I seem to remember a rumor that a certain operating system company rewrote sections of their operating system back in the '80s to prevent a competing spreadsheet from working. What was the saying attributed to the manager at the time? Oh, yes: "The program's not done, 'til Lotus won't run".
I smell a commercial game, there... That's something people would pay good money to play.
But to do it right, you'd have to set it up like the Sims:
* Different development groups would drop by for a visit, and the two groups of programmers might get along well, or suddenly attack each other (complete with spherical cloud of smoke).
* Different managers would come by to try and poach your best people (like the Sims thief). Instead of a burgular alarm, maybe you'd get a vicious, paranoid office manager complete with a bun in her hair and two inch blood-red nails on her fingers.
* You'd have to monitor your programmer's mood and general well being. If you didn't keep them happy, they would either drop dead at their desk (Karoshi) or they would sneak off and join competing firms.
* Like Sims trying to cook, periodically consultants will set the mainframe on fire, then jump from foot to foot with their hands in the air instead of doing anything about it. If you purchased a Source Control System, it would act like the Sims fire alarm -- and a sysadmin would activate the halon system (putting out the fire and killing the consultant, thus solving the problem and preventing future ones).
* Finally, hackers would periodically sneak in and try to charm one of your workers (or the sadistic office manager). Your IDS would go berserk and a security guard would come running in and nab the hacker. Or, if you didn't buy one, the hacker would steal your development server, knock up all your workers, and reduce your revenues by 50%.
Teaching a manager programming gives the manager a false sense of competence. He may develop the idea that he actually knows what all this programming business is about, and it'll make him an insufferable pain in the ass to all of his developers, who will curse your name in several languages for decades. Don't do it! Think of it as a "professional courtesy" issue and don't curse your comrades by creating such a monster.
INSTEAD, do THIS:
Arrange the course around a 50,000 foot view of the actual development process. Show the managers what programmers actually have to put up with, what problems they have to endure, what sorts of things go wrong in their daily lives that gum up the works and cause projects to fail. Show the managers good project management practices. Instill a sense in them that all schedules are works of fiction until their projects are complete (forecasting is a myth!). Make sure they understand that in software development, anything that can go wrong will, and that it's not necessarily the programmer's fault. Show them what happens when a user changes everything right in the middle of a project, so that the manager will have a proper fear of such catastrophes. Teach them that hiring permanant staff results in the retention of institutional knowledge about the applications in use, and that outsourcing (even to local consultants) ensures that NO institutional knowledge will ever be developed or retained. Teach them HOW to hire consultants if they do -- how to develop their bullshit detectors and know when they're being lied to, for instance.
In other words, don't try to make a manager a programmer (it can't be done). Instead, try to make the manager into the kind of manager YOU would want to work for. Teach them how to manage smart people, and how to treat them well, so that they're respected and followed rather than defied, hated, and surreptitiously mocked as "The PHB".
Then, the manager's eventual staff will bless you again and again. All that good karma's gotta boomerang back and whack you SOONER or later.:)
Some yahoo said: "Or if you would just stop depending on microsoft, and use something that isn't bullshit, you wouldn't have this problem there either. I know that governments are usually not on the ball, but I also know that there are jobs out there in the private sector."
Oh! I see! So all I have to do is get a job in the private sector, where I lose my pension, my benefits, my union membership, my job security, my good salary...
The private sector that outsources everything to foreign countries and lays off thousands of people with little notice?
The private sector that makes you sign nondisclosures and noncompetes, IP agreements that pledge everything you think about to the company?
Fuck that shit. I'll take hair-brained consultant bullshit any day. At least I don't have to worry about where my next paycheck is coming from.
Don't work in software until you're out of school.
on
Countering IP Agreements?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Here's my advice:
You're in grad school right now. So, you must be building a thesis, which is probably the intellectual property of your university (if not, good for you). You have no way of knowing how valuable or useful your area of study might be. You might have something you can start a company with. Who's to say you're not one of those who comes up with the Next Big Thing and turns it into fifty million bucks? If you DO, you'll never forgive yourself for signing it all away.
Forget the internship (or whatever it is). Stay independent, at least until you've given yourself every opportunity to create something.
Avoid ALL NDA's, Noncompetes, and IP agreements like the plague. They're casting a net -- don't get dragged into the boat.
