Unless you hop from startup to startup, you'll have to deal with legacy code at some point, either someone else's or your own. Here are some indicators I came up with (warning: a lot of broad generalizations follow; they don't always apply):
1) "was the code base developed in-house?" in-house developers generally have a deeper understanding of the requirements, resources, and the company. Some contractors do just enough to meet the requirements so that they can get paid and move on to the next project. Quality is generally higher when someone has to maintain the code and/or face their peers every day in the office.
2) "how many projects are developers involved in at once?" if a developer has to juggle more than a few projects at once, one or more might not get the attention that is needed to be of the highest quality. Conversely, if someone is just focused on one project, the quality might be better due to their deeper commitment to the project and understanding of the internals.
3) "what's the employee turn over rate?" your experience is likely to be less awful if the original author or authors are still around; they can at least explain some of the reasoning behind the design decision. Conversely, if the original designer is long gone and many people have dabbled in the code, the quality might suffer due to developers having different ideas about how to best maintain the code and different understandings of how everything fits together.
4) To follow on the "Are there code review processes?" question, you might want to ask "how is performance evaluated?" It's a good question to ask in anyway, and that might give you an insight into how much oversight there is of a developer's work quality.
Also keep in mind that you need to strike a balance between beautiful code, functionality, and time/cost. Sometimes less elegant code is more maintainable, takes less time to develop (i.e. costs less in labour), and does the job well enough.
I started out around 2000 with RedHat 5.2. I quickly moved to Slackware 4.0 and stayed with it for a while. I played with a few distros until late 2003 / early 2004 when I switched to Gentoo. I stuck with Gentoo for several year but finally switched over to Fedora around 2006 or 2007 when I wanted to spend more time using my computer than maintaining it. I spent about a year on Fedora. After that I tried debian for a few months, but I didn't like that I had to choose between really old but stable software and really new but unstable software (at least that was what it felt like at the time for me). Then, I switched to Ubuntu. I'm still on Ubuntu for my desktop, but I've got a laptop running Arch Linux.
I'm considering doing a fresh install of something else on my desktop (maybe Arch Linux or Fedora). I find that Ubuntu isn't going where I want it to go, and the upgrades are getting to be more of a pain than a reward. They changed the desktop environment (gnome 'classic' to unity), they changed the location of the minimize/maximize/close buttons, they added an annoying 'report the problem to ubuntu' dialog that comes up whenever a program crashes (which is too often BTW), and many other things. Each upgrade has a ton of changes that I have to correct / set back. If I stay with Ubuntu through another upgrade, I'll have to uninstall the Amazon ads as well.
Explain it as being like Apple's Time Machine or Microsoft Office's Track Changes. It's a really smart backup system that lets you roll back to a specific point in time, see when someone changed something, see who changed something, and see why someone changed something (via the commit log message).
Writing a letter "to the college" usually has little impact. The suggestions usually don't filter down to the right people. From my experience (4 years in University, 3 years in College), the right person to talk to is the department head. While the course professor has some flexibility, he or she isn't likely to be able to change a "How to use MS Office" course into an actual computing course. The department head can instigate broader course changes, with the proper approval from stakeholders and higher ups. Also, I'd suggest talking to the department head if possible instead of writing a letter.
I played Far Cry on Linux today (via wine), Minecraft yesterday (native), and Counter-Strike (via wine/playonlinux) the day before. A lot of commercial games run on Linux, but hardly anybody knows about it and even fewer promote it.
I find that a good judge of someone's familiarity with an operating system is what they do after an installation on the first boot. Seasoned pros have a whole routine (install this, uninstall that, disable something, enable something else, etc), and when asked they can provide justification for their actions. I find that in general, people who are completely happy with the defaults are either A) not that passionate about their job or B) don't know enough or have enough experience to handle running real world servers.
To: announce@spreadfirefox.com From: admin@spreadfirefox.com Subject: Spread Firefox Security Notice
The Spread Firefox Team became aware this week that the server hosting Spread Firefox, our community marketing site, has been accessed by unknown remote attackers who attempted to exploit a security vulnerability in TWiki software installed on the server. The TWiki software was disabled as soon as we were aware of the attempts to access SpreadFirefox.com. This exploit was limited to SpreadFirefox.com and did not affect mozilla.org web sites or Mozilla software.
We have scanned Spread Firefox servers and at this time do not believe any sensitive data was taken, but as a precautionary measure we have shutdown the site and will be rebuilding the web site from scratch. We also recommend that you change your Spread Firefox password and the password of any accounts where you use the same password as your Spread Firefox account. We will notify you again when the site is back up with instructions on how to change your password. (Note: We do use MD5 hashing on the passwords, but MD5 cannot protect all passwords against off-line dictionary style attacks.)
