I admit, it is ironic and moronic. At least I still know you can get headphones somewhere else for $10 and a laser pointer for $5. Even if I was hasty in my post to paste in those links.
In the case of flash MP3 players more work than don't work. Hard drive players are a mixed bag, though, as far as I understand it. I chose iPod simple because I knew it worked. iRiver may work just fine. So might the Zen. I don't know. What I do know is that the iPod worked even before I bought it. And with hard drive players that peace of mind that I won't have to monkey with the OS to get it to work was worth it. Plus the price ($250 for 4GB) was worth it.
This is why the lawsuit was allowed to proceed. Most iPod users are apparently morons who don't know they can get a laser pointer for $5 and new headphones for $10 somewhere else.
And in the interest of full disclosure I have a Mini. It was the cheapest/GB that worked well with Linux at the time. And when/if it dies I'll buy whatever is cheapest on the market that works with Linux.
This is so so true. My current PDA is a Palm M130 (dragonball 33mhz). I have an iPod. I have a 4 year old model monochrome cell phone I bought off the Internet for $15. All of these devices do one thing really well and do it with a minimum of unneeded features. The iPod will go days between charges. The Palm weeks. My Gameboy Advance SP will go weeks. My cell phone lasts a couple days if I make few calls.
The problem I've run into is that they're starting to run out of replacement batteries for these specific devices and even worse if I wanted to walk into the store and buy a regular cell phone (you know, one that makes calls and doesn't have an annoying ass ring tone that people pay for along with a camera phone that has no discernable purpose) I couldn't. Thus the reason why I'm on my second Palm M130, a used model that I "modded" with a new battery. Thus the reason I bought a new version of my same old phone off of eBay. If the iPod battery dies at some point I guess I'd stop listening to music if nothing similar were on the market.
The bottom line is that some of us out here want devices that do EXACTLY what they're supposed to do and do it well. Low-color, monochrome, simple, well thought-out. We're out here. Please sell to us.
That's about what I was going to say. Someone should make a film about Microsoft stealing all their good ideas and then send that in. That would be pretty funny.
I think I'm the first to mention HDTV specifically so it's my bad. Either way forcing people to go digital is dumb too. I also have a pretty old TV. 20". Suits me just fine. Maybe that makes me a TV luddite. I think it makes me sane. I'd rather by a new bike or spend money going to Hawaii than bugging out in front of an HDTV. That's just me, though.
I call BS on your post. This isn't the reason for the legislation. It was originally conceived as a way to force consumers to pay for new TVs and new technology. Not as some govt. need to "save the spectrum". Come on. You don't really believe that, do you?
No room for weakness? We're talking about a ridiculous mandate to begin with regarding HDTV. Something many people don't need or want, frankly. I don't know what's more stupid. The fact that there ever was a deadline to begin with or your post.
I'm talking about IT writ-large. Programmers, system admins, everyone. I get the difference between CS and IT, but when it comes to the work world I don't see women being wired any differently. In fact, if anything the only difference is that they tend to have more perspective on life and be easier to work with.
Exactly. Thus my point about IT being a crappy field. I do it, but I'm definitely not climbing the ladder. And a big reason for that is because I do put health and family and free time ahead of death marches.
Statistically I didn't give a number. I just said "a lot". So I'm not really sure what we're disputing. To me, having 1 or 2 guys on your team that are like that is "a lot" because they destroy any attempt to have a cooperative, communicative, healthy environment in the workplace. I didn't say that they were the majority of IT folks. Just that there were a lot of them out there and that that sucks. I'd rather sit next to someone who wasn't as qualified, but was at least friendly and professional and a team player, than someone who's a genius, but treats those who haven't memorized every design pattern like garbage.
Women not "wired" for IT? Are you kidding? If by IT you mean working 80 hour weeks and subsisting on Mountain Dew and Pizza while your health rapidly deteriorates, then yes, I would say your insight is very accute. Most women who I've worked with in IT don't like living like that.
