This is now a two day old discussion, so I may be late. here goes anyways:-)
I fail to see what the problem is here. In my house, if my kid comes home with a bad grade, the discussion instantly goes to the realm of show me your homework and exams. If the paper was unfairly graded, in my opinion, I will have a discussion with the teacher.
This was 15 year old, my wife was the teacher. The teacher didn't get the child to tell the truth: he asked a simple question that the parent should have asked.
For the record, the child isn't lazy. He's disorganized, and somewhat aloof.
After that conference, where the teacher clearly explained why the child wasn't succeeding in the class, quite a lot. Agreed. But not all parents got to the conferences. A lot of the underperforming kids parents' skip them unless called by the principal, or threatened with suspension.
Based on what, the title of "teacher"? Actually, they should. The kid is more likely fib about his performance than the teacher. Teachers, in my experience on both sides of the issue (my wife and half my friends are high school teachers), don't really discriminate.
However, if a teacher has constant problems being disrespected like that... Actually, it's generally from the same parents. And no level of proof would satisfy them. If you brought in the audio tape, something else would be at issue.
The problem is that I absolutely assure you that not every teacher is a good one Again, agreed. Been there, done that. This said, of the 30 or so high school teachers I had, three of them were bad.
We agree on a lot of stuff, I think. I don't know if you are a parent or not, but kids are manipulation machines. My daughters, who I love both to the ends of the earth, are especially adept at trying to change reality with either charm, rage, or calls to social justice. Essentially, it's all about self-interest. Which is the reason I tend to believe their teachers.
Re:This is all ridiculous and breeds future behavi
on
Internet Pranks in Schools
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· Score: 2, Informative
Can't speak for david, but the stories I have are in this vein: parent comes with child to teacher-parent conference upset at the teacher that child did not get a good grade. Teacher looks at child and says "did you do the assignments?" Child answers "no". Teacher tells parent "that's why he got a bad grade."
So, the question is, how much bull do you think this kid can get past his parents if one single question from the teacher can shed light on why he got a bad grade ? How much credibility does the teacher have in that household ?
Or the student who called a teacher a bitch in class. When the parent was called for a conference, her response was "do you have audio-tape proof ?"
I'm certainly not saying all parents are like this. Not even 15%. But if three or four students in a classroom disrupt, the whole class is in trouble. Computers start to crash. Equipment disappears. All sorts of stuff like that.
Wow. Somebody extracted pretty much what I wanted to say in my obscure post. On slashdot. And people modded him up. I'm floored:-).
Thanks for clarifying my post.
And my wife (teacher) pretty much agrees with your wife. The stories she comes back with from school really make me feel OK for saying "no" to my kids.:-)
Honestly, if she had fat legs and someone pointed it out to her in person would they have criminal/civil court documents filed over it? No, they would get detention/short-term suspension and move on with their lives. Quite true. But I know of certain circumstances where the teacher has absolutely no authority on anything that happens off school grounds. So the school can't back them up.
It's actually management that's behind.
Re:Not so hard to stop
on
eBay The Vote
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· Score: 1
I give you my voted ballot. You go in the booth with my ballot and your blank ballot. To get the money, you have to give me back a blank ballot. I then take the blank ballot you gave me to purchase my next vote.
This is purely abstract and would not work with ebay. But it's still an idea:-)
The sales tax in Quebec is 7.5 %. This is the provincial sales tax. 6% extra on top of this is Federal sales tax. The kicker on this is that they charge provincial sales tax on federal sales tax.
> And to think that all these young people voted and demonstrated AGAINST the CPE...
First I don't think there was a vote ( I may very well be wrong). They demonstrated. The government fell back.
Secondly, plans that attack only a segment of the population are bound to fail. This was a classic "protect the baby boomers" approach to the problem, I don't think it would have solved much.
That said, as much as the US has to move more toward protecting workers, France has to work the other way.
Money starved, large governmental institutions might actually be the first with the clout and incentive to massively move away from MSOffice.
Re:UML Modelling - Communications Gap
on
UML Fever
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· Score: 1
> Yes, it's easy and quick to hack together a working prototype using XP. I don't see pure XP projects getting well polished or being easily > maintained. Of course, projects heavily into UML and UP are also a maintenance nightmare.
This, from experience, depends on the level of expertise on your team. In both cases.
