I don't do it lately, but back when 9600 baud modem connections were still considered state-of-the-art (or at least typical for a computer geek/college student trying to get some sort of net access), I routinely did web browsing via Lynx.
Okay, Gotta call you on this. When 9600 baud was considered state-of-the-art, there was no World Wide Web. I was a pretty early adopter of the whole networking thing (1st Internet account in 1988, 1st modem in 1983) and unless my memory is really bad, 9600 was really a blip.
In the eighties, 9600 bauds modems were truly 733t... and rare because they couldn't agree on a damn standard, so if you had a (IIRC) U.S. Robotics 9600 and your ISP or BBS used Hayes 9600, you were SOL. Before there was ever a clear winner in the 9600 baud protocol wars, 14,4k and then 28.8k rose up and got popular. By the time the web was invented, either 14.4k or 28.8k was the "standard", with (very unreliable) 56k modems being available, and by the time the web got any traction and started to attract non-geeks, 28.8k or 56k were the standard connections.
So, basically, WTF are you talking about? If you browsed using Lynx with a 9600 baud modem, you were using creaky, outdated hardware...
I'm no Linux hothead... don't hate it, like it, but prefer the BSDs myself, but I have to question the scalability accusation here because...
Isn't Google's server farm run on Linux?
Personally, my experience is that unixes (both AT&T Unix descendants and workalikes like Linux and the BSDs) tend to utilize multiple processors (both on the same motherboard and in clusters) far more effectively than any of the Windows variants (hmmm... Windows Forks?). Exactly what kind of scalability are they talking about here? Scalability of license fees for the vendor?
I can't decide if this is a lame troll, or if this poster is in sort-of a reverse Jobsian reality-distortion-field.
OS X is obsolete? In what way? As a workstation and end user PC, it's an infinitely more polished (read, "your grandma can use it") than any Linux distro with any desktop environment, and there is much more software available for it than Linux, including about 99% of what exists for Linux, if you don't mind typing./configure then make. Despite the ease-of-use and pretty front end, though, it has all the command-line goodness and power that Linux zealots take pride in (not that this matters to the hardcore it-sucks-if-it-ain't-a-(sorta)-monolithic-kernel, or the hardcore it-sucks-if-I-didn't-compile-it-myself crowd)
Yeah, there are more applications out there for Windows, but most of what's out there for Windows is crap. And there are relatively few kinds of applications that there isn't at least one really good package for the Mac, plus we've got a lot of the big names from the Windows world. On top of that, there are some best-of-breed applications that only exist for the Mac now - Final Cut Pro, Motion, Shake. There are features that have been standard since OS X first came out that won't appear in Windows till Longhorn rolls out in 2014 or whenever. The next release os OS X (Tiger) will widen that gap even more.
Oh, yeah, also... unlike Linux, we can play DVDs without violating the DMCA. =-)
Now, don't get me wrong. I've got a Linux box under my desk and a FreeBSD box next to it. I've got machines in the house that run Windows XP, 2000, NT, and (though I loathe to admit it) one running ME. I can use them all comfortably. They all have their merits (well, except the ME box). But when I sit down on my own time, or when I really need to get something done in a hurry, I invariably sit down at my 17" Powerbook. If stability and efficiency are obsolete, then I'll have to agree with you.
Oy. I don't know why I get sucked into these things, though. People have been claiming Apple was going to die at least since the late eighties. Since they didn't die in the mid-nineties (when they damn well should have), forgive me for scoffing at your pathetic belief that the polished OS X is going to be exitinct in a few years, while the amalgamation of distros and desktop environments that makes up the Linux "world" will somehow skyrocket to the top of the heap and become a tour de force in end user computing.
First of all, DVDs are not exactly made of titanium.
I can think of both albums and movies that I've paid multiple times for the "right" to own and watch because formats have changed (wax->8 track -> cassette -> cd), or because the fragile media they deliver the music or movie on has become damanged and unable to be played.
I'll stop making personal backup copies of my legally purchased music and movies the very instant that they refund me for those additional copies I've purchased and offer to replace my existing scratched CDs and DVDs.
I wish they wouldn't bother with this Macrovision - all it's going to do is increase the cost of the movies and make people more likely not to buy them.
Ahh... grashopper... you failed to account for a few things (and it's "lose" not "loose" you loser).
