While I agree that this is an opportunity for politicians to discredit Greenpeace.. its not an issue of ENVIRONMENTAL damage.. its an issue of preserving National and World Heritage. The government of Peru is not worried about plants and animals in this case.. it is worried about keeping these ancient grounds for future generations.
What they did is the equivalent of pissing on the Mona Lisa.
Look, I know a lot of people with CS degrees that write garbage code... also lots of people w/o CS degrees that write brilliant code. I also know people in a leading CS Master's degree program that can barely program.
Majority of the companies are your "cheaskate" organizations.... Unfortunately, management will fight till the bitter end to keep the status quo and as a result the good software developers will remain a specie on the brink of extinction.
Sounds like you're working in the wrong industry. Go work for a Software company.. they appreciate a good engineer.
Often times you would think that a person can solve a problem on his feet just because you could do so. But probably you've been thinking about that problem and in a certain way for a while.
I find in interviews that asking hard questions won't always give you good results. But that you are passing up the opportunity to hire someone smart.
Experienced developers bring a key thing to the table: EXPERIENCE
Experience tells you how to run a software project the best way, how to get out of a bind, how to write code that survives in the wild. They may be creative or may not be so. Maybe you're looking for a PhD?
I haven't found the Microsoft / Google interviewing technique very useful. I basically just look for people that CAN learn, have a proven track record of learning, and are willing to learn.
Expecting a candidate to tell you right then and there what you want to hear is not a very effective selection criteria (it can also scare away good people from your company).
Yeah.. on the other hand I think it is more likely that Amazon simply didn't get the memo that went out in 2000. They think they're still in the Bubble.
ps. for you young folks out there: 2000 was when the dotCom boom went bust.
Jobs took on the pc industry and lost. But helped introduce a lot of great technologies in the PC industry. They also got it started. Jobs took introduced the GUI that was largely ignored until Windows was popularized in the early 90s. Jobs took on the music industry and unblocked the online music market. Jobs took on the cellphone market and beat the incumbents. He created the tablet market (even though MS created it first).
Musk revolutionized online Payments with PayPal. Musk took on the Car industry and unblocked Electric Cars, something consumers want but Big Oil hates. Today everyone dreams of having an electric car. Must took on the Energy market with SolarCity. Some success but nothing revolutionary. Musk took on the entrenched, overpriced, bureaucratic, an dead US Space industry and brought it back to life. He's taken the lead in developing cheap alternatives to orbit.
Jobs ultimate success moment was the iPod / iTunes, the creation of a toy and fashion accessory. And its follow up toy/fashion accessory the iPhone and the iPad. Musk may well be remembered as the guy that gave us electric cars and the guy that got us to Mars (TBD) and gave the little guy a key tool to start an online business (ie. the eBay killer app)
I recently toured 14 campuses in the US and it is clear to me that Engineering and Science is a low priority for most american youth based on the comments I heard from students and tour guides. Also, movies and tv shows keep portraying scientists, engineers and computer people as weird and devoid of social life.
If the US is to continue to be a country of innovation it needs to inform its youth that the highest demand jobs are those that involve MATH and Science and Engineering. It needs to give these subjects a higher priority in the curriculum. Because it is through these subjects that people will be able to BUILD the future.
Its nice that so many people are in to art history, or sociology, or communications. But what the economy needs is innovators that can bring technological solutions to make the world a better place. The salary discrepancies clearly show this.
Teaching programming will help students model and understand the world and to solve its technological problems.
70% of the youth in Asia chose Science and Engineering jobs. In the Americas the trend is the opposite only about 30% chose these fields. No wonder so many work at Walmart and are wondering if higher education is worth the investment.
Its true.. people are ruder online than they are in person.
Its like they feel the have a license to do or say whatever they want. A culture of lawlessness.
Also, the Internet gives the real creeps of the world more direct access to you. In the real world you wouldn't let them get close to you.. but on the Internet they can get into your face!
That doesn't make it more acceptable. It means men don't only have to change the way they treat women.. they also have to change the way they treat other men.
Get a job building things for the future.. If you can handle the math and learn to build things creatively that is a good basis for a ton of careers.
