Duct tape programmers dont give a shit what you think about them. They stick to simple basic and easy to use tools and use the extra brainpower that these tools leave them to write more useful features for their customers.
Exactly. Many posts will go on about how having a good architecture will make it easier to maintain in the long run, and other such things, but it all comes down to one thing:
TIME
If your code is useful, it will be used, you will get revenue (hopefully!), and you will have the TIME to improve things, clean up code, write unit tests, and all of the other things that are good and proper in life, but which only indirectly benefit the end used. This is the fundamental opportunity cost for software.
Sounds like the usual situation whenever you have a bunch of people over at a place off the beaten path. I suspect they are young to pay one heck of a surcharge to get the septic tank guy to come pump it out...
Psssft. Get back to me when the grad student who dug it out collapses into a coma and lives a lifetime as a paleolithic hunter, then wakes up and can play some good mammoth hunting songs...
But, they weren't interested in playing the massive volumes with razor thin margins game of the PC world, thinking that the unix workstation market was insulated from the PC market. After all, PC's were for chumps running 1-2-3 and Wordperfect. So they introduced their own hardware, SPARC, and discontinued SunOS/x86.
Yet another example that any large, established, company will never knowingly introduce a new product that might damage the market for an existing product. That is why giving billions to one or two large companies to develop TECHNOLOGY X never seems to work. If you gave the same amount of money to companies with less than 50 people, you would have 12 different versions of TECHNOLOGY X within a year.
All that I can picture is the classic 19th century drill tower with glowing magma spraying from the top, and lava-coated workmen running around cheering "It's a gusher!!"
Actually, in my mind, the workmen look a lot like Homer Simpson...
No car analogy yet... forklift was as close as I could get:) And of course, since it is in military use, we must sing a rousing chorus of "He tried to kill him with a forklift!"
This reclusive giant of the deep, the Great White Backhoe, spends most
of its life in quiet solitude. But, once every seven years, as if called by some
unknown force, these gentle beasts gather in great numbers to feast upon the
cables of the ocean floor.
</french-accent>
I don't know if World War III will be fought with railguns or belt-fed airport screening devices, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
No, no... you got the quote all wrong.
"World War III will be fought with radioactive Monkey-Snake Hybrids, World War IV will be fought with watermelons and trebuchets, World War V will be fought with intelligent berzerker cheeses, and World War VI will be fought with sticks and stones... the size of planets!"
> Didn't he already shoot the sequel to The Hobbit?
No, no, no.
<spoiler> This sequel will be called Hobbit 2: Electric Boogaloo Quickening, and will feature Bilbo and Frodo as actually from the future, preventing the destruction of the earth. Because Hobbits are really from space.
(Chris Tolkien hasn't gotten to this story in dad's notes yet...) </spoiler>
Years ago, we experimented in the office to see just how much abuse one of those 5.25 floppies could take. We took the disk out, put fingerprints all over it, threw it on the floor and stomped on it with dirty shoes, wrote on it with a marker, and were still able to read it.
Setting a hot coffee pot on it did the trick though:-)
I dealt with this a couple of years ago by adopting an external form for descriptions and a picture naming convention. See the screed/tirade below:-)
I wrote a couple of scripts for bulk-importing lots of files and started a windows GUI editor to encourage family to adopt it, but got distracted. I have just been doing everything with emacs in the meantime.
== == Photo Description Tools ==
Digital photos are wonderful, but for all of their megapixels they lack the simple feature of prints -- you can't write on the back of them.
On the surface, it seems simple enough. When I take a picture of Uncle Harvey, the JPEG file is one million bytes in size. You would think that it wouldn't be difficult to add in the twelve extra bytes for the string "Uncle Harvey".
The problem is that everyone wants to do it differently. In what has become computing industry standard practice, each vendor wants to lock you into their private database for notes, and when the technology or business environment changes, you lose everything.
In the past year, I have shot many photos, and since I can't jot notes on the back, have forgotten many details about the subjects. I can't wait another few years for a winner to emerge before recording this information. I need to capture it now!
I keep my physical photos for 30-40 years, and want to keep my digital photos for just as long. If you believe that your current solution is going to survive that long, good for you. I don't, and this is my open way of saving the information in a way that will survive for many years and hopefully outlast the stupid vendor contests.
That data belongs to you! Don't let someone else lock it up!
