Like many issues in international politics, this isn't as cut and dry as you make it out to be.
I certainly wasn't trying to make it sound that way. I agree that it's not, and I thought I showed that, but maybe not. It is definitely not cut and dry; it is a very complicated issue, and I do not envy those who have to deal with it on a daily basis.
Our own country was far from fully supportive, and many other nations had a government that supported the war but a huge chunk of their population that opposed it. That's the essence of the global test. When there are protests around the world against something you're doing, and it's controversial even in your own country, maybe you don't need to rush into it.
That definitely gets an insightful in my book, and I had to think about this for quite a while. I think there is a misconception that no consideration of an action was given when the consequences turn out to be disagreeable. Now, maybe that's true in this case, or maybe it isn't. Nevertheless, in this country, the people are represented by congress, and congress gave the president the authority to take action in Iraq. Congress debated taking this action, and each representative or senator made his or her vote on the basis of how their constituents felt about the issue. We elected them for this purpose and we trust them to consider heavily what is being put before them. If we don't like their representation of us, we have the right to elect a better representative. Some of our representatives agreed with the action and some of them disagreed with the action, as per the opinion of their constituents. The most important thing to remember here is that, the constituents who were protesting were represented.
In dealing with countries in the U.N. we take it on faith that the government of the other countries represents their people to the best of their ability just as ours does. This is why we listen only to their representatives in the U.N. and their heads of state. If we didn't do this, we would be hindering that nation's government to best represent its citizens.
So, while I agree that it's important to not rush into a situation, I'm not really sure it's necessarily a good idea to base our foreign policy purely on those people visibly protesting. Although it should give people pause, it should not restrict the ability of a nation's government to represent the entirety of its citizens.
Maybe you can make a few concessions to accomodate some of the concerns brought up by your critics, or do a better job of explaining your position.
Well, I'm not sure what you mean. Powell made this address before the U.N., and, although I don't necessarily agree with the outcome, I nevertheless think he made it pretty clear why we wanted to do what we did. If you could explain why this was not sufficient, that would be helpful.
Mkay, but I already mentioned "purchase" to which you pretty much said "I wasn't talking about purchase." So which is it?
I think that at this point it's pretty obvious what I am talking about. I even provided you with information on exactly what type of system I was talking about implementing. I really don't think you're this obtuse, so you can stop your trolling.
Were you talking about a purchase
No.
or it's NOT a purchase, in which case it ain't nothing but a link.
No, I'm not talking about a link either. Even if I was talking about a link, that's been patented too!
But that's really not the important part. It doesn't really matter what I implement, and since you seem to be having such a hard time understanding exactly what it is that I want to implement, we'll use your example instead.
You want to talk about playing DVDs, so fine, let's talk about playing DVDs.
I can't order mandrake that can play DVDs out of the box either - but it takes about sixty seconds to make it able to do so.
And you think that's no big deal? On other platforms and with commercial Linux players, I can play DVDs immediately. You know why? Because these implementations have players that have a legal CSS license.
The reason you can't play them by default is, because the Content Scramble System (CSS) is the intellectual property of the DVD Copy Control Association, and it is illegal to implement CSS without purchasing a license for the patent.
Mandrake does not have a CSS license, and neither do the makers of any of the open source software in the Mandrake distribution. Because of this, they can't ship a working DVD player unless they purchase a license. The open source DVD player projects also can't ship a working DVD player without violating intellectual property laws.
On Mandrake, I have to install libdvdcss, which is illegal in some parts of the world. This opens the user up to intellectual property litigation.
So, fine, you're happy with installing your illegal library on your computer and spending time to try to get it to work. CSS, though, is a very small part of DVD playback, and it has caused tons of litigation already. Now, think about the other things involved that are patented, like MPEG. What if you had to download an illegal library for that to?
Suddenly, you have to install several libraries on your own, because Mandrake can't ship IP encumbered libraries (this would open them up to litigation). Instead, you open the end-user up to litigation. I'm sure end-users will love that and it will make them want to use open source software all the more.
Now who would implement these open source libraries? Nobody in a country with strong IP laws is going to be able to, so that leaves out the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, etc.
