Yeah. You're right. 100%.
However, comparing Delphi marketshare to Java marketshare is kind of pointless, because Java has something Delphi will probably never have: portability. Remember Kylix? Didn't fly. There are both technical and market reasons why.
You can't just compare Windows-dev-tools with portable dev tools, when comparing market share. It's like saying "the Toyota Corolla is selling well, therefore there is no market for the Porsche 911". Java and Delphi are only competitors in a very small way. How many Java developers develop commercial Windows apps in Java? Not very many. Java is an in-house-software-systems-language, and web-services oriented system.
All the stuff people write in Java is stuff I'd never write if you paid me 10x what I get paid right now. BORING CRAP. Sorry, but there it is. Not all developers are the same, and not all development projects are the same.
Delphi's core constituency is formed by people who write software for Windows only, and who want software that runs on every version of windows ever made (even back to windows 95, or windows 98, if you really need to) with a single binary EXE file, with no runtimes needed, no necessity of using DLLs, and so on. Delphi has two major streams within that core-constituency, in-house-app developers (like myself) that write vertical line of business applications that a company either uses, or sells to its small customer base. My apps have to run on customer PCs around the globe, in every country in the world, without DLL hell, without runtime (sucks to be.NET) and on every version and every service pack of Windows ever released.
Even Microsoft can't do this with their own tool set. Oh, and they abandon their own developers (hello VB 6 fans, how ya doin?). So your choices are:
1. Abandon your Windows-only strategy, go Java or something portable. (not a bad idea.)
2. Use whatever latest pile of CRAP Microsoft is shipping these days, and be prepared to rewrite when they ship you a whole new steaming pile of crap.
3. Have an insulating layer between you and Microsoft's platform. That is what Delphi/VCL gets you.
If you need to write software that runs on Windows, CodeGear is the only thing I would use. Otherwise, get me outta here. The day I can no longer work as a Delphi developer, I get a new career, or maybe I switch to Cocoa/ObjectiveC on Mac OS X. At least it's elegant and beautiful, and not a stinking pile of MS-crap.
I'm bitter today, don't I sound bitter? Yeah.
But there is a lot of hope. CodeGear is spinning up now, and they've shipped my favourite Delphi version ever (already), Delphi 2007, and Delphi for PHP, both of which are amazing products. Now, let's see if they can market it. That's where the old BORLAND always sucked. Great on technology delivery. Crap marketing.
Franciscan
Borland just released Delphi 2007. It's got first-class support for Windows Vista apps (Glass, etc). How exactly is Delphi dead? There are probably 100,000 developers in north america and probably half a million or more active Delphi developers worldwide. Are we all dead?
There are more people doing Java these days, and more people doing C# and probably more people doing C++, but we're not DEAD. Why do you have to be #1 or be called dead?
Warren
That's not true. The IDE Product is commercial, the VCL for PHP library is open source (to be hosted on Sourceforge, should be there any day now). YOu aren't trapped. You can go back to VIM at any time.
Warren
mod this guy up, please. He's right.
This is not very significant, and TFA calls it "city wide". The plans don't call for city-wide. The City of Toronto
is huge. 6 square km in the downtown core is not the world's largest Wi-Fi outdoor mesh. The Google wifi freenet is much bigger, and permanently free. No big news here.
Wifi on the TTC Subway lines would be wonderful. Might make me a rider again, if I could Surf the Web instead of Commuting in my Car.
W
And people like you are idiots:
>Christians are constantly pushing their views onto others and pressuring law makers
>to criminalize behavior they disagree with, even when it has nothing to do with them.
This has nothing to do with the issue at hand. The issue at hand is people who want to see
the movie, without the nudity, or other objectionable (in their opinion) content.
They should have the right, and this should be covered under fair use. They aren't having
the movie edited so YOU can't see the nudity. It's just them.
So what is your problem?
Warren
(1) This guy thinks he is an every-man. Since most people are exactly like him, whatever he desires is what most people desire. (Please sir, I'd like free educational and income-tax software.)
(2) This guy thinks that his sundry experience with a smattering of systems and operating systems constitutes some kind of basis from which to form opinions of some value, or to give advice. At least he could have polled three of his best friends and make a data-set taken from four people who think they are Everyman. As it is, this guy thinks everything that matters to him is what really matters in the big bad world out there.
(3) This guy is a terrible writer. He doesn't know how to present a cogent argument, formulate a clear thesis, and support it with evidence.
I've read a lot of really mundane and pointless articles. This one tops them all.