I told my daughter: get an undergrad degree in this.. if you don't like it later than get a Master's and change.. but getting an undergrad in something simplistic and simple later limits your options.
It is that way because we let it be that way. But money doesn't need to be amoral.
Money is not a god that society needs to bow down to. It is a tool that society uses to distribute resources and create a form of justice. So it follows that society should regulate money to serve its ends.. not be a slave to it. Just as you wouldn't want to create an army of warlord soldiers that reign free over humans, you don't want to let money reign free over humans.
Presently economist and politicians have become too dogmatic about what should or should not be done with money. It serves only a small minority and eventually will bring upon ruin.
I disagree. There are other factors. (Unless you are programming alone)
To choose a language I take into account:
1. Popularity and future: if nobody is using it, it is going to be costly to find people that have expertise. Sadly you cannot ignore trends.. Also your platform may be discontinued and people using other platforms may have more tooling at their disposal.
2. Technical merit: this is the point where people usually argue. However, if you've taken a computer languages course in College you probably know a bit about what a good language looks like and what a bad (messy) language is like. For example, people used to hail Pascal and dis BASIC while pragmatists went for C. Today you can find parallels (.. further comments censored to avoid flame wars...). But technical merit isn't everything or we'd all be using Smalltalk!
3. Familiarity / abilities of your team: it is important to know where your team is and what their limitations are in terms of technology because making a switch to something trendy may turn out to be costly as well.
4. Culture and process: will your team write unit tests for all classes or is that just a pipe dream that will never happen? Do you want the compiler to find trivial problems for you? How important is static error checking (Findbugs, PMD, etc..)? Are all your servers Windows servers (consider.Net)? Are all your servers Linux (don't consider.Net)? What is the valuation (from an investor's point of view) of an app written in FoxPro (considered obsolete) vs one written in Java (considered "Enterprise safe") vs one written in Go (considered "unproven")? Can your "source code" be visible to the end user?
5. The project you're working on: love Java? well good luck with that if your project is a iPhone app. Writing device drivers in Python? huh? Different projects require different tools.
Not all languages are the same. The results will not be the same.. And yes.. your project may succeed or fail based on your choices.
In summary the book looks into issues of programmer productivity. It explores the role of computer languages and concludes that for the most part which programming language is being used will not have a huge effect on productivity with the exception of Assembler. The jump to 3rd generation computer languages makes programmers MUCH more productive than Assembler, but between those languages and even the so-called 4gls there is not a great difference. (However, it would be interesting to see this study repeated with modern applications + languages, because writing web apps involves so many tools and third party tools that I would guess that there IS a difference between writing a web app in C vs Ruby on Rails)
The book then goes on to note that a far greater impact on productivity is the programmer's environment and the book fixates on the issue of a noise free environment and a door that closes. Interestingly a large part of the industry has forgotten the Peopleware lesson and has moved back to "open floor plans" or "cubicles" while the book cites studies showing that these increase the distraction rate and productivity of programmers.
Would you like to work at "Survivor" all the time?
So every week we "vote" someone out of the company?
What Netflix is missing is that employee loyalty comes with an implicit "employer" loyalty as well. People should feel that they have a future where they work and that they can invest in the place.
A nice severance is fine if you're 20 years old.. but if you're 50 and you get fired it may be your last job (don't think age isn't a factor).
As others have pointed out Microsoft tried out a similar strategy.. that didn't pan out so well for them.
A company needs to have a certain level of humanity and morality. Not everything is about money and performance metrics. There are people and families involved as well. As a company owner myself I firmly believe that I need to care about "my people" or otherwise why should they care about me?
Another factor here is that hiring is VERY EXPENSIVE.. and training as well. Also corporate know-how is in its people.
Netfilix may be ok.. but their UI is certainly not an A-game.. (I have quite a bit of trouble finding and browsing with it) So their magic results are not a given in my opinion.
