What is in high demand is coders that know how use their code to actually do something else.
I almost exclusively write code at work and I'm a mechanical engineer. The code is just a means to an end. A way to do something that we did 10 or 20 years ago faster. Expecting to get a job just knowing how to program is like trying to get a job just knowing how to swing a hammer.
All of the jobs I've found are like that. My last position was $60/hr, teleworking. There was no 'coding test'. The languages I know appear on one line in my resume. In the on-site interview they were never brought up. It is just treated like "MS Office" is on my resume.
Because they don't have current skills. I work with these 60 yo programmers and can't get rid of them soon enough. They learned one niche skillset in the 80s and never learned anything again.
They're plumbers that insist on only using lead pipe instead of PVC, Copper or PEX or electricians that insist on using knob and tube.
Their skillsets were top notch when what they knew was relevant. They played the waiting game of thinking they would make it to retirement before having to learn something new.
Look at how much whining occurs when Rust, Go or Python shows up on Slashdot.
Any subreddit above a certain size goes to hell. There is a sweet spot of 'enough users for content' but 'not so many users it goes to hell'. Some smaller niche subreddits are actually really good, have good comments and posts.
civil public online discourse with anonymity or pseudonymity is only possible with a combination of heavy moderation, temporary IP banning, and shadow-banning.
I think we can get there with encryption, white listing and "AI". Just a simple text classification tool to determine the reading level of the comment as an initial moderation value would be a good start.
Don't sign your message, -2. Below a 10th grade writing level, -2. Anonymous account, -2. I just set my client to show me everything +2 and I only reply to stuff 2+ and you've automated the bulk of moderation.
Let the crackpots and tolls post. I won't even bother making Slashdot render their messages.
Heck, charge me per post. $0.02 ~ 5 Dogecoin. I'll gladly pay $0.02 to post to what I hope is an interesting discussion. If I get modded past +4 put my 'deposit' back in my account to post again. If I don't, it goes to run the site.
I think that this community and academics at large could probably come up with a decent working moderation system if we all sat down and discussed how to do it.
Other users have mentioned a 'log e' function. I think being able to 'earn' moderation weights would be one thing. As well as being able to weight certain users (more than just friend/foe) or their moderation weights going through a transform before being applied.
I would also like to be able to sort by more than just +-. The same comments on the same article viewed at +5 Funny or +5 Informative would be completely separate 'threads'.
I genuinely want to know what I'm doing different when I see these comments. I have not had the issues that you, or multiple others, describe like this.
Coding is a tool. It's a tool to get another job done and that's how I use it and I haven't had a problem finding a job or getting paid to do it.
But it means that you have to go beyond knowing the tool and how to apply it to the right situation. Anyone can swing a hammer but machinists, general contractors, and fine woodworkers know how to use that skill to build something people will pay for.
It's not perfect, but it's better than a Reddit bandwagon. Add to that that it's capped means that there is hope something can recover.
I've had more than a few +5 Funnies that started off as -2 because the original moderators didn't get the joke. On reddit that type of comment would just be gone.
Everyone is fed up with where they currently are on the internet so they scatter seeing if they can find something better.
Reddit is a sinking ship with it's core demographic. Facebook is dropping users left and right. Twitter and Instagram are just bots. Given Slashdot's staying power and topic I'm guessing a new demographic is trying it out. I'm guessing a lot are trying to troll and Slashdot's moderation system is working as intended.
Ubuntu has mostly reached the point where it's boring and generally works.
Which means it's hit enterprise. The only alternative I've seen to Fedora and, at least where I've seen it, close to up to date.
It's the release Matlab and Nvidia target (my experience) as well multiple other companies.
Most will only support 2 LTS which means 14.04, the first "big" Ubuntu release into enterprise, is going to get deprecated. Which means life after April is going to be interesting.
Since Bitcoin seems to be in the cross hairs for how many CPU cycles it wastes, has anyone computed what Wordpress environmental impact is?
How many countries power grids does it take to serve all of the Wordpress sites in the world? How many people actually need a fully dynamic website?
I'm glad to see that static site generators are making a comeback. I have more than enough computing power in a $5 VPS to host nginx serving static content.
The biggest issue I have with GNU is the lack of respect of the time and effort it goes into coding.
The biggest problem I've had with GNU/GPL software is two fold:
Avoiding breakage at all costs.
"I'm not getting paid to fix it, just use it as is" mentality.
