Let me preface this statement by saying I love yahoo, or rather I love who theyused to be. I started using yahoo in the akebono days. Back then, Yahoo helped transform the web from a loosely connected set of "hotlists" into a strtuctured entity. They were the cartd catalog for the world wide web, and they owned the space. But they lost their way in the dotcom hype brigade. They tried to be the orginization of the web, the sales front, the noIse maker,... They built their business on being an organizing force online.
Those days are long gone. They gave it up to be the circus barkers of the internet and are now just like the circus, an outdated spectical with no compelling purpose, kept alive by nostalgia. If Yahoo is to exist in anyrelevant form in 10 years, there needs to be a blood letting. It may be ugly and brutal, but in the end maybe Yahoo will find a reason to exist.
In the end, I am not shedding a tear for Jerry Yang anymore than anyone else who won the lottery.
Whether or not you should have a solid mathematics background is not a static question and depends on what field you wish to work in. Fundamentally, to be a skilled programmer in any field means being able to bridge the gap between the problem domain and practical solutions to problems in that domain. If that problem domain is inherently mathematical in its formulation (e.g. signal processing), then acquiring a background in mathematics is essential to being a highly effective programmer. If you interests lie elsewhere, then gaining a background in whatever the foundational material is in that particular field will probably be more beneficial.
At the very least, you should have enough of a background in mathematics to be able to read the foundational resource/journal for your problem domain and understand the gist of the articles and algorithms. This ability will be the critical enabler in allowing you to incorporate new ideas in the field into novel software, and will ultimately be a limiter to your success in the field.
Moral arguments don't play in. Capitalism is amoral by nature and the people involved are, for the most part, nothing more than components of the system.
Capitalism is amoral? Really? You should probably tell that to Adam Smith. An amoral view of capitalism can justify anything so long as there is money to be made, say by exploiting slave labor conditions under totalitarian regimes.
I see, so your moral argument is "it's ok as long as were making money at it"? That's really nice. Maybe we can make some money selling crack to baby's, I hear there's a market.
A quick search of Apple's Employment portal yields the following: Apple requires at least a BS for their technical positions.
So Job's message is "I'm smart, was in the right place at the right time, and made a shitload of money. The rest of you, good luck and get a degree if you want to come work at Apple."
Social security was envisioned as, and functions as, an insurance of last resort against the cruel twists of fate that lead to destitution. It is part of the social contract that we have adopted as a nation, and that helps realize our core values. In so far that it has problems, these problems are actuarial as opposed to philosophical in nature. If you wish to rewrite the social contract of our country, and of modern western civilization as a whole, find some desert compound, buy a bunch of spam, and best of luck.
I concur that sleeves are the way to go. I have a backpack that I love, and I bought a sleeve from ebags so I could keep using it. If you're really adventurous (or broke), I made a sleeve about 4 years ago out of bubble wrap, duct tape, and velcro.
Programming a computer was like "tweaking a little brain".
I'm sure someone has already said this to you, but you should really take a look at artificial neural networks as a research area to play with. It's exactly like "tweaking a little brain" because the field was motivated in large part by modelling little brains. Take a look at this neural networks in java site for a fun quick overview.
Is it really selling out when aspects of a sub-culture break out to the greater culture?
Yes. When your sub-culture is a counter against bubble gum pop culture, and you buy into the bubble gum pop culture for a wider market, then yes Virginia, you have sold out. When you find FUBU in every mall, it's all about the money. When lyrics went from "teachers teach and do the world good, kings just rule and most are never understood" to "it's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes" you've lost your purpose. My problem is that the purpose driven mainstream hip hop no longer exists. You have to go behind the scenes to find it. Take a look at the artist in my sig and you'll find a taste. Oh, and he's also a EE. You don't have to de a thug to have credentials.
I used to agree with you, then I read "How Microsoft Lost the API War". The thing that really struck me was that fundamentals components of.NET will be abandonned with Avalon. This is why I now think that open source.net is a masterstroke. MS is basically asking/forcing their developer base to adopt a now open sourced, platform neutral enviornment. In a few years, they're going to break the whole model and say that to play, you have to retrain and recode major portions of your work. At that point, it becomes more cost effective to stick with mature solutions that work, not play catchup to the latest and greatest. "Look, Shinny Things" is not a better business strategy than compatibility and reuse.
