if they are incompatible with someone that person, perhaps the best coder ever, can't work there.
If a person cannot bring themselves to conform to the team's conventions, then yes, they cannot work there.
Here's the REALLY BIG HINT all over again. If "the best coder ever" can't get along with the rest of the team members, they aren't the best coder for our team.
The best way is to be adaptable and realize that the exact conventions don't matter. If it takes you more than two days to adapt to new conventions, then you aren't a very good developer.
About you "voting room." What if out of 100 coders 90 want 1 style and 10 another? Should the 10 get screwed for the "good of the team."
How is having to produce code consistent with standards different from your own cause you to be "screwed"? Is the only way for you to express your creativity in source code by having your personal conventions? Will you lose your identity if you have to work in a project where the tab indent is different from what you'd prefer?
In direct answer to your question, the ten developers should not have agreed at the start of the conventions meeting that consistency was more important than individual personal preferences. If they agreed to that, they agreed to compromise on those issues where they would prefer to do it slightly differently.
Be willing to adapt and compromise or be ready to be alone for the rest of your life.
Any time you're in a relationship with someone else, whether as a teammate on a software project or in a romantic relationship, you're going to have to compromise from the way you want to do things. Compromise does not mean that you lose your identity. Compromise does not mean that you are always caving in to unreasonable requests (to answer your first strawman).
But you will have to compromise if you want any relationship to last.
If reading the second one is problematic for you, your issues are deeper than formatting conventions.
Most people mentally key off of the indention of a particular line of code, not the braces surrounding it. Despite all anecdotal assertions to the contrary.
You just like having open braces on their own line. Great. Can you join our team writing code where everyone else is putting the opening brace at the end of the previous line? No? Then you're going to be out of a job in short order.
We can't afford to cater to every whim of a prima donna. And we don't.
The worst part of coding standards is when they are so poorly thought out that they make it impossible or at least very difficult to write certain syntactically-valid programs.
I agree. To my mind, the only thing worse than no conventions are conventions that get in the way of effective development. Your polymorphism example seems particularly egregious. In order to prevent something similarly annoying, our documentation standard leverages javadoc, which since the 1.2 jdk, allows for the inheritance of method documentation. Our documentation standard further leverages a well-organized code base. You're allowed to refer to documentation in another class if it means your code is clearer and easier to understand.
People were meant to code, not worry about indentation-nazis.
Which is why the little effort I do put into that responsibility is in helping people configure their tools to support the conventions automatically. If you have to put a lot of effort into formatting conventions, you're using the wrong conventions and/or tools. Since you've obviously got your panties in a twist over the issue, I suggest you look into a better development environment.
For all your code-nazi bluster, you're screwed when you decide to leverage some open source code that uses a different style and there's the possibility you might contribute your changes back to the official code base (you don't have to if you don't distribute your modified version). I suppose you can make "exceptions" for foreign code, but why shackle your own developers and not shackle outsiders?
Contributing to an outside project means you conform to that project's conventions. I use emacs and Eclipse as editing tools. Both allow you to have multiple auto-align rulesets resolved by project (Eclipse) or directory (emacs). I suspect that other editing tools have similar capabilities, even if you have to swap in a different config file and restart the environment. A little self-awareness lets you conform to another project's non-formatting conventions at the same time.
What conflict were you envisioning again? Arguments like yours call you out as a programmer in desperate need of personal growth and seasoning. If you want to work in a team environment, that is. If you want to work by yourself, it doesn't matter if you insist on doing it your way...
I suppose you can make "exceptions" for foreign code, but why shackle your own developers and not shackle outsiders?
You missed the whole point of my posting, but we are on slashdot, so... Conventions (including formatting conventions) aren't for or against the programmer. They're for the people who come later. Asking them to clean up your mess for you doesn't really do anyone any favors.
(Of course, the real reason is "because I can and it makes my code-nazi job look important).
If it makes you feel better to believe that, go right ahead.
I predict that you wouldn't last a month on our team. Your attitudes towards conventions are just a symptom of the underlying attitude problems that would put you at odds with every developer I'd ever want to work with.
If its for the readability of everyone else why not run it through a standard pretty-printer-reformatter thingy on cvs checking and run it through the users own favourite reformatting mode on cvs (or whatever) checkout?
I've tried that on two occasions in the past and talked to others who have had their own first hand experiences. Invariably, the reformatters tend to handle some conventions better than others and having everyone adjust their editor's settings to the team's conventions is a lot simpler for everyone. Syntax specific line breaks (try to break before an arithmetic operator but after a comma) tend to be iffy. Also, many of the conventions are not simply where spaces and braces go, but get into how to name things, how much stuff to put on a line, how to organize code in a file, what kinds of things to add extra documentation to, etc. None of which has a darned thing to do with formatting.
Finally, many of the people who propose this aren't serious about actually setting up their own local conventions while respecting the team-wide conventions. In my experience, the person suggesting this has a persistent belief that their way is better than any other way but if the rest of the team can't see it, they'll be the mature one and offer a compromise position. They don't have any intention of actually following through on researching and setting up such an environment, but they're more than happy to suggest it. In the end, they don't yet accept the value of team-wide conventions and it's a big red flag that you're dealing with an immature developer who still believes there's exactly one way to solve engineering problems.
You'll be able to adjust with only a little temporary discomfort, so deal with the discomfort and start communicating with the rest of your team like you're all a team. Also, being able to describe your attitude towards conventions as flexible will help during interviews. I've been asked about conventions in the last three interviews I've had and I always ask. The right answer is something similar to: "The team needs to have consistent conventions, but I don't have strong opinions that code should look a particular way."
What kills me is how few people realize that code conventions are not for their own personal readability of the code they write. Code conventions are for the benefit of the tens and possibly hundreds of people who are going to be reading the code well after you've moved on to another position.
Also, for all of the people who assert that their convention (braces on the next line/end of previous line) is scientifically backed to be more readable than the alternative: most of the time, it doesn't matter nearly as much as consistency and being able to have the whole team agree.
I happen to be the "conventions nazi" in my office (I was also the "unit test nazi" until we bought a tool that did it better than I could). I'm not an asshole about this issue because I'm a control freak, I'm an asshole because conventions really matter to the long term future of the project.
The right way to be the "conventions nazi" is to get everyone into a room, get everyone to agree that consistency matters more than personal preference, then go down the list of issues and get some consensus (voting works well) on each one. Lone holdouts may need frequent reminding of the "consistency over personal preference" point. Don't leave the room until you have a set of conventions that (1) keep the code consistent in important ways (2) isn't so huge that nobody could hope to remember them and (3) can be easily supported by the tools commonly used by team members.
Our convention is 132 characters on a line. Inner classes and Java/C++ class/method/variable naming conventions make 80 characters simply impractical. After trying it for a while, there were so many broken lines that the code was simply less readable. So we changed the convention and even though I was for 80 characters, I'm fairly happy with the improved readability of the code.
