All good practices. I would add that with subversion you can branch the code for any significant work and deploy from the branches to the dev machines. I say machines because in a shop with lots of concurrent development (messy but needed if you have tight financial and regulatory deadlines) you will want a different branch and dev machine for each concurrent effort. then as projects finish up they can be merged into release codelines and then tested on the test machine(s) from those codelines/branches. as each release concludes it can then be merged into the trunk. anyway that was our practice at bank of america when i was there and it worked pretty well.
i forget who - maybe jefferson? but long ago someone suggested ALL LAWS should sunset after a generation - since the next generation had no chance to vote on them there was no notion of consent. I like that model. It would also tie the busybodies up just maintaining laws instead of writing new ones. They might have to simplify them too.
so many people talk about greed uncritically, assuming that everyone understands it's synonymous with evil - but greed is one of those things that exhibits interesting counterintuitive consequences. greed often produces positive results.
by rewarding (for example giving money to) people who fail you encourage failure - you reduce the cost of failure to them and therefore influence their decision making process. by rewarding success, you give extra incentive to succeed. by penalizing success (as by steep graduated income taxes) you lower the relative reward of success to failure.
greed is just a desire to want more good things in your life. and money isnt the only thing people are greedy about. some (largely politicians) are greedy for power.
greed is not something that will go away. it is a fundamental part of human nature. a society must make use of greed to reach its full potential.
greed caused people to form internet companies, hardware companies, etc. they didnt do it for others - they did it for themselves to make a buck. the consequence was that we all get to sit around at our jobs reading and posting these responses.
many people complain about greed but more than likely the greedy people they work for sign their paychecks. few people have their paychecks signed by people who are not greedy.
for a scientific look at the implications of greed in our society i recommend "game theory at work" by james d. miller.
this might seem like a bit of a tangent but there are so many posts under this artlicle that relate to greed that it seems reasonable to address it.
Re:The internet the big corporation way
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 1
just to be sure i understand - you're saying that this (largely written) electronic communications medium is not worth much to people without literacy or electricity?
i guess they can always draw on the walls of their caves?
1. How many times have you been bent over the rail for 'minor enhancements' to proprietary software? 2. How many times have we bought software from companies that have later gone out of business only to find later that they are bug-ridden? 3. How many times has a vendor BS'd us about a product's capabilities and all we could do was nod silently?
Add all these together and while I'm sure they're a small percentage of the overall benefit, they're something alot of tech managers have had to deal with in the past.
You're on the right track.
The only way to solve this is to have every email accompanied by a second (non-email) transmission that includes payment information linking something encrypted and financial from the sender to something in the email. if the user doesnt like the email they can simply go somewhere and "charge" the sender using that information.
Nice thing is:
1. Spammers will pay out the wazoo
2. Legitimate companies doing online statements or order confirmations will not get charged back or can stipulate that any customers charging back will be either backcharged themselves or dropped
3. Joe user doesnt have to care.
What do you think?
what we need is a system that, for every email sent, sends some identification data (through a separate connection). before an email is accepted, the email sender info would be matched with the identification data. upon user receipt of the mail, user would have a set period (3 days? 7 days?) during which they could opt to charge the sender a "receipt fee." of, say a dime.
now if i sent a friend an email and he charged me a dime i might be upset or think it a joke but if a spammer sent out a million emails and nobody wanted it, it would cost them a cool chunk of change!
i'm sure there are some other ideas out there that would make sense but the last thing i want to see in my inbox is:
Sender: US Gov Subject: We're from the government and we're here to help you.
Reading through the list of questions, i was startled by their high caliber. They were far better than any i've seen in the other interviews. congrats to the questioners and the moderators both.
it seems that the most flexible answer is what's already out there: show your credentials and anyone who wants the quality work done will come to you and pay a little extra to have it done right. but don't tell me that i can't have someone put in something simple on the cheap because they don't have a government-mandated certification.
for protection, if you want to ensure that the job is done right then get a contract and hold the person to it.
as for this: "I think it might cut down on the riff-raff and wannabes" how would you handle journeymen just trying to get started in the industry. look at any in an industry that gets regulated this way and you find two things:
1. competition goes down 2. prices go up 3. new people have a hard time breaking into the business because of the high cost of entry.
instead of ensuring computer services quality lets leave the government to what it's good at - ensure the quality of the employees at the post office and the airports.
Slashdot Mirror
All good practices. I would add that with subversion you can branch the code for any significant work and deploy from the branches to the dev machines. I say machines because in a shop with lots of concurrent development (messy but needed if you have tight financial and regulatory deadlines) you will want a different branch and dev machine for each concurrent effort. then as projects finish up they can be merged into release codelines and then tested on the test machine(s) from those codelines/branches. as each release concludes it can then be merged into the trunk. anyway that was our practice at bank of america when i was there and it worked pretty well.
i forget who - maybe jefferson? but long ago someone suggested ALL LAWS should sunset after a generation - since the next generation had no chance to vote on them there was no notion of consent. I like that model. It would also tie the busybodies up just maintaining laws instead of writing new ones. They might have to simplify them too.
