I fought the idea of convergence for some time, thinking "if I want to make a call, I'll use a phone... if I want to take pictures, I'll use a camera.. etc..."
I believe you're right in your statement though. The fewer things I carry, the better off I think I am. Right now my Blackberry 8800 takes care of just about everything for me when I'm not at my desk or at home, and the next version I get will have a camera in it.
On the flip side of the argument, my fiance wouldn't want to carry around something this size just to listen to music when she exercises. An iPod mini would be right up her alley if we weren't both opposed to propietary lock in.
Further complicating things is the fact that under current laws, power grid regulation is a state matter, and the Federal government has comparatively little authority over it right now.
Like that's ever stopped them before? We have a welfare system, federal highway system, healthcare for underemployed people, and federal guidelines for public schools, none of which is constitutional. Do you honestly think they won't nose into state business again?
Granted I haven't read the PDF yet, or done my own investigating...
However, does this only break when all.Net code is deemed trusted? It sounds more to me like lazy development/deployment where folks don't want to spend the time and iterations trying to get a non-trusted dll in place, so they open it up.
This historically has been a thorn in MSs side. Make a computer "easy" enough for blue haired grannies to use, and the majority of users won't bother researching how to implement code/software properly so as to follow best practices in security.
I could be completely off base (see first line of this post) here. However, having written some.Net code that was forward facing, I have spent the time dealing with trusted vs. non-trusted code in the GAC, and wonder if these guys are exploiting lazy implementers.
I have a team of 7 developers now, and we pick pieces of methodologies that suit our environment. For instance, we have a scrum every morning to make sure all are on the same page, or issues can be brought up to be worked out.
We've joked about pair programming, and of course the punch line is this... experienced developers will pair automatically when necessary. A ballpark estimate is that they're pairing about 20% of the time.
I understand the importance of getting the FP, but really... is google that difficult a tool to use?
One of the probably features of Windows 7 include MinWin, which is a much lighter kernel (25MB footprint on disk, 40MB footprint in RAM). Another is the likelyhood of MS's heirarchical filesystem that was pulled in the Vista release.
There are other features being discussed such as extensive touch interface ability, etc...
You're probably right about that, though I wouldn't even try to venture a guess as to what percentage of folks that called themselves programmers actually turned into decent ones.
With the tech market crash in 2001 here in the states, we did see a lot of not-really-programmers (in any language) turn to other careers, and I think the pool is stronger these days for it as well.
The fact that VB does permit faulty conventions, non-type-safe programming, etc... for some time flooded the market with bad programmers. By bad programmer, I mean programmers who lack concern for the application footprint (read: bloat), lack concern for memory leaks, and write code in a manner that is difficult to support by other programmers.
As a tool for small personal applications, VB is fine. Even in the world of enterprise applications VB is ok. But it became apparent over the length of my career that VB cause a great number of people to think they were qualified enterprise application developers when they were not.
Yeah, I'm sure PHB dashboard metrics and auto-status tickets would prevent something like this from happening. Even small companies like Chorus use them.
Just another blogger looking for page hits or his weekend buddy conversation "dude, I totally pwned the internet this week."
Funny you say that about language branching and symbolic similarities. It made me revisit why I think pascal based languages are much easier to read than basic languages.
In short, my programming began at age 12 in 1983, and rapidly moved into C programming as GW Basic (I think) was fairly limited and my father was a programmer nudging me along. Most of my development was in C until my corporate career began and VB was taking over much of corporate development. Enterprise applications were still relegated mostly to mainframes in 1991, and what the company I worked for needed was smaller more specialized applications.
What I still find unfortunate is the ability to open a VB box, install, and begin coding with no notion of real software engineering. While to some that seems wonderful in that applications can be written rapidly by non-programmers, the end result is usually the same. Bad naming conventions, lack of type safety, code that's not reusable, etc...
In some enviroments that's ok, but not in any environment I want to be part of.
"I don't know nuthin' about fautly batteries. But Houston is dang hot, and it ain't no dry heat. Things just catch on fire all the time. It's hotter than a whore in Sunday church down here."
Oh, don't get me wrong. I've written a fair share of applications in VB, and have seen well designed and well written VB code elsewhere.