Why do you think the engineers for defense contractors are paid much more than your average commercial engineer?
I've recently worked as an engineer for a government contractor and the wages they were offering were 20% lower than other employers in the vicinity for similar skill levels. I took the job because I was two months behind on rent at that moment and I didn't have time to go through another interview process somewhere else, even though I knew of companies that were hiring.
I think that the idea is that once you get a job for a government contractor, it's almost impossible to lose it. Some of the PhD's on our team did literally nothing but got consistently decent job reviews. They were seat warmers collecting a paycheck and that was okay with them and with the government contractor (Grumman).
As for the whole Chinese bribe thing, you get your security clearance if they decide you're a good security risk. Living within your means is part of what they look at. If you're prone to needing that extra $50k to pay for your lifestyle (several pegged credit cards, etc.), you'll never get the security clearance and the job will go to someone else very quickly.
Maybe, however as a politician I would be hard pressed to explain to a family or nation why their sons/daughters and 3000+ people died because of a razor blade. Hence the PA crash I imagine.
Exactly.
We had been told by our leaders that you should let an attacker take what they want and don't give them any fight or other excuse to hurt you. That goes double for a highjacking. The concept that the highjackers might not want to use you as hostages in a negotiation never occured to anyone.
By the time the passengers in the fourth plane heard the story, that whole plan went right out the window. There is a zero fucking chance that another plane will be hijacked in the US in the next twenty years (or at least, until people forget about 9/11).
But the government would have you believe that it was the box-cutter that allowed them to succeed in taking over the planes. What utter twaddle. You could take a pistol onto a plane today and have zero chance of taking it over. I'd have to get in line to stomp your face about two seconds after you started making threats and waving it around.
Taking responsibility for our own actions along with the actions our government does in our names (Afghanistan, Iraq II, Abu Grahib, The Shah, Pinochet, Saddam, etc.) would be a good start.
International TechneGroup, Inc.. They sell CAD/CAM translation and information management products. They're right down the hill from SDRC in Milford, way out on the western edge of Cincinnati (unless they've moved since I worked there).
I like being in the same room with others on the same project. --- And Quiet.
These points really encapsulates the core issues of good workspace design, but achieving them can be harder than describing them. To restate them as I see them:
(1) Effective isolation from distractions. People doing valuable work almost universally need to be able to concentrate. For most of us, this means quiet. Intercoms, other people's phone conversations (and mobile phone ring tones), obtrusive music, noisy conference rooms, all steal productivity from your employees. (Some like having background music, some dont. Those who want it should have effective comfortable headphones so they don't disturb people who can't work as effectively with background noise).
(2) Effective workgroup communication. Basically, this means it should be trivially easy to speak face-to-face with everyone each employees needs to communicate with during completion of their typical daily tasks.
These two primary considerations can work together, but there's a tension between them as well. Workgroup communication is ideal when I can turn my head to a co-worker and ask a question, but the more people I can look around and see, the noiser my workspace will be. Workspace isolation is ideal when everyone has private soundproofed offices, but there's an increased cost to either IM'ing someone (instead of having the nuance available in face-to-face speech) or taking the time to walk over to the other person's office.
I have come to believe that workspace sharing is crucial, but the upper limit of a really effective workspace is around six people. You can possibly have eight very cooperative and respectful individuals, but workspaces tend to last longer than the teams that occupy them and I wouldn't recommend larger than six.
In my own history, I've seen lots of different office plans, from cube farms to private offices and lots of variations between. My favorite office layout had the team of seventeen (including development staff, QA staff, and the team lead in "quads". Each quad was a 20'x20' room with two walls covered with whiteboard, two others had bland office paint and some nice artwork. Four desks and a 4' round table easily fit in each quad. The five quads had staggered openings on a common hallway that led to one small conference room, one large conference room, a kitchen area, and the front door (on the other side of the common areas).
One other very nice amenity that I've never seen anywhere else was a single stall shower adjacent to the bathrooms, so doing a lunchtime jog around the hills near the office didn't leave you sweaty and stinky for the afternoon.
Too bad they were in Cincinnati when I really wanted to be in Austin...
also on a side note the writter of this story doesn't really under stand the meaning of censorship. Only a government can censor a person, a private company does not have this ability.
I've heard this from other people as well, and the issue is that you've got the first amendment confused with the definition of censorship.
From Merriam-Webster:
censorship (noun) 1 a : the institution, system, or practice of censoring b : the actions or practices of censors; especially : censorial control exercised repressively
If I run a chatroom for AOL and I keep the chatroom kiddy-safe by kicking objectionable posters and deleting their remarks, I am censoring the chatroom. The First Amendment to the US Constitution, on the other hand, basically states that the government is usually not permitted to censor individuals (free speech) or publishing interests (free press).
If you wanted to be correct, you could say that the first amendment only prevents the US government from censoring content, and that corporations and people are not limited by "free speech" rights to censor themselves and others who speak or publish through them.
At that point, we get into the interesting topics that this issue raises: is it okay if the government asks nongovernment entities to censor for it? Related question: is it good if nongovernment entities universally censor certain opinions they consider unpalatable (say, antiglobalization)?
"Deconstructing and disrupting the growth of genetically modified foods" might be done as a piece of performance art, but it's still vandalism and destuction of somebody else's property.
I have two problems with your statement.
First, you stated your opinion as a fact. You have assumed as facts several premises that are very much in debate. Many (including myself) will argue that much art is also political statement and that the artist being discussed here takes a slightly different view on the subject of what can be property and what should be done with genetic engineering. As such, you might sound more credible if you actually responded to the issues being raised rather than just bleating "terrorist!"
Second, they didn't actually do any of the things you're saying they did, they described some ideas on how to do those things. You're allowed to write a story about robbing a bank and make lots of money, but if you actually rob a bank, you go to federal prison. See the difference? It's subtle, but it's there.
They're still practicing terrorism in that releasing something genetically modified into the environment is likely to cause a scare even if it's found to be harmless later.
RTFA. They haven't done any genetic modifications, nor have they released anything genetically modified into the environment. The equipment that the accused had in his home is for making gels: visualizations of genetic sequences. The most he could do in the way of genetic modification with the equipment he had was to create the equivalent of a bacterial breed by selecting bacterial populations for various conditions.
And, in a worst case, these guys could botch it all up and cause the kind of environmental harm that they're so scared Monsanto will cause.
Get your facts straight, you also have all of the equipment to do exactly the same thing in your home right now. The only thing you can't do that he could with his fancy gear is see what the bacterial genes look like in the mutant strain in the back corner of the fridge.
At least Monsanto does its best to follow the laws... these people seem to have no respect for the law at all.
Monsanto will definitely follow the laws that benefit its bottom line. To assume that Monsanto is therefore completely lawful is an entirely different set of assumptions. I have found that only rarely do companies do what is moral (or legal) when the immoral and illegal are much more profitable. While I have no evidence that that Monsanto learned at the Enron school of business, I'll reserve judgement about whether it "does its best to follow the laws." until I know for certain.