Warren
If the patent is worded generally (delivery of rich multimedia content over an electronic/computer network) then it will be extremely easy to show prior art. Xanadu, interactive cable-box technologies, etc, dating back to the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Balthawhatever has exactly NOTHING.
Writing good software is very difficult. I see a pattern in companies where there are (i) people with technical ability and (ii) posers who take the 30,000-foot view on everything telling them what to do at every turn.
The posers can be detected by the following:
(a) Posers tend to swear allegiance to whatever mantras are put forward to them in books, by well-meaning gurus, in whatever software-development rule book the poser has most recently read. The poser tuned out at some point in the book's more complex content, but they did read far enough in order to take away some new silver bullets, that they think makes them capable of leading a project that they don't understand and could not develop on their own, even giving 30 years of their own time.
(b) Posers believe that whatever makes inherent sense to them, should require no explanation, and should be immediately cast in stone, becoming a new Corporate Commandment. Posers lead by use of brute power, rather than by use of reason and influence.
(c) Posers don't bother to think about the fact that one language/technology/tool/method will not suit every application in every department of every company, for all time, and instead worry about preventing stress on their very limited mental abilities caused by the learning of some new language, technology or method.
(d) What posers do tend to be able to do is calm the nerves of rattled executives they report to, who don't want to understand anything about the actual problems in a given development project, but can give high level, fluffy claims about how we've "got the process under control now", and "we'll be back on schedule right away sir". The poser serves a valuable role in an organization. By being reviled from above and below, the poser is a lightening rod for negativity. This helps keep the developers actually developing and making progress towards some goal, even if the date they will reach the destination remains a mystery to the PHBs and posers.
Warren
Incoherent babble from a complete idiot who can't form an intelligent thesis statement, structure an argument, or figure out how to build an argument based on reason gets posted on the front page of Slashdot. Film at Eleven.
Warren
(OSNews has very low standards on the quality of things they allow on there. Or is it completely open, and anyone can post on it? That would explain the complete lack of intellect this writer displays.)
I have visited several local big-box-electronics shops (bestbuy/futureshop), local games retailers (ebgames, etc) and asked for turn-based RPGs for the PC, and found that there are ZERO on the shelves of retailers right now. There are a few turn-based tactics/RPG titles out there for consoles, including a few for the PS2, which I have, but NOTHING for the PC. Apparently a new Heroes of Might and Magic will be out (5.0) soon. There is even a web site up for it now, but it's not out yet. One employee (a fellow turn-based tactics/rpg fan) recommended I go out and get Heroes of Might and Magic IV for the PC, which I did. I was somewhat impressed by it, but i found the user interface really klunky compared with the smooth and well-thought out user-interface of games for the handheld GBA or DS, or PS2/console titles.
So if any game-designer out there thinks it's worth creating a really great turn-based tactics/RPG game out there, won't you please let the world know about it, even if it's a low-budget casual game without big studio bucks put into it. The world needs more FUN games, not more flashy FX-studio games.
Main bhi aisa hi hoon.
I am not indian, but I think Hindi is a fabulous language. If you want to pass coded messages to your friends, write them in french, but use the Hindi (Devanagari) script.
Warren
I'm a software developer with no prior experience as an "HR" type guy, but I recently stepped in and assisted my employers in hiring for a bunch of new positions. Together, we read over 2000 resumes and filtered them, did 80 interviews over 5 days to fill five positions, including a software development position, and a variety of other high-tech engineering positions.
The general level of lying on resumes was abysmally high. People claimed routinely to be expert in things, and when interviewed, they would know nothing about them. Imagine claming you were an electronics designer, and you don't know what a diode, a capacitor, or a resistor do, and you can't explain the relationship between volts, amps and watts. I am not an electronics engineer, just a software developer, but I knew more than most of the "electronics engineers" I interviewed. When it came to interviewing software developers, I expected to meet a few competent developers. I met exactly two. One had relevant experience, and we were able to hire him. One was a smart person with no relevant experience, and so we didn't hire that person. My standards are that I'll hire a smart person, with little relevant industry-sector experience, provided they have been around, and have demonstrated their ability to produce reasonably good results.
Now that I'm no longer a complete HR virgin, I won't be so surprised next time, to find that there are a tonne of people who are willing to work for me who know nothing about IT, nothing about software development, nothing about electronics, although according to their resume, they are multi-talented multi-disciplinary impressarios. In fact, now that I'm calibrated to the prevaling conditions of the job market, I know I can streamline my resume-scanning, interviewing, and hiring practices to save me 50% of the time I spent last time. I have learned, when an interview has gone off the rails, to end it quickly, and in a way in which everyone's dignity is preserved. This saves my time, and saves candidates who know nothing at all, from further embarrassment.
