A typical day involving a group of, lets say 4 for arguments sake, engineers in the same room: 1) 7:30 one of the engineers is an early bird, and likes to get some stuff done in private before the office gets noisy, he gets a couple of productive hours of coding done 2) 9:30 two more engineers wander in, they have a quick discussion (including the first) about how the widgets aren't quite fitting in well with the bargles. 3) Inspired by the conversation, one of the engineers realises what the solution, and spends half an hour hacking out a prototype solution. 4) 10:00 the fourth engineer arrives, and suggests coffee. While standing around the coffee machine, the engineers discuss how frustrated with their manager they are. One of them suggests a reason for his apparently strange actions. This gets shot down, but all 4 begin to understand the situation they're in a bit better. 5) 12:00 the early bird engineer is getting hungry. He suggests lunch, they grab their manager on the way out. They spend lunch discussing how best to design a rocket to reach LKO in KSP. It's not particularly productive in terms of their project, but they're now closer to each other. 6) Come 14:00 one of the engineers is getting frustrated, he calls his colleague over to rubber duck an idea off. The two figure out a good solution. 7) The engineer who prototyped out the solution earlier in the day has come up with a better, more concrete solution, he sends out a patch for review. 8) At 5 in the evening, the early bird is about to head home. The afore mentioned engineer quickly notes "hey, I have that patch out, and you're kinda best positioned to review it, could you take a quick stare, it should only take 10 minutes". They have a quick sit down discussion, and go over the patch. 9) Come the evening the patch is landed, as are several others. Everyone heads home
Now lets say one is in Belgium, one in SV, one in NY, and one is in australia: 1) The engineer in Australia gets up at 11:00 knowing that he stands a chance of talking to his colleagues if he gets up late. He gets to work at 12:00. 2) He spends 5 hours working on why the widgets aren't fitting with the bargles. 3) He Skype calls the engineer in Belgium, who's just got up. He chats about his frustration, and annoyance that the engineer in NY hasn't solved this yet. He goes to bed frustrated with a colleague who he rarely speaks to. 4) The engineer in Belgium doesn't really consider this his problem, he's too busy working on the Flailing module. He submits a couple of patches, and eventually calls the guys in america. 5) They have a brief discussion about how the Flailing module is working, and how it fits in. 6) The NY engineer works on integrating the Flailing module, not realising that his design for the widgets isn't fitting well with the bargles. He expresses frustration at the Australian engineer for not getting the bargle module to work well. 7) The SV engineer sympathises, but is too frustrated with a problem that's at the back of his mind. He's been staring at a screen for several hours now, and his brain isn't working so well.
Basically, the problem is not anything to do with "good people" or not. It's to do with whether they communicate effectively. Giving each other screen breaks. Allowing each other to bounce ideas off each other. Thinking as a group, and coming up with silly plans that turn out to work well. Just general group cohesion... All of this is lost by having people spread across different buildings, let alone different time zones.
Remote working is simply less effective, there's no way to recover this lost work.
I also object to "because they grew up in a disposable world". It's not because we grew up in a disposable world that we don't mend things. Instead, it's because we don't (and can't) mend things that we are in a disposable world. You can't mend things any more - they're much much much too complex to be able to do it without incredibly fancy machinery, generally that's custom to each item you'd want to mend. And that's even assuming you understood what the thing was doing, and why.
The problem is that it only added explicit language support for one of the many different ways we abstracted things, and did so at the cost of all of the others.
It stopped people thinking about how best to solve the problem, and made them just solve it by (as the author says) anthropomorphising everything.
No, it's not manager to engineer communication that's the problem. It's engineer to engineer communication. That is far far more important, and the thing that gets lost.
Given that the premise of the article is "in order to get hold of the other 95% of programmers who are NOT in america" only counting US states is somewhat disingenuous.
No, they want you there so that they can talk to you, have face to face meetings with you, and have casual chats. Because all of these things are where actual decisions get made. Having one half hour Skype chat a day, in the 1-2 hours that you're online at the same time just does not cut it for getting everyone pulling in the same direction.
No, definitely not exactly this. Remote working really doesn't work well. Especially remote working across 8 time zones (i.e. you only actually get to chat to each other for 1-2 hours a day)
The thing is, + will be compiled into something useful on all platforms the compiler targets. Intrinsics will only become something useful on the platforms they are for. That's why they're closer to assembler than + is.
Yep, it's really simple - they've pushed the price too high.
If the price were $5 a showing, I'd be there every single week, probably twice a week. Since the price is $12 or so now, which means $24 for my wife and I, it's not worth taking a punt on movies that could be mediocre.
Generally, misusing your own computer system is not a criminal offense unless you really go to extremes.
Yes, but they weren't, were they - they were misusing millions of 3rd party's computers to create a DDoS They were misusing the network (yes, that's a computer system) They were misusing Sony's computer (by feeding it bogus data until it became unresponsive).
What's especially weird about this article is that neither Branson nor Musk have ever said that their space ventures are anything other than a method of making them a bunch of profit...
So what you're saying is "because lots of the power we have available now is produced by burning coal, we shouldn't try to produce power in the future by doing something else"?