One of the best places for information on AVR software modules, OS's, emulators, compilers, assemblers, application notes, prototype boards, etc. is avrfreaks.net
Many of the software offerings are free (especially those from Amtel and the Open Source world) and most of the prototype boards are very reasonably priced. One of the more sophisticated boards is available for under $200.
Yeah, but for Revolutions, the rest of us got the disappointment over with early. You had to sit through a large part of the movie to realize what an enormous pile of crap it was.
The Matrix had huge potential as a starting point. One day, someone may realize: "there was no sequel" and he'll write the rest of the story to the same caliber as the first one.
Funny that at no point does our caped crusader consider reporting anything to the London police
Actually, the discussion thread on SomethingAwful.com does discuss handing the details over to Scotland Yard several times and the "seller" is one of those in favor of it. It appears that, for the moment, this action is being reserved as a response if the "buyer" attempts to make any further contact with the "seller". The only misrepresentation to the UK government resulted in an overestimation of the value (and duty) of the imported item. They're not going to be interested in pursuing that issue so that the scammer can get ~250GBP back on his stolen credit card.
But the discussion about going to the police with the information on hand starts on page 75 of the thread, so I can completely understand why you might not have read it.
(or the FBI, considering a US college professor was apparently involved)
The professor is the guy who's account was hijacked. eBay has already restored his account and does what they do in those situations. It is likely that some sort of nominal report to some form of police (perhaps, as you suggest, the FBI) has already been made, though it is almost certainly below their interest level.
As you say, there's a risk that someone honest will get hurt if an idiot improperly identifies someone as a scammer. I'm still cheering this accurate instance (and the deliberate violation of social norms) on.
Didn't I mention that I'm 32 with a wife and a young child? My wife was in school getting her PhD and had no intention of leaving her program. I have no intention of telling you any more private details of my experience, however, I will say that we worked it through as a family; we're still a family; we don't have to travel to see each other any more; and I have a job where I have my self-respect and I'm able to build up my own business.
I agree that it's better to have another job lined up before you quit a bad job, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way and you simply must leave the life-sucking job before it completely swallows you up.
I've seen people who live day to day in utter misery, hating their jobs, hating their lives, nothing but a daily habit of surviving, dealing with existence as a series of disappointments along an inevitable path that they can't seem to escape. I won't live that way. I'd kill myself first. Luckily, in my experience not being willing to live that way usually means you don't have to.
However, I'd agree with you that I'm not like most of the population. I'm in the same situation as much of the population (growing family that depends on me for income, looming questions about middle age, ability to jump careers, etc.). But I don't treat that situation the same as most people do. Which is their loss.
I'm betting on Microsoft, maybe through Baystar but most likely directly.
But Novell didn't sell UNIX to SCO so there's no way for Microsoft or BayStar to own it unless either one offers Novell a metric buttload of money for assignment of the copyrights.
To be correct, you should ask, "Who will own the ability to collect UNIX SysV license fees for Novell and take 5% as a service charge?"
I quit a job that was sucking the life out of me in September 2002. The job market in 2002 appeared much worse than the job market today. It took me until January 2003 to find a better job, and the one I found turned out to be 1500 miles away from my friends and family.
Sure it was scary to do when the economy sucked and jobs were few and far between. Sure I was worried about how I was going to pay bills (I took a class in bartending just in case). Sure I was freaked out about moving halfway across the country for a new and mostly unknown job. But I did all of those things and so can others.
Quite simply, there was absolutely no way in hell that I was going to stay in that job. Life is simply too short to spend 8 or more hours a day being miserable. If I worked for SCO before their lawsuit, I'd have been one of the first out the door, with or without a replacement job in hand. There's simply no salary large enough to compensate for your self-respect.
If you have evidence otherwise, then post it. Otherwise, can it.
I'll post it. Here's a short list of events in recent history of events during which the US directly harmed nationals of other countries. Now why am I having to post easy to find and read US history? Did you honestly know nothing of these events?
You were probably honestly suprised at the events of 9/11. The only thing that suprised me were how many people never expected the people we've harmed through the decades to do anything about it.
Regards, Ross
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." -- Helen Keller
Indeed, whether or not you hesitate to call them "religious nuts", for many of them their contemporaries had no such hesitation, and they came to escape religious persecution. Did you sleep through history class?
I can see that you paid attention to what the coach told you about the pilgrims and "religious persecution" in your history class. Too bad that story was fiction. You'll need to read a bit farther than the fanciful textbook version that you were fed during k-12.
In the non-mythical story, the pilgrims really did flee religious persecution in England (persecution brought on by their direct antagonism of everyone who lived near them) all the way to Holland. Once in Holland, they realized that they didn't really want their children growing up in a truly religiously free environment. After all, their children might hear other perspectives and believe something different from what they believed... Luckily, the "Big News" at the time was that several Dutch colonies were opening up in the East Indies and the pilgrims believed that they would have the opportunity to create their own community, free from alternative religious viewpoints. So the pilgrims fled from religious freedom to the new world.
When the pilgrims first arrived in the new world, they were headed for landings at already established Dutch settlements near what is now New York City (this was the original intent of the ships they were on). However, the pilgrims mutinied and commandeered the ships in order to go elsewhere and build the theocracy of their dreams. The pilgrims took their commandeered vessels and headed further north, out of economic reach of the Dutch settlements to what is now Massachusetts. After landing (not at the mythical Plymouth rock, a story made up from whole cloth years after the fact), they discovered planted cultivated fields but rarely did they find a farmer alive (not realizing that the diseases they were carrying and immune to were 95% lethal to their new "neighbors"). They praised God for giving them the bounty of this freshly prepared land and proceeded to attempt to plant crops from England and Holland in the newly abandoned farmland. This attempt at farming failed. Several times. Being the incredibly poor farmers that they were, the colony starved the first winter and barely made it through the second by stealing supplies from the storehouses of their native neighbors (somewhere in history, the thanksgiving myth appeared as a rationalization of these additional crimes).
By now, enough mythological bubbles have been burst that you might be interested in reading more about the real story of the pilgrims and how they came to be one of many early colonies in the New World. But you won't find that story in any US high school (or earlier) text. Be careful of texts that try to cover "American History". Most do a rather awful job. Look for a book that goes into depth on the one topic and you're more likely to be looking at something that you can extract real information from. And even then, never forget to think critically about what you're reading.
If you choose to seek out knowledge, Google will be your friend in this endeavour, but the links you find will only be a starting point. History is quite a challenging thing to study.
Cryptonomicon was kind of destined to become a hit. An outstanding writer who is a geek's geek geeking out on top geeky topics.
It was destined to become a hit among twenty-something geeks who live in Silicon Valley and have no life outside of their job. As a twenty-something geek living in Austin with a rich life, I found it to be agonizingly badly written.