On top of that it seems like a lot of tools were developed in a weekend by a single individual to scratch an itch and move on. GNUMake seems to be one of the biggest ones that everyone runs into. No one wants to make any changes that break stuff because then people will complain, and at this point so much needs to be 'fixed' that it'll never happen. And no one wakes up thinking "I'll take time to do this right" because they won't ever get paid for any improvements they make.
And if something is up to date and maintained it appears that people are being paid to fix it and keep it working. I dig through BSD project commits and a lot of individuals at big companies making small tweaks to keep things running. The nature of the license doesn't scare away the lawyers and when I see a BSD binary that does everything I need it to I kind of tell myself "This is what I'm *allowed* to see, the cool stuff must still be behind closed doors".
How much cruft and dead weight is in GCC because of the myriad of platforms it needs to support and the way in which it supports them?
LLVM started off as a graduate project where it looks like someone actually sat down and thought about use cases. If I want to port a new language to a platform I just have to make a $LANG to intermediate representation (IR) parser.
The same thing goes for porting LLVM to a new architecture, I just need to make the IR to byte code part. I don't have to waste my time working out the C, C++, Fortran bits and can concentrate on supporting my architecture.
I'm sure that Apple, IBM and Google have some incredibly awesome tools they can't or wont show us. Probably some stuff highly specific to what ever they need to support. And if that's what puts food on their table, it works for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing Amazon has done couldn't have been done by any other established company, they just refused to do so.
In-app promoted posts will have all the elements of a standard Reddit post, including upvotes, downvotes and comment threads.
They had those on desktop for a while. It never goes the way the advertiser intends to and so they shut off comments and voting.
That's why we keep getting called back to work after we retire
The intersection of those getting rehired after retirement and those that can't find a job at all is probably zero.
But that olde farce who's been there over 30 years doesn't keep his or her job by being obsolete.
Sure they do. Just like we keep old machines around. Sometimes it's just easier to wait them out to retirement than get rid of them.
My $99 SheevaPlug is still going strong.
What is in high demand is coders that know how use their code to actually do something else.
I almost exclusively write code at work and I'm a mechanical engineer. The code is just a means to an end. A way to do something that we did 10 or 20 years ago faster. Expecting to get a job just knowing how to program is like trying to get a job just knowing how to swing a hammer.
All of the jobs I've found are like that. My last position was $60/hr, teleworking. There was no 'coding test'. The languages I know appear on one line in my resume. In the on-site interview they were never brought up. It is just treated like "MS Office" is on my resume.
Because they don't have current skills. I work with these 60 yo programmers and can't get rid of them soon enough. They learned one niche skillset in the 80s and never learned anything again.
They're plumbers that insist on only using lead pipe instead of PVC, Copper or PEX or electricians that insist on using knob and tube.
Their skillsets were top notch when what they knew was relevant. They played the waiting game of thinking they would make it to retirement before having to learn something new.
Look at how much whining occurs when Rust, Go or Python shows up on Slashdot.
I've demanded to be allowed to work from home for the last 8 years with an occasional few days a month in the office and gotten it.
PGP sign.
Not signature sign.
Yeah, Reddit is a toxic place.
Any subreddit above a certain size goes to hell. There is a sweet spot of 'enough users for content' but 'not so many users it goes to hell'. Some smaller niche subreddits are actually really good, have good comments and posts.
civil public online discourse with anonymity or pseudonymity is only possible with a combination of heavy moderation, temporary IP banning, and shadow-banning.
I think we can get there with encryption, white listing and "AI". Just a simple text classification tool to determine the reading level of the comment as an initial moderation value would be a good start.
Don't sign your message, -2. Below a 10th grade writing level, -2. Anonymous account, -2. I just set my client to show me everything +2 and I only reply to stuff 2+ and you've automated the bulk of moderation.
Let the crackpots and tolls post. I won't even bother making Slashdot render their messages.
Heck, charge me per post. $0.02 ~ 5 Dogecoin. I'll gladly pay $0.02 to post to what I hope is an interesting discussion. If I get modded past +4 put my 'deposit' back in my account to post again. If I don't, it goes to run the site.
I think that this community and academics at large could probably come up with a decent working moderation system if we all sat down and discussed how to do it.
Other users have mentioned a 'log e' function. I think being able to 'earn' moderation weights would be one thing. As well as being able to weight certain users (more than just friend/foe) or their moderation weights going through a transform before being applied.
I would also like to be able to sort by more than just +-. The same comments on the same article viewed at +5 Funny or +5 Informative would be completely separate 'threads'.
