Go ahead and RTFA. I'm only marginally familiar with Ada83. However, I'm a fan of functional programming languages. I can't tell you how many times I've wished for type inference and pattern matching.
The problem is that, like Haskell, I will probably never work for a company who adopts BitC.
I bet that what they are doing is building a set of queries to be executed over the stream so that the only "records" kept in memory are those that match some predicate.
That means that the amount of memory needed is very much dependent on the type of query written. If you are looking for army units that don't have enough gas to complete the objective or are off course, hopefully the number of matching "records" is small.
Nicely said. I too am an "experienced" developer. I've had the same experience as you. I've worked my ass off building products and digging companies out of trouble.
Am I well compensated? yes -- primarily because, like you, I refuse to accept less. Has any employer's stock option given me enough money to retire -- nope. Will they ever? I doubt it. So, I'm pretty mercenary about what I do.
But here's the funny thing, I have love for this industry and I absolutely hate what some of these "business types" are doing to it.
So all this "passion" talk is really code for "willing to work like hell just because it's fun". Given that, experience comes along with a life outside of work what this really translates into is "we'll work you hard, convince you it's fun, and when you wise up we'll hire someone else who we'll dupe just like we did you."
The end effect is that, inexperienced children end up running the show in many places. On the one hand it's good because, well, someone has to be highly paid to clean up the mess. On the other hand, I'm pretty sick of being the "software janitor" who has to clean up after these folks.
I'm an autodidact. However, I find that, in many areas I end up being narrow but deep in my knowledge. I learn the heck out of things that I need and don't learn the things that I don't need.
However, there are times when I don't see the obvious cross-discipline connections that someone who's had a little more broad formal instruction.
Sure, I kick the crap out of most people with a formal education who aren't also autodidacts but when somebody is both educated and a self-learner, they can do better than I can. (And yes, it bugs the crap out of me -- I'm accustomed to being the alpha-geek.)
Taking some of the "glamour" out will be better for the industry, and it will be a better fit for the people who choose to do this. Money is, or should, be a secondary concern for everyone involved - there are bigger priorities here.
I don't agree. See, I think the computer industry is one of the most demanding (in many ways -- not all). People who have the dedication to work in the industry and do well want the same things that everybody else wants. To expect them to take a vow of poverty because "there are bigger priorities here" isn't going to fly. It's going to end up that the really smart and talented people end up going into other fields.
So, in the end, you end up throwing the baby out with the bath water. Good people who were dedicated to the profession give up because they aren't content working for the same wages as someone who lives with a much lower cost of living.
Were were using XML because it was an XQuery product. The documents returned were xml -- we just wanted the expansion to occur on the client side, which was more likely to be cheap for customers to scale-up.
The problem is that many systems that produce XML have a more compact internal storage (rows from a DB or whatever), then they go through an "expansion" to produce XML.
So, to propose simply compressing it means that there's and expansion (which is expensive) followed by a compression (which is really expensive). That seems pretty silly. However, given an upfront knowledge of which tags are going to be generated, it's pretty easy to implement a binary XML format that's fast and easy to decode.
This is what I did for a company that I worked for. We did it because performance was a problem. Now, if we don't get something like this through the standards bodies, more companies are going to do what mine did and invent thier own format. That's a problem -- back to the bad old days before we had XML for interoperability.
Now, if we get something good through the standards body then, even though it won't be human readable, it should be simple to provide converters. To have something fast that is onvertable to human readable and back seems like a really good idea.
I'm in my early thirties and, of my professional life, I've spent about half of it working while connected to the internet. (before that it was UUCP for news and mail)
Multitasking is not really a problem for me. However, I actually find sitting down and concentrating on a difficult problem more rewarding. I think that I get a shallow understanding of a problem when I multitask -- for some things that's okay. However, that's the easy stuff.
The problem is that, at least in my experience, the meaty difficult problems are few and far between.
I'm old -- at least for a college student. I'm 34. I started working in the computer industry when I was 17, so I've been in a lot of different development shops, shipped a lot of commercial product and generally had a pretty good career.
A couple of years ago, I decided to go back to school part-time and get a math degree. The interesting thing is that I've noticed that I'm much more able to handle algorithm analysis and puzzle questions in an interview.
So, at least for a very small sample set (one -- me) on some very particular types of problems, college has made me a better thinker. However, I don't think that going to school at the traditional time would have had nearly the impact nor would a CS degree.
I have a little girl at home who, at 19 months old, is *FAR* ahead of where she should be developmentally. So, I'm looking into the future thinking that she may have to deal with this crap.
This seems relevant:
Meine Herren, I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as a Privatdozent. After all, the Senate is not a bath-house.
It depends on what the contractor is doing. R&D can also be depreciated. Since you are talking about a publicly traded corp. It's unlikely (and I'm just speculating here) have both the folks doing R&D and the folks buying servers reporting to you, so I would guess that depreciating labor costs is not an option for you.
