There's nothing wrong with agile development. Like you said, users often don't know what they want until they see something. So prototype early and often. But at the same time, you need to have the business rules in place before you waste time developing. And developing with out business rules IS a waste of time. Even with agile development, you'll spend your time redeveloping from every prototype just to hit a major business rule 'clarification' after 6 months and realize that you need a new attack vector that requires substantial code changes.
So true. I've been working in business software development for about 8 years now. Over the last 4 I've been working in lots of custom in-house leasing, loan, and accounting applications. Having a solid grasp of the development tools and being able to build a solid framework is important, but it doesn't help the company. Being able to communicate clearly with the accounting department, or understanding lease accounting, implicit rate calculations, and the whole litany of terms that your users live by, that is what is going to make the development smooth.
You want to get hired onto a major software development firm? Get a BS in comp sci, or IT w/ a CS focus, and become a CPA. Its no easy task to achieve, but it'll lead to rock solid employment opportunities.
The problem isn't high level languages or agile development. The problem is a lack of foresight, planning, and documentation.
We have two major systems at the company I work for. One, that the related staff spent 2 years documenting their business practices and exactly what they wanted the application to do. They took that huge document to a couple of consulting companies and said "we want this." 2 years later the consulting company that won the bid turned over a nearly perfect application.
The other app is an extension of a 3rd party application. This app started development with little to no documentation, no project manager, and no one who had actually worked with the 3rd party application. Flying blind into a short deadline has left us playing redevelopment games for almost 2 years! We finally managed to get the critical personnel together to get the system and processes documented, and after 3 months of business process documentation we should be set to re-write the business layer of the application in 6 months.
Had the user group worked with the 3rd party app prior to launch, and documented their processes, the entire application could have been developed in under 9 months. But with out that work on the front side we will have over two and a half years wrapped up in development from 3 people.
One more project like this, and I'm moving to management. As much as I love coding, I hate inept managers even more.
Except that the companies could all raise the prices on their memory to pay for the punitive damages, the class action lawsuit payout, and the lawyer fees.
Is it right for them to fix prices? No. Is this class action lawsuit going to benefit the consumers? No. Is this class action lawsuit going to fatten the wallets of lawyers? Yup.
I'm not against the punitive damages, but this class action lawsuit is a waste. I would rather see individuals from the corporate entities be held responsible. Instead of getting the companies to pay some lawyers, how about with hit the corp with punitive damages(to pay for the investigation and state legal expenses), then give any company officer with knowledge of the collusion 6 months in jail? Which do you think would motivate more corporate leaders, a financial penalty to their corporation (which will only hurt the stock holders and consumers) or 6 months in the brig?
So they fixed prices, so what, memory prices in the mid/late nineties plummited. Early 90s buying a 4 meg chip costed hundreds, mid 90s a 32 meg chip cost under a hundred, by the end of the 90s we were paying under a buck a meg, heck now it's what, under a buck for 10 megs?
In the end, the consumers will see none of it (who's really going to go through to paper work for a $3 rebate?), the lawyers will see millions, and the government will get the unclaimed payouts.
I just can't wrap my head around why ISP's need a NEW chargable interaction. If the ISP needs more money to improve their pipes, either raise the prices for your customers or gain more customers.
What's so hard about that? If Google's traffic is bogging your network, raise the price on your contract with Google. They will either pay the price, so you can expand, or they will fire up the dark net, opening tons of your pipe back up.
The back bone carriers increase rates for the high tier ISPs, they raise rates for the low teir ISPs, they raise rates for what the consumer's pay. Viola! The pipe bilders get more money, the consumers and businesses still pay for them, and no one gets censored.
But why limit the compilation to rap? There are a lot of great non-rap nerdcore songs. As the OP said, 6 CDs worth of music and he came up with what, 15 to add to his play list?
Not exactly. While I have found no loops in my family tree, it was my brother who is the more traditional conservative hick/redneck. Myself, I am more of the liberal goth type with a healthy balance of pessimism and hope.
Yeah, it's not much better than using the GIMP for image modification, or PMS for management software, or running FU Reports. The joy of software development is that you get to use some entertaining acronyms. We were instructed to change one application's name because upper management could not pronounce the acronym with a straight face (La-tee-dah-til).
