" instead of C (and, God forbid, C++). That's the only way we can overwhelm the evil monopolies. Build on each other's efforts, instead of re-inventing the wheel.
I've worked for 4 companies in 3 years;) and 3 of them had standardised on Netscape (i.e. 4.x). Most of the "geeks" (yeah:-> ) don't know about Mozilla, and they'll only settle for Netscape 6/7. So NS4 is pretty much still the standard (no pun) in many places I know. MS Outlook is a strict no-no, except for the bosses (of course, the PHB boxen can't catch no viriiiii, coz they've got the latest NAV!!!).
I agree. Most of the geeks I know use Mutt or Pine. See this thread, for example, where the shortcomings of Mozilla Mail (Thunderbird) sutly get exposed:
But forget you not! - so many of us are forced to use Windows at work (and that's changing), and it's a pain to use Mutt or Pine on Windows. So we settle for Mozilla Mail.
Existing C++ code in Oracle products has already raised serious portability issues.
Oracle RDBMS is one of the first products to be ported to a new platform, often before the official release of the new platform. At the time of porting, a C compiler will be available, but a C++ compiler may not be.
C compilers for 64-bit platforms are far ahead of their C++ counterparts.
C++ compilers on some platforms are immature. It's far easier to write incompatible C++ code (than C).
<disclaimer>
My views; not those of Oracle.
</disclaimer>
The Mozilla C++ Portability Guide also restricts use of some key C++ features (rtti, exceptions, templates (which rules out the STL by the way!)).
I work at Oracle. C++ is banned here. Apparently, Oracle software runs on more platforms than there are C++ compilers for. Therefore, C++ is a strict no-no. The internal C coding standards doc reads somewhat like this:
Don't write C++.
If you've already written C++, rewrite in C.
:-)
So it's either C, or Java (lately). Anything else is considered as scripting (Perl, Shell, SQL).
"passing through" technologies don't last as long as Linux has already.
"passing through" technologies are like fart--they last for a while, making you uncomfy, but they go on their own. Linux is like shit--somebody has to clean it, or it's going to stay there and stink all day! (And with so much shit floating around!)
C'mon Bill! This ain't no farting^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpassing through!
Guys, what's wrong with you?! Don't you remember fips? Don't you remember those days, when we had to defrag, shrink-partition with fips, and then install our latest Red Hat Linux 5.2?
Slashdot Mirror
I read somewhere that an average Indian programmer would cost $20/hr while an American would cost $65/hr. This is the cost to the company, including the cost of the resources used by the programmer. For example, the WAN link from the US to India would be charged to the Indian programmer (for the purpose of this calculation).
Now... $20/hr is a dream in India. Our salaries are more like $2/hr. I was surprised to read those figures myself, until I realised the "cost to company" concept. I still find it hard to believe my company spends $20/hr on me, where I am taking home only $2/hr (where is the rest of the money?!).
I used to take work home initially, but I never got rewarded for extra hours put in. Instead, if I came in late or left early some day, I was frowned upon by my (jealous) colleagues and (troubled, confused) manager. Then I started coming in on time, leaving *on time* (tough one), and *not* taking home any work. I would go to the gym, or hang around with my friends, go watch a movie, read a (possibly technical) book, etc. Follow this, and you'll be fine.
I've hear that, in the US, having a car is a MUST. I don't understand then, howcome in India we are able to live without personal cars? Why did we build such excellent public transport?
I think I understand that we Indians have accepted lower standards of living, as compared with the US. So it's not surprising that we should cost less. For once, you have to think that you're not competing on price, but on standard on living.
And BTW Oracle supports SuSE SLES 7+, and basically United Linux.
You'll kill Linux by proclaiming it free (as-in-beer).