Disclaimer: although I used to be a C++/Java guy, since the tech crash VB6 (and now, VB.Net) has been putting bread on my table. So, in the words of a coworker, I'm going to play the "sick puppy that bites the hand that feeds", here:
Here's something really funny (and fun) for all people who know VB to do the next time they're drinking with their C++ and/or Java friends:
1. State "You guys make fun of VB6, but we DO have really good exception handling. Wanna see how it works?"
2. Wait for them to finish laughing at you.
3. Write the following bit of code on a napkin, and show it to them:
public sub DoSomething()
' Variable defs here
On Error goto My_Errorhandler
' Buncha code here
Cleanup:
' Clean out all objects, etc, then exit
exit sub
My_Errorhandler:
' Handle errors then resume at Cleanup
resume Cleanup
end sub
4. Wait several minutes while they look at the napkin, then look back at you, then back at the napkin, then at each other.
5. Wait several more minutes while they laugh uncontrollably and throw peanuts at you.
6. Once they've settled down, say in a very somber tone "You're just jealous." You have to appear slightly wounded but dignified when you say this.
You win if one of your friends actually falls off his stool while laughing.;)
The only people who know what we have to go through is other guys like us... When I tell my private-industry friends the kind of weirdness I run into here, they NEVER believe me. They always accuse me of making it all up, or at least exaggerating the hell out of it.
"But," I tell them, "I wasn't exaggerating, I was actually glossing over most of it!"
Yeah... God, I miss my C++ days. My current employers are completely obsessed with VB. You should have seen the conversation in which I tried to explain to them that NO, VB.Net was NOT VB6 compatible, and NO, a VB6 programmer does NOT actually know OOP, and YES, everyone in our department was going to need retraining... You'd think I was trying to sell them the Brooklyn bridge. Sometimes, I feel like crying. I used to be a C++ and Java guy, and now, I'm a VB GUY; we used to make FUN of them when I was in college. The only thing that keeps me sane is tinkering around on my Linux box at home after work.
I accepted a pretty big lifestyle change after the tech crash, you betcha.
Anyway, yeah, where I work, they won't even let us use C# (much less C++) because they think it's too hard, they won't be able to grab some schmuck off the street to replace us if we get hit by a bus.
C# for christ's sake! Think about the implications of that.
You said: "So you're saying you're not capable of writing a VB.Net app that looks and operates exactly the same as your old VB6 app? Why not? It's a bunch of Windows forms... if you just make them identical to the old app why would your users even notice any difference at all?"
Boy, you don't have any idea how things work in government, do you? Let me explain.
1. Most of the legacy code was written by contractors who have long since disappeared. Contractors don't comment their code, and for some ungodly reason, they love to stick things into arrays with hard-coded references (for example, you'd think they'd just use the recordset they just fetched, but NOOOOOOO, they cram the whole thing into a 2-D array named something like "arrAM2F" so it's almost unmaintainable). Also, although they used COM+ services, not only is everything a function library rather than a real class, there's a lot of replication of functionality because all the contractors ended up rolling their own versions of everything -- they never talk to each other for Christ's sake. To port it you have to map out what everything does.
2. As soon as the users find out the thing's being ported, we have to go through a whole new requirements gathering session to see what NEW things they want to stick in. And somebody wants to punch up the UI, make it look better. And instead of client-server, we're going with a web interface. And so on. And so on. Which leads to a whole new development cycle and new training.
3. While we're porting the apps, we discover that the contractor who designed the original database schema was a complete fucktard and nothing is normalized or reportable. So we have to design a whole new schema to match the user's new reporting requirements from #2 above. And we have to integrate Joe Schmoe's spiffy third-party reporting tool because some OTHER consultant has convinced some bigshot that it's the latest, greatest thing and we MUST HAVE IT NOW (guess whose porting project is going to be the test case?).
Get the picture? PAINFUL FOR ME. The whole process is a big fucking catastrophe. And instead of building NEW systems to ADD functionality, we have to waste all our time replicating OLD systems we've already finished and debugged. And every few years we've got to do it again.
If Microsoft would just quit fucking everybody over, those legacy apps could work for DECADES without causing anyone any trouble. But Nooooo...
An A/C who I agree with said, "Surely this example could make a very good case to your employer to pick a real, standards-based language like C++ for its critical infrastructure; so when your compiler vendor decides he needs more upgrade revenue you don't get screwed again"
HOWEVER,
I work in government. The decisions on what platform we are permitted to use are handed down from on high, and we have no say whatsoever in the matter. We are TOLD to use this platform, it's all political, and the technical merits don't really come into play.
I like my job; the pay and benefits are good, and I have job security. So, I do what they tell me.
But I'm still not looking forward to it.
