Yes. Salaries are low in Karachi, we pay her about $5000 USD per year. So we bought enough bitcoin to cover that for a few years so we wouldn't have to do a lot of small transactions. We weren't really expecting the surge in value, but now we have enough to cover her salary for a few centuries.
Do you actually use it as the negotiated salary? As in 'X' number of bitcoins a year?
No. Her salary is set in PR (Pakistani Rupees).
Presumably you do a last minute calculation based on a more stable currency
Yes. We calculate the BC->PR exchange rate, and send that many BC.
and by the same token she presumably cashes it out pretty quickly.
No idea. I never asked her. But I presume that she did, because if she had held onto them she will be a USD millionaire many times over and would would have quit working for us long ago.
things will become worse because massive numbers of coal plants are being added while idiots defend it.
The only idiot defending coal is Trump, and since he was elected America has added zero new coal plants, and has no new coal plants in the pipeline or even being planned.
And if we had spent the R&D money back in the '70s to boost renewable, sources of energy that don't emit greenhouse gases
We did spend the money. Billions of tax dollars were spent on shale oil and other nonsense. But governments are really bad at "picking winners". The breakthroughs that actually made a difference, such as hydraulic fracturing, LED light bulbs, lithium batteries, and solar panel manufacturing tech, all came from nerds in the private sector, not politicians. Governments should set goals and establish incentives, then leave the details to others.
It is better than real money for anonymous transactions, such as buying drugs, or funding an off shore gambling account.
It is also better than real money for many international transactions. My company employs a graphic artist in Karachi. She emails us her work, and we pay her salary in bitcoins. This is much cheaper and faster than using a bank. We have also made a nice profit from the stash of bitcoins we bought for this purpose several years ago.
I was always taught that tests should be written by a QA developer instead of the application developer
You are doing it wrong. Unit tests should be written by the developer, and the class/method/function and the unit test should be written simultaneously by the same person. Code test commit code test commit code test commit.
QA people should focus on high level functionality and usability, not implementation details.
if I spent time writing tests I'd never get anything done on the timeframe demanded of me.
You are doing it wrong. TDD saves time. Even during death marches, I write unit tests. The time spent writing tests is way less than time spent chasing bugs.
I have worked with an after-school coding program for 4-6th graders for several years. My experience is that the best way to start kids out is 2D graphics. They can see the output, tell when it is wrong, and it looks cool when they get it right.
Start out by drawing a square, then a triangle, then a pentagram (5 point star). They not only learn coding, but also about angles, cartesian coordinates, and logical thinking.
After they master basic shapes, they move on to responding to mouse clicks, and making stuff move.
The newbies use Scratch. When they are ready, they move to Python.
In my area (San Jose) the high schools teach Java because that is what the CS AP test uses, and that is much more rigorous than what we teach the younglings.
Excess bad of writers, atheletes, historians, mathematicians, wtf.
Indeed. "Some people are bad at X, therefore we shouldn't teach X" is a dumb argument.
My kids learned Scratch, then Python, then C++, then Java. My daughter got a 5 on her CS AP test. My son just completed an "AI bootcamp" summer program for teens. CS is the most-in-demand college degree. If you have bright kids, you are negligent if you are not teaching them this stuff.
But if you don't, no problem. My kids can use part of their $150k starting salary to pay your kids to clean their toilets. Please teach them to scrub under the rim.
... modifying the code to pass that test without regressing...
Who said you don't regress? Regression testing should be a standard part of any dev process. Before you commit code, you should run your full test suite... with a single command (or 'click', if you use an IDE). In you don't then: "You are doing it wrong."
The fact is you don't need agile to do TDD and FBF.
Sure. But I learned to do both in the context of Agile development. Agile is basically a bag of tricks. Some are good, a few are bad, and some are good in some situations but not in others.
TDD and FBF are always good ideas, and tech-debt accumulates rapidly when they are not done.
Pair programming is good for training newbies, or for a 2nd set of eyes when wrangling with a gnarly bug like a race condition, but mostly holds back good coders.
We do standups, but not everyday, and there is no penalty for not attending... or for bringing a chair. We don't take them seriously.
Sprints are good for procrastinators and perfectionists, who work better with deadlines.
Stories are good, but they don't replace good docs. My experience is that you start with stories, then write the docs. During initial development we refer to the stories far more than the docs. But the docs are important for wrapping up the details.
The only specific example given in TFA is the pedestrian killed by Uber, which was NOT an algorithm failure, it was a policy failure. The policy decision to toss control back to an inattentive human when a collision was imminent was made by humans, not a machine.
For example shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded theater.
You might want to read the history of this analogy. It was first used by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. His reasoning was that obviously the government had the power to arrest someone for shouting fire in a theater, so, hey, it was also okay for the government to arrest people for speaking out against the WW1 draft. Totally the same thing.
So the defendants went to prison, where they were beaten and abused. Some of them died there.
So using stupid analogies to justify political censorship has a long history.
Later in his life, Oliver Wendell Holmes said this ruling was one of his biggest regrets.