1) Platform lock-in for ERP software is incredible. Migrating to a new package is incredibly expensive, risky, and time-consuming. The case has to be more compelling than "their software's a little better" to justify the move. Oracle will almost certainly make the "upgrade" path from PeopleSoft to Oracle easy, or will at least do a convincing job of marketing it that way.
2) While Oracle has committed to supporting PeopleSoft, it's almost dead certain they will require those customers to move their back-end to Oracle (PeopleSoft currently supports SQL2K, DB2, Sybase and Informix in addition to Oracle), so by this move, they increase their database market-share as well.
3) DIMHRs. The Department of Defense has committed to a multi-million, possibly billion dollar implementation of Personnel & Pay based on PeopleSoft. SAP is not eligible to bid on this job even if they decide to put it back out for bid. The current plan is to implement DIMHRs on DB2. Given congressional mandates that make writing a custom Personnel/Pay system nearly impossible, it is almost impossible to imagine any scenario where this doesn't end up as Oracle Apps on Oracle database. PeopleSoft also has a big presence in other Federal markets that now Oracle will be the only remaining credible vendor.
4) As obnoxious as Oracle apps can be, they are still more implementation-friendly than SAP (you vill do it our vay because that is the best way and ve don't care if you are, how do you say, 'customer'.).
There's some truth to what you say... unfortunately, a lot of the people who ultimately make the decision about what ERP package to implement or who they're going to hire to do the implementation work are borderline tech-illiterate. A competent decision maker can, with a little effort, weed out the good ones from the bad, but most of the time, they just buy into marketing hype from one of the big consulting firms and abdicate most say in the individuals actually picked to do the work.
It's also a catch-22 - typically, most of the good people have little or no downtime, so many of the people on the bench at any given time are less-than-stellar... but you can bet that the partner or sales manager is painting a very nice picture of those peoples' abilities to the client in order to get them off the bench.
the original poster wasn't failing to appreciate MS's enterprise experience, they were noting that Microsoft has little credibility in the Enterprise Applications space - and Enterprise Applications are not just applications run in an Enterprise.
MicroSoft has very little credibility in this space and almost no presence among the larger ERP implementations. You are just as clueless or misinformed as you accuse the original poster of being.
Although I'm no fan of SQL Server, I have to disagree with the original poster's statement in one regard, however. SQL2k has been gaining credibility rapidly in the Enterprise Application space (including as a back-end for PeopleSoft). It's gained considerable ground on Oracle in certain portions of the marketspace, although it's nowhere near overtaking them.
The bad thing about this marketplace is that unlike commercial, boxed software, where the product is used exactly as it leaves the testing floor, ERP software (not just PeopleSoft) gets manhandled by a whole fleet of "implementation consultants" who are almost always overpaid, and, unfortunately, are often unqualified - sometimes obscenely so.
The impression most people have of their ERP vendor is a direct reflection on the quality of the implementors. In the days when PeopleSoft was typically implemented by a small group of select consultants and Dave would send one of the guys who wrote the system out to help fix and get back on track any floundering implementation, customers were loyal -- almost at an Apple / Harley Davidson level -- and their software wasn't really any better back then (although it was much simpler, and people's expectations were lower).
Oooooh... sounds like somebody's bitter and out of work.
PeopleSoft eRecruit is certainly one of the more-hyped aspects of their HRMS suite (which is just one of PeopleSoft's product lines), and it is one that it is relatively easy to find fault with (I could go on for days, in great detail). However, having been involved with eRecruit in several capacities (I've been hired through it, been a hiring manager and interviewer using it, implemented it, customized it, and was the troubleshooter brought in to unfuck a whole bunch of really bad code that made it into the shipped product (yes, I worked at PeopleSoft before the dark times...), I can say with certainty that the above description assumes that an unqualified and rather stupid applicant got passed over by an unqualified and rather stupid hiring manager for a job that was filled by a different unqualified and rather stupid applicant and the whole transaction happened using a PeopleSoft system implemented by rather stupid and unqualified consultants (sorry, was that last bit redundant?).
Define a system by its problems... not by yours. The fact that you can't get a job is not PeopleSoft's fault.
I've met some fabulous programmers here on H1B Visas... worked with many. As time went on, the quality went down. There are still good ones, but on a whole, getting an H1B is just as much of a shooting match as it is hiring Americans today, it's just cheaper.
