is it better to start creating a new algorithm as fast as you can type or to find an existing algorithm that just needs a minor tweak to work?
Exactly. I didn't mean to imply that everything was created from scratch. In fact, that's precisely the point. An "uber" programmer has the uncanny ability to remember (sort of a photographic memory) algorithms they've learned or devised in the past. After many years of accumulating these techniques, it's as if they are just sitting on some mental shelf ready to be applied whenever needed.
Ok. I give up. Maybe he did stare into space when I wasn't looking! Maybe he even mumbled 'Hmm. I think I've seen something like this before.'" under his breath occasionally! And yes, he did occasionally eat, go to the head, sleep and function as an otherwise ordinary person.
I should realize that this is/. and that no matter how I try to make my point there will always be those that disagree.
The point I was trying to make is that Cooks statement:
An über-programmer, Cook explains, is likely to be someone who stares quietly into space and then says 'Hmm. I think I've seen something like this before.'"
Is bullsh!t. Most people I know when faced with a problem to solve do that, whether they are an uber programmer or a slug, or whether they're a programmer at all. Doing that, or any similar external show of contemplative behavior tells you next to nothing about their abilities. In fact, it could very easily be interpreted as "Hmmm... I hope nobody notices that I don't have a clue what he just said".
It's the ability to conceptualize an enormously complex application "in their head" and hold it there as they commit their somatic creation to an extra-somatic media such as a source file that is so exceptional.
No doubt somewhere in the depths of their cerebral cortex the word "Hmm" is floating around and obviously integral to the mental process was a great deal of associative reasoning, but to an external observer, one got the distinct impression that getting it all typed out was the bottleneck.
Wrong.
I once witnessed one of these folks code up a sophisticated multiple system integration application consisting over over 8,000 lines of Java code, database tables and stored procedures, all in a four-week period. The new system replaced an aging tangle of messy, yet finely tuned set of "C" programs. The new code was very readable, very efficient (performed better than the old system by a factor of 3) and was running bug-free within 2 days of system integration testing. It's been in place for over a year and has had maybe one set of minor bug fixes applied. On top of that, this person spent one week culling through the documentation and code prior to taking on the project and along the way produced a set of well written functional requirements, high-level design, detail-design and operations documents.
Don't assume that just because you've never run across this type of intellect, that it doesn't exist - it does. I consider myself a "well above average" developer, but working with one of these folks was certainly a humbling experience and made me realize how much pure "talent" can make a difference.
There are plenty of great programmers who produce quality code quickly following standard methodologies. I don't consider these "uber" programmers. It's like the difference between Barry Manilow and Mozart. No question both have talent, but the term "genius" can only truly be applied to the one who's currently decomposing.
To me an "uber" programmer is one who does NOT stare quietly into space thinking "I've seen this before", but rather, without pausing to take a breath implements the algorithm as fast as he can type.
It's as if the solution, no matter how complex, is already assembled in his brain and it's just a matter of spitting it out to a file as quickly as his fingers can move. It's not so much the recollection of a some prior scenario, as it is the seamless integration of numerous previously experienced scenarios as well as novel algorithms into a new cohesive algorithm that sets an "uber" programmer apart from the run of the mill code monkey. In my experience, these type of folks are few a far between.
Of course, there's no problem if they all play golf together at their country club. It's the "appearance" of conflict of interest thats the problem here, not the "actual" conflict of interest that goes on all the time.
They have a consulting business?
Just that fact alone says enough to me given that it's supposed to be "a programming language so easy even a caveman can do it".
(Apologies to cavemen everywhere)
These scientists obviously never heard of Ockham's Razor. The fact that these particles have not been found could not be because they don't exist... no, it must be that they're are conspiring with the universe to deny us knowledge of their existence!
I think they watched the Wizard of Oz just a few times to many. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...
>>This part of the world is just breathing a bit easier that we are not going to get nuked out of existence during the next 3 years...perhaps. That's some pretty dark admiration for the US Goverment.
>>
The U.S. government did not receive the award. Obama still has to work within the constraints of the political system in the U.S.. The president of the US has to support US troops, wherever they are deployed. To do otherwise would be political suicide.
In fact recently, rather than just giving the US generals in Afganistan carte-blance on their request for more troops, he is giving serious consideration to other options. He has made it clear that his enemy is Al-Qaeda, not the people of Afganistan or Pakistan,or even the Taliban. It's Al-Qaeda and O.B.L. that he's after. He's trying to focus the military effort on that objective and the more cooperation he can get from Pakistan and Afganistan in achieving that end, the sooner the troops will be gone.
The point is that Obama's message and stated direction is better relations with all countries, even those that might have "some pretty dark admiration" for the US for it's past policies.
