Anything IT related, would involve system administration, setting up clusters, containers, virtual machines, managing user problems (forgotten passwords, inability to log into applications, fixing hardware).
Computer programmer would be someone writing algorithms and scripts in Python, C, C++, assembly language to assist academic staff in their work. I've heard of scientific programmer, device driver and graphics programmers. Programmers optimize code around hardware taking into account memory layouts, DMA timing, multithreading, mutexes and other techniques. Software Engineers are more about collaborating and working out a solution to add application features at an application level. Application software developers do more time and project management but work more with network API's than working with things at a hardware level. They would be doing things like writing stock-trading applications designed to operate in multi-processor environments with built in fault redundancy.
Research Scientists are doing work equivalent to project managers; estimating project times and costs, supervising staff (technicians), doing talks, writing papers. Same with Network architects; they estimate costs of hardware and time to install.
This diagram really misses out on all the new jobs like AI/DNN/ML/computer vision engineers. There are also HPC system administrators.
It's like that in a lot of cities. I once went on one of Edinburgh's Ghost Tours". Mostly it was walking around what are technically the foundation levels of old buildings. But the architects had actually built up an entire level street over several valleys. So they had excavated the old topsoil and dug out hundreds of thousands of stone blocks to make arches, then built a road on top of what were now basement levels. This also helped to preserve old monuments like the original village road and well, which were now about 10 meters underground.
Paris have the catacombs which were done on a similar basic. They needed stone for buildings and they needed basements. By carving out the stones from the bedrock they make the basements and use the blocks for building. Then all those basements start end up expanding into tunnels and then an entire network.
They already have. There was a failure of the UK's PayPoint system. This is a means for those on low incomes to pay in advance for electricity and gas with special electronic meters. They go to a PayPoint shop, usually a corner newsagent or convenience store, wait in line behind the people buying scratchcard lottery tickets and making Western Union payments, then get the key "topped up", then go back home and insert the key to charge up the meter. A few days ago, this system failed and literally left customers in the dark.
There was the failure of the TSB's banking systems due to an upgrade. Across the USA, there have been failures of the electronic benefit transfer system (EBT), leading to riots as people don't stock up on an emergency supply of food.
Just look at all the startups based on computer vision with OpenCV. They build some kind of camera chassis, maybe a robot or a golf cart, bolt on a few cameras, get some video streaming to a PC, then advertise like mad to find the computer vision people to actually get all the image data to stitch together and process.
They used to try and build up a company so they could have an IPO. The universities were under pressure to have "spin-off" companies to show how relevant their research was. So a couple of professors would set up a company, take some alumni students with them and try and grow the company. The hard part is filling in the middle management in such a rapid time. So the startups can really only get so big before they have to get bought out. They state it themselves; to build a lump of technology that's large enough to be bought out by someone else.
"IT department have been informed that there are performance issues with the standard laptop issued to all employees due to thermal problems. As a stop-gap measure to resolve this problem, we are turning down the temperature of the office air-conditioning by 20 degrees. All staff are advised to wear thick woolly clothes including gloves and hats. Arctic jackets will be provided upon request."
You could say the same with those scripting languages like Python. Research labs that would have needed C and C++ programmers ditch the need for programmers who can understand pointers and system memory.
It was the economists in the colleges who advised the billionaires and came up all these ideas like "bringing in low-cost foreign workers allows corporations to redeploy staff to positions where they can be used to further increase the value of the company." In other words, make your technical staff managers and have their train up their replacements before firing them. Another one is "foreign workers bring in skills that local workers do not have".
In some cases, those very same economists would meddle and block the career paths of their own research students in order to prove that their theories were correct.
They ran a cloud computing demo some time ago where a video artist could do some editing on one frame, press a button to apply to all frames, and then the cloud server would do that in real time allowing the video to be streamed straight back to the Apply PC. Having one of these would let someone run a personal cloud server.
Run task manager or cports.exe and see all the tasks that are running under Windows. svchost.exe is running half the tasks out there, which almost seems to be all servers; everything from SAMBA to plug-and-play, USB port monitors, keyboard and mouse drivers. All of those are written in C++ but are built from templates. Then the applications depend on 100+ different dynamic libraries. Each has grown and expanded as network protocols, bus architectures have been enhanced with burst modes, large packet sizes, and the need for real-time response speeds.
Read the developer forums. Developers now are stlll demand that the compiler developers provide a full C++99 implementation, instead of cherry picking the C++17 and C++19 features that seem the most sexy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... "Historically, Microsoft has been slow to implement new C features in their Visual C++ tools, instead focusing mainly on supporting developments in the C++ standards.[12] However, with the introduction of Visual C++ 2013 Microsoft implemented a limited subset of C99, which was expanded in Visual C++ 2015.[13]"
Game programmers have always written their own scripting languages, GUI's, command line editors, art tools. They make perfect sense for the games they write in the style they code. But for anyone else, it's a mess.