The way the H1B program is run, and the false pretense under which it is justified are a shame. Some of the Indian companies providing manpower do not help the situation. A situation I had when I was responsible for interviewing a prospective H1B. We did a phone interview before he came, and the candidate was absolutely fabulous over the phone; we couldn't wait for him to get here. When the guy showed up, it wasn't the same guy - different voice, much worse accent, and not at all fabulous. We sent him back. Turns out (after finding other people who had the same experience with this company, that they have a small pool of people they use for the phone interviews who speak English well and really know their shit, but those people have no intention of ever coming to America. The ones they actually send they wouldn't allow to interview.
It's almost certainly NOT the way most Indian companies providing H1Bs do it, but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth, and had I not had many good experiences with Indian programmers, I might have been inclined to make negative generalizations about the integrity of Indians.
Bottom line, there are fantastic Indian programmers... and there are fantastic American ones. There are also mediochre Indian programmers and mediochre American ones. There are American scam artists and assholes, and -- yes -- Indian scam artists and assholes. We tend to view the exceptional cases in whatever group we relate to as just what they are: exceptional. But when we see them in other groups, we either disregard them or generalize them to the whole population because it's easier. That tendency is also a root cause of all racism and intolerance, and every last one of us does it to some extent.
One thing, about your comment, though - the H1B who has had "so much taken away" chose to come to this country. I have no patience for whiney American programmers, but I have less patience for whiney H1Bs. You can't rightly blame anyone but yourself if you were unprepared for the culture shock. Don't blame anyone but yourself if you didn't find a way to adapt and integrate into the social life where you chose to live. And you simply didn't have to answer the bus driver's questions. If his comments crossed the line, you had the option of lodging a complaint. But either way, get over it. You describe your experience as an "adventure" yet seem upset that it turned out to actually be something of, well, an adventure.
Unfortunately, many Americans are going to judge your whole country based on their experiences and associations with you. Too bad for them.
Perhaps you slept through the last twenty years. We don't making anything here in the U.S. anymore, manufacturing all got outsourced years ago. Now, in the last few years, knowledge worker jobs have started going, top. Not only is it a contest, the odds are against us if we don't buck up, stop the whining, and find a way to compete in the face of the harsh new reality of today.
Suing our employers is not likely the best way to stay competitive.
Don't know about now (I've since moved a long ways away), but in the worst of the dot-com craze, I was paying $2k a month for a little 2 bedroom apartment in Pleasanton, which isn't even close to the most expensive part of the Bay Area. Down in San Jose, rents were routinely going up $400 a month each time the lease came up for renewal.
Living in Manhattan is expensive, but you expect that; it's a large metropolitan area. It would be comparable to the Bay Area if it was just as expensive to live up in Poughkeepsie as it was in Manhattan (I happen to know it's not, having lived not too far from Poughkeepsie right before moving to California). The Bay Area is huge, and the whole region was swept up in the craziness of the late nineties and early 2ks, and much of that still lingers on the Peninsula. Believe it.
I worked at an ERP software company for years, including through the dot-com explosion. Early on, we were all young, mostly childless. After a couple of releases, people started moving along in their lives. Some stuck with it, some moved to management or testing or strategy or left the company. Some stayed and complained, some stayed and refused to do the same level of work as their peers (with the obvious consequences).
Needless to say, the people who pulled the all-night shifts and endless hours right before code freeze were usually rewarded with large bonuses and generous stock options. You rarely hear people complaining about that aspect of the business. I had one quarter where we had a major release, and my bonuses and stock options (at the exercise price) were over twice my base salary.
Game companies have the additional advantage of being a highly desirable occupation for 20 year old fan-boys with a decent brain, no kids, and no real plans or direction in life (not to mention, no mortgage). A "family man" can't compete with them unless he wants his kids to grow up as strangers.
Are you really that stupid? I hope your point of view isn't that typical, otherwise our country is in serious trouble.
I don't know what parallels you see between a yuppie working too many hours and kids in poverty in Africa. The former isn't enjoying life as quite much as they'd like, the latter may not get to even live his or her life. Your statement, if it does anything, makes me even less sympathetic for the EA software engineers.
I'm nog going to go to Africa and question the vaccination programs because a) I believe they are good programs, and b) I have a CHOICE, and I choose not to go. Just like the EA developers have a CHOICE. Get a fucking life, you loser.
Democracy doesn't guarantee you a wondeful life, just the right to pursue one. You still are responsible for the consequences of your actions (or inaction), though many would like it were it not so, and some even try to legislate it so it is.