Here's some worthwhile advice, whether you take it means jack to me because in my book, you and those who share your sentiments are the biggest thing wrong with the development industry: Eat some crow, swallow your pride, and admit to yourself that developer preference should have no place in the development process. There is always a best tool for the job (or multiple tools that are equally suitable) and not using that tool for any reason except those beyond your control shows that you have much to learn about our craft.
Nice setiment. Actually I would possit that the biggest thing wrong with our industry is so that so much emphasis is spent on forking off new tech that, in practical terms, is of little added value, and is explicitely made incompatible with other tech for the sole purpose of money. While I agree that you use the right tool for the job, then endless chase for the latest and greatest makes the field look like a circus sideshow. "I know last year I told you X was the way, but now Y is the way and X is trash (what was I thinking)". It's lead to a field dominated not by actual investigation, but ad campaigns and market speak.
As for developer preferences having no place in the development process, I don't think that you know what your talking about. In the real world, the job is to get the job done with a set of people. Those people come with a set of knowledge and experience. If you intend to push the envelope, fine. If you expect them to speak swahili in 2 hours, good luck. You have to define paths to solutions to actually get things done. I would also propose that you have your own preferences that color your choice of "best solution for the problem". If you don't think so, then your just lying to yourself. It may just happen that your "best solution" is currently in vogue so you get your ass kissed enough to make you think you know something. Why don't you go tell Knuth he's an asshat for doing things in k&r C and Tex instead of.net and ms office.
Talk about some FUD... Give me a break man. You quoted apples, then compared oranges. Microsoft did not intend.NET to be backwards compatible with VB6. It's an entirely different technology.
That's the point isn't it. They cut off the development path for a language that most of the MS world counted on, and made a new language super VB. Your only option to not go to.net is to never upgrade your VB app to take advantage of new tech.
Continuing to move forward in a way that will allow something to NEVER break backwards-compatibility is a good way to stifle innovation. You can't innovate by building on top of something that already exists, you have to scrap it, start fresh, and move on.
That's just bullshit. If that's the case, then the S should just be removed from CS, because the whole path to advancement in science is to build on or test prior work. Further, your continue to make my point. Why bother with ASP.NET, just wait a year and the next gee wiz.xyznet muckity muck will be out that makes toast while it compliles. All you have to do is drop all prior knowledge, rewrite you code to add anything new, and adopt the.xyznet way.
Re:Developers, Developers, Developers
on
Mono Beta 2 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The reason why Microsoft can't radically alter.NET is because of the existance of legacy apps. The company I work for has thousands of man-hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars into our ASP.NET applications. Microsoft can't break these applications.
Really? VB.net is not backward compatibile with VB6. How many millions of man hours were spent writing VB code that now has to be rewritten to play in.net? Microsoft is concerned with their own position. You will be screwed over insofar as you are still willing to buy the product, and it forwards their aims.
Seriously. You would think that with all we can and have achieved technologically, we could come up with something to do with it other than kill each other. It's like the Simpsons episode with the cursed monkey paw:
"You can put things into orbit." "That's good." "They will be used to kill people." "That's bad."...
You know, lots of people need to be paid more. But the average teacher's salary in 2002 was $44,367. Meanwhile, the median household income in 2002 was $42,409. Further, you have to, as the previous post stated, put this into the context of the number of days per year actually worked. This yields an adjusted salary of about $60,000 (via a back of the envelope calculation).
I'm not saying that this isn't commensurate with their value to society. Money is a horrible indicator for actual value. What I am saying is that based on the job, it's really not horrible money. Read more here.
I agree, and I should have broadened my scope to include not just pen and paper games, but to any game in which the ultimate intelligence is driven by human interaction. This can also include minatures, card games, etc...