Not that bad of combination for organizations that already maintain a Windows/IIS web configuration. Media Wiki is designed for LAMP, but if you poke it with a stick for a while, it'll run on WIMP.
WTH, flame bait? For pointing out the idiocy of the headline? I figured this post would get nailed as redundant for preaching to the choir if anything, but flame bait?!?
Or you can just use *AMM (Windows/Linux, Apache, MySQL, Mono).
I use a full windows setups (Win 2k/2k3, IIS5/6, SQL Server,.Net) for a few web sites with great results.
I also use a WIMP setup for our inhouse documentation Wiki site (Media Wiki running on Windows/IIS5)
And I use LAMP for my personal web site, primarily because that's what the host offered.
I've never had a problem performance whys with any of them so long as they are properly configured and coded. A poorly coded site will have performance issues whether it's LAMP, WAMP, WIMP or anything else!
That one is a toss up. You are weakening the economy as a whole because you are moving money out of the country. But at the same time, companies are saving money, which allows them to grow and increase sales in the US, which helps keep more money in motion in the US economy. Long term though, you are correct, our trade defeciet will force inflation on and the value of the dollar will drop. England had it's time on top, we had our time on top, and soon enough China will have it's time on top.
Now, how many people here have screamed bloody murder about how downloading digital content (ie: Movies and music) is not Theft because nothing of value has been removed from the original owner.
In this case, it's even less then those because the code owner likely hasn't copyrighted the code at this point. So at best you are looking at an trade secrecy issue and some vague 'unlawful use of a computer' crime. Attempting to sell the code could get you into more legal trouble, but it still isn't theft as nothing has been stolen.
Yeah, that's why I corrected myself and said that you can, but people aren't going to pay for it. Like in the US, some states have marijuana tax stamps. If you sell pot with out a tax stamp, the IRS can haul you in, but in order to get the stamp you need to prove you have the goods to sell, so if you show up at your local town hall with a few OZs of weed to get stamps for, you'll get arrested on the spot for possession with intent to distribute.
It's a fail safe, if for some reason the possession case fails, they can nail you for tax evasion. Many mobsters were brought down for tax evasion.
Which is where the idiocy begins. You can't tax something that's illegal. Well, you can, but not many people will fess up. Right now, with the betting going on overseas, the industry is pulling money out of the US economy and adding it to other country's economies. All taxes aside, the US economy is weakening because it is illegal to gamble online in the US, but not on servers outside the US.
IF the US were to legalize online gambling, and tariff the hell out of international gambling services, they could not only keep more of the money IN the US economy, but they could still tax the gamblers (capital gains) and the profits of the online casino.
Instead the government has created a situation where they are attempting to dictate morals to the majority aged citizens and are shipping our US dollars overseas for no good reason.
Ahh, thanks for the clarification. I know of EA's record, but they recently bought Mythic. I must have remembered the headlines in the wrong order (Mythic involved on WH, then EA buys Mythic, not the other way around.)
I get through an 8 hour work day if I pull it off the charger before heading to work. I have the screen brightness turned down and the power saving features turned on. And I haven't noticed any problems with sound quality, I ripped a large portion of the CD library to WMV and it sounds just fine over a set of sony switch backs and a similar set of radioshack nock-offs.
ehh ~$250, compared to $~280 for a video capable iPod. True, the iPod has 30 times the space and 14 hours of audio playback. My PDA only has 1gig of space and about 8 hours of audio playback. But my PDA also has wireless internet access, ifrd, interacts with Windows MCE, can IM and email, has a calander and games;)
And my 1gig card has no problem holding way more music than I can listen in any 8 hour period anyway. Sure, 30 gigs and a bit more battery life would be nice, but no way would I give up my interenet access and other functionality for it.
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There's nothing wrong with agile development. Like you said, users often don't know what they want until they see something. So prototype early and often. But at the same time, you need to have the business rules in place before you waste time developing. And developing with out business rules IS a waste of time. Even with agile development, you'll spend your time redeveloping from every prototype just to hit a major business rule 'clarification' after 6 months and realize that you need a new attack vector that requires substantial code changes.