P.S. I DO agree with you, and I'd LOVE to use C++, but there's no way on EARTH I'll ever sneak that one past the boss... HIS boss'd go nuts.
This fucks a lot of people. At my shop, we have a lot of legacy apps which use COM+ services (mostly 3-tier client-server and ASP apps). We've been a Win2K shop so far, and we should be able to hold out for a while, but sooner or later we're going to have to wade hip-deep into our legacy code and re-write for VB.Net.
I started out as a C++ and Java programmer and took up VB6 after the tech crash (to pay the bills). I know VB6, VB.Net, and Java, and I think VB.Net is a straightforward clone of Java -- there's almost no similarity to VB6 at all. Microsoft's porting tool is almost useless for any REAL application. We're looking at a ground-up, OOP redesign of everything our shop uses. Plus testing. Plus retraining of all our users. Plus figuring out a whole new security model, vis-a-vis the web services. It's going to be PAINFUL.
Well, the trick is to choose carefully. If you know what you're looking for, you can generally get CDs you're very happy with -- and I don't mean getting only two songs per CD that you like. Here's a good example: most Nirvana CDs are good all the way through. The Supreme Beings of Leisure CD I bought was excellent. If there are only two good songs on a CD I don't bother with it.
After all, sooner or later, they'll end up on a "greatest hits" CD and I'll get ALL the good songs a band produced in one package. Right?
But, Econ 101 says that it is not the music industry that sets the prices, it is the MARKET.
Take me for example. I think 99 cents is too expensive for a song. So, I won't buy online. What I'll do instead is haunt used-cd stores, and pick up an entire CD worth of music for 3.99. 3.99/10 songs (minimum case) is 40 cents a song. Cheaper!
If I find a CD with 20 songs (which happens a lot) it's down to 20c/song. Even cheaper!
So, until the online merchants drop their price by at least fifty percent, I'll keep shopping at Mr. Bill's CD's on Route 9.
Oh! So it was Slashdot! How WEIRD! I guess the irony is lost on them -- being a site where people complain about that kind of stuff, and then, doing it...
So they had some kind of flash voice-over tied to the audio link?
Damn, that's weird. By the way, I have Firefox, but (not yet) adblock. Maybe I'll look into it...
I played about a minute of the mp3 using Realplay, got bored with it (cute, but not my kind of music) and closed the Real Player window.
About three seconds later, this nasal wench started giving me a spiel about Vonage! Which is some kind of VOIP telephone thing, I guess, but nothing I have any use for. RealPlayer wasn't visibly running, nothing was displayed on my desktop, but in the background this woman blathered on for about 30 seconds.
I tried to get it to repeat itself, but I couldn't...
Is Real Player sticking 30 second advertisements at random intervals in its free player? Or am I going nuts? It really caught me by surprise.
Here you have an interesting specimen of the increasingly rare species "Effetus snobbius", known colloquially as an "Ivory Tower Windbag" (because of their incredible lung capacity). People just don't appreciate these rare creatures... They used to be more common, you know.
Originally, their lifecycle depended on consuming large numbers of dead trees. In that way they were similar to beavers, although they stacked their dead trees in structures made of other dead trees and avoided water almost entirely. This gave them a somewhat musty odor, which we suspect may have aided in the gradual erosion of their ability to locate mating partners. Sadly, in the past twenty years, we have failed to locate even one female willing to mate with a Snobbius. The species is almost certainly going to go extinct. And, what with bloggers destroying their natural habitat, well... What chance do the poor creatures have?
My, but this is a fine specimen. And, he's feisty, too! It's such a shame.
I used to struggle with the "why do they keep using it, when there are so many (much better) alternatives" question. I see now how silly my confusion was. It's all so clear...
Windows... Is a video game!
Sure, think about it. Can you hack your friend Billy's computer before he hacks yours while you chat online? The suspense must be very exciting. Who has the better Script? Who has the better collection of vulnerabilities?
It must be almost like playing Magic: The Gathering, or one of the other card games kids are into now. "My hack trumps yours! I get all your pr0n!"
Suddenly I feel very boring. Sigh... It's okay, Slackware, I love you even IF you're secure. I'll just have to settle for being Rudolph, and not play in any Reindeer Games.