After Spread Firefox was compromised in July, we instituted procedures to ensure that we apply all security fixes to the software running the site (Drupal and PHP) as soon as they become available. Unfortunately, those procedures overlooked the installation of the TWiki software since it is not used by the main Spread Firefox site. When the system is rebuilt, all the software will be audited to ensure that security updates will be applied in a timely manner. We deeply regret this incident and any inconvenience this may have caused you. Sincerely,
>Everyone wants to get paid for their work People are already getting paid for open source and free software. It is possible! Companies and non-profits are making money by
The makers of M&M's have a trademark on the letter M. Using the Microsoft rational, Microsoft should be sued because it's name contains part of a trademark.
This type of book is good if you don't read it. Instead of reading it cover to cover, it should be used as a reference. Read the sections you need when you need them. No one should read about NIS if they are using a single computer at home to try out linux.
If people are willing to break the law to make analog to digital copies of copyrighted material what makes anyone think that they won't break the law to subvert the watermark detectors?
If they were able to estabilsh a better proxy system they could have all of the clients connecting to proxies. Then they proxies could systematically send their packets of data to distributed.net a couple times a week. This would cut down on all the bandwidth for people who just do one work, connect, send the work unit, fetch another work unit, disconnect, crunch the work unit and repeat the above steps many times a day.
Since it's a "contest" with cash prizes, why not charge people to enter. That would cover some bandwidth costs if dnet was unable to get free bandwidth.
I think that the eligibility of his code should be based on his coding skills as opposed to his age. If someone makes a considerable contribution then they should not be held back because of their age. Many young people are great programmers.
Another thing to point out is that Google is currently running a programming contest, but the authors of the code must be 18 or older to enter. If something is good why should it matter where it's from?
"Serial ATA, A New Standard"
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you hop from startup to startup, you'll have to deal with legacy code at some point, either someone else's or your own. Here are some indicators I came up with (warning: a lot of broad generalizations follow; they don't always apply):
1) "was the code base developed in-house?" in-house developers generally have a deeper understanding of the requirements, resources, and the company. Some contractors do just enough to meet the requirements so that they can get paid and move on to the next project. Quality is generally higher when someone has to maintain the code and/or face their peers every day in the office.
2) "how many projects are developers involved in at once?" if a developer has to juggle more than a few projects at once, one or more might not get the attention that is needed to be of the highest quality. Conversely, if someone is just focused on one project, the quality might be better due to their deeper commitment to the project and understanding of the internals.
3) "what's the employee turn over rate?" your experience is likely to be less awful if the original author or authors are still around; they can at least explain some of the reasoning behind the design decision. Conversely, if the original designer is long gone and many people have dabbled in the code, the quality might suffer due to developers having different ideas about how to best maintain the code and different understandings of how everything fits together.
4) To follow on the "Are there code review processes?" question, you might want to ask "how is performance evaluated?" It's a good question to ask in anyway, and that might give you an insight into how much oversight there is of a developer's work quality.
Also keep in mind that you need to strike a balance between beautiful code, functionality, and time/cost. Sometimes less elegant code is more maintainable, takes less time to develop (i.e. costs less in labour), and does the job well enough.
I started out around 2000 with RedHat 5.2. I quickly moved to Slackware 4.0 and stayed with it for a while. I played with a few distros until late 2003 / early 2004 when I switched to Gentoo. I stuck with Gentoo for several year but finally switched over to Fedora around 2006 or 2007 when I wanted to spend more time using my computer than maintaining it. I spent about a year on Fedora. After that I tried debian for a few months, but I didn't like that I had to choose between really old but stable software and really new but unstable software (at least that was what it felt like at the time for me). Then, I switched to Ubuntu. I'm still on Ubuntu for my desktop, but I've got a laptop running Arch Linux.
I'm considering doing a fresh install of something else on my desktop (maybe Arch Linux or Fedora). I find that Ubuntu isn't going where I want it to go, and the upgrades are getting to be more of a pain than a reward. They changed the desktop environment (gnome 'classic' to unity), they changed the location of the minimize/maximize/close buttons, they added an annoying 'report the problem to ubuntu' dialog that comes up whenever a program crashes (which is too often BTW), and many other things. Each upgrade has a ton of changes that I have to correct / set back. If I stay with Ubuntu through another upgrade, I'll have to uninstall the Amazon ads as well.
Explain it as being like Apple's Time Machine or Microsoft Office's Track Changes. It's a really smart backup system that lets you roll back to a specific point in time, see when someone changed something, see who changed something, and see why someone changed something (via the commit log message).