You don't need to explain linux, or PGP, to a geek. You certainly don't need to put thirty pages of exposition about linux where thirty pages of story should be. A geek with no appreciation of good writing may appreciate reading hundreds of pages of stuff he already knows as if it's some clue that he's in the "in crowd", but for many of us, that's drivel.
And what in the hell kind of an ending was that? In the beginning and middle of the story I could identify the character arcs, relate to people (even if I was bored by the exposition), and then all of a sudden, in the last twenty pages, every single character across two generations flips out so the book can come to some sort of a conclusion.
Neal writes about the things that fascinate him and occasionally has to wrap things up to make a book. Fun for him, but only occasionally good (let alone great) writing. I really liked "The Diamond Age" (except for the ending), "Zodiac" (whole thing) and "Snow Crash" (except for the ending), but Cryptonomicon drove me away from even being interested in Neal's new work. When I do an author scan at the bookstore, I go right by Stevenson. Near as I can tell, I've already got the good ones.
How about stop being a mindless drone and buy something other than denim?
Because denim lasts for many years (as long as it hasn't been acid washed), denim is comfortable, denim is very low effort to keep clean (wash hot with plenty of detergent, spot treat on the grease stains after working on the car) and denim suits my casual style. Since it also suits my employer's casual dress code, I'm very happy with denim and at this point in my life, I only have three non-denim pairs of pants for the few occasions I attend where blue jeans are not appropriate.
And since when does buying functional clothing make someone a mindless drone? If anything, those people buying fashion for fashion sake are the mindless drones. Here in LA, I call people who place style over substance "hipsters", "slicksters", or "place-holders" (I choose the pejorative based largely on observed personality).
I haven't bought a pair of jeans for six years... it's quite easy.
So what do you think is so superior to denim? Dockers? Not really a stand-out of independant style... Hand made wool suits? Pretty low scoring on the bang/buck scale. Push-up bustiers with frilly underthings? If so, I'll agree that you're definitely not following the majority with that one:)
Actually, I'm in need of some new jeans right now. Probably going to head over to Ross (the store) and see what they've got in seconds and irregulars for blue jeans. If I don't find much I'll head over to Costco and see what they've got in my size. But I'm not buying them to fit into any mythical crowd. Certainly not in LA.
some people actually think diamonds are nice to look at and that's why they buy them.
Sure, but they should buy them at the market price, not at the DeBeers artificial price. Just try to sell a diamond to a store for a fraction of the price they've got on a similar diamond. The moment you leave a retail store with a shiny new diamond, it loses 50-80% of it's value as a saleable good.
People who like diamonds should buy diamonds at estate sales and keep the DeBeers markup in their pocket. There are smaller jewelers who will help with this process, grading a diamond pre-sale (when possible), buying it for you, resetting it in your own jewelry, and selling you a very nice diamond ring for a small fraction of the price of the same ring from a retail store.
There's going to be a small diamond in my soon-to-be fiancee's ring (along with a similar sized garnet: our birthstones), but most of the money that DeBeers would prefer I spent on a diamond ring is going to be spent on her double laser eye surgery instead.
Then again, you've probably never even spoken to a girl so you have no idea.
This is what's commonly known as an ad-hominem argument. It doesn't make your argument any more compelling, and often makes you look rather spiteful and mean-spirited. I'd recommend that you avoid similar statements in future discussions.
The thing is is that he made this money. And when I say made, I don't mean earned, I mean he and other stakeholders in Microsoft created that money from what would never have been. As in, far from "empty[ing] the pool", the pool of money is bigger because of what Microsoft is worth.
A lot of people honestly have no idea where money comes from in an economy. In the US economy, money appears and disappears in the stock market. When a stock price goes up, a few people are buying stock at the higher value and a few people are selling, but the people who are holding the stock now simply have more money, created by the motion of the stock in the stock market. They can then take that money that the company made for them and put a down payment on a house or buy groceries with it or whatever. It's new money, that appears when a company does a good job of being more valuable (usually by making a profit and growing).
When Bill Gates built up a company that became the largest company in the world, the money in that valuation is dollars that now exist which otherwise wouldn't. When Bill Gates retained a big chunk of ownership in that enterprise, he gained the ability to spend the money that he made. Which amounts to 40-odd billion dollars. The other 160-odd billion is how other people have benefited from the existence and growth of Microsoft.
Now don't read into this "origin of money" ovservation any hint that I condone how Bill Gates made Microsoft into the biggest company in the world. I don't see any evidence that ethics will ever be discovered on the Microsoft campus unless a minister has a car accident there.
What do you have to know to put a computer language on your resume?
Like many issues, knowledge is not black and white. To clarify the claims on your resume, you should qualify them. For instance, on my resume I would claim:
Programming Language Skills: Java (Guru), C++ (Expert), C (Expert), Perl (Novice), Python (Novice), Visual Basic (Novice), C# (Novice)
This provides an opportunity for the interviewer to read my claims of knowledge along a scale of how confident I am. If my terminology is not clear enough, we have an opportunity to discuss what I mean by "Guru" or "Expert" and then the interviewer can gauge the veracity of my claims quite precisely.
Other interesting datapoints about your knowledge would be the number of years using/learning the skill and the number of years since you last used the skill.
As a side-note, it looks in the article like by saying that 68% of employees don't understand Java, he really means that 68% of employees have never heard of MDA and have no idea what the hell it is, or don't quickly "recognise the value of MDA," since, of course, all highly-skilled Java programmers do.
The article is a shill for a code-generation product similar to Rational Rose or TogetherJ. Tools to reduce the quantity of boilerplate you have to write have been around for a long time and are slowly getting better and better. However, this method of marketing is really bad form. I really dislike Gartner for their inability to separate paid advertising from the actual research they do... Hmmm... I just had a mental "category shift" happen... Does Gartner actually do *anything* I should call research?
The real problem with code-gen tools is that the boilerplate isn't the hard part of development, so those tools don't *solve* much of anything. The tough part is analyzing the problem and understanding the requirements well enough to design an object model that handles the requirements you know about and is flexible enough to deal with the requirements you know are coming. Once they solve that problem, I'll be out of a job, but until then I feel fairly secure in the value I can contribute to employers.
Nothing is stopping you from opening up the hood of your car (YET), throwing out the fuel injection, and putting in a carberator, distributor cap and a mechanical gas petal line. Edelbrook and others make fine carberators that fit happily onto modern engines... but then it's not stock.
Well, there is one thing that might slow you down: the law. Look at the fine print on those Edelbrock carburetor web pages. Not legal for street use. Unless your car was manufactured before the emissions laws were passed, that is (1969?, 1973?, I'm not certain).
Slashdot Mirror
if they are incompatible with someone that person, perhaps the best coder ever, can't work there.
If a person cannot bring themselves to conform to the team's conventions, then yes, they cannot work there.
Here's the REALLY BIG HINT all over again. If "the best coder ever" can't get along with the rest of the team members, they aren't the best coder for our team.