Meanwhile people keep telling me she should just be a welder a few make $26/hr ignoring that's only the top 10% and they're doing dangerous work.
Welding is not dangerous, and $26/hr is way less than the top 10% make. Pay is proportional to skill. If all you know how to do is stick welding from your high school shop class, you may not make much. But if you learn MIG, TIG, or acetylene welding, and are good at it, you can earn $50/hr or more even in flyover country.
The four year colleges don't like to give credit for community college classes.
In California, it is very clear which CC credits will transfer to UCs and CSUs. The students know this information upfront. Remedial classes for stuff you should have learned in high school does not transfer. Most other credits do transfer.
CC is an especially good choice for people that goofed off in high school. After 2 years at a CC, the 4 year colleges will only look at your CC grades, and ignore your HS GPA.
Forgive it and make Big Education pay for the loss.
The debt load is $1.5T. "Big Education" does not have that kind of money, and the research universities with big endowments are not where the defaults are. Why should Harvard have to bailout Trump Univ?
Any plausible bailout will be paid by the taxpayers, or won't happen.
Solution: Go to CC for the first 2 years, then transfer to the 4 year college for your junior and senior year. Your degree is identical to those who were there for all 4 years, but it cost you much less. The tuition is much less, and you can live at home rent free, with Mom buying the groceries.
At least in California, the 2 year community colleges are set up as "feeders" to the UC and CSU systems. It is much easier to transfer CC->UC than CSU->UC.
Slashdot Mirror
You company held bitcoins to pay salaries?
Yes. Salaries are low in Karachi, we pay her about $5000 USD per year. So we bought enough bitcoin to cover that for a few years so we wouldn't have to do a lot of small transactions. We weren't really expecting the surge in value, but now we have enough to cover her salary for a few centuries.
Do you actually use it as the negotiated salary? As in 'X' number of bitcoins a year?
No. Her salary is set in PR (Pakistani Rupees).
Presumably you do a last minute calculation based on a more stable currency
Yes. We calculate the BC->PR exchange rate, and send that many BC.
and by the same token she presumably cashes it out pretty quickly.
No idea. I never asked her. But I presume that she did, because if she had held onto them she will be a USD millionaire many times over and would would have quit working for us long ago.
things will become worse because massive numbers of coal plants are being added while idiots defend it.
The only idiot defending coal is Trump, and since he was elected America has added zero new coal plants, and has no new coal plants in the pipeline or even being planned.
And if we had spent the R&D money back in the '70s to boost renewable, sources of energy that don't emit greenhouse gases
We did spend the money. Billions of tax dollars were spent on shale oil and other nonsense. But governments are really bad at "picking winners". The breakthroughs that actually made a difference, such as hydraulic fracturing, LED light bulbs, lithium batteries, and solar panel manufacturing tech, all came from nerds in the private sector, not politicians. Governments should set goals and establish incentives, then leave the details to others.
Bitcoin is literally useless.
It is better than real money for anonymous transactions, such as buying drugs, or funding an off shore gambling account.
It is also better than real money for many international transactions. My company employs a graphic artist in Karachi. She emails us her work, and we pay her salary in bitcoins. This is much cheaper and faster than using a bank. We have also made a nice profit from the stash of bitcoins we bought for this purpose several years ago.
There is very little math in school.
What? Math is a required course every single year from K thru 12, taught for an hour or so every day.
Programming is an elective.
I learned calculus in high school. I also learned to program. In my career, the programming skills have been a thousand times more useful.
You only need calculus if you are writing a physics engine, or doing physical simulations. Likely less than 1% of coders do either.
If everyone can code, then coding wil be a worthless skill
If this were true, then locations where coding skills are rare, such as central Africa, would pay coders the most.
And locations where coders are common, such as the SF Bay Area, would pay them the least.
This is the exact opposite of reality.
I was always taught that tests should be written by a QA developer instead of the application developer
You are doing it wrong. Unit tests should be written by the developer, and the class/method/function and the unit test should be written simultaneously by the same person. Code test commit code test commit code test commit.
QA people should focus on high level functionality and usability, not implementation details.
if I spent time writing tests I'd never get anything done on the timeframe demanded of me.
You are doing it wrong. TDD saves time. Even during death marches, I write unit tests. The time spent writing tests is way less than time spent chasing bugs.
I have worked with an after-school coding program for 4-6th graders for several years. My experience is that the best way to start kids out is 2D graphics. They can see the output, tell when it is wrong, and it looks cool when they get it right.
Start out by drawing a square, then a triangle, then a pentagram (5 point star). They not only learn coding, but also about angles, cartesian coordinates, and logical thinking.
After they master basic shapes, they move on to responding to mouse clicks, and making stuff move.
The newbies use Scratch. When they are ready, they move to Python.
In my area (San Jose) the high schools teach Java because that is what the CS AP test uses, and that is much more rigorous than what we teach the younglings.
Excess bad of writers, atheletes, historians, mathematicians, wtf.
Indeed. "Some people are bad at X, therefore we shouldn't teach X" is a dumb argument.
