Maintainability damn well can be designed in from the beginning!
I agree, it most certainly can. Seriously, what is the point of a clean, well-engineered design, if you're not attempting to build a solid foundation for future work? Why not just crank it out any old way so long as the spec is met? Rhetorical question.
Learning how to code for maintainability up front is more a matter of experience (having been burned enough times by not having done it, and tried enough possible solutions until you've found those that work) that it is talent. It's also something that many programmers I've worked with over the years (almost three decades at last count) deem unnecessary, because they honestly don't know how. That, and the fact that thinking about maintainability requires actual forethought, as well as some extra bureaucratic/recordkeeping overhead. If you're not planning on being around for more than a few years in a given job, and don't give a flying fuck about the poor bastard down the line, then why waste a neuron on maintainability? That's how a lot of people look at it, I'm afraid.
I ran my own software business for, oh, fifteen years or so. I started out not concerning myself about maintainability because I was only worried about delivering the product on time. Then, after being in business for a few years and having to maintain my own code I changed my tune pretty quick. I mean, I got really tired of asking myself the same question over and over: "what the hell was I thinking?" And I mean that literally: when the code was written, what was I thinking? 'Cause it wasn't always obvious from the code itself, and I wasted a lot of time refiguring things out from scratch. Wasted even more time refactoring code because I hadn't bothered to think ahead, either. Now to be fair, I wasn't very experienced then and didn't really know what kinds of things for which to plan. That excuse doesn't wash anymore, I'm afraid.
Right now I'm responsible for several hundred thousand lines of code much of which is over a decade old. If you don't constantly work towards maintainability in an environment like that, you'll founder quickly. Matter of fact, several years ago I went through a major refactoring of that codebase (took a couple of months) just to make it into something that could be dealt with, long-term. Nobody had bothered until that time: the damn thing just kept growing like some amoeboid monstrosity. Reorganizing that project was a thunk of gruntwork that I don't want to ever have to do again, but I did it because not doing it was even more frustrating.
Ultimately, what you're talking about is managed incompetence, and proper identification and utilization of real talent. Most organizations do well enough at the former, and are just terrible at the latter.
Do programmers also loose karma for being fast and lose with their spelling?
/irony
They can be docked karma that way, but when they're not sure about something, they can cover their asses and submit anonymously. That way, if something totally whooshes over their heads, they're in the clear. They can later correct their own dumbass mistakes unanonymously and whore karma instead of losing it. What a perfect system!
Huh. Too bad Slashdot doesn't have a system like that.
I was the one that modded it as a troll (and by posting here I am undoing it). It is now modded +5 Funny, and yeah in hindsight it is funny. But at the time I modded it Troll, it was +2 Insightful, which I thought was an abomination. Insightful?
Well, you really shouldn't mod based upon existing moderation, I think. Moderate on your own opinion of the post, not what other people happened to think.
But if it makes you feel any better, I was just trying to be funny.
It was about attacking and marginalizing a minority.
Uh... what? I'm not even Jewish and I have to say, that's pretty far off base. I suppose you could call attempted genocide "marginalizing a minority". I suppose. Most of us would call the Holocaust by its proper name: mass murder, murder on a Biblical scale. The black population of the United States has been marginalized for a long time (less so in recent decades, perhaps) but we're not packing them into freight cars and shipping them off to be killed en masse.
And just by way of comparison, Guantanemo Bay is a detention camp and torture facility (maybe not as horrific as those maintained by many other countries, but the same in principle), not a tool of a genocidal totalitarian State. Anyone worthy of being an American citizen is horrified by what our government has done in our name in the pursuit of counter-terrorism, and wishes it would stop.
o she didn't get to a high station because she was a woman in a society thats over 100 years dead, that really sucks for her, but only marginally relevant today.
No offence, but graphical representation and statistics was used from Archimedes days by your so-hated by feminists "men". This is how our brains work.
Sure, but that's irrelevant. It was her application of those techniques, her recognition of the need, and her perseverance in the face of considerable resistance that are admirable. She was a remarkable individual, whether you agree with girlintraining's estimation or not.
She used graphs to make a point about the importance of cleanliness. Why is this on/.? And why was it in Science News? Slow week...
It's just history, which is often fascinating in its own right, and a rather important part of it at that. You (like most of us) take a lot for granted.
Florence Nightingale's accomplishments are particularly relevant in the context of modern medical science, when you consider how much of that advancement is a direct result of efforts made to improve field medicine. By presenting her case and the facts in such a way as to persuade the powers-that-were in her time to increase that investment, she did all of us a huge favor.
But conversely, if she was a man nobody would feel the need to write an article about it.
Of course they would: great people are great people, and their accomplishments stand by themselves. The difference is, if she were a man, her (uh, his) sex wouldn't be worthy of note.