When coding with assembly, programmers would use macros in the same way templates were used. You would define your macro with parameters defining the local name of each register storing that variable. Then if you wanted to reorder register usage, you just change the order of the parameters in the macro call.
I would believe that. There's about two dozen ways to iterate through an STL vector class; by integer index, by iterator begin/end, by auto iterator by value, by auto iterator by reference, these can be done backwards from end to start as well. Another combination is whether to pre-increment or post-increment. But only one method will actually be the fastest on any platform. Then you could use pthreads to parallelize things or maybe Intel TBB blocks. Depending on whether you are working with vector data, then the Intel/AMD AVX/AVX-256 and AVX-512 are another option.
In many companies, they would split this into multiple tasks. Get something simple working. Get someone else to investigate how to optimize the single core version. Now get someone else to investigate multi-threading. Then get the AVX optimization expert to have a go.
There are Youtube videos where the developers have managed to write a C++ compiler to generate 8-bit 6502 code. Just by using the const keyboard they could make a kilobyte of data and code just disappear.
It's crazy. All down to availability of office space and demand. Prices in Central London are £120 square foot, while somewhere on the South Coast are only £11/square foot with a 15 minute commute and about 70 cafes all around.
I heard a story about something similar. A company had a small field office with around eight desks in a portacabin. One desk was next to the heater and coffee machine. Another few were next to windows. Everyone practically player early morning musical chairs to get that desk next to the heater. One person went as far as to make a standing order with a taxi firm to get him there by 6.30 in the morning.
Facial recognition works on that trapezoidal area between the top of the eyebrows, nose and mouth. They look for the relative lengths between different points on each side of the face; corners of the eyes, eyebrows, mouth, nose. Facial hair and shaved eyebrows are enough to throw the system off. Same with sunglasses, long hair and a floppy hat.
Slashdot Mirror
They also became "Executeries" - Executive secretary.
Anything IT related, would involve system administration, setting up clusters, containers, virtual machines, managing user problems (forgotten passwords, inability to log into applications, fixing hardware).
Computer programmer would be someone writing algorithms and scripts in Python, C, C++, assembly language to assist academic staff in their work. I've heard of scientific programmer, device driver and graphics programmers. Programmers optimize code around hardware taking into account memory layouts, DMA timing, multithreading, mutexes and other techniques. Software Engineers are more about collaborating and working out a solution to add application features at an application level. Application software developers do more time and project management but work more with network API's than working with things at a hardware level. They would be doing things like writing stock-trading applications designed to operate in multi-processor environments with built in fault redundancy.
Research Scientists are doing work equivalent to project managers; estimating project times and costs, supervising staff (technicians), doing talks, writing papers. Same with Network architects; they estimate costs of hardware and time to install.
This diagram really misses out on all the new jobs like AI/DNN/ML/computer vision engineers. There are also HPC system administrators.
It's like that in a lot of cities. I once went on one of Edinburgh's Ghost Tours". Mostly it was walking around what are technically the foundation levels of old buildings. But the architects had actually built up an entire level street over several valleys. So they had excavated the old topsoil and dug out hundreds of thousands of stone blocks to make arches, then built a road on top of what were now basement levels. This also helped to preserve old monuments like the original village road and well, which were now about 10 meters underground.
Paris have the catacombs which were done on a similar basic. They needed stone for buildings and they needed basements. By carving out the stones from the bedrock they make the basements and use the blocks for building. Then all those basements start end up expanding into tunnels and then an entire network.
They are doing that with the distances of mobile phones to mobile service masts.
They already have. There was a failure of the UK's PayPoint system. This is a means for those on low incomes to pay in advance for electricity and gas with special electronic meters. They go to a PayPoint shop, usually a corner newsagent or convenience store, wait in line behind the people buying scratchcard lottery tickets and making Western Union payments, then get the key "topped up", then go back home and insert the key to charge up the meter. A few days ago, this system failed and literally left customers in the dark.
There was the failure of the TSB's banking systems due to an upgrade. Across the USA, there have been failures of the electronic benefit transfer system (EBT), leading to riots as people don't stock up on an emergency supply of food.
Because IT managers might only know Microsoft PowerShell, and so they will push to use it for the Linux systems under their control.
Just look at all the startups based on computer vision with OpenCV. They build some kind of camera chassis, maybe a robot or a golf cart, bolt on a few cameras, get some video streaming to a PC, then advertise like mad to find the computer vision people to actually get all the image data to stitch together and process.