I think you're confusing poseurs with specialists. They're not the same thing. I've had to vet a few resumes in my time, too, and I've seen some pretty ridiculous stuff, like the guy who claimed ten years of experience in.Net development... In 2003!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying a programmer will only know one tool during his career. The case you describe is actually my second case. You spent seven years doing Smalltalk; that's specialization, just as I described. I started out in college doing C and C++, then spent a year doing really dopey crap with a specialized database (boring), then a couple of years doing Java and Perl (same environment, two parallel tasks), then a few years in a Microsoft shop... In every case, I stuck with the same tool long enough to get really good at it.
In my experience, a programmer can learn syntax in a few weeks, and he gets relatively good at a tool within a couple of months. Within a year or so, he's great at it. Additional years make him better. Knowing the basics of computer science isn't anywhere NEAR enough; you have to know your working environment, too. You have to know how to build your interface, how to work with your middleware, your database, how to handle transactions and security... There's a mountain of stuff nobody seems to get in school.
Expecting to jump into a job and be useful right away just because you've done a bunch of different things over the years is going to get you into trouble. You've got to expect a bit of a learning curve, and to spend some time honing your skill before you *really* are any good.
There are two kinds of programmers. The first kind is all over the place, with a dozen languages on his resume. He believes he "knows" all these different languages, and he uses the one he thinks is suitable for a specific job. Often, this sort of programmer believes he can learn any language in a couple of weeks. But as a jack of all trades, he's the master of none... Because he's always jumping around, he'll always be a newbie no matter WHAT language he's using. And newbies make lots of mistakes.
The second kind specializes in a specific tool he's using at a given point in his career (Java, for example). He takes the time to learn all the libraries, best practices, common pitfalls to avoid, all the little gotchas that can gum up the works... He masters ONE tool, and maybe, understands enough about a few others to make good use of them. He knows that all you can learn in a few weeks is basic syntax, so he takes his time and builds knowledge over a few years. He's not a newbie, he's seasoned, because he stuck with ONE tool. He's more trustworthy.
I would rather hire the specialist any day. His code is going to be cleaner, more effective, easier to maintain over time... He won't make silly mistakes because he'll really understand how things are supposed to work. His knowledge is DEEP.
Breadth is overrated. Depth is much more useful in practice.
1. You are simply claiming that the appeal to authority IS valid, not refuting the parent poster's argument. Thus, I can use the appeal to authority to claim that YOU are wrong, by saying that virtually all important philosophers agree with the parent poster and you shouldn't dismiss their opinions lightly.
2. You are saying that whiners don't write languages or define fields; therefore, in your view, if I write a language or define a field, I cannot be a whiner. Obviously, this doesn't work. I suspect that it is entirely possible to do something great and then, turn around and be a whiner. For exhibit A, I present... The "Great Man" himself! Who whined for three pages about Java. Despite his achievements. Hmm...
3. C# is based largely on Java; it is a knock-off. I suspect you haven't used it.
English is an excellent language. It has absorbed the best features of the languages its users have been exposed to. Consider the combination:
A 26-character alphabet which can be combined into phonemes to express virtually any sound humans are capable of making (and some we aren't), which enables people to express virtually any thought by constructing it from more primitive chunks;
A spoken form that is driven heavily by context so that a limited number of words can express a much broader number of meanings, with extremely subtle variations possible based on body language and tone;
A format that can accept any foreign word or concept merely by converting the sounds into english phonemes, growing constantly, never becoming obsolete...
English is really something. The reason it's used so widely is that it's so good it's almost viral.
Big deal. So Alan Kay thinks the languages we're all using are crap, that our computer science degrees aren't as good as his generation's, that we focus too much on practical skills rather than lofty theory, that the way HE and his generation did things is the One True Way... Yawn. Wake me up when something interesting happens.
By the way, if Heraclitus was around today, he sure wouldn't be doing something practical and pedestrian like computer programming; he'd probably be panhandling in the park, surrounded by NYU students. FYI.
If you're a girl, the following steps may not change the world, but they WILL make a lonely, starving open-source coder happy:
1. Locate an open-source coder.
2. Approach said coder's dorm room or apartment in a trenchcoat (naked underneath), with a six-pack in one hand and a bag of Chinese food in the other.
3. When the coder opens the door, announce "I noticed you checked my bug-fix into CVS this afternoon! Let's celebrate!" Lean back so the trenchcoat opens up, and hold up the beer and Chinese food.
4. Be ready to administer CPR if the coder has a heart attack.
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to remember a rumor that a certain operating system company rewrote sections of their operating system back in the '80s to prevent a competing spreadsheet from working. What was the saying attributed to the manager at the time? Oh, yes: "The program's not done, 'til Lotus won't run".
:)
But that was just a rumor, of course.