So, while we haven't exactly had trouble filling our positions, we've found it takes a lot of work to weed out unqualified people.
I've noticed that a lot of tech pseudo-journalism boils down to the following:
(1) I like technology X, Y and Z.
(2) I don't like technology A, B, and C.
(3) A,B, and C shouldn't exist, because by existing, they distract people who don't know they really shouldn't
like A,B, and C, and if I could just force them to see things my way, they'd do as I do.
I find it amazing that people bother reading the original article, to which this article responds, and dignify it by any response at all. Slackware will exist as long as at least one slackware developer/maintainer finds it useful, pleasant, or in some way desires for it to continue to exist, and thus Slackware, or something very like it, is likely to continue to exist. It's the oldest surviving linux distribution, with a longer history that even RedHat or Debian, if I remember correctly.
I'm a Debian fan. I like their packaging, I like their stable/unstable/testing partitioning. I like the community and the debian process. That doesn't mean I feel any need to impugn the Fedora/RedHat fans, or the Slackware, or any other Linux distro fans. Guess what guys, it's splitting hairs. I have compiled thousands of tar.gz (tarballs) containing thousands of software packages, on over 100 different versions of over 20 different distributions, and the differences are so vanishingly small, compared to amount of things that are the same, that any kind of "my distribution is better than your distribution" discussion ends up mostly moot. If Ubuntu has some better feature than basic Debian, or if Slackware people invent something neat, chances are most of the rest of the Linux world will borrow, adapt, and absorb whatever they can into the environment they prefer.
These people who claim it should be otherwise should go to Apple, or Microsoft, and say, "here's my money, now control everything and make it uniform, and make sure everybody does things the same way, all the time". Those who are attempting to do this in the Free Software World, suggesting that something is irrelevant, dead, unimportant, or detrimental to the free software world, because it exists, are idiots. Ignore them.
If technology really has become irrelevant, it requires no commentary to establish it. Anybody remember Yggdrasil Linux? I can now dare to say that Yggdrasil Linux is probably pretty close to dead. Anyone want to disagree with me?
Regards,
Warren/Franciscan
Re:Manifestation of liturgical commentary.
on
The New C Standard
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Talmudic? Exactly.
Here is a prodigious mind at work. A fascinating book, interesting perhaps only to the very small sub-set of human beings who have the following interests:
(i) heavily interested in C
(ii) not at all interested in C++
(iii) into scholarly discussions of human intellectual processes, metrics, studies, and quantifiable discourse on subjects dear to the heart of a language lawywer.
(iv) wants detailed line by line commentary on the C standard.
If I were the technical editor in charge of reviewing his book, I'd have a hard time making a case that there are a lot of people who want to read this book out there. If I really wanted to piss the author off, I'd suggest he try to get it published as "C99 for Dummies".
Warren
Exactly right. I always want to work for a place where technical people are appreciated for the value they contribute to the company, and where the economic value generated by developing new products and technology is a core goal or intent of the managers of the company.
According to some of the people responding, you should be working for a smaller company, and according to others, a bigger company. I have worked at big and at small companies that had a lot of overtime, low morale, and other classic problems.
As a software developer for over twelve years, also in my mid 30s, I have always worked as a a software developer but never "right in the industry". That is to say, I do not like to work at software-only shops:
(A) The problem with small software-only companies is their financial instability, and the lack of anywhere to go from here.
(B) The problem with big software-only companies, insurance companies, banks, and government work, is that I hate beaurocracies. Also these "big" places tend to have found ways to destroy joy, sense of accomplishment, and the potential to do anything new and interesting, by establishing huge sets of Policies, Procedures, that make my working life a living hell.
(C) I prefer to work in R&D, Engineering, and Science companies. I like to be the only software developer, or to work in a team of two or three equally capable software people. I like working with people who are friggin briliant, and who are results oriented, and who can't stand it when B.S. gets in the way of innovation. You know what I mean. Mordac, Preventer of Information Services, get thee behind me, before I smite thee! Pointy-haired bosses, beware.
Anyways, my chosen industry is a perfect fit with my skills and my shortcomings, because we all have both skills and shortcomings. I produce products that work, and which users are happy with, and they pay me and everyone where I work gets to do something that they love to do. Good deal. But I could not work just anywhere. For one thing, my shortcomings can get me fired. I don't suffer fools gladly, and I don't think that idiots should be allowed to dumb-down software designs to the point where the design is entirely pedantic enough for them to understand. I enjoy the actual work of programming, I like to build great software. I hate the other *crap* that does not contribute to the end goal. So, I have found where I fit. They like me, and I like my employers. Maybe *you* need to take a personal inventory, and find out where *you* fit.
