From what I have seen in the industry, it is very simple: Either there are no senior developers that deserve the name, or they are not asked on anything that is "management".
I fully agree with you. The job to evaluate technological skills must always be done by a chief engineer (or equivalent). If you do not have a chief engineer, then you cannot evaluate the technological skills of people, and that is it. Other engineering disciplines do understand this. But "coders" are often not even viewed as engineers these days, which is just plain stupid and just another facet of the same problem.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers. -- Plato
Yet these morons are _still_ looking for the "magic" numbers that can replace understanding, millennia later. The only thing that works is a "Chief Coder" or "Chief Engineer", who must be very competent, both technologically and with regards to social skills. That person will know. Of course, such people are rare, but nothing else works.
The one thing I print things for is to be able to annotate by hand. That will not work with this paper, obviously, or require special markers. I also need these notes typically significantly longer than 5 days.
The only way to deal with this is to recycle paper. Where I live it is solved very simply: Normal trash you pay for by volume actually produced (you need to use special bags). Paper, cardboard, metal and glass you can either throw in the normal trash and pay for it or collect it separately and dispose of it for free.
I mean, flying cars are just bullshit. There is nothing that makes them useful compared to the alternatives. They cannot be real cars and they cannot be real planes or helicopters. In addition, they cannot be flown by anybody not quite experienced. In all circumstances it is preferable to have car and "flying" done by separate, specialized machines. Why this extremely obviously extremely stupid ideas does not die out is beyond me.
And "3 years"? That is just plain demented. You cannot get a new car design for a normal car out the door in that time.
Sure, we may see useless stunts in 3 years, but nothing beyond that for a very, very long time.
I think it is just "this modern thing" they do not comprehend and hence must be the future. They might as well advise everybody to learn how to compose symphonic music, for the good it will people do. Sure, good coders will have good jobs for the foreseeable future, but bad coders will not even get a job now. School will never produce good coders, as school is about basic skills. Coding on the level required to be really useful is a very advanced skill. It can only be self-taught (yes, a good academic CS program helps, but it is only one part of what is needed) and requires dedication and talent.
I fully and completely agree. And that is what will eventually happen when insecure software will get you hacked within days. Most of the software that gets written today does not fulfill any useful purpose (besides giving some people an income), so, as a group, the human race is far better off without it.
Well, I do not doubt it. "Security people" are of various levels of skill and insight and many of them have a deep, unreasonable trust in tools, languages and technological progress. I never really had that and by now, I am pretty much convinced that the only thing that can give software a good security level is people that have a deep understanding of security on all levels (architecture, design and implementation). Of course such people are rare, and they tend to be expensive. They also tend to be unwilling to take the usual crap everybody has to take in a large organization.
Indeed. I have had to give people a price-quote on a FOSS support mailing list several times so far to make it clear to them that I would not be doing their job for them for free. Some people do not grasp that there is free help and then there is actual work. Of course, many of the trolls are too stupid or too bad human beings to care to find out whether somebody is lazy or actually has a real problem. These you can only ignore, they will never bring positive contributions to the table.
Nice one, I laughed loud and hard! That future has been predicted for now something like 40 years, and exactly _nothing_ of it has materialized.
The state of things has been and likely will be for a long time (potentially forever) that anything the coder does not understand will not be understood and hence very likely faulty. Tools help somewhat with errors that are oversights. They do not help at all when the coder does not understand what is wrong or even that there is something wrong. The key reason for that is that tools have no insight (no AI or weak AI only, because the strong AI that would be needed has not materialized so far and may never do so), and hence tools use heuristics and pattern-libraries. These are somewhat usable to create suspicion of an error (if the situation is structurally simple), but they either miss a lot or create a lot of false positives. In the latter case, the coder has to understand whether something is actually a problem or not, and that works only for errors that are oversights, not for problems stemming from lack of insight on the coder's side. Structurally complex errors (architecture, design) are completely out of reach for tools and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
For this reason, security people love it. They understand how they can write software with deterministic behavior in Rust where they know they cannot in C or many other compiled languages.
I am a security person and I do not love Rust. In fact, I think it will make matters worse, because it will make people think that they can write security-critical software with even less understanding of what is going on. Rust will make some types of attacks harder to do, but by the dumbing-down effect it will add other problems. My expectation is that in total, what we will see is a decrease of security due to less competent architecture, design and implementation.
There is no silver bullet, and those that still do not understand this are doomed to screw up time and again.
That would explain it. I never had a large git repository on Windows either.
Well, what can you expect from a company that has its flagship product on a 23 year old filesystem, because it failed time and again to produce anything more modern. And the "case aware, but case insensitive" design is just stupid.
