I prefer Better Place's approach of using swappable battery modules. It's faster for the consumer. Batteries can be tested and replaced before they degrade.
We have a Cricut and a Silhouette - electronic paper cutters. The home crafting market is one I think a 3D printer would do well in, and this one seems to be aiming in that direction. There are lots of moms & grandmas who sew, quilt, knit, make cards, scrapbook, etc. Many of those women are incorporating computer driven tools into their workflows. A 3D printer would let them print cutsie embellishments, cupcake holders, party favors, napkin rings, and "girlie" things that are completely off the radar of the "hacker space" boys club.
Are you interested in making developers happy and feel good, or interested in producing good (great?) products? The two are not necessarily complimentary.
A faithfully used bug tracking & task assigning tool will give great accountability of what people are working on, where the product is in the schedule, prioritize tasks, etc. But using it may be considered burdensome micro-management by developers. A "good" developer should want to use those tools, though.
I interpreted the question along the lines of tools that should be available and used by the development team. Trackers, continuous integration, VMs, debuggers, source-control, IDEs, that sort of thing. Provide a rich, discipled set of software development tools, enforce consistent use, and teach the newer guys to use them.
Whether you have Hawaiian shirt day or free Red Bull should be pretty far down the list of concerns. Free drinks & snacks are nice, though, as they make being in the office a bit more comfortable. That sort of social, interpersonal thing is definitely going to be different from group to group - even within an office. But the company recognizing the importance of that social bonding and allocating some time and funds for it is certainly a moral booster.
In summary: 1) First focus on the work. Provide the tools to do the work well. Make people use them and teach people to use them. 2) Provide some personal social tradition to help the group bond.
I'll throw in a vote for Grails. It is a convention over configuration app framework that has you code your domain objects and then it generates CRUD pages for you.
The documentation is pretty good. There's lots of tags for the web page side.
It lives on top of Spring, Hibernate, & JQuery so it has some solid frameworks at its core.
It uses Groovy as its language rather than Java, but Groovy is 100% compatible with Java and is mostly syntactic shortcuts & convenience tricks on top of Java (like no need for semicolons). So it is very easy to learn if you're a Java guy; you can slowly start using more idiomatic Groovy while still writing very Java-esque code.
If Groovy scares you, try Roo (http://www.springsource.org/spring-roo). It's a pure Java based app framework also from Spring that uses the Spring libraries.
Now, having said all that. If you plan to deploy to iOS or Android, you may want to consider RhoMobile (http://rhomobile.com). It is a Ruby-on-Rails environment that runs on top of the native OS. So developing a RoR app for the client-server PC side and then porting to RhoMobile should be very easy. I don't know of a solution on the Java side that will take a Java servlet based app and move it over to the mobile OSes conveniently.
The reasoning was, "We haven't covered that so the answer is 'it can't be done'". The accuracy of my answer was irrelevant. We hadn't covered negative numbers in class, so I could give no answer.
Reading further in this thread, I see many people have had similar experiences.
It amazes me that I remember the incident so vividly. It is truly one of my earliest and foundational memories of cynicism. Authority does not care if you are "right" only if you give the answer they want.
I went on to be an A,B and occasional C student without trying very hard. I saw no value in pushing myself when I could be near the top of the class and provide the answers expected. Anything more was wasted effort.
Same experience here. In third grade, I believe, we had a quiz question where the answer was a negative number. I put the negative number answer and got it marked wrong. The teacher's response was that it was impossible in our class.
Cynicism was born in me that day 30+ years ago. You only need to work hard enough to pass and give the expected answers. Anything beyond that makes you a troublemaker.
Cool Story Bro: When I was in third grade, there was a question on a math test, it was something like:
4444444 -5555555 --------------
I answered -1111111 and had it marked wrong. I argued with the teacher that the answer was correct and his response that it wasn't in this class; the correct answer was that the problem couldn't be done.
This deeply affected my perception and attitude toward school. Cynicism was born that day. It's not about doing your best or learning as much as you can; it's about towing the line, giving the expected answer, making the system happy.