Anyway, so there are techies out there that know both. We're just the guys that have a little grey in our beards, won't work for peanuts, and want to get home to our families at the end of the day. Some employers get that our experience saves them money in the long run, others see as past our prime. It's okay -- working for companies that respect you as apposed to that who think they are buying your every waking moment is *MUCH* more rewarding.
The purpose of any education system is to provide the opportunity to learn to those who _want_ to learn. I'd rather have an education system that puts out a few brilliant people a year than the one that's good "on average" but doesn't put out any geniuses.
The problem is democrary. See, the smart ones get the same vote as the stupid ones. So, if you're going to pump out a few geniouses, who are unable to affect the course of the nation because they are outnumberd, count me out.
Let's face it, you don't need math to flip hamburgers or to do plumbing work. Heck, many programmers in the company where I work are puzzled by the most trivial math formulae. Despite of this they do their jobs fairly well.
I think that the current state of high-school math is terrible. It's all about being a good "mechanic" -- solving physical problems, making change (in the lower levels), and the like.
I would like to see us make statistics and economics mandatory even if it pushes out trig (the highest math many take in high school). I think we'd have an electorate that might be able to call bullshit on lying politicians.
But, it will never happen. Business wants mechanics not decision makers. Business will get decision makers from b-schools, where they can be assured of getting a certain level of indoctrination.
The workplace is now a sour, hostile, toxic environment for everyone except management and shareholders.
Managers are generally under the same pressures. From the lowest team lead to the CEO, they are constantly under threat of getting axed.
This is not something that is going to be fixed by getting rid of a few managers. It's something that will be fixed by the investor not insisting on a "quick hit".
BTW, I think that Google's IPO will be seen as a huge success by shareholders and the business world but its founders will wish they had never done it.
Part of the problem is that many software folks in the U.S. consider themselves to be in a creative job. In reality good software developer are more like the Ecuadorian line cooks that Bourdain talks about in "Kitchen Confidential".
That doesn't mean that developers can't or shouldn't be creative but it's about learning when the role you fill at that particular moment in time calls for creativity and deep thought and when it calls for you to focus on just getting the job done.
Slashdot Mirror
Go ahead and RTFA. I'm only marginally familiar with Ada83. However, I'm a fan of functional programming languages. I can't tell you how many times I've wished for type inference and pattern matching.
The problem is that, like Haskell, I will probably never work for a company who adopts BitC.
Well, I have to admit to not being a lisp-style syntax fan but take a look at the features. Type inference, pattern matching, theorem proving...
I can't tell you how many times I've wished that we were using a language that had type inference and pattern matching.
A quick poiter for you. Look at RETE networks the original author is Forgy (Sp?) 1986 or so.
It all about fast pattern mathing in expert systems but is easily applied to other fields.
I bet that what they are doing is building a set of queries to be executed over the stream so that the only "records" kept in memory are those that match some predicate.
That means that the amount of memory needed is very much dependent on the type of query written. If you are looking for army units that don't have enough gas to complete the objective or are off course, hopefully the number of matching "records" is small.
Speculation but seems likely.
Nicely said. I too am an "experienced" developer. I've had the same experience as you. I've worked my ass off building products and digging companies out of trouble.
Am I well compensated? yes -- primarily because, like you, I refuse to accept less. Has any employer's stock option given me enough money to retire -- nope. Will they ever? I doubt it. So, I'm pretty mercenary about what I do.
But here's the funny thing, I have love for this industry and I absolutely hate what some of these "business types" are doing to it.
So all this "passion" talk is really code for "willing to work like hell just because it's fun". Given that, experience comes along with a life outside of work what this really translates into is "we'll work you hard, convince you it's fun, and when you wise up we'll hire someone else who we'll dupe just like we did you."
The end effect is that, inexperienced children end up running the show in many places. On the one hand it's good because, well, someone has to be highly paid to clean up the mess. On the other hand, I'm pretty sick of being the "software janitor" who has to clean up after these folks.
I'm an autodidact. However, I find that, in many areas I end up being narrow but deep in my knowledge. I learn the heck out of things that I need and don't learn the things that I don't need.
However, there are times when I don't see the obvious cross-discipline connections that someone who's had a little more broad formal instruction.
Sure, I kick the crap out of most people with a formal education who aren't also autodidacts but when somebody is both educated and a self-learner, they can do better than I can. (And yes, it bugs the crap out of me -- I'm accustomed to being the alpha-geek.)
Taking some of the "glamour" out will be better for the industry, and it will be a better fit for the people who choose to do this. Money is, or should, be a secondary concern for everyone involved - there are bigger priorities here.
I don't agree. See, I think the computer industry is one of the most demanding (in many ways -- not all). People who have the dedication to work in the industry and do well want the same things that everybody else wants. To expect them to take a vow of poverty because "there are bigger priorities here" isn't going to fly. It's going to end up that the really smart and talented people end up going into other fields.