Furthermore, no company is going to want to use these open source libraries in their operation, because it opens them up to litigation. For example, I'm sure that small companies would love to be sued by Microsoft for using a version of Sendmail with Sender ID.
So, how exactly are patents good for open source again?
This is the exact fucking point I made TWICE now... You REALLY don't pay attention, do you?
No, it's you who don't pay attention very well. The point I have been making is that you can have legal action taken against you if you violate someone's intellectual property regardless of whether you are a for profit or non-profit entity. Furthermore, since there are so many software patents, you can do so, unknowingly. If you are an open source project, and violate someone's intellectual property, your project is pretty much finished.
The way I interperted "global test" was more along the lines of carefully thinking out our actions and basically putting ourselves in the rest of the world's shoes. "How will the Arab world react if we do X? What if we do Y? And what about the Chinese?"
That's not enough actually. You can't just picture yourself in another country's shoes, as this is the same as doing something without asking, and may actually be considered more insulting. You can't as an American president, presume to know how a certain country would feel about U.S. military action anywhere. You have to go before the rest of the world, put forth a resolution, and tell them that this is what you want to do. At least that's the procedure that is currently in place.
And that's just the problem. I don't think Bush & co. have been taking seriously any of the input from the rest of the world.
The current administration tried to take the rest of the world seriously. They tried to play by the rules and Colin Powell went before the U.N. to try to convince them to support our resolution for action in Iraq. Multiple times, we tried to get the U.N. security council to back us unconditionally. Furthermore, many U.S. citizens desired U.N. support before taking military action in Iraq, so it was important for the administration to try to achieve this. They did not take the rest of the world lightly in this case.
However, as we all know, these attempts to gain support failed, and at this point maybe that's when the "global test" should have failed. This is when Colin Powell started his tour to find supportive nations, and when he had 49, the "global test" passed for the administration. That is where the controversy lies. There were supportive nations, but the fact that none of them were France, Germany, and Russia was a major issue. Probably the largest sticking point, was the fact that the U.N. Security Council did not back our actions, and we did not have support of all the permanent members.
That being said, the administration felt that it had enough global support to pass its definition of "global test", and made its decision to attack.
The Global Test is more of an abstract concept than a strictly defined set of rules.
And therein lies the problem, and why Bush appeared upset. Bush and Kerry have very different interpretations of what constitutes a "global test". The administration feels that they had enough support globally, but Kerry feels that this was not enough.
So what constitutes a global test? Is it enought to have N number of nations supporting your actions? Is it enought to have only the U.N. Security Council supporting your actions? Do you need more than this? It's a very slippery slope.
It appears, though, that no matter what we do, at least some of the rest of the world will not support us. If, for instance, Canada suddenly just bombed Detroit, I would find it had to believe, even in this case, that we would get overwhemling support in the U.N. to retaliate. Canada would most certainly be condemned by the U.N. for attacking the U.S., but it is doubtful whether the U.N. would support a U.S. attack on Canada. Furthermore, we wouldn't have the support of all the U.N. Security Council in this case. Most of Europe would probably not support action. So now what do we do? Retaliate, or just ignore the attacks?
You cannot take the opinion of the world upon any of your actions lightly, and this is why we went before the U.N., and why it was necessary to consult congress first before any action was taken.
You're being sarcastic, but what I don't understand is how they straight-up lied about WMDs and whatnot (and knew about it), yet not a damned thing is happening about it.
If you know you have to exit in the next few kilometres, what the hell are you doing out in the right hand lane?! It's called "being prepared".
You actually expect people to get over that early?
Sheesh, I don't get over until the last 400 meters (or when I see the quarter-mile sign, since I live in the U.S.). This assists other commuters by forcing them to slow down suddenly and spill their morning coffee down the front of themselves, thus resulting in burns in very sensitive places, which helps them stay awake at the Friday morning status meeting. Everyone knows how boring those are, so, really, I'm doing everyone a great service. On Monday, I try extra hard to do my duty, and close the gap to about 100 meters.
