You are in a bad situation, with respect to fitness. You are quite right that work and sleep, and a bit of down time, must come before an exercise regime.
The danger will be that as weeks of this turn into months, and you haven't exercised, that you'll become so lethargic that you can't bring yourself to exercise when you get the chance
My recommendation is that you make a point of each week doing at least some exercise, however light. Better to go for a walk around the block, than to resolve to run a mile, and not do it.
Even better, would be to get some small exercise every day. If at all possible, try to go for a 20 minute, or even 10 minute, walk at lunch time. It will keep you in shape (somewhat), and clear the head for the rest of the day.
Eventually, as your body clock adjusts to your new schedule, you will be able to do some more demanding exercises, but that time will come a lot sooner if you keep doing regular light exercise.
Which is fine if you want nice little drones that can't think for themselves,..
A good manager deals with this problem by ensuring that specifications are complete, accurate, unambiguous and testable. Then they can be passed on to the drones. Then use a good metrics system to manage the drones.
I was in the 80's, and it wasn't a hacker culture at all - the Waterfall Model (sighhh..) ruled. I was once asked in an interview - "Do you believe that there's one way to do things?" (the right answer was "yes"). People got rich selling waterfall oriented products, people got promoted by blustering about "doing it R*I*G*H*T", project failures were attributed to lack of process. A good programmer produced 10 lines of code per day.
It's easy to see where software's gone wrong. The waterfall model was abandoned and the industry just started banging out lots of useless software which often fails.
Bring it back, I say!! But this time, we just need better tools, better processes, better managers and better programmers. Especially tools, tools, tools, tools, tools....
a standard naming convention and make sure bosses and managers enforce it.
Won't work. Never has, never will. People won't comply. Bosses won't enforce. Some will make a good faith effort for a while. More will make a good faith effort, but get it wrong. Some will ignore it. Threatening memos will be issued from managers. Then it will emerge that one of the memos came from a manager who doesn't use the conventions himself (because he's "too busy"). The people who invested (wasted) time in understanding the system, and using it, will see that the they're efforts are futile because of the amount of non-compliance, and give up. Then the company will be left with a minor portion of the files in this system. 3 years later people will wonder "what the hell" these bizaar files are, along with the 17 other naming conventions they see around (and peoples who's names are on those files will look silly), and then someone will say "we need a standard naming convention and make sure bosses and managers enforce it."
I'm reminded of one of Joel's chestnuts - Whenever you have two incompatible systems, and introduce a third system to unify them, all you end up with is three incomptible systems. (or words to that effect).
Another lesson could be that when your client feels uncertainty and doubt, actively make this a topic and ask how that feeling can be alleviated.
That is a seriously good suggestion. I usually try to alleviate "uncertainty and doubt" by being proactive in communication, (as do most professional people), but in some situations it is best to make it an open topic.
Yeah I expect "The Year of Good Enough Hardware" will coincide with the 10th anniversary of the "Year of Linux on the Desktop".
That was my first reaction to this piece too... we've skipped the YOLOTD
We didn't need fast computers for everyday computing and then we started indexing the entire hard drive... previews..youtube..etc..
Your list is pretty much all the features I've discovered in Vista over about 6 months. They make a big difference to my productivity. "Search" on the desktop is as important as "Search" on the web. Sure, we lived full and productive lives without it, but once we've got it, we can't go back. Still, I'm a computer geek and power user. I doubt that these features are being used by average Joe's out there. If they do start to use them, then the "good enough" revolution won't happen any time soon. Also, the "good enough" revolution won't happen until Linux actually is "good enough" for average Joe. "Is good enough", not "nearly good enough", as it's been for the last 10 years.
ONCE THE REQUIREMENTS ARE LOCKED DOWN you do not accept changes to them.
I would add.. do not let the customer increase the process overhead either
This is unusual, but I once had a customer who was actually more interested in the process than product! As I got stuck into the project, he'd frequently drop by and demand a "process" item, such as a plan, a demo, a design document, etc. Initially I responded positively, but that just increased his demands, until it was seriously interferring with the project, and, incredibly, he knew it! When I started resisting the demands (in order to get on with the job) he accused me of trying to "hide something" from him.
That was an extreme case, but the lesson is - treat process as a contract, as much as the functional requirements. If they ask for more, just say "no"
people that should be having more kids (kind, intelligent, financially responsible) are not but those that should not (lazy, stupid people, with anachronistic religious views)
Feeding the trolls, but that's too big a whopper to let slip. Look around anywhere - your work, the news, your family and friends. You will see that people who practice mainstream religion are more likely to be kind, intelligent and financially responsible than to be lazy and stupid.
