Training talent is not a smart strategy because, as the GP said, no company should expect the trainee to remain in the company.
Why the hell not?!? Superior pay, opportunities, and a good working environment will keep the person. There's no reason not to invest in someone, unless you don't plan on following thru.
That's okay, I can't figure out what the hell the guy he responded to is talking about. One minute we're on how the high pay is only in the experienced, and then all of a sudden there's this stuff about community service and "Republican hyper-capitalists" and shitting in caves. ?!?
Should I worry about all that, or corporations or terrorism or illegal immigrants or President Hillary or offshoring or Global Warming or...
I'm just not going to live my life believing in worst-case scenarios just around the corner. I've lived in tension and fear for several days the early part of this week, and I didn't like the feeling. So, while it's worth being cognizant of potentially threatening issues, I'm not going to assume cataclysmic changes (such as an economic change of the magnitude you're talking about) are imminent and near. I'd be a nervous wreck.
For that reason, yes, the falling US dollar is about to make a 2008 $75,000/year paycheck feel like a 1995 $26,000/year paycheck.
I made $28,000/year in 1995, and remember what it was like, and can assure you that unless your tastes and/or family has dramatically expanded with your salary, $75K currently affords a large amount of disposable income, and is nothing like the former circumstances.
And if I were to suggest that every channel has an absurd liberal slant you would probably praise me for seeing the world as it really is.
Nah, but if you were to suggest that most channels have an absurd liberal slant, and a single one has a distinct right slant, but nothing even close to what you were referring to earlier, I would praise you for seeing the world as it really is, and for how far you've come from your earlier wacky "oppo-view" of reality where most news channels are somehow filled with Pat Robertson material.
Our news is politicized because people here go into the news business specifically to politicize it. Why do Islamic extremists blow people up? Because it's a religion to them.
Well, I was trying to be polite and leave the hallucinating out of it, but if you really think, for example, that you can't turn on the news without hearing about how homosexuality is a disease, you've either reprogrammed your TV to pick up some weird Jerry Falwell network or something on all channels, or you were dropped more than a few times on your head as a child.
Don't worry tho -- just stick with Slashdot, DailyKos, etc., where you're perfectly normal. I'll admit that between us I'm the odd one, here.
Sorry to ruin your fantasy, but it's not "taxes==bad", it's "too much taxes==bad". One line of reasoning is within the questions, are we taxed too little, just about right, or too much. Only if you think we're taxed too little does adding Yet Another Tax seem reasonable. Don't need to get any more complicated than that.
Well, while my assertion still stands that Linux freaks need to make believe that there exist equal but opposite freaks that they need to be around to counter, you're right in that the qualities of the Linux mass hysteria go far beyond mere fanboyism and are squarely in the camp of religious zealotry. To the point that y'all are the "Fundies" of OS's, and RMS is Jerry Falwell, GNU being his Moral Majority.
Unless you spin it into free publicity for your candidate, that is.
I don't care about that -- what was her name again? I'm just glad anytime I see an organization that is not a political organization, yet has chosen in its actions to not remain neutral politically, be exposed for what it is.
Above 5 cylinders, all cars seem to have an even number of cylinders - 6, 8, 10, 12, or (rarely) 16 or 18.
Because they're usually in a "vee" configuration rather than an inline one. All in one row is fine for a small number of them, but if you had an I16 in your car, you'd have to sit in your trunk!:)
And if you're going to put about half on each side, you might as well build exactly half on each side. There might even be issues such as uneven stresses with an unmatched number pushing off each side.
It's natural that software maintenance will never be in new languages. That doesn't prevent new projects,...
Yes, it does, because it's for the exact same reason -- economics. It's too costly, in time/money, to train developers in a drastically different language. The days of difficult but powerful languages and other technologies (like CORBA, COM, prolly others) achieving mainstream status are over. That's why C++ is being replaced with Java and C#. Anything hard is undesirable by PHB's. As is anything drastically different.
Why was VB massaged into a C/C++-like language? PHB's want it all to be basically the same, and relatively idiot-proof, so they can start managing software like they really want to, like they were taught in business school that they could manage anything as, and that is like widget production. Developers should be inexpensive, interchangeable resources, so they must all be relatively on the same page, and they should crank out modules that any other inexpensive developer should be able to take over.
