He's a bit like the British royal family.
They get endless flak in the press, but their reaction is a consistent non-inflamatory one-liner and a speech once or twice per year.
Also, they have about as much power...
Nevertheless, somehow, they wield great influence.
(Resting on past greatness perhaps?)
When you (gu)estimate how long development might take for a project, the gut-feeling you get will give you the time for the FIRST ITERATION. You need AT LEAST two iterations (since the first is the process of learning what your software actually amounts to). So it's at least something like double your expectations. In reality, 5 or 6 iterations are likely to be necessary - that's 4 or more years for anything substantial. But people don't do it this way usually - they just hack and re-hack until bugs are suppressed to a reasonable usable level. This method takes rather longer so 10 years for a bugless efficient functional solution to a non-trivial requirement doesn't surprise me.
Read this book by Tim Flannery (if you can get your hands on one - it's out of print). It details exactly the process by which man, on arrival in a land not adapted to them, extinguished most edible species within a few hundred years. This did not happen in Africa and Asia (until recently) since the fauna there was adapted to man.
I have worked a number of such companies (some European but of Fortune 500 scale) which do use open-source tools - such as gcc, gdb, DDD, emacs, Samba, Apache, myriad other open-source development tools and even Linux.
The reasons were that such tools were in some cases: better, more standard, cross-platform, robust. In the case of Linux it was a platform which was x86 based (removing some endian issues) and would recompile our Solaris code without much change (we had problems with Solaris for x86) and lived happily on our network.
The pair programming angle is minor and unnecessary.
It's really about the software project change cost-curve paradox: that it is only in implementation that most design flaws can be found but that at that stage it's too expensive to make the required design change, so hacking occurs.
XP allows a design change to be propogated controllably through the implementation model avoiding twisted topologies.
The change in philosophy is a hard sell to management who have only just got their head around the (in my opinion now discredited) UML.
When I download something, the first thing I look for is comments. No matter how clever or elegant the code is, nothing 10,000 lines long can ever be so self-evident that you don't need comments.
1) I hope you don't mean 10000 lines in a single execution unit.
2) Well written code needs few comments. By well written I mean, most importantly, using appropriate object names. They should come from the environment - designs, protocols, manuals etc - without abreviation, retaining spacing (with underscores) and capitalization, so that there is no ambiguity as to what you refer.
3) Comments should be reserved for non-intuitive or optimized code. This should be rare, and well encapsulated to allow extensive testing.
4) In general, much commenting signifies bad coding!
The fact that some people have problems installing Linux is hardly insummountable - it's just a bit of work for someone who could be bothered.
The real issue is whether Linux-on-Mac is worth the effort given that MacOS networks properly now there's (OS) X.
The answer, obviously, is "Yes", for exactly the same reasons that Linux is worth it in general. Whether or not you use Linux on your Mac, there is no upper limit on your freedom because you can always go to Linux.
True!
Starting from zero, windows is arcane and badly organised. It doesn't get better as you dig deeper. At least Linux is comparitively better constructed internally.
My wife had NO computer knowledge ("how do you make capital letters?") and started with GNOME on Linux. No real problem. Now she gets frustrated when she has to use a Windows box.
It is unreasonable (even if desirable in this case) to build into the UI of an OS that it be easy coming from an OS with a different UI!
There is a learning curve, obviously. It will take a few weeks. There are books. You have to read them.
Really? From whose perspective? Like most languages a one-year intensive course at a university in China is enough to read newspapers, write expressively communicate orally reasonably well.
"you have to understand that all these Asian cultures basically hate each other"
It is the "correct" way of pronouncing the Chinese written language, and is the language of the Han ethnic group, who are by far the largest in China. The correlation between the Han people, written Chinese and "Mandarin" is very close.
"...written language (which I presume is what we're talking about with the Web)"
Okay, more specifically, the total buying power of all those who understand the Chinese that was originally of the Han people will overtake the total buying power of those who understand the language originally of the English people within the next 20 years.
In comparison Africa's total population is much smaller, and there is no comparibly dominant language.
It's not China who will overtake the world but profit motivated people who will place China at the top of their marketing priorities.
Yes, I mean it.
In the same way that English overpowered French even though it was highly entrenched, Han Chinese will overpower English.
The main reason people learn another language is not interest, or because it's cool, but because it will help them make money. The way it can do that is by helping them to sell to someone who speaks that language.
It is the size of the US market which drove the growth of English as a second language.
China will overtake the US in this sense (in total, not per capita) some time in the next 20 years, and as it approaches that we'll see progressively more of the internet and of content production in general in Chinese.
Slashdot Mirror
If you check out most of the 9-11 terrorists, you'll find they were rather brilliant and disiplined people.
They'd have rolled their own strong encryption in a week or two if required.
They've had digital radio in the US for years.
We're talking digital SATELITE radio.
He's a bit like the British royal family. ...
They get endless flak in the press, but their reaction is a consistent non-inflamatory one-liner and a speech once or twice per year.
Also, they have about as much power
Nevertheless, somehow, they wield great influence.
(Resting on past greatness perhaps?)
Anyone know about the other big developing markets?
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh?
Indonesia?
Arab countries?
South America?
Obviously WXP is available pirated in all these places too but it would be interesting to note the comparitive penetration rates.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,55 1037,00.html
Well, they've expelled him so far from Saudi Arabia and Sudan ...
Since they bought Cygnus who developed Cygwin for their internal needs then released it GPLed.
