I can understand the NIH process taking 9 months, but you'd think Bill's foundation would be a lot quicker. A malaria vaccine is probably in the top 5 things to solve. You'd think Bill would take notice and write the check himself.
I would have thought that one of the US Military (to protect service personnel), Bill Gates (isn't his foundation working on a malaria vaccine too?), or governments in malaria regions would fund this. The desired $250K is nothing for such sources.
I worked with a guy who understood pointers. He was a brilliant guy. He was also a terrible programmer.
Being able to understand pointers is orthogonal to being someone who write intelligible code.
I've hired guys to do C, Java, perl, and ruby among others...
And, for the non-C hires, you probably hired the ones who just so happened to have the right aptitude anyway, i.e., they could do pointers if they did C. The "true" programmers will always filter through to those hiring. His point is that Java schools make the hiring problem harder by not filtering out those without the right aptitude. Hence your examples do nothing to invalidate his point.
So he starts off with stuff about how he's feeling old and the surest sign of it is bitching about "kids these days".
You need to have read more of Joel's writing. That's just his irreverent style.
Got to that point and decided that it's an obviously unsupportable premise. Read a little bit more, and my takeaway is that Joel doesn't know how to spot a good programmer unless they're working in C.
His premise is that, in order to be a good programmer, you need the right kind of metal aptitude which is a you-either-have-it-or-you-don't thing and not a skill that can be learned. While there may be other ways to test for that aptitude, his claim is that one sure-fire way to test for it is the ability to understand pointers. (He makes that point even more explicit here.)
And, among today's languages that are in use, the only one that really requires you to understand pointers is C. (Many years ago, it might have been Pascal, but Pascal is pretty much a dead language.)
And [C] absolutely does not require me to understand how the processor works.
Well then you're not writing that has to run fast.
Consider
this talk. Yes, it's on C++, but the point is that, at least for code that's used a lot (like the page-display code at Facebook), shaving 1% off the running time saves the company an "engineer's salary for 10 years."
In order to achieve that level of performance, you really do need to understand what's going on at the CPU level.
Tied plans are hiding the true costs of the smartphones Americans...
If carriers sold phones at their true cost -- and therefore very few people bought them -- perhaps it would force the smartphone manufacturers to lower their costs.
[M]any dealers charge $200 dollars to transfer your ownership....
What? But the dealer has no legal role in car ownership after the car is initially purchased. What happens if the new (or old) owner doesn't pay? (I've sold two previous cars and never paid the dealership anything.)
I agree with the annoyance part, but I also find that it's far easier to glance at a watch than pull my phone out. While I don't wear this particular watch, I wear one like it.
An additional benefit is that I can be sitting at a table and glance down at my watch more stealthily than looking at my wrist.
If Apple sells an iWatch, I hope it has a detachable band so I can swap the watch into a belt clip like the one shown.
On the other hand replacing private cars with corporate shuttle busses probably reduces general road congestion which also costs the city money.
SF is supposed to be a transit-first city. The goal is to make public transit an attractive-enough option to persuade people to use it rather than private autos. Therefore, anything that hinders public transit is bad.
The congestion in SF would also be less if those who worked in Mountain View also lived in Mountain View (or at least within a 10-mile radius).
Google using a community resource in this way has the side effect of making it convenient for Googlers who would otherwise choose not to live in the city. That bolsters its tax base while contributing to a reduction of traffic and vehicle emissions during the daily rush hours.
Some would say that therefore not having the resource would mean they would leave the city. If they moved closer to work (and Google ran local shuttles) that would also reduce emissions.
How does Google employees waiting at bus stops cost the city money?
On the one hand, they generally don't cost the city money; but it does give tech shuttles a free pass at using city bus stops that, if you or I stopped at (and were caught), we'd have to pay a fine.
On the other hand, they do cost the city money in that that can (and do) delay the actual city busses from stopping at the stops and, as the adage goes, time is money. (The slower a bus goes, the more potential overtime the city will have to pay and the more busses the city will need to use for a given route to maintain the same headway.)
It's generally not a good idea to commemorate a living person because they still have the potential to end up in a scandal or do something embarrassing.
I plugged my iPad into the USB charger in the plane...
What planes/airlines have built-in USB ports? That aside, it's interesting that it's more than just a dumb USB-shaped port (akin to the wall dongles that merely convert a wall-outlet into a USB port). The fact that you got that message implies there's actually a computer on the other end in addition to just power.
I guess it's good to know that I can respect a well-crafted response, even when it comes from a source I don't respect.
That should have been obvious. Occasionally, people I generally strongly disagree with say or write something I do agree with -- just like a broken clock is right twice a day.
More likely that Google would build an office in SF (raising land prices even higher). Some tech companies have done that already.
They've already done that but it's nowhere near as big as the Googleplex in Mountain View. That aside, at least then they're paying SF city taxes. Also, I don't know if they have employee shuttles for their SF office or if their employees just take Muni like everybody else.
It would be ironic if a Google employee waiting for a Muni bus on his way to the SF office was delayed by a Google bus blocking the bus stop while picking up for a trip to Mountain View.
It easily beats having those people all driving themselves.