However, if you mean they aren't "wired" to actually do the work you're dead wrong. If anything, my experience has shown that women are often better equipped to be quality members of an IT team. Most women I've worked with are easier to work with (i.e. they actually have people skills often), they're friendly and communicative and they do care about their work. It just seems (and once again this is all anecdotal) they don't care about it to the detriment of their free time, their health and their life. I would say these are qualities to be admired, personally.
If being "wired" for IT means being a jerk and being willing to slave away on death marches, then I'd say you have a screwed up idea of what a good IT shop should be. I know the reality is often death marches and late nights, but it shouldn't be.
I would say yes. That's why I laugh at these "good, leave the jobs to the real geeks" folks. There are people that pile into every "hot profession". Big deal. Live with it. They are jobs, after all. Find one you enjoy and then try to enjoy your free time. I'm not saying this to you, but some of these other posters who inevitably turn up to slam anyone who entered the field for the wrongs reasons. As if that's never happened before and never will again. The blame should be placed on people who couldn't tell the difference between IT professionals and people who just wanted to get into IT.
Anyway, point is that I think you're right. Just as people piled into IT during the 90s, people are jumping on the healthcare bandwagon now. What's scarier? The thought that your next nurse might not give a damn about his/her patients (which could be you) or that you're sitting next to someone who isn't as uber-qualified as you are in the IT field? As someone who values his health and enjoys having a life, I can tell you which scares me more. The rest of you can make up your minds.
I love posts like the one by the original poster. They act like they were frickin' explorers who discovered the new world, only to be overtaken by all these dag-nabbed settlers and swindlers. Like they discovered IT or something. Sure, there are people in IT for the wrong reasons. For that matter there are people in nursing/law/medicine/politics, etc. etc. etc. for the wrong reasons. Why should IT be any different? Because some of us love the work? Come on. At the end of the day it is just work. You should love your life at home, your family, your hobbies, more than your work.
If you actually love the IT field as it's currently constructed, I would say you are clinically insane. The long hours, the insane demands, the poor management. I love programming, learning new things and generally working with computers. And I'm good at it. I like the work, but I don't like the actual jobs. And at the end of the day it's still a job, plain and simple. We all do it for money on some level.
Anyway posts like that OP always crack me up. Reminds me of that one South Park.
It's funny that you say this, but my personal experience has been that the.com boom resulted in a glut of inexperienced and ineffectual leaches on the programmers more than a glut of bad programmers. The chaff, in my opinion, are the managers who don't know diddly about project management OR IT. The chaff are the executives that pitched horrible ideas and then cost the jobs of others down the road. I hate these posts that inevitably blame people for trying to better there lives by finding a good line of work. Of course I do what I love, so that's why I'm in IT. And I didn't major in any IT-related course of study either. So maybe I'm one of the people you consider unqualified. Maybe not. Either way I don't care. I'm good at what I do. I like the work. But there are so many bad managers, project managers and executives, that it makes the actual jobs miserable.
And also, for the record, there are a lot of self-righteous, pompous IT folks, who while being quite intelligent have ZERO people skills and look down their noses at those of us who scratched and clawed our way into the industry because we loved it. Maybe you're one of them, maybe not. Either way THOSE are the people the.com boom should have weeded out first, IMHO.
Seriously. We bemoan the state of education, but I'd have to say, having the foresight to NOT choose IT is pretty insightful and intelligent. Of course, I say that as someone who's in IT. I love the work, the actual act of maintaining systems, working on networks, servers or programming. I've been doing it for 8 years now, after studying English in college and I've always loved the work. But to be frankly honest, I haven't liked many of the actual jobs. The hours are often absurd. The demands on your time, especially your free time, are very high. And you are often put into riduculously high pressure situations by ineffectual and incompetent leadership. So it's sad, in a way. I love the work. I love working with other developers and learning and growing as a professional. But sometimes I honestly hate the actual jobs and the companies I work for. That's a hard thing to find out, so if college students are figuring that out before they find themselves 40lbs. or more overweight, with blood pressure, etc. then bully to them.