First let me agree with you on somethign: Qt is the best class library out there for C++ period.
If I needed portability to Linux and Windows, I'd buy a QT license, and use QT. QT can go to Solaris/Sparc, or IBM AIX for instance, and Delphi/Kylix can't.
[DreamerMode:On]
What I dislike about Qt is Moc. I think Moc is great in one sense, because it shows you exactly what should be built into the C++ language to make it better. Secondly, I think that a massive redesign of C++ compiler cores is needed, to address compilation-time issues in a more radical fashion than the lame and broken "precompiled header" schemes that I always have to turn off in order to get things to work.
[DreamerMode:Off]
In conclusion, while I respect C++ as a technology, and I respect QT, and all that, I think it's weird that companies choose to harm themselves by going with C++ if they don't need what C++ gives them, and they throw away what Delphi could give them, things that they really could use, like getting it done faster, and having something nicer and more functional when you're finished.
Bjarne Stroustrup never had to write a forms-based GUI application in his life, or C++ would have been radically different, more like Objective-C,
which is really cool, but even more obscure than Delphi/ObjectPascal.
Actually, it's the lack of introspection and reflection capability in the language and the compiler, that creates the brain-dead class libraries (MFC, ATL, et al), that creates the poor overall developer experience.
So, yes, it is the language, and the class libraries, and everything else. It all matters.
W.P.(Franciscan)
I use Pascal all day, every day. I laugh myself sick thinking how much time my C++ developer friends waste on stuff that takes days in ATL/MFC/C++ that I can do in a few seconds in Delphi. DCOM servers, GUI programming, reusable components, these are all a pain in the butt with C++. Okay, C# and Dotnet are almost as powerful as Delphi, but they have a huge runtime (like java). For my money, nothing can touch Delphi/ObjectPascal/VCL for efficiency, productivity, quality, easy deployability with NO DLL HELL and no runtime installation issues.
WP.(Franciscan)
(P.S. I never ever shipped any app with the BDE in it. That, and the Database Desktop, are the crappiest things ever to come out of Borland. They are still in the latest native Win32 version of Delphi, Delphi 7, but at least you don't ever have to use them.)
There's the excuse I was waiting for. It's not that I lacked social skills in high school, it was merely that I was so focused on learning 6502 assembly language, and C and Pascal programming, that I didn't have enough time for any of that nasty socializing stuff in High School. And I really *liked* it when a beautiful, kind and approachable girl *tried* to talk to me, but I was too awkward to return the attention in a friendly way, and so she gave up, and walked away. If only she was smart enough to be worth talking to, then I wouldn't have had to freeze up like that. Sigh.
... I don't know what planet the previous poster was from, but in my world, it sucks to be lonely.
We are located in the biggest city in Canada, Toronto, population of the greater toronto area is between 4-6 million, which is above 15% of the population of the entire country, so of course, it makes sense that we can't get any high speed internet access where we're located.
Okay, the deal is that we're too far (by a little margin) from the CO to use Bell's DSL service, and Rogers doesn't have cable internet available on our little side-street, which is only one block away from Kennedy/Ellesmere, a fairly major intersection. The buildings right behind us on Kennedy road all have high speed internet access (choice of DSL and Cable), but not us, we're in some backwater industrial park in middle-scarberia, and we're out of luck.
Anyways, the problems with satellite are:
1. The drivers for the 2-way satellite modems suck, they crash regularly. The drivers are available for Windows only, not for linux.
2. The NOC (operations center) in Texas goes down more often than [insert colorful image not suitable for younger slashdotters here].
3. The satellite link becomes unavailable whenever heavy rain or snow gets in between our dish and the satellite, or between the satellite and the NOC downlink in texas.