Time for a mature, enlightened debate on climate change, by people with thorough knowledge of the field who don't parrot long-discredited bullshit at all!
OK - I got a laugh!
However, you actually raise a serious issue, ie. the proposition that scientific matters should only be discussed by those qualified. This is a very old position. There are always people in other fields (eg. the arts, economics, history, religion..) who have similar attitudes to popular debates. Nevertheless, we see that over time the general population will not stay out of the debates, and also tends to "get it right" eventually. The alternative is to leave all decisions in the hands of experts - but experts are fallible, and often driven by career concerns, fads and ego. We are never able to select a "panel of experts" to trust on anything. It's when the debates involve common people that the experts are forced to argue their opinions in simple terms, and forced to face competition amongst the general population, rather than in the academies.
I personally learned a few new facts about climate change, and the principles of the debate, that I had not seen before, from reading this forum. And that came from people who do not claim to be expert.
I think that what a couple wise men said about democracy, would also apply to popular scientific debate.."You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time", and "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." (Churchill)
>> Sorry, English is not my first language and I was a bit tired.;-)
Hey, welcome! - you're doing great:)
I was actually going to respond to your first statement ("like any hobbiest or professional for that matter, doesn't want to use Vista."). I use Vista for web development, and have been very happy with it. It's got a couple of annoying glitches, but overall works better, and looks better, than XP. The main thing I like is the "search" feature. I use it all the time, and it saves me from having to be really carefull about where I save things, because I trust that "search" will find them anyway. The file explorer is also better. This is the sort of stuff that actually makes a difference to a developer.
I don't think he worries about the cost of upgrading,...
Yep, I'm sure that's what it's about. He's been successfully running his business for 15 years without having to think about his computers. He want's to think about the computers for a short time now, spend whatever money it takes, and then not think about them for another 15 years.
Microsoft has a lot of cash which is why it is still so strong. It's current products are coming under increasing pressure from open source, the web etc. So this may not last forever...
That sounded plausible in 1999, but 10 years later it has the same ring as YOLOTD.
That's where "experience" comes in. With experience, we learn to write the more general solution almost as quickly as the shortest-path. We have our naming conventions memorised, we've got a few favourite design patterns, and we get a "feel" for when to refactor - for when refactoring will expedite the initial development, not just the maintenance.
With experience, we also learn to avoid fancy features which complicate the code, thus getting the best of both worlds - faster development, and better structure.
We also learn when to leave well enough alone - when a bit of ugly, repetitive, unfactored code isn't doing any harm, and is worth 0 time improving.
But I've always had a dislike for excessive time spent on building the more general solution, and I've come across several projects which were nearly killed by it.
I used KDE 4.1 for a while on a computer from 2004 - 2.4 Ghz, 1GB, 128 MB graphics card. It was as smooth as anything - it seemed to run even faster than KDE 3.5. I went back to KDE 3.5 though, because the 4.1 tended to crash. Apart from the crashing, yes, it was a very beautiful, usable desktop (even on old hardware).
That's why I (and you) bothered to format our responses.
Re:One thing I have noticed
on
Tech Vs. Business?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
In other words, since I was not running around all day fixing things it meant I was not doing anything.
I actually had a similar experience doing software projects for an engineering firm. Despite their strength in electrical engineering, they had the delusion that software is "easy" - because they'd all written a few programs - so when I was given a task and completed it, without fuss, a few months later, they thought little of it. Another programmer, with a background in engineering, was always have problems, and slipping, because of "unforseeable" problems with software tools, and interfaces. As he first of all ranted about his problems, then fixed them, I could see the bosses thinking "there's a real programmer".:).. Eventually they booted me, kept him, and have continued to have "unforseeable" software problems.
Whenever my mum goes to a site through a google search she says that google "has" the information, as if the site in the query result is part of google.
Slashdot Mirror
Did they also warn you about the drop bears, and hoop snakes?
You are in a bad situation, with respect to fitness. You are quite right that work and sleep, and a bit of down time, must come before an exercise regime.
The danger will be that as weeks of this turn into months, and you haven't exercised, that you'll become so lethargic that you can't bring yourself to exercise when you get the chance
My recommendation is that you make a point of each week doing at least some exercise, however light. Better to go for a walk around the block, than to resolve to run a mile, and not do it.