I smell a commercial game, there... That's something people would pay good money to play.
But to do it right, you'd have to set it up like the Sims:
* Different development groups would drop by for a visit, and the two groups of programmers might get along well, or suddenly attack each other (complete with spherical cloud of smoke).
* Different managers would come by to try and poach your best people (like the Sims thief). Instead of a burgular alarm, maybe you'd get a vicious, paranoid office manager complete with a bun in her hair and two inch blood-red nails on her fingers.
* You'd have to monitor your programmer's mood and general well being. If you didn't keep them happy, they would either drop dead at their desk (Karoshi) or they would sneak off and join competing firms.
* Like Sims trying to cook, periodically consultants will set the mainframe on fire, then jump from foot to foot with their hands in the air instead of doing anything about it. If you purchased a Source Control System, it would act like the Sims fire alarm -- and a sysadmin would activate the halon system (putting out the fire and killing the consultant, thus solving the problem and preventing future ones).
* Finally, hackers would periodically sneak in and try to charm one of your workers (or the sadistic office manager). Your IDS would go berserk and a security guard would come running in and nab the hacker. Or, if you didn't buy one, the hacker would steal your development server, knock up all your workers, and reduce your revenues by 50%.
Sounds fun!
Teaching a manager programming gives the manager a false sense of competence. He may develop the idea that he actually knows what all this programming business is about, and it'll make him an insufferable pain in the ass to all of his developers, who will curse your name in several languages for decades. Don't do it! Think of it as a "professional courtesy" issue and don't curse your comrades by creating such a monster.
:)
INSTEAD, do THIS:
Arrange the course around a 50,000 foot view of the actual development process. Show the managers what programmers actually have to put up with, what problems they have to endure, what sorts of things go wrong in their daily lives that gum up the works and cause projects to fail. Show the managers good project management practices. Instill a sense in them that all schedules are works of fiction until their projects are complete (forecasting is a myth!). Make sure they understand that in software development, anything that can go wrong will, and that it's not necessarily the programmer's fault. Show them what happens when a user changes everything right in the middle of a project, so that the manager will have a proper fear of such catastrophes. Teach them that hiring permanant staff results in the retention of institutional knowledge about the applications in use, and that outsourcing (even to local consultants) ensures that NO institutional knowledge will ever be developed or retained. Teach them HOW to hire consultants if they do -- how to develop their bullshit detectors and know when they're being lied to, for instance.
In other words, don't try to make a manager a programmer (it can't be done). Instead, try to make the manager into the kind of manager YOU would want to work for. Teach them how to manage smart people, and how to treat them well, so that they're respected and followed rather than defied, hated, and surreptitiously mocked as "The PHB".
Then, the manager's eventual staff will bless you again and again. All that good karma's gotta boomerang back and whack you SOONER or later.
Some yahoo said: "Or if you would just stop depending on microsoft, and use something that isn't bullshit, you wouldn't have this problem there either. I know that governments are usually not on the ball, but I also know that there are jobs out there in the private sector."
Oh! I see! So all I have to do is get a job in the private sector, where I lose my pension, my benefits, my union membership, my job security, my good salary...
The private sector that outsources everything to foreign countries and lays off thousands of people with little notice?
The private sector that makes you sign nondisclosures and noncompetes, IP agreements that pledge everything you think about to the company?
Fuck that shit. I'll take hair-brained consultant bullshit any day. At least I don't have to worry about where my next paycheck is coming from.
Here's my advice:
You're in grad school right now. So, you must be building a thesis, which is probably the intellectual property of your university (if not, good for you). You have no way of knowing how valuable or useful your area of study might be. You might have something you can start a company with. Who's to say you're not one of those who comes up with the Next Big Thing and turns it into fifty million bucks? If you DO, you'll never forgive yourself for signing it all away.
Forget the internship (or whatever it is). Stay independent, at least until you've given yourself every opportunity to create something.
Avoid ALL NDA's, Noncompetes, and IP agreements like the plague. They're casting a net -- don't get dragged into the boat.
Disclaimer: although I used to be a C++/Java guy, since the tech crash VB6 (and now, VB.Net) has been putting bread on my table. So, in the words of a coworker, I'm going to play the "sick puppy that bites the hand that feeds", here:
;)
Here's something really funny (and fun) for all people who know VB to do the next time they're drinking with their C++ and/or Java friends:
1. State "You guys make fun of VB6, but we DO have really good exception handling. Wanna see how it works?"
2. Wait for them to finish laughing at you.
3. Write the following bit of code on a napkin, and show it to them:
public sub DoSomething()
' Variable defs here
On Error goto My_Errorhandler
' Buncha code here
Cleanup:
' Clean out all objects, etc, then exit
exit sub
My_Errorhandler:
' Handle errors then resume at Cleanup
resume Cleanup
end sub
4. Wait several minutes while they look at the napkin, then look back at you, then back at the napkin, then at each other.