I'm a Masshole and I'm proud. It is my God-given right to cut you off. Long live the Commonwealth!
If it's not a store then a "one click option for download" is a fucking URL.
First of all, I did not say, "one click option for download". What I referred to was a one-click option for purchase, which is covered by a patent owned by Amazon.
Secondly, what you are describing, a "one click option for download", is not a URL, but a hyperlink. A URL is an address of a resource, while a hyperlink is the object you click on to download the resource.
Now do you see how difficult it is to write software without violating someone's intellectual property? It doesn't matter whether you are a private company or an open source project, you can still be taken to court if you violate patent law.
Why do you think that GNU doesn't use GIFs? Here's a hint:
If we released such a program, Unisys and IBM might think it wiser (for public relations reasons) not to sue a charity like the FSF.
They could instead sue the users of the program, including the companies who redistribute GNU software. We feel it would not be responsible behavior for us to set up this situation.
No, I'm not twelve but these "points" you seem to be attempting sure have me convinced you are.
May I remind you that you're the one who can't seem to use polite, logical arguments backed by evidence to refute my supposedly jejune "points".
If you want to run a "click and shop store then you are, by definitoin, doing business.
I didn't say "run", a store, I said, "make a one-click option". Totally different.
OTOH, nothing at all to stop me from creating (and maintaining) an open source software project that provides "click and shop" functionality to those who do business in countries with sensible IP laws.
Provided it's not written by a U.S. citizen, not hosted in the U.S., and no one in the U.S. can download it.
This means that U.S. citizens cannot create open source software without fear of litigation by corporations.
So a company would hire you to work for them and then sue you for doing it?
No, I'm saying that the company would rather sue you than hire you. Get it?
If I were part of the Gentoo leadership, I'd make this my #1 priority.
And I say that Gentoo doesn't go far enough!
That's why I compile a toolchain myself, chroot to it, and then build enough of Linux to compile. Once this is done, I install it by hand into the correct directories, reboot, and build everything from source. This way I get a complete system whithout all that "emerge" bullshit.
Oh, and when I want to add a kernel patch, I don't bother to recompile the kernel, I just, "vi vmlinuz". That's good enough for me.
With those fancy precompile distros, you never know what you'll get.
You were on the right track! Your pair was improperly trained.
Possibly. Actually, I don't think he was even hearing me.
That's completely unprofessional. All I can say is that the developers that I have worked with would never do anything like this. In fact, in the last place I worked where pair programming was not policy, we sometimes ended up initiating a pair programming session on our own when we had a particularly hard problem to solve. This happened regardless of the seniority of the engineer.
I did shut up. I thought that was made clear in my OP.
Ack, that's not really what I mean; see this earlier explanation. In your particular case, being quiet wouldn't have helped you. Unfortunately, your partner is an antipattern, and probably no amount of diplomacy would have helped.
Let me try to illustrate this better with an example: Back when I was a junior developer, I was put on a project I had no experience with (I didn't even know how to program in the language they used), and told to add a particular feature in a very complicated section of the code. Of course, I had questions, and it so happened that the main developer (and the person I was told to work with) was located right across the hall from me. So, I would pop in from time to time to ask questions about what certain undocumented variables meant, or which part of the state machine I could safely change. I thought everything was fine until my annual review where I got lambasted for, "asking too many questions". Of course, my first thought was, "That greasy bastard!"
However, you have to look at it from his point of view. The code that I was working on was not critical (it was going to be heavily reviewed and documented before it was passed off on). The code he was working on was critical, more complicated, and on a tighter deadline. He was the more critical resource, and even though he was told to help me, his time was more important. What I should have done was prepare a list of all the questions and sample code that I had, and scheduled an early meeting with him. In other words, working with him instead of pissing him off.
This is a skill that has to be learned, and unfortuately the way it's usually learned is that the junior developer gets pinged. Over the years, I have found myself in the same situation as the senior developer in my story, but I have, at least, been better about telling junior developers what I expect and scheduling time with them.
Likewise, you need to learn when to shut up and not be such and asshole.
