Re:24 years ago at Grumman Aerospace
on
UML Fever
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· Score: 1
Good job on the Lunar Module, by the way. It was really cool the was it landed on the moon and everything.
Two Words: Sprint
on
UML Fever
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· Score: 2, Interesting
OK, that's not really two words, but two words with a colon after it is much funnier than one word with a colon after it.
Anyway, folks from the Kansas City area are familiar with Sprint, for whom we've all worked occassionally. It's your typical environment where management is non-technical but deluded to the contrary and they overcommit to things like RUP, UML, and code generation toold. Some people will tell you there should be sequence diagrams for every single bit of logic in an application and so on. It's all been said before and I'm sure there are many Sprint's out there. The applications work eventually, but at great cost, delay and frustration.
In my rarely humble opinion, UML is misused as just another management crutch, like powerpoint and outsourcing. Managers want to wow their uppers with charts and graphs and a few simple innovative ideas rather than than be hands on and make the tough decisions required to bring a project in on time and on budget. They put all their faith in an ideas like UML and RUP that they themselves don't fully comprehend and expect the world to magically change.
I was recently in a working group meeting for an insurance standards body called Acord. Somebody whipped out an interaction diagram and all these MBA's thought it was the second coming of Christ(or the first coming if you're Jewish).
...smart and creative people.
Having personally worked for the Department of Energy (I took another job because I got the sense my clearance wouldn't come through), I can tell you that I've never met so many IT people who didn't like computers. Laziness and apathy are rampant on the very computer systems used to...wait for it...control the manufacture of atomic weapons. Office politics and backbiting are also a serious problem.
I'm sure you'd all agree that the kind of rocket scientist discrete math cipherpunks we need protecting these networks are either bonkers or have skeletons in their closets.
Creative people take risks and people who take risks make mistakes. Essentially, if you've ever had a DUI, taken any drug other than marijuana, bounced a check, or been in therapy you won't get a clearance.
Network security is a black art, my friends. It involves inuition, mastery of a jillion different disciplines, paranoia, ego, and poor personal hygiene - pricisely the kind of personality bureaucrats are most afraid of. The feds want IT people who are avid golfers and college football fans. No self respecting nerd would be caught dead on the back nine. It takes too much time away from writing 2 line perl scripts that draw ASCII pictures of Terri Hatcher.
I really like the API for Eclipse Plugins. If you need a IDE tool Eclipse doesn't have or hasn't already been developed as a 3rd party plugin, you just write your own.
I wrote a TCP Tunnel for Eclipse in about 4 hours and a Project comparison and migration tool in about a day and a half. Back when I used Visual Age (because I was forced), forget about it.
...which may mean you could produce more Xenon in space if they can come up with a way to get the xenon out of the fuel rods. This assumes, of course, that any real ion engines will be nuclear powered - which of course they will.
Wow. I'm in shock. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Like a lot of people who barely understand technology, you clearly know enough to convince non-technical people that you have a clue, but my fellow slash-dotters see right through you. I suppose the folly of open source software explains why Linux is rapidly becoming the world's most dominant server operating system and why every server in google's arsenal runs Linux. I suppose that's why IBM has repeatedly built commercial software on top of open source components. The IBM HTTP Server is based on the Apache web server (which happens to be the dominant web server in it's own right). Their WebSphere Java Application server is based on the open source Tomcat project. IBM's WebSphere Studio line of products is based on the open source Eclipse project. Even Oracle incorporates (and horribly mangles) open source components like XML parsers in their Java application server. I could go on and on.
There are good and bad open source projects just like there are good and bad commercial software packages. The difference is that open source projects rise and fall based on their technical and usability merits alone. There's very little marketing to cloud the issue. The most successful open source projects tend to be those that are actually better rather than those that just have the best pitch men.
But let's call this what it really is. Your article was just good old fashioned intellectual snobbery. You're from Princeton and people like you can't possibly imagine how some kid without a college degree can do in a week what it takes you a dozen developers, several years, and a research grant to do. What you're really saying is that you don't trust software written by people without what you consider the proper pedigree. People who don't move in your Ivy League circles are the unwashed masses to you. The world is changing, Buckwheat. You better change with it.
Take them on a trip somewhere vaguely business related like Comdex or Apachecon where they can all party it up on per diem with no additional tax liability. If you're talking about 1500 per person, that should cover it. You can also spring for show tickets and restaurant tabs which let everyone have a good time, but aren't taxable for your employees and are an entertainment expense for you.