I mean, of course the wind turbines get produced by burning coal - that's so that future wind turbines will be produced by drawing electricity from a grid powered by wind turbines (and tidal power stations, and hydro plants, and solar plants, and nuclear, and...)
+1 on Power Grid. It really is an excellent game, and as you say, very cleverly designed, so that those that are doing well are reigned in a little, while those who are lagging are given a little hand.
Monopoly is actually probably the single worst board game I can think of. There's a dominant strategy, which means that the game (assuming everyone plays to the dominant strategy) just comes down to luck. It takes hours. After the first 2-3 rounds of the board there's effectively no strategy at all in the game.
Seriously, literally the worst board game I can think of.
The right to bear arms doesn't give you the right to actually use those arms. Just having the right to carry a gun doesn't implicitly give you the right to commit a murder (whether in self defence or not).
Yep, this is my experience too - 2 people to an office, 3 at a real push. That's just enough that you can have the occasional casual conversation, rubber duck ideas, have a screen break, etc, but not enough that it's just constant noise.
See, I don't buy that the latter is "doing it well" either.
People need time not looking at a screen. They need it regularly. In an environment where you're 2 to an office, that's as simple as turning round and briefly having a conversation with your co-worker. Often that conversation is rubber ducking an idea, or a problem. Often they're extremely productive conversations. You can't have that kind of environment if you rigidly enforce silence. You also can't have a productive office if you let people have those conversations in an open office space.
Solution - don't do open office spaces, they're terrible for software engineers.
This... This is by far the best environment I've ever worked in. Each of us with our own individual office (or two to an office at most), and then a communal area with sofas and the whole wall being whiteboard. The communal area lets people have flash meetings and rubber duck with each other. The individual offices let people get on with their job without a bunch of distractions. I'll admit, it takes a fair amount of space, but oh boy is it worth it for the productivity.
No, not in every case, infact in most cases if you are unlikely to blow over the limit on the station breathalizer you won't be taken to the station at all, its a waste of time for the officers, the custody Sargent and everyone else involved because the CPS can't prosecute the case anyway without the station units reading.
Of course it's not a waste of time - that time was spent making sure that someone who was drunk was not driving. That's an extremely valuable use of police time.
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It absolutely does get lost.
A typical day involving a group of, lets say 4 for arguments sake, engineers in the same room:
1) 7:30 one of the engineers is an early bird, and likes to get some stuff done in private before the office gets noisy, he gets a couple of productive hours of coding done
2) 9:30 two more engineers wander in, they have a quick discussion (including the first) about how the widgets aren't quite fitting in well with the bargles.
3) Inspired by the conversation, one of the engineers realises what the solution, and spends half an hour hacking out a prototype solution.
4) 10:00 the fourth engineer arrives, and suggests coffee. While standing around the coffee machine, the engineers discuss how frustrated with their manager they are. One of them suggests a reason for his apparently strange actions. This gets shot down, but all 4 begin to understand the situation they're in a bit better.
5) 12:00 the early bird engineer is getting hungry. He suggests lunch, they grab their manager on the way out. They spend lunch discussing how best to design a rocket to reach LKO in KSP. It's not particularly productive in terms of their project, but they're now closer to each other.
6) Come 14:00 one of the engineers is getting frustrated, he calls his colleague over to rubber duck an idea off. The two figure out a good solution.
7) The engineer who prototyped out the solution earlier in the day has come up with a better, more concrete solution, he sends out a patch for review.
8) At 5 in the evening, the early bird is about to head home. The afore mentioned engineer quickly notes "hey, I have that patch out, and you're kinda best positioned to review it, could you take a quick stare, it should only take 10 minutes". They have a quick sit down discussion, and go over the patch.
9) Come the evening the patch is landed, as are several others. Everyone heads home
Now lets say one is in Belgium, one in SV, one in NY, and one is in australia:
1) The engineer in Australia gets up at 11:00 knowing that he stands a chance of talking to his colleagues if he gets up late. He gets to work at 12:00.
2) He spends 5 hours working on why the widgets aren't fitting with the bargles.
3) He Skype calls the engineer in Belgium, who's just got up. He chats about his frustration, and annoyance that the engineer in NY hasn't solved this yet. He goes to bed frustrated with a colleague who he rarely speaks to.
4) The engineer in Belgium doesn't really consider this his problem, he's too busy working on the Flailing module. He submits a couple of patches, and eventually calls the guys in america.
5) They have a brief discussion about how the Flailing module is working, and how it fits in.
6) The NY engineer works on integrating the Flailing module, not realising that his design for the widgets isn't fitting well with the bargles. He expresses frustration at the Australian engineer for not getting the bargle module to work well.
7) The SV engineer sympathises, but is too frustrated with a problem that's at the back of his mind. He's been staring at a screen for several hours now, and his brain isn't working so well.
Basically, the problem is not anything to do with "good people" or not. It's to do with whether they communicate effectively. Giving each other screen breaks. Allowing each other to bounce ideas off each other. Thinking as a group, and coming up with silly plans that turn out to work well. Just general group cohesion... All of this is lost by having people spread across different buildings, let alone different time zones.