But who's going to support kernel 2.2 and KDE 2.2 until the end of time? And why not run SCO until the end of time?! This point is really so very moot. No one ever bought that argument. NOTHING is free in this world. Any sound businessman knows this. Yeah, right. You need to call in an expert from Red Hat, or <my linux vendor> What if Red Hat goes out of business? Does SuSE support Red Hat Linux? Honestly, does SuSE support Red Hat Linux? That's not a reason for choosing Linux. Disqualified. GPL is NOT a EULA! GPL is a redistribution license. If I'm not wrong, commercial Linux vendors have their own EULAs in addition to the GPL. (The GPL applies to the kernel, and some of the other software that comes with the distro.)Heck, I'm so dependent on Firebird and Thunderbird now, I can't work without these tools. Can't some of us who are employed contribute small parts of our paychecks towards the Mozilla Foundation?
Reality, however, is different. I work for a large software house with its 2,000-strong technical workforce in India. Several portions of its flagship products are developed here.
Why do you Americans keep trying to convince yourselves that the tech jobs will somehow stay back there? Either we non-Americans can't speak/write English, or we're incompetent, or we don't have good IP laws, or <insert favourite consolation>
Sounds wierd, eh? Every company (small or big) I've worked at before this had the same rules--use Netscape for email.
What's the natural successor to Netscape Messenger (the mail client)? Mozilla Mail (Thunderbird) of course. I think the "browser wars" are largely overhyped vis-a-vis corporate usage. Email is at least as important as the WWW, and I don't see why no one ever bothers evangelising Mozilla Mail, considering Netscape 4 still lives on corporate desktops just for the sake of email.
The amount of money your program makes will be inversely proportional to the life/quality of the program (don't pack too many features, or too much robustness (aka bullet-proofness) into the first release!).
It is better to do the quick thing and greatly increase the chance of $uccess now, or to do the correct thing and avoid pain later (assuming there is money to pay for the pain later).
Gotcha.
Esp. for open source projects, we'd rather see people use these "new languages" instead of C (and, God forbid, C++). That's the only way we can overwhelm the evil monopolies. Build on each other's efforts, instead of re-inventing the wheel.
Source: http://www.linuxworld.com/2003/0627.petreley.html
GNOME/GTK calories
KDE/Qt calories
SCO calories
Gentoo Linux calories
Debian GNU/Linux calories
I've worked for 4 companies in 3 years ;) and 3 of them had standardised on Netscape (i.e. 4.x). Most of the "geeks" (yeah :-> ) don't know about Mozilla, and they'll only settle for Netscape 6/7. So NS4 is pretty much still the standard (no pun) in many places I know. MS Outlook is a strict no-no, except for the bosses (of course, the PHB boxen can't catch no viriiiii, coz they've got the latest NAV!!!).
http://www.penlug.org/pipermail/penlug-members/200 3-June/000031.html
But forget you not! - so many of us are forced to use Windows at work (and that's changing), and it's a pain to use Mutt or Pine on Windows. So we settle for Mozilla Mail.
-
Existing C++ code in Oracle products has already raised serious portability issues.
-
Oracle RDBMS is one of the first products to be ported to a new platform, often before the official release of the new platform. At the time of porting, a C compiler will be available, but a C++ compiler may not be.
-
C compilers for 64-bit platforms are far ahead of their C++ counterparts.
-
C++ compilers on some platforms are immature. It's far easier to write incompatible C++ code (than C).
<disclaimer> My views; not those of Oracle. </disclaimer>The Mozilla C++ Portability Guide also restricts use of some key C++ features (rtti, exceptions, templates (which rules out the STL by the way!)).
So it's either C, or Java (lately). Anything else is considered as scripting (Perl, Shell, SQL).
It isn't ironic... the bloke is lying!
"passing through" technologies are like fart--they last for a while, making you uncomfy, but they go on their own. Linux is like shit--somebody has to clean it, or it's going to stay there and stink all day! (And with so much shit floating around!)
C'mon Bill! This ain't no farting^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpassing through!
I'm getting all nostalgic now. Excuse me.