One of the major issues that I have with CRPGs is that ultimately, regardless of how good the AI in a game is, you are still fundamentally limited in the possibilities for game play. It's like a big "Choose Your Own Adventure Book". Maybe every so often you flip a coin to choose the next page, or maybe there are so many paths that you can't enumerate them all before you just get bored, but your still limited.
I contrast this to pen and paper games like D&D or Palladium (my fav fantasy). You are limited by the creativity of the GM, and the limits of your belief in human free will (and how long the pizza lasts). It's always been the unexpected turns of other players that makes these games fun to play.
I agree with you that there is not a finite amount of wealth, since so much of what people are willing to pay a premium on now are intellectual products (software, movies, music, etc...). I also agree with you that meritocracies are best in the long run for societal health.
I think where we may have a difference in opinion in terms of degree and duration. I believe in a mostly unchecked market, so long as there are not structural issues with the market that make it fundamentally biased. I also agree in the long run that the creation of new markets, and the improvement of the quality of life in the developing world is for the best. What concerns me is the time it takes while capital flows out of the US for the world to respond and the tides to rise again. Ancient Rome eventually became modern Italy. I just hope we don't suffer through the dark ages in the process.
Bullshit. Russia, India, etc... are full of hard science PhDs who need work, and will take any work. Exactly how much education do you expect everyone in the society to need or get? Should you be required to have a PhD in mathematics to get an entry level programming job at 10k? Someone overseas will do this, so there's your competition. Good luck!
There is, I believe, a fundamental problem with all of this analysis. Markets are fundamentally concerned with economic transactions. Societies are fundamentally concerned with the social interactions of a group of people. They are related, but distinct concepts. What may be good for a market, may not be good for a society (and vice versa).
It is in this last point that I think the crux of the issue lies. If we view markets as abstract and amoral concepts, then concern of societal impact is moot. However, markets only exist in the context of people, and people are fundamentally part of, and derive benifits from, societies. So if the amoral decisions of the marketplace benefit a few, but ultimately lead to the canabilization of a society, why should a society continue to tolerate and support such a marketplace?
Mackinac really doesn't apply here. The total circumference of the island is 7 miles; cars aren't much better than bikes.
Yes the island is small, but community scale is driven by resources. The fact that they are small owes in large part to the mode of transportation available.
It's a chicken and egg problem. Suburban sprawl would not be possible by bike. Groceries stores would be closer than 5 miles away from the McMansions if people had to walk. The Boston-Washington Megalopolis, and the Los Angeles Ameoba are not natural occurences. They are only possible in the presence of cheap gas and lots of cars.
Also, you have to remember that it's a tourist community, the horses are really there for the tourists.If I remember correctly, it does have motor vehicles in the form of emergency vehicles, such as fire engines. Also, as you've noted it has roads. Not that they're four lane highways, but they're definitely plenty wide enough for cars.
Not necessarily. There are horses for tourists, and there are also draft teams for hauling. Most people walk, bike, or snow mobile in the winter. It has one paved road, M-185. It is 2 lanes wide. Other than emergency vehicles, there are no cars to drive on it.
- Purchasing large objects:... - Groceries:... - Weather:...
I think that carless communities are constructed to a different scale and adapt to these issues. Take a look Mackinac Michigan. Mackinac has always been a carless community. A friend of mine worked at a municiple facility where several tons of equipment and chemicals we're frequently delivered by teams of draft horses.
For the groceries, you buy less, and more frequently. I've heard (but have never been to see myself) that in older European cities, you generally have a "dorm" fridge, and stop by the market on the way home.
The weather is the one you really can't get around. If you are driving around in a living room, that's going to beat walking or biking in it. However, when the weather's bad, and you sitting for 4 hours in traffic, sometimes it might just be better to get wet.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me preface this statement by saying I love yahoo, or rather I love who theyused to be. I started using yahoo in the akebono days. Back then, Yahoo helped transform the web from a loosely connected set of "hotlists" into a strtuctured entity. They were the cartd catalog for the world wide web, and they owned the space. But they lost their way in the dotcom hype brigade. They tried to be the orginization of the web, the sales front, the noIse maker, ... They built their business on being an organizing force online.