5. Wait several more minutes while they laugh uncontrollably and throw peanuts at you.
6. Once they've settled down, say in a very somber tone "You're just jealous." You have to appear slightly wounded but dignified when you say this.
You win if one of your friends actually falls off his stool while laughing.
Enjoy!
heh heh heh... I'm very pleased to meet you.
;)
The only people who know what we have to go through is other guys like us... When I tell my private-industry friends the kind of weirdness I run into here, they NEVER believe me. They always accuse me of making it all up, or at least exaggerating the hell out of it.
"But," I tell them, "I wasn't exaggerating, I was actually glossing over most of it!"
Blank stares.
Yeah... God, I miss my C++ days. My current employers are completely obsessed with VB. You should have seen the conversation in which I tried to explain to them that NO, VB.Net was NOT VB6 compatible, and NO, a VB6 programmer does NOT actually know OOP, and YES, everyone in our department was going to need retraining... You'd think I was trying to sell them the Brooklyn bridge. Sometimes, I feel like crying. I used to be a C++ and Java guy, and now, I'm a VB GUY; we used to make FUN of them when I was in college. The only thing that keeps me sane is tinkering around on my Linux box at home after work.
I accepted a pretty big lifestyle change after the tech crash, you betcha.
Anyway, yeah, where I work, they won't even let us use C# (much less C++) because they think it's too hard, they won't be able to grab some schmuck off the street to replace us if we get hit by a bus.
C# for christ's sake! Think about the implications of that.
You said: "So you're saying you're not capable of writing a VB.Net app that looks and operates exactly the same as your old VB6 app? Why not? It's a bunch of Windows forms... if you just make them identical to the old app why would your users even notice any difference at all?"
Boy, you don't have any idea how things work in government, do you? Let me explain.
1. Most of the legacy code was written by contractors who have long since disappeared. Contractors don't comment their code, and for some ungodly reason, they love to stick things into arrays with hard-coded references (for example, you'd think they'd just use the recordset they just fetched, but NOOOOOOO, they cram the whole thing into a 2-D array named something like "arrAM2F" so it's almost unmaintainable). Also, although they used COM+ services, not only is everything a function library rather than a real class, there's a lot of replication of functionality because all the contractors ended up rolling their own versions of everything -- they never talk to each other for Christ's sake. To port it you have to map out what everything does.
2. As soon as the users find out the thing's being ported, we have to go through a whole new requirements gathering session to see what NEW things they want to stick in. And somebody wants to punch up the UI, make it look better. And instead of client-server, we're going with a web interface. And so on. And so on. Which leads to a whole new development cycle and new training.
3. While we're porting the apps, we discover that the contractor who designed the original database schema was a complete fucktard and nothing is normalized or reportable. So we have to design a whole new schema to match the user's new reporting requirements from #2 above. And we have to integrate Joe Schmoe's spiffy third-party reporting tool because some OTHER consultant has convinced some bigshot that it's the latest, greatest thing and we MUST HAVE IT NOW (guess whose porting project is going to be the test case?).
Get the picture? PAINFUL FOR ME. The whole process is a big fucking catastrophe. And instead of building NEW systems to ADD functionality, we have to waste all our time replicating OLD systems we've already finished and debugged. And every few years we've got to do it again.
If Microsoft would just quit fucking everybody over, those legacy apps could work for DECADES without causing anyone any trouble. But Nooooo...
Fucking Microsoft.
An A/C who I agree with said, "Surely this example could make a very good case to your employer to pick a real, standards-based language like C++ for its critical infrastructure; so when your compiler vendor decides he needs more upgrade revenue you don't get screwed again"
HOWEVER,
I work in government. The decisions on what platform we are permitted to use are handed down from on high, and we have no say whatsoever in the matter. We are TOLD to use this platform, it's all political, and the technical merits don't really come into play.
I like my job; the pay and benefits are good, and I have job security. So, I do what they tell me.
But I'm still not looking forward to it.
P.S. I DO agree with you, and I'd LOVE to use C++, but there's no way on EARTH I'll ever sneak that one past the boss... HIS boss'd go nuts.