I do question the PHBs that decided, after reading an article describing VB as the cost saving miracle snake oil, to hand off huge enterprise application development to people who'd seen nothing but VB. Compared to what I described in the second sentence, I've seen way more 168 form VB applications with no classes, but 16 modules with global variables as far as the eye can see, etc...
While VB itself is not to blame (well, except for that whole not defaulting Option Explicit thing), the people who chose it and the teams they chose (apparently based on desired rate and nothing more) are what made VB the laughing stock of the industry.
Only less than fully informed because I didn't qualify it.
The rewrite projects I've seen regarding VB to [insert your own language of choice here] seem to be wrapped around a common theme... unsupportable code. While I'm sure there are plenty of enterprise level applications out there written in VB and well-written, the majority of what I've seen takes form level code and spaghetti to a whole new level.
My only guess as to why this happens with such frequency is the environment in the late 90s where there were more jobs than programmers, too many "Sam's Teach Yourself Visual Basic in 21 Hours" books, and a lack of architecural knowledge leading VB teams down the path of no return.
What many companies are left with are legacy apps that nobody wants to support, much less enhance. And with webServices, AJAX and all that is Web 2.0, and a bevy of other technologies that people want to utilize, enhancing kludgy enterprise VB apps with no architecture tends to be more expensive than a proper rewrite.
A funny note: I'm currently contracted to a company that lost all of it's Java/Jade developers when part of the company was sold. In an effort to get the software on supported technology, phase 1 of this project is to reverse engineer the (completely undocumented) application and recreate it in C#. No changes allowed, regardless of best practices. Phase 2 is to completely rewrite it. By reading this could you guess this company is in the oil and gas industry?
One word.... RAD. Well, ok, it's really three words.
With the PHBs having been promised projects developed in half the time with a smaller team, I can see how VB got it's bloated non-type-safe foot in the door.
And rewriting projects now that are a VB fiasco is making for lots of development jobs;)
My first computer game was Lemonade Stand on the Apple II, followed by lode runner.
Now I'm deeply into Tabula Rasa, but had the normal run of games between then and now. I remember how excited I was when I got my Atari 2600, playing around on a friend's C64 (my Dad bought a z80 based Toshiba computer forcing me at age 12 into my programming career as it was almost immediate discontinued), another friend's Atari 5200, and of course the TRS-80. All had some neat games, and we spent countless hours typing to tape the code for other games found in Byte magazine.
I don't agree with issues translating games to movie scripts, other than his suggestion that young fresh talent is excluded in Hollywood (I guess that's true... he's the expert not me).
I think the real problem with me seeing that is I'm a gamer. So when Silent Hill released, I rushed out to see it having played and enjoyed the game. The story in Silent Hill the game was entertaining... why wouldn't it be entertaining in a movie theater?
I can back that claim up having been a programmer for Wal-Mart in the past. All salaried employees in Bentonville are considered management, and are required to attend 2 Saturday management meetings a month.
Starting with the corny cheer, management meetings move on to Billy Mays styled new product demonstrations, which end with how much they got the vendor down in price and how. The large number of "hows" are how they convinced the vendor to set up shop in China. More often than not, they also include details about using lower grade plastic, shorter wires, etc...
That's not to say all products coming from China are crap. There is a huge difference in regulatory control over manufacturing though.
All this from the "Made in USA" company when Sam Walton was still alive.
What confuses me is that we still haven't adopted languages and practices that naturally scale to multiple cores
Sadly, I do still subscribe to what was once a great magazine, but now is a large advertisement with an article or two, DDJ. The had a fairly interesting article regarding what would be necessary for your comment to be true in smart compilers.
the computer technology arm of the US defence company Northrop Grumman
What are you talking about?!? I just did a contract for NG a couple of years ago where I wrote a reporting system for a yet unclassed ship in C# using CR! How could the brilliant minds that come up with that architecture for military vessels be associated with failure?
MS's current formats are suffixed with x (docx, xlsx, pptx) which are (in theory alone) open formats. I don't pay a ton of attention to MS's press releases, but last I knew they were yet to be open.