These protocols were written to scratch this particular itch. The following are my design goals:
- Let me capture BASIC information about the photos
- Store the master copy of the information in a separate file, so that we never lose it if some vendor decides to strip things from the picture file.
- Store the master copy in an open format so that I can write tools against it or even just edit it with a text editor and never be held hostage to a particular tool.
- Copy the info into the file multiple times in all the competing protocols, so that it will be visible in whatever system you happen to be using.
In order to make this happen, I have defined two specs that will govern the tools I write. If it other people and projects want to adopt them too, so much the better.
The first is the pixtag file format for picture descriptions. This is simple enough to write by hand with notepad.exe or emacs (I am doing a lot of this while building my tools), but structured enough for tools to easily read and manage.
The second is a naming convention for files. You can use pixtag regardless of what you name your image files, but if you plan on keeping your pictures for decades, you better use something better than the IMG_1234 that comes out of your camera. Plus, you better plan on mixing those files with ones from other people, scans of traditional prints, and so on.
PIXTAG DESCRIPTION FILE
There is some flexibility in how the master file is handled. In most cases, I expect that there will be one file with all of the pictures a person has, or one file per directory (what I do) However, some people may want to partitioning files by year, or overachievers may even load everything into a mysql database.
I suggest the pixtag file extension for the master files. So for a single file it might look like:
loffredo.pixtag
For multiple years or directories it might look like
The Star Trek New Voyages folks are using this anniversary for the premiere of their latest episode "To Serve All My Days". It was written by DC Fontana and guest stars Walter Koeinig. Check out all of the episodes and shorts do far at:
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/
Just this weekend, I was having a similar conversation with my father, who is a PE (Professional Engineer). He retired for a while but came out to work on a new project. As part of that, he had to reinstate his lapsed PE license. This involves making sure he has taken enough training and what-not to stay up-to-date.
Talking about this, I pointed out that in software, there is absolutely no such licensing hoo-haa, and suggested that it was directly tracable to the "AS-IS" disclaimers on each and every software license that has ever been written. An engineer who designs or builds a building has to be licensed and has to sign-off on drawings and what not because they are more-or-less eternally responsible for the things. You can't just get a clean compile and kick it out the door.
Eliminate the total liability waivers in software licenses and you will see a) software quality go way up, b) the amount of available software go way down, c) professional licensing requirements pop up for software people, d) fewer software jobs, and e) more job security for the people in those jobs.
Is this desirable? Who knows. I'll do fine in either case.
You will note that nobody is complaining about architect and mech-e jobs going overseas. Those stay close to the project because of the professional licensing issues.
I've been hearing noise about the semantic web, RDF, and what not for years now, and every time I do, the first thing that pops into my head is "Second System Effect".
He got lucky once, because he put together some tools that were simple and straightforward enough for people to pick it up quickly, thereby avoiding the fate of the dozens of other hypertext systems going back to the late 1980's.
Now, like all second systems, he wants to "do it right", over-engineering away all of the things that made the first one take off...
Of course the first US patent is the one for the time machine -- or at least it will be when it gets invented. (Insert shameless plug for Cheapass games here)
And the inventor will be Doctor Lucky, if someone doesn't kill him first:-)
Star Trek may have used the phrase "cloaking device" in the sixties, but we'd need to see the script to verify.
So they are the very definition of pedantic, big deal. Just show them one of the novelizations by James Blish or Alan Dean Foster (for the animated ones) that came out a couple of years later.
As a geek who is into manufacturing, I was listening to some of the international trade speechifying on CSPAN the other day, and heard the following particularly relevant tale from Rep DeFazio of Oregon. (Quote courtesy of a quick search of the congressional record)
I
have a small company in my district called Videx. They developed a new
kind of scanning technology. They developed an electronic lock. They
are selling in 44 countries, including, their mistake, China, where
they were selling about a $1 million a year. But it turns out, they say
in China if you bring in intellectual property within 24 hours it is
counterfeited and for sale.
And the Videx company had followed all the laws and protections, went
to the trouble of getting supposed Chinese protection and patents and
all that. One day they found their entire company had been cloned in
China including their Web site. In fact, the Chinese, the fake Chinese
Videx, had gone them one up. They had a little fake American flag
waving at the top of their Web site, this Chinese company.
They even copied and translated into Chinese the U.S. copyright and
patents on their software. They did not make a very good product, the
company found out, because they started getting product support calls
from people who thought they were clients of the U.S. Videx, but were
actually clients of the phony Chinese Videx. This happens time and time
again.