You can't "process" stupidity.:)
Re:UML Modelling - Communications Gap
on
UML Fever
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· Score: 1
>Peer programming is not a good idea, IMHO, as you > get better 'value' from code reviews instead. > (kind of like peer review afterwards instead of > during - and besides, any peer programming I know > of, one person codes, the other yawns, watches > out the window, daydreams of Sharon in accounts, etc)
I've honestly had the opposite effect. Slacking off was not an option.
> Test cases for everything before coding.. good if the design stays the same
This I've seen.
> No documentation is good - as long as there is > documentation produced by other means.. auto > generated by code comments for example.
Although I'd agree with you on this, I've seen many projects where the Javadocs (for example) get behind ( either they become irrelevant or worse false. )
But I think we agree on the big (brick) docs...
My main issue with XP is the discipline it requires: tons of people don't do the programmer tests or even fix them. Short deliveries don't allow for people having down time, and if you're in a heavyweight process company, people are used to fooling around in the "design" phase.
I had started reading on Crystal and found it more realistic in it's approach.
Re:UML Modelling - Communications Gap
on
UML Fever
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· Score: 1
I am somewhat curious of the reasons why you dislike XP.
How does XP / Pair Programming cope with two developers who are at opposite ends of this scale, or do you have to be pretty evenly matched in ability?
It doesn't, really. Sometimes you'll work with a slow junior, and you gotta live with that. But you should change partners pretty much with each task and should do so promiscuously.
Mind you, working with juniors will often get you out of blindly using techniques: chances are your partner will ask you why you are doing such and such, and you are going to have to justify it.
Keep in mind that XP wants to achieve the simplest design possible, not the most flexible. So overuse of patterns is a bad thing.
Whoa, doesn't the US protect its citizens ?
on
Loki Aftermath Looks Bad
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Where I come from (Quebec), corporations can't claim bankrupcy protection for salaries: you can sue (personally) the board of directors of a company if you aren't paid your salary.
If you get these problems in successive projects (meaning that the rule of doubling is necessary) you have other problems that have nothing to do with software engineering.
And doubling doesn't really protect you from the stuff you list. Do you tink you could replace your dead programmer within four days ?
Most of the things you list are really force majeure incidents.
And you know birth is not a personnal problem (and are generally forseable):)
The danger with constantly doubling is that it leads to falsely large numbers for small projects.
A project estimated at one day should NEVER take four days. A project estimated at three months could take a year.
In my opinion, everything is about risk and you seem to agree (the reasons you double your time is generally for unforseen events).
So if risk is the problem, we have to reduce risk. How should this be done ? The simple solution is shortening your horizon.
Instead of saying "this project of size X will be delivered in three months", deliver smaller increments more often ("this project of size X/12 will be delivered in one week")
The problem which NineNine referred to I believe is how to reconcile a large scale project using XP methodology with the MBA types who want one big estimate for when the whole damn project will be complete and how many dollars it will cost just from the original specifications
From your tone, I get that you aren't an MBA type:)
The main problem is that everybody wants a heavy handed process because that's how they know big things are built (like airplanes). But this ain't true of software, because specs change too much.
If your management (and marketing, etc) are not in line with extreme programming methods, it's not going to work there.
Agreed. But this is true of any developpement methodology.
1) Lack of up front planning - too many projects fail to do proper initial planning - specifically defining the problem to be solved, producing detailed product requirements, and a detailed project plan (and then sticking to it).
My opinion is that long term planning fails all the time because of...
2) Late (or incomplete) requirements - if you went to an architect half way through home construction and wanted to change the design of a house; you wouldn't be surprised if it fell behind schedule and went over cost.
...this. Customers (the people who pay) change their minds. Sales (your own) tend to over promise or even forget features promised.
I also think that getting precise requirements
is so difficult that it tends to be useless (except in a couple of businesses). Keep them simple...
My preferred developpement method is XP because it does just this.
5) Failure to have read Deming ("You cannot test quality into a product").
Which doesn't mean that you shouldn't test:)
7) Failure to place a senior developer on the team that knows about the previous issues.
Or, at least, a very knowlegable available customer.
Don't know if you'll read this and can't go offline...
My point about architecture is that without implementing it, you can't know if an architecture works.
My experience is that architectures are rarely so screwed up as to not be usable. It often in line with "if I could do this over again, I would change this..."