4. The latency is terrible. Ssh remotely sucks. You could download small pages (
5. Get used to hitting reload a lot on your browser. First try didn't work, try try again.
6. Don't ever ever try to use WinGate with your Satellite access, trust me on this one. And pay extra for a public IP, so you can use a NAT firewall/gateway in your home or office.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. You're right. 100%. However, comparing Delphi marketshare to Java marketshare is kind of pointless, because Java has something Delphi will probably never have: portability. Remember Kylix? Didn't fly. There are both technical and market reasons why. You can't just compare Windows-dev-tools with portable dev tools, when comparing market share. It's like saying "the Toyota Corolla is selling well, therefore there is no market for the Porsche 911". Java and Delphi are only competitors in a very small way. How many Java developers develop commercial Windows apps in Java? Not very many. Java is an in-house-software-systems-language, and web-services oriented system. All the stuff people write in Java is stuff I'd never write if you paid me 10x what I get paid right now. BORING CRAP. Sorry, but there it is. Not all developers are the same, and not all development projects are the same. Delphi's core constituency is formed by people who write software for Windows only, and who want software that runs on every version of windows ever made (even back to windows 95, or windows 98, if you really need to) with a single binary EXE file, with no runtimes needed, no necessity of using DLLs, and so on. Delphi has two major streams within that core-constituency, in-house-app developers (like myself) that write vertical line of business applications that a company either uses, or sells to its small customer base. My apps have to run on customer PCs around the globe, in every country in the world, without DLL hell, without runtime (sucks to be .NET) and on every version and every service pack of Windows ever released.
Even Microsoft can't do this with their own tool set. Oh, and they abandon their own developers (hello VB 6 fans, how ya doin?). So your choices are:
1. Abandon your Windows-only strategy, go Java or something portable. (not a bad idea.)
2. Use whatever latest pile of CRAP Microsoft is shipping these days, and be prepared to rewrite when they ship you a whole new steaming pile of crap.
3. Have an insulating layer between you and Microsoft's platform. That is what Delphi/VCL gets you.
If you need to write software that runs on Windows, CodeGear is the only thing I would use. Otherwise, get me outta here. The day I can no longer work as a Delphi developer, I get a new career, or maybe I switch to Cocoa/ObjectiveC on Mac OS X. At least it's elegant and beautiful, and not a stinking pile of MS-crap.
I'm bitter today, don't I sound bitter? Yeah.
But there is a lot of hope. CodeGear is spinning up now, and they've shipped my favourite Delphi version ever (already), Delphi 2007, and Delphi for PHP, both of which are amazing products. Now, let's see if they can market it. That's where the old BORLAND always sucked. Great on technology delivery. Crap marketing.
Franciscan
Borland just released Delphi 2007. It's got first-class support for Windows Vista apps (Glass, etc). How exactly is Delphi dead? There are probably 100,000 developers in north america and probably half a million or more active Delphi developers worldwide. Are we all dead? There are more people doing Java these days, and more people doing C# and probably more people doing C++, but we're not DEAD. Why do you have to be #1 or be called dead? Warren
That's not true. The IDE Product is commercial, the VCL for PHP library is open source (to be hosted on Sourceforge, should be there any day now). YOu aren't trapped. You can go back to VIM at any time. Warren
mod this guy up, please. He's right. This is not very significant, and TFA calls it "city wide". The plans don't call for city-wide. The City of Toronto is huge. 6 square km in the downtown core is not the world's largest Wi-Fi outdoor mesh. The Google wifi freenet is much bigger, and permanently free. No big news here. Wifi on the TTC Subway lines would be wonderful. Might make me a rider again, if I could Surf the Web instead of Commuting in my Car. W
And people like you are idiots: >Christians are constantly pushing their views onto others and pressuring law makers >to criminalize behavior they disagree with, even when it has nothing to do with them. This has nothing to do with the issue at hand. The issue at hand is people who want to see the movie, without the nudity, or other objectionable (in their opinion) content. They should have the right, and this should be covered under fair use. They aren't having the movie edited so YOU can't see the nudity. It's just them. So what is your problem? Warren
(1) This guy thinks he is an every-man. Since most people are exactly like him, whatever he desires is what most people desire. (Please sir, I'd like free educational and income-tax software.)
(2) This guy thinks that his sundry experience with a smattering of systems and operating systems constitutes some kind of basis from which to form opinions of some value, or to give advice. At least he could have polled three of his best friends and make a data-set taken from four people who think they are Everyman. As it is, this guy thinks everything that matters to him is what really matters in the big bad world out there.
(3) This guy is a terrible writer. He doesn't know how to present a cogent argument, formulate a clear thesis, and support it with evidence.
I've read a lot of really mundane and pointless articles. This one tops them all.
Warren
If the patent is worded generally (delivery of rich multimedia content over an electronic/computer network) then it will be extremely easy to show prior art. Xanadu, interactive cable-box technologies, etc, dating back to the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Balthawhatever has exactly NOTHING.
Warren
Writing good software is very difficult. I see a pattern in companies where there are (i) people with technical ability and (ii) posers who take the 30,000-foot view on everything telling them what to do at every turn.
