I use Java myself, and do everthing from PDA applications to web apps with, also I frequently compile Java into native code for various platforms. I think the stygma started in the dot com era when anyone who could get "Hello World" to compile considered themselves a Java programmer, and thus a programmer in general. This was further compounded by the advent of Java script, managers and recuiters seem to frequently confuse these two, and even further confusion results now that Sun considers Java to be a 'brand' as opposed to a 'platform'. Seems like most of the 'Hello World' programmers LA majors, H1-B's etc., have now been pushed out of the industry. I use Java because it allows me to most effectivley and efficiently deliver applications to meet my client needs, granted its its the choice of hackers, but I don't hack, I write apps for my clients, and I want to deliver the best product for their investment.
M
Its funny that M$ is in a big hurry to outsource everything possible to India, even though Windows 95 was banned in India. In simular stupidity GM has started outsourcing to India even though their cars are banned in India also. It seems these companies understand greed, and little else.
M
Went to see it 'cuz it had a good preview, as far as sucky movies it had it all, very bad acting, cheesy inconsistent plot, and really bad special effects, I want my $7 back!
M
Don't really see how you can compare a scripting language with an OO development language. The choice between the two would seem to be driven by what it is your trying to do. Seems strange that Java is touted as a scripting language when this was never really intended to this.
M
I remember when I was in grad school for fluid dynamics at the Von Karaman Institute there was a big fad on modelling turbulence using fractals. While it is true that turbulence is more accuratley described with fractal as opposed to Euclidian geometry, this doesn't necessarily mean that useful predictive model can be produced. The many attempts at modelling turbulence with fractals didn't really produce models more effective then the usual stochastic models that were used. There may have been more progress made in the past few years, but I'm not aware of any major breakthroughs. Granted turbulence is a different problem than the financial markets, but the deterministic chaotic behavior is the simular. Also if you could model the dynamics of the stock market, it is unlikely that I'd be willing to donate CPU cycles just so a few day traders can get rich.
Mark
Like I'd actually give them real information, even my Safeway/Vons card is based on a bogus personality. I really don't mind registering made up personalities with email addresses (hotmail or yahoo) based on other imagined persons. I love filling out surveys such as to make my bogus registration person have such a conflicting set of interest and attributes, that they could not exist. The really amusing thing is that some companies might actually try to use this data for some business purpose.
M
(Actual name and email, as well as other traits may vary)
Again another example of EDS shoddiness, why anyone would give money to EDS for anything is beyond me, they deliver inferior service at outrageous prices.
M
Seems like a bit of a waste since the two very best OS's are excluded. But we alternate OS'ers are a smug lot and will refrain from comment, (only grunts of contempt).
M
It seems like it has only been implemented in ALICE and not for any other languages such as Java or C, implementing it for these languages would be non-trivial. There have been many de-bugging tools over the years, none of them have fundamentally changed programming, so I'd wait and see if it is actually useful, or lives up to expectation.
M
They can have my cable modem when they pry it from my cold dead fingers! Another chance to screwed by Verizon, on boy! I really miss those guys now that I have VOIP. As usual you can expect what you actually pay to be several times the advertised $35./month, typical Verizon scam. Really, I do hope all the Verizon CEO's starve to death, free yourself get VOIP! Death to Verizon!
(former Verizon customer)
Seems like all of North America is already covered with data service resold through vendors such as Star Band, the satellite is geo-synchronis, so the packet round trip would exceed 700 ms, this amount of latency is a big problem for gaming, VOIP etc., I don't reaaly see how this new satellite brings any new type of service since you can already get internet and data via geo satellites almost everywhere in the northern hemisphere.
Mark
Last couple of projects which I worked on ( for decent pay I might add) were only possible because of open source, the small companies / non-profits for which the projects were done did not have the budget to buy M$ crap. If everyone had to pay M$ for development tools, there'd be a lot less jobs for developers. Many clients don't have the resources to pay both the developer and Bill, I'd rather the money go to the dvelopers.
M
In general large software companies are, for lack of a better word evil. They produce inferior products at criminally high prices, industry rates for ASP development are still at $200 - $300 / hr, MS spends 300k per year per employee. The developers are certainly not getting most of this money and the clients certainly not getting good work or code for these horrendous rates. The large software companies produce the poor products and rely on slick marketing to the sell their products to ill technically informed clients/managers. These companies seems to use the strategy of charge the client as much as possible, pay the developers as little as possible, both client and developer get screwed, managemeent gets rich for nothing. I think its a good thing many of these companies are going away, its just their scam is over. Its not that people don't need software, its that the're tired of getting ripped off for it. I believe that these companies are just being replaced or put out of business by small companies and individual developers working directly for non-tech clients. Its the big US companies that have been the most enthusiastic about replacing US workers with H1-B's outsourcing etc, small companies tend to use better quality, long term local talent. Anyhow this seems like the trend I've seen. Due the large availibilty of developers, cheap bandwidth, cheap hardware, and free development tools/platforms, its seems like the large companies are going to have ahard time, but I think this will be better in the long run for both developers and clients/users.