Slashdot Mirror
This was 15 year old, my wife was the teacher. The teacher didn't get the child to tell the truth: he asked a simple question that the parent should have asked.
For the record, the child isn't lazy. He's disorganized, and somewhat aloof. After that conference, where the teacher clearly explained why the child wasn't succeeding in the class, quite a lot. Agreed. But not all parents got to the conferences. A lot of the underperforming kids parents' skip them unless called by the principal, or threatened with suspension. Based on what, the title of "teacher"? Actually, they should. The kid is more likely fib about his performance than the teacher. Teachers, in my experience on both sides of the issue (my wife and half my friends are high school teachers), don't really discriminate. However, if a teacher has constant problems being disrespected like that... Actually, it's generally from the same parents. And no level of proof would satisfy them. If you brought in the audio tape, something else would be at issue. The problem is that I absolutely assure you that not every teacher is a good one Again, agreed. Been there, done that. This said, of the 30 or so high school teachers I had, three of them were bad.
We agree on a lot of stuff, I think. I don't know if you are a parent or not, but kids are manipulation machines. My daughters, who I love both to the ends of the earth, are especially adept at trying to change reality with either charm, rage, or calls to social justice. Essentially, it's all about self-interest. Which is the reason I tend to believe their teachers.
Can't speak for david, but the stories I have are in this vein: parent comes with child to teacher-parent conference upset at the teacher that child did not get a good grade. Teacher looks at child and says "did you do the assignments?" Child answers "no". Teacher tells parent "that's why he got a bad grade."
So, the question is, how much bull do you think this kid can get past his parents if one single question from the teacher can shed light on why he got a bad grade ? How much credibility does the teacher have in that household ?
Or the student who called a teacher a bitch in class. When the parent was called for a conference, her response was "do you have audio-tape proof ?"
I'm certainly not saying all parents are like this. Not even 15%. But if three or four students in a classroom disrupt, the whole class is in trouble. Computers start to crash. Equipment disappears. All sorts of stuff like that.
Wow. Somebody extracted pretty much what I wanted to say in my obscure post. On slashdot. :-).
:-)
And people modded him up. I'm floored
Thanks for clarifying my post.
And my wife (teacher) pretty much agrees with your wife. The stories she comes back with from school really make me feel OK for saying "no" to my kids.
It's actually management that's behind.
I give you my voted ballot. You go in the booth with my ballot and your blank ballot. To get the money, you have to give me back a blank ballot. I then take the blank ballot you gave me to purchase my next vote.
:-)
This is purely abstract and would not work with ebay. But it's still an idea
Ontario does the same.
The sales tax in Quebec is 7.5 %. This is the provincial sales tax.
6% extra on top of this is Federal sales tax.
The kicker on this is that they charge provincial sales tax on federal sales tax.
> Even for the Windows API, the code trumped the documentation.
:-)
The code always trumps the documentation, because nobody runs the documentation
> And to think that all these young people voted and demonstrated AGAINST the CPE...
First I don't think there was a vote ( I may very well be wrong). They demonstrated. The government fell back.
Secondly, plans that attack only a segment of the population are bound to fail. This was a classic "protect the baby boomers" approach to the problem, I don't think it would have solved much.
That said, as much as the US has to move more toward protecting workers, France has to work the other way.
Anybody feel like watching The Princess Bride ?
Never bet against a sicilian when death is on the line.
Scrum is more project management oriented. Many people use Scrum/XP
But the reasons given for limiting funding on stem cell research have nothing to do with making a profit or not.
I mostly agree that using taxpayer money for funding highly profitable business ventures might not be the best idea.
...has standardized on Open Office, I think.
Money starved, large governmental institutions might actually be the first with the clout and incentive to massively move away from MSOffice.
> Yes, it's easy and quick to hack together a working prototype using XP. I don't see pure XP projects getting well polished or being easily
:)
> maintained. Of course, projects heavily into UML and UP are also a maintenance nightmare.
This, from experience, depends on the level of expertise on your team. In both cases.
You can't "process" stupidity.
>Peer programming is not a good idea, IMHO, as you
> get better 'value' from code reviews instead.
> (kind of like peer review afterwards instead of
> during - and besides, any peer programming I know
> of, one person codes, the other yawns, watches
> out the window, daydreams of Sharon in accounts, etc)
I've honestly had the opposite effect. Slacking off was not an option.