Remote working is simply less effective, there's no way to recover this lost work.
I also object to "because they grew up in a disposable world". It's not because we grew up in a disposable world that we don't mend things. Instead, it's because we don't (and can't) mend things that we are in a disposable world. You can't mend things any more - they're much much much too complex to be able to do it without incredibly fancy machinery, generally that's custom to each item you'd want to mend. And that's even assuming you understood what the thing was doing, and why.
The problem is that it only added explicit language support for one of the many different ways we abstracted things, and did so at the cost of all of the others.
It stopped people thinking about how best to solve the problem, and made them just solve it by (as the author says) anthropomorphising everything.
Nor does encapsulation mean what he thinks it mans. The idea that you can't do encapsulation unless you have OOP is completely flawed.
No, it's not manager to engineer communication that's the problem. It's engineer to engineer communication. That is far far more important, and the thing that gets lost.
Given that the premise of the article is "in order to get hold of the other 95% of programmers who are NOT in america" only counting US states is somewhat disingenuous.
No, they want you there so that they can talk to you, have face to face meetings with you, and have casual chats. Because all of these things are where actual decisions get made. Having one half hour Skype chat a day, in the 1-2 hours that you're online at the same time just does not cut it for getting everyone pulling in the same direction.
No, definitely not exactly this. Remote working really doesn't work well. Especially remote working across 8 time zones (i.e. you only actually get to chat to each other for 1-2 hours a day)
The thing is, + will be compiled into something useful on all platforms the compiler targets. Intrinsics will only become something useful on the platforms they are for. That's why they're closer to assembler than + is.
Yep, it's really simple - they've pushed the price too high.
If the price were $5 a showing, I'd be there every single week, probably twice a week. Since the price is $12 or so now, which means $24 for my wife and I, it's not worth taking a punt on movies that could be mediocre.
Generally, misusing your own computer system is not a criminal offense unless you really go to extremes.
Yes, but they weren't, were they - they were misusing millions of 3rd party's computers to create a DDoS
They were misusing the network (yes, that's a computer system)
They were misusing Sony's computer (by feeding it bogus data until it became unresponsive).
No, missuse of a computer system is a criminal offence. And yes, there was effectively destruction of property, and you heard of it.
What's especially weird about this article is that neither Branson nor Musk have ever said that their space ventures are anything other than a method of making them a bunch of profit...
So what you're saying is "because lots of the power we have available now is produced by burning coal, we shouldn't try to produce power in the future by doing something else"?
I mean, of course the wind turbines get produced by burning coal - that's so that future wind turbines will be produced by drawing electricity from a grid powered by wind turbines (and tidal power stations, and hydro plants, and solar plants, and nuclear, and ...)
I'd suggest 3 or 4 is optimum.
+1 on Power Grid. It really is an excellent game, and as you say, very cleverly designed, so that those that are doing well are reigned in a little, while those who are lagging are given a little hand.
Monopoly is actually probably the single worst board game I can think of. There's a dominant strategy, which means that the game (assuming everyone plays to the dominant strategy) just comes down to luck. It takes hours. After the first 2-3 rounds of the board there's effectively no strategy at all in the game.
Seriously, literally the worst board game I can think of.
The right to bear arms doesn't give you the right to actually use those arms. Just having the right to carry a gun doesn't implicitly give you the right to commit a murder (whether in self defence or not).
Actually, the UK already have a hypersonic air breathing engine that's not enormous and bulky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
If the economy is tanking, why is the office space expensive?
Hint - that would be because the economy is actually up.
Yep, this is my experience too - 2 people to an office, 3 at a real push. That's just enough that you can have the occasional casual conversation, rubber duck ideas, have a screen break, etc, but not enough that it's just constant noise.
See, I don't buy that the latter is "doing it well" either.
People need time not looking at a screen. They need it regularly. In an environment where you're 2 to an office, that's as simple as turning round and briefly having a conversation with your co-worker. Often that conversation is rubber ducking an idea, or a problem. Often they're extremely productive conversations. You can't have that kind of environment if you rigidly enforce silence. You also can't have a productive office if you let people have those conversations in an open office space.
Solution - don't do open office spaces, they're terrible for software engineers.
This... This is by far the best environment I've ever worked in. Each of us with our own individual office (or two to an office at most), and then a communal area with sofas and the whole wall being whiteboard. The communal area lets people have flash meetings and rubber duck with each other. The individual offices let people get on with their job without a bunch of distractions. I'll admit, it takes a fair amount of space, but oh boy is it worth it for the productivity.
No, not in every case, infact in most cases if you are unlikely to blow over the limit on the station breathalizer you won't be taken to the station at all, its a waste of time for the officers, the custody Sargent and everyone else involved because the CPS can't prosecute the case anyway without the station units reading.
Of course it's not a waste of time - that time was spent making sure that someone who was drunk was not driving. That's an extremely valuable use of police time.
It's pretty common in the US. Crazily, for a while, it was even common to have to pay to receive SMSes, which you couldn't even opt out of receiving.