30+ years on I still remember that incident. And its lesson still holds true - quietly obeying a broken system is often easier and more personally advantageous than being right or doing your best.
FWIW, we are homeschooling our child. My wife worked as a sub while our child was in kindergarten and first grade. She saw the ugly truth of the local school system and we plan to keep our child out of that environment.
Cool Story Bro: My mother-in-law is a retired secretary from the local school system. She is now working part time for the administration so that they can justify hiring a full time person. She sits and reads books most of the time! The system is paying her - and a couple of other retirees - to sit around doing nothing so they can show the need for a new full time admin person.
Yes, it is. And it's not really Christianity. I'll save the details, but mainstream Protestant and Catholic denominations do not recognize LDS as "Christian". It is heavily based on the same teachings, but there are some core foundational differences. To those who think Baptists, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews, Muslims et al. are all worshipping pretend fantastical delusions, the differences don't really matter, but they are there.
Mormons have "be wholesome" as a very strong teaching of what it takes to be a good Mormon. And Romney is pretty high up in the Mormon religious hierarchy. He is modeling good Mormon behavior.
Rebuttal from BSR, one of the NYT's sources for the article. NYT misrepresented the situation. Took advantage of Apple being popular to read about, and ignored all the other companies that are Foxconn customers and are not doing as much as Apple to improve working conditions.
"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware."
This has been one of Microsoft's biggest failings. They can't optimize or change things because of all the hardware vendors that depend on the existing way of doing things.
And they don't get serious enough about the UI to make it great because end-users aren't their real customers, OEMs and IT departments are.
If Nokia became a wholly owned subsidiary of MS and became the primary manufacturer of Windows phones, MS might have a chance to get their software and hardware as a single package act together.
Google has a lot of market penetration with Android, but they are suffering the same fracturing and sub-optimal user experience that Windows faces. Meanwhile Apple happily melds the OS and hardware into a single package and continues make insanely great products (and profits).
To get something 80% complete takes 20% of the time. The last 20% takes the other 80%.
Or, once something is 80% done, there's only 80% left to do.
So, Minecraft as a loose tech demo is fun and relatively easy. Fleshing it out to the point of being a full-featured game takes a long time and a lot of work.
But the US Constitution isn't set in stone. It can be amended - and has been numerous times. If the States want the Fed to take on more of the burden and power, let them say so explicitly with some amendments. The amendments could even be very broad and vague giving the Fed lots of power. The way it works now is the Fed does stuff and the States don't object so it is a de facto Federal power.
I actually kind of agree that the USA is much smaller than it was when founded. Travel speed and communications have made it much easier for someone in Washington to know what's going on in Oregon. And for someone in Oregon to provide feedback to Washington. The country is much more governable as a single nation, and the populace is very mobile.
As you say, wealth is distributed unevenly across the country and a strong Federal government helps distribute that wealth so the poor States don't spiral into oblivion. But the Federal government has been spending money it doesn't have for a number of years. The nation is now seriously in debt and radical steps must be taken to reduce that debt or we'll end up like Greece and Spain and Ireland, etc. The entrenched political class is more interested in preserving their own political power than making the painful decisions required to get our financial house in order.
I see many posts in this thread referring to "government"; like "the government" should or shouldn't do this or that.
The USA is set up with multiple levels of government: Local, State, and Federal. The Federal government has certain powers enumerated by the Constitution of the United States. Ron Paul - and many others - are of the opinion that the Federal government has far exceeded the powers granted to it by our country's founding document. State governments are granted far more leeway in what they can do.
So, student loans may be a GREAT idea. Public health care may be a GREAT idea. Lots of other publicly funded programs may be super awesome. BUT, they are not (unless a Constitutional Amendment is passed) the role of the Federal government. The Federal government has seized powers that it should not have. It needs to relinquish those powers back to the States.
A strong, dominant Federal government (such as we currently have) concentrates power into fewer hands. This concentration of power eases corruption, and the repercussions of that corruption affect the entire country./rant
And he's probably right, implementing at the state level would likely work just as well.