The award was given by an international committee, not Faux News. When you consider how the international community views the U.S. as compared to the previous administration, Obama has made tremendous strides. Whether this award is due to actual actions by Obama, or due to the message he sends is immaterial. The fact is the world views the U.S. in a much more positive light and is much less inclined to view it as the enemy, thereby promoting the prospects of greater peace throughout the world. In addition, the prestige of this award (at least to non-US conservatives) will empower Obama even more, as he will have additional clout when working with his adversaries because he will come into the negotiations as a man of peace rather than a man of war.
While he is still having to grapple with the remnants of the Bush administration debacle in a responsible way (and not getting any help from the right), it does not diminish his overall message of peace and cooperation with other nations throughout the globe.
This sounds like a great application for my new write-only-memory (WOM) drive! Just copy all your illegal files over to this drive and the authorities will never know you have them!
Don't assume that because they are programmers, they don't understand business or the big picture. If they are truly seasoned then they have probably done a stint in management at one time or another and chose to go back to development.
Perhaps the best advice I can give is listen - you might just learn from them. After many years of taking upper management's great new ideas and trying to shoehorn them into the way the business actually works though carefully crafted software, there's a good chance they know more about the business than anyone else.
Re:More than scientific learning
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 1
I noticed the tag "hardon" was attached to this post. At first I thought surely this was a misspelling of hadron, but then I noticed the reference to "turned on" in the post. In any case I'm sure the physicists got a hadron from this success:)
Of course how effective you can be as a telecommuter depends on your profession. I work in IT and have been working 100% telecommute for about 7 years and it has worked out just fine.
I can get a lot more done with email and phone than I ever could with face-to-face meetings. I can put my thoughts together concisely in an email and avoid the smalltalk. I can also keep working while I'm listening in on a conference call (thanks to the mute button) and multitask more than one project at a time. It's not uncommon for me to work on a project with the project leader in Arkasas, the DBA in Missippi, the customer in Texas and the data center in Louisianna so the work environment is disparate anyway.
Face-to-face is fine and beneficial for gaining the comfort level of the employer, but if you can gain their trust with solid results it really makes no difference. As a bonus, I'm able to charge cheaper rates because I don't have a lot on travel expenses.
Slashdot Mirror
is it better to start creating a new algorithm as fast as you can type or to find an existing algorithm that just needs a minor tweak to work?
Exactly. I didn't mean to imply that everything was created from scratch. In fact, that's precisely the point. An "uber" programmer has the uncanny ability to remember (sort of a photographic memory) algorithms they've learned or devised in the past. After many years of accumulating these techniques, it's as if they are just sitting on some mental shelf ready to be applied whenever needed.
I should realize that this is
The point I was trying to make is that Cooks statement:
An über-programmer, Cook explains, is likely to be someone who stares quietly into space and then says 'Hmm. I think I've seen something like this before.'"
Is bullsh!t. Most people I know when faced with a problem to solve do that, whether they are an uber programmer or a slug, or whether they're a programmer at all. Doing that, or any similar external show of contemplative behavior tells you next to nothing about their abilities. In fact, it could very easily be interpreted as "Hmmm... I hope nobody notices that I don't have a clue what he just said".
It's the ability to conceptualize an enormously complex application "in their head" and hold it there as they commit their somatic creation to an extra-somatic media such as a source file that is so exceptional.
No doubt somewhere in the depths of their cerebral cortex the word "Hmm" is floating around and obviously integral to the mental process was a great deal of associative reasoning, but to an external observer, one got the distinct impression that getting it all typed out was the bottleneck.
Somehow I think that Bill may have had a slight "edge" over other applicants for the chief software architect position.
So your uber programmer, when he needs to sort a file, writes a sort program.
No, maybe he just types :)
sort filename1 > filename2
But he does so without the requisite "staring into space" step....
In that case, I would not apply the term "uber programmer" to him.
Wrong.
I once witnessed one of these folks code up a sophisticated multiple system integration application consisting over over 8,000 lines of Java code, database tables and stored procedures, all in a four-week period. The new system replaced an aging tangle of messy, yet finely tuned set of "C" programs. The new code was very readable, very efficient (performed better than the old system by a factor of 3) and was running bug-free within 2 days of system integration testing. It's been in place for over a year and has had maybe one set of minor bug fixes applied. On top of that, this person spent one week culling through the documentation and code prior to taking on the project and along the way produced a set of well written functional requirements, high-level design, detail-design and operations documents.
Don't assume that just because you've never run across this type of intellect, that it doesn't exist - it does. I consider myself a "well above average" developer, but working with one of these folks was certainly a humbling experience and made me realize how much pure "talent" can make a difference.