M
Grey hair is actually caused by having to program with the win32 API. I recently did a win32 app, my girlfriend claims my hair is entirely grey now, case closed!
M
This is exactly what those of us in the trenches coding have been saying for many years. The current abysmal state of poor software performance seems directly correlated to the race to the bottom in 'cutting' develoment cost. The solution to producing secure reliable code is to hire experienced competent programmers who understand security issues, and have a vested and sincere interest in producing reliable secure code. This generally means a long term relationship and with and understanding of the clients's needs and business perspectives, as well as the technical competence and willingness to put forth the efffort required to produce quality code. This is necessarily the oppossite of the current trend towards going with the lowest bidder, outsourcing, H1-B's, and throwing large numbers of low skilled developers at a project rather than using a small group of highly skilled developers. Fortunatley for me however my current client regognizes this and only retains a couple of long term highly skilled developers, they do have a number of very nice, secure and relaible applications to show for this, absent the usual bloated development team. This however may be the exception in the industry. Hopefully the corporate types will eventually figure out that throwing large numbers of low skilled developers at a project will not produce relaible secure code. This issue been well documented obstensibly in works such as 'Mythical Man Month" and "The Pragmatic Programmer" however it seems most corporate manager types have yet to acquire this wisdom.
Mark
is no match for natural stupidity. I'm sure no matter how good the machines / software get, managers will still make stupid decisions based on the 2 page MS add they saw in 'Time'. I think with the current and perpetual state of management incompetence gurantees us technical types job security. Almost everyone still uses Windows, people have to have there custom Office apps, depsite all the horrendous problems with Windows. Every few years someone who's just a writer sprays about how everything is about to change in some revolutionary way, but still here we are, different Windows version(s) same old crap. I don't think my clients will be able to replace me with 'smart' machines before I'm too old and decrepit to care.
Mark
I've used Java 3D quite a bit, the performance issue really depends on a lot of factors, but it doesn't necessarily suck. I've compiled Java 3D into win32 native code also, this seems to work quite well as it is quite performent but still gives you the advantages of nice clean OO Java. I think its great that they've released the source, it will definitely make life easier for developers. I think the next big step foward is to get awt support for gcc/gcj such that Java 3D can be compiled to native code for various platforms.
Mark
Find a cool project with a charity or non-profit, they usually have some money, maybe not a lot. If you can find a project you like its a good place to start. A couple of years ago I was in the process of leaving the IT industry, I took on a PDA project for a non-profit, probably didn't make minimum wage on it, but I gained valuable experience and exposure, today I'm fully booked for PDA projects, and making good money. Point is if you can get a project up and running for someone, it will get you experience and exposure. Also non-profits usually can't pay ASP rates for their projects, so the're more likely to hire an individual developer who can work self contained for low cost. Also charities will hire someone they know personally and trust, and usually won't nitpick on whether you have n years experience with C++. A good place to start are any orgainzations you or your friends and family work with, ie churches, community groups, etc. Also working for non-proits can be very rewarding, and a lot more fun than dealing with the corporate world. Good luck.
Mark
Unfortunately after years of tech down turn and the mass shipment of jobs overseas, your Federal government still thinks its a great idea to give what few jobs remain to foriegners. Write your congress critters and express your outrage. Why give job to Americans when you can give to foriegners, all so a few CEO's can get even richer. Use your un-employed time to help stop this crap. Also be sure to vote this next election, find out where your candidates stand on critical issues such as H1-B and outsourcing. I wish I has some actual advice for getting a job, but the current goverment policies seemed to aimed at asuuring that no qulaified American can get a job, the current administration thinks the more jobs that go to foriegers the better, abd will bo rest ubtil every last US job is gone. Write and vote!