True, but what I think the protesters are thinking is that if companies eliminated the shuttles (or shrank their radius so that SF was outside of it), then most workers, rather than endure a multi-hour commute each day, would simply move closer to work (and, more specifically, outside of SF city limits).
It might increase traffic in/around Mountain View, but the companies could run local shuttles with a 10-mile (instead of 35-mile) radius to alleviate that problem. But it would no longer be SF's problem.
No it's not. It's not legal for any vehicle other than a city bus to use a city bus stop. At least that's the way it's been up until very recently. Now, the bus operators will have to
pay to use the stops.
Slashdot Mirror
I can understand the NIH process taking 9 months, but you'd think Bill's foundation would be a lot quicker. A malaria vaccine is probably in the top 5 things to solve. You'd think Bill would take notice and write the check himself.
I would have thought that one of the US Military (to protect service personnel), Bill Gates (isn't his foundation working on a malaria vaccine too?), or governments in malaria regions would fund this. The desired $250K is nothing for such sources.
Patents last for 20 years. Hence, something patented by Microsoft in 1990 would have expired in 2010.
Being able to understand pointers is orthogonal to being someone who write intelligible code.
And, for the non-C hires, you probably hired the ones who just so happened to have the right aptitude anyway, i.e., they could do pointers if they did C. The "true" programmers will always filter through to those hiring. His point is that Java schools make the hiring problem harder by not filtering out those without the right aptitude. Hence your examples do nothing to invalidate his point.
And they've already got it.
Instead of an ad hominem remark, how about refuting his points with an actual argument?
You need to have read more of Joel's writing. That's just his irreverent style.
His premise is that, in order to be a good programmer, you need the right kind of metal aptitude which is a you-either-have-it-or-you-don't thing and not a skill that can be learned. While there may be other ways to test for that aptitude, his claim is that one sure-fire way to test for it is the ability to understand pointers. (He makes that point even more explicit here.) And, among today's languages that are in use, the only one that really requires you to understand pointers is C. (Many years ago, it might have been Pascal, but Pascal is pretty much a dead language.)
Well then you're not writing that has to run fast. Consider this talk. Yes, it's on C++, but the point is that, at least for code that's used a lot (like the page-display code at Facebook), shaving 1% off the running time saves the company an "engineer's salary for 10 years."
In order to achieve that level of performance, you really do need to understand what's going on at the CPU level.
You're not the first to notice this.
San Francisco's housing costs are insane. Pick Seattle unless you've got at least a $100K income.
There is. Also see this for some more background information.
If carriers sold phones at their true cost -- and therefore very few people bought them -- perhaps it would force the smartphone manufacturers to lower their costs.
What? But the dealer has no legal role in car ownership after the car is initially purchased. What happens if the new (or old) owner doesn't pay? (I've sold two previous cars and never paid the dealership anything.)
If Apple sells an iWatch, I hope it has a detachable band so I can swap the watch into a belt clip like the one shown.
SF is supposed to be a transit-first city. The goal is to make public transit an attractive-enough option to persuade people to use it rather than private autos. Therefore, anything that hinders public transit is bad.
The congestion in SF would also be less if those who worked in Mountain View also lived in Mountain View (or at least within a 10-mile radius).
Headways for popular lines in San Francisco are in the sub-ten-minute range.
Some would say that therefore not having the resource would mean they would leave the city. If they moved closer to work (and Google ran local shuttles) that would also reduce emissions.
On the one hand, they generally don't cost the city money; but it does give tech shuttles a free pass at using city bus stops that, if you or I stopped at (and were caught), we'd have to pay a fine.
On the other hand, they do cost the city money in that that can (and do) delay the actual city busses from stopping at the stops and, as the adage goes, time is money. (The slower a bus goes, the more potential overtime the city will have to pay and the more busses the city will need to use for a given route to maintain the same headway.)
It's generally not a good idea to commemorate a living person because they still have the potential to end up in a scandal or do something embarrassing.
What planes/airlines have built-in USB ports? That aside, it's interesting that it's more than just a dumb USB-shaped port (akin to the wall dongles that merely convert a wall-outlet into a USB port). The fact that you got that message implies there's actually a computer on the other end in addition to just power.
That should have been obvious. Occasionally, people I generally strongly disagree with say or write something I do agree with -- just like a broken clock is right twice a day.
They've already done that but it's nowhere near as big as the Googleplex in Mountain View. That aside, at least then they're paying SF city taxes. Also, I don't know if they have employee shuttles for their SF office or if their employees just take Muni like everybody else.
It would be ironic if a Google employee waiting for a Muni bus on his way to the SF office was delayed by a Google bus blocking the bus stop while picking up for a trip to Mountain View.
True, but what I think the protesters are thinking is that if companies eliminated the shuttles (or shrank their radius so that SF was outside of it), then most workers, rather than endure a multi-hour commute each day, would simply move closer to work (and, more specifically, outside of SF city limits). It might increase traffic in/around Mountain View, but the companies could run local shuttles with a 10-mile (instead of 35-mile) radius to alleviate that problem. But it would no longer be SF's problem.
No it's not. It's not legal for any vehicle other than a city bus to use a city bus stop. At least that's the way it's been up until very recently. Now, the bus operators will have to pay to use the stops.
So terrorists will simply use snail mail. I don't think they're in that much of a hurry.