People are not pieces of machinery to play with and then discard. These people have forgotten their moral/human obligations toward their people. They think only stock holders matter. That is what is wrong with a lot of corporations these days.
people seem to equate "free market" with capitalism and regulation w socialism. No need to be so black and white. Before the free market dogma caught on there were plenty of regulated capitalistic economies. Putting the free market dogma to rest would help improve economies so that all people are benefitting from economic growth and not just a small group of nobles. This was largely the case in the US in the 1950s but today selfish policies are systematically eroding the middle class and the US will soon be like Latin America in the 50s where a small oligarchy takes over, dominates all while the land "of the free" languishes in poverty and oppression due to a shortsighted adherence to a free market policy that sacrifices the good of all for the ridiculous notion that "the market will correct itself." The way the economic values are setup these days there is no regard for the environment or justice. People need to wake up and realize that human regulation by elective representatives is necessary to protect the interests of society. That isn't socialism.. its life, liberty and the free pursuit of happiness!
The efforts in these 3rd world countries are more than providing supplies. They actually show people how to dig wells and find drinkable water. There are communities that have been built on this concept and that have become self sufficient.
Internet requires computers and computer require electricity. To get to the point where computers can help these people, they need to develop infrastructure and that requires people going there and teach them how to build communities. That is where the funding needs to go at this point in time.
No. Progress in "3rd world countries" comes about when people are empowered to look at their own problems and find their own solutions to them rather than have "experts" from the "developed world" come and tell them what to do.
Slashdot Mirror
what the flock are you talking about?
While I agree that this is an opportunity for politicians to discredit Greenpeace.. its not an issue of ENVIRONMENTAL damage.. its an issue of preserving National and World Heritage. The government of Peru is not worried about plants and animals in this case.. it is worried about keeping these ancient grounds for future generations.
What they did is the equivalent of pissing on the Mona Lisa.
Look, I know a lot of people with CS degrees that write garbage code... also lots of people w/o CS degrees that write brilliant code.
I also know people in a leading CS Master's degree program that can barely program.
So I don't think it is easy to judge.
Majority of the companies are your "cheaskate" organizations.... Unfortunately, management will fight till the bitter end to keep the status quo and as a result the good software developers will remain a specie on the brink of extinction.
Sounds like you're working in the wrong industry. Go work for a Software company.. they appreciate a good engineer.
This is a tricky issue.
Often times you would think that a person can solve a problem on his feet just because you could do so. But probably you've been thinking about that problem and in a certain way for a while.
I find in interviews that asking hard questions won't always give you good results. But that you are passing up the opportunity to hire someone smart.
Experienced developers bring a key thing to the table: EXPERIENCE
Experience tells you how to run a software project the best way, how to get out of a bind, how to write code that survives in the wild. They may be creative or may not be so. Maybe you're looking for a PhD?
I haven't found the Microsoft / Google interviewing technique very useful. I basically just look for people that CAN learn, have a proven track record of learning, and are willing to learn.
Expecting a candidate to tell you right then and there what you want to hear is not a very effective selection criteria (it can also scare away good people from your company).
These guys made NPR fun to listen to.
They're self-deprecating humor was great: " you've wasted another perfectly good hour listening to Cartalk"
Didn't learn a single lesson about cars.. too busy laughing.
Yeah.. on the other hand I think it is more likely that Amazon simply didn't get the memo that went out in 2000. They think they're still in the Bubble.
ps. for you young folks out there: 2000 was when the dotCom boom went bust.
Sony has been idiotic.
They INVENTED the Walkman, they own tons of music.. but they had to wait for Apple to come and teach them about mp3 players.
And Netflix to teach them about streaming.
Disgraceful.. they should have been there first.
Jobs took on the pc industry and lost. But helped introduce a lot of great technologies in the PC industry. They also got it started.
Jobs took introduced the GUI that was largely ignored until Windows was popularized in the early 90s.
Jobs took on the music industry and unblocked the online music market.
Jobs took on the cellphone market and beat the incumbents.
He created the tablet market (even though MS created it first).
Musk revolutionized online Payments with PayPal.
Musk took on the Car industry and unblocked Electric Cars, something consumers want but Big Oil hates. Today everyone dreams of having an electric car.
Must took on the Energy market with SolarCity. Some success but nothing revolutionary.
Musk took on the entrenched, overpriced, bureaucratic, an dead US Space industry and brought it back to life. He's taken the lead in developing cheap alternatives to orbit.