Also, you should consider the morale boost that comes with going to an industry conference, especially if most of your rank and file staff don't ever attend trade shows. Anyway, congrats on your good year.
Here, here. I stopped using Real Player because of all the junk it installs. Pop up ads. Messages. Probably not spyware in the way the asker intended, but insidious nonetheless. Just another example of a company getting us hooked on their technology and then using it for evil.
Myself, I plan on buying the rights for Oregon Trail and using it to pollute the minds of impressionable young people with subliminal messages from Snoop Dogg.
Yeah, M$ and their minions are rather silly and their marketing people tend to confuse things by giving slight variations on the same thing different names (OLE to COM to COM+ to.NET), but hey, whose marketing people don't?
I think our natural enemy isn't M$ marketing, but marketing in general. There's this programming language called Java and Scott's minions decided to call the Java 1.2 SDK Java 2. (Interesting that I'm certified as a Java 2 programmer and the most recent SDK is 1.4.2. Does this mean that I'm a time traveller?)
My point is that everybody ships products with confusing new names in order to generate the kind of hype incrementing a version number just can't. Microsoft may be better at it, but everybody does it. If the marketing department at your company doesn't infuriate you on a daily basis or occasionally make slightly false claims about your product line, they're not doing their jobs.
There is a line, however, where the normal murkiness of marketing spin becomes pure evil and that line is crossed most frequently by the minions of Larry Ellison. Anybody remember the "Unbreakable" campaign? Nothing is unbreakable. Not even the most hardcore Linux zealot wouldn't have the gall to say something like that.
Even Apache spins. I've read some Jakarta project overviews that read like a cross between page 5 of the Windows Getting Started booklet and The Celestine Prophecy.
The point of my rambling post is that even our employers or companies whose technology we actually like are guilty of the same marketing spin. It's part of the world we live in, kiddies. Some people use their marketing spin for good, some for evil. The moral of the story is that even though Microsoft marketing people are dirty liars, Oracle marketing people are filthy lice infested dirty liars.
I bid you all good health and a pleasant afternoon.
Slashdot Mirror
Good job on the Lunar Module, by the way. It was really cool the was it landed on the moon and everything.
OK, that's not really two words, but two words with a colon after it is much funnier than one word with a colon after it. Anyway, folks from the Kansas City area are familiar with Sprint, for whom we've all worked occassionally. It's your typical environment where management is non-technical but deluded to the contrary and they overcommit to things like RUP, UML, and code generation toold. Some people will tell you there should be sequence diagrams for every single bit of logic in an application and so on. It's all been said before and I'm sure there are many Sprint's out there. The applications work eventually, but at great cost, delay and frustration.
In my rarely humble opinion, UML is misused as just another management crutch, like powerpoint and outsourcing. Managers want to wow their uppers with charts and graphs and a few simple innovative ideas rather than than be hands on and make the tough decisions required to bring a project in on time and on budget. They put all their faith in an ideas like UML and RUP that they themselves don't fully comprehend and expect the world to magically change.
I was recently in a working group meeting for an insurance standards body called Acord. Somebody whipped out an interaction diagram and all these MBA's thought it was the second coming of Christ(or the first coming if you're Jewish).
...smart and creative people. Having personally worked for the Department of Energy (I took another job because I got the sense my clearance wouldn't come through), I can tell you that I've never met so many IT people who didn't like computers. Laziness and apathy are rampant on the very computer systems used to...wait for it...control the manufacture of atomic weapons. Office politics and backbiting are also a serious problem.
I'm sure you'd all agree that the kind of rocket scientist discrete math cipherpunks we need protecting these networks are either bonkers or have skeletons in their closets.
Creative people take risks and people who take risks make mistakes. Essentially, if you've ever had a DUI, taken any drug other than marijuana, bounced a check, or been in therapy you won't get a clearance.
Network security is a black art, my friends. It involves inuition, mastery of a jillion different disciplines, paranoia, ego, and poor personal hygiene - pricisely the kind of personality bureaucrats are most afraid of. The feds want IT people who are avid golfers and college football fans. No self respecting nerd would be caught dead on the back nine. It takes too much time away from writing 2 line perl scripts that draw ASCII pictures of Terri Hatcher.