The best way is to be adaptable and realize that the exact conventions don't matter. If it takes you more than two days to adapt to new conventions, then you aren't a very good developer.
About you "voting room." What if out of 100 coders 90 want 1 style and 10 another? Should the 10 get screwed for the "good of the team."
How is having to produce code consistent with standards different from your own cause you to be "screwed"? Is the only way for you to express your creativity in source code by having your personal conventions? Will you lose your identity if you have to work in a project where the tab indent is different from what you'd prefer?
In direct answer to your question, the ten developers should not have agreed at the start of the conventions meeting that consistency was more important than individual personal preferences. If they agreed to that, they agreed to compromise on those issues where they would prefer to do it slightly differently.
Be willing to adapt and compromise or be ready to be alone for the rest of your life.
Any time you're in a relationship with someone else, whether as a teammate on a software project or in a romantic relationship, you're going to have to compromise from the way you want to do things. Compromise does not mean that you lose your identity. Compromise does not mean that you are always caving in to unreasonable requests (to answer your first strawman).
But you will have to compromise if you want any relationship to last.
Regards,
Ross
If reading the second one is problematic for you, your issues are deeper than formatting conventions.
Most people mentally key off of the indention of a particular line of code, not the braces surrounding it. Despite all anecdotal assertions to the contrary.
You just like having open braces on their own line. Great. Can you join our team writing code where everyone else is putting the opening brace at the end of the previous line? No? Then you're going to be out of a job in short order.
We can't afford to cater to every whim of a prima donna. And we don't.
Regards,
Ross
The worst part of coding standards is when they are so poorly thought out that they make it impossible or at least very difficult to write certain syntactically-valid programs.
I agree. To my mind, the only thing worse than no conventions are conventions that get in the way of effective development. Your polymorphism example seems particularly egregious. In order to prevent something similarly annoying, our documentation standard leverages javadoc, which since the 1.2 jdk, allows for the inheritance of method documentation. Our documentation standard further leverages a well-organized code base. You're allowed to refer to documentation in another class if it means your code is clearer and easier to understand.
People were meant to code, not worry about indentation-nazis.
Which is why the little effort I do put into that responsibility is in helping people configure their tools to support the conventions automatically. If you have to put a lot of effort into formatting conventions, you're using the wrong conventions and/or tools. Since you've obviously got your panties in a twist over the issue, I suggest you look into a better development environment.
For all your code-nazi bluster, you're screwed when you decide to leverage some open source code that uses a different style and there's the possibility you might contribute your changes back to the official code base (you don't have to if you don't distribute your modified version). I suppose you can make "exceptions" for foreign code, but why shackle your own developers and not shackle outsiders?
Contributing to an outside project means you conform to that project's conventions. I use emacs and Eclipse as editing tools. Both allow you to have multiple auto-align rulesets resolved by project (Eclipse) or directory (emacs). I suspect that other editing tools have similar capabilities, even if you have to swap in a different config file and restart the environment. A little self-awareness lets you conform to another project's non-formatting conventions at the same time.
What conflict were you envisioning again? Arguments like yours call you out as a programmer in desperate need of personal growth and seasoning. If you want to work in a team environment, that is. If you want to work by yourself, it doesn't matter if you insist on doing it your way...
I suppose you can make "exceptions" for foreign code, but why shackle your own developers and not shackle outsiders?
You missed the whole point of my posting, but we are on slashdot, so... Conventions (including formatting conventions) aren't for or against the programmer. They're for the people who come later. Asking them to clean up your mess for you doesn't really do anyone any favors.
(Of course, the real reason is "because I can and it makes my code-nazi job look important).
If it makes you feel better to believe that, go right ahead.
I predict that you wouldn't last a month on our team. Your attitudes towards conventions are just a symptom of the underlying attitude problems that would put you at odds with every developer I'd ever want to work with.
Regards,
ross
If its for the readability of everyone else why not run it through a standard pretty-printer-reformatter thingy on cvs checking and run it through the users own favourite reformatting mode on cvs (or whatever) checkout?
I've tried that on two occasions in the past and talked to others who have had their own first hand experiences. Invariably, the reformatters tend to handle some conventions better than others and having everyone adjust their editor's settings to the team's conventions is a lot simpler for everyone. Syntax specific line breaks (try to break before an arithmetic operator but after a comma) tend to be iffy. Also, many of the conventions are not simply where spaces and braces go, but get into how to name things, how much stuff to put on a line, how to organize code in a file, what kinds of things to add extra documentation to, etc. None of which has a darned thing to do with formatting.
Finally, many of the people who propose this aren't serious about actually setting up their own local conventions while respecting the team-wide conventions. In my experience, the person suggesting this has a persistent belief that their way is better than any other way but if the rest of the team can't see it, they'll be the mature one and offer a compromise position. They don't have any intention of actually following through on researching and setting up such an environment, but they're more than happy to suggest it. In the end, they don't yet accept the value of team-wide conventions and it's a big red flag that you're dealing with an immature developer who still believes there's exactly one way to solve engineering problems.
You'll be able to adjust with only a little temporary discomfort, so deal with the discomfort and start communicating with the rest of your team like you're all a team. Also, being able to describe your attitude towards conventions as flexible will help during interviews. I've been asked about conventions in the last three interviews I've had and I always ask. The right answer is something similar to: "The team needs to have consistent conventions, but I don't have strong opinions that code should look a particular way."
Regards,
Ross
What kills me is how few people realize that code conventions are not for their own personal readability of the code they write. Code conventions are for the benefit of the tens and possibly hundreds of people who are going to be reading the code well after you've moved on to another position.
Also, for all of the people who assert that their convention (braces on the next line/end of previous line) is scientifically backed to be more readable than the alternative: most of the time, it doesn't matter nearly as much as consistency and being able to have the whole team agree.
I happen to be the "conventions nazi" in my office (I was also the "unit test nazi" until we bought a tool that did it better than I could). I'm not an asshole about this issue because I'm a control freak, I'm an asshole because conventions really matter to the long term future of the project.
The right way to be the "conventions nazi" is to get everyone into a room, get everyone to agree that consistency matters more than personal preference, then go down the list of issues and get some consensus (voting works well) on each one. Lone holdouts may need frequent reminding of the "consistency over personal preference" point. Don't leave the room until you have a set of conventions that (1) keep the code consistent in important ways (2) isn't so huge that nobody could hope to remember them and (3) can be easily supported by the tools commonly used by team members.
Our convention is 132 characters on a line. Inner classes and Java/C++ class/method/variable naming conventions make 80 characters simply impractical. After trying it for a while, there were so many broken lines that the code was simply less readable. So we changed the convention and even though I was for 80 characters, I'm fairly happy with the improved readability of the code.
Regards,
Ross
Why do you think the engineers for defense contractors are paid much more than your average commercial engineer?