When you (gu)estimate how long development might take for a project, the gut-feeling you get will give you the time for the FIRST ITERATION. You need AT LEAST two iterations (since the first is the process of learning what your software actually amounts to). So it's at least something like double your expectations. In reality, 5 or 6 iterations are likely to be necessary - that's 4 or more years for anything substantial. But people don't do it this way usually - they just hack and re-hack until bugs are suppressed to a reasonable usable level. This method takes rather longer so 10 years for a bugless efficient functional solution to a non-trivial requirement doesn't surprise me.
Read this book by Tim Flannery (if you can get your hands on one - it's out of print). It details exactly the process by which man, on arrival in a land not adapted to them, extinguished most edible species within a few hundred years. This did not happen in Africa and Asia (until recently) since the fauna there was adapted to man.
I have worked a number of such companies (some European but of Fortune 500 scale) which do use open-source tools - such as gcc, gdb, DDD, emacs, Samba, Apache, myriad other open-source development tools and even Linux.
The reasons were that such tools were in some cases: better, more standard, cross-platform, robust. In the case of Linux it was a platform which was x86 based (removing some endian issues) and would recompile our Solaris code without much change (we had problems with Solaris for x86) and lived happily on our network.
Not Indoeuropeans - they're Turkic.
The pair programming angle is minor and unnecessary.
It's really about the software project change cost-curve paradox: that it is only in implementation that most design flaws can be found but that at that stage it's too expensive to make the required design change, so hacking occurs.
XP allows a design change to be propogated controllably through the implementation model avoiding twisted topologies.
The change in philosophy is a hard sell to management who have only just got their head around the (in my opinion now discredited) UML.
Is there any pressure to use Objective C for development (not that I'd be adverse to that)?
How much of the book did you actually read?
The article is indeed pretentious crap, but the book is not. I don't think the author of the article read much of the book.
No, you are not a Hacker. You are a "Protestant" (in terms of work ethic).
The two who were fired may well have been Hackers - and they were fired because they were not Protestants.
The Hacker ethic is better for the worker - but not necessarily more productive.
Hmmm. A remarkable mixture of stereotypes.
... is he the guy who can't even pick up guys??? :-)
I mean - does he dress well?
Can he dance?
Does he get on well with women?
Or
When I download something, the first thing I look for is comments. No matter how clever or elegant the code is, nothing 10,000 lines long can ever be so self-evident that you don't need comments.
1) I hope you don't mean 10000 lines in a single execution unit.
2) Well written code needs few comments. By well written I mean, most importantly, using appropriate object names. They should come from the environment - designs, protocols, manuals etc - without abreviation, retaining spacing (with underscores) and capitalization, so that there is no ambiguity as to what you refer.
3) Comments should be reserved for non-intuitive or optimized code. This should be rare, and well encapsulated to allow extensive testing.
4) In general, much commenting signifies bad coding!
The fact that some people have problems installing Linux is hardly insummountable - it's just a bit of work for someone who could be bothered.
The real issue is whether Linux-on-Mac is worth the effort given that MacOS networks properly now there's (OS) X.
The answer, obviously, is "Yes", for exactly the same reasons that Linux is worth it in general. Whether or not you use Linux on your Mac, there is no upper limit on your freedom because you can always go to Linux.
True!
Starting from zero, windows is arcane and badly organised. It doesn't get better as you dig deeper. At least Linux is comparitively better constructed internally.
My wife had NO computer knowledge ("how do you make capital letters?") and started with GNOME on Linux. No real problem. Now she gets frustrated when she has to use a Windows box.
It is unreasonable (even if desirable in this case) to build into the UI of an OS that it be easy coming from an OS with a different UI!
There is a learning curve, obviously. It will take a few weeks. There are books. You have to read them.
"With that despicable government they've got?"
European powers expanded rapidly while under the authoritarian rule of aristocracy.
The US did pretty well with slavery.
Don't be naive.
"Mandarin is extremely difficult to learn"
Really? From whose perspective? Like most languages a one-year intensive course at a university in China is enough to read newspapers, write expressively communicate orally reasonably well.
"you have to understand that all these Asian cultures basically hate each other"
Just like European countries until very recently.
"First of all, Mandarin is a spoken dialect"
It is the "correct" way of pronouncing the Chinese written language, and is the language of the Han ethnic group, who are by far the largest in China. The correlation between the Han people, written Chinese and "Mandarin" is very close.
"...written language (which I presume is what we're talking about with the Web)"
This certainly won't be true in 20 years.
Okay, more specifically, the total buying power of all those who understand the Chinese that was originally of the Han people will overtake the total buying power of those who understand the language originally of the English people within the next 20 years.
In comparison Africa's total population is much smaller, and there is no comparibly dominant language.
It's not China who will overtake the world but profit motivated people who will place China at the top of their marketing priorities.
Total market size is what counts the most.
"How many of these Mandrin, Spanish, and Hindi speakers also speak English?"
A number inversely proportional to the number of speakers. In Mandarin's case, a very small proportion.
"How many of them view their language as an impediment in their business?"
Those who want to sell to English speaking markets, of course!
Yes, I mean it.
In the same way that English overpowered French even though it was highly entrenched, Han Chinese will overpower English.
The main reason people learn another language is not interest, or because it's cool, but because it will help them make money. The way it can do that is by helping them to sell to someone who speaks that language.
It is the size of the US market which drove the growth of English as a second language.
China will overtake the US in this sense (in total, not per capita) some time in the next 20 years, and as it approaches that we'll see progressively more of the internet and of content production in general in Chinese.