Incidentally, "MADE IN GERMANY" was intended to protect the British market against kitchen steel-wares (mostly knifes) from Solingen that were cheaper than the domestically fabricated. It was intended as a "low quality - stay away" sign that the German manufacturers were forced to add when exporting to Britain. Turns out these German steel-wares were not only cheaper but also a lot better than the British ones and the whole thing tragically backfired because people then sought out the better ones by the "MADE IN GERMANY" label.
Any similarities to what is going to happen to quality when things are made in the US "again" is purely coincidental.
Note: Protectionism does not really work. It merely causes larger problems at a later time.
On the subject of 12v, it's too bad that there is no(formal, there are various hacky workarounds you can find from case-mod vendors; and IBM/NCR's "PoweredUSB" proprietary connector extension for 12 and 24v point of sale gear) connection standard for exposing 12v power from a computer's PSU for use by external hardware.
I built one of those. They are a bit more work than you would initially expect. First, they need to be fuse-protected, because having some 50A or so flow on a short-circuit is not a good idea and the plugs are not well protected against being shortened. But the surprising thing is that they need diodes as well to prevent reverse currents, at least if you can connect more than one device. I have this for two, and when I plugged in a second HDD while the first one was running, the momentary voltage-drop from the buffer caps in the second one did cause a stop-start cycle in the first one. A Schottky diode per line fixes that. On the other hand, a fuse+holder is maybe $0.30, and a 10A Schottky diode is $.10 or so per connector. So not really expensive.
FFS, how can you enforce bribery laws, when you won't even enforce them for the squatter in the Whitehouse?
You cannot. But you need to make the occasional public sacrifice of some minor player in order to give the appearance to be doing something. Otherwise the shee^H^H^H^H voters may wake up to the fact that they made a really dumb decision and may even do something about it.
Considering the size of the investment. Not a surprise, there will not be any significant job-creation in the US industry ever again. That is unless a total collapse happens.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I have seen in the industry, it is very simple: Either there are no senior developers that deserve the name, or they are not asked on anything that is "management".
I fully agree with you. The job to evaluate technological skills must always be done by a chief engineer (or equivalent). If you do not have a chief engineer, then you cannot evaluate the technological skills of people, and that is it. Other engineering disciplines do understand this. But "coders" are often not even viewed as engineers these days, which is just plain stupid and just another facet of the same problem.
This fact has been known for a long, long time:
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers. -- Plato
Yet these morons are _still_ looking for the "magic" numbers that can replace understanding, millennia later. The only thing that works is a "Chief Coder" or "Chief Engineer", who must be very competent, both technologically and with regards to social skills. That person will know. Of course, such people are rare, but nothing else works.
So they go from being exploited and paid to now being exploited and unpaid? An even greater win...
After all, they are now out of a job and probably have do some worse job instead. A great win indeed.
... and what they have is not a computer, but a simple, slow oscillator. Alternate facts or fake news? Who knows...
The one thing I print things for is to be able to annotate by hand. That will not work with this paper, obviously, or require special markers. I also need these notes typically significantly longer than 5 days.
The only way to deal with this is to recycle paper. Where I live it is solved very simply: Normal trash you pay for by volume actually produced (you need to use special bags). Paper, cardboard, metal and glass you can either throw in the normal trash and pay for it or collect it separately and dispose of it for free.
I mean, flying cars are just bullshit. There is nothing that makes them useful compared to the alternatives. They cannot be real cars and they cannot be real planes or helicopters. In addition, they cannot be flown by anybody not quite experienced. In all circumstances it is preferable to have car and "flying" done by separate, specialized machines. Why this extremely obviously extremely stupid ideas does not die out is beyond me.
And "3 years"? That is just plain demented. You cannot get a new car design for a normal car out the door in that time.
Sure, we may see useless stunts in 3 years, but nothing beyond that for a very, very long time.
Very much this.
I think it is just "this modern thing" they do not comprehend and hence must be the future. They might as well advise everybody to learn how to compose symphonic music, for the good it will people do. Sure, good coders will have good jobs for the foreseeable future, but bad coders will not even get a job now. School will never produce good coders, as school is about basic skills. Coding on the level required to be really useful is a very advanced skill. It can only be self-taught (yes, a good academic CS program helps, but it is only one part of what is needed) and requires dedication and talent.
I fully and completely agree. And that is what will eventually happen when insecure software will get you hacked within days. Most of the software that gets written today does not fulfill any useful purpose (besides giving some people an income), so, as a group, the human race is far better off without it.