That didn't come out right. Before I get flamed, let me explain myself by saying that I'm not claiming that you personally are an asshole. I was attempting (badly) to show how you could be perceived by the senior developer, and that sometimes it requires practice to learn to not say something at the right moment.
Anyway, I hope I preempted any confusion, hurt feelings, etc.
I was assigned to do pair programming with a more senior person. I got so tired of my suggestions being ignored (not disagreed with, ignored), that I just gave up and sat and watched him.
Your experience was done completely wrong. Part of pairing a senior developer with a junior is to teach the junior developer things they didn't learn in school However, the junior developer constantly questioning the senior developer's judgement is equally as bad as the senior developer ignoring the junior developer. Neither developer is there for the other's amusement, and it's good to keep in mind that there should be no criticism; sometimes neither developer's idea is very good.
These are the problems as I see them:
You should have been the one typing. You will learn more this way, the other person should express things as ideas, and not code. Then, as a senior, he can point out optimizations, if you go astray while coding. Telling someone how to type printf is not pair programming, noting that the error needs to be logged is.
The senior programmer should have told you why he thought your ideas wouldn't work, and not be such an asshole. It's not helping you any if you don't understand why the senior is choosing not to implement your idea, and he probably has a good reason.
Likewise, you need to learn when to shut up and not be such and asshole. The senior has more experience than you, and stating the obvious on every line is not going to accomplish anything. He already knows what to do, so either ask constructive questions or add to the design; don't just spout idioms and cliches.
Australian Alan Warild led a 25-strong team of cavers from Russia and Ukraine on a world-record 1830-metre descent into the Krubera-Voronia cave in Abkhazia, Georgia.
I read somewhere that at one point while exploring the cave, they heard a hollow voice say, "plugh". Pretty bizarre stuff.
I hate to shatter your illusions, but the chances of finding a new species in there are not great. You tend to get cave life if the conditions are mild (e.g. not too cold, not too much water flow) and if there is a steady input of digestible matter (e.g. vegetable matter or bat droppings) from the outside.
Well, this cave contains 46 different species, 31 of which were previously unknown, and the cave was entirely closed off from the surface.
I see this as an insult to America. They're basically saying our process of electing a president is a sham and that we're incapable of being democratic.
No, actually the OSCE were asked by Secretary of State Colin Powell to monitor the election. Furthermore, this isn't the first election in the U.S. they have monitored.
Slashdot Mirror
I certainly wasn't trying to make it sound that way. I agree that it's not, and I thought I showed that, but maybe not. It is definitely not cut and dry; it is a very complicated issue, and I do not envy those who have to deal with it on a daily basis.
Our own country was far from fully supportive, and many other nations had a government that supported the war but a huge chunk of their population that opposed it. That's the essence of the global test. When there are protests around the world against something you're doing, and it's controversial even in your own country, maybe you don't need to rush into it.
That definitely gets an insightful in my book, and I had to think about this for quite a while. I think there is a misconception that no consideration of an action was given when the consequences turn out to be disagreeable. Now, maybe that's true in this case, or maybe it isn't. Nevertheless, in this country, the people are represented by congress, and congress gave the president the authority to take action in Iraq. Congress debated taking this action, and each representative or senator made his or her vote on the basis of how their constituents felt about the issue. We elected them for this purpose and we trust them to consider heavily what is being put before them. If we don't like their representation of us, we have the right to elect a better representative. Some of our representatives agreed with the action and some of them disagreed with the action, as per the opinion of their constituents. The most important thing to remember here is that, the constituents who were protesting were represented.
In dealing with countries in the U.N. we take it on faith that the government of the other countries represents their people to the best of their ability just as ours does. This is why we listen only to their representatives in the U.N. and their heads of state. If we didn't do this, we would be hindering that nation's government to best represent its citizens.
So, while I agree that it's important to not rush into a situation, I'm not really sure it's necessarily a good idea to base our foreign policy purely on those people visibly protesting. Although it should give people pause, it should not restrict the ability of a nation's government to represent the entirety of its citizens.
Maybe you can make a few concessions to accomodate some of the concerns brought up by your critics, or do a better job of explaining your position.