That is the PHB's holy grail -- they want simplicity and familiarity and predictability, not greater risk (no matter the promised returns), complexity, and expense. Java wouldn't have gone anywhere if it had not borrowed so much from C and C++ syntax and familiar concepts, enabling people to jump over to it with only a small learning curve. Same for C#. And is the trend for there to be more for the programmer to manage and think about, or less? I think suv4x4 is basically right, we're stuck with the C syntax, OOP, and any advancements such as in the area of more concurrency will only catch on big if it is handled automatically for the developer, by the runtime.
Also never underestimate the huge number of anti- virus / trojan / spyware and pop-up crapware that are running in parallel on average joe's computer. My folks still use AOL. ("Security Edition".) Their computer is basically locked up whenever one of the several types of scans or automatic check for updates auto-launches. They need 3 cores for all those kinds of horribly-written craplets, and 1 to play Minesweeper.
Blockbuster likes to stock impersonator movies of similar names to a movie that's out and has the buzz, but is not yet out on video, that many people might not be clear on. Like the War of the Worlds stinker with C. Thomas Howell while Spielberg's was playing in the theaters. See also Snakes on a Train.
That's not C++. I'm sure it compiles as C++, but the programming style is Java's -- objects created on the heap. And the use of bare nekkid pointers is C style, not C++ style.
I think that because the syntax between these kinds of languages is so similar: 1) That programmer fooled himself into believing that he was a C++ programmer, and 2) He also fooled you.
If someone built a CPU which processes Java bytecode natively, would that suddenly turn Java from an interpreted into a compiled language?
Yes. A compiled language means it's translated into the CPU's instruction set on the developer's time. And only once, for that version of the software. An interpreted language means it's translated into the CPU's instruction set on *my* time. Over and over again, every time I run it.
However, the creation of such a CPU would only demolish the "interpreted" mark against Java. The language itself would still suffer from a lack of power and expressiveness, relative to the language it is a dumbed-down version of.
On the other hand, while I'm not qualified to discuss climatology myself, I am very aware of what a convenient argument global warming makes to radical-leftist elements (read: damned hippies) who already have a beef with capitalism and Western civilization in general.
That's exactly the problem. I don't know whether Global Warming is a threat or not. But I do know that there are those in and outside of this country who hate America and its traditions and foundation and our way of life here (driving SUV's, capitalism, etc.) who are definitely a threat. And GW is being used by them to attack that.
It's routine for a political side to claim something is a crisis, to try to get what they want. Left-wingers use GW, Right-wingers use terrorism. Lefties pooh-pooh the threat of terrorism to us, because they fear it's an overblown ploy by the Right to be allowed to do whatever they want. And Righties pooh-pooh the threat of global warming because they fear it's an overblown ploy by the Left to be allowed to do whatever they want.
So unfortunately I don't know, and probably can't know, for the above reason, if GW really is a threat or not.
But DOGBITE is not part of the XP dogma, YAGNI and DTSTTCPW (Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work) are. And people take it too literally, like maybe poster "julesh" above. XP is an over-reaction to the traditional process of developing software, and just flops us from one terribly unwise extreme to the other. It's best not taken as something to be exactly followed, but merely serving as an interesting jolt and challenge to the old ways of doing things, waking us up so that we think about how we've been doing things, versus just doing it that way because we always have.
This is Slashdot indeed -- you think anyone who doesn't do imbedded programming is "mediocre". Grow up.
...how is an exception less complicated than an early return or even a goto in C?
Because the caller doesn't necessarily need to handle the error -- it could be handled further up the call chain. It makes sense to have a function return indications of common, anticipated error conditions, such as a user having entered a bad file path. But integrating code into a function for uncommon, unanticipated error conditions unnecessarily dilutes and distracts.
Using switch-cases for example isn't really any less complicated than goto's, and all conditional and iterative constructs in modern languages can be replaced with goto's, that wouldn't really complicate things, except to remove the extra expressiveness of choosing a particular of these constructs over the others. In the above situation, an exception is a clearer expression of that category of failure.
You could do the malloc that you're assigning to p, up front where you declare p. Consider "enough memory available" one of the function's preconditions.
On the other hand, in much of programming you just don't ever run out of memory (I never have in 11 years of PC programming), so it would be considered an exceptional case -- throw an exception.
It depends on the requirements. This part of XP is just happy talk. Some things can be easily added later, but some cannot due to the approach chosen based on the requirements at the time. "Design for nothing extra" is indeed extreme. If you don't keep highly likely future requirements in mind when doing your initial design, you may very well find yourself in a "can't get there from here" situation, and having to throw out quite a bit of code.