This fucks a lot of people. At my shop, we have a lot of legacy apps which use COM+ services (mostly 3-tier client-server and ASP apps). We've been a Win2K shop so far, and we should be able to hold out for a while, but sooner or later we're going to have to wade hip-deep into our legacy code and re-write for VB.Net.
I started out as a C++ and Java programmer and took up VB6 after the tech crash (to pay the bills). I know VB6, VB.Net, and Java, and I think VB.Net is a straightforward clone of Java -- there's almost no similarity to VB6 at all. Microsoft's porting tool is almost useless for any REAL application. We're looking at a ground-up, OOP redesign of everything our shop uses. Plus testing. Plus retraining of all our users. Plus figuring out a whole new security model, vis-a-vis the web services. It's going to be PAINFUL.
I'm really, really not looking forward to that.
Well, the trick is to choose carefully. If you know what you're looking for, you can generally get CDs you're very happy with -- and I don't mean getting only two songs per CD that you like. Here's a good example: most Nirvana CDs are good all the way through. The Supreme Beings of Leisure CD I bought was excellent. If there are only two good songs on a CD I don't bother with it.
After all, sooner or later, they'll end up on a "greatest hits" CD and I'll get ALL the good songs a band produced in one package. Right?
But you already know what you have decided. Now you must learn WHY you have made the choice.
But, Econ 101 says that it is not the music industry that sets the prices, it is the MARKET.
:)
Take me for example. I think 99 cents is too expensive for a song. So, I won't buy online. What I'll do instead is haunt used-cd stores, and pick up an entire CD worth of music for 3.99. 3.99/10 songs (minimum case) is 40 cents a song. Cheaper!
If I find a CD with 20 songs (which happens a lot) it's down to 20c/song. Even cheaper!
So, until the online merchants drop their price by at least fifty percent, I'll keep shopping at Mr. Bill's CD's on Route 9.
NOW how are they going to set my price?
Oh! So it was Slashdot! How WEIRD! I guess the irony is lost on them -- being a site where people complain about that kind of stuff, and then, doing it...
So they had some kind of flash voice-over tied to the audio link?
Damn, that's weird. By the way, I have Firefox, but (not yet) adblock. Maybe I'll look into it...
Thanks for the info!
Ok, this is BIZARRE:
I played about a minute of the mp3 using Realplay, got bored with it (cute, but not my kind of music) and closed the Real Player window.
About three seconds later, this nasal wench started giving me a spiel about Vonage! Which is some kind of VOIP telephone thing, I guess, but nothing I have any use for. RealPlayer wasn't visibly running, nothing was displayed on my desktop, but in the background this woman blathered on for about 30 seconds.
I tried to get it to repeat itself, but I couldn't...
Is Real Player sticking 30 second advertisements at random intervals in its free player? Or am I going nuts? It really caught me by surprise.
Here you have an interesting specimen of the increasingly rare species "Effetus snobbius", known colloquially as an "Ivory Tower Windbag" (because of their incredible lung capacity). People just don't appreciate these rare creatures... They used to be more common, you know.
Originally, their lifecycle depended on consuming large numbers of dead trees. In that way they were similar to beavers, although they stacked their dead trees in structures made of other dead trees and avoided water almost entirely. This gave them a somewhat musty odor, which we suspect may have aided in the gradual erosion of their ability to locate mating partners. Sadly, in the past twenty years, we have failed to locate even one female willing to mate with a Snobbius. The species is almost certainly going to go extinct. And, what with bloggers destroying their natural habitat, well... What chance do the poor creatures have?
My, but this is a fine specimen. And, he's feisty, too! It's such a shame.
Heh heh heh... I'd have answered "XBox" except my XBox works, and never gives me any trouble. ;)
I used to struggle with the "why do they keep using it, when there are so many (much better) alternatives" question. I see now how silly my confusion was. It's all so clear...
Windows... Is a video game!
Sure, think about it. Can you hack your friend Billy's computer before he hacks yours while you chat online? The suspense must be very exciting. Who has the better Script? Who has the better collection of vulnerabilities?
It must be almost like playing Magic: The Gathering, or one of the other card games kids are into now. "My hack trumps yours! I get all your pr0n!"
Suddenly I feel very boring. Sigh... It's okay, Slackware, I love you even IF you're secure. I'll just have to settle for being Rudolph, and not play in any Reindeer Games.
Oh! Look! My Microwave just beeped! Pea Soup!
Mmmm!