Serfs were, for practical purposes, slaves. They had no options and relatively few of them had cable television and SUVs, so far as I know. Serfs had absolutely no options. EA employees have many, the most pathetic of which is to whine and do nothing, followed closely by suing.
Listen. This isn't just the game industry. It's the software industry. And it's a part of the reason why software engineers (at least at one time) made considerably more money than other careers when compared to others with comparable education and experience (the original blog even said the pay and benefits were "right").
I've been there. It sucks. My wife was there too. Both of us chugging away at the eighteen hour day in Silicon Valley, fighting over who had to get the kids from day care that day, make 'em dinner, and get 'em to bed before getting back to work for a few more hours from home.
There's an easy answer. Get another job. Move somewhere else. Start your own business. Go back to school. Refuse to work beyond a reasonable amount of time (hint: stopping at 40 hours is not reasonable where you are).
I'm so tired of people who think the world owes them and who think that they have some right to an easy life AND good pay AND benefits. I really hope these whiners lose in court. I don't love big corporate software companies, but as long as people keep putting up with it, they'll keep doing it. So move on; go somewhere else. If all the good developers and artists do that, they'll be forced to offer more sane practices to lure people back.
This is not unskilled labor; there is a finite pool of talent, so make the tough choice to leave, tell your boss/manager how you feel (and not anonymously), or if you're too scared to do one of those, then buck up and put up with it.
You do have options; resorting to the courts is a whiny loser path and you'll get no sympathy from me, sorry.
Actually, there's a whole genre... it's called SteamPunk. Not too much of it has made it to the big screen (especially live action) and what has hasn't been great (it's a tough concept to pull off) but it is far from a novel concept.
If knowing something didn't actually happen makes a story worthless, we might as well just start throwing out the old SF from Vernes up to the early Clark, Asimov and Heinlein as well as all the historical fiction "littering" up our libraries and book stores.
Come on, this is a troll if I've ever seen one. A lot of people have strong opinions about this, and tend to lump those who disagree with them in some category of people (e.g. "small website hackers").
I deal with large applications that access large volumes of data in the real world, and I'm not a big fan of stored procedures. But, I use them in a limited fashion.
My personal opinion (and nothing more) is that you start with your business logic (exluding data validity constraints) in your controller objects of your application. Once you're into system and load testing, you look for places where the benefits of a stored procedure really buy you something that you need to buy.
"Centralized code" is not a benefit of stored procedures: just the opposite, unless you manage to do your entire application in stored procedures. I also disagree that security is a benefit of a stored procedure. Unless you're dealing with client/server applications (and poorly designed ones at that), there's relatively little difference in the risk of having logic in the application versus in the database, and I can think of a few known exploits that could give somebody a look at your application logic.
The true benefit of a stored procedure is that it is easier to improve performance. Notice how I phrased it, because it's important. Many people will state flat out that stored procedures give you better performance. Not true - on most databases, you can implement optimizations to give you the same benefits (e.g. declaring cursors, using prepared statements and bind variables, etc.). But, databases know themselves pretty well, and one of the quickest and easiest optimizations you can do is to move poor performing logic into the database - achieving the same thing through SQL or an interface can be time-consuming, and you have to have good developers who really know their stuff.
Even at that, I try to tune the logic first before moving it into the database. A lot of "first try" SQL is inefficient, so spending a little time on your more complex querys often allows avoiding having to separate pieces of business logic. Oh, and if you do use a SP, put a big obnoxious comment where the logic used to be with the name of the SP, how it's used, and when the logic was put there. Or don't... it's your system (and career).
There are a few exceptions to my approach of avoiding stored procedures. Bulk moves between databases is one I can think of. But as a general rule, I avoid them during initial design, and use them as an optimization when I have a reason to optimize.
Your mileage may vary. I know many people who have 180 different opinion on this, who are just as successful with their systems. It is possible to make a well-designed, easily maintained system using SPs, but it just doesn't really fit the way I work.
Not that you want to lend any validity their patent, but I would simply file an answer that their patent doesn't cover your system because you use LCD displays; their patents specifically require CRTs for system display. If you don't have LCD displays, go buy some - it'll probably be less than $30k and you get something for it in return.
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I don't do it lately, but back when 9600 baud modem connections were still considered state-of-the-art (or at least typical for a computer geek/college student trying to get some sort of net access), I routinely did web browsing via Lynx.
