In my opinion, despite Gnome's incremental approach, they are still highly successive in alienating their users.
That, sadly, is true. I've been a big fan of Gnome since ~version 1.0, but have lost count of instances where the developers have arbitrarily decided that the way I like to get something done is no longer cool or trendy, so they break it.
Having said that, I do try occasionally to give KDE a fair go. But I have never managed to last more than a couple of weeks. I just find the interface unnecessarily cluttered, and it makes me cranky. Or crankier than normal, anyway.
At least neither of them are bad enough to drive me into the arms of Microsoft...
but I just don't recall coders producing a shit ton of code back in the day and today they definitely do.
You answered yourself there. A shit ton == a ton of shit.:-) I realise what you are saying (and I don't necessarily disagree, given commercial imperatives), but my point was that time is better spent thinking about what your code does than checking to see if by some miracle it passes through the compiler.
...you have to know your own limitations and ignorance. I have a lot of both...
For the entertainment of the Slashbots, this brings to mind an apposite quote from The importance of being Earnest:
Lady Bracknell....I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?
Jack. [After some hesitation.] I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.
Lady Bracknell. I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.
Sadly there still are some companies (Municipalities mostly) that still look for those worthless certifications.
I don't think this is new. I remember contracting for a certain council to the West of London back in the early 80s where apparently the main criterion for employment was that I should be able to turn up punctually for work.
I'm 54 years old, female, and work in IT. I don't have a degree, but am constantly upgrading my skills...
Exactly. I presume you took the "trainee programmer" route I did back in the days when this was common.
This is exactly the kind of background that makes an excellent programmer: exposure of your work to your more experienced colleagues from day one is a quick way to get up to speed (since we had to be able to pull our weight on commercial projects), and if you went into contracting (as I did) it didn't take long to fill up several pages in your resume listing all the programming languages in which you were proficient.
We can start with a one page written (in English, using appropriate grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation) paper correlating the business of IT for the IT associated with their business.
I can think of an interesting way to refine this.
How about one page, HAND-WRITTEN, on any subject at all. I figure that the ability to do this without excessive deletions and corrections might say a lot about one's ability to think or set forth a cogent argument without the crutch of his computer's editing functions.
OK, I am old enough to remember the paper coding forms we used back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth: we wrote our (COBOL or Fortran) code on them with a pencil and sent them off to the keypunch girls to encode. Although this approach was cumbersome, it did force us to be critical about our code. We all spent more time thinking about what it did rather than just chucking any old dreck in to see if it would compile. Also, sketches and pseudocode saved a lot of time, so we were about as productive as any present-day programmer.
It is otiose to buy into the debate about exactly what age the brain starts to decline. What is important is one's ability to function as a useful part of an organisation, and maturity has a large part to play in this.
I know plenty of people in their 20s who are more academically gifted and mentally brilliant than my 46-year-old self, but this doesn't necessarily count for much when one sees them running around in circles without any real focus.
A stupidly simple case in point: just today, I and a younger colleague needed to get a quickie questionnaire out for a project we're working on. It took several attempts to convince my colleague that there was no point adding useless data on respondents' age and other matters, since (a) these things made no difference to us, and (b) there is no point collecting data on something you can't use.
You might find it less fashionable to parrot this idea of the brain declining at 27 when you pass that age and have to watch the young sprouts making fools of themselves and you.
For the benefit of the idiot who moderated the parent post offtopic: OJ got off primarily because forensic evidence was grossly mishandled, leading to its inadmissibility in court. (IANAL, but I am qualified in forensics.) The comment might be boring or unfunny, but not wholly offtopic.
..and more to the point, iiNet pulled out of the trial months ago. I'm not sure why there's this sudden resurgence of interest, but hopefully someone can enlighten us.
I have a universal remote like this one which works well for me. It has a touchscreen interface with an orange-red backlight. Any keys that you don't use can just be edited out, so you don't have the clutter of unused buttons. It does have pre-sets for a lot of equipment, but it's easy enough to teach it the codes.
I don't have any conviction one way or another, but saying that the DHS "isn't prepared to deal with organized online threats" doesn't provide a convincing rationale for having the similarly unqualified president's office take over the brief.
