"For something to have been sitting in a museum (not studied?!) for three years and not noticed makes this look like insurance fraud more than anything else."
Hey, stealing a non-existent 3ton meteorite is even easier than stealing a real one. One can do that and not leve a single track.
"Sure, I use array indexing all the time, but the fact that this is semantically equivalent to pointer arithmetic in C++ is coincidental."
Not quite a coincidence. That fact is what makes array indexing fast (and unsafe) at C/C++.
Also, do you optimize the way you put variables at stack or hash? That is impossible with automatic memory management (altough Eiffel comes close, things are not as good there). Do you directly interface the hardware? That is so hard without pointers that one could consider it impossible too.
Not to cite all those complex structures that we sometimes need to create at memory and would need to transform into hashmaps if not by pointer arithmetics. There is also low level optimizations where you buffer the memory management (your program being faster than the OS), shared memory IPC, and lots of other.
Windows is still dominant, and that dominance makes it harder to choose an alternative.
At work, people deal a lot with office documents, expect you to use exchange calendar and develop new systems that interact with MS Office or DirectX. At home you'll have problems with new devices and games.
Last time I saw, Microsoft was still getting their money from people buying Windows, not media companies.
Of course, Windows has no warranty of doing whatever the salesman told you it would do (where that is legal, by the way). But confusion about who is really one's customers always leads to problems, even if you don't have to give their money back.
The GNU system started a decade before Linus wrote the first version of his kernel.
Also, the GNU system was widely used with proprietary kernels by that time. In fact, most Unix systems were based on the GNU userland because of their quality.
And GNU already had a kernel at the pipeline when Linux was released. And just a few years later it was as functional as Linux 0.1. Linux just being out a little earlier gained the advantaje of having all developers working on it, but things probably wouldn't be much different if that didn't happen.
Those things are usefull when you want a small, but plugged in computer. There is simply no point in comparing it with a Mac Mini. Unless you want some quite unusual gabinet (like a bottle), you shoulnd't even look into putting one of those at your desk. Tou also don't want to carry an entire PC around using batteries.
But inside of a wall, for exemple, one of those could go (with proper ventilation).
"I can't imagine downloading software and then never even installing it or trying it."
I do that all the time. If I search for forftware that may solve a problem, I'll install them just untill one of them really solves it, never using the remaining.
Thank God I know how to do that very well at my first language, and also do that ok (but not perfectly) on 3 other languages, one of them being english.
But if you pointed the error your comment youd be quite usefull.
The GP is clearly uninformed, giving an useless opinion.
And, yes, knowing about multicast is important (even if not widely used at WANs). And not knowing about it is a simptom a a much bigger flaw on understanding the internet.
"Finally even if you hate corporate America I hope that you can acknowledge that it is equally sleazy for a non-profit organization to hide behind its humanitarian efforts to blatantly violate previous agreements that it has signed and to license something that they do not have the registered trademark for."
The Red Cross is an international entity, acknowledged by most governemnts and the UN, that is using that same symbol for more than a century. If J&J wanted to defend their trademark, they are very late to the game.
You are looking for a bigger sphere, with the star inside it not outside.
And it can't be a binary system because it is too small and have too little mass to be a star.
Well, that could be a space-ship, with the aliens inside it. But one'd expect shuch things to be less massive, if for no other reason, jut to make it easy to get out of it into space.
That doesn't mean the end of SPARK. That means that Sun wants to go into the MIPS market, that is licensing the core to custom designs.
But Sun isn't getting money out of this. That probably means that they want to fill that market so their core will be more used and so they have better support and a bigger production scale scale for their servers.
"What about all the people who just want to use the software, won't all that arguing put them off, and think of it as a negative reflection on the OSS development model?"
If they just want to use the software, they should just go and use it. No point in reading trough flamewars.
Perl gives you enough freedom to do things, Java don't. That is why on Perl bad developers write bad code, wile on Java bad developers write passable code.
Now, if you have a team of good developers, they are much more productive on Perl than on Java. But if you hire a single bad code, your Perl team won't be able to get anything done. (You can compare Lisp or Prolog with Java for a more extreme result.)
Saying that Java is better then Perl because almost no one is able to write bad code on it is as trolish as saying that Perl is better than Java because a good developer is a lot more productive on it.