Mark
Slashdot Mirror
Wouild still work after being splashed with water, blood and fishguts? that's what happens to Swiss army all the time. Mark
I use Java myself, and do everthing from PDA applications to web apps with, also I frequently compile Java into native code for various platforms. I think the stygma started in the dot com era when anyone who could get "Hello World" to compile considered themselves a Java programmer, and thus a programmer in general. This was further compounded by the advent of Java script, managers and recuiters seem to frequently confuse these two, and even further confusion results now that Sun considers Java to be a 'brand' as opposed to a 'platform'. Seems like most of the 'Hello World' programmers LA majors, H1-B's etc., have now been pushed out of the industry. I use Java because it allows me to most effectivley and efficiently deliver applications to meet my client needs, granted its its the choice of hackers, but I don't hack, I write apps for my clients, and I want to deliver the best product for their investment. M
Its funny that M$ is in a big hurry to outsource everything possible to India, even though Windows 95 was banned in India. In simular stupidity GM has started outsourcing to India even though their cars are banned in India also. It seems these companies understand greed, and little else. M
Went to see it 'cuz it had a good preview, as far as sucky movies it had it all, very bad acting, cheesy inconsistent plot, and really bad special effects, I want my $7 back! M
Don't really see how you can compare a scripting language with an OO development language. The choice between the two would seem to be driven by what it is your trying to do. Seems strange that Java is touted as a scripting language when this was never really intended to this. M
I remember when I was in grad school for fluid dynamics at the Von Karaman Institute there was a big fad on modelling turbulence using fractals. While it is true that turbulence is more accuratley described with fractal as opposed to Euclidian geometry, this doesn't necessarily mean that useful predictive model can be produced. The many attempts at modelling turbulence with fractals didn't really produce models more effective then the usual stochastic models that were used. There may have been more progress made in the past few years, but I'm not aware of any major breakthroughs. Granted turbulence is a different problem than the financial markets, but the deterministic chaotic behavior is the simular. Also if you could model the dynamics of the stock market, it is unlikely that I'd be willing to donate CPU cycles just so a few day traders can get rich. Mark
Like I'd actually give them real information, even my Safeway/Vons card is based on a bogus personality. I really don't mind registering made up personalities with email addresses (hotmail or yahoo) based on other imagined persons. I love filling out surveys such as to make my bogus registration person have such a conflicting set of interest and attributes, that they could not exist. The really amusing thing is that some companies might actually try to use this data for some business purpose. M (Actual name and email, as well as other traits may vary)
Again another example of EDS shoddiness, why anyone would give money to EDS for anything is beyond me, they deliver inferior service at outrageous prices. M
Seems like a bit of a waste since the two very best OS's are excluded. But we alternate OS'ers are a smug lot and will refrain from comment, (only grunts of contempt). M
Looks loke slashdot got slashdotted?! Had to drink an entire cup of coffee slashdot free! M
It seems like it has only been implemented in ALICE and not for any other languages such as Java or C, implementing it for these languages would be non-trivial. There have been many de-bugging tools over the years, none of them have fundamentally changed programming, so I'd wait and see if it is actually useful, or lives up to expectation. M
They can have my cable modem when they pry it from my cold dead fingers! Another chance to screwed by Verizon, on boy! I really miss those guys now that I have VOIP. As usual you can expect what you actually pay to be several times the advertised $35./month, typical Verizon scam. Really, I do hope all the Verizon CEO's starve to death, free yourself get VOIP! Death to Verizon! (former Verizon customer)
Seems like all of North America is already covered with data service resold through vendors such as Star Band, the satellite is geo-synchronis, so the packet round trip would exceed 700 ms, this amount of latency is a big problem for gaming, VOIP etc., I don't reaaly see how this new satellite brings any new type of service since you can already get internet and data via geo satellites almost everywhere in the northern hemisphere. Mark
Math can be a sport according to Godel's incompleteness theorum, which states that no sport can be both consistent and complete. Mark
A dry sandy place with only ammonia and methane, sounds like a giant cat box, but where are the martian kitties? M
They don't actually have an SDK or documentation for download on the developers section, very suspicious... M
Last couple of projects which I worked on ( for decent pay I might add) were only possible because of open source, the small companies / non-profits for which the projects were done did not have the budget to buy M$ crap. If everyone had to pay M$ for development tools, there'd be a lot less jobs for developers. Many clients don't have the resources to pay both the developer and Bill, I'd rather the money go to the dvelopers. M