Even better, would be to get some small exercise every day. If at all possible, try to go for a 20 minute, or even 10 minute, walk at lunch time. It will keep you in shape (somewhat), and clear the head for the rest of the day.
Eventually, as your body clock adjusts to your new schedule, you will be able to do some more demanding exercises, but that time will come a lot sooner if you keep doing regular light exercise.
A good manager deals with this problem by ensuring that specifications are complete, accurate, unambiguous and testable. Then they can be passed on to the drones. Then use a good metrics system to manage the drones.
I was in the 80's, and it wasn't a hacker culture at all - the Waterfall Model (sighhh..) ruled. I was once asked in an interview - "Do you believe that there's one way to do things?" (the right answer was "yes"). People got rich selling waterfall oriented products, people got promoted by blustering about "doing it R*I*G*H*T", project failures were attributed to lack of process. A good programmer produced 10 lines of code per day.
It's easy to see where software's gone wrong. The waterfall model was abandoned and the industry just started banging out lots of useless software which often fails.
Bring it back, I say!! But this time, we just need better tools, better processes, better managers and better programmers. Especially tools, tools, tools, tools, tools....
I'm ashamed to say that they were right.
A nice story, and very apt to this discussion! Thanks.
Won't work. Never has, never will. People won't comply. Bosses won't enforce. Some will make a good faith effort for a while. More will make a good faith effort, but get it wrong. Some will ignore it. Threatening memos will be issued from managers. Then it will emerge that one of the memos came from a manager who doesn't use the conventions himself (because he's "too busy"). The people who invested (wasted) time in understanding the system, and using it, will see that the they're efforts are futile because of the amount of non-compliance, and give up. Then the company will be left with a minor portion of the files in this system. 3 years later people will wonder "what the hell" these bizaar files are, along with the 17 other naming conventions they see around (and peoples who's names are on those files will look silly), and then someone will say "we need a standard naming convention and make sure bosses and managers enforce it."
I'm reminded of one of Joel's chestnuts - Whenever you have two incompatible systems, and introduce a third system to unify them, all you end up with is three incomptible systems. (or words to that effect).
Dame Edna
Yep - device drivers - the killer app for Linux since 1991.
Another lesson could be that when your client feels uncertainty and doubt, actively make this a topic and ask how that feeling can be alleviated.
That is a seriously good suggestion. I usually try to alleviate "uncertainty and doubt" by being proactive in communication, (as do most professional people), but in some situations it is best to make it an open topic.
Yeah I expect "The Year of Good Enough Hardware" will coincide with the 10th anniversary of the "Year of Linux on the Desktop".
That was my first reaction to this piece too... we've skipped the YOLOTD
We didn't need fast computers for everyday computing and then we started indexing the entire hard drive... previews..youtube..etc..
Your list is pretty much all the features I've discovered in Vista over about 6 months. They make a big difference to my productivity. "Search" on the desktop is as important as "Search" on the web. Sure, we lived full and productive lives without it, but once we've got it, we can't go back. Still, I'm a computer geek and power user. I doubt that these features are being used by average Joe's out there. If they do start to use them, then the "good enough" revolution won't happen any time soon. Also, the "good enough" revolution won't happen until Linux actually is "good enough" for average Joe. "Is good enough", not "nearly good enough", as it's been for the last 10 years.
ONCE THE REQUIREMENTS ARE LOCKED DOWN you do not accept changes to them.
I would add.. do not let the customer increase the process overhead either
This is unusual, but I once had a customer who was actually more interested in the process than product! As I got stuck into the project, he'd frequently drop by and demand a "process" item, such as a plan, a demo, a design document, etc. Initially I responded positively, but that just increased his demands, until it was seriously interferring with the project, and, incredibly, he knew it! When I started resisting the demands (in order to get on with the job) he accused me of trying to "hide something" from him.
That was an extreme case, but the lesson is - treat process as a contract, as much as the functional requirements. If they ask for more, just say "no"
people that should be having more kids (kind, intelligent, financially responsible) are not but those that should not (lazy, stupid people, with anachronistic religious views)
Feeding the trolls, but that's too big a whopper to let slip. Look around anywhere - your work, the news, your family and friends. You will see that people who practice mainstream religion are more likely to be kind, intelligent and financially responsible than to be lazy and stupid.
i love coding with my boss in my shoulder pseudo-auditing my code and constantly reminding me the project schedule...