Okay, Gotta call you on this. When 9600 baud was considered state-of-the-art, there was no World Wide Web. I was a pretty early adopter of the whole networking thing (1st Internet account in 1988, 1st modem in 1983) and unless my memory is really bad, 9600 was really a blip.
In the eighties, 9600 bauds modems were truly 733t... and rare because they couldn't agree on a damn standard, so if you had a (IIRC) U.S. Robotics 9600 and your ISP or BBS used Hayes 9600, you were SOL. Before there was ever a clear winner in the 9600 baud protocol wars, 14,4k and then 28.8k rose up and got popular. By the time the web was invented, either 14.4k or 28.8k was the "standard", with (very unreliable) 56k modems being available, and by the time the web got any traction and started to attract non-geeks, 28.8k or 56k were the standard connections.
So, basically, WTF are you talking about? If you browsed using Lynx with a 9600 baud modem, you were using creaky, outdated hardware...
Yeah... and they already have monkeys working there...
Depends on whose brain you're thinking about...
... a sledgehammer.
I've yet to hear of anyone recovering data after a good 5 whack "scrubbing".
What do you care? It'll be a problem your grandkids will have to deal with when Longhorn ships.
I'm no Linux hothead... don't hate it, like it, but prefer the BSDs myself, but I have to question the scalability accusation here because...
Isn't Google's server farm run on Linux?
Personally, my experience is that unixes (both AT&T Unix descendants and workalikes like Linux and the BSDs) tend to utilize multiple processors (both on the same motherboard and in clusters) far more effectively than any of the Windows variants (hmmm... Windows Forks?). Exactly what kind of scalability are they talking about here? Scalability of license fees for the vendor?
I can't decide if this is a lame troll, or if this poster is in sort-of a reverse Jobsian reality-distortion-field.
./configure then make. Despite the ease-of-use and pretty front end, though, it has all the command-line goodness and power that Linux zealots take pride in (not that this matters to the hardcore it-sucks-if-it-ain't-a-(sorta)-monolithic-kernel, or the hardcore it-sucks-if-I-didn't-compile-it-myself crowd)
OS X is obsolete? In what way? As a workstation and end user PC, it's an infinitely more polished (read, "your grandma can use it") than any Linux distro with any desktop environment, and there is much more software available for it than Linux, including about 99% of what exists for Linux, if you don't mind typing
Yeah, there are more applications out there for Windows, but most of what's out there for Windows is crap. And there are relatively few kinds of applications that there isn't at least one really good package for the Mac, plus we've got a lot of the big names from the Windows world. On top of that, there are some best-of-breed applications that only exist for the Mac now - Final Cut Pro, Motion, Shake. There are features that have been standard since OS X first came out that won't appear in Windows till Longhorn rolls out in 2014 or whenever. The next release os OS X (Tiger) will widen that gap even more.
Oh, yeah, also... unlike Linux, we can play DVDs without violating the DMCA. =-)
Now, don't get me wrong. I've got a Linux box under my desk and a FreeBSD box next to it. I've got machines in the house that run Windows XP, 2000, NT, and (though I loathe to admit it) one running ME. I can use them all comfortably. They all have their merits (well, except the ME box). But when I sit down on my own time, or when I really need to get something done in a hurry, I invariably sit down at my 17" Powerbook. If stability and efficiency are obsolete, then I'll have to agree with you.
Oy. I don't know why I get sucked into these things, though. People have been claiming Apple was going to die at least since the late eighties. Since they didn't die in the mid-nineties (when they damn well should have), forgive me for scoffing at your pathetic belief that the polished OS X is going to be exitinct in a few years, while the amalgamation of distros and desktop environments that makes up the Linux "world" will somehow skyrocket to the top of the heap and become a tour de force in end user computing.
...you could just use google.us couldn't you?
Hello, McFly?
First of all, DVDs are not exactly made of titanium.
I can think of both albums and movies that I've paid multiple times for the "right" to own and watch because formats have changed (wax->8 track -> cassette -> cd), or because the fragile media they deliver the music or movie on has become damanged and unable to be played.
I'll stop making personal backup copies of my legally purchased music and movies the very instant that they refund me for those additional copies I've purchased and offer to replace my existing scratched CDs and DVDs.
I wish they wouldn't bother with this Macrovision - all it's going to do is increase the cost of the movies and make people more likely not to buy them.
and, dammit, I'm a loser too; I misspelled grasshopper... =-)
Ahh... grashopper... you failed to account for a few things (and it's "lose" not "loose" you loser).