I've recently worked as an engineer for a government contractor and the wages they were offering were 20% lower than other employers in the vicinity for similar skill levels. I took the job because I was two months behind on rent at that moment and I didn't have time to go through another interview process somewhere else, even though I knew of companies that were hiring.
I think that the idea is that once you get a job for a government contractor, it's almost impossible to lose it. Some of the PhD's on our team did literally nothing but got consistently decent job reviews. They were seat warmers collecting a paycheck and that was okay with them and with the government contractor (Grumman).
As for the whole Chinese bribe thing, you get your security clearance if they decide you're a good security risk. Living within your means is part of what they look at. If you're prone to needing that extra $50k to pay for your lifestyle (several pegged credit cards, etc.), you'll never get the security clearance and the job will go to someone else very quickly.
Regards,
Ross
Maybe, however as a politician I would be hard pressed to explain to a family or nation why their sons/daughters and 3000+ people died because of a razor blade. Hence the PA crash I imagine.
Exactly.
We had been told by our leaders that you should let an attacker take what they want and don't give them any fight or other excuse to hurt you. That goes double for a highjacking. The concept that the highjackers might not want to use you as hostages in a negotiation never occured to anyone.
By the time the passengers in the fourth plane heard the story, that whole plan went right out the window. There is a zero fucking chance that another plane will be hijacked in the US in the next twenty years (or at least, until people forget about 9/11).
But the government would have you believe that it was the box-cutter that allowed them to succeed in taking over the planes. What utter twaddle. You could take a pistol onto a plane today and have zero chance of taking it over. I'd have to get in line to stomp your face about two seconds after you started making threats and waving it around.
Taking responsibility for our own actions along with the actions our government does in our names (Afghanistan, Iraq II, Abu Grahib, The Shah, Pinochet, Saddam, etc.) would be a good start.
Regards,
Ross
International TechneGroup, Inc.. They sell CAD/CAM translation and information management products. They're right down the hill from SDRC in Milford, way out on the western edge of Cincinnati (unless they've moved since I worked there).
Regards,
Ross
I like being in the same room with others on the same project.
---
And Quiet.
These points really encapsulates the core issues of good workspace design, but achieving them can be harder than describing them. To restate them as I see them:
(1) Effective isolation from distractions. People doing valuable work almost universally need to be able to concentrate. For most of us, this means quiet. Intercoms, other people's phone conversations (and mobile phone ring tones), obtrusive music, noisy conference rooms, all steal productivity from your employees. (Some like having background music, some dont. Those who want it should have effective comfortable headphones so they don't disturb people who can't work as effectively with background noise).
(2) Effective workgroup communication. Basically, this means it should be trivially easy to speak face-to-face with everyone each employees needs to communicate with during completion of their typical daily tasks.
These two primary considerations can work together, but there's a tension between them as well. Workgroup communication is ideal when I can turn my head to a co-worker and ask a question, but the more people I can look around and see, the noiser my workspace will be. Workspace isolation is ideal when everyone has private soundproofed offices, but there's an increased cost to either IM'ing someone (instead of having the nuance available in face-to-face speech) or taking the time to walk over to the other person's office.
I have come to believe that workspace sharing is crucial, but the upper limit of a really effective workspace is around six people. You can possibly have eight very cooperative and respectful individuals, but workspaces tend to last longer than the teams that occupy them and I wouldn't recommend larger than six.
In my own history, I've seen lots of different office plans, from cube farms to private offices and lots of variations between. My favorite office layout had the team of seventeen (including development staff, QA staff, and the team lead in "quads". Each quad was a 20'x20' room with two walls covered with whiteboard, two others had bland office paint and some nice artwork. Four desks and a 4' round table easily fit in each quad. The five quads had staggered openings on a common hallway that led to one small conference room, one large conference room, a kitchen area, and the front door (on the other side of the common areas).
One other very nice amenity that I've never seen anywhere else was a single stall shower adjacent to the bathrooms, so doing a lunchtime jog around the hills near the office didn't leave you sweaty and stinky for the afternoon.
Too bad they were in Cincinnati when I really wanted to be in Austin...
Regards,
Ross
also on a side note the writter of this story doesn't really under stand the meaning of censorship. Only a government can censor a person, a private company does not have this ability.
I've heard this from other people as well, and the issue is that you've got the first amendment confused with the definition of censorship.
From Merriam-Webster:
censorship (noun) 1 a : the institution, system, or practice of censoring b : the actions or practices of censors; especially : censorial control exercised repressively
If I run a chatroom for AOL and I keep the chatroom kiddy-safe by kicking objectionable posters and deleting their remarks, I am censoring the chatroom. The First Amendment to the US Constitution, on the other hand, basically states that the government is usually not permitted to censor individuals (free speech) or publishing interests (free press).
If you wanted to be correct, you could say that the first amendment only prevents the US government from censoring content, and that corporations and people are not limited by "free speech" rights to censor themselves and others who speak or publish through them.
At that point, we get into the interesting topics that this issue raises: is it okay if the government asks nongovernment entities to censor for it? Related question: is it good if nongovernment entities universally censor certain opinions they consider unpalatable (say, antiglobalization)?
But your definition of censorship is in error.
Regards,
Ross
"Deconstructing and disrupting the growth of genetically modified foods" might be done as a piece of performance art, but it's still vandalism and destuction of somebody else's property.
I have two problems with your statement.
First, you stated your opinion as a fact. You have assumed as facts several premises that are very much in debate. Many (including myself) will argue that much art is also political statement and that the artist being discussed here takes a slightly different view on the subject of what can be property and what should be done with genetic engineering. As such, you might sound more credible if you actually responded to the issues being raised rather than just bleating "terrorist!"
Second, they didn't actually do any of the things you're saying they did, they described some ideas on how to do those things. You're allowed to write a story about robbing a bank and make lots of money, but if you actually rob a bank, you go to federal prison. See the difference? It's subtle, but it's there.
They're still practicing terrorism in that releasing something genetically modified into the environment is likely to cause a scare even if it's found to be harmless later.
RTFA. They haven't done any genetic modifications, nor have they released anything genetically modified into the environment. The equipment that the accused had in his home is for making gels: visualizations of genetic sequences. The most he could do in the way of genetic modification with the equipment he had was to create the equivalent of a bacterial breed by selecting bacterial populations for various conditions.
And, in a worst case, these guys could botch it all up and cause the kind of environmental harm that they're so scared Monsanto will cause.
Get your facts straight, you also have all of the equipment to do exactly the same thing in your home right now. The only thing you can't do that he could with his fancy gear is see what the bacterial genes look like in the mutant strain in the back corner of the fridge.
At least Monsanto does its best to follow the laws... these people seem to have no respect for the law at all.
Monsanto will definitely follow the laws that benefit its bottom line. To assume that Monsanto is therefore completely lawful is an entirely different set of assumptions. I have found that only rarely do companies do what is moral (or legal) when the immoral and illegal are much more profitable. While I have no evidence that that Monsanto learned at the Enron school of business, I'll reserve judgement about whether it "does its best to follow the laws." until I know for certain.