And here is the crux of the matter. Ron Paul is a strict Constitutionalist. The Constitution doesn't give the Federal government the power to give out student loans, so the Federal government shouldn't do it. States? They can do whatever they want and offer free tuition, loans, health care, etc.
It's mostly about the balance of power between the Federal and State governments. The Fed is way too powerful. Time to knock it down several notches.
Your numbers work with people paying in state tuition at public universities. But how many people do that? You have to factor in where people actually go to school. One of the big factors of the complaint I've read about is the number of private for-profit schools charging $20+k per year.
Also, as someone else pointed out, high unemployment disproportionately affects young people. So we should see those default numbers climbing over the next several years as graduating classes find fewer jobs, and recent grads slip into bankruptcy.
And while I'm posting, let's not forget that there are State governments, too. Ron Paul is a VERY strong advocate of a smaller Federal government, but letting the States do what they want. He wants to eliminate lots of programs at the Federal level because the Federal government has taken over the country in ways it should not have.
States can run the same math you did and subsidize college education for their citizens.
FTA:'Bartel said GameStop will ship the tablet with a dedicated controller, though he admitted that "[t]here's not a lot of tablet/android based games for the consumer that are designed to use an external controller."'
Fail. Right there. You work with some key developers to have kick-ass launch titles that show off the greatness of the controller and you mock everyone who doesn't develop their games to support this awesome revolution.
You don't say, "Oh, well, no one really supports external controllers, but we hope developers will think it's cool and start. Please."
Agreed. A good wireless controller and connection to the TV (wireless preferred) could help pull this off.
GameStop gets to define the controller that will be used and to strongly encourage developers to support that controller. One of the big wins for consoles is a known hardware and control setup. Right now no tablet comes with or can expect a handheld controller. A GameStop branded tablet could do that.
Also, GameStop could sell games for their tablet only through their own online store. Then they could sell the tablet at a loss and make it up on the games - just like the console makers. What would be hard, though, is forcing developers to ONLY sell their games through GameStop. But Steam does pretty well, I guess.
Toss in some good parental controls (I want this account to only see Y7 games) and that would give parents a warm fuzzy about the system. (But kids would hate it, so maybe that's a bad idea. But the kids will likely figure out a way around the controls, and many parents won't bother to set them up.)
To me, the trick is NOT to just release a GameStop tablet and a controller. But to release an entire gaming environment. Playstation Network and XBox Live have led the way, but they had years of experience and huge piles of money behind them.
Tablet hardware has certainly reached the point of being powerful enough to be a viable gaming platform. A tablet with a few tweaks to make it extra gaming friendly could be a winner.
Starting and Thinking Forth were two of my very early computer books. I'm sure I've forgotten everything I read in them, but I'm also sure some of the info has engrained itself in my programming instincts.
I actually had a job in college writing Forth for a satellite dish controller.
I'm currently reading "Code Complete". Great stuff.
I'm glad I've never worked anywhere like that. And I've been doing software development for almost 20 years - for only two companies, though.
I suspect lots of jobs are filled with boring meetings, self-important, self-serving, useless and worse than useless co-workers. Doing whatever the actual job is you think you're doing is probably a fraction of many people's days. So there's nothing unique about software development there.
This used to be true of me. However, now I fall in the older, over 40, spectrum of software engineers. My wife, kid, and other outside work activities take up the time I used to spend tinkering and writing on the side. Also, after staring at a screen for eight hours+ at work, I don't have a strong desire to do it at home.
I enjoy my job, and try to pick up a book now and then on some new language or framework, but I don't have the time or energy to be in computer geek mode all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
I prefer Better Place's approach of using swappable battery modules. It's faster for the consumer. Batteries can be tested and replaced before they degrade.
- Jasen.
We have a Cricut and a Silhouette - electronic paper cutters.
The home crafting market is one I think a 3D printer would do well in, and this one seems to be aiming in that direction. There are lots of moms & grandmas who sew, quilt, knit, make cards, scrapbook, etc. Many of those women are incorporating computer driven tools into their workflows. A 3D printer would let them print cutsie embellishments, cupcake holders, party favors, napkin rings, and "girlie" things that are completely off the radar of the "hacker space" boys club.