1) Platform lock-in for ERP software is incredible. Migrating to a new package is incredibly expensive, risky, and time-consuming. The case has to be more compelling than "their software's a little better" to justify the move. Oracle will almost certainly make the "upgrade" path from PeopleSoft to Oracle easy, or will at least do a convincing job of marketing it that way.
2) While Oracle has committed to supporting PeopleSoft, it's almost dead certain they will require those customers to move their back-end to Oracle (PeopleSoft currently supports SQL2K, DB2, Sybase and Informix in addition to Oracle), so by this move, they increase their database market-share as well.
3) DIMHRs. The Department of Defense has committed to a multi-million, possibly billion dollar implementation of Personnel & Pay based on PeopleSoft. SAP is not eligible to bid on this job even if they decide to put it back out for bid. The current plan is to implement DIMHRs on DB2. Given congressional mandates that make writing a custom Personnel/Pay system nearly impossible, it is almost impossible to imagine any scenario where this doesn't end up as Oracle Apps on Oracle database. PeopleSoft also has a big presence in other Federal markets that now Oracle will be the only remaining credible vendor.
4) As obnoxious as Oracle apps can be, they are still more implementation-friendly than SAP (you vill do it our vay because that is the best way and ve don't care if you are, how do you say, 'customer'.).
There's some truth to what you say... unfortunately, a lot of the people who ultimately make the decision about what ERP package to implement or who they're going to hire to do the implementation work are borderline tech-illiterate. A competent decision maker can, with a little effort, weed out the good ones from the bad, but most of the time, they just buy into marketing hype from one of the big consulting firms and abdicate most say in the individuals actually picked to do the work.
It's also a catch-22 - typically, most of the good people have little or no downtime, so many of the people on the bench at any given time are less-than-stellar... but you can bet that the partner or sales manager is painting a very nice picture of those peoples' abilities to the client in order to get them off the bench.
the original poster wasn't failing to appreciate MS's enterprise experience, they were noting that Microsoft has little credibility in the Enterprise Applications space - and Enterprise Applications are not just applications run in an Enterprise.
MicroSoft has very little credibility in this space and almost no presence among the larger ERP implementations. You are just as clueless or misinformed as you accuse the original poster of being.
Although I'm no fan of SQL Server, I have to disagree with the original poster's statement in one regard, however. SQL2k has been gaining credibility rapidly in the Enterprise Application space (including as a back-end for PeopleSoft). It's gained considerable ground on Oracle in certain portions of the marketspace, although it's nowhere near overtaking them.
You obviously haven't used Oracle's HR apps.
The bad thing about this marketplace is that unlike commercial, boxed software, where the product is used exactly as it leaves the testing floor, ERP software (not just PeopleSoft) gets manhandled by a whole fleet of "implementation consultants" who are almost always overpaid, and, unfortunately, are often unqualified - sometimes obscenely so.
The impression most people have of their ERP vendor is a direct reflection on the quality of the implementors. In the days when PeopleSoft was typically implemented by a small group of select consultants and Dave would send one of the guys who wrote the system out to help fix and get back on track any floundering implementation, customers were loyal -- almost at an Apple / Harley Davidson level -- and their software wasn't really any better back then (although it was much simpler, and people's expectations were lower).
Oooooh... sounds like somebody's bitter and out of work.
PeopleSoft eRecruit is certainly one of the more-hyped aspects of their HRMS suite (which is just one of PeopleSoft's product lines), and it is one that it is relatively easy to find fault with (I could go on for days, in great detail). However, having been involved with eRecruit in several capacities (I've been hired through it, been a hiring manager and interviewer using it, implemented it, customized it, and was the troubleshooter brought in to unfuck a whole bunch of really bad code that made it into the shipped product (yes, I worked at PeopleSoft before the dark times...), I can say with certainty that the above description assumes that an unqualified and rather stupid applicant got passed over by an unqualified and rather stupid hiring manager for a job that was filled by a different unqualified and rather stupid applicant and the whole transaction happened using a PeopleSoft system implemented by rather stupid and unqualified consultants (sorry, was that last bit redundant?).
Define a system by its problems... not by yours. The fact that you can't get a job is not PeopleSoft's fault.
I've met some fabulous programmers here on H1B Visas... worked with many. As time went on, the quality went down. There are still good ones, but on a whole, getting an H1B is just as much of a shooting match as it is hiring Americans today, it's just cheaper.
