I would venture that books, at least fiction, share this problem. A quick look at the top 10 from today's New York times bestseller list for fiction reveals: #1 - "dark secret" (not necessarily violent, but quite possibly so); #2 - "killer"; #3 - "tragedy in their past" (not necessarily violence, but probably someone's death); #4 - "a tortured man with particular sexual tastes" (psychological violence, probably S&M); #5 - probably nonviolent; #6 - "murder"; #7 - "terrorist act"; #8 - basically the same as #4; #9 - "mysterious death"; #10 - probably nonviolent. So, 7 out of 10 stories involve murder or violence. I think that supports my point.
You couldn't find something non-violent to do?
On the contrary, I found something perfectly entertaining to do. Did you read my post?
My point is that a large proportion of the entertainment people (in America) buy contains violence -- so much that we hardly even notice it.
But then after I started working on it, things changed. Instead of 1 new data source every 4-5 years, we got 3 new sources in one year.
The way I'd describe your story is that your maintainability requirements changed and you realized that. (Maintainability requirements are often implicit but that doesn't make them less real!)
Then in response to the requirements change, you updated the code to meet the new requirements.
So, I didn't mean to be dismissive of maintainable code. I was just saying that making changes to improve maintainability should be driven by evidence of an actual payoff, which you definitely had when you did your refactoring.
The first problem is that you regard the code as "yours" rather than "the project's" or "the company's." Engineering discussions should not be personal, and getting emotionally attached to the code is unlikely to help you evaluate it objectively.
As an engineer, I've adopted the maxim that there is no good and bad, only fitness for a particular purpose. I prefer a discussion of trade-offs to statements of principle.
I tend to ask "what requirements does this code fail to meet?" And very often, the reviewer has invented his own new requirement! Depending on your process, your response might be anything from "good point, let's add a test case for that" to "you should submit a Requirements Change Form for that. Make sure to get all the required signatures."
And if the criticism is for something immeasurable like "readability" or "maintainability" you can let your critic make the case to the boss why fixing this code is worth the cost.
Any campaign to buy back violent games and, especially, movies would be a drop in the ocean.
After I heard about the Newtown shooting, I decided to spend the evening avoiding violence in all media. That meant turning off the news, of course, and looking around for what to do.
What struck me was the shortage of non-violent entertainment in my house. With the exception of baseball, all my Xbox games are violent to some degree. All the DVDs on my shelf had some level of violence -- even the Disney movies and nature documentaries (I can't stand chick flicks, but lots of those are nonviolent). There's violence in TV commercials. I ended up watching some episodes of Through the Wormhole on my DVR.
If you like violent games and movies, I have no problem with that. But since that day, I've been quite amazed by the pervasiveness of violence in games, movies, and TV.
It was more like while ( x y ) and I was changing updating X when he expected me to update Y. I admit his way was more readable, but when I said "it's mathematically equivalent; let's move on" I kind of expected to, you know, move on instead of arguing about it for 10 minutes.
This is a key point. I "failed" one of these interviews because my implementation updated the left-hand side of a loop condition, and the kid who was interviewing me didn't have the listening skills or mastery of basic algebra to understand that can be equivalent to updating the right-hand side.
The take-away for me was, thank God I'm not working there with him as a colleague or, worse, a supervisor.
This was at Google, where everyone thinks they're hot shit.
I don't know -- general relativity was a big paradigm shift, and I would say that occurred well after the formative years of science (which I would put in the 16th or 17th century).
Perhaps the reason it looks like paradigm shifts don't happen any more is that they only come along every hundred years or so.
Rape would be proportional to this. You get to be Bubba's bitch. Which from what I have been led to believe (thankfully not by direct experience) comes as a free bonus with pretty much any prison sentence.
This treats human beings as if they were replaceable robots.
I disagree. It treats a profession as having real physical requirements. If a helicopter pilot loses an eye, his lack of depth perception could make him unable to do his job safely. Similarly for a nurse who can't (or won't, in this case) get inoculated against contagious disease.
There are times, however, when human compassion makes all the difference.
