I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic, but Paul Allen was/is a programmer before anything else. Not only that, but as far as I know he was screwed over pretty hard by Bill and Steve to churn out code while his health suffered, and even though he is still wealthy today the other two took the lions share of spoils. It angers me when I see mangement abuse technical brilliance like that. I can just picture Paul Allen working 12-hour days back then while Steve and Bill talked business and told Allen how hard their job is because they have to "think outside the square" and "look at the big picture". To which they add "so, when are you going to be finished with that code then?".
It's true though, many business types I have spoken to can't understand why open source software is free, and often pay for commercial equivalents that aren't nearly as good.
Thanks, that was a great reply.
until you are asked for a solution, you should not try to give one. It is useless I guess it's just this that I disagree with. Chances are management won't ask for a solution because they already have selected one they like, which may or may not be based on technical merit. It's definately not useless to speak your mind about something if it's something that effects your job or something you think will adversly effect the company.
But by doing that, the OPs job goes from maintaining reliable systems to maintaining, ah, Microsoft ones. A job is something you do for the vast majority of your waking life - it helps to have a job you don't loathe going to. I'd say that is at least one reason the OP wants to keep their LAMP systems.
I sure as hell would fight for the same thing if I was in their position. Having non-technical management impose a technical platform makes about as much sense as the IT staff insiting management change their company logo to one of their choosing, split the company up into three or four sub-companies focussed on different market sectors, hire a new CFO and launch an IPO. It's simply not their area of expertise. Even if the descison comes from a CTO (assuming they studied business information systems or something similar as a student, not computer science) they are unlikely to fully appreciate the diference between maintaing, developing for, and supporting an open-source Linux system as opposed to a closed-source Microsoft one. If the descision did come from someone who should be able to make sound technical descisions, then I would at least want to discuss it with them before going ahead with it.
It's not about forcing Linux on anyone, it's that the OP believes that the LAMP setup is a better choice, and it's their job to make sure they have the best development platform possible - not to just do what management says.
For the OP, some good reasons not to switch:
1).NET is Microsoft-only (OK, there is Mono, but I'm not familiar with how well it works. They are always playing catch up with Microsoft anyhow). Mac OSX and Linux are being increasingly used on the desktop. I know so many people who have switched from Windows to Mac in the last year, and it's not unresonalbe to think that might have some effect on what businesses purchase. 2) LAMP is free. Software licencing costs disappear. If the demeand for your software soars, you licencing costs won't soar along with it. 3) Libraries libraries libraries. When programming in Python for example, more often than not I can find a library which takes much of the hard work out of some application, so I can concentrate on the application itself. I don't know if this is the case with.NET?
Granted, most PHB couldn't care less about 1), since if 90% of their market use Windows then they really don't care about Mac or Linux. It's sad but often true. Still, it is an important added bonus, and if these system becmore more popular in the future you'll be most likely screwed if you're using Microsoft technologies.
You *can* sell management on Linux. Some other points to ease their mind:
5) You can get support contracts from Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical etc. Maybe print out and show them what they actally get for their money. 6) You have technical reasons why you prefer Linux over Microsoft. Try and make them understand that things will run smoother, applications will be developed more quickly and reliably if you don't switch.
No no, Twisted is great, just has some initial learning curve (but once you get over that, it makes network programming easy). Either way, if a PHP progammer moves to Ruby or to Python, the world is a better place.
I'm living overseas at the moment, so it's nice to keep in contact with friends back home. Sure, there is many other ways to do that, and this is just another. Still not sure I like the wall concept though... makes it hard to have conversations. I'm not sure whether I should be writing on my wall or theirs.
Those are usually people from other fields (e.g. graphic design, marketing, business/commerce) that have developed some web sites or applications as part of their job and like to call themselves programmers. It's not that they don't have skills, but they aren't the kind of people writing your base tools that other developers use, for example. Just look for a comp sci or similar education, and some decent work experience developing real software and you should be OK.
damn, you beat me to the joke. And a mainframe CPU, too. What I don't understand, is why Java is where it is and Python, Ruby or Perl aren't there in it's place.
I sure as hell would rather write Python server-side applications than Java.
He seems like an annoying egotistical kid to me. Yeah I feel the same way after reading some of his pranks. They aren't funny, they are just immature and could seriously cause a lot of harm if something goes wrong. It seems like he doesn't think through the consequences of his actions. Maybe I'm just boring, but hey.
The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real. Am I the only one who thinks that doesn't make any sense (and isn't an analogy, either). Even if the sentence did make sense, and really was an analogy, what does the existance/non-existance of a god have to do with perpetual energy?
I agree. Seems like Wine has sent a few emails so far bagering them about progress. Even if there's no legal issues to sort out, they still need time to clean it up and write some docs and comments on their changes to make it release worthy.
Given that Office has real trouble opening versions of documents from save with older versions, and in general the quality of Microsofts products are utter crap, I entirely believe this is the development process they use.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally, someone knows why the value is not a multiple of 4!
:)
Why am I not surprised the summary had errors?