How about a law that says it is illegal to make laws which in any way penalize consensual acts between adults?
It competes with the lottery. The government wants to keep their monopoly on gambling.
so many people talk about greed uncritically, assuming that everyone understands it's synonymous with evil - but greed is one of those things that exhibits interesting counterintuitive consequences. greed often produces positive results.
by rewarding (for example giving money to) people who fail you encourage failure - you reduce the cost of failure to them and therefore influence their decision making process. by rewarding success, you give extra incentive to succeed. by penalizing success (as by steep graduated income taxes) you lower the relative reward of success to failure.
greed is just a desire to want more good things in your life. and money isnt the only thing people are greedy about. some (largely politicians) are greedy for power.
greed is not something that will go away. it is a fundamental part of human nature. a society must make use of greed to reach its full potential.
greed caused people to form internet companies, hardware companies, etc. they didnt do it for others - they did it for themselves to make a buck. the consequence was that we all get to sit around at our jobs reading and posting these responses.
many people complain about greed but more than likely the greedy people they work for sign their paychecks. few people have their paychecks signed by people who are not greedy.
for a scientific look at the implications of greed in our society i recommend "game theory at work" by james d. miller.
this might seem like a bit of a tangent but there are so many posts under this artlicle that relate to greed that it seems reasonable to address it.
just to be sure i understand - you're saying that this (largely written) electronic communications medium is not worth much to people without literacy or electricity?
i guess they can always draw on the walls of their caves?
questions to management:
1. How many times have you been bent over the rail for 'minor enhancements' to proprietary software?
2. How many times have we bought software from companies that have later gone out of business only to find later that they are bug-ridden?
3. How many times has a vendor BS'd us about a product's capabilities and all we could do was nod silently?
Add all these together and while I'm sure they're a small percentage of the overall benefit, they're something alot of tech managers have had to deal with in the past.
You're on the right track. The only way to solve this is to have every email accompanied by a second (non-email) transmission that includes payment information linking something encrypted and financial from the sender to something in the email. if the user doesnt like the email they can simply go somewhere and "charge" the sender using that information. Nice thing is: 1. Spammers will pay out the wazoo 2. Legitimate companies doing online statements or order confirmations will not get charged back or can stipulate that any customers charging back will be either backcharged themselves or dropped 3. Joe user doesnt have to care. What do you think?
what we need is a system that, for every email sent, sends some identification data (through a separate connection). before an email is accepted, the email sender info would be matched with the identification data. upon user receipt of the mail, user would have a set period (3 days? 7 days?) during which they could opt to charge the sender a "receipt fee." of, say a dime.
now if i sent a friend an email and he charged me a dime i might be upset or think it a joke but if a spammer sent out a million emails and nobody wanted it, it would cost them a cool chunk of change!
i'm sure there are some other ideas out there that would make sense but the last thing i want to see in my inbox is:
Sender: US Gov
Subject: We're from the government and we're here to help you.
Is that where they write all that billing software?
Reading through the list of questions, i was startled by their high caliber. They were far better than any i've seen in the other interviews. congrats to the questioners and the moderators both.
wow - this makes me want to do business with california - where do i send my checks?
it seems that the most flexible answer is what's already out there: show your credentials and anyone who wants the quality work done will come to you and pay a little extra to have it done right. but don't tell me that i can't have someone put in something simple on the cheap because they don't have a government-mandated certification.
for protection, if you want to ensure that the job is done right then get a contract and hold the person to it.
as for this: "I think it might cut down on the riff-raff and wannabes" how would you handle journeymen just trying to get started in the industry. look at any in an industry that gets regulated this way and you find two things:
1. competition goes down
2. prices go up
3. new people have a hard time breaking into the business because of the high cost of entry.
instead of ensuring computer services quality lets leave the government to what it's good at - ensure the quality of the employees at the post office and the airports.
the article says "...under a £184 million contract...", not $184 million, which at the latest exchange rate is $291 million.
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Programm ing/Methodologies/Patterns_and_Anti-Patterns/
also check out amazon.com's used books and lists from other programmers including:
Applied Java Patterns by Stephen A. Stelting, Olav Maassen
Pattern Languages of Program Design (series)
Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture (series)
Design Patterns Java Workbook by Steven John Metsker
Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design by Alan Shalloway, James R. Trott
Concurrent Programming in Java(TM): Design Principles and Patterns (2nd Edition) by Doug Lea
Pattern Hatching: Design Patterns Applied (Software Patterns Series) by John Vlissides
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Programm ing/Methodologies/Patterns_and_Anti-Patterns/
also check out amazon.com's used books and lists from other programmers including:
Applied Java Patterns by Stephen A. Stelting, Olav Maassen
Pattern Languages of Program Design (series)
Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture (series)
Design Patterns Java Workbook by Steven John Metsker
Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design by Alan Shalloway, James R. Trott
Concurrent Programming in Java(TM): Design Principles and Patterns (2nd Edition) by Doug Lea
Pattern Hatching: Design Patterns Applied (Software Patterns Series) by John Vlissides
yes but only with the eclipse window manager...