The compassionate thing to do would probably be to reassign the nurses to jobs where they're not in contact with flu patients. But that may not have been practical, depending on the size of the hospital. Compassion also comes into play when considering the well-being of the patients.
I can't tell if you're a smart guy trying to slam Anonymous or an idiot idolizing public officers
I was trying to say that the only difference between Anonymous and public officers is accountability. Public officers are also prone to frame someone or tamper with evidence -- this happens frequently. But the fact that they're accountable is important, and makes me more inclined to trust lawful authorities than a faceless mob.
Yeah, and they would never frame anybody or tamper with evidence or anything, because their motives are always pure and above reproach. And unlike public officers, they're completely accountable!
If I only buy indie DRM free games, I don't need Steam. I'd rather cut out the middleman and give the indie developer a bigger chunk of the sale price.
Don't dismiss something just because it can do more than what you need.
When "more than I need" includes randomly blocking access to things I paid for, I damn well will dismiss it!
I am one of the unfortunate people who learned to hate DRM through experience. Are you aware that Steam locks you out if you play in "offline mode" for too long?
I actually agree with you. A health care giver who can't take the flu vaccine needs to be kept away from flu patients, and if that means finding another job, so be it. Kind of like the way I can't be a fighter pilot because I don't have 20/20 vision.
It's interesting how any time a self-professed Christian does something incredibly stupid, it makes it onto Slashdot. You'd almost think the editors are trolling or something.
For the record, there are many Christian sects, and most of them have nothing against modern medicine. Mine is entirely fine with science in general and indeed my church's primate is opposed to teaching creationism in schools.
That might be harder than you think. No reflective material is perfect: they would all absorb some heat from the laser. So you'd need a material that retains its reflectivity at high temperature. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying it would be a technology race between the reflective materials and the high-energy lasers.
The index covers searches in Google, Google Blogs, MSN, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and YouTube.
So its definition of "popularity" is: "I'm trying to use this language, but I don't know how." This may say more about the number of C programs whose original authors have left the field, than the number of new C programs being written.
Slashdot Mirror
I would venture that books, at least fiction, share this problem. A quick look at the top 10 from today's New York times bestseller list for fiction reveals: #1 - "dark secret" (not necessarily violent, but quite possibly so); #2 - "killer"; #3 - "tragedy in their past" (not necessarily violence, but probably someone's death); #4 - "a tortured man with particular sexual tastes" (psychological violence, probably S&M); #5 - probably nonviolent; #6 - "murder"; #7 - "terrorist act"; #8 - basically the same as #4; #9 - "mysterious death"; #10 - probably nonviolent. So, 7 out of 10 stories involve murder or violence. I think that supports my point.
On the contrary, I found something perfectly entertaining to do. Did you read my post?
My point is that a large proportion of the entertainment people (in America) buy contains violence -- so much that we hardly even notice it.
Touchée!
The way I'd describe your story is that your maintainability requirements changed and you realized that. (Maintainability requirements are often implicit but that doesn't make them less real!)
Then in response to the requirements change, you updated the code to meet the new requirements.
So, I didn't mean to be dismissive of maintainable code. I was just saying that making changes to improve maintainability should be driven by evidence of an actual payoff, which you definitely had when you did your refactoring.
The first problem is that you regard the code as "yours" rather than "the project's" or "the company's." Engineering discussions should not be personal, and getting emotionally attached to the code is unlikely to help you evaluate it objectively.
As an engineer, I've adopted the maxim that there is no good and bad, only fitness for a particular purpose. I prefer a discussion of trade-offs to statements of principle.
I tend to ask "what requirements does this code fail to meet?" And very often, the reviewer has invented his own new requirement! Depending on your process, your response might be anything from "good point, let's add a test case for that" to "you should submit a Requirements Change Form for that. Make sure to get all the required signatures."
And if the criticism is for something immeasurable like "readability" or "maintainability" you can let your critic make the case to the boss why fixing this code is worth the cost.
Any campaign to buy back violent games and, especially, movies would be a drop in the ocean.
After I heard about the Newtown shooting, I decided to spend the evening avoiding violence in all media. That meant turning off the news, of course, and looking around for what to do.