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic, but Paul Allen was/is a programmer before anything else. Not only that, but as far as I know he was screwed over pretty hard by Bill and Steve to churn out code while his health suffered, and even though he is still wealthy today the other two took the lions share of spoils. It angers me when I see mangement abuse technical brilliance like that. I can just picture Paul Allen working 12-hour days back then while Steve and Bill talked business and told Allen how hard their job is because they have to "think outside the square" and "look at the big picture". To which they add "so, when are you going to be finished with that code then?".
It's true though, many business types I have spoken to can't understand why open source software is free, and often pay for commercial equivalents that aren't nearly as good.
But by doing that, the OPs job goes from maintaining reliable systems to maintaining, ah, Microsoft ones. A job is something you do for the vast majority of your waking life - it helps to have a job you don't loathe going to. I'd say that is at least one reason the OP wants to keep their LAMP systems.
.NET is Microsoft-only (OK, there is Mono, but I'm not familiar with how well it works. They are always playing catch up with Microsoft anyhow). Mac OSX and Linux are being increasingly used on the desktop. I know so many people who have switched from Windows to Mac in the last year, and it's not unresonalbe to think that might have some effect on what businesses purchase. .NET?
I sure as hell would fight for the same thing if I was in their position. Having non-technical management impose a technical platform makes about as much sense as the IT staff insiting management change their company logo to one of their choosing, split the company up into three or four sub-companies focussed on different market sectors, hire a new CFO and launch an IPO. It's simply not their area of expertise. Even if the descison comes from a CTO (assuming they studied business information systems or something similar as a student, not computer science) they are unlikely to fully appreciate the diference between maintaing, developing for, and supporting an open-source Linux system as opposed to a closed-source Microsoft one. If the descision did come from someone who should be able to make sound technical descisions, then I would at least want to discuss it with them before going ahead with it.
It's not about forcing Linux on anyone, it's that the OP believes that the LAMP setup is a better choice, and it's their job to make sure they have the best development platform possible - not to just do what management says.
For the OP, some good reasons not to switch:
1)
2) LAMP is free. Software licencing costs disappear. If the demeand for your software soars, you licencing costs won't soar along with it.
3) Libraries libraries libraries. When programming in Python for example, more often than not I can find a library which takes much of the hard work out of some application, so I can concentrate on the application itself. I don't know if this is the case with
Granted, most PHB couldn't care less about 1), since if 90% of their market use Windows then they really don't care about Mac or Linux. It's sad but often true. Still, it is an important added bonus, and if these system becmore more popular in the future you'll be most likely screwed if you're using Microsoft technologies.
You *can* sell management on Linux. Some other points to ease their mind:
5) You can get support contracts from Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical etc. Maybe print out and show them what they actally get for their money.
6) You have technical reasons why you prefer Linux over Microsoft. Try and make them understand that things will run smoother, applications will be developed more quickly and reliably if you don't switch.
Japanese does.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
If it's your first night to Error Club, you must produce an error!
You must be new here...
I've actually seen that game in an arcade! Seriously - the machine has two keyboards attached to it!
isn't it a carrot?
Wow, you wrote that?! I've come across that code in lectures (in Japan too, so there your code is used around the world!).
:)
Nice stuff. Would be interesting to see that ported to other OO languages
No no, Twisted is great, just has some initial learning curve (but once you get over that, it makes network programming easy). Either way, if a PHP progammer moves to Ruby or to Python, the world is a better place.
I'm living overseas at the moment, so it's nice to keep in contact with friends back home. Sure, there is many other ways to do that, and this is just another. Still not sure I like the wall concept though... makes it hard to have conversations. I'm not sure whether I should be writing on my wall or theirs.
Do you know of Axiom? Storm seems to have an API very much like it. Storm looks great, well done!
http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodAxiom
Wow... If you're serious, that's impressive.
Those are usually people from other fields (e.g. graphic design, marketing, business/commerce) that have developed some web sites or applications as part of their job and like to call themselves programmers. It's not that they don't have skills, but they aren't the kind of people writing your base tools that other developers use, for example. Just look for a comp sci or similar education, and some decent work experience developing real software and you should be OK.
damn, you beat me to the joke. And a mainframe CPU, too. What I don't understand, is why Java is where it is and Python, Ruby or Perl aren't there in it's place.
I sure as hell would rather write Python server-side applications than Java.
Haha. Good one :)
No Mac version :( I sure hope someone ports it! (From the No Mutants Allowed FAQ on Fallout 3 http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=37329)
I agree. Seems like Wine has sent a few emails so far bagering them about progress. Even if there's no legal issues to sort out, they still need time to clean it up and write some docs and comments on their changes to make it release worthy.
Given that Office has real trouble opening versions of documents from save with older versions, and in general the quality of Microsofts products are utter crap, I entirely believe this is the development process they use.
I can't think of one either, but I have to go and refill my coffee... this coffee tastes like sh*t!
In this context, it really makes sense though. I suppose many people would invest based on what others are doing - especially the "great unwashed" :)
[ducks]
OK, maybe I better not post here anymore either.