Those days are long gone. They gave it up to be the circus barkers of the internet and are now just like the circus, an outdated spectical with no compelling purpose, kept alive by nostalgia. If Yahoo is to exist in anyrelevant form in 10 years, there needs to be a blood letting. It may be ugly and brutal, but in the end maybe Yahoo will find a reason to exist.
In the end, I am not shedding a tear for Jerry Yang anymore than anyone else who won the lottery.
Me too. That and Natalie Portman trolls.
Whether or not you should have a solid mathematics background is not a static question and depends on what field you wish to work in. Fundamentally, to be a skilled programmer in any field means being able to bridge the gap between the problem domain and practical solutions to problems in that domain. If that problem domain is inherently mathematical in its formulation (e.g. signal processing), then acquiring a background in mathematics is essential to being a highly effective programmer. If you interests lie elsewhere, then gaining a background in whatever the foundational material is in that particular field will probably be more beneficial.
At the very least, you should have enough of a background in mathematics to be able to read the foundational resource/journal for your problem domain and understand the gist of the articles and algorithms. This ability will be the critical enabler in allowing you to incorporate new ideas in the field into novel software, and will ultimately be a limiter to your success in the field.
Moral arguments don't play in. Capitalism is amoral by nature and the people involved are, for the most part, nothing more than components of the system.
Capitalism is amoral? Really? You should probably tell that to Adam Smith. An amoral view of capitalism can justify anything so long as there is money to be made, say by exploiting slave labor conditions under totalitarian regimes.
I see, so your moral argument is "it's ok as long as were making money at it"? That's really nice. Maybe we can make some money selling crack to baby's, I hear there's a market.
A quick search of Apple's Employment portal yields the following: Apple requires at least a BS for their technical positions.
So Job's message is "I'm smart, was in the right place at the right time, and made a shitload of money. The rest of you, good luck and get a degree if you want to come work at Apple."
Thanks Buddy!
That would be classic.
Social security was envisioned as, and functions as, an insurance of last resort against the cruel twists of fate that lead to destitution. It is part of the social contract that we have adopted as a nation, and that helps realize our core values. In so far that it has problems, these problems are actuarial as opposed to philosophical in nature. If you wish to rewrite the social contract of our country, and of modern western civilization as a whole, find some desert compound, buy a bunch of spam, and best of luck.
I concur that sleeves are the way to go. I have a backpack that I love, and I bought a sleeve from ebags so I could keep using it. If you're really adventurous (or broke), I made a sleeve about 4 years ago out of bubble wrap, duct tape, and velcro.
Programming a computer was like "tweaking a little brain".
I'm sure someone has already said this to you, but you should really take a look at artificial neural networks as a research area to play with. It's exactly like "tweaking a little brain" because the field was motivated in large part by modelling little brains. Take a look at this neural networks in java site for a fun quick overview.
Is it really selling out when aspects of a sub-culture break out to the greater culture?
Yes. When your sub-culture is a counter against bubble gum pop culture, and you buy into the bubble gum pop culture for a wider market, then yes Virginia, you have sold out. When you find FUBU in every mall, it's all about the money. When lyrics went from
"teachers teach and do the world good, kings just rule and most are never understood"
to
"it's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes"
you've lost your purpose. My problem is that the purpose driven mainstream hip hop no longer exists. You have to go behind the scenes to find it. Take a look at the artist in my sig and you'll find a taste. Oh, and he's also a EE. You don't have to de a thug to have credentials.
I used to agree with you, then I read "How Microsoft Lost the API War". The thing that really struck me was that fundamentals components of .NET will be abandonned with Avalon . This is why I now think that open source .net is a masterstroke. MS is basically asking/forcing their developer base to adopt a now open sourced, platform neutral enviornment. In a few years, they're going to break the whole model and say that to play, you have to retrain and recode major portions of your work. At that point, it becomes more cost effective to stick with mature solutions that work, not play catchup to the latest and greatest. "Look, Shinny Things" is not a better business strategy than compatibility and reuse.