Well, I'm not sure what you mean. Powell made this address before the U.N., and, although I don't necessarily agree with the outcome, I nevertheless think he made it pretty clear why we wanted to do what we did. If you could explain why this was not sufficient, that would be helpful.
I think that at this point it's pretty obvious what I am talking about. I even provided you with information on exactly what type of system I was talking about implementing. I really don't think you're this obtuse, so you can stop your trolling.
Were you talking about a purchase
No.
or it's NOT a purchase, in which case it ain't nothing but a link.
No, I'm not talking about a link either. Even if I was talking about a link, that's been patented too!
But that's really not the important part. It doesn't really matter what I implement, and since you seem to be having such a hard time understanding exactly what it is that I want to implement, we'll use your example instead.
You want to talk about playing DVDs, so fine, let's talk about playing DVDs.
I can't order mandrake that can play DVDs out of the box either - but it takes about sixty seconds to make it able to do so.
And you think that's no big deal? On other platforms and with commercial Linux players, I can play DVDs immediately. You know why? Because these implementations have players that have a legal CSS license.
The reason you can't play them by default is, because the Content Scramble System (CSS) is the intellectual property of the DVD Copy Control Association, and it is illegal to implement CSS without purchasing a license for the patent.
Mandrake does not have a CSS license, and neither do the makers of any of the open source software in the Mandrake distribution. Because of this, they can't ship a working DVD player unless they purchase a license. The open source DVD player projects also can't ship a working DVD player without violating intellectual property laws.
On Mandrake, I have to install libdvdcss, which is illegal in some parts of the world. This opens the user up to intellectual property litigation.
So, fine, you're happy with installing your illegal library on your computer and spending time to try to get it to work. CSS, though, is a very small part of DVD playback, and it has caused tons of litigation already. Now, think about the other things involved that are patented, like MPEG. What if you had to download an illegal library for that to?
Suddenly, you have to install several libraries on your own, because Mandrake can't ship IP encumbered libraries (this would open them up to litigation). Instead, you open the end-user up to litigation. I'm sure end-users will love that and it will make them want to use open source software all the more.
Now who would implement these open source libraries? Nobody in a country with strong IP laws is going to be able to, so that leaves out the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, etc.
Furthermore, no company is going to want to use these open source libraries in their operation, because it opens them up to litigation. For example, I'm sure that small companies would love to be sued by Microsoft for using a version of Sendmail with Sender ID.
So, how exactly are patents good for open source again?
This is the exact fucking point I made TWICE now... You REALLY don't pay attention, do you?
No, it's you who don't pay attention very well. The point I have been making is that you can have legal action taken against you if you violate someone's intellectual property regardless of whether you are a for profit or non-profit entity. Furthermore, since there are so many software patents, you can do so, unknowingly. If you are an open source project, and violate someone's intellectual property, your project is pretty much finished.
That's not enough actually. You can't just picture yourself in another country's shoes, as this is the same as doing something without asking, and may actually be considered more insulting. You can't as an American president, presume to know how a certain country would feel about U.S. military action anywhere. You have to go before the rest of the world, put forth a resolution, and tell them that this is what you want to do. At least that's the procedure that is currently in place.
And that's just the problem. I don't think Bush & co. have been taking seriously any of the input from the rest of the world.
The current administration tried to take the rest of the world seriously. They tried to play by the rules and Colin Powell went before the U.N. to try to convince them to support our resolution for action in Iraq. Multiple times, we tried to get the U.N. security council to back us unconditionally. Furthermore, many U.S. citizens desired U.N. support before taking military action in Iraq, so it was important for the administration to try to achieve this. They did not take the rest of the world lightly in this case.
However, as we all know, these attempts to gain support failed, and at this point maybe that's when the "global test" should have failed. This is when Colin Powell started his tour to find supportive nations, and when he had 49, the "global test" passed for the administration. That is where the controversy lies. There were supportive nations, but the fact that none of them were France, Germany, and Russia was a major issue. Probably the largest sticking point, was the fact that the U.N. Security Council did not back our actions, and we did not have support of all the permanent members.