The way the H1B program is run, and the false pretense under which it is justified are a shame. Some of the Indian companies providing manpower do not help the situation. A situation I had when I was responsible for interviewing a prospective H1B. We did a phone interview before he came, and the candidate was absolutely fabulous over the phone; we couldn't wait for him to get here. When the guy showed up, it wasn't the same guy - different voice, much worse accent, and not at all fabulous. We sent him back. Turns out (after finding other people who had the same experience with this company, that they have a small pool of people they use for the phone interviews who speak English well and really know their shit, but those people have no intention of ever coming to America. The ones they actually send they wouldn't allow to interview.
It's almost certainly NOT the way most Indian companies providing H1Bs do it, but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth, and had I not had many good experiences with Indian programmers, I might have been inclined to make negative generalizations about the integrity of Indians.
Bottom line, there are fantastic Indian programmers... and there are fantastic American ones. There are also mediochre Indian programmers and mediochre American ones. There are American scam artists and assholes, and -- yes -- Indian scam artists and assholes. We tend to view the exceptional cases in whatever group we relate to as just what they are: exceptional. But when we see them in other groups, we either disregard them or generalize them to the whole population because it's easier. That tendency is also a root cause of all racism and intolerance, and every last one of us does it to some extent.
One thing, about your comment, though - the H1B who has had "so much taken away" chose to come to this country. I have no patience for whiney American programmers, but I have less patience for whiney H1Bs. You can't rightly blame anyone but yourself if you were unprepared for the culture shock. Don't blame anyone but yourself if you didn't find a way to adapt and integrate into the social life where you chose to live. And you simply didn't have to answer the bus driver's questions. If his comments crossed the line, you had the option of lodging a complaint. But either way, get over it. You describe your experience as an "adventure" yet seem upset that it turned out to actually be something of, well, an adventure.
Unfortunately, many Americans are going to judge your whole country based on their experiences and associations with you. Too bad for them.
Perhaps you slept through the last twenty years. We don't making anything here in the U.S. anymore, manufacturing all got outsourced years ago. Now, in the last few years, knowledge worker jobs have started going, top. Not only is it a contest, the odds are against us if we don't buck up, stop the whining, and find a way to compete in the face of the harsh new reality of today.
Suing our employers is not likely the best way to stay competitive.
Don't know about now (I've since moved a long ways away), but in the worst of the dot-com craze, I was paying $2k a month for a little 2 bedroom apartment in Pleasanton, which isn't even close to the most expensive part of the Bay Area. Down in San Jose, rents were routinely going up $400 a month each time the lease came up for renewal.
Living in Manhattan is expensive, but you expect that; it's a large metropolitan area. It would be comparable to the Bay Area if it was just as expensive to live up in Poughkeepsie as it was in Manhattan (I happen to know it's not, having lived not too far from Poughkeepsie right before moving to California). The Bay Area is huge, and the whole region was swept up in the craziness of the late nineties and early 2ks, and much of that still lingers on the Peninsula. Believe it.
Hear, hear.
I worked at an ERP software company for years, including through the dot-com explosion. Early on, we were all young, mostly childless. After a couple of releases, people started moving along in their lives. Some stuck with it, some moved to management or testing or strategy or left the company. Some stayed and complained, some stayed and refused to do the same level of work as their peers (with the obvious consequences).
Needless to say, the people who pulled the all-night shifts and endless hours right before code freeze were usually rewarded with large bonuses and generous stock options. You rarely hear people complaining about that aspect of the business. I had one quarter where we had a major release, and my bonuses and stock options (at the exercise price) were over twice my base salary.
Game companies have the additional advantage of being a highly desirable occupation for 20 year old fan-boys with a decent brain, no kids, and no real plans or direction in life (not to mention, no mortgage). A "family man" can't compete with them unless he wants his kids to grow up as strangers.
Are you really that stupid? I hope your point of view isn't that typical, otherwise our country is in serious trouble.
I don't know what parallels you see between a yuppie working too many hours and kids in poverty in Africa. The former isn't enjoying life as quite much as they'd like, the latter may not get to even live his or her life. Your statement, if it does anything, makes me even less sympathetic for the EA software engineers.
I'm nog going to go to Africa and question the vaccination programs because a) I believe they are good programs, and b) I have a CHOICE, and I choose not to go. Just like the EA developers have a CHOICE. Get a fucking life, you loser.