Writing a letter "to the college" usually has little impact. The suggestions usually don't filter down to the right people. From my experience (4 years in University, 3 years in College), the right person to talk to is the department head. While the course professor has some flexibility, he or she isn't likely to be able to change a "How to use MS Office" course into an actual computing course. The department head can instigate broader course changes, with the proper approval from stakeholders and higher ups. Also, I'd suggest talking to the department head if possible instead of writing a letter.
What you see on TV might not be appropriate for small children or business meetings with potential clients.
There is no way to block adult oriented results from coming up....
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1054282
What about Windows 8 Secure Boot?
I played Far Cry on Linux today (via wine), Minecraft yesterday (native), and Counter-Strike (via wine/playonlinux) the day before. A lot of commercial games run on Linux, but hardly anybody knows about it and even fewer promote it.
I find that a good judge of someone's familiarity with an operating system is what they do after an installation on the first boot. Seasoned pros have a whole routine (install this, uninstall that, disable something, enable something else, etc), and when asked they can provide justification for their actions. I find that in general, people who are completely happy with the defaults are either A) not that passionate about their job or B) don't know enough or have enough experience to handle running real world servers.
See them here http://www.hwpr0n.se/
To: announce@spreadfirefox.com
From: admin@spreadfirefox.com
Subject: Spread Firefox Security Notice
The Spread Firefox Team became aware this week that the server hosting
Spread Firefox, our community marketing site, has been accessed by
unknown remote attackers who attempted to exploit a security
vulnerability in TWiki software installed on the server. The TWiki
software was disabled as soon as we were aware of the attempts to access
SpreadFirefox.com. This exploit was limited to SpreadFirefox.com and
did not affect mozilla.org web sites or Mozilla software.
We have scanned Spread Firefox servers and at this time do not believe
any sensitive data was taken, but as a precautionary measure we have
shutdown the site and will be rebuilding the web site from scratch. We
also recommend that you change your Spread Firefox password and the
password of any accounts where you use the same password as your Spread
Firefox account. We will notify you again when the site is back up with
instructions on how to change your password. (Note: We do use MD5
hashing on the passwords, but MD5 cannot protect all passwords against
off-line dictionary style attacks.)
After Spread Firefox was compromised in July, we instituted procedures
to ensure that we apply all security fixes to the software running the
site (Drupal and PHP) as soon as they become available. Unfortunately,
those procedures overlooked the installation of the TWiki software since
it is not used by the main Spread Firefox site. When the system is
rebuilt, all the software will be audited to ensure that security
updates will be applied in a timely manner. We deeply regret this
incident and any inconvenience this may have caused you. Sincerely,
Spread Firefox Team
Mozilla Foundation
from site:
Max allowed load: 11
Current load: 156
So when does this really go to court?
What about google? How do they get around cacheing almost every website on the net? Couldn't Slashdot use the same tricks as google?
People are already getting paid for open source and free software. It is possible! Companies and non-profits are making money by
The makers of M&M's have a trademark on the letter M. Using the Microsoft rational, Microsoft should be sued because it's name contains part of a trademark.
This type of book is good if you don't read it. Instead of reading it cover to cover, it should be used as a reference. Read the sections you need when you need them. No one should read about NIS if they are using a single computer at home to try out linux.
"Real men don't use backups, they post their stuff on a public ftp server and let the rest of the world make copies." - Linus Torvald
If people are willing to break the law to make analog to digital copies of copyrighted material what makes anyone think that they won't break the law to subvert the watermark detectors?
If they were able to estabilsh a better proxy system they could have all of the clients connecting to proxies. Then they proxies could systematically send their packets of data to distributed.net a couple times a week. This would cut down on all the bandwidth for people who just do one work, connect, send the work unit, fetch another work unit, disconnect, crunch the work unit and repeat the above steps many times a day.
Since it's a "contest" with cash prizes, why not charge people to enter. That would cover some bandwidth costs if dnet was unable to get free bandwidth.
-TC
"As per usual, our good friends at NORAD have all the details of its orbit"
NORAD monitors Santa, other countries space flights, what next? the paper airplanes thrown during second grade recess.
I think that the eligibility of his code should be based on his coding skills as opposed to his age. If someone makes a considerable contribution then they should not be held back because of their age. Many young people are great programmers.
Another thing to point out is that Google is currently running a programming contest, but the authors of the code must be 18 or older to enter. If something is good why should it matter where it's from?
Don't we have enough standards as it is?
Mars Inc. has a trademark on the letter "M".
Just setup your 802.11b gateway and some dial-in servers and start your own ISP. You could charge your room mate $20 per month.