Yea, we could convert all of our conflicts into
computer simulations, install disintegration booths, the whole nine yards.
... but then William Shatner would drop by and screw up the whole thing. Then he would sing "Lucy [pause] in the Sky [pause] with Diamonds" just to
rub it in.
Slashdot Mirror
Your droids ... They'll have to wait outside.
From the article:
allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit
So NASA's building a version of Voltron?
They don't say so explicitly ... you have to read between the lions.
Duct tape programmers dont give a shit what you think about them. They stick to simple basic and easy to use tools and use the extra brainpower that these tools leave them to write more useful features for their customers.
Exactly. Many posts will go on about how having a good architecture will make it easier to maintain in the long run, and other such things, but it all comes down to one thing:
TIME
If your code is useful, it will be used, you will get revenue (hopefully!), and you will have the TIME to improve things, clean up code, write unit tests, and all of the other things that are good and proper in life, but which only indirectly benefit the end used. This is the fundamental opportunity cost for software.
Sounds like the usual situation whenever you have a bunch of people over at a place off the beaten path. I suspect they are young to pay one heck of a surcharge to get the septic tank guy to come pump it out ...
Psssft. Get back to me when the grad student who dug it out collapses into a coma and lives a lifetime as a paleolithic hunter, then wakes up and can play some good mammoth hunting songs ...
But, they weren't interested in playing the massive volumes with razor thin margins game of the PC world, thinking that the unix workstation market was insulated from the PC market. After all, PC's were for chumps running 1-2-3 and Wordperfect. So they introduced their own hardware, SPARC, and discontinued SunOS/x86.
Yet another example that any large, established, company will never knowingly introduce a new product that might damage the market for an existing product. That is why giving billions to one or two large companies to develop TECHNOLOGY X never seems to work. If you gave the same amount of money to companies with less than 50 people, you would have 12 different versions of TECHNOLOGY X within a year.
End rant.
All that I can picture is the classic 19th century drill tower with glowing magma spraying from the top, and lava-coated workmen running around cheering "It's a gusher!!"
Actually, in my mind, the workmen look a lot like Homer Simpson ...
Unless you're suggesting that some of the athletes were, in fact, undead.
Which would be the single coolest change to the sport ever!
I can't wait until they add the 500m shamble!
- Wolf Raider Dave
This reclusive giant of the deep, the Great White Backhoe, spends most of its life in quiet solitude. But, once every seven years, as if called by some unknown force, these gentle beasts gather in great numbers to feast upon the cables of the ocean floor.
</french-accent>
No, no ... you got the quote all wrong.
"World War III will be fought with radioactive Monkey-Snake Hybrids, World War IV will be fought with watermelons and trebuchets, World War V will be fought with intelligent berzerker cheeses, and World War VI will be fought with sticks and stones ... the size of planets!"
> Didn't he already shoot the sequel to The Hobbit?
...)
No, no, no.
<spoiler>
This sequel will be called Hobbit 2: Electric Boogaloo Quickening, and
will feature Bilbo and Frodo as actually from the future, preventing the
destruction of the earth. Because Hobbits are really from space.
(Chris Tolkien hasn't gotten to this story in dad's notes yet
</spoiler>
Years ago, we experimented in the office to see just how much abuse one
:-)
of those 5.25 floppies could take. We took the disk out, put fingerprints
all over it, threw it on the floor and stomped on it with dirty shoes, wrote
on it with a marker, and were still able to read it.
Setting a hot coffee pot on it did the trick though
> No dynamic (self-modifying) code is allowed.
...
Usually true in practice, but you still may hit some old code with
an ALTER statement if your luck is negative
I dealt with this a couple of years ago by adopting an external form for descriptions and a picture naming convention. See the screed/tirade below :-)
I wrote a couple of scripts for bulk-importing lots of files and started a windows GUI editor to encourage family to adopt it, but got distracted. I have just been doing everything with emacs in the meantime.
==
== Photo Description Tools
==
Digital photos are wonderful, but for all of their megapixels they lack the simple feature of prints -- you can't write on the back of them.
On the surface, it seems simple enough. When I take a picture of Uncle Harvey, the JPEG file is one million bytes in size. You would think that it wouldn't be difficult to add in the twelve extra bytes for the string "Uncle Harvey".
