Sure, they want software that works, who doesn't? But they also want it in half the time that it takes to develop good software, and once it is complete, they want it to do something different than what was specified in the specs.
That's the nature of software development though, and something that developers need to be able to work with. Some newer approaches like Extreme Programming take this into effect and allow the developer to modify the scope as the project matures.
We were taught a ton of quality control, testing, and design in school. In fact, design and testing were taught at the major portion of software development. We spent most of our time designing and testing our code than we did writing it. We also did studies on the effects of poor programming and the responsibilities a programmer has in relation to his/her code. I can't speak for every CS program, but I know that these were the core aspects of mine.
You are right though, once I got a job in the real world I found that these virtues were lost in most companies, and the importiance of the training we received in CS classes were dismissed as academic jargon and a waste of time. I saw a lot of people developing software without even an engineering degree of any kind! And the notion that as long as your code isn't in a position to harm a person's life, so what if it has bugs, is rampent...
So I think the problem is not in the teaching, but that a lot (surely not all) of the employers dismiss the talents that their employees learned in school simply because they think the "real world" works differently and that their experience is more importiant that formal teaching.
Don't get me wrong, I have a DVD player and rent them almost exclusivly, but I don't think VHS is dead just yet. I use my 2 VCRs very often to record TV shows so I can watch them at my leisure. You can do it with Tivo, but then I can't lend the tape out, or watch the show elsewhere. Plus a VCR is more economical for me since I have 1000 blank tapes sitting around.
CC is just cutting the VCRs because they are cheap and they don't make a lot of money off them, Walmart and Best Buy will have them for 10 more years.
This is pretty ironic. You have to already have a computer to buy one? Most people who would buy a low end system like these probably don't already own a computer (besides the geeks here) and are looking for a cheap way to get one.
On a side note, I think Lindows will fail and make Linux look like crap to the general public.
I had to change the path to the AV software on my box at work so it wouldn't be able to start on boot. This was the only way to disable the whole thing without the proper admin access on our boxes. Had to put up with the annoying "Service can't start" error, but it was well worth it.
Someone should make a special program to detect and turn off Virus programs! I get a lot of calls from family members complaining about their slow computers, I check it out and they have the defacto McAfee install which checks all email, boot sector and floppy on boot, and (the worst one) EVERY exe before it starts. This causes a horrible delay everytime you do anything! I refuse to install any AV software on my computer simply because I am not stupid enough to open any of these files, and I consider the AV software itself to be a performance affecting Virus.
yea, that is a totally insane number. Like 13 million people are going to go to radio shack and buy splitters, split their cables and hook up all their TVs. I'd bet it's more like 13 thousand, and that is still a little high.
Ok, now this is worse than anything that MS bundles with their OS. Why does Sun think it can start bundling all this other software into the OS? This is the very thing that MS is getting in (or out of) trouble for. Does Sun think it's not ok only if MS does it?
Hey, this sounds like a really expensive way to play a game similar to paintball, but not nearly as fun. Why not just play paintball instead? Or if you want to go the more 80s route, you could play Lazertag instead.
I don't understand Netscape. Every so often they come out with a browser that is Mozilla, except that it has the name "Netscape" on it instead. However, somehow it seems to be not quite as good as Mozilla. And [not so] strangely, the releases come at the same time as Mozilla releases do (more or less).
So what is the point? Anyone can download and use Mozilla on almost any platform and it's the same or better than Netscape? Even the code is the same!!! Why are these netscape people fooling themselves pretending that their work is worthwhile? This is the most unneccessarily redundant job I have ever heard of...
Thanks for the unwarrented insult. Feeling bitter today?
If I wanted to use both Windows and Linux software at the same time, I'd be shit out of luck! We all know that Lindows will never achieve this, applications will never run as well on Linidws as they will on Windows. And if I am wrong and things will run equally as well on Windows and Lindows, then it will be because of all the hard work that the Wine developers put in, not because of the mp3.com yahoo!
Now if I wanted to run Linux software on Windows, I could try to compile it meself, port the code myself, check to see if someone else already did it, or just run Linux.
They are obviously using "Lindows" because it sounds like "Windows". It may be legal, but it is just plain stupid and childish as another poster mentioned.
Personally, I think the whole "Lindows" movement will fail. If I wanted to run a bunch of Windows software, I would use Windows.
This sounds like college would be a great solution for GeneralEmergency here. He sounds like someone who didn't get a degree when he should have and is now bitter about it since those with degrees are now doing his old job?
Also, note the general lack of intelligent dialect. Swearing, distain, and most notabily, bad advice. These are attributes one is likely to shed in college as it becomes importiant to learn how to communicate with others.
I just wanted to say that I admire your persistance and hard work.
You are right, there are a lot of naturally great coders/admin types out there (Carmack comes to mind) but your first exposure to a hiring person is on paper, and without that degree, things are bleak and likely to stay that way.
Amazing how people don't learn from history, or in this case, now.