Well, I do not doubt it. "Security people" are of various levels of skill and insight and many of them have a deep, unreasonable trust in tools, languages and technological progress. I never really had that and by now, I am pretty much convinced that the only thing that can give software a good security level is people that have a deep understanding of security on all levels (architecture, design and implementation). Of course such people are rare, and they tend to be expensive. They also tend to be unwilling to take the usual crap everybody has to take in a large organization.
Indeed. I have had to give people a price-quote on a FOSS support mailing list several times so far to make it clear to them that I would not be doing their job for them for free. Some people do not grasp that there is free help and then there is actual work. Of course, many of the trolls are too stupid or too bad human beings to care to find out whether somebody is lazy or actually has a real problem. These you can only ignore, they will never bring positive contributions to the table.
Nice one, I laughed loud and hard! That future has been predicted for now something like 40 years, and exactly _nothing_ of it has materialized.
The state of things has been and likely will be for a long time (potentially forever) that anything the coder does not understand will not be understood and hence very likely faulty. Tools help somewhat with errors that are oversights. They do not help at all when the coder does not understand what is wrong or even that there is something wrong. The key reason for that is that tools have no insight (no AI or weak AI only, because the strong AI that would be needed has not materialized so far and may never do so), and hence tools use heuristics and pattern-libraries. These are somewhat usable to create suspicion of an error (if the situation is structurally simple), but they either miss a lot or create a lot of false positives. In the latter case, the coder has to understand whether something is actually a problem or not, and that works only for errors that are oversights, not for problems stemming from lack of insight on the coder's side. Structurally complex errors (architecture, design) are completely out of reach for tools and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
For this reason, security people love it. They understand how they can write software with deterministic behavior in Rust where they know they cannot in C or many other compiled languages.
I am a security person and I do not love Rust. In fact, I think it will make matters worse, because it will make people think that they can write security-critical software with even less understanding of what is going on. Rust will make some types of attacks harder to do, but by the dumbing-down effect it will add other problems. My expectation is that in total, what we will see is a decrease of security due to less competent architecture, design and implementation.
There is no silver bullet, and those that still do not understand this are doomed to screw up time and again.
That would explain it. I never had a large git repository on Windows either.
Well, what can you expect from a company that has its flagship product on a 23 year old filesystem, because it failed time and again to produce anything more modern. And the "case aware, but case insensitive" design is just stupid.
Because I never found git processing times to be a problem.
Only if you have chaining-connections and for multiplication and division, not even then.
Spoken like a true fascist. Nice. Of course, your argumentation is entirely invalid.
No, it is pointing out some historical facts and protectionism is most certainly how "MADE IN GERMANY" came to pass.
Incidentally, "MADE IN GERMANY" was intended to protect the British market against kitchen steel-wares (mostly knifes) from Solingen that were cheaper than the domestically fabricated. It was intended as a "low quality - stay away" sign that the German manufacturers were forced to add when exporting to Britain. Turns out these German steel-wares were not only cheaper but also a lot better than the British ones and the whole thing tragically backfired because people then sought out the better ones by the "MADE IN GERMANY" label.
Any similarities to what is going to happen to quality when things are made in the US "again" is purely coincidental.
Note: Protectionism does not really work. It merely causes larger problems at a later time.
It really does not matter at all. Your question is irrelevant.
On the subject of 12v, it's too bad that there is no(formal, there are various hacky workarounds you can find from case-mod vendors; and IBM/NCR's "PoweredUSB" proprietary connector extension for 12 and 24v point of sale gear) connection standard for exposing 12v power from a computer's PSU for use by external hardware.
I built one of those. They are a bit more work than you would initially expect. First, they need to be fuse-protected, because having some 50A or so flow on a short-circuit is not a good idea and the plugs are not well protected against being shortened. But the surprising thing is that they need diodes as well to prevent reverse currents, at least if you can connect more than one device. I have this for two, and when I plugged in a second HDD while the first one was running, the momentary voltage-drop from the buffer caps in the second one did cause a stop-start cycle in the first one. A Schottky diode per line fixes that. On the other hand, a fuse+holder is maybe $0.30, and a 10A Schottky diode is $.10 or so per connector. So not really expensive.
FFS, how can you enforce bribery laws, when you won't even enforce them for the squatter in the Whitehouse?
You cannot. But you need to make the occasional public sacrifice of some minor player in order to give the appearance to be doing something. Otherwise the shee^H^H^H^H voters may wake up to the fact that they made a really dumb decision and may even do something about it.
Include a remote-detonated explosive charge and it is the perfect tool to fight terrorism!
Considering the size of the investment. Not a surprise, there will not be any significant job-creation in the US industry ever again. That is unless a total collapse happens.