There are plenty of great programmers who produce quality code quickly following standard methodologies. I don't consider these "uber" programmers. It's like the difference between Barry Manilow and Mozart. No question both have talent, but the term "genius" can only truly be applied to the one who's currently decomposing.
Certainly not staring into space! /. !
Most likely he's reading
To me an "uber" programmer is one who does NOT stare quietly into space thinking "I've seen this before", but rather, without pausing to take a breath implements the algorithm as fast as he can type.
It's as if the solution, no matter how complex, is already assembled in his brain and it's just a matter of spitting it out to a file as quickly as his fingers can move. It's not so much the recollection of a some prior scenario, as it is the seamless integration of numerous previously experienced scenarios as well as novel algorithms into a new cohesive algorithm that sets an "uber" programmer apart from the run of the mill code monkey. In my experience, these type of folks are few a far between.
Don't hold your breath for the lawyers in the state legislatures to make any laws that will impact them - now there's the REAL conflict of interest.
Of course, there's no problem if they all play golf together at their country club. It's the "appearance" of conflict of interest thats the problem here, not the "actual" conflict of interest that goes on all the time.
They have a consulting business? Just that fact alone says enough to me given that it's supposed to be "a programming language so easy even a caveman can do it". (Apologies to cavemen everywhere)
These scientists obviously never heard of Ockham's Razor. The fact that these particles have not been found could not be because they don't exist... no, it must be that they're are conspiring with the universe to deny us knowledge of their existence! I think they watched the Wizard of Oz just a few times to many. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...
Nope. I think GWB has that distinction in class by himself.
>>This part of the world is just breathing a bit easier that we are not going to get nuked out of existence during the next 3 years...perhaps. That's some pretty dark admiration for the US Goverment. >> The U.S. government did not receive the award. Obama still has to work within the constraints of the political system in the U.S.. The president of the US has to support US troops, wherever they are deployed. To do otherwise would be political suicide. In fact recently, rather than just giving the US generals in Afganistan carte-blance on their request for more troops, he is giving serious consideration to other options. He has made it clear that his enemy is Al-Qaeda, not the people of Afganistan or Pakistan,or even the Taliban. It's Al-Qaeda and O.B.L. that he's after. He's trying to focus the military effort on that objective and the more cooperation he can get from Pakistan and Afganistan in achieving that end, the sooner the troops will be gone. The point is that Obama's message and stated direction is better relations with all countries, even those that might have "some pretty dark admiration" for the US for it's past policies.
The award was given by an international committee, not Faux News. When you consider how the international community views the U.S. as compared to the previous administration, Obama has made tremendous strides. Whether this award is due to actual actions by Obama, or due to the message he sends is immaterial. The fact is the world views the U.S. in a much more positive light and is much less inclined to view it as the enemy, thereby promoting the prospects of greater peace throughout the world. In addition, the prestige of this award (at least to non-US conservatives) will empower Obama even more, as he will have additional clout when working with his adversaries because he will come into the negotiations as a man of peace rather than a man of war. While he is still having to grapple with the remnants of the Bush administration debacle in a responsible way (and not getting any help from the right), it does not diminish his overall message of peace and cooperation with other nations throughout the globe.
This sounds like a great application for my new write-only-memory (WOM) drive! Just copy all your illegal files over to this drive and the authorities will never know you have them!
Everyone knows we have until 12/21/2012 until the world ends.
Don't assume that because they are programmers, they don't understand business or the big picture. If they are truly seasoned then they have probably done a stint in management at one time or another and chose to go back to development. Perhaps the best advice I can give is listen - you might just learn from them. After many years of taking upper management's great new ideas and trying to shoehorn them into the way the business actually works though carefully crafted software, there's a good chance they know more about the business than anyone else.
I noticed the tag "hardon" was attached to this post. At first I thought surely this was a misspelling of hadron, but then I noticed the reference to "turned on" in the post. In any case I'm sure the physicists got a hadron from this success :)
Of course how effective you can be as a telecommuter depends on your profession. I work in IT and have been working 100% telecommute for about 7 years and it has worked out just fine. I can get a lot more done with email and phone than I ever could with face-to-face meetings. I can put my thoughts together concisely in an email and avoid the smalltalk. I can also keep working while I'm listening in on a conference call (thanks to the mute button) and multitask more than one project at a time. It's not uncommon for me to work on a project with the project leader in Arkasas, the DBA in Missippi, the customer in Texas and the data center in Louisianna so the work environment is disparate anyway. Face-to-face is fine and beneficial for gaining the comfort level of the employer, but if you can gain their trust with solid results it really makes no difference. As a bonus, I'm able to charge cheaper rates because I don't have a lot on travel expenses.