You forgot to put weapons manufacturers on your list. I mean, they take the heat for a lot of shootings, but I don't see many TV ads or billboards showing beautiful women playing with guns in an effort to make gun ownership sexy. It's not like the fast food companies, SUV makers and tobacco companies that spend billions of dollars in marketing, convincing us to fuck ourselves over for their benefit. I mean, yes they sell lethal tools, but it's the customer that pulls the trigger.
Now, tobacco companies have been held responsible for cancer deaths because they deliberately withheld knowledge that their product caused that disease, and point-blank lied about it (to the courts and to the public.) Might have been different if they'd been open and honest about their products' effects. Now, to my way of thinking smoke inhalation is a bad idea anyway, but whatever. People fell for it, are still falling for it.
But in general, I agree. Look at our recent history: everything has been about shifting responsibility (and blame) for our own actions onto other people or organizations. Hot coffee spills in your lap... sue. Shoot your wife dead... sue the gun maker. Get diabetes... sue a fast food company. Break into your school and end up a paraplegic... sue the school. All that because obviously they (whoever they might happen to be) should somehow have stopped you. Some lawyers like that, because it means they get to sue the pants off deep-pockets corporations, and people like it because they don't have to own up to anything, and can maybe get society or some corporation to pay for their own poor judgment.
Makes me sick. Not the America I grew up in, or thought I grew up in.
I'm afraid for the future if many people think like you. Having the government start prosecuting people for arbitrary charges just because you've done something that is socially unacceptable sends chills down my spine.
Kinda brings back thoughts of the Salem Witch Trials, doesn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
Maintainability damn well can be designed in from the beginning!
I agree, it most certainly can. Seriously, what is the point of a clean, well-engineered design, if you're not attempting to build a solid foundation for future work? Why not just crank it out any old way so long as the spec is met? Rhetorical question.
Learning how to code for maintainability up front is more a matter of experience (having been burned enough times by not having done it, and tried enough possible solutions until you've found those that work) that it is talent. It's also something that many programmers I've worked with over the years (almost three decades at last count) deem unnecessary, because they honestly don't know how. That, and the fact that thinking about maintainability requires actual forethought, as well as some extra bureaucratic/recordkeeping overhead. If you're not planning on being around for more than a few years in a given job, and don't give a flying fuck about the poor bastard down the line, then why waste a neuron on maintainability? That's how a lot of people look at it, I'm afraid.
I ran my own software business for, oh, fifteen years or so. I started out not concerning myself about maintainability because I was only worried about delivering the product on time. Then, after being in business for a few years and having to maintain my own code I changed my tune pretty quick. I mean, I got really tired of asking myself the same question over and over: "what the hell was I thinking?" And I mean that literally: when the code was written, what was I thinking? 'Cause it wasn't always obvious from the code itself, and I wasted a lot of time refiguring things out from scratch. Wasted even more time refactoring code because I hadn't bothered to think ahead, either. Now to be fair, I wasn't very experienced then and didn't really know what kinds of things for which to plan. That excuse doesn't wash anymore, I'm afraid.
Right now I'm responsible for several hundred thousand lines of code much of which is over a decade old. If you don't constantly work towards maintainability in an environment like that, you'll founder quickly. Matter of fact, several years ago I went through a major refactoring of that codebase (took a couple of months) just to make it into something that could be dealt with, long-term. Nobody had bothered until that time: the damn thing just kept growing like some amoeboid monstrosity. Reorganizing that project was a thunk of gruntwork that I don't want to ever have to do again, but I did it because not doing it was even more frustrating.
I used to talk to myself a lot more back then.
Update your firmware and tweak your BT settings. I run the WRT54G and I get no problems whatsoever even with multiple torrents.
I run a WRT54G V4 with the Tomato firmware. Likewise I have no problems.
Wait, so does that also mean that Vista was written by Copyright Lawyers?
As it happens, yes it was. And when you think about, that explains a lot.
"Hear", not "here".
I can't hear here because there's too damn much noise.
Ultimately, what you're talking about is managed incompetence, and proper identification and utilization of real talent. Most organizations do well enough at the former, and are just terrible at the latter.
Do programmers also loose karma for being fast and lose with their spelling?
/irony
They can be docked karma that way, but when they're not sure about something, they can cover their asses and submit anonymously. That way, if something totally whooshes over their heads, they're in the clear. They can later correct their own dumbass mistakes unanonymously and whore karma instead of losing it. What a perfect system!
Huh. Too bad Slashdot doesn't have a system like that.
Not that I disagree with your overall point, but:
I don't see many TV ads or billboards showing beautiful women playing with guns in an effort to make gun ownership sexy
They don't have to. Practically every movie and TV show out there is doing the advertising for them.
Well, and that's true too.
I thought we've only existed as our current species for ten thousand years?
About 200000 years apparently.
As intelligent species go, it's obvious that we're a little slow.
I was the one that modded it as a troll (and by posting here I am undoing it). It is now modded +5 Funny, and yeah in hindsight it is funny. But at the time I modded it Troll, it was +2 Insightful, which I thought was an abomination. Insightful?