I'm a gamer, so not only have I been witness to the...
Windows vs. Linux GTK vs. QT Gnome vs. KDE Python vs. Ruby Ruby vs. Java PHP vs. Java Emacs vs. vi...flame-wars, but I've also been a party to countless gaming flame-wars. And in the end they all devolve and become pointless. Granted the stakes are higher when you're talking about Ruby vs. Java or GTK vs. QT. You're talking about making decisions that impact a project and perhaps a company for years or decades to come. But in the end all I ask is for both sides (if they must engage in debate) to first actually debate and secondly to do so from a neutral, open-minded and informed point of view.
I can see where you got that mistaken impression, but please reread my initial post.
First off, I said "Are you serious? I would argue that if there is such a thing as a J2EE "fanboy" (to use a gaming term) then that is an individual who cares only about job security and not about being a good technologist."
So I'm starting my post by arguing against the original posters assertion, saying that it isn't really "these two groups" who are two blame for the language flame-wars, but rather individuals (in both camps, mind you, I just pick on the J2EE camp because that's what I know). I use the term "fanboy" intentionally. Because it reminds me of the same psychology that drives someone to berate XBoxen or the GameCube or the PS2 simply because they are a huge fan of one of the other 3 systems. This similar detachment from open-mindedness and flexibility is what I was arguing against. And I was trying to make the point that it wasn't J2EE developers writ-large to blame, but rather individuals who had become so entrenched in their technology that they had a self-interest in not learning other technologies or giving them an open look.
I believe these developers do exist. I've never known them personally. Ever Java developer I've personally worked with has had side interests in everything from Scheme to Lisp to Python to Ruby to PHP to.NET. They just became Java specialists because of the toolkit or because that was the nature of their work. So I believe they exist, thus I did go off the rails a bit (no pun intended) and talk about the virtues of having broad experience, but mostly to support my idea that the individuals who engage in flame wars, on both sides, are possibly misguided by their interest in protecting their investment in time spent learning their trade. And that these are individuals who are to blame for the flame-wars, not the two camps at large. So I will agree that my argument wasn't entirely coherent, but that was the point I was trying to make.
I have great respect for those with depth. In fact, they're why I'm primarily a Java developer today. That and my own hard work. However, I was just trying to make the point that for those other individuals, the ones for whom Java is the end and not the means, they should consider broadening their technical expertise for the sake of their organization and themselves.
In the end, you're correct and I think I echoed this. Passion for your work (as opposed to passion for keeping your job at all costs) and the desire to work hard to do the job at hand, regardless of the tool required, are the traits I admire in fellow developers. Java, for many organizations, is the answer. I personally believe in it myself as the answer to many problems. Thus the reason I seek work doing it. However that won't stop me from giving Ruby an honest look. And it also means I'm never going to become a participant in a Ruby vs. Java or PHP vs. Java or.NET vs. Java flame-war.
Now if one is an expert in Ruby and Java, then by all means give me your opinion. But otherwise, discussions of that nature are useless.
There are people who happen to use J2EE and then there are the J2EE "morons" as you call them. I know from being a Java developer the last 4 years in a J2EE environment that the majority of J2EE developers are intelligent people interested in other technologies. They program Python when they need it. I've known many who ignore IDEs like Idea in favor of Emacs. I've known many who love PHP. I agree that there are morons out there. People who defend their silo for reasons other than technical grounds. Those people might be considered morons.
I do agree with what you say about Ruby. I have only brief and fleeting experience with Ruby. I hope to learn more later when I have time. But in the brief time I've worked with it I've found everyone to be helpful and fun and open-minded and.... well... pragmatic (to steal from the author of the PickAxe).
In summary I think there are less boosters of Ruby than there are boosters of J2EE. So your statement rings of truth, but I wouldn't call them morons.
You don't understand the use of the word everything in that phrase? Come on. Seriously?