Probably. People also have synchronization problems at school (althoug I used to solve mine with a bit more of engeneering and didn't touch version control untill last year). It is not that hard either, that shouldn't be at a interview questionary.
"analyze someone else's code (multiple people's code), figure out what it's doing, and map that to what it's supposed to be doing?
That is normaly mandatory. And several times. How do you think people learn to write operational systems or device drivers? By looking into Linux and BSD code. How do you think people learns how to write compilers? By looking at other compilers' code...
"can you understand the bug at all (what is is supposed to be doing)?"
You mean testing (a fomral discipline), (reverse)engeneering (both formal disciplines) or simply understanding the code (like above)?
"can you figure out how to verify that your fix actually worked?"
Now you mean testing. That is a formal discipline, people normaly learn those at scholl.
"explain what you're about to do, and justify why it should be done like that?"
You mean knowing theory, not just practice? It is people that didn't go to scholl that have problems here.
"do you understand how to configure and use the product you're working on?"
"be focused enough to fix one (1) bug, and not go off and rewrite a whole lot of stuff that looks like cr*p?"
Those you don't learn at scholl. To be honest, the last one doesn't seem to be aquired with practice either (at least work practice). But people with experience on a lot of dfferent systems (that you normaly get from school) have a easier path toward the first.
"And that, of course, is a benefit for having 15 developers instead of five: Any given hiring mistake costs half as much, and reduces your workforce by a fifteenth instead of a fifth."
Unless you put them on a team, then any hiring mistake will delay the entire team and no level of excelence will put your developers even on par with the average.
And, by the way, to hire good developers and exploit their entire potential you need to create several factors:
The payment is hight enough, so they will apply.
Cluefull HR people. Otherwise they'll put the good developers' resumee away and call just good politicians to interview (you'll need a lot of luck to one of the rare intersections apply).
A good work environment, both pleasant and chalenging. Pleasant because otherwise people will run away from it, and chalenging so you can see if you make a hiring mistake.
Competent management, so if you make a mistake you'll be able to notice it. Yes, that opens another (and bigger) can of worms: How to hire good managers.
Sane office politics. If you have an incompetent developer you'll need to fire him. Not to relocate him, neither to put him on that team that is doing well (so it won't create delays), but fire him. Alternatively, if you have a good developer, you need to keep him and pay him well. Not to create uneeded lay-offs, neither to force him into management (you don't need that amount of managers).
That is hard to do, and I've never saw a big company that has all of the above factors, nor a small company that keeps all of them for a lot of time. That is probably why most good developers don't stay a lot of time as developers.
"Average hackers think they're good. Good hackers think they're great. Great hackers think they're on a higher plane of existence."
Funny, I've been able to see both those categories of (average, good and great) and (think they are: good, great, gods). The only problem is that I've never saw any correlation within them.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, stealing a non-existent 3ton meteorite is even easier than stealing a real one. One can do that and not leve a single track.
Not quite a coincidence. That fact is what makes array indexing fast (and unsafe) at C/C++.
Also, do you optimize the way you put variables at stack or hash? That is impossible with automatic memory management (altough Eiffel comes close, things are not as good there). Do you directly interface the hardware? That is so hard without pointers that one could consider it impossible too.
Not to cite all those complex structures that we sometimes need to create at memory and would need to transform into hashmaps if not by pointer arithmetics. There is also low level optimizations where you buffer the memory management (your program being faster than the OS), shared memory IPC, and lots of other.
Better yet. It seems C++ is the only "industrial strength development tool". The "behave like a native app" part assures that.
Thank God he said nothing about time to market :)
Windows is still dominant, and that dominance makes it harder to choose an alternative.
At work, people deal a lot with office documents, expect you to use exchange calendar and develop new systems that interact with MS Office or DirectX. At home you'll have problems with new devices and games.
Last time I saw, Microsoft was still getting their money from people buying Windows, not media companies.
Of course, Windows has no warranty of doing whatever the salesman told you it would do (where that is legal, by the way). But confusion about who is really one's customers always leads to problems, even if you don't have to give their money back.
Nothing without pointer arithmetics will ever replace C/C++. D is a candidate, but unlikely. Eiffel is out.
What is an "industrial strength development tool"?