Well, you really shouldn't mod based upon existing moderation, I think. Moderate on your own opinion of the post, not what other people happened to think.
But if it makes you feel any better, I was just trying to be funny.
Call me when they install gas chambers there.
AND start shipping every last Arab citizen we can get our hands on there to be gassed. There are no half-measures when it comes to genocide.
It was about attacking and marginalizing a minority.
Uh ... what? I'm not even Jewish and I have to say, that's pretty far off base. I suppose you could call attempted genocide "marginalizing a minority". I suppose. Most of us would call the Holocaust by its proper name: mass murder, murder on a Biblical scale. The black population of the United States has been marginalized for a long time (less so in recent decades, perhaps) but we're not packing them into freight cars and shipping them off to be killed en masse.
And just by way of comparison, Guantanemo Bay is a detention camp and torture facility (maybe not as horrific as those maintained by many other countries, but the same in principle), not a tool of a genocidal totalitarian State. Anyone worthy of being an American citizen is horrified by what our government has done in our name in the pursuit of counter-terrorism, and wishes it would stop.
Unfortunately for your point, legally and practically there is no way that gender (or race, for that matter) matters in a leader.
A. I was not really making a point, just trying to be funny, and
B. What?
No corner-cutting, no vagina using, no feminist propaganda, no tricks
Well. Some would say that's just working from your strengths.
... this, coming from a woman who wholesalely was the greatest single cause of spreading V.D. amongst the troops. True. Look it up.
Saavik: iic veni... komi. (He's so... human.)
Spock: liingeth flamii bufith*, Saavik. (Nobody's perfect, Saavik.)
o she didn't get to a high station because she was a woman in a society thats over 100 years dead, that really sucks for her, but only marginally relevant today.
Today a black President, tomorrow ...
Because she was the first nerd who ever used interesting graphs to impress a PHB. Bonus points that the graphs were scientifically valid and useful.
She matters for the same reason that people still care about 1-2-3 or the 4004.
She also matters because a lot of people lived who otherwise wouldn't have.
... even amongst the most technical and literate of the population (like here, on slashdot).
Ah ha ... now there's where you went wrong.
No offence, but graphical representation and statistics was used from Archimedes days by your so-hated by feminists "men". This is how our brains work.
Sure, but that's irrelevant. It was her application of those techniques, her recognition of the need, and her perseverance in the face of considerable resistance that are admirable. She was a remarkable individual, whether you agree with girlintraining's estimation or not.
She used graphs to make a point about the importance of cleanliness. Why is this on /.? And why was it in Science News? Slow week...
It's just history, which is often fascinating in its own right, and a rather important part of it at that. You (like most of us) take a lot for granted.
Florence Nightingale's accomplishments are particularly relevant in the context of modern medical science, when you consider how much of that advancement is a direct result of efforts made to improve field medicine. By presenting her case and the facts in such a way as to persuade the powers-that-were in her time to increase that investment, she did all of us a huge favor.
But conversely, if she was a man nobody would feel the need to write an article about it.
Of course they would: great people are great people, and their accomplishments stand by themselves. The difference is, if she were a man, her (uh, his) sex wouldn't be worthy of note.
Must we malign this truly amazing woman with the word(s) "PowerPoint?"
You're right. I apologize.
Troll mod? Gee, looks like we have a PHB in the audience.
So Nightingale devised clever ways of presenting the information in charts.
So, in other words, she invented PowerPoint.
You forgot to put weapons manufacturers on your list. I mean, they take the heat for a lot of shootings, but I don't see many TV ads or billboards showing beautiful women playing with guns in an effort to make gun ownership sexy. It's not like the fast food companies, SUV makers and tobacco companies that spend billions of dollars in marketing, convincing us to fuck ourselves over for their benefit. I mean, yes they sell lethal tools, but it's the customer that pulls the trigger.
... sue. Shoot your wife dead ... sue the gun maker. Get diabetes ... sue a fast food company. Break into your school and end up a paraplegic ... sue the school. All that because obviously they (whoever they might happen to be) should somehow have stopped you. Some lawyers like that, because it means they get to sue the pants off deep-pockets corporations, and people like it because they don't have to own up to anything, and can maybe get society or some corporation to pay for their own poor judgment.
Now, tobacco companies have been held responsible for cancer deaths because they deliberately withheld knowledge that their product caused that disease, and point-blank lied about it (to the courts and to the public.) Might have been different if they'd been open and honest about their products' effects. Now, to my way of thinking smoke inhalation is a bad idea anyway, but whatever. People fell for it, are still falling for it.
But in general, I agree. Look at our recent history: everything has been about shifting responsibility (and blame) for our own actions onto other people or organizations. Hot coffee spills in your lap
Makes me sick. Not the America I grew up in, or thought I grew up in.
I'm afraid for the future if many people think like you. Having the government start prosecuting people for arbitrary charges just because you've done something that is socially unacceptable sends chills down my spine.
Kinda brings back thoughts of the Salem Witch Trials, doesn't it?