It's like saying "I play all kinds of video games, everything from Madden to Final Fantasy". It doesn't mean I play every video game on the planet. It means that I play many different video games, including the following and a few more that I won't bother mentioning.
I thought that usage of the word was well known and understood and didn't bear being picked apart tediously.
Oh boy. Calling people ignorant and arrogant (and useless) is a sure fire way to keep the topic on an intelligent and reasonable level. Also it displays a level of ignorance and arrogance as well, no?
I disagree completely with what you're saying. I "roll my eyes" at your "real corporation". I've worked for "real corporations" my entire career. And at every place I've been they've needed generalists and specialists. Sometimes, some "real corporations" are so small they need mostly generalists because that person has to run the servers, do desktop support AND do development. Sometimes if they're bigger these "real corporations" need generalists to be the glue that binds together all the specialists. Help with the servers. Do some front-end work. Write tests. Help teach people how to use CVS. To fill in the gaps, basically. I've never had problems finding work, nor being useful as a generalist.
You say depth is more valuable, but how do you quantify value in your "real corporation"? I agree that most companies with projects of any kind of scale need specialists. I'm just arguing in favor of those specialists being less specialized and being willing to be more broad. Nothing more.
Besides, I define value as the work getting done. And often times in order to get the work done you have to have intelligent flexible people willing to do whatever is thrown at them and sometimes the nature of the platform changes. And I want people around who can adapt. That's all I'm saying. Thus the Ruby vs. Java flamewars purely to protect one's turf are silly. That's my point.
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I admit, it is ironic and moronic. At least I still know you can get headphones somewhere else for $10 and a laser pointer for $5. Even if I was hasty in my post to paste in those links.
In the case of flash MP3 players more work than don't work. Hard drive players are a mixed bag, though, as far as I understand it. I chose iPod simple because I knew it worked. iRiver may work just fine. So might the Zen. I don't know. What I do know is that the iPod worked even before I bought it. And with hard drive players that peace of mind that I won't have to monkey with the OS to get it to work was worth it. Plus the price ($250 for 4GB) was worth it.
It will buy you new headphones...
A ppleStore.woa/70202/wo/aF7ksSJz3QSn2NkCe1s114BrFs7 /1.0.0.11.1.0.6.9.3.19.0.1.0.1.1.0.1.0.3
A ppleStore.woa/70202/wo/aF7ksSJz3QSn2NkCe1s114BrFs7 /9.0.0.11.1.0.6.9.3.19.0.1.1.1.1.0.1.0.1
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/
And half a laser pointer...
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/
This is why the lawsuit was allowed to proceed. Most iPod users are apparently morons who don't know they can get a laser pointer for $5 and new headphones for $10 somewhere else.
And in the interest of full disclosure I have a Mini. It was the cheapest/GB that worked well with Linux at the time. And when/if it dies I'll buy whatever is cheapest on the market that works with Linux.
Mod Up!!!!
This is so so true. My current PDA is a Palm M130 (dragonball 33mhz). I have an iPod. I have a 4 year old model monochrome cell phone I bought off the Internet for $15. All of these devices do one thing really well and do it with a minimum of unneeded features. The iPod will go days between charges. The Palm weeks. My Gameboy Advance SP will go weeks. My cell phone lasts a couple days if I make few calls.
The problem I've run into is that they're starting to run out of replacement batteries for these specific devices and even worse if I wanted to walk into the store and buy a regular cell phone (you know, one that makes calls and doesn't have an annoying ass ring tone that people pay for along with a camera phone that has no discernable purpose) I couldn't. Thus the reason why I'm on my second Palm M130, a used model that I "modded" with a new battery. Thus the reason I bought a new version of my same old phone off of eBay. If the iPod battery dies at some point I guess I'd stop listening to music if nothing similar were on the market.
The bottom line is that some of us out here want devices that do EXACTLY what they're supposed to do and do it well. Low-color, monochrome, simple, well thought-out. We're out here. Please sell to us.