I never suggested that we return to the 1970s and use assembly code for everything. You and the previous posters taking a torch to my butt have missed the point. Sure, there are more "modern" and productive ways to code, but the point I was making was that it is a Good Thing to know and understand how a program actually works. It is a Good Thing to get into the habit of giving at least some thought to making your code efficient. If you don't, then you can't take any pride in your work.
I never said that everybody should become a Real Programmer. But if all you can say about your work is that it is maintainable, then you might just as well go find a job as a public servant.
You mean a merkin: "Counterfeit hair for women's privy parts" (Dr. Johnson). It always puzzles me why one would want to wear one of these on one's face.
I know this will seem foreign to most of the current generation of graduates, but I would suggest a strong grounding in assembly coding for any processor. If the programmer really understands assembly, s/he should "intuitively" acquire a sound grasp of what makes a good program written in C, Fortran or whatever.
Many of the current commercial languages belong in toyland. They are designed for programmers who really don't have any idea about managing resources efficiently.
...okay, there's a miniscule[sic] possibility that Australia will march firmly in the direction of fascism...
Australia is not merely marching down that path, it has been running headlong down it for over a decade. The fact that the major political parties swapped the reins of government in 2007 has made no difference, since the Labor party is still stirring up the same narrow-minded xenophobic nastiness that Howard fostered so insidiously. Historically, the Labor party's main agenda used to be centred on social justice, but it seems that has gone the way of last year's management theories.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmmm. I wonder if IBM are just getting this in 6 days early? ;-)
Agreed. WHY does it take so long for my preview to load?
Indeed. Why does it take so long for EVERYTHING to load?
My solution is simple: go into your preferences and enable "classic" mode. Aaaah, relief. No more cruft and bloat.
In my opinion, despite Gnome's incremental approach, they are still highly successive in alienating their users.
That, sadly, is true. I've been a big fan of Gnome since ~version 1.0, but have lost count of instances where the developers have arbitrarily decided that the way I like to get something done is no longer cool or trendy, so they break it.
Having said that, I do try occasionally to give KDE a fair go. But I have never managed to last more than a couple of weeks. I just find the interface unnecessarily cluttered, and it makes me cranky. Or crankier than normal, anyway.
At least neither of them are bad enough to drive me into the arms of Microsoft...
Kinda defeats the purpose of a captcha if it looks like noise to a human...
But... but this is so cool! Captchas suck^3!
but I just don't recall coders producing a shit ton of code back in the day and today they definitely do.
:-) I realise what you are saying (and I don't necessarily disagree, given commercial imperatives), but my point was that time is better spent thinking about what your code does than checking to see if by some miracle it passes through the compiler.
You answered yourself there. A shit ton == a ton of shit.
...you have to know your own limitations and ignorance. I have a lot of both...
...I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?
For the entertainment of the Slashbots, this brings to mind an apposite quote from The importance of being Earnest:
Lady Bracknell.
Jack. [After some hesitation.] I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.
Lady Bracknell. I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.
Sadly there still are some companies (Municipalities mostly) that still look for those worthless certifications.
I don't think this is new. I remember contracting for a certain council to the West of London back in the early 80s where apparently the main criterion for employment was that I should be able to turn up punctually for work.
I'm 54 years old, female, and work in IT. I don't have a degree, but am constantly upgrading my skills...
Exactly. I presume you took the "trainee programmer" route I did back in the days when this was common.
This is exactly the kind of background that makes an excellent programmer: exposure of your work to your more experienced colleagues from day one is a quick way to get up to speed (since we had to be able to pull our weight on commercial projects), and if you went into contracting (as I did) it didn't take long to fill up several pages in your resume listing all the programming languages in which you were proficient.
Me too!
:-}
When I was a kid, I always used to say I was going to be a cantankerous old man when I grew up.
Trouble is, I'm now in my late 40s and still show no signs of growing up...
We can start with a one page written (in English, using appropriate grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation) paper correlating the business of IT for the IT associated with their business.
I can think of an interesting way to refine this.
How about one page, HAND-WRITTEN, on any subject at all. I figure that the ability to do this without excessive deletions and corrections might say a lot about one's ability to think or set forth a cogent argument without the crutch of his computer's editing functions.