Jobs ultimate success moment was the iPod / iTunes, the creation of a toy and fashion accessory. And its follow up toy/fashion accessory the iPhone and the iPad.
Musk may well be remembered as the guy that gave us electric cars and the guy that got us to Mars (TBD) and gave the little guy a key tool to start an online business (ie. the eBay killer app)
I applaud this effort.
I recently toured 14 campuses in the US and it is clear to me that Engineering and Science is a low priority for most american youth based on the comments I heard from students and tour guides. Also, movies and tv shows keep portraying scientists, engineers and computer people as weird and devoid of social life.
If the US is to continue to be a country of innovation it needs to inform its youth that the highest demand jobs are those that involve MATH and Science and Engineering. It needs to give these subjects a higher priority in the curriculum. Because it is through these subjects that people will be able to BUILD the future.
Its nice that so many people are in to art history, or sociology, or communications. But what the economy needs is innovators that can bring technological solutions to make the world a better place. The salary discrepancies clearly show this.
Teaching programming will help students model and understand the world and to solve its technological problems.
70% of the youth in Asia chose Science and Engineering jobs. In the Americas the trend is the opposite only about 30% chose these fields. No wonder so many work at Walmart and are wondering if higher education is worth the investment.
Look at any better languages like Python or Ruby lately?
Python is not only simpler than PHP.. its actually designed.
PHP is the garbage of programming languages.. today's BASIC.
If Dijkstra were alive today he'd say that PHP causes brain damage.
I formally specify PHP to be crap!
Its true.. people are ruder online than they are in person.
Its like they feel the have a license to do or say whatever they want. A culture of lawlessness.
Also, the Internet gives the real creeps of the world more direct access to you. In the real world you wouldn't let them get close to you.. but on the Internet they can get into your face!
That doesn't make it more acceptable. It means men don't only have to change the way they treat women.. they also have to change the way they treat other men.
Get a job building things for the future.. If you can handle the math and learn to build things creatively that is a good basis for a ton of careers.
I told my daughter: get an undergrad degree in this.. if you don't like it later than get a Master's and change.. but getting an undergrad in something simplistic and simple later limits your options.
College is expensive.. learn hard things there.
It is that way because we let it be that way. But money doesn't need to be amoral.
Money is not a god that society needs to bow down to. It is a tool that society uses to distribute resources and create a form of justice. So it follows that society should regulate money to serve its ends.. not be a slave to it. Just as you wouldn't want to create an army of warlord soldiers that reign free over humans, you don't want to let money reign free over humans.
Presently economist and politicians have become too dogmatic about what should or should not be done with money. It serves only a small minority and eventually will bring upon ruin.
I needed a new laptop.. but nobody would sell me one without Windows 8.
So I bought a MacBook Pro (fully loaded).
I'm very satisfied with it (now that the new version supports 16 gb though it still seems a bit low).
MS has done its utmost to drive me away.. I was tough to convince.. but eventually they succeeded.
First they tried with the Ribbon: I stuck to Office 2000 (still use it by the way)
Then they did the XP mess: I waited till Vista/Win7
But Win 8 was an impossible puzzle to solve.. so I got a Macbook and installed Win7 with Parallels. Phew..
I wonder if I'll be able to dodge their next salvo!
I disagree. There are other factors. (Unless you are programming alone)
To choose a language I take into account:
1. Popularity and future: if nobody is using it, it is going to be costly to find people that have expertise. Sadly you cannot ignore trends.. Also your platform may be discontinued and people using other platforms may have more tooling at their disposal.
2. Technical merit: this is the point where people usually argue. However, if you've taken a computer languages course in College you probably know a bit about what a good language looks like and what a bad (messy) language is like. For example, people used to hail Pascal and dis BASIC while pragmatists went for C. Today you can find parallels (.. further comments censored to avoid flame wars...). But technical merit isn't everything or we'd all be using Smalltalk!
3. Familiarity / abilities of your team: it is important to know where your team is and what their limitations are in terms of technology because making a switch to something trendy may turn out to be costly as well.