That's about what I was going to say. Someone should make a film about Microsoft stealing all their good ideas and then send that in. That would be pretty funny.
I think I'm the first to mention HDTV specifically so it's my bad. Either way forcing people to go digital is dumb too. I also have a pretty old TV. 20". Suits me just fine. Maybe that makes me a TV luddite. I think it makes me sane. I'd rather by a new bike or spend money going to Hawaii than bugging out in front of an HDTV. That's just me, though.
I call BS on your post. This isn't the reason for the legislation. It was originally conceived as a way to force consumers to pay for new TVs and new technology. Not as some govt. need to "save the spectrum". Come on. You don't really believe that, do you?
No room for weakness? We're talking about a ridiculous mandate to begin with regarding HDTV. Something many people don't need or want, frankly. I don't know what's more stupid. The fact that there ever was a deadline to begin with or your post.
I'm talking about IT writ-large. Programmers, system admins, everyone. I get the difference between CS and IT, but when it comes to the work world I don't see women being wired any differently. In fact, if anything the only difference is that they tend to have more perspective on life and be easier to work with.
Exactly. Thus my point about IT being a crappy field. I do it, but I'm definitely not climbing the ladder. And a big reason for that is because I do put health and family and free time ahead of death marches.
Statistically I didn't give a number. I just said "a lot". So I'm not really sure what we're disputing. To me, having 1 or 2 guys on your team that are like that is "a lot" because they destroy any attempt to have a cooperative, communicative, healthy environment in the workplace. I didn't say that they were the majority of IT folks. Just that there were a lot of them out there and that that sucks. I'd rather sit next to someone who wasn't as qualified, but was at least friendly and professional and a team player, than someone who's a genius, but treats those who haven't memorized every design pattern like garbage.
Women not "wired" for IT? Are you kidding? If by IT you mean working 80 hour weeks and subsisting on Mountain Dew and Pizza while your health rapidly deteriorates, then yes, I would say your insight is very accute. Most women who I've worked with in IT don't like living like that.
However, if you mean they aren't "wired" to actually do the work you're dead wrong. If anything, my experience has shown that women are often better equipped to be quality members of an IT team. Most women I've worked with are easier to work with (i.e. they actually have people skills often), they're friendly and communicative and they do care about their work. It just seems (and once again this is all anecdotal) they don't care about it to the detriment of their free time, their health and their life. I would say these are qualities to be admired, personally.
If being "wired" for IT means being a jerk and being willing to slave away on death marches, then I'd say you have a screwed up idea of what a good IT shop should be. I know the reality is often death marches and late nights, but it shouldn't be.
"Better *their* lives" rather. Sheesh. I shouldn't post when these topics come up. The typos come home to roost.
I would say yes. That's why I laugh at these "good, leave the jobs to the real geeks" folks. There are people that pile into every "hot profession". Big deal. Live with it. They are jobs, after all. Find one you enjoy and then try to enjoy your free time. I'm not saying this to you, but some of these other posters who inevitably turn up to slam anyone who entered the field for the wrongs reasons. As if that's never happened before and never will again. The blame should be placed on people who couldn't tell the difference between IT professionals and people who just wanted to get into IT.
Anyway, point is that I think you're right. Just as people piled into IT during the 90s, people are jumping on the healthcare bandwagon now. What's scarier? The thought that your next nurse might not give a damn about his/her patients (which could be you) or that you're sitting next to someone who isn't as uber-qualified as you are in the IT field? As someone who values his health and enjoys having a life, I can tell you which scares me more. The rest of you can make up your minds.
I love posts like the one by the original poster. They act like they were frickin' explorers who discovered the new world, only to be overtaken by all these dag-nabbed settlers and swindlers. Like they discovered IT or something. Sure, there are people in IT for the wrong reasons. For that matter there are people in nursing/law/medicine/politics, etc. etc. etc. for the wrong reasons. Why should IT be any different? Because some of us love the work? Come on. At the end of the day it is just work. You should love your life at home, your family, your hobbies, more than your work.