The posers can be detected by the following:
(a) Posers tend to swear allegiance to whatever mantras are put forward to them in books, by well-meaning gurus, in whatever software-development rule book the poser has most recently read. The poser tuned out at some point in the book's more complex content, but they did read far enough in order to take away some new silver bullets, that they think makes them capable of leading a project that they don't understand and could not develop on their own, even giving 30 years of their own time.
(b) Posers believe that whatever makes inherent sense to them, should require no explanation, and should be immediately cast in stone, becoming a new Corporate Commandment. Posers lead by use of brute power, rather than by use of reason and influence.
(c) Posers don't bother to think about the fact that one language/technology/tool/method will not suit every application in every department of every company, for all time, and instead worry about preventing stress on their very limited mental abilities caused by the learning of some new language, technology or method.
(d) What posers do tend to be able to do is calm the nerves of rattled executives they report to, who don't want to understand anything about the actual problems in a given development project, but can give high level, fluffy claims about how we've "got the process under control now", and "we'll be back on schedule right away sir". The poser serves a valuable role in an organization. By being reviled from above and below, the poser is a lightening rod for negativity. This helps keep the developers actually developing and making progress towards some goal, even if the date they will reach the destination remains a mystery to the PHBs and posers.
Warren
Incoherent babble from a complete idiot who can't form an intelligent thesis statement, structure an argument, or figure out how to build an argument based on reason gets posted on the front page of Slashdot. Film at Eleven. Warren (OSNews has very low standards on the quality of things they allow on there. Or is it completely open, and anyone can post on it? That would explain the complete lack of intellect this writer displays.)
I have visited several local big-box-electronics shops (bestbuy/futureshop), local games retailers (ebgames, etc) and asked for turn-based RPGs for the PC, and found that there are ZERO on the shelves of retailers right now. There are a few turn-based tactics/RPG titles out there for consoles, including a few for the PS2, which I have, but NOTHING for the PC. Apparently a new Heroes of Might and Magic will be out (5.0) soon. There is even a web site up for it now, but it's not out yet. One employee (a fellow turn-based tactics/rpg fan) recommended I go out and get Heroes of Might and Magic IV for the PC, which I did. I was somewhat impressed by it, but i found the user interface really klunky compared with the smooth and well-thought out user-interface of games for the handheld GBA or DS, or PS2/console titles.
So if any game-designer out there thinks it's worth creating a really great turn-based tactics/RPG game out there, won't you please let the world know about it, even if it's a low-budget casual game without big studio bucks put into it. The world needs more FUN games, not more flashy FX-studio games.
Cheers,
Warren
Okay, I figured it out. Numeeja = "clever" satirical reference to "new-media" types. This fellow was almost too cunning to be understood.
Okay, I'll bite. What's a "numeedja"? Oh, and excuse me, but a quick spelling note to the Parent poster: It's PSEUDO, not SUDO. Warren
Like, are we supposed to act surprised here? Bill and Steve and crew continue to bully the planet. Film at eleven.
Warren
Main bhi aisa hi hoon. I am not indian, but I think Hindi is a fabulous language. If you want to pass coded messages to your friends, write them in french, but use the Hindi (Devanagari) script. Warren
I'm a software developer with no prior experience as an "HR" type guy, but I recently stepped in and assisted my employers in hiring for a bunch of new positions. Together, we read over 2000 resumes and filtered them, did 80 interviews over 5 days to fill five positions, including a software development position, and a variety of other high-tech engineering positions.
The general level of lying on resumes was abysmally high. People claimed routinely to be expert in things, and when interviewed, they would know nothing about them. Imagine claming you were an electronics designer, and you don't know what a diode, a capacitor, or a resistor do, and you can't explain the relationship between volts, amps and watts. I am not an electronics engineer, just a software developer, but I knew more than most of the "electronics engineers" I interviewed. When it came to interviewing software developers, I expected to meet a few competent developers. I met exactly two. One had relevant experience, and we were able to hire him. One was a smart person with no relevant experience, and so we didn't hire that person. My standards are that I'll hire a smart person, with little relevant industry-sector experience, provided they have been around, and have demonstrated their ability to produce reasonably good results.