-Rick
So true. I've been working in business software development for about 8 years now. Over the last 4 I've been working in lots of custom in-house leasing, loan, and accounting applications. Having a solid grasp of the development tools and being able to build a solid framework is important, but it doesn't help the company. Being able to communicate clearly with the accounting department, or understanding lease accounting, implicit rate calculations, and the whole litany of terms that your users live by, that is what is going to make the development smooth.
You want to get hired onto a major software development firm? Get a BS in comp sci, or IT w/ a CS focus, and become a CPA. Its no easy task to achieve, but it'll lead to rock solid employment opportunities.
-Rick
Here! Here!
The problem isn't high level languages or agile development. The problem is a lack of foresight, planning, and documentation.
We have two major systems at the company I work for. One, that the related staff spent 2 years documenting their business practices and exactly what they wanted the application to do. They took that huge document to a couple of consulting companies and said "we want this." 2 years later the consulting company that won the bid turned over a nearly perfect application.
The other app is an extension of a 3rd party application. This app started development with little to no documentation, no project manager, and no one who had actually worked with the 3rd party application. Flying blind into a short deadline has left us playing redevelopment games for almost 2 years! We finally managed to get the critical personnel together to get the system and processes documented, and after 3 months of business process documentation we should be set to re-write the business layer of the application in 6 months.
Had the user group worked with the 3rd party app prior to launch, and documented their processes, the entire application could have been developed in under 9 months. But with out that work on the front side we will have over two and a half years wrapped up in development from 3 people.
One more project like this, and I'm moving to management. As much as I love coding, I hate inept managers even more.
-Rick
Except that the companies could all raise the prices on their memory to pay for the punitive damages, the class action lawsuit payout, and the lawyer fees.
Is it right for them to fix prices? No. Is this class action lawsuit going to benefit the consumers? No. Is this class action lawsuit going to fatten the wallets of lawyers? Yup.
I'm not against the punitive damages, but this class action lawsuit is a waste. I would rather see individuals from the corporate entities be held responsible. Instead of getting the companies to pay some lawyers, how about with hit the corp with punitive damages(to pay for the investigation and state legal expenses), then give any company officer with knowledge of the collusion 6 months in jail? Which do you think would motivate more corporate leaders, a financial penalty to their corporation (which will only hurt the stock holders and consumers) or 6 months in the brig?
-Rick
So they fixed prices, so what, memory prices in the mid/late nineties plummited. Early 90s buying a 4 meg chip costed hundreds, mid 90s a 32 meg chip cost under a hundred, by the end of the 90s we were paying under a buck a meg, heck now it's what, under a buck for 10 megs?
In the end, the consumers will see none of it (who's really going to go through to paper work for a $3 rebate?), the lawyers will see millions, and the government will get the unclaimed payouts.
IOW, a complete waste of time.
-Rick
I just can't wrap my head around why ISP's need a NEW chargable interaction. If the ISP needs more money to improve their pipes, either raise the prices for your customers or gain more customers.
What's so hard about that? If Google's traffic is bogging your network, raise the price on your contract with Google. They will either pay the price, so you can expand, or they will fire up the dark net, opening tons of your pipe back up.
The back bone carriers increase rates for the high tier ISPs, they raise rates for the low teir ISPs, they raise rates for what the consumer's pay. Viola! The pipe bilders get more money, the consumers and businesses still pay for them, and no one gets censored.
-Rick
But why limit the compilation to rap? There are a lot of great non-rap nerdcore songs. As the OP said, 6 CDs worth of music and he came up with what, 15 to add to his play list?
-Rick
There are great non-rap geek songs in the world. My current favorite has to be "Code Monkey" http://www.jonathancoulton.com/lyrics/code-monkey
-Rick
That was my first thought as well! How long until I can be stubble free with out razor burn!?!?
-Rick
Not exactly. While I have found no loops in my family tree, it was my brother who is the more traditional conservative hick/redneck. Myself, I am more of the liberal goth type with a healthy balance of pessimism and hope.
-Rick
You have the right to be eaten, to taste good, and to be fried in a fine vinaigrette oil.
-PETA (People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.)
Your info on the MTA sounds right, I'm spouting off from memory here, so I will bow out to your more substantial knowledge.