That being said, the administration felt that it had enough global support to pass its definition of "global test", and made its decision to attack.
The Global Test is more of an abstract concept than a strictly defined set of rules.
And therein lies the problem, and why Bush appeared upset. Bush and Kerry have very different interpretations of what constitutes a "global test". The administration feels that they had enough support globally, but Kerry feels that this was not enough.
So what constitutes a global test? Is it enought to have N number of nations supporting your actions? Is it enought to have only the U.N. Security Council supporting your actions? Do you need more than this? It's a very slippery slope.
It appears, though, that no matter what we do, at least some of the rest of the world will not support us. If, for instance, Canada suddenly just bombed Detroit, I would find it had to believe, even in this case, that we would get overwhemling support in the U.N. to retaliate. Canada would most certainly be condemned by the U.N. for attacking the U.S., but it is doubtful whether the U.N. would support a U.S. attack on Canada. Furthermore, we wouldn't have the support of all the U.N. Security Council in this case. Most of Europe would probably not support action. So now what do we do? Retaliate, or just ignore the attacks?
You cannot take the opinion of the world upon any of your actions lightly, and this is why we went before the U.N., and why it was necessary to consult congress first before any action was taken.
Michael Moore is just not Kenneth Starr, I guess.
You actually expect people to get over that early?
Sheesh, I don't get over until the last 400 meters (or when I see the quarter-mile sign, since I live in the U.S.). This assists other commuters by forcing them to slow down suddenly and spill their morning coffee down the front of themselves, thus resulting in burns in very sensitive places, which helps them stay awake at the Friday morning status meeting. Everyone knows how boring those are, so, really, I'm doing everyone a great service. On Monday, I try extra hard to do my duty, and close the gap to about 100 meters.
I'm a Masshole and I'm proud. It is my God-given right to cut you off. Long live the Commonwealth!
First of all, I did not say, "one click option for download". What I referred to was a one-click option for purchase, which is covered by a patent owned by Amazon.
Secondly, what you are describing, a "one click option for download", is not a URL, but a hyperlink. A URL is an address of a resource, while a hyperlink is the object you click on to download the resource.
Furthermore, the hyperlink is patented.
Now do you see how difficult it is to write software without violating someone's intellectual property? It doesn't matter whether you are a private company or an open source project, you can still be taken to court if you violate patent law. Why do you think that GNU doesn't use GIFs? Here's a hint:
No, I'm not twelve but these "points" you seem to be attempting sure have me convinced you are.
May I remind you that you're the one who can't seem to use polite, logical arguments backed by evidence to refute my supposedly jejune "points".
I didn't say "run", a store, I said, "make a one-click option". Totally different.
OTOH, nothing at all to stop me from creating (and maintaining) an open source software project that provides "click and shop" functionality to those who do business in countries with sensible IP laws.
Provided it's not written by a U.S. citizen, not hosted in the U.S., and no one in the U.S. can download it.
This means that U.S. citizens cannot create open source software without fear of litigation by corporations.
So a company would hire you to work for them and then sue you for doing it?
No, I'm saying that the company would rather sue you than hire you. Get it?
duuueeehhhhh.... hello, anyone home?
Real mature. What are you 12?
Okay, in that case, I'd like to make a one-click buy option for an open source online store.
Oh, wait, I can't, because Amazon owns the patent on that and my open source project can't afford to license it.
Now do you see how patents hurt open source too?
meanwhile those big mean and evil corporations might even use a bit of that brainpower of yours as motivation to cut you a paycheck.
Or they could just decide to sue you for violating their intellectual property rights.
HEY! I don't go throwing knives at your favorite desktop! Can't we all just get along?
Congratulations on making everyone painfully aware of the more than obvious joke in my post.
Having to deal with townies in real life always makes me want to NOT visit a place again.
On the other hand, I wish all these "leaf peepers" would get the hell out of my town.
And I say that Gentoo doesn't go far enough!
That's why I compile a toolchain myself, chroot to it, and then build enough of Linux to compile. Once this is done, I install it by hand into the correct directories, reboot, and build everything from source. This way I get a complete system whithout all that "emerge" bullshit.