My kids learned Scratch, then Python, then C++, then Java. My daughter got a 5 on her CS AP test. My son just completed an "AI bootcamp" summer program for teens. CS is the most-in-demand college degree. If you have bright kids, you are negligent if you are not teaching them this stuff.
But if you don't, no problem. My kids can use part of their $150k starting salary to pay your kids to clean their toilets. Please teach them to scrub under the rim.
... modifying the code to pass that test without regressing ...
Who said you don't regress? Regression testing should be a standard part of any dev process. Before you commit code, you should run your full test suite ... with a single command (or 'click', if you use an IDE). In you don't then: "You are doing it wrong."
I got cooled off from unit tests, in favor of functional ones (spanning multiple classes/modules).
They are not alternatives. You need both. Write the unit tests while you code each class. Write the functional tests while you do integration.
If you are hardcore Agile, you write all the tests first, but in practice almost nobody does that.
The fact is you don't need agile to do TDD and FBF.
Sure. But I learned to do both in the context of Agile development. Agile is basically a bag of tricks. Some are good, a few are bad, and some are good in some situations but not in others.
TDD and FBF are always good ideas, and tech-debt accumulates rapidly when they are not done.
Pair programming is good for training newbies, or for a 2nd set of eyes when wrangling with a gnarly bug like a race condition, but mostly holds back good coders.
We do standups, but not everyday, and there is no penalty for not attending ... or for bringing a chair. We don't take them seriously.
Sprints are good for procrastinators and perfectionists, who work better with deadlines.
Stories are good, but they don't replace good docs. My experience is that you start with stories, then write the docs. During initial development we refer to the stories far more than the docs. But the docs are important for wrapping up the details.
...Sounds good on paper, disastrous in practice.
Another similarity is that when it fails, the proponents will say that is only because you weren't doing it right.
My opinion:
Good agile practices: TDD, FBF
Ok in moderation: Standups, sprints, stories
Bad: Everything else
TDD = Test Driven Development
FBF = Fix Bugs First
The only specific example given in TFA is the pedestrian killed by Uber, which was NOT an algorithm failure, it was a policy failure. The policy decision to toss control back to an inattentive human when a collision was imminent was made by humans, not a machine.
And in China and Russia, you don't even have to commit a crime to get hauled off to jail!
Yes you do. They just have different crimes.
An American is four times more likely to be arrested and incarcerated than a Chinese citizen, and 18 times more like to be imprisoned than an Indian.
Treating people as objects and being a psychopath are the same thing.
So exactly what are you saying then ? That people should have the right to yell FIRE! in a theater ?
Of course not. I am saying that equating "yelling fire in a theater" with "hate speech", as the GPP was doing, is idiotic.
How is allowing Ann Coulter to speak on campus harming anyone? Being offended is not "harm".
As an aside, I can't understand why liberals want to silence Ann Coulter. I can't imagine a better spokesperson for any cause that I despise.
For example shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded theater.
You might want to read the history of this analogy. It was first used by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. His reasoning was that obviously the government had the power to arrest someone for shouting fire in a theater, so, hey, it was also okay for the government to arrest people for speaking out against the WW1 draft. Totally the same thing.
So the defendants went to prison, where they were beaten and abused. Some of them died there.
So using stupid analogies to justify political censorship has a long history.
Later in his life, Oliver Wendell Holmes said this ruling was one of his biggest regrets.
Shouting fire in a crowded theater
Schenck v. United States
Meanwhile people keep telling me she should just be a welder a few make $26/hr ignoring that's only the top 10% and they're doing dangerous work.
Welding is not dangerous, and $26/hr is way less than the top 10% make. Pay is proportional to skill. If all you know how to do is stick welding from your high school shop class, you may not make much. But if you learn MIG, TIG, or acetylene welding, and are good at it, you can earn $50/hr or more even in flyover country.
Disclaimer: I am not a very good welder.
The four year colleges don't like to give credit for community college classes.
In California, it is very clear which CC credits will transfer to UCs and CSUs. The students know this information upfront. Remedial classes for stuff you should have learned in high school does not transfer. Most other credits do transfer.
CC is an especially good choice for people that goofed off in high school. After 2 years at a CC, the 4 year colleges will only look at your CC grades, and ignore your HS GPA.
Forgive it and make Big Education pay for the loss.
The debt load is $1.5T. "Big Education" does not have that kind of money, and the research universities with big endowments are not where the defaults are. Why should Harvard have to bailout Trump Univ?
Any plausible bailout will be paid by the taxpayers, or won't happen.
So too many people go to college ... and the solution is to make it free so fewer people go?
And you are a school teacher? We may have found the root problem.
Solution: Go to CC for the first 2 years, then transfer to the 4 year college for your junior and senior year. Your degree is identical to those who were there for all 4 years, but it cost you much less. The tuition is much less, and you can live at home rent free, with Mom buying the groceries.
At least in California, the 2 year community colleges are set up as "feeders" to the UC and CSU systems. It is much easier to transfer CC->UC than CSU->UC.