I genuinely want to know what I'm doing different when I see these comments. I have not had the issues that you, or multiple others, describe like this.
Coding is a tool. It's a tool to get another job done and that's how I use it and I haven't had a problem finding a job or getting paid to do it.
But it means that you have to go beyond knowing the tool and how to apply it to the right situation. Anyone can swing a hammer but machinists, general contractors, and fine woodworkers know how to use that skill to build something people will pay for.
It's not perfect, but it's better than a Reddit bandwagon. Add to that that it's capped means that there is hope something can recover.
I've had more than a few +5 Funnies that started off as -2 because the original moderators didn't get the joke. On reddit that type of comment would just be gone.
Has anyone compiled a list of moderation styles as well as their pros and cons?
Reddit's 'everyone gets a vote' doesn't work because "everyone" easily means bots.
Forums are usually moderated by a select team of moderators.
Facebook is just likes.
That site is called 4Chan and you can still visit it if you wish.
The problem with a simple up/down is it allows no classification. At least Slashdot separates by Troll, Flamebait & Offtopic.
I wish someone would either extend the protocol or add a secondary 'moderation' protocol.
Let everyone post what ever they want but let the end clients talk to the moderation server and how to display the content.
Slashdot's moderation style is still hands down the best I've seen. I wish more sites adopted it.
I would actually pay money for a good Slashdot moderation style site for discussion other than technology.
Everyone is fed up with where they currently are on the internet so they scatter seeing if they can find something better.
Reddit is a sinking ship with it's core demographic. Facebook is dropping users left and right. Twitter and Instagram are just bots. Given Slashdot's staying power and topic I'm guessing a new demographic is trying it out. I'm guessing a lot are trying to troll and Slashdot's moderation system is working as intended.
Ubuntu has mostly reached the point where it's boring and generally works.
Which means it's hit enterprise. The only alternative I've seen to Fedora and, at least where I've seen it, close to up to date.
It's the release Matlab and Nvidia target (my experience) as well multiple other companies.
Most will only support 2 LTS which means 14.04, the first "big" Ubuntu release into enterprise, is going to get deprecated. Which means life after April is going to be interesting.
What industry are you in? Automotive has them
Since Bitcoin seems to be in the cross hairs for how many CPU cycles it wastes, has anyone computed what Wordpress environmental impact is?
How many countries power grids does it take to serve all of the Wordpress sites in the world? How many people actually need a fully dynamic website?
I'm glad to see that static site generators are making a comeback. I have more than enough computing power in a $5 VPS to host nginx serving static content.
The biggest issue I have with GNU is the lack of respect of the time and effort it goes into coding.
The biggest problem I've had with GNU/GPL software is two fold:
On top of that it seems like a lot of tools were developed in a weekend by a single individual to scratch an itch and move on. GNUMake seems to be one of the biggest ones that everyone runs into. No one wants to make any changes that break stuff because then people will complain, and at this point so much needs to be 'fixed' that it'll never happen. And no one wakes up thinking "I'll take time to do this right" because they won't ever get paid for any improvements they make.
When I started doing FreeBSD development and working with BSD userspace it felt 'broken' at first, but after sitting down and RTFM, it feels like they actually put thought into some design decisions. And yes, sometimes stuff breaks. But they seem to give a fairly big heads up of any breaking changes.
And if something is up to date and maintained it appears that people are being paid to fix it and keep it working. I dig through BSD project commits and a lot of individuals at big companies making small tweaks to keep things running. The nature of the license doesn't scare away the lawyers and when I see a BSD binary that does everything I need it to I kind of tell myself "This is what I'm *allowed* to see, the cool stuff must still be behind closed doors".
How much cruft and dead weight is in GCC because of the myriad of platforms it needs to support and the way in which it supports them?
LLVM started off as a graduate project where it looks like someone actually sat down and thought about use cases. If I want to port a new language to a platform I just have to make a $LANG to intermediate representation (IR) parser.
The same thing goes for porting LLVM to a new architecture, I just need to make the IR to byte code part. I don't have to waste my time working out the C, C++, Fortran bits and can concentrate on supporting my architecture.
I'm sure that Apple, IBM and Google have some incredibly awesome tools they can't or wont show us. Probably some stuff highly specific to what ever they need to support. And if that's what puts food on their table, it works for me.
There are so many industries, I'm probably not in yours. Last position was at $65/hr. Is that up or down for you?
Just type it in here.
Slashcode knows we're talking to each other. For example it'll automatically block my password: hunter2. All you'll see is ********.