Slashdot Mirror
Training talent is not a smart strategy because, as the GP said, no company should expect the trainee to remain in the company.
Why the hell not?!? Superior pay, opportunities, and a good working environment will keep the person. There's no reason not to invest in someone, unless you don't plan on following thru.
That's okay, I can't figure out what the hell the guy he responded to is talking about. One minute we're on how the high pay is only in the experienced, and then all of a sudden there's this stuff about community service and "Republican hyper-capitalists" and shitting in caves. ?!?
Should I worry about all that, or corporations or terrorism or illegal immigrants or President Hillary or offshoring or Global Warming or...
I'm just not going to live my life believing in worst-case scenarios just around the corner. I've lived in tension and fear for several days the early part of this week, and I didn't like the feeling. So, while it's worth being cognizant of potentially threatening issues, I'm not going to assume cataclysmic changes (such as an economic change of the magnitude you're talking about) are imminent and near. I'd be a nervous wreck.
For that reason, yes, the falling US dollar is about to make a 2008 $75,000/year paycheck feel like a 1995 $26,000/year paycheck.
I made $28,000/year in 1995, and remember what it was like, and can assure you that unless your tastes and/or family has dramatically expanded with your salary, $75K currently affords a large amount of disposable income, and is nothing like the former circumstances.
And if I were to suggest that every channel has an absurd liberal slant you would probably praise me for seeing the world as it really is.
Nah, but if you were to suggest that most channels have an absurd liberal slant, and a single one has a distinct right slant, but nothing even close to what you were referring to earlier, I would praise you for seeing the world as it really is, and for how far you've come from your earlier wacky "oppo-view" of reality where most news channels are somehow filled with Pat Robertson material.
Our news is politicized because people here go into the news business specifically to politicize it. Why do Islamic extremists blow people up? Because it's a religion to them.
Well, I was trying to be polite and leave the hallucinating out of it, but if you really think, for example, that you can't turn on the news without hearing about how homosexuality is a disease, you've either reprogrammed your TV to pick up some weird Jerry Falwell network or something on all channels, or you were dropped more than a few times on your head as a child.
Don't worry tho -- just stick with Slashdot, DailyKos, etc., where you're perfectly normal. I'll admit that between us I'm the odd one, here.
Sounds like you turned your TV to Fox News and then broke the knob off, sticking it there.
I could simulate the equivalent for me by programming my TV to repeatedly cycle through all the remaining channels.
Sorry to ruin your fantasy, but it's not "taxes==bad", it's "too much taxes==bad". One line of reasoning is within the questions, are we taxed too little, just about right, or too much. Only if you think we're taxed too little does adding Yet Another Tax seem reasonable. Don't need to get any more complicated than that.
Well, while my assertion still stands that Linux freaks need to make believe that there exist equal but opposite freaks that they need to be around to counter, you're right in that the qualities of the Linux mass hysteria go far beyond mere fanboyism and are squarely in the camp of religious zealotry. To the point that y'all are the "Fundies" of OS's, and RMS is Jerry Falwell, GNU being his Moral Majority.
Unless you spin it into free publicity for your candidate, that is.
I don't care about that -- what was her name again? I'm just glad anytime I see an organization that is not a political organization, yet has chosen in its actions to not remain neutral politically, be exposed for what it is.
I love the sound of Linux fanboys pretending that they have counterparts on their opposing side to validate them, who are burning in the morning.
...pushing up the number of /. comments, which is probably one of the metrics...
Ya think?
Above 5 cylinders, all cars seem to have an even number of cylinders - 6, 8, 10, 12, or (rarely) 16 or 18.
:)
Because they're usually in a "vee" configuration rather than an inline one. All in one row is fine for a small number of them, but if you had an I16 in your car, you'd have to sit in your trunk!
And if you're going to put about half on each side, you might as well build exactly half on each side. There might even be issues such as uneven stresses with an unmatched number pushing off each side.
It's natural that software maintenance will never be in new languages. That doesn't prevent new projects,...
Yes, it does, because it's for the exact same reason -- economics. It's too costly, in time/money, to train developers in a drastically different language. The days of difficult but powerful languages and other technologies (like CORBA, COM, prolly others) achieving mainstream status are over. That's why C++ is being replaced with Java and C#. Anything hard is undesirable by PHB's. As is anything drastically different.