Democracy doesn't guarantee you a wondeful life, just the right to pursue one. You still are responsible for the consequences of your actions (or inaction), though many would like it were it not so, and some even try to legislate it so it is.
Serfs were, for practical purposes, slaves. They had no options and relatively few of them had cable television and SUVs, so far as I know. Serfs had absolutely no options. EA employees have many, the most pathetic of which is to whine and do nothing, followed closely by suing.
Listen. This isn't just the game industry. It's the software industry. And it's a part of the reason why software engineers (at least at one time) made considerably more money than other careers when compared to others with comparable education and experience (the original blog even said the pay and benefits were "right"). I've been there. It sucks. My wife was there too. Both of us chugging away at the eighteen hour day in Silicon Valley, fighting over who had to get the kids from day care that day, make 'em dinner, and get 'em to bed before getting back to work for a few more hours from home. There's an easy answer. Get another job. Move somewhere else. Start your own business. Go back to school. Refuse to work beyond a reasonable amount of time (hint: stopping at 40 hours is not reasonable where you are). I'm so tired of people who think the world owes them and who think that they have some right to an easy life AND good pay AND benefits. I really hope these whiners lose in court. I don't love big corporate software companies, but as long as people keep putting up with it, they'll keep doing it. So move on; go somewhere else. If all the good developers and artists do that, they'll be forced to offer more sane practices to lure people back. This is not unskilled labor; there is a finite pool of talent, so make the tough choice to leave, tell your boss/manager how you feel (and not anonymously), or if you're too scared to do one of those, then buck up and put up with it. You do have options; resorting to the courts is a whiny loser path and you'll get no sympathy from me, sorry.
They seem to have a rather weak concept of what a "diehard" is.
Actually, there's a whole genre... it's called SteamPunk. Not too much of it has made it to the big screen (especially live action) and what has hasn't been great (it's a tough concept to pull off) but it is far from a novel concept.
If knowing something didn't actually happen makes a story worthless, we might as well just start throwing out the old SF from Vernes up to the early Clark, Asimov and Heinlein as well as all the historical fiction "littering" up our libraries and book stores.
Come on, this is a troll if I've ever seen one. A lot of people have strong opinions about this, and tend to lump those who disagree with them in some category of people (e.g. "small website hackers").
I deal with large applications that access large volumes of data in the real world, and I'm not a big fan of stored procedures. But, I use them in a limited fashion.
My personal opinion (and nothing more) is that you start with your business logic (exluding data validity constraints) in your controller objects of your application. Once you're into system and load testing, you look for places where the benefits of a stored procedure really buy you something that you need to buy. "Centralized code" is not a benefit of stored procedures: just the opposite, unless you manage to do your entire application in stored procedures. I also disagree that security is a benefit of a stored procedure. Unless you're dealing with client/server applications (and poorly designed ones at that), there's relatively little difference in the risk of having logic in the application versus in the database, and I can think of a few known exploits that could give somebody a look at your application logic.
The true benefit of a stored procedure is that it is easier to improve performance. Notice how I phrased it, because it's important. Many people will state flat out that stored procedures give you better performance. Not true - on most databases, you can implement optimizations to give you the same benefits (e.g. declaring cursors, using prepared statements and bind variables, etc.). But, databases know themselves pretty well, and one of the quickest and easiest optimizations you can do is to move poor performing logic into the database - achieving the same thing through SQL or an interface can be time-consuming, and you have to have good developers who really know their stuff.
Even at that, I try to tune the logic first before moving it into the database. A lot of "first try" SQL is inefficient, so spending a little time on your more complex querys often allows avoiding having to separate pieces of business logic. Oh, and if you do use a SP, put a big obnoxious comment where the logic used to be with the name of the SP, how it's used, and when the logic was put there. Or don't... it's your system (and career).
There are a few exceptions to my approach of avoiding stored procedures. Bulk moves between databases is one I can think of. But as a general rule, I avoid them during initial design, and use them as an optimization when I have a reason to optimize.
Your mileage may vary. I know many people who have 180 different opinion on this, who are just as successful with their systems. It is possible to make a well-designed, easily maintained system using SPs, but it just doesn't really fit the way I work.
Not that you want to lend any validity their patent, but I would simply file an answer that their patent doesn't cover your system because you use LCD displays; their patents specifically require CRTs for system display. If you don't have LCD displays, go buy some - it'll probably be less than $30k and you get something for it in return.