-Rick
Yeah, it's not much better than using the GIMP for image modification, or PMS for management software, or running FU Reports. The joy of software development is that you get to use some entertaining acronyms. We were instructed to change one application's name because upper management could not pronounce the acronym with a straight face (La-tee-dah-til).
-Rick
Windows, IIS, MySQL, Php
Not that bad of combination for organizations that already maintain a Windows/IIS web configuration. Media Wiki is designed for LAMP, but if you poke it with a stick for a while, it'll run on WIMP.
-Rick
Thanks for the correction, I know I have heard that before, but it completely slipped my mind when I was posting.
-Rick
WTH, flame bait? For pointing out the idiocy of the headline? I figured this post would get nailed as redundant for preaching to the choir if anything, but flame bait?!?
-Rick
Or you can just use *AMM (Windows/Linux, Apache, MySQL, Mono).
.Net) for a few web sites with great results.
I use a full windows setups (Win 2k/2k3, IIS5/6, SQL Server,
I also use a WIMP setup for our inhouse documentation Wiki site (Media Wiki running on Windows/IIS5)
And I use LAMP for my personal web site, primarily because that's what the host offered.
I've never had a problem performance whys with any of them so long as they are properly configured and coded. A poorly coded site will have performance issues whether it's LAMP, WAMP, WIMP or anything else!
-Rick
That one is a toss up. You are weakening the economy as a whole because you are moving money out of the country. But at the same time, companies are saving money, which allows them to grow and increase sales in the US, which helps keep more money in motion in the US economy. Long term though, you are correct, our trade defeciet will force inflation on and the value of the dollar will drop. England had it's time on top, we had our time on top, and soon enough China will have it's time on top.
-Rick
Now, how many people here have screamed bloody murder about how downloading digital content (ie: Movies and music) is not Theft because nothing of value has been removed from the original owner.
In this case, it's even less then those because the code owner likely hasn't copyrighted the code at this point. So at best you are looking at an trade secrecy issue and some vague 'unlawful use of a computer' crime. Attempting to sell the code could get you into more legal trouble, but it still isn't theft as nothing has been stolen.
-Rick
Yeah, that's why I corrected myself and said that you can, but people aren't going to pay for it. Like in the US, some states have marijuana tax stamps. If you sell pot with out a tax stamp, the IRS can haul you in, but in order to get the stamp you need to prove you have the goods to sell, so if you show up at your local town hall with a few OZs of weed to get stamps for, you'll get arrested on the spot for possession with intent to distribute.
It's a fail safe, if for some reason the possession case fails, they can nail you for tax evasion. Many mobsters were brought down for tax evasion.
-Rick
Which is where the idiocy begins. You can't tax something that's illegal. Well, you can, but not many people will fess up. Right now, with the betting going on overseas, the industry is pulling money out of the US economy and adding it to other country's economies. All taxes aside, the US economy is weakening because it is illegal to gamble online in the US, but not on servers outside the US.
IF the US were to legalize online gambling, and tariff the hell out of international gambling services, they could not only keep more of the money IN the US economy, but they could still tax the gamblers (capital gains) and the profits of the online casino.
Instead the government has created a situation where they are attempting to dictate morals to the majority aged citizens and are shipping our US dollars overseas for no good reason.
-Rick
4) set script to rename ABC in program listings to BCD.
Problem solved.
-Rick
Ahh, thanks for the clarification. I know of EA's record, but they recently bought Mythic. I must have remembered the headlines in the wrong order (Mythic involved on WH, then EA buys Mythic, not the other way around.)
-Rick
I get through an 8 hour work day if I pull it off the charger before heading to work. I have the screen brightness turned down and the power saving features turned on. And I haven't noticed any problems with sound quality, I ripped a large portion of the CD library to WMV and it sounds just fine over a set of sony switch backs and a similar set of radioshack nock-offs.
-Rick
ehh ~$250, compared to $~280 for a video capable iPod. True, the iPod has 30 times the space and 14 hours of audio playback. My PDA only has 1gig of space and about 8 hours of audio playback. But my PDA also has wireless internet access, ifrd, interacts with Windows MCE, can IM and email, has a calander and games ;)
And my 1gig card has no problem holding way more music than I can listen in any 8 hour period anyway. Sure, 30 gigs and a bit more battery life would be nice, but no way would I give up my interenet access and other functionality for it.
-Rick