- Jasen.
Are you interested in making developers happy and feel good, or interested in producing good (great?) products? The two are not necessarily complimentary.
A faithfully used bug tracking & task assigning tool will give great accountability of what people are working on, where the product is in the schedule, prioritize tasks, etc. But using it may be considered burdensome micro-management by developers. A "good" developer should want to use those tools, though.
I interpreted the question along the lines of tools that should be available and used by the development team. Trackers, continuous integration, VMs, debuggers, source-control, IDEs, that sort of thing. Provide a rich, discipled set of software development tools, enforce consistent use, and teach the newer guys to use them.
Whether you have Hawaiian shirt day or free Red Bull should be pretty far down the list of concerns. Free drinks & snacks are nice, though, as they make being in the office a bit more comfortable. That sort of social, interpersonal thing is definitely going to be different from group to group - even within an office. But the company recognizing the importance of that social bonding and allocating some time and funds for it is certainly a moral booster.
In summary:
1) First focus on the work. Provide the tools to do the work well. Make people use them and teach people to use them.
2) Provide some personal social tradition to help the group bond.
- Jasen.
I'll throw in a vote for Grails. It is a convention over configuration app framework that has you code your domain objects and then it generates CRUD pages for you.
The documentation is pretty good. There's lots of tags for the web page side.
It lives on top of Spring, Hibernate, & JQuery so it has some solid frameworks at its core.
It uses Groovy as its language rather than Java, but Groovy is 100% compatible with Java and is mostly syntactic shortcuts & convenience tricks on top of Java (like no need for semicolons). So it is very easy to learn if you're a Java guy; you can slowly start using more idiomatic Groovy while still writing very Java-esque code.
If Groovy scares you, try Roo (http://www.springsource.org/spring-roo). It's a pure Java based app framework also from Spring that uses the Spring libraries.
Now, having said all that. If you plan to deploy to iOS or Android, you may want to consider RhoMobile (http://rhomobile.com). It is a Ruby-on-Rails environment that runs on top of the native OS. So developing a RoR app for the client-server PC side and then porting to RhoMobile should be very easy. I don't know of a solution on the Java side that will take a Java servlet based app and move it over to the mobile OSes conveniently.
The reasoning was, "We haven't covered that so the answer is 'it can't be done'". The accuracy of my answer was irrelevant. We hadn't covered negative numbers in class, so I could give no answer.
Reading further in this thread, I see many people have had similar experiences.
It amazes me that I remember the incident so vividly. It is truly one of my earliest and foundational memories of cynicism. Authority does not care if you are "right" only if you give the answer they want.
I went on to be an A,B and occasional C student without trying very hard. I saw no value in pushing myself when I could be near the top of the class and provide the answers expected. Anything more was wasted effort.
Same experience here. In third grade, I believe, we had a quiz question where the answer was a negative number. I put the negative number answer and got it marked wrong. The teacher's response was that it was impossible in our class.
Cynicism was born in me that day 30+ years ago. You only need to work hard enough to pass and give the expected answers. Anything beyond that makes you a troublemaker.
Cool Story Bro:
When I was in third grade, there was a question on a math test, it was something like:
4444444
-5555555
--------------
I answered -1111111 and had it marked wrong. I argued with the teacher that the answer was correct and his response that it wasn't in this class; the correct answer was that the problem couldn't be done.
This deeply affected my perception and attitude toward school. Cynicism was born that day. It's not about doing your best or learning as much as you can; it's about towing the line, giving the expected answer, making the system happy.
30+ years on I still remember that incident. And its lesson still holds true - quietly obeying a broken system is often easier and more personally advantageous than being right or doing your best.
FWIW, we are homeschooling our child. My wife worked as a sub while our child was in kindergarten and first grade. She saw the ugly truth of the local school system and we plan to keep our child out of that environment.