Regards,
Ross
One of the best places for information on AVR software modules, OS's, emulators, compilers, assemblers, application notes, prototype boards, etc. is avrfreaks.net
Many of the software offerings are free (especially those from Amtel and the Open Source world) and most of the prototype boards are very reasonably priced. One of the more sophisticated boards is available for under $200.
Regards,
Ross
Yeah, but for Revolutions, the rest of us got the disappointment over with early. You had to sit through a large part of the movie to realize what an enormous pile of crap it was.
The Matrix had huge potential as a starting point. One day, someone may realize: "there was no sequel" and he'll write the rest of the story to the same caliber as the first one.
Regards,
Ross
Funny that at no point does our caped crusader consider reporting anything to the London police
Actually, the discussion thread on SomethingAwful.com does discuss handing the details over to Scotland Yard several times and the "seller" is one of those in favor of it. It appears that, for the moment, this action is being reserved as a response if the "buyer" attempts to make any further contact with the "seller". The only misrepresentation to the UK government resulted in an overestimation of the value (and duty) of the imported item. They're not going to be interested in pursuing that issue so that the scammer can get ~250GBP back on his stolen credit card.
But the discussion about going to the police with the information on hand starts on page 75 of the thread, so I can completely understand why you might not have read it.
(or the FBI, considering a US college professor was apparently involved)
The professor is the guy who's account was hijacked. eBay has already restored his account and does what they do in those situations. It is likely that some sort of nominal report to some form of police (perhaps, as you suggest, the FBI) has already been made, though it is almost certainly below their interest level.
As you say, there's a risk that someone honest will get hurt if an idiot improperly identifies someone as a scammer. I'm still cheering this accurate instance (and the deliberate violation of social norms) on.
Regards,
Ross
Didn't I mention that I'm 32 with a wife and a young child? My wife was in school getting her PhD and had no intention of leaving her program. I have no intention of telling you any more private details of my experience, however, I will say that we worked it through as a family; we're still a family; we don't have to travel to see each other any more; and I have a job where I have my self-respect and I'm able to build up my own business.
I agree that it's better to have another job lined up before you quit a bad job, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way and you simply must leave the life-sucking job before it completely swallows you up.
I've seen people who live day to day in utter misery, hating their jobs, hating their lives, nothing but a daily habit of surviving, dealing with existence as a series of disappointments along an inevitable path that they can't seem to escape. I won't live that way. I'd kill myself first. Luckily, in my experience not being willing to live that way usually means you don't have to.
However, I'd agree with you that I'm not like most of the population. I'm in the same situation as much of the population (growing family that depends on me for income, looming questions about middle age, ability to jump careers, etc.). But I don't treat that situation the same as most people do. Which is their loss.
Regards,
Ross
I'm betting on Microsoft, maybe through Baystar but most likely directly.
But Novell didn't sell UNIX to SCO so there's no way for Microsoft or BayStar to own it unless either one offers Novell a metric buttload of money for assignment of the copyrights.
To be correct, you should ask, "Who will own the ability to collect UNIX SysV license fees for Novell and take 5% as a service charge?"
Regards,
Ross
I quit a job that was sucking the life out of me in September 2002. The job market in 2002 appeared much worse than the job market today. It took me until January 2003 to find a better job, and the one I found turned out to be 1500 miles away from my friends and family.
Sure it was scary to do when the economy sucked and jobs were few and far between. Sure I was worried about how I was going to pay bills (I took a class in bartending just in case). Sure I was freaked out about moving halfway across the country for a new and mostly unknown job. But I did all of those things and so can others.
Quite simply, there was absolutely no way in hell that I was going to stay in that job. Life is simply too short to spend 8 or more hours a day being miserable. If I worked for SCO before their lawsuit, I'd have been one of the first out the door, with or without a replacement job in hand. There's simply no salary large enough to compensate for your self-respect.
Regards,
Ross
If you have evidence otherwise, then post it. Otherwise, can it.
I'll post it. Here's a short list of events in recent history of events during which the US directly harmed nationals of other countries. Now why am I having to post easy to find and read US history? Did you honestly know nothing of these events?
You were probably honestly suprised at the events of 9/11. The only thing that suprised me were how many people never expected the people we've harmed through the decades to do anything about it.
Regards,
Ross
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." -- Helen Keller
Indeed, whether or not you hesitate to call them "religious nuts", for many of them their contemporaries had no such hesitation, and they came to escape religious persecution. Did you sleep through history class?
I can see that you paid attention to what the coach told you about the pilgrims and "religious persecution" in your history class. Too bad that story was fiction. You'll need to read a bit farther than the fanciful textbook version that you were fed during k-12.
In the non-mythical story, the pilgrims really did flee religious persecution in England (persecution brought on by their direct antagonism of everyone who lived near them) all the way to Holland. Once in Holland, they realized that they didn't really want their children growing up in a truly religiously free environment. After all, their children might hear other perspectives and believe something different from what they believed... Luckily, the "Big News" at the time was that several Dutch colonies were opening up in the East Indies and the pilgrims believed that they would have the opportunity to create their own community, free from alternative religious viewpoints. So the pilgrims fled from religious freedom to the new world.
When the pilgrims first arrived in the new world, they were headed for landings at already established Dutch settlements near what is now New York City (this was the original intent of the ships they were on). However, the pilgrims mutinied and commandeered the ships in order to go elsewhere and build the theocracy of their dreams. The pilgrims took their commandeered vessels and headed further north, out of economic reach of the Dutch settlements to what is now Massachusetts. After landing (not at the mythical Plymouth rock, a story made up from whole cloth years after the fact), they discovered planted cultivated fields but rarely did they find a farmer alive (not realizing that the diseases they were carrying and immune to were 95% lethal to their new "neighbors"). They praised God for giving them the bounty of this freshly prepared land and proceeded to attempt to plant crops from England and Holland in the newly abandoned farmland. This attempt at farming failed. Several times. Being the incredibly poor farmers that they were, the colony starved the first winter and barely made it through the second by stealing supplies from the storehouses of their native neighbors (somewhere in history, the thanksgiving myth appeared as a rationalization of these additional crimes).
By now, enough mythological bubbles have been burst that you might be interested in reading more about the real story of the pilgrims and how they came to be one of many early colonies in the New World. But you won't find that story in any US high school (or earlier) text. Be careful of texts that try to cover "American History". Most do a rather awful job. Look for a book that goes into depth on the one topic and you're more likely to be looking at something that you can extract real information from. And even then, never forget to think critically about what you're reading.
If you choose to seek out knowledge, Google will be your friend in this endeavour, but the links you find will only be a starting point. History is quite a challenging thing to study.
Regards,
Ross
Cryptonomicon was kind of destined to become a hit. An outstanding writer who is a geek's geek geeking out on top geeky topics.