If you actually love the IT field as it's currently constructed, I would say you are clinically insane. The long hours, the insane demands, the poor management. I love programming, learning new things and generally working with computers. And I'm good at it. I like the work, but I don't like the actual jobs. And at the end of the day it's still a job, plain and simple. We all do it for money on some level.
Anyway posts like that OP always crack me up. Reminds me of that one South Park.
"Ther taking er jobs!"
It's funny that you say this, but my personal experience has been that the .com boom resulted in a glut of inexperienced and ineffectual leaches on the programmers more than a glut of bad programmers. The chaff, in my opinion, are the managers who don't know diddly about project management OR IT. The chaff are the executives that pitched horrible ideas and then cost the jobs of others down the road. I hate these posts that inevitably blame people for trying to better there lives by finding a good line of work. Of course I do what I love, so that's why I'm in IT. And I didn't major in any IT-related course of study either. So maybe I'm one of the people you consider unqualified. Maybe not. Either way I don't care. I'm good at what I do. I like the work. But there are so many bad managers, project managers and executives, that it makes the actual jobs miserable.
.com boom should have weeded out first, IMHO.
And also, for the record, there are a lot of self-righteous, pompous IT folks, who while being quite intelligent have ZERO people skills and look down their noses at those of us who scratched and clawed our way into the industry because we loved it. Maybe you're one of them, maybe not. Either way THOSE are the people the
I meant to say "high blood pressure", of course. Everyone has blood pressure. At least I assume so. :)
Seriously. We bemoan the state of education, but I'd have to say, having the foresight to NOT choose IT is pretty insightful and intelligent. Of course, I say that as someone who's in IT. I love the work, the actual act of maintaining systems, working on networks, servers or programming. I've been doing it for 8 years now, after studying English in college and I've always loved the work. But to be frankly honest, I haven't liked many of the actual jobs. The hours are often absurd. The demands on your time, especially your free time, are very high. And you are often put into riduculously high pressure situations by ineffectual and incompetent leadership. So it's sad, in a way. I love the work. I love working with other developers and learning and growing as a professional. But sometimes I honestly hate the actual jobs and the companies I work for. That's a hard thing to find out, so if college students are figuring that out before they find themselves 40lbs. or more overweight, with blood pressure, etc. then bully to them.
If I had mod points I'd give them to you, man, because that's funny.
No, not really.
I know it's bad form to reply to yourself, but I found this on a Nintendo DS message board and it seemed appropriate to this current sub-topic.
...flame-wars, but I've also been a party to countless gaming flame-wars. And in the end they all devolve and become pointless. Granted the stakes are higher when you're talking about Ruby vs. Java or GTK vs. QT. You're talking about making decisions that impact a project and perhaps a company for years or decades to come. But in the end all I ask is for both sides (if they must engage in debate) to first actually debate and secondly to do so from a neutral, open-minded and informed point of view.
http://img.vgcats.com/050404.jpg
I'm a gamer, so not only have I been witness to the...
Windows vs. Linux
GTK vs. QT
Gnome vs. KDE
Python vs. Ruby
Ruby vs. Java
PHP vs. Java
Emacs vs. vi
I can see where you got that mistaken impression, but please reread my initial post.
.NET. They just became Java specialists because of the toolkit or because that was the nature of their work. So I believe they exist, thus I did go off the rails a bit (no pun intended) and talk about the virtues of having broad experience, but mostly to support my idea that the individuals who engage in flame wars, on both sides, are possibly misguided by their interest in protecting their investment in time spent learning their trade. And that these are individuals who are to blame for the flame-wars, not the two camps at large. So I will agree that my argument wasn't entirely coherent, but that was the point I was trying to make.
.NET vs. Java flame-war.
First off, I said "Are you serious? I would argue that if there is such a thing as a J2EE "fanboy" (to use a gaming term) then that is an individual who cares only about job security and not about being a good technologist."