In general large software companies are, for lack of a better word evil. They produce inferior products at criminally high prices, industry rates for ASP development are still at $200 - $300 / hr, MS spends 300k per year per employee. The developers are certainly not getting most of this money and the clients certainly not getting good work or code for these horrendous rates. The large software companies produce the poor products and rely on slick marketing to the sell their products to ill technically informed clients/managers. These companies seems to use the strategy of charge the client as much as possible, pay the developers as little as possible, both client and developer get screwed, managemeent gets rich for nothing. I think its a good thing many of these companies are going away, its just their scam is over. Its not that people don't need software, its that the're tired of getting ripped off for it. I believe that these companies are just being replaced or put out of business by small companies and individual developers working directly for non-tech clients. Its the big US companies that have been the most enthusiastic about replacing US workers with H1-B's outsourcing etc, small companies tend to use better quality, long term local talent. Anyhow this seems like the trend I've seen. Due the large availibilty of developers, cheap bandwidth, cheap hardware, and free development tools/platforms, its seems like the large companies are going to have ahard time, but I think this will be better in the long run for both developers and clients/users. M
Grey hair is actually caused by having to program with the win32 API. I recently did a win32 app, my girlfriend claims my hair is entirely grey now, case closed! M
Scientific American - Chock full O' good 'merican geek seeking material, so good in fact, I even pay to have have it delivered on dead tree(s). M
This is exactly what those of us in the trenches coding have been saying for many years. The current abysmal state of poor software performance seems directly correlated to the race to the bottom in 'cutting' develoment cost. The solution to producing secure reliable code is to hire experienced competent programmers who understand security issues, and have a vested and sincere interest in producing reliable secure code. This generally means a long term relationship and with and understanding of the clients's needs and business perspectives, as well as the technical competence and willingness to put forth the efffort required to produce quality code. This is necessarily the oppossite of the current trend towards going with the lowest bidder, outsourcing, H1-B's, and throwing large numbers of low skilled developers at a project rather than using a small group of highly skilled developers. Fortunatley for me however my current client regognizes this and only retains a couple of long term highly skilled developers, they do have a number of very nice, secure and relaible applications to show for this, absent the usual bloated development team. This however may be the exception in the industry. Hopefully the corporate types will eventually figure out that throwing large numbers of low skilled developers at a project will not produce relaible secure code. This issue been well documented obstensibly in works such as 'Mythical Man Month" and "The Pragmatic Programmer" however it seems most corporate manager types have yet to acquire this wisdom. Mark
is no match for natural stupidity. I'm sure no matter how good the machines / software get, managers will still make stupid decisions based on the 2 page MS add they saw in 'Time'. I think with the current and perpetual state of management incompetence gurantees us technical types job security. Almost everyone still uses Windows, people have to have there custom Office apps, depsite all the horrendous problems with Windows. Every few years someone who's just a writer sprays about how everything is about to change in some revolutionary way, but still here we are, different Windows version(s) same old crap. I don't think my clients will be able to replace me with 'smart' machines before I'm too old and decrepit to care. Mark
I've used Java 3D quite a bit, the performance issue really depends on a lot of factors, but it doesn't necessarily suck. I've compiled Java 3D into win32 native code also, this seems to work quite well as it is quite performent but still gives you the advantages of nice clean OO Java. I think its great that they've released the source, it will definitely make life easier for developers. I think the next big step foward is to get awt support for gcc/gcj such that Java 3D can be compiled to native code for various platforms. Mark
Find a cool project with a charity or non-profit, they usually have some money, maybe not a lot. If you can find a project you like its a good place to start. A couple of years ago I was in the process of leaving the IT industry, I took on a PDA project for a non-profit, probably didn't make minimum wage on it, but I gained valuable experience and exposure, today I'm fully booked for PDA projects, and making good money. Point is if you can get a project up and running for someone, it will get you experience and exposure. Also non-profits usually can't pay ASP rates for their projects, so the're more likely to hire an individual developer who can work self contained for low cost. Also charities will hire someone they know personally and trust, and usually won't nitpick on whether you have n years experience with C++. A good place to start are any orgainzations you or your friends and family work with, ie churches, community groups, etc. Also working for non-proits can be very rewarding, and a lot more fun than dealing with the corporate world. Good luck. Mark
Unfortunately after years of tech down turn and the mass shipment of jobs overseas, your Federal government still thinks its a great idea to give what few jobs remain to foriegners. Write your congress critters and express your outrage. Why give job to Americans when you can give to foriegners, all so a few CEO's can get even richer. Use your un-employed time to help stop this crap. Also be sure to vote this next election, find out where your candidates stand on critical issues such as H1-B and outsourcing. I wish I has some actual advice for getting a job, but the current goverment policies seemed to aimed at asuuring that no qulaified American can get a job, the current administration thinks the more jobs that go to foriegers the better, abd will bo rest ubtil every last US job is gone. Write and vote! Mark