Also, just to get back on track:
The original argument was that MS wouldn't break compatability since there was an investment in the tech.
I noted that compatibility was broken for VB when VB6 was stopped and VB.net took over.
You've now said that VB6 was a terrible, and that it's a good thing that VB.net is incompatible.
Hence, through all your protestation, you still made my original point.
Here's some worthwhile advice, whether you take it means jack to me because in my book, you and those who share your sentiments are the biggest thing wrong with the development industry: Eat some crow, swallow your pride, and admit to yourself that developer preference should have no place in the development process. There is always a best tool for the job (or multiple tools that are equally suitable) and not using that tool for any reason except those beyond your control shows that you have much to learn about our craft.
.net and ms office.
Nice setiment. Actually I would possit that the biggest thing wrong with our industry is so that so much emphasis is spent on forking off new tech that, in practical terms, is of little added value, and is explicitely made incompatible with other tech for the sole purpose of money. While I agree that you use the right tool for the job, then endless chase for the latest and greatest makes the field look like a circus sideshow. "I know last year I told you X was the way, but now Y is the way and X is trash (what was I thinking)". It's lead to a field dominated not by actual investigation, but ad campaigns and market speak.
As for developer preferences having no place in the development process, I don't think that you know what your talking about. In the real world, the job is to get the job done with a set of people. Those people come with a set of knowledge and experience. If you intend to push the envelope, fine. If you expect them to speak swahili in 2 hours, good luck. You have to define paths to solutions to actually get things done. I would also propose that you have your own preferences that color your choice of "best solution for the problem". If you don't think so, then your just lying to yourself. It may just happen that your "best solution" is currently in vogue so you get your ass kissed enough to make you think you know something. Why don't you go tell Knuth he's an asshat for doing things in k&r C and Tex instead of
Talk about some FUD... Give me a break man. You quoted apples, then compared oranges. Microsoft did not intend .NET to be backwards compatible with VB6. It's an entirely different technology.
.net is to never upgrade your VB app to take advantage of new tech.
.xyznet muckity muck will be out that makes toast while it compliles. All you have to do is drop all prior knowledge, rewrite you code to add anything new, and adopt the .xyznet way.
That's the point isn't it. They cut off the development path for a language that most of the MS world counted on, and made a new language super VB. Your only option to not go to
Continuing to move forward in a way that will allow something to NEVER break backwards-compatibility is a good way to stifle innovation. You can't innovate by building on top of something that already exists, you have to scrap it, start fresh, and move on.
That's just bullshit. If that's the case, then the S should just be removed from CS, because the whole path to advancement in science is to build on or test prior work. Further, your continue to make my point. Why bother with ASP.NET, just wait a year and the next gee wiz
The reason why Microsoft can't radically alter .NET is because of the existance of legacy apps. The company I work for has thousands of man-hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars into our ASP.NET applications. Microsoft can't break these applications.
.net? Microsoft is concerned with their own position. You will be screwed over insofar as you are still willing to buy the product, and it forwards their aims.
Really? VB.net is not backward compatibile with VB6. How many millions of man hours were spent writing VB code that now has to be rewritten to play in
A great historical read for anyone who can read a comic book is the Cartoon History of the Universe Series by Larry Gonick. If you were into that sort of thing when he was doing it, you might also remember his work as a cartoonist for Discover magazine.
the accurate weapons at the *right* things
...
Seriously. You would think that with all we can and have achieved technologically, we could come up with something to do with it other than kill each other. It's like the Simpsons episode with the cursed monkey paw:
"You can put things into orbit."
"That's good."
"They will be used to kill people."
"That's bad."
You know, lots of people need to be paid more. But the average teacher's salary in 2002 was $44,367. Meanwhile, the median household income in 2002 was $42,409. Further, you have to, as the previous post stated, put this into the context of the number of days per year actually worked. This yields an adjusted salary of about $60,000 (via a back of the envelope calculation).
I'm not saying that this isn't commensurate with their value to society. Money is a horrible indicator for actual value. What I am saying is that based on the job, it's really not horrible money. Read more here.