Oh, and when I want to add a kernel patch, I don't bother to recompile the kernel, I just, "vi vmlinuz". That's good enough for me.
With those fancy precompile distros, you never know what you'll get.
You mean, "can", as opposed to, "may"?
Massachusetts also has it in case someone buys something in New Hampshire.
So I have a god webcam.
You were on the right track! Your pair was improperly trained.
Possibly. Actually, I don't think he was even hearing me.
That's completely unprofessional. All I can say is that the developers that I have worked with would never do anything like this. In fact, in the last place I worked where pair programming was not policy, we sometimes ended up initiating a pair programming session on our own when we had a particularly hard problem to solve. This happened regardless of the seniority of the engineer.
I did shut up. I thought that was made clear in my OP.
Ack, that's not really what I mean; see this earlier explanation. In your particular case, being quiet wouldn't have helped you. Unfortunately, your partner is an antipattern, and probably no amount of diplomacy would have helped.
Let me try to illustrate this better with an example: Back when I was a junior developer, I was put on a project I had no experience with (I didn't even know how to program in the language they used), and told to add a particular feature in a very complicated section of the code. Of course, I had questions, and it so happened that the main developer (and the person I was told to work with) was located right across the hall from me. So, I would pop in from time to time to ask questions about what certain undocumented variables meant, or which part of the state machine I could safely change. I thought everything was fine until my annual review where I got lambasted for, "asking too many questions". Of course, my first thought was, "That greasy bastard!"
However, you have to look at it from his point of view. The code that I was working on was not critical (it was going to be heavily reviewed and documented before it was passed off on). The code he was working on was critical, more complicated, and on a tighter deadline. He was the more critical resource, and even though he was told to help me, his time was more important. What I should have done was prepare a list of all the questions and sample code that I had, and scheduled an early meeting with him. In other words, working with him instead of pissing him off.
This is a skill that has to be learned, and unfortuately the way it's usually learned is that the junior developer gets pinged. Over the years, I have found myself in the same situation as the senior developer in my story, but I have, at least, been better about telling junior developers what I expect and scheduling time with them.
That didn't come out right. Before I get flamed, let me explain myself by saying that I'm not claiming that you personally are an asshole. I was attempting (badly) to show how you could be perceived by the senior developer, and that sometimes it requires practice to learn to not say something at the right moment.
Anyway, I hope I preempted any confusion, hurt feelings, etc.
Your experience was done completely wrong. Part of pairing a senior developer with a junior is to teach the junior developer things they didn't learn in school However, the junior developer constantly questioning the senior developer's judgement is equally as bad as the senior developer ignoring the junior developer. Neither developer is there for the other's amusement, and it's good to keep in mind that there should be no criticism; sometimes neither developer's idea is very good.
These are the problems as I see them:
- You should have been the one typing. You will learn more this way, the other person should express things as ideas, and not code. Then, as a senior, he can point out optimizations, if you go astray while coding. Telling someone how to type printf is not pair programming, noting that the error needs to be logged is.
- The senior programmer should have told you why he thought your ideas wouldn't work, and not be such an asshole. It's not helping you any if you don't understand why the senior is choosing not to implement your idea, and he probably has a good reason.
- Likewise, you need to learn when to shut up and not be such and asshole. The senior has more experience than you, and stating the obvious on every line is not going to accomplish anything. He already knows what to do, so either ask constructive questions or add to the design; don't just spout idioms and cliches.
Pair programming is a two way street!I read somewhere that at one point while exploring the cave, they heard a hollow voice say, "plugh". Pretty bizarre stuff.
Well, this cave contains 46 different species, 31 of which were previously unknown, and the cave was entirely closed off from the surface.
And considering that the question is about home-schooling, that's just gross.
We're sorry, you must be at least this* high to re-enable the WiFi.
Please come again when you are taller.
- The Management
* - 7'3"
No, actually the OSCE were asked by Secretary of State Colin Powell to monitor the election. Furthermore, this isn't the first election in the U.S. they have monitored.