A few years ago, everyone was skipping college, picking up a "programming for dummies" book and making 50K a year riding scooters around the office.
Some of us went to college, worked hard, got degrees, and then went out and got the same jobs.
Then the economy went belly up and everyone without a degree is now trying to get the job they once had back. A lot of people with degrees are trying to get those jobs now too.
You might know your stuff, you might be super great, but most people will hire someone who cared enough about their career and what they do to go to college in the first place over those who did not.
There are a lot of people in these forums who would disagree I'm sure. But there is no denying that a college degree goes a long way in todays workplace. And since companies can't afford to make the same mistakes they made in the 90's, things will stay that way...
I have written a lot of Java code. Only once did my code not work on other platforms. I was writing some charting software on an NT box. This requires getting a graphics context from the OS and using that to render the images. This works fine on NT, however, if you run it on a headless Unix box (no X server) it won't work because there is no way to get the context. So the code was not cross platform. However this is fixed in version 1.4. And you could include the PJA toolkit jar to fix it as well.
Other than this, I have not heard of Java code not being portable across platforms. I'd love to hear some examples of what you are talking about.
The reason why this situation exists in the first place is the failure of the taxpayers to monitor how their money is being spent.
I agree, however this would be a full time job in and of itself. Tax money is so widely dispersed that any given taxpayer might be funding several hundred seperate projects at the same time (e.g. street repairs, many aspects of education, homeless shelters, and so on).
What would really be nice (and maybe a good project for your students) is a website that allows you to plug in how much state taxes/federal taxes you payed and it tells you what exactly you are paying for and the details of each. Probably impossible as much of that data is not on the internet. Come to think of it, it probably never will be since somebody would make this site and everyone would be pissed at what they were paying for!
What is the goal you hope to obtain in regard to the DMCA dispute? How to you intend to meet those goals ?
Personally, I think that as time passes, people will become more and more technical and eventually the absurdity of the DMCA will be exposed on a more general population than just the techies that it is now. So the nest means to an end IMHO is educating the general public. Is this your intention?
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Sure, they want software that works, who doesn't? But they also want it in half the time that it takes to develop good software, and once it is complete, they want it to do something different than what was specified in the specs.
That's the nature of software development though, and something that developers need to be able to work with. Some newer approaches like Extreme Programming take this into effect and allow the developer to modify the scope as the project matures.
We were taught a ton of quality control, testing, and design in school. In fact, design and testing were taught at the major portion of software development. We spent most of our time designing and testing our code than we did writing it. We also did studies on the effects of poor programming and the responsibilities a programmer has in relation to his/her code. I can't speak for every CS program, but I know that these were the core aspects of mine.
You are right though, once I got a job in the real world I found that these virtues were lost in most companies, and the importiance of the training we received in CS classes were dismissed as academic jargon and a waste of time. I saw a lot of people developing software without even an engineering degree of any kind! And the notion that as long as your code isn't in a position to harm a person's life, so what if it has bugs, is rampent...
So I think the problem is not in the teaching, but that a lot (surely not all) of the employers dismiss the talents that their employees learned in school simply because they think the "real world" works differently and that their experience is more importiant that formal teaching.
more like 30 or so. I was using 1000 as an exageration to imply that I have a lot of tapes.
Don't get me wrong, I have a DVD player and rent them almost exclusivly, but I don't think VHS is dead just yet. I use my 2 VCRs very often to record TV shows so I can watch them at my leisure. You can do it with Tivo, but then I can't lend the tape out, or watch the show elsewhere. Plus a VCR is more economical for me since I have 1000 blank tapes sitting around.
CC is just cutting the VCRs because they are cheap and they don't make a lot of money off them, Walmart and Best Buy will have them for 10 more years.
This is pretty ironic. You have to already have a computer to buy one? Most people who would buy a low end system like these probably don't already own a computer (besides the geeks here) and are looking for a cheap way to get one.
On a side note, I think Lindows will fail and make Linux look like crap to the general public.
No problem, it's 208.47.125.33
I had to change the path to the AV software on my box at work so it wouldn't be able to start on boot. This was the only way to disable the whole thing without the proper admin access on our boxes. Had to put up with the annoying "Service can't start" error, but it was well worth it.
Someone should make a special program to detect and turn off Virus programs! I get a lot of calls from family members complaining about their slow computers, I check it out and they have the defacto McAfee install which checks all email, boot sector and floppy on boot, and (the worst one) EVERY exe before it starts. This causes a horrible delay everytime you do anything! I refuse to install any AV software on my computer simply because I am not stupid enough to open any of these files, and I consider the AV software itself to be a performance affecting Virus.
yea, that is a totally insane number. Like 13 million people are going to go to radio shack and buy splitters, split their cables and hook up all their TVs. I'd bet it's more like 13 thousand, and that is still a little high.