Cool Story Bro:
My mother-in-law is a retired secretary from the local school system. She is now working part time for the administration so that they can justify hiring a full time person. She sits and reads books most of the time! The system is paying her - and a couple of other retirees - to sit around doing nothing so they can show the need for a new full time admin person.
Shameful.
From http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120325-james-cameron-mariana-trench-challenger-deep-deepest-science-sub/ ..."is to jettison steel weights attached to the sub and shoot back to the surface."
Can't we go anywhere and follow the "Leave No Trace" ethos? What effect will those weights have on the local ecosystem?
- Jasen.
Came here to say this, but not as eloquently. This is why I wish the two party system in the USA could be busted.
- Jasen.
I voted for Ron Paul.
soap, ballot, ammo. Boxes to be used in that order.
Yes, it is. And it's not really Christianity. I'll save the details, but mainstream Protestant and Catholic denominations do not recognize LDS as "Christian". It is heavily based on the same teachings, but there are some core foundational differences. To those who think Baptists, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews, Muslims et al. are all worshipping pretend fantastical delusions, the differences don't really matter, but they are there.
Mormons have "be wholesome" as a very strong teaching of what it takes to be a good Mormon. And Romney is pretty high up in the Mormon religious hierarchy. He is modeling good Mormon behavior.
- Jasen.
https://www.bsr.org/en/our-insights/blog-view/letter-to-the-new-york-times-from-bsr
Rebuttal from BSR, one of the NYT's sources for the article. NYT misrepresented the situation. Took advantage of Apple being popular to read about, and ignored all the other companies that are Foxconn customers and are not doing as much as Apple to improve working conditions.
Yellow journalism, plain and simple.
"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware."
This has been one of Microsoft's biggest failings. They can't optimize or change things because of all the hardware vendors that depend on the existing way of doing things.
And they don't get serious enough about the UI to make it great because end-users aren't their real customers, OEMs and IT departments are.
If Nokia became a wholly owned subsidiary of MS and became the primary manufacturer of Windows phones, MS might have a chance to get their software and hardware as a single package act together.
Google has a lot of market penetration with Android, but they are suffering the same fracturing and sub-optimal user experience that Windows faces. Meanwhile Apple happily melds the OS and hardware into a single package and continues make insanely great products (and profits).
- Jasen.
To get something 80% complete takes 20% of the time. The last 20% takes the other 80%.
Or, once something is 80% done, there's only 80% left to do.
So, Minecraft as a loose tech demo is fun and relatively easy. Fleshing it out to the point of being a full-featured game takes a long time and a lot of work.
- Jasen.
But the US Constitution isn't set in stone. It can be amended - and has been numerous times. If the States want the Fed to take on more of the burden and power, let them say so explicitly with some amendments. The amendments could even be very broad and vague giving the Fed lots of power. The way it works now is the Fed does stuff and the States don't object so it is a de facto Federal power.
I actually kind of agree that the USA is much smaller than it was when founded. Travel speed and communications have made it much easier for someone in Washington to know what's going on in Oregon. And for someone in Oregon to provide feedback to Washington. The country is much more governable as a single nation, and the populace is very mobile.
As you say, wealth is distributed unevenly across the country and a strong Federal government helps distribute that wealth so the poor States don't spiral into oblivion. But the Federal government has been spending money it doesn't have for a number of years. The nation is now seriously in debt and radical steps must be taken to reduce that debt or we'll end up like Greece and Spain and Ireland, etc. The entrenched political class is more interested in preserving their own political power than making the painful decisions required to get our financial house in order.
- Jasen.
I see many posts in this thread referring to "government"; like "the government" should or shouldn't do this or that.
The USA is set up with multiple levels of government: Local, State, and Federal. The Federal government has certain powers enumerated by the Constitution of the United States. Ron Paul - and many others - are of the opinion that the Federal government has far exceeded the powers granted to it by our country's founding document. State governments are granted far more leeway in what they can do.
So, student loans may be a GREAT idea. Public health care may be a GREAT idea. Lots of other publicly funded programs may be super awesome. BUT, they are not (unless a Constitutional Amendment is passed) the role of the Federal government. The Federal government has seized powers that it should not have. It needs to relinquish those powers back to the States.