Now that I'm no longer a complete HR virgin, I won't be so surprised next time, to find that there are a tonne of people who are willing to work for me who know nothing about IT, nothing about software development, nothing about electronics, although according to their resume, they are multi-talented multi-disciplinary impressarios. In fact, now that I'm calibrated to the prevaling conditions of the job market, I know I can streamline my resume-scanning, interviewing, and hiring practices to save me 50% of the time I spent last time. I have learned, when an interview has gone off the rails, to end it quickly, and in a way in which everyone's dignity is preserved. This saves my time, and saves candidates who know nothing at all, from further embarrassment.
So, while we haven't exactly had trouble filling our positions, we've found it takes a lot of work to weed out unqualified people.
Warren/Franciscan
(1) I like technology X, Y and Z.
(2) I don't like technology A, B, and C.
(3) A,B, and C shouldn't exist, because by existing, they distract people who don't know they really shouldn't like A,B, and C, and if I could just force them to see things my way, they'd do as I do.
I find it amazing that people bother reading the original article, to which this article responds, and dignify it by any response at all. Slackware will exist as long as at least one slackware developer/maintainer finds it useful, pleasant, or in some way desires for it to continue to exist, and thus Slackware, or something very like it, is likely to continue to exist. It's the oldest surviving linux distribution, with a longer history that even RedHat or Debian, if I remember correctly.
I'm a Debian fan. I like their packaging, I like their stable/unstable/testing partitioning. I like the community and the debian process. That doesn't mean I feel any need to impugn the Fedora/RedHat fans, or the Slackware, or any other Linux distro fans. Guess what guys, it's splitting hairs. I have compiled thousands of tar.gz (tarballs) containing thousands of software packages, on over 100 different versions of over 20 different distributions, and the differences are so vanishingly small, compared to amount of things that are the same, that any kind of "my distribution is better than your distribution" discussion ends up mostly moot. If Ubuntu has some better feature than basic Debian, or if Slackware people invent something neat, chances are most of the rest of the Linux world will borrow, adapt, and absorb whatever they can into the environment they prefer.
These people who claim it should be otherwise should go to Apple, or Microsoft, and say, "here's my money, now control everything and make it uniform, and make sure everybody does things the same way, all the time". Those who are attempting to do this in the Free Software World, suggesting that something is irrelevant, dead, unimportant, or detrimental to the free software world, because it exists, are idiots. Ignore them.
If technology really has become irrelevant, it requires no commentary to establish it. Anybody remember Yggdrasil Linux? I can now dare to say that Yggdrasil Linux is probably pretty close to dead. Anyone want to disagree with me?
Regards,
Warren/Franciscan
Talmudic? Exactly. Here is a prodigious mind at work. A fascinating book, interesting perhaps only to the very small sub-set of human beings who have the following interests: (i) heavily interested in C (ii) not at all interested in C++ (iii) into scholarly discussions of human intellectual processes, metrics, studies, and quantifiable discourse on subjects dear to the heart of a language lawywer. (iv) wants detailed line by line commentary on the C standard. If I were the technical editor in charge of reviewing his book, I'd have a hard time making a case that there are a lot of people who want to read this book out there. If I really wanted to piss the author off, I'd suggest he try to get it published as "C99 for Dummies". Warren
You mean like the big honking fans on the Dual G5?
Exactly right. I always want to work for a place where technical people are appreciated for the value they contribute to the company, and where the economic value generated by developing new products and technology is a core goal or intent of the managers of the company.
Life is not a zero-sum game.
Franciscan
According to some of the people responding, you should be working for a smaller company, and according to others, a bigger company. I have worked at big and at small companies that had a lot of overtime, low morale, and other classic problems.
As a software developer for over twelve years, also in my mid 30s, I have always worked as a a software developer but never "right in the industry". That is to say, I do not like to work at software-only shops:
(A) The problem with small software-only companies is their financial instability, and the lack of anywhere to go from here.
(B) The problem with big software-only companies, insurance companies, banks, and government work, is that I hate beaurocracies. Also these "big" places tend to have found ways to destroy joy, sense of accomplishment, and the potential to do anything new and interesting, by establishing huge sets of Policies, Procedures, that make my working life a living hell.
(C) I prefer to work in R&D, Engineering, and Science companies. I like to be the only software developer, or to work in a team of two or three equally capable software people. I like working with people who are friggin briliant, and who are results oriented, and who can't stand it when B.S. gets in the way of innovation. You know what I mean. Mordac, Preventer of Information Services, get thee behind me, before I smite thee! Pointy-haired bosses, beware.