4. Culture and process: will your team write unit tests for all classes or is that just a pipe dream that will never happen? Do you want the compiler to find trivial problems for you? How important is static error checking (Findbugs, PMD, etc..)? Are all your servers Windows servers (consider .Net)? Are all your servers Linux (don't consider .Net)? What is the valuation (from an investor's point of view) of an app written in FoxPro (considered obsolete) vs one written in Java (considered "Enterprise safe") vs one written in Go (considered "unproven")? Can your "source code" be visible to the end user?
5. The project you're working on: love Java? well good luck with that if your project is a iPhone app. Writing device drivers in Python? huh? Different projects require different tools.
Not all languages are the same. The results will not be the same.. And yes.. your project may succeed or fail based on your choices.
Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister's Peopleware book covers issues about productivity and is often quoted when people say that some developers are up to 10x more productive that others.
(see http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-3rd-ebook/dp/B00DY5A8X2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389069388&sr=8-1&keywords=peopleware)
In summary the book looks into issues of programmer productivity. It explores the role of computer languages and concludes that for the most part which programming language is being used will not have a huge effect on productivity with the exception of Assembler. The jump to 3rd generation computer languages makes programmers MUCH more productive than Assembler, but between those languages and even the so-called 4gls there is not a great difference. (However, it would be interesting to see this study repeated with modern applications + languages, because writing web apps involves so many tools and third party tools that I would guess that there IS a difference between writing a web app in C vs Ruby on Rails)
The book then goes on to note that a far greater impact on productivity is the programmer's environment and the book fixates on the issue of a noise free environment and a door that closes. Interestingly a large part of the industry has forgotten the Peopleware lesson and has moved back to "open floor plans" or "cubicles" while the book cites studies showing that these increase the distraction rate and productivity of programmers.
A great book and and entertaining read.
Would you like to work at "Survivor" all the time?
So every week we "vote" someone out of the company?
What Netflix is missing is that employee loyalty comes with an implicit "employer" loyalty as well. People should feel that they have a future where they work and that they can invest in the place.
A nice severance is fine if you're 20 years old.. but if you're 50 and you get fired it may be your last job (don't think age isn't a factor).
As others have pointed out Microsoft tried out a similar strategy.. that didn't pan out so well for them.
A company needs to have a certain level of humanity and morality. Not everything is about money and performance metrics. There are people and families involved as well. As a company owner myself I firmly believe that I need to care about "my people" or otherwise why should they care about me?
Another factor here is that hiring is VERY EXPENSIVE.. and training as well. Also corporate know-how is in its people.
Netfilix may be ok.. but their UI is certainly not an A-game.. (I have quite a bit of trouble finding and browsing with it)
So their magic results are not a given in my opinion.
People are not pieces of machinery to play with and then discard. These people have forgotten their moral/human obligations toward their people. They think only stock holders matter. That is what is wrong with a lot of corporations these days.
too bad.. I'd love to see them succeed at that as well
"booked" is not the same as having it in the bank. They need to launch or they don't earn the money.
people seem to equate "free market" with capitalism and regulation w socialism. No need to be so black and white. Before the free market dogma caught on there were plenty of regulated capitalistic economies. Putting the free market dogma to rest would help improve economies so that all people are benefitting from economic growth and not just a small group of nobles. This was largely the case in the US in the 1950s but today selfish policies are systematically eroding the middle class and the US will soon be like Latin America in the 50s where a small oligarchy takes over, dominates all while the land "of the free" languishes in poverty and oppression due to a shortsighted adherence to a free market policy that sacrifices the good of all for the ridiculous notion that "the market will correct itself." The way the economic values are setup these days there is no regard for the environment or justice. People need to wake up and realize that human regulation by elective representatives is necessary to protect the interests of society. That isn't socialism.. its life, liberty and the free pursuit of happiness!
Now there'll be more worms for the rest of us..
The efforts in these 3rd world countries are more than providing supplies. They actually show people how to dig wells and find drinkable water. There are communities that have been built on this concept and that have become self sufficient.
Internet requires computers and computer require electricity. To get to the point where computers can help these people, they need to develop infrastructure and that requires people going there and teach them how to build communities. That is where the funding needs to go at this point in time.
No. Progress in "3rd world countries" comes about when people are empowered to look at their own problems and find their own solutions to them rather than have "experts" from the "developed world" come and tell them what to do.