Why was VB massaged into a C/C++-like language? PHB's want it all to be basically the same, and relatively idiot-proof, so they can start managing software like they really want to, like they were taught in business school that they could manage anything as, and that is like widget production. Developers should be inexpensive, interchangeable resources, so they must all be relatively on the same page, and they should crank out modules that any other inexpensive developer should be able to take over.
That is the PHB's holy grail -- they want simplicity and familiarity and predictability, not greater risk (no matter the promised returns), complexity, and expense. Java wouldn't have gone anywhere if it had not borrowed so much from C and C++ syntax and familiar concepts, enabling people to jump over to it with only a small learning curve. Same for C#. And is the trend for there to be more for the programmer to manage and think about, or less? I think suv4x4 is basically right, we're stuck with the C syntax, OOP, and any advancements such as in the area of more concurrency will only catch on big if it is handled automatically for the developer, by the runtime.
Also never underestimate the huge number of anti- virus / trojan / spyware and pop-up crapware that are running in parallel on average joe's computer. My folks still use AOL. ("Security Edition".) Their computer is basically locked up whenever one of the several types of scans or automatic check for updates auto-launches. They need 3 cores for all those kinds of horribly-written craplets, and 1 to play Minesweeper.
- People have always had to sit on planes for about 9 hours. Before taking off.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/02/15/passengers.shttp://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/01/tra
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/business/15r
Blockbuster likes to stock impersonator movies of similar names to a movie that's out and has the buzz, but is not yet out on video, that many people might not be clear on. Like the War of the Worlds stinker with C. Thomas Howell while Spielberg's was playing in the theaters. See also Snakes on a Train.
That's not C++. I'm sure it compiles as C++, but the programming style is Java's -- objects created on the heap. And the use of bare nekkid pointers is C style, not C++ style.
I think that because the syntax between these kinds of languages is so similar:
1) That programmer fooled himself into believing that he was a C++ programmer, and
2) He also fooled you.
However, the creation of such a CPU would only demolish the "interpreted" mark against Java. The language itself would still suffer from a lack of power and expressiveness, relative to the language it is a dumbed-down version of.
It's routine for a political side to claim something is a crisis, to try to get what they want. Left-wingers use GW, Right-wingers use terrorism. Lefties pooh-pooh the threat of terrorism to us, because they fear it's an overblown ploy by the Right to be allowed to do whatever they want. And Righties pooh-pooh the threat of global warming because they fear it's an overblown ploy by the Left to be allowed to do whatever they want.
So unfortunately I don't know, and probably can't know, for the above reason, if GW really is a threat or not.
But DOGBITE is not part of the XP dogma, YAGNI and DTSTTCPW (Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work) are. And people take it too literally, like maybe poster "julesh" above. XP is an over-reaction to the traditional process of developing software, and just flops us from one terribly unwise extreme to the other. It's best not taken as something to be exactly followed, but merely serving as an interesting jolt and challenge to the old ways of doing things, waking us up so that we think about how we've been doing things, versus just doing it that way because we always have.
...but this is Slashdot, home of the mediocre,...
...how is an exception less complicated than an early return or even a goto in C?
This is Slashdot indeed -- you think anyone who doesn't do imbedded programming is "mediocre". Grow up.
Because the caller doesn't necessarily need to handle the error -- it could be handled further up the call chain. It makes sense to have a function return indications of common, anticipated error conditions, such as a user having entered a bad file path. But integrating code into a function for uncommon, unanticipated error conditions unnecessarily dilutes and distracts.
Using switch-cases for example isn't really any less complicated than goto's, and all conditional and iterative constructs in modern languages can be replaced with goto's, that wouldn't really complicate things, except to remove the extra expressiveness of choosing a particular of these constructs over the others. In the above situation, an exception is a clearer expression of that category of failure.
You could do the malloc that you're assigning to p, up front where you declare p. Consider "enough memory available" one of the function's preconditions.
On the other hand, in much of programming you just don't ever run out of memory (I never have in 11 years of PC programming), so it would be considered an exceptional case -- throw an exception.
It depends on the requirements. This part of XP is just happy talk. Some things can be easily added later, but some cannot due to the approach chosen based on the requirements at the time. "Design for nothing extra" is indeed extreme. If you don't keep highly likely future requirements in mind when doing your initial design, you may very well find yourself in a "can't get there from here" situation, and having to throw out quite a bit of code.