A strong, dominant Federal government (such as we currently have) concentrates power into fewer hands. This concentration of power eases corruption, and the repercussions of that corruption affect the entire country. /rant
- Jasen.
And he's probably right, implementing at the state level would likely work just as well.
And here is the crux of the matter. Ron Paul is a strict Constitutionalist. The Constitution doesn't give the Federal government the power to give out student loans, so the Federal government shouldn't do it. States? They can do whatever they want and offer free tuition, loans, health care, etc.
It's mostly about the balance of power between the Federal and State governments. The Fed is way too powerful. Time to knock it down several notches.
- Jasen.
Your numbers work with people paying in state tuition at public universities. But how many people do that? You have to factor in where people actually go to school. One of the big factors of the complaint I've read about is the number of private for-profit schools charging $20+k per year.
Also, as someone else pointed out, high unemployment disproportionately affects young people. So we should see those default numbers climbing over the next several years as graduating classes find fewer jobs, and recent grads slip into bankruptcy.
And while I'm posting, let's not forget that there are State governments, too. Ron Paul is a VERY strong advocate of a smaller Federal government, but letting the States do what they want. He wants to eliminate lots of programs at the Federal level because the Federal government has taken over the country in ways it should not have.
States can run the same math you did and subsidize college education for their citizens.
- Jasen.
FTA:'Bartel said GameStop will ship the tablet with a dedicated controller, though he admitted that "[t]here's not a lot of tablet/android based games for the consumer that are designed to use an external controller."'
Fail. Right there. You work with some key developers to have kick-ass launch titles that show off the greatness of the controller and you mock everyone who doesn't develop their games to support this awesome revolution.
You don't say, "Oh, well, no one really supports external controllers, but we hope developers will think it's cool and start. Please."
Agreed. A good wireless controller and connection to the TV (wireless preferred) could help pull this off.
GameStop gets to define the controller that will be used and to strongly encourage developers to support that controller. One of the big wins for consoles is a known hardware and control setup. Right now no tablet comes with or can expect a handheld controller. A GameStop branded tablet could do that.
Also, GameStop could sell games for their tablet only through their own online store. Then they could sell the tablet at a loss and make it up on the games - just like the console makers. What would be hard, though, is forcing developers to ONLY sell their games through GameStop. But Steam does pretty well, I guess.
Toss in some good parental controls (I want this account to only see Y7 games) and that would give parents a warm fuzzy about the system. (But kids would hate it, so maybe that's a bad idea. But the kids will likely figure out a way around the controls, and many parents won't bother to set them up.)
To me, the trick is NOT to just release a GameStop tablet and a controller. But to release an entire gaming environment. Playstation Network and XBox Live have led the way, but they had years of experience and huge piles of money behind them.
Tablet hardware has certainly reached the point of being powerful enough to be a viable gaming platform. A tablet with a few tweaks to make it extra gaming friendly could be a winner.
Starting and Thinking Forth were two of my very early computer books. I'm sure I've forgotten everything I read in them, but I'm also sure some of the info has engrained itself in my programming instincts.
I actually had a job in college writing Forth for a satellite dish controller.
I'm currently reading "Code Complete". Great stuff.
Agreed. I smell a troll.
I'm glad I've never worked anywhere like that. And I've been doing software development for almost 20 years - for only two companies, though.
I suspect lots of jobs are filled with boring meetings, self-important, self-serving, useless and worse than useless co-workers. Doing whatever the actual job is you think you're doing is probably a fraction of many people's days. So there's nothing unique about software development there.
This used to be true of me. However, now I fall in the older, over 40, spectrum of software engineers. My wife, kid, and other outside work activities take up the time I used to spend tinkering and writing on the side. Also, after staring at a screen for eight hours+ at work, I don't have a strong desire to do it at home.
I enjoy my job, and try to pick up a book now and then on some new language or framework, but I don't have the time or energy to be in computer geek mode all the time.