Ok, now this is worse than anything that MS bundles with their OS. Why does Sun think it can start bundling all this other software into the OS? This is the very thing that MS is getting in (or out of) trouble for. Does Sun think it's not ok only if MS does it?
Hey, this sounds like a really expensive way to play a game similar to paintball, but not nearly as fun. Why not just play paintball instead? Or if you want to go the more 80s route, you could play Lazertag instead.
I don't understand Netscape. Every so often they come out with a browser that is Mozilla, except that it has the name "Netscape" on it instead. However, somehow it seems to be not quite as good as Mozilla. And [not so] strangely, the releases come at the same time as Mozilla releases do (more or less).
So what is the point? Anyone can download and use Mozilla on almost any platform and it's the same or better than Netscape? Even the code is the same!!! Why are these netscape people fooling themselves pretending that their work is worthwhile? This is the most unneccessarily redundant job I have ever heard of...
just can the project and move on already!
Hey Hanzo-
Thanks for the unwarrented insult. Feeling bitter today?
If I wanted to use both Windows and Linux software at the same time, I'd be shit out of luck! We all know that Lindows will never achieve this, applications will never run as well on Linidws as they will on Windows. And if I am wrong and things will run equally as well on Windows and Lindows, then it will be because of all the hard work that the Wine developers put in, not because of the mp3.com yahoo!
Now if I wanted to run Linux software on Windows, I could try to compile it meself, port the code myself, check to see if someone else already did it, or just run Linux.
They are obviously using "Lindows" because it sounds like "Windows". It may be legal, but it is just plain stupid and childish as another poster mentioned.
Personally, I think the whole "Lindows" movement will fail. If I wanted to run a bunch of Windows software, I would use Windows.
Yes, that is similar to what PJA does, but running a virtual frame buffer is a waste of resources if you are not going to use it often.
Nevertheless, the code does not run on multipul platforms (until 1.4 at least)
This sounds like college would be a great solution for GeneralEmergency here. He sounds like someone who didn't get a degree when he should have and is now bitter about it since those with degrees are now doing his old job?
Also, note the general lack of intelligent dialect. Swearing, distain, and most notabily, bad advice. These are attributes one is likely to shed in college as it becomes importiant to learn how to communicate with others.
Hi Ron-
I just wanted to say that I admire your persistance and hard work.
You are right, there are a lot of naturally great coders/admin types out there (Carmack comes to mind) but your first exposure to a hiring person is on paper, and without that degree, things are bleak and likely to stay that way.
Good luck!
Amazing how people don't learn from history, or in this case, now.
A few years ago, everyone was skipping college, picking up a "programming for dummies" book and making 50K a year riding scooters around the office.
Some of us went to college, worked hard, got degrees, and then went out and got the same jobs.
Then the economy went belly up and everyone without a degree is now trying to get the job they once had back. A lot of people with degrees are trying to get those jobs now too.
You might know your stuff, you might be super great, but most people will hire someone who cared enough about their career and what they do to go to college in the first place over those who did not.
There are a lot of people in these forums who would disagree I'm sure. But there is no denying that a college degree goes a long way in todays workplace. And since companies can't afford to make the same mistakes they made in the 90's, things will stay that way...
I have written a lot of Java code. Only once did my code not work on other platforms. I was writing some charting software on an NT box. This requires getting a graphics context from the OS and using that to render the images. This works fine on NT, however, if you run it on a headless Unix box (no X server) it won't work because there is no way to get the context. So the code was not cross platform. However this is fixed in version 1.4. And you could include the PJA toolkit jar to fix it as well.
Other than this, I have not heard of Java code not being portable across platforms. I'd love to hear some examples of what you are talking about.
The reason why this situation exists in the first place is the failure of the taxpayers to monitor how their money is being spent.
I agree, however this would be a full time job in and of itself. Tax money is so widely dispersed that any given taxpayer might be funding several hundred seperate projects at the same time (e.g. street repairs, many aspects of education, homeless shelters, and so on).
What would really be nice (and maybe a good project for your students) is a website that allows you to plug in how much state taxes/federal taxes you payed and it tells you what exactly you are paying for and the details of each. Probably impossible as much of that data is not on the internet. Come to think of it, it probably never will be since somebody would make this site and everyone would be pissed at what they were paying for!
Thanks for the comment, good insights. Troy
You could go with the AMD athlon/Duron/K5/K6 loophole too.
Design of software using models, that is, drawing class diagrams, use case diagrams etc... This class contains that and inherits from this and so on.
Alan-
What is the goal you hope to obtain in regard to the DMCA dispute? How to you intend to meet those goals ?
Personally, I think that as time passes, people will become more and more technical and eventually the absurdity of the DMCA will be exposed on a more general population than just the techies that it is now. So the nest means to an end IMHO is educating the general public. Is this your intention?
-Troy
Great Show. I believe it was Fenten though.
They make really crappy news distribution software that is called Sage. It is about as reliable as the Sr. Mgmt there.
I think they make some other things too.