They used to try and build up a company so they could have an IPO. The universities were under pressure to have "spin-off" companies to show how relevant their research was. So a couple of professors would set up a company, take some alumni students with them and try and grow the company. The hard part is filling in the middle management in such a rapid time. So the startups can really only get so big before they have to get bought out. They state it themselves; to build a lump of technology that's large enough to be bought out by someone else.
They are more netbooks, tablets, phablets than laptops. They are designed to be media consumption devices, not for software development.
"IT department have been informed that there are performance issues with the standard laptop issued to all employees due to thermal problems. As a stop-gap measure to resolve this problem, we are turning down the temperature of the office air-conditioning by 20 degrees. All staff are advised to wear thick woolly clothes including gloves and hats. Arctic jackets will be provided upon request."
Happened 200 years ago when the British Admiralty was determined to stamp out piracy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You could say the same with those scripting languages like Python. Research labs that would have needed C and C++ programmers ditch the need for programmers who can understand pointers and system memory.
It was the economists in the colleges who advised the billionaires and came up all these ideas like "bringing in low-cost foreign workers allows corporations to redeploy staff to positions where they can be used to further increase the value of the company." In other words, make your technical staff managers and have their train up their replacements before firing them. Another one is "foreign workers bring in skills that local workers do not have".
In some cases, those very same economists would meddle and block the career paths of their own research students in order to prove that their theories were correct.
They ran a cloud computing demo some time ago where a video artist could do some editing on one frame, press a button to apply to all frames, and then the cloud server would do that in real time allowing the video to be streamed straight back to the Apply PC. Having one of these would let someone run a personal cloud server.
Run task manager or cports.exe and see all the tasks that are running under Windows. svchost.exe is running half the tasks out there, which almost seems to be all servers; everything from SAMBA to plug-and-play, USB port monitors, keyboard and mouse drivers. All of those are written in C++ but are built from templates. Then the applications depend on 100+ different dynamic libraries. Each has grown and expanded as network protocols, bus architectures have been enhanced with burst modes, large packet sizes, and the need for real-time response speeds.
"sic" means mis-spelling or incorrect grammar reprinted as originally transcribed.
Read the developer forums. Developers now are stlll demand that the compiler developers provide a full C++99 implementation, instead of cherry picking the C++17 and C++19 features that seem the most sexy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Historically, Microsoft has been slow to implement new C features in their Visual C++ tools, instead focusing mainly on supporting developments in the C++ standards.[12] However, with the introduction of Visual C++ 2013 Microsoft implemented a limited subset of C99, which was expanded in Visual C++ 2015.[13]"
Game programmers have always written their own scripting languages, GUI's, command line editors, art tools. They make perfect sense for the games they write in the style they code. But for anyone else, it's a mess.
When coding with assembly, programmers would use macros in the same way templates were used. You would define your macro with parameters defining the local name of each register storing that variable. Then if you wanted to reorder register usage, you just change the order of the parameters in the macro call.
Dang! Our embedded systems only have 2 Gigabytes of memory and 512Mbytes is reserved for the OS and display memory.
I would believe that. There's about two dozen ways to iterate through an STL vector class; by integer index, by iterator begin/end, by auto iterator by value, by auto iterator by reference, these can be done backwards from end to start as well. Another combination is whether to pre-increment or post-increment. But only one method will actually be the fastest on any platform. Then you could use pthreads to parallelize things or maybe Intel TBB blocks. Depending on whether you are working with vector data, then the Intel/AMD AVX/AVX-256 and AVX-512 are another option.
In many companies, they would split this into multiple tasks. Get something simple working. Get someone else to investigate how to optimize the single core version. Now get someone else to investigate multi-threading. Then get the AVX optimization expert to have a go.
There are Youtube videos where the developers have managed to write a C++ compiler to generate 8-bit 6502 code. Just by using the const keyboard they could make a kilobyte of data and code just disappear.
There's Neptune with all that Ammonia . It's reassuring that our solar system will never run out of toilet freshener.
It's crazy. All down to availability of office space and demand. Prices in Central London are £120 square foot, while somewhere on the South Coast are only £11/square foot with a 15 minute commute and about 70 cafes all around.
I heard a story about something similar. A company had a small field office with around eight desks in a portacabin. One desk was next to the heater and coffee machine. Another few were next to windows. Everyone practically player early morning musical chairs to get that desk next to the heater. One person went as far as to make a standing order with a taxi firm to get him there by 6.30 in the morning.
Facial recognition works on that trapezoidal area between the top of the eyebrows, nose and mouth. They look for the relative lengths between different points on each side of the face; corners of the eyes, eyebrows, mouth, nose. Facial hair and shaved eyebrows are enough to throw the system off. Same with sunglasses, long hair and a floppy hat.