> Test cases for everything before coding.. good if the design stays the same
This I've seen.
> No documentation is good - as long as there is
> documentation produced by other means.. auto
> generated by code comments for example.
Although I'd agree with you on this, I've seen many projects where the Javadocs (for example) get behind ( either they become irrelevant or worse false. )
But I think we agree on the big (brick) docs...
My main issue with XP is the discipline it requires: tons of people don't do the programmer tests or even fix them. Short deliveries don't allow for people having down time, and if you're in a heavyweight process company, people are used to fooling around in the "design" phase.
I had started reading on Crystal and found it more realistic in it's approach.
I am somewhat curious of the reasons why you dislike XP.
Don't worry, I'm not an XP zealot.
How does XP / Pair Programming cope with two developers who are at opposite ends of this scale, or do you have to be pretty evenly matched in ability?
It doesn't, really. Sometimes you'll work with a slow junior, and you gotta live with that. But you should change partners pretty much with each task and should do so promiscuously.
Mind you, working with juniors will often get you out of blindly using techniques: chances are your partner will ask you why you are doing such and such, and you are going to have to justify it.
Keep in mind that XP wants to achieve the simplest design possible, not the most flexible. So overuse of patterns is a bad thing.
Where I come from (Quebec), corporations can't claim bankrupcy protection for salaries: you can sue (personally) the board of directors of a company if you aren't paid your salary.
Don't these people have recourse ?
As a software developer I know uml reasonably well, and have tried to use it, but I find that I have big problems with it.
You aren't alone. The always entertaining and often right Bertrand Meyer has this to say about UML.
If you get these problems in successive projects (meaning that the rule of doubling is necessary) you have other problems that have nothing to do with software engineering.
:)
And doubling doesn't really protect you from the stuff you list. Do you tink you could replace your dead programmer within four days ?
Most of the things you list are really force majeure incidents.
And you know birth is not a personnal problem (and are generally forseable)
The danger with constantly doubling is that it leads to falsely large numbers for small projects.
:)
A project estimated at one day should NEVER take four days. A project estimated at three months could take a year.
In my opinion, everything is about risk and you seem to agree (the reasons you double your time is generally for unforseen events).
So if risk is the problem, we have to reduce risk. How should this be done ? The simple solution is shortening your horizon.
Instead of saying "this project of size X will be delivered in three months", deliver smaller increments more often ("this project of size X/12 will be delivered in one week")
This is extreme planning.
So I'm an XP evangelist. sue me
The problem which NineNine referred to I believe is how to reconcile a large scale project using XP methodology with the MBA types who want one big estimate for when the whole damn project will be complete and how many dollars it will cost just from the original specifications
:)
From your tone, I get that you aren't an MBA type
The main problem is that everybody wants a heavy handed process because that's how they know big things are built (like airplanes). But this ain't true of software, because specs change too much.
If your management (and marketing, etc) are not in line with extreme programming methods, it's not going to work there.
Agreed. But this is true of any developpement methodology.
You do large projects in many iterations.
The main problem with this is to have the customer on-site.
And, no, this is not CS bull. The guys behind this (as are most of the agile methodology people) are just programmers, not university types.
1) Lack of up front planning - too many projects fail to do proper initial planning - specifically defining the problem to be solved, producing detailed product requirements, and a detailed project plan (and then sticking to it).
...
:)
My opinion is that long term planning fails all the time because of
2) Late (or incomplete) requirements - if you went to an architect half way through home construction and wanted to change the design of a house; you wouldn't be surprised if it fell behind schedule and went over cost.
...this. Customers (the people who pay) change their minds. Sales (your own) tend to over promise or even forget features promised.
I also think that getting precise requirements
is so difficult that it tends to be useless (except in a couple of businesses). Keep them simple...
My preferred developpement method is XP because it does just this.
5) Failure to have read Deming ("You cannot test quality into a product").
Which doesn't mean that you shouldn't test
7) Failure to place a senior developer on the team that knows about the previous issues.
Or, at least, a very knowlegable available customer.
Don't know if you'll read this and can't go offline ...
My point about architecture is that without implementing it, you can't know if an architecture works.
My experience is that architectures are rarely so screwed up as to not be usable. It often in line with "if I could do this over again, I would change this..."