The problem is that everyone wants to do it differently. In what has become computing industry standard practice, each vendor wants to lock you into their private database for notes, and when the technology or business environment changes, you lose everything.
In the past year, I have shot many photos, and since I can't jot notes on the back, have forgotten many details about the subjects. I can't wait another few years for a winner to emerge before recording this information. I need to capture it now!
I keep my physical photos for 30-40 years, and want to keep my digital photos for just as long. If you believe that your current solution is going to survive that long, good for you. I don't, and this is my open way of saving the information in a way that will survive for many years and hopefully outlast the stupid vendor contests.
That data belongs to you! Don't let someone else lock it up!
These protocols were written to scratch this particular itch. The following are
my design goals:
- Let me capture BASIC information about the photos
- Store the master copy of the information in a separate file,
so that we never lose it if some vendor decides to strip
things from the picture file.
- Store the master copy in an open format so that I can write
tools against it or even just edit it with a text editor
and never be held hostage to a particular tool.
- Copy the info into the file multiple times in all the competing
protocols, so that it will be visible in whatever system
you happen to be using.
In order to make this happen, I have defined two specs that will
govern the tools I write. If it other people and projects want to
adopt them too, so much the better.
The first is the pixtag file format for picture descriptions. This is
simple enough to write by hand with notepad.exe or emacs (I am doing a
lot of this while building my tools), but structured enough for tools
to easily read and manage.
The second is a naming convention for files. You can use pixtag
regardless of what you name your image files, but if you plan on
keeping your pictures for decades, you better use something better
than the IMG_1234 that comes out of your camera. Plus, you better
plan on mixing those files with ones from other people, scans of
traditional prints, and so on.
PIXTAG DESCRIPTION FILE
There is some flexibility in how the master file is handled. In most
cases, I expect that there will be one file with all of the pictures a
person has, or one file per directory (what I do) However, some people
may want to partitioning files by year, or overachievers may even load
everything into a mysql database.
I suggest the pixtag file extension for the master files. So for a
single file it might look like:
loffredo.pixtag
For multiple years or directories it might look like
196x_loffredo.pixtag
The Star Trek New Voyages folks are using this anniversary for the premiere of their latest episode "To Serve All My Days". It was written by DC Fontana and guest stars Walter Koeinig. Check out all of the episodes and shorts do far at: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/
Cheers, Xleeko
Just this weekend, I was having a similar conversation with my father, who is a PE (Professional Engineer). He retired for a while but came out to work on a new project. As part of that, he had to reinstate his lapsed PE license. This involves making sure he has taken enough training and what-not to stay up-to-date.
Talking about this, I pointed out that in software, there is absolutely no such licensing hoo-haa, and suggested that it was directly tracable to the "AS-IS" disclaimers on each and every software license that has ever been written. An engineer who designs or builds a building has to be licensed and has to sign-off on drawings and what not because they are more-or-less eternally responsible for the things. You can't just get a clean compile and kick it out the door.
Eliminate the total liability waivers in software licenses and you will see a) software quality go way up, b) the amount of available software go way down, c) professional licensing requirements pop up for software people, d) fewer software jobs, and e) more job security for the people in those jobs.
Is this desirable? Who knows. I'll do fine in either case.
You will note that nobody is complaining about architect and mech-e jobs going overseas. Those stay close to the project because of the professional licensing issues.
I've been hearing noise about the semantic web, RDF, and what not for years now, and every time I do, the first thing that pops into my head is "Second System Effect".
He got lucky once, because he put together some tools that were simple and straightforward enough for people to pick it up quickly, thereby avoiding the fate of the dozens of other hypertext systems going back to the late 1980's.
Now, like all second systems, he wants to "do it right", over-engineering away all of the things that made the first one take off ...
Just my opinionated rant ...
So they are the very definition of pedantic, big deal. Just show them one of the novelizations by James Blish or Alan Dean Foster (for the animated ones) that came out a couple of years later.
-Dave
This really burns me.
As a geek who is into manufacturing, I was listening to some of the international trade speechifying on CSPAN the other day, and heard the following particularly relevant tale from Rep DeFazio of Oregon. (Quote courtesy of a quick search of the congressional record)
For the full transcript, go here
- Dave
Yes, but does it have five asses?!
>> WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!
Geek!!
(another nostalgic alum, who is still in Troy!)
- Dave