Slashdot Mirror
I fought the idea of convergence for some time, thinking "if I want to make a call, I'll use a phone... if I want to take pictures, I'll use a camera.. etc..."
I believe you're right in your statement though. The fewer things I carry, the better off I think I am. Right now my Blackberry 8800 takes care of just about everything for me when I'm not at my desk or at home, and the next version I get will have a camera in it.
On the flip side of the argument, my fiance wouldn't want to carry around something this size just to listen to music when she exercises. An iPod mini would be right up her alley if we weren't both opposed to propietary lock in.
Like that's ever stopped them before? We have a welfare system, federal highway system, healthcare for underemployed people, and federal guidelines for public schools, none of which is constitutional. Do you honestly think they won't nose into state business again?
Crapola... awitod said it better and answered below.
Granted I haven't read the PDF yet, or done my own investigating...
.Net code is deemed trusted? It sounds more to me like lazy development/deployment where folks don't want to spend the time and iterations trying to get a non-trusted dll in place, so they open it up.
.Net code that was forward facing, I have spent the time dealing with trusted vs. non-trusted code in the GAC, and wonder if these guys are exploiting lazy implementers.
However, does this only break when all
This historically has been a thorn in MSs side. Make a computer "easy" enough for blue haired grannies to use, and the majority of users won't bother researching how to implement code/software properly so as to follow best practices in security.
I could be completely off base (see first line of this post) here. However, having written some
I have a team of 7 developers now, and we pick pieces of methodologies that suit our environment. For instance, we have a scrum every morning to make sure all are on the same page, or issues can be brought up to be worked out.
We've joked about pair programming, and of course the punch line is this... experienced developers will pair automatically when necessary. A ballpark estimate is that they're pairing about 20% of the time.
Why would they bother to do that when they can simply search /. posts from 2006 and c/p them here.
/. for prior art.
Gah, that merely points out you forgot 4) search
I understand the importance of getting the FP, but really... is google that difficult a tool to use?
One of the probably features of Windows 7 include MinWin, which is a much lighter kernel (25MB footprint on disk, 40MB footprint in RAM). Another is the likelyhood of MS's heirarchical filesystem that was pulled in the Vista release.
There are other features being discussed such as extensive touch interface ability, etc...
Approved over 4 years after Chinese scientists apparently already began experimenting with the same.
Oh, and the obligatory "I for one welcome our new <insert your own human/animal hybrid here> overlords."
You're probably right about that, though I wouldn't even try to venture a guess as to what percentage of folks that called themselves programmers actually turned into decent ones.
With the tech market crash in 2001 here in the states, we did see a lot of not-really-programmers (in any language) turn to other careers, and I think the pool is stronger these days for it as well.
Well, now I completely disagree with you.
The fact that VB does permit faulty conventions, non-type-safe programming, etc... for some time flooded the market with bad programmers. By bad programmer, I mean programmers who lack concern for the application footprint (read: bloat), lack concern for memory leaks, and write code in a manner that is difficult to support by other programmers.
As a tool for small personal applications, VB is fine. Even in the world of enterprise applications VB is ok. But it became apparent over the length of my career that VB cause a great number of people to think they were qualified enterprise application developers when they were not.
Yeah, I'm sure PHB dashboard metrics and auto-status tickets would prevent something like this from happening. Even small companies like Chorus use them.
Just another blogger looking for page hits or his weekend buddy conversation "dude, I totally pwned the internet this week."
Funny you say that about language branching and symbolic similarities. It made me revisit why I think pascal based languages are much easier to read than basic languages.
In short, my programming began at age 12 in 1983, and rapidly moved into C programming as GW Basic (I think) was fairly limited and my father was a programmer nudging me along. Most of my development was in C until my corporate career began and VB was taking over much of corporate development. Enterprise applications were still relegated mostly to mainframes in 1991, and what the company I worked for needed was smaller more specialized applications.
What I still find unfortunate is the ability to open a VB box, install, and begin coding with no notion of real software engineering. While to some that seems wonderful in that applications can be written rapidly by non-programmers, the end result is usually the same. Bad naming conventions, lack of type safety, code that's not reusable, etc...