What struck me was the shortage of non-violent entertainment in my house. With the exception of baseball, all my Xbox games are violent to some degree. All the DVDs on my shelf had some level of violence -- even the Disney movies and nature documentaries (I can't stand chick flicks, but lots of those are nonviolent). There's violence in TV commercials. I ended up watching some episodes of Through the Wormhole on my DVR.
If you like violent games and movies, I have no problem with that. But since that day, I've been quite amazed by the pervasiveness of violence in games, movies, and TV.
It was more like while ( x y ) and I was changing updating X when he expected me to update Y. I admit his way was more readable, but when I said "it's mathematically equivalent; let's move on" I kind of expected to, you know, move on instead of arguing about it for 10 minutes.
This is a key point. I "failed" one of these interviews because my implementation updated the left-hand side of a loop condition, and the kid who was interviewing me didn't have the listening skills or mastery of basic algebra to understand that can be equivalent to updating the right-hand side.
The take-away for me was, thank God I'm not working there with him as a colleague or, worse, a supervisor.
This was at Google, where everyone thinks they're hot shit.
I don't know -- general relativity was a big paradigm shift, and I would say that occurred well after the formative years of science (which I would put in the 16th or 17th century).
Perhaps the reason it looks like paradigm shifts don't happen any more is that they only come along every hundred years or so.
I dispute none of that. They're still more accountable than Anonymous.
Rape would be proportional to this. You get to be Bubba's bitch. Which from what I have been led to believe (thankfully not by direct experience) comes as a free bonus with pretty much any prison sentence.
I disagree. It treats a profession as having real physical requirements. If a helicopter pilot loses an eye, his lack of depth perception could make him unable to do his job safely. Similarly for a nurse who can't (or won't, in this case) get inoculated against contagious disease.
The compassionate thing to do would probably be to reassign the nurses to jobs where they're not in contact with flu patients. But that may not have been practical, depending on the size of the hospital. Compassion also comes into play when considering the well-being of the patients.
I was trying to say that the only difference between Anonymous and public officers is accountability. Public officers are also prone to frame someone or tamper with evidence -- this happens frequently. But the fact that they're accountable is important, and makes me more inclined to trust lawful authorities than a faceless mob.
I would hope that if you ran a hospital, the patients' health would weigh heavier in your mind than the chance of being sued.
Yeah, and they would never frame anybody or tamper with evidence or anything, because their motives are always pure and above reproach. And unlike public officers, they're completely accountable!
Wait, who are these people again?
And the sign-in fails, and you have to contact tech support, and wait days for a response. Twice now. "Lockout" is the word I use to describe that.
If I only buy indie DRM free games, I don't need Steam. I'd rather cut out the middleman and give the indie developer a bigger chunk of the sale price.
That's strictly true, but Linux only lets you use your computer the way you want to because of the belief system that underlies it.
When "more than I need" includes randomly blocking access to things I paid for, I damn well will dismiss it!
I am one of the unfortunate people who learned to hate DRM through experience. Are you aware that Steam locks you out if you play in "offline mode" for too long?
I actually agree with you. A health care giver who can't take the flu vaccine needs to be kept away from flu patients, and if that means finding another job, so be it. Kind of like the way I can't be a fighter pilot because I don't have 20/20 vision.
It's interesting how any time a self-professed Christian does something incredibly stupid, it makes it onto Slashdot. You'd almost think the editors are trolling or something.
For the record, there are many Christian sects, and most of them have nothing against modern medicine. Mine is entirely fine with science in general and indeed my church's primate is opposed to teaching creationism in schools.
Linux + DRM : Missing the point of Linux, entirely.
If they had refused the flu vaccine because they're allergic to eggs, would you still approve of them being fired?
That might be harder than you think. No reflective material is perfect: they would all absorb some heat from the laser. So you'd need a material that retains its reflectivity at high temperature. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying it would be a technology race between the reflective materials and the high-energy lasers.
So its definition of "popularity" is: "I'm trying to use this language, but I don't know how." This may say more about the number of C programs whose original authors have left the field, than the number of new C programs being written.