It was destined to become a hit among twenty-something geeks who live in Silicon Valley and have no life outside of their job. As a twenty-something geek living in Austin with a rich life, I found it to be agonizingly badly written.
You don't need to explain linux, or PGP, to a geek. You certainly don't need to put thirty pages of exposition about linux where thirty pages of story should be. A geek with no appreciation of good writing may appreciate reading hundreds of pages of stuff he already knows as if it's some clue that he's in the "in crowd", but for many of us, that's drivel.
And what in the hell kind of an ending was that? In the beginning and middle of the story I could identify the character arcs, relate to people (even if I was bored by the exposition), and then all of a sudden, in the last twenty pages, every single character across two generations flips out so the book can come to some sort of a conclusion.
Neal writes about the things that fascinate him and occasionally has to wrap things up to make a book. Fun for him, but only occasionally good (let alone great) writing. I really liked "The Diamond Age" (except for the ending), "Zodiac" (whole thing) and "Snow Crash" (except for the ending), but Cryptonomicon drove me away from even being interested in Neal's new work. When I do an author scan at the bookstore, I go right by Stevenson. Near as I can tell, I've already got the good ones.
Regards,
Ross
How about stop being a mindless drone and buy something other than denim?
:)
Because denim lasts for many years (as long as it hasn't been acid washed), denim is comfortable, denim is very low effort to keep clean (wash hot with plenty of detergent, spot treat on the grease stains after working on the car) and denim suits my casual style. Since it also suits my employer's casual dress code, I'm very happy with denim and at this point in my life, I only have three non-denim pairs of pants for the few occasions I attend where blue jeans are not appropriate.
And since when does buying functional clothing make someone a mindless drone? If anything, those people buying fashion for fashion sake are the mindless drones. Here in LA, I call people who place style over substance "hipsters", "slicksters", or "place-holders" (I choose the pejorative based largely on observed personality).
I haven't bought a pair of jeans for six years... it's quite easy.
So what do you think is so superior to denim? Dockers? Not really a stand-out of independant style... Hand made wool suits? Pretty low scoring on the bang/buck scale. Push-up bustiers with frilly underthings? If so, I'll agree that you're definitely not following the majority with that one
Actually, I'm in need of some new jeans right now. Probably going to head over to Ross (the store) and see what they've got in seconds and irregulars for blue jeans. If I don't find much I'll head over to Costco and see what they've got in my size. But I'm not buying them to fit into any mythical crowd. Certainly not in LA.
Regards,
Ross
some people actually think diamonds are nice to look at and that's why they buy them.
Sure, but they should buy them at the market price, not at the DeBeers artificial price. Just try to sell a diamond to a store for a fraction of the price they've got on a similar diamond. The moment you leave a retail store with a shiny new diamond, it loses 50-80% of it's value as a saleable good.
People who like diamonds should buy diamonds at estate sales and keep the DeBeers markup in their pocket. There are smaller jewelers who will help with this process, grading a diamond pre-sale (when possible), buying it for you, resetting it in your own jewelry, and selling you a very nice diamond ring for a small fraction of the price of the same ring from a retail store.
There's going to be a small diamond in my soon-to-be fiancee's ring (along with a similar sized garnet: our birthstones), but most of the money that DeBeers would prefer I spent on a diamond ring is going to be spent on her double laser eye surgery instead.
Then again, you've probably never even spoken to a girl so you have no idea.
This is what's commonly known as an ad-hominem argument. It doesn't make your argument any more compelling, and often makes you look rather spiteful and mean-spirited. I'd recommend that you avoid similar statements in future discussions.
Regards,
Ross
The thing is is that he made this money. And when I say made, I don't mean earned, I mean he and other stakeholders in Microsoft created that money from what would never have been. As in, far from "empty[ing] the pool", the pool of money is bigger because of what Microsoft is worth.
A lot of people honestly have no idea where money comes from in an economy. In the US economy, money appears and disappears in the stock market. When a stock price goes up, a few people are buying stock at the higher value and a few people are selling, but the people who are holding the stock now simply have more money, created by the motion of the stock in the stock market. They can then take that money that the company made for them and put a down payment on a house or buy groceries with it or whatever. It's new money, that appears when a company does a good job of being more valuable (usually by making a profit and growing).
When Bill Gates built up a company that became the largest company in the world, the money in that valuation is dollars that now exist which otherwise wouldn't. When Bill Gates retained a big chunk of ownership in that enterprise, he gained the ability to spend the money that he made. Which amounts to 40-odd billion dollars. The other 160-odd billion is how other people have benefited from the existence and growth of Microsoft.
Now don't read into this "origin of money" ovservation any hint that I condone how Bill Gates made Microsoft into the biggest company in the world. I don't see any evidence that ethics will ever be discovered on the Microsoft campus unless a minister has a car accident there.
Regards,
Ross
What do you have to know to put a computer language on your resume?
Like many issues, knowledge is not black and white. To clarify the claims on your resume, you should qualify them. For instance, on my resume I would claim:
Programming Language Skills: Java (Guru), C++ (Expert), C (Expert), Perl (Novice), Python (Novice), Visual Basic (Novice), C# (Novice)
This provides an opportunity for the interviewer to read my claims of knowledge along a scale of how confident I am. If my terminology is not clear enough, we have an opportunity to discuss what I mean by "Guru" or "Expert" and then the interviewer can gauge the veracity of my claims quite precisely.
Other interesting datapoints about your knowledge would be the number of years using/learning the skill and the number of years since you last used the skill.
As a side-note, it looks in the article like by saying that 68% of employees don't understand Java, he really means that 68% of employees have never heard of MDA and have no idea what the hell it is, or don't quickly "recognise the value of MDA," since, of course, all highly-skilled Java programmers do.
The article is a shill for a code-generation product similar to Rational Rose or TogetherJ. Tools to reduce the quantity of boilerplate you have to write have been around for a long time and are slowly getting better and better. However, this method of marketing is really bad form. I really dislike Gartner for their inability to separate paid advertising from the actual research they do... Hmmm... I just had a mental "category shift" happen... Does Gartner actually do *anything* I should call research?
The real problem with code-gen tools is that the boilerplate isn't the hard part of development, so those tools don't *solve* much of anything. The tough part is analyzing the problem and understanding the requirements well enough to design an object model that handles the requirements you know about and is flexible enough to deal with the requirements you know are coming. Once they solve that problem, I'll be out of a job, but until then I feel fairly secure in the value I can contribute to employers.
Regards,
Ross
Nothing is stopping you from opening up the hood of your car (YET), throwing out the fuel injection, and putting in a carberator, distributor cap and a mechanical gas petal line. Edelbrook and others make fine carberators that fit happily onto modern engines... but then it's not stock.
Well, there is one thing that might slow you down: the law. Look at the fine print on those Edelbrock carburetor web pages. Not legal for street use. Unless your car was manufactured before the emissions laws were passed, that is (1969?, 1973?, I'm not certain).
Regards,
Ross