Hi! Looking for a job? The last guy was real no-hoper.
...is not a country.
Thankyou! Nor is South-East Asia a state. I know - I can see it from my balcony.
Time for a mature, enlightened debate on climate change, by people with thorough knowledge of the field who don't parrot long-discredited bullshit at all!
OK - I got a laugh!
However, you actually raise a serious issue, ie. the proposition that scientific matters should only be discussed by those qualified. This is a very old position. There are always people in other fields (eg. the arts, economics, history, religion..) who have similar attitudes to popular debates. Nevertheless, we see that over time the general population will not stay out of the debates, and also tends to "get it right" eventually. The alternative is to leave all decisions in the hands of experts - but experts are fallible, and often driven by career concerns, fads and ego. We are never able to select a "panel of experts" to trust on anything. It's when the debates involve common people that the experts are forced to argue their opinions in simple terms, and forced to face competition amongst the general population, rather than in the academies.
I personally learned a few new facts about climate change, and the principles of the debate, that I had not seen before, from reading this forum. And that came from people who do not claim to be expert.
I think that what a couple wise men said about democracy, would also apply to popular scientific debate.."You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time", and "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." (Churchill)
>> Sorry, English is not my first language and I was a bit tired. ;-)
Hey, welcome! - you're doing great :)
I was actually going to respond to your first statement ("like any hobbiest or professional for that matter, doesn't want to use Vista."). I use Vista for web development, and have been very happy with it. It's got a couple of annoying glitches, but overall works better, and looks better, than XP. The main thing I like is the "search" feature. I use it all the time, and it saves me from having to be really carefull about where I save things, because I trust that "search" will find them anyway. The file explorer is also better. This is the sort of stuff that actually makes a difference to a developer.
Yep, I'm sure that's what it's about. He's been successfully running his business for 15 years without having to think about his computers. He want's to think about the computers for a short time now, spend whatever money it takes, and then not think about them for another 15 years.
After pink ponies, the only place to go was down.
Pink ponies was /.s "Yesterday", "Mona Lisa", "E=MC2", "spaghetti harvest", 1492, etc... We were lucky to be alive at the same time.
Microsoft has a lot of cash which is why it is still so strong. It's current products are coming under increasing pressure from open source, the web etc. So this may not last forever...
That sounded plausible in 1999, but 10 years later it has the same ring as YOLOTD.
Or did I just fall for April Fool's? :)
That's where "experience" comes in. With experience, we learn to write the more general solution almost as quickly as the shortest-path. We have our naming conventions memorised, we've got a few favourite design patterns, and we get a "feel" for when to refactor - for when refactoring will expedite the initial development, not just the maintenance.
With experience, we also learn to avoid fancy features which complicate the code, thus getting the best of both worlds - faster development, and better structure.
We also learn when to leave well enough alone - when a bit of ugly, repetitive, unfactored code isn't doing any harm, and is worth 0 time improving.
But I've always had a dislike for excessive time spent on building the more general solution, and I've come across several projects which were nearly killed by it.
I used KDE 4.1 for a while on a computer from 2004 - 2.4 Ghz, 1GB, 128 MB graphics card. It was as smooth as anything - it seemed to run even faster than KDE 3.5. I went back to KDE 3.5 though, because the 4.1 tended to crash. Apart from the crashing, yes, it was a very beautiful, usable desktop (even on old hardware).
Did you understand the headline - "Some of Australia's Tubes are About to Be Filtered"?
Yes? - you're a geek!!. No? - Congratulations, now get off slashdot, and spend some time with real people, before it happens to you.
And, have you ever heard anyone in real life refer to the internet at "tubes"?
Didn't HP, Dell and Walmart offer retail computers with Linux? The market has had it's chance to vote for Linux.
User Experience
User Experience
User Experience
That's why I (and you) bothered to format our responses.
I actually had a similar experience doing software projects for an engineering firm. Despite their strength in electrical engineering, they had the delusion that software is "easy" - because they'd all written a few programs - so when I was given a task and completed it, without fuss, a few months later, they thought little of it. Another programmer, with a background in engineering, was always have problems, and slipping, because of "unforseeable" problems with software tools, and interfaces. As he first of all ranted about his problems, then fixed them, I could see the bosses thinking "there's a real programmer". :).. Eventually they booted me, kept him, and have continued to have "unforseeable" software problems.
So, it's not just "business"!
Whenever my mum goes to a site through a google search she says that google "has" the information, as if the site in the query result is part of google.