I really like the API for Eclipse Plugins. If you need a IDE tool Eclipse doesn't have or hasn't already been developed as a 3rd party plugin, you just write your own.
I wrote a TCP Tunnel for Eclipse in about 4 hours and a Project comparison and migration tool in about a day and a half. Back when I used Visual Age (because I was forced), forget about it.
I also like purple.
...which may mean you could produce more Xenon in space if they can come up with a way to get the xenon out of the fuel rods. This assumes, of course, that any real ion engines will be nuclear powered - which of course they will.
I sent Mr. Strauss the following E-Mail...
Mr. Strauss:
Wow. I'm in shock. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Like a lot of people who barely understand technology, you clearly know enough to convince non-technical people that you have a clue, but my fellow slash-dotters see right through you. I suppose the folly of open source software explains why Linux is rapidly becoming the world's most dominant server operating system and why every server in google's arsenal runs Linux. I suppose that's why IBM has repeatedly built commercial software on top of open source components. The IBM HTTP Server is based on the Apache web server (which happens to be the dominant web server in it's own right). Their WebSphere Java Application server is based on the open source Tomcat project. IBM's WebSphere Studio line of products is based on the open source Eclipse project. Even Oracle incorporates (and horribly mangles) open source components like XML parsers in their Java application server. I could go on and on.
There are good and bad open source projects just like there are good and bad commercial software packages. The difference is that open source projects rise and fall based on their technical and usability merits alone. There's very little marketing to cloud the issue. The most successful open source projects tend to be those that are actually better rather than those that just have the best pitch men.
But let's call this what it really is. Your article was just good old fashioned intellectual snobbery. You're from Princeton and people like you can't possibly imagine how some kid without a college degree can do in a week what it takes you a dozen developers, several years, and a research grant to do. What you're really saying is that you don't trust software written by people without what you consider the proper pedigree. People who don't move in your Ivy League circles are the unwashed masses to you. The world is changing, Buckwheat. You better change with it.
Coldest Regards,
[name deleted]
Take them on a trip somewhere vaguely business related like Comdex or Apachecon where they can all party it up on per diem with no additional tax liability. If you're talking about 1500 per person, that should cover it. You can also spring for show tickets and restaurant tabs which let everyone have a good time, but aren't taxable for your employees and are an entertainment expense for you.
Also, you should consider the morale boost that comes with going to an industry conference, especially if most of your rank and file staff don't ever attend trade shows. Anyway, congrats on your good year.
Here, here. I stopped using Real Player because of all the junk it installs. Pop up ads. Messages. Probably not spyware in the way the asker intended, but insidious nonetheless. Just another example of a company getting us hooked on their technology and then using it for evil.
Myself, I plan on buying the rights for Oregon Trail and using it to pollute the minds of impressionable young people with subliminal messages from Snoop Dogg.
Yeah, M$ and their minions are rather silly and their marketing people tend to confuse things by giving slight variations on the same thing different names (OLE to COM to COM+ to .NET), but hey, whose marketing people don't?
I think our natural enemy isn't M$ marketing, but marketing in general. There's this programming language called Java and Scott's minions decided to call the Java 1.2 SDK Java 2. (Interesting that I'm certified as a Java 2 programmer and the most recent SDK is 1.4.2. Does this mean that I'm a time traveller?)
My point is that everybody ships products with confusing new names in order to generate the kind of hype incrementing a version number just can't. Microsoft may be better at it, but everybody does it. If the marketing department at your company doesn't infuriate you on a daily basis or occasionally make slightly false claims about your product line, they're not doing their jobs.
There is a line, however, where the normal murkiness of marketing spin becomes pure evil and that line is crossed most frequently by the minions of Larry Ellison. Anybody remember the "Unbreakable" campaign? Nothing is unbreakable. Not even the most hardcore Linux zealot wouldn't have the gall to say something like that.
Even Apache spins. I've read some Jakarta project overviews that read like a cross between page 5 of the Windows Getting Started booklet and The Celestine Prophecy.
The point of my rambling post is that even our employers or companies whose technology we actually like are guilty of the same marketing spin. It's part of the world we live in, kiddies. Some people use their marketing spin for good, some for evil. The moral of the story is that even though Microsoft marketing people are dirty liars, Oracle marketing people are filthy lice infested dirty liars.
I bid you all good health and a pleasant afternoon.