So I'm starting my post by arguing against the original posters assertion, saying that it isn't really "these two groups" who are two blame for the language flame-wars, but rather individuals (in both camps, mind you, I just pick on the J2EE camp because that's what I know). I use the term "fanboy" intentionally. Because it reminds me of the same psychology that drives someone to berate XBoxen or the GameCube or the PS2 simply because they are a huge fan of one of the other 3 systems. This similar detachment from open-mindedness and flexibility is what I was arguing against. And I was trying to make the point that it wasn't J2EE developers writ-large to blame, but rather individuals who had become so entrenched in their technology that they had a self-interest in not learning other technologies or giving them an open look.
I believe these developers do exist. I've never known them personally. Ever Java developer I've personally worked with has had side interests in everything from Scheme to Lisp to Python to Ruby to PHP to
I have great respect for those with depth. In fact, they're why I'm primarily a Java developer today. That and my own hard work. However, I was just trying to make the point that for those other individuals, the ones for whom Java is the end and not the means, they should consider broadening their technical expertise for the sake of their organization and themselves.
In the end, you're correct and I think I echoed this. Passion for your work (as opposed to passion for keeping your job at all costs) and the desire to work hard to do the job at hand, regardless of the tool required, are the traits I admire in fellow developers. Java, for many organizations, is the answer. I personally believe in it myself as the answer to many problems. Thus the reason I seek work doing it. However that won't stop me from giving Ruby an honest look. And it also means I'm never going to become a participant in a Ruby vs. Java or PHP vs. Java or
Now if one is an expert in Ruby and Java, then by all means give me your opinion. But otherwise, discussions of that nature are useless.
There are people who happen to use J2EE and then there are the J2EE "morons" as you call them. I know from being a Java developer the last 4 years in a J2EE environment that the majority of J2EE developers are intelligent people interested in other technologies. They program Python when they need it. I've known many who ignore IDEs like Idea in favor of Emacs. I've known many who love PHP. I agree that there are morons out there. People who defend their silo for reasons other than technical grounds. Those people might be considered morons.
I do agree with what you say about Ruby. I have only brief and fleeting experience with Ruby. I hope to learn more later when I have time. But in the brief time I've worked with it I've found everyone to be helpful and fun and open-minded and.... well... pragmatic (to steal from the author of the PickAxe).
In summary I think there are less boosters of Ruby than there are boosters of J2EE. So your statement rings of truth, but I wouldn't call them morons.
You don't understand the use of the word everything in that phrase? Come on. Seriously?
It's like saying "I play all kinds of video games, everything from Madden to Final Fantasy". It doesn't mean I play every video game on the planet. It means that I play many different video games, including the following and a few more that I won't bother mentioning.
I thought that usage of the word was well known and understood and didn't bear being picked apart tediously.
Oh boy. Calling people ignorant and arrogant (and useless) is a sure fire way to keep the topic on an intelligent and reasonable level. Also it displays a level of ignorance and arrogance as well, no?
I disagree completely with what you're saying. I "roll my eyes" at your "real corporation". I've worked for "real corporations" my entire career. And at every place I've been they've needed generalists and specialists. Sometimes, some "real corporations" are so small they need mostly generalists because that person has to run the servers, do desktop support AND do development. Sometimes if they're bigger these "real corporations" need generalists to be the glue that binds together all the specialists. Help with the servers. Do some front-end work. Write tests. Help teach people how to use CVS. To fill in the gaps, basically. I've never had problems finding work, nor being useful as a generalist.
You say depth is more valuable, but how do you quantify value in your "real corporation"? I agree that most companies with projects of any kind of scale need specialists. I'm just arguing in favor of those specialists being less specialized and being willing to be more broad. Nothing more.
Besides, I define value as the work getting done. And often times in order to get the work done you have to have intelligent flexible people willing to do whatever is thrown at them and sometimes the nature of the platform changes. And I want people around who can adapt. That's all I'm saying. Thus the Ruby vs. Java flamewars purely to protect one's turf are silly. That's my point.