I agree, and I should have broadened my scope to include not just pen and paper games, but to any game in which the ultimate intelligence is driven by human interaction. This can also include minatures, card games, etc...
One of the major issues that I have with CRPGs is that ultimately, regardless of how good the AI in a game is, you are still fundamentally limited in the possibilities for game play. It's like a big "Choose Your Own Adventure Book". Maybe every so often you flip a coin to choose the next page, or maybe there are so many paths that you can't enumerate them all before you just get bored, but your still limited.
I contrast this to pen and paper games like D&D or Palladium (my fav fantasy). You are limited by the creativity of the GM, and the limits of your belief in human free will (and how long the pizza lasts). It's always been the unexpected turns of other players that makes these games fun to play.
Thanks, and sorry for the initial "Bullshit".
I agree with you that there is not a finite amount of wealth, since so much of what people are willing to pay a premium on now are intellectual products (software, movies, music, etc...). I also agree with you that meritocracies are best in the long run for societal health.
I think where we may have a difference in opinion in terms of degree and duration. I believe in a mostly unchecked market, so long as there are not structural issues with the market that make it fundamentally biased. I also agree in the long run that the creation of new markets, and the improvement of the quality of life in the developing world is for the best. What concerns me is the time it takes while capital flows out of the US for the world to respond and the tides to rise again. Ancient Rome eventually became modern Italy. I just hope we don't suffer through the dark ages in the process.
Here's a better solution: keep yourself educated.
Bullshit. Russia, India, etc... are full of hard science PhDs who need work, and will take any work. Exactly how much education do you expect everyone in the society to need or get? Should you be required to have a PhD in mathematics to get an entry level programming job at 10k? Someone overseas will do this, so there's your competition. Good luck!
There is, I believe, a fundamental problem with all of this analysis. Markets are fundamentally concerned with economic transactions. Societies are fundamentally concerned with the social interactions of a group of people. They are related, but distinct concepts. What may be good for a market, may not be good for a society (and vice versa).
It is in this last point that I think the crux of the issue lies. If we view markets as abstract and amoral concepts, then concern of societal impact is moot. However, markets only exist in the context of people, and people are fundamentally part of, and derive benifits from, societies. So if the amoral decisions of the marketplace benefit a few, but ultimately lead to the canabilization of a society, why should a society continue to tolerate and support such a marketplace?
Mackinac really doesn't apply here. The total circumference of the island is 7 miles; cars aren't much better than bikes.
Yes the island is small, but community scale is driven by resources. The fact that they are small owes in large part to the mode of transportation available.
It's a chicken and egg problem. Suburban sprawl would not be possible by bike. Groceries stores would be closer than 5 miles away from the McMansions if people had to walk. The Boston-Washington Megalopolis, and the Los Angeles Ameoba are not natural occurences. They are only possible in the presence of cheap gas and lots of cars.
Also, you have to remember that it's a tourist community, the horses are really there for the tourists.If I remember correctly, it does have motor vehicles in the form of emergency vehicles, such as fire engines. Also, as you've noted it has roads. Not that they're four lane highways, but they're definitely plenty wide enough for cars.
Not necessarily. There are horses for tourists, and there are also draft teams for hauling. Most people walk, bike, or snow mobile in the winter.
It has one paved road, M-185. It is 2 lanes wide. Other than emergency vehicles, there are no cars to drive on it.
- Purchasing large objects:
- Groceries:
- Weather:
I think that carless communities are constructed to a different scale and adapt to these issues. Take a look Mackinac Michigan. Mackinac has always been a carless community. A friend of mine worked at a municiple facility where several tons of equipment and chemicals we're frequently delivered by teams of draft horses.
For the groceries, you buy less, and more frequently. I've heard (but have never been to see myself) that in older European cities, you generally have a "dorm" fridge, and stop by the market on the way home.
The weather is the one you really can't get around. If you are driving around in a living room, that's going to beat walking or biking in it. However, when the weather's bad, and you sitting for 4 hours in traffic, sometimes it might just be better to get wet.