I think you're confusing poseurs with specialists. They're not the same thing. I've had to vet a few resumes in my time, too, and I've seen some pretty ridiculous stuff, like the guy who claimed ten years of experience in .Net development... In 2003!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying a programmer will only know one tool during his career. The case you describe is actually my second case. You spent seven years doing Smalltalk; that's specialization, just as I described. I started out in college doing C and C++, then spent a year doing really dopey crap with a specialized database (boring), then a couple of years doing Java and Perl (same environment, two parallel tasks), then a few years in a Microsoft shop... In every case, I stuck with the same tool long enough to get really good at it.
In my experience, a programmer can learn syntax in a few weeks, and he gets relatively good at a tool within a couple of months. Within a year or so, he's great at it. Additional years make him better. Knowing the basics of computer science isn't anywhere NEAR enough; you have to know your working environment, too. You have to know how to build your interface, how to work with your middleware, your database, how to handle transactions and security... There's a mountain of stuff nobody seems to get in school.
Expecting to jump into a job and be useful right away just because you've done a bunch of different things over the years is going to get you into trouble. You've got to expect a bit of a learning curve, and to spend some time honing your skill before you *really* are any good.
I think you're overlooking something.
There are two kinds of programmers. The first kind is all over the place, with a dozen languages on his resume. He believes he "knows" all these different languages, and he uses the one he thinks is suitable for a specific job. Often, this sort of programmer believes he can learn any language in a couple of weeks. But as a jack of all trades, he's the master of none... Because he's always jumping around, he'll always be a newbie no matter WHAT language he's using. And newbies make lots of mistakes.
The second kind specializes in a specific tool he's using at a given point in his career (Java, for example). He takes the time to learn all the libraries, best practices, common pitfalls to avoid, all the little gotchas that can gum up the works... He masters ONE tool, and maybe, understands enough about a few others to make good use of them. He knows that all you can learn in a few weeks is basic syntax, so he takes his time and builds knowledge over a few years. He's not a newbie, he's seasoned, because he stuck with ONE tool. He's more trustworthy.
I would rather hire the specialist any day. His code is going to be cleaner, more effective, easier to maintain over time... He won't make silly mistakes because he'll really understand how things are supposed to work. His knowledge is DEEP.
Breadth is overrated. Depth is much more useful in practice.
1. You are simply claiming that the appeal to authority IS valid, not refuting the parent poster's argument. Thus, I can use the appeal to authority to claim that YOU are wrong, by saying that virtually all important philosophers agree with the parent poster and you shouldn't dismiss their opinions lightly.
2. You are saying that whiners don't write languages or define fields; therefore, in your view, if I write a language or define a field, I cannot be a whiner. Obviously, this doesn't work. I suspect that it is entirely possible to do something great and then, turn around and be a whiner. For exhibit A, I present... The "Great Man" himself! Who whined for three pages about Java. Despite his achievements. Hmm...
3. C# is based largely on Java; it is a knock-off. I suspect you haven't used it.
Tag! You're it.
English is an excellent language. It has absorbed the best features of the languages its users have been exposed to. Consider the combination:
A 26-character alphabet which can be combined into phonemes to express virtually any sound humans are capable of making (and some we aren't), which enables people to express virtually any thought by constructing it from more primitive chunks;
A spoken form that is driven heavily by context so that a limited number of words can express a much broader number of meanings, with extremely subtle variations possible based on body language and tone;
A format that can accept any foreign word or concept merely by converting the sounds into english phonemes, growing constantly, never becoming obsolete...
English is really something. The reason it's used so widely is that it's so good it's almost viral.
Big deal. So Alan Kay thinks the languages we're all using are crap, that our computer science degrees aren't as good as his generation's, that we focus too much on practical skills rather than lofty theory, that the way HE and his generation did things is the One True Way... Yawn. Wake me up when something interesting happens.
By the way, if Heraclitus was around today, he sure wouldn't be doing something practical and pedestrian like computer programming; he'd probably be panhandling in the park, surrounded by NYU students. FYI.
If you're a girl, the following steps may not change the world, but they WILL make a lonely, starving open-source coder happy:
1. Locate an open-source coder.
2. Approach said coder's dorm room or apartment in a trenchcoat (naked underneath), with a six-pack in one hand and a bag of Chinese food in the other.
3. When the coder opens the door, announce "I noticed you checked my bug-fix into CVS this afternoon! Let's celebrate!" Lean back so the trenchcoat opens up, and hold up the beer and Chinese food.
4. Be ready to administer CPR if the coder has a heart attack.