So, in the end, you end up throwing the baby out with the bath water. Good people who were dedicated to the profession give up because they aren't content working for the same wages as someone who lives with a much lower cost of living.
Go see a Prince concert. The man is still amazing.
"...your argument is less a refutation of Mr. Harvard Guy than it is a beautiful example of the failure of the American education system."
Both by the content of the anecdote and the reasoning.
This works for me.
Were were using XML because it was an XQuery product. The documents returned were xml -- we just wanted the expansion to occur on the client side, which was more likely to be cheap for customers to scale-up.
Yep -- support in Apache Axis and everything.
The problem is that many systems that produce XML have a more compact internal storage (rows from a DB or whatever), then they go through an "expansion" to produce XML.
So, to propose simply compressing it means that there's and expansion (which is expensive) followed by a compression (which is really expensive). That seems pretty silly. However, given an upfront knowledge of which tags are going to be generated, it's pretty easy to implement a binary XML format that's fast and easy to decode.
This is what I did for a company that I worked for. We did it because performance was a problem. Now, if we don't get something like this through the standards bodies, more companies are going to do what mine did and invent thier own format. That's a problem -- back to the bad old days before we had XML for interoperability.
Now, if we get something good through the standards body then, even though it won't be human readable, it should be simple to provide converters. To have something fast that is onvertable to human readable and back seems like a really good idea.
DIME attackments.
No, run gentoo.
This is multi-track tape. So you need 32 cell phones and 16 crinkly plastic bags.
I'm in my early thirties and, of my professional life, I've spent about half of it working while connected to the internet. (before that it was UUCP for news and mail)
Multitasking is not really a problem for me. However, I actually find sitting down and concentrating on a difficult problem more rewarding. I think that I get a shallow understanding of a problem when I multitask -- for some things that's okay. However, that's the easy stuff.
The problem is that, at least in my experience, the meaty difficult problems are few and far between.
I'm proud of my little girl -- is that so bad?
I'm old -- at least for a college student. I'm 34. I started working in the computer industry when I was 17, so I've been in a lot of different development shops, shipped a lot of commercial product and generally had a pretty good career.
A couple of years ago, I decided to go back to school part-time and get a math degree. The interesting thing is that I've noticed that I'm much more able to handle algorithm analysis and puzzle questions in an interview.
So, at least for a very small sample set (one -- me) on some very particular types of problems, college has made me a better thinker. However, I don't think that going to school at the traditional time would have had nearly the impact nor would a CS degree.
This seems relevant:
And I'm practically old enough to be your typical slashdotter's father. Seems okay to me.
For me, a diet coke and .. well, I guess I wouldn't need the diet coke really.
It depends on what the contractor is doing. R&D can also be depreciated. Since you are talking about a publicly traded corp. It's unlikely (and I'm just speculating here) have both the folks doing R&D and the folks buying servers reporting to you, so I would guess that depreciating labor costs is not an option for you.
Anyway, so there are techies out there that know both. We're just the guys that have a little grey in our beards, won't work for peanuts, and want to get home to our families at the end of the day. Some employers get that our experience saves them money in the long run, others see as past our prime. It's okay -- working for companies that respect you as apposed to that who think they are buying your every waking moment is *MUCH* more rewarding.
The purpose of any education system is to provide the opportunity to learn to those who _want_ to learn. I'd rather have an education system that puts out a few brilliant people a year than the one that's good "on average" but doesn't put out any geniuses.
The problem is democrary. See, the smart ones get the same vote as the stupid ones. So, if you're going to pump out a few geniouses, who are unable to affect the course of the nation because they are outnumberd, count me out.
Let's face it, you don't need math to flip hamburgers or to do plumbing work. Heck, many programmers in the company where I work are puzzled by the most trivial math formulae. Despite of this they do their jobs fairly well.
I think that the current state of high-school math is terrible. It's all about being a good "mechanic" -- solving physical problems, making change (in the lower levels), and the like.
I would like to see us make statistics and economics mandatory even if it pushes out trig (the highest math many take in high school). I think we'd have an electorate that might be able to call bullshit on lying politicians.
But, it will never happen. Business wants mechanics not decision makers. Business will get decision makers from b-schools, where they can be assured of getting a certain level of indoctrination.
The workplace is now a sour, hostile, toxic environment for everyone except management and shareholders.
Managers are generally under the same pressures. From the lowest team lead to the CEO, they are constantly under threat of getting axed.
This is not something that is going to be fixed by getting rid of a few managers. It's something that will be fixed by the investor not insisting on a "quick hit".
BTW, I think that Google's IPO will be seen as a huge success by shareholders and the business world but its founders will wish they had never done it.
Part of the problem is that many software folks in the U.S. consider themselves to be in a creative job. In reality good software developer are more like the Ecuadorian line cooks that Bourdain talks about in "Kitchen Confidential".
That doesn't mean that developers can't or shouldn't be creative but it's about learning when the role you fill at that particular moment in time calls for creativity and deep thought and when it calls for you to focus on just getting the job done.