Anyways, my chosen industry is a perfect fit with my skills and my shortcomings, because we all have both skills and shortcomings. I produce products that work, and which users are happy with, and they pay me and everyone where I work gets to do something that they love to do. Good deal. But I could not work just anywhere. For one thing, my shortcomings can get me fired. I don't suffer fools gladly, and I don't think that idiots should be allowed to dumb-down software designs to the point where the design is entirely pedantic enough for them to understand. I enjoy the actual work of programming, I like to build great software. I hate the other *crap* that does not contribute to the end goal. So, I have found where I fit. They like me, and I like my employers. Maybe *you* need to take a personal inventory, and find out where *you* fit.
Regards,
Franciscan.
First let me agree with you on somethign: Qt is the best class library out there for C++ period.
If I needed portability to Linux and Windows, I'd buy a QT license, and use QT. QT can go to Solaris/Sparc, or IBM AIX for instance, and Delphi/Kylix can't.
[DreamerMode:On]
What I dislike about Qt is Moc. I think Moc is great in one sense, because it shows you exactly what should be built into the C++ language to make it better. Secondly, I think that a massive redesign of C++ compiler cores is needed, to address compilation-time issues in a more radical fashion than the lame and broken "precompiled header" schemes that I always have to turn off in order to get things to work.
[DreamerMode:Off]
In conclusion, while I respect C++ as a technology, and I respect QT, and all that, I think it's weird that companies choose to harm themselves by going with C++ if they don't need what C++ gives them, and they throw away what Delphi could give them, things that they really could use, like getting it done faster, and having something nicer and more functional when you're finished.
Bjarne Stroustrup never had to write a forms-based GUI application in his life, or C++ would have been radically different, more like Objective-C, which is really cool, but even more obscure than Delphi/ObjectPascal.
Such is life.
Regards,
W.P. (Franciscan)
Actually, it's the lack of introspection and reflection capability in the language and the compiler, that creates the brain-dead class libraries (MFC, ATL, et al), that creates the poor overall developer experience.
So, yes, it is the language, and the class libraries, and everything else. It all matters.
W.P.(Franciscan)
I use Pascal all day, every day. I laugh myself sick thinking how much time my C++ developer friends waste on stuff that takes days in ATL/MFC/C++ that I can do in a few seconds in Delphi. DCOM servers, GUI programming, reusable components, these are all a pain in the butt with C++. Okay, C# and Dotnet are almost as powerful as Delphi, but they have a huge runtime (like java). For my money, nothing can touch Delphi/ObjectPascal/VCL for efficiency, productivity, quality, easy deployability with NO DLL HELL and no runtime installation issues.
WP.(Franciscan)
(P.S. I never ever shipped any app with the BDE in it. That, and the Database Desktop, are the crappiest things ever to come out of Borland. They are still in the latest native Win32 version of Delphi, Delphi 7, but at least you don't ever have to use them.)
There's the excuse I was waiting for. It's not that I lacked social skills in high school, it was merely that I was so focused on learning 6502 assembly language, and C and Pascal programming, that I didn't have enough time for any of that nasty socializing stuff in High School. And I really *liked* it when a beautiful, kind and approachable girl *tried* to talk to me, but I was too awkward to return the attention in a friendly way, and so she gave up, and walked away. If only she was smart enough to be worth talking to, then I wouldn't have had to freeze up like that. Sigh.
... I don't know what planet the previous poster was from, but in my world, it sucks to be lonely.
Franciscan.
We are located in the biggest city in Canada, Toronto, population of the greater toronto area is between 4-6 million, which is above 15% of the population of the entire country, so of course, it makes sense that we can't get any high speed internet access where we're located.
Okay, the deal is that we're too far (by a little margin) from the CO to use Bell's DSL service, and Rogers doesn't have cable internet available on our little side-street, which is only one block away from Kennedy/Ellesmere, a fairly major intersection. The buildings right behind us on Kennedy road all have high speed internet access (choice of DSL and Cable), but not us, we're in some backwater industrial park in middle-scarberia, and we're out of luck.
Anyways, the problems with satellite are:
1. The drivers for the 2-way satellite modems suck, they crash regularly. The drivers are available for Windows only, not for linux.
2. The NOC (operations center) in Texas goes down more often than [insert colorful image not suitable for younger slashdotters here].
3. The satellite link becomes unavailable whenever heavy rain or snow gets in between our dish and the satellite, or between the satellite and the NOC downlink in texas.
4. The latency is terrible. Ssh remotely sucks. You could download small pages ( 5. Get used to hitting reload a lot on your browser. First try didn't work, try try again.
6. Don't ever ever try to use WinGate with your Satellite access, trust me on this one. And pay extra for a public IP, so you can use a NAT firewall/gateway in your home or office.
Regards,
Someone who has been there.