In some enviroments that's ok, but not in any environment I want to be part of.
That sounds to me like a perfect use of RAD and a perfect use of VB actually.
Said one AT&T employee in Houston...
"I don't know nuthin' about fautly batteries. But Houston is dang hot, and it ain't no dry heat. Things just catch on fire all the time. It's hotter than a whore in Sunday church down here."
Oh, don't get me wrong. I've written a fair share of applications in VB, and have seen well designed and well written VB code elsewhere.
I do question the PHBs that decided, after reading an article describing VB as the cost saving miracle snake oil, to hand off huge enterprise application development to people who'd seen nothing but VB. Compared to what I described in the second sentence, I've seen way more 168 form VB applications with no classes, but 16 modules with global variables as far as the eye can see, etc...
While VB itself is not to blame (well, except for that whole not defaulting Option Explicit thing), the people who chose it and the teams they chose (apparently based on desired rate and nothing more) are what made VB the laughing stock of the industry.
Only if they upgrade ;)
Only less than fully informed because I didn't qualify it.
The rewrite projects I've seen regarding VB to [insert your own language of choice here] seem to be wrapped around a common theme... unsupportable code. While I'm sure there are plenty of enterprise level applications out there written in VB and well-written, the majority of what I've seen takes form level code and spaghetti to a whole new level.
My only guess as to why this happens with such frequency is the environment in the late 90s where there were more jobs than programmers, too many "Sam's Teach Yourself Visual Basic in 21 Hours" books, and a lack of architecural knowledge leading VB teams down the path of no return.
What many companies are left with are legacy apps that nobody wants to support, much less enhance. And with webServices, AJAX and all that is Web 2.0, and a bevy of other technologies that people want to utilize, enhancing kludgy enterprise VB apps with no architecture tends to be more expensive than a proper rewrite.
A funny note: I'm currently contracted to a company that lost all of it's Java/Jade developers when part of the company was sold. In an effort to get the software on supported technology, phase 1 of this project is to reverse engineer the (completely undocumented) application and recreate it in C#. No changes allowed, regardless of best practices. Phase 2 is to completely rewrite it. By reading this could you guess this company is in the oil and gas industry?
One word.... RAD. Well, ok, it's really three words.
;)
With the PHBs having been promised projects developed in half the time with a smaller team, I can see how VB got it's bloated non-type-safe foot in the door.
And rewriting projects now that are a VB fiasco is making for lots of development jobs
My first computer game was Lemonade Stand on the Apple II, followed by lode runner.
Now I'm deeply into Tabula Rasa, but had the normal run of games between then and now. I remember how excited I was when I got my Atari 2600, playing around on a friend's C64 (my Dad bought a z80 based Toshiba computer forcing me at age 12 into my programming career as it was almost immediate discontinued), another friend's Atari 5200, and of course the TRS-80. All had some neat games, and we spent countless hours typing to tape the code for other games found in Byte magazine.
And 7 million Dungeon Seige roleplayers rejoiced.
I don't agree with issues translating games to movie scripts, other than his suggestion that young fresh talent is excluded in Hollywood (I guess that's true... he's the expert not me).
I think the real problem with me seeing that is I'm a gamer. So when Silent Hill released, I rushed out to see it having played and enjoyed the game. The story in Silent Hill the game was entertaining... why wouldn't it be entertaining in a movie theater?
I can back that claim up having been a programmer for Wal-Mart in the past. All salaried employees in Bentonville are considered management, and are required to attend 2 Saturday management meetings a month.
Starting with the corny cheer, management meetings move on to Billy Mays styled new product demonstrations, which end with how much they got the vendor down in price and how. The large number of "hows" are how they convinced the vendor to set up shop in China. More often than not, they also include details about using lower grade plastic, shorter wires, etc...
That's not to say all products coming from China are crap. There is a huge difference in regulatory control over manufacturing though.
All this from the "Made in USA" company when Sam Walton was still alive.
http://ddj.com/dept/architect/202401072
disclaimer: I needed the money
MS's current formats are suffixed with x (docx, xlsx, pptx) which are (in theory alone) open formats. I don't pay a ton of attention to MS's press releases, but last I knew they were yet to be open.