Lisp has advantages and disadvantages, like anything else. Prejudice will lead you nowere.
The GNU system started a decade before Linus wrote the first version of his kernel.
Also, the GNU system was widely used with proprietary kernels by that time. In fact, most Unix systems were based on the GNU userland because of their quality.
And GNU already had a kernel at the pipeline when Linux was released. And just a few years later it was as functional as Linux 0.1. Linux just being out a little earlier gained the advantaje of having all developers working on it, but things probably wouldn't be much different if that didn't happen.
Those things are usefull when you want a small, but plugged in computer. There is simply no point in comparing it with a Mac Mini. Unless you want some quite unusual gabinet (like a bottle), you shoulnd't even look into putting one of those at your desk. Tou also don't want to carry an entire PC around using batteries.
But inside of a wall, for exemple, one of those could go (with proper ventilation).
Now one can use it on a Mac.
I do that all the time. If I search for forftware that may solve a problem, I'll install them just untill one of them really solves it, never using the remaining.
Thank God I know how to do that very well at my first language, and also do that ok (but not perfectly) on 3 other languages, one of them being english.
But if you pointed the error your comment youd be quite usefull.
The GP is clearly uninformed, giving an useless opinion.
And, yes, knowing about multicast is important (even if not widely used at WANs). And not knowing about it is a simptom a a much bigger flaw on understanding the internet.
The Red Cross is an international entity, acknowledged by most governemnts and the UN, that is using that same symbol for more than a century. If J&J wanted to defend their trademark, they are very late to the game.
To be fair, USians would say the same thing.
The only difference is that they would be talking about a single country.
Well, that constant was used to calculate the mass of the planet too.
You are looking for a bigger sphere, with the star inside it not outside.
And it can't be a binary system because it is too small and have too little mass to be a star.
Well, that could be a space-ship, with the aliens inside it. But one'd expect shuch things to be less massive, if for no other reason, jut to make it easy to get out of it into space.
Did you ever saw any valid argument for Inteligent Design?!?
Please, show it. Everything I always saw was nutcases repeating flawed conjectures.
That doesn't mean the end of SPARK. That means that Sun wants to go into the MIPS market, that is licensing the core to custom designs.
But Sun isn't getting money out of this. That probably means that they want to fill that market so their core will be more used and so they have better support and a bigger production scale scale for their servers.
If they just want to use the software, they should just go and use it. No point in reading trough flamewars.
Perl gives you enough freedom to do things, Java don't. That is why on Perl bad developers write bad code, wile on Java bad developers write passable code.
Now, if you have a team of good developers, they are much more productive on Perl than on Java. But if you hire a single bad code, your Perl team won't be able to get anything done. (You can compare Lisp or Prolog with Java for a more extreme result.)
Saying that Java is better then Perl because almost no one is able to write bad code on it is as trolish as saying that Perl is better than Java because a good developer is a lot more productive on it.
Probably. People also have synchronization problems at school (althoug I used to solve mine with a bit more of engeneering and didn't touch version control untill last year). It is not that hard either, that shouldn't be at a interview questionary.
That is normaly mandatory. And several times. How do you think people learn to write operational systems or device drivers? By looking into Linux and BSD code. How do you think people learns how to write compilers? By looking at other compilers' code...
You mean testing (a fomral discipline), (reverse)engeneering (both formal disciplines) or simply understanding the code (like above)?
Now you mean testing. That is a formal discipline, people normaly learn those at scholl.
You mean knowing theory, not just practice? It is people that didn't go to scholl that have problems here.
Those you don't learn at scholl. To be honest, the last one doesn't seem to be aquired with practice either (at least work practice). But people with experience on a lot of dfferent systems (that you normaly get from school) have a easier path toward the first.
Unless you put them on a team, then any hiring mistake will delay the entire team and no level of excelence will put your developers even on par with the average.
And, by the way, to hire good developers and exploit their entire potential you need to create several factors:
That is hard to do, and I've never saw a big company that has all of the above factors, nor a small company that keeps all of them for a lot of time. That is probably why most good developers don't stay a lot of time as developers.
Funny, I've been able to see both those categories of (average, good and great) and (think they are: good, great, gods). The only problem is that I've never saw any correlation within them.
Pehaps you should be looking for a bigger sphere....
With the star inside it, not outside.