OK, I am old enough to remember the paper coding forms we used back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth: we wrote our (COBOL or Fortran) code on them with a pencil and sent them off to the keypunch girls to encode. Although this approach was cumbersome, it did force us to be critical about our code. We all spent more time thinking about what it did rather than just chucking any old dreck in to see if it would compile. Also, sketches and pseudocode saved a lot of time, so we were about as productive as any present-day programmer.
It is otiose to buy into the debate about exactly what age the brain starts to decline. What is important is one's ability to function as a useful part of an organisation, and maturity has a large part to play in this.
I know plenty of people in their 20s who are more academically gifted and mentally brilliant than my 46-year-old self, but this doesn't necessarily count for much when one sees them running around in circles without any real focus.
A stupidly simple case in point: just today, I and a younger colleague needed to get a quickie questionnaire out for a project we're working on. It took several attempts to convince my colleague that there was no point adding useless data on respondents' age and other matters, since (a) these things made no difference to us, and (b) there is no point collecting data on something you can't use.
You might find it less fashionable to parrot this idea of the brain declining at 27 when you pass that age and have to watch the young sprouts making fools of themselves and you.
OJ didn't do it!
For the benefit of the idiot who moderated the parent post offtopic: OJ got off primarily because forensic evidence was grossly mishandled, leading to its inadmissibility in court. (IANAL, but I am qualified in forensics.) The comment might be boring or unfunny, but not wholly offtopic.
...just to save time, in the interest of transparency, here's my IP address:
127.0.0.1
Cheers
A. Coward.
Huh. Feel free to mod me -1 ignoramus or whatever. Just discovered I have indeed been living in a barrel, since I don't follow the Simpsons. :-)
Maybe I've been living in a barrel, but I believe he's come up with a cool new verb as well:
;-)
"embiggen". As in "click to embiggen". Nice, I'll use that...
..and more to the point, iiNet pulled out of the trial months ago. I'm not sure why there's this sudden resurgence of interest, but hopefully someone can enlighten us.
Just check the manpages - e.g.
$ man woman
No manual entry for woman.
$
I have a universal remote like this one which works well for me. It has a touchscreen interface with an orange-red backlight. Any keys that you don't use can just be edited out, so you don't have the clutter of unused buttons. It does have pre-sets for a lot of equipment, but it's easy enough to teach it the codes.
I don't have any conviction one way or another, but saying that the DHS "isn't prepared to deal with organized online threats" doesn't provide a convincing rationale for having the similarly unqualified president's office take over the brief.
I think you're dead wrong.
;-)
Well, thanks for your input.
I never suggested that we return to the 1970s and use assembly code for everything. You and the previous posters taking a torch to my butt have missed the point. Sure, there are more "modern" and productive ways to code, but the point I was making was that it is a Good Thing to know and understand how a program actually works. It is a Good Thing to get into the habit of giving at least some thought to making your code efficient. If you don't, then you can't take any pride in your work.
I never said that everybody should become a Real Programmer. But if all you can say about your work is that it is maintainable, then you might just as well go find a job as a public servant.
Err, yes, I know that, but you missed the point. I was talking about people who choose to wear merkins on their face. ;-)
Well, which one has a goatee?
You mean a merkin: "Counterfeit hair for women's privy parts" (Dr. Johnson). It always puzzles me why one would want to wear one of these on one's face.
Either shave or don't shave.
I know this will seem foreign to most of the current generation of graduates, but I would suggest a strong grounding in assembly coding for any processor. If the programmer really understands assembly, s/he should "intuitively" acquire a sound grasp of what makes a good program written in C, Fortran or whatever.
Many of the current commercial languages belong in toyland. They are designed for programmers who really don't have any idea about managing resources efficiently.
OK, what moderator decided that was funny? Insightful, Informative, Underrated, sad... but not funny.
...okay, there's a miniscule[sic] possibility that Australia will march firmly in the direction of fascism...
Australia is not merely marching down that path, it has been running headlong down it for over a decade. The fact that the major political parties swapped the reins of government in 2007 has made no difference, since the Labor party is still stirring up the same narrow-minded xenophobic nastiness that Howard fostered so insidiously. Historically, the Labor party's main agenda used to be centred on social justice, but it seems that has gone the way of last year's management theories.