Nice ad-Hominem argument. It just says you have nothing better.
You "typo" argument is bogus. There is only a small class of "typos" that can be found by strong typing. Most of them can also be found by a reasonable "warning" system where the compiler allows it but tells you it is probably not a good idea, and quite often by better naming. In the greater scheme of things, these errors are irrelevant. The added freedom that non-strong typing provides is worth much, much more in the hands of an expert. For low-competence coders, strong typing helps, no argument about that.
And when we are doing ad Hominem, here is one for you: If JavaScript is your only not strongly typed language and you are just getting into it, then you are simply incompetent.
It's not even just for programming that's dysfunctional, everything gets screwed up with management. I see software people whine that it should be done like other engineering, except that other engineering is dysfunctional as well. Seriously, picking pre-built and well tested components, applying the math, and creating a circuit is a myth too. Most places just cobble things together, they'll argue forever about saving two cents on a board but then go and add a component that's never used. If the boss designs part of it then everyone's too afraid to correct it, or politics gets involved. When it's done, it's tossed over the brick wall to software who are told to work around any defects.
I completely agree. It is absolutely staggering how bad a lot of electronics are designed. By now I have a close look at everything I buy before even switching it on, and usually I find some gross developer incompetence at work. These people often do not even understand the basics and manage to screw-up the reference designs by "improving" them. And the number of people that cannot even read the basic information in datasheets (like "Absolute Maximum Ratings") is truly astonishing.
Not at all. In fact, the industry keeps making exactly the same mistakes that Brooks describes. You seem to have missed basically all he writes and seem to have focused to the technology in use back then.
Actually, you cannot make the less efficient engineers as efficient as the most efficient ones. It is not something they learned that makes them exceptional, it is who they are.
As to the MMM, I completely agree. And it will stay hugely relevant as long as it gets ignored. Current technical management has usually never even heard of it.
Short-term planning is detrimental to long-term survival. Seems to be applicable on a global level, including survival of the current civilization. I predict that in a few centuries, the current time will be known as the "Age of Stupidity", where we had everything to turn this planet into a paradise and failed abysmally because of greed and stupidity.
I believe the cycle goes something like that: 1. fire competent local people 2. import incompetent foreign ones that are cheap 3. wait for a while 4. huge loss of profit.
Indeed. They had to push some new 'better' thing to make even more money. Remember how DOS used to support slightly larger disks every release and the only way to upgrade was to buy the next version at full price? That is what made Microsoft rich.
And thereby making anybody competent less efficient. Strong typing is akin to training wheels. If your people are so incompetent or inexperienced that their productivity increases with strong typing, then your problem is not the language. You knowledge of language impact on productivity is at least 10 years out of date.
I seriously doubt that. Creation of large pieces of software is abysmally inefficient in basically all examples I have seen. The only exception are situations where a small team of up to 5 people does it all, akin to Brook's "Surgical Team'. These small teams are routinely much more efficient and effective than teams of 20, 30 or 50 people. It has been known since Brook's seminal "the Mythical Man-Month" that creating software does not scale and the only way to accelerate a project is to use better people, but not to use more of them after a certain, very low limit.
As to scaling up organizations, measuring things is more difficult here, but my impression is that something very similar applies: In a large organization, bureaucracy, meetings, infighting, careerism, etc. kill so much productivity, that it is often surprising they get anything done at all.
I think this person has no clue what he is talking about.
Google is a lot less competent in many areas than they think they are. For example, their research papers suck badly. That they do not really know how to handle Android is no surprise. Maybe if they had hired some people with experience and maturity instead of highly-intelligent but otherwise retarded ones.
But in computer science you can take it one step farther. 90% of everything is crap, and 90% of the stuff that is worthwhile is designed to keep away the crap.
Very true. My chosen field has decided to screw itself over repeatedly and with a vengeance. I really do not get the level of stupidity that gets applied. It is like every moron that can barely write a line of code insists on shaping the "future" of CS. CS also still fails to really be engineering or science. This is just pathetic, given the time it had to evolve.
Hehehehehe. Well, sane init-systems usually manage to give you a shell so you can find out what is wrong, but systemd finds that this is beneath it as you have obviously insulted its creator by using it not exactly as was ordained.
And that is the real core of the criticism on systemd: It is a misanthropic POS, that does not respect its users one bit. Resembles its creator in that way.
While I agree on systemd as the default being utterly demented for Debian and a complete violation of the principle that Debian stable must be rock-solid, you can replace it with sysvinit after installation, or even before if you give the installer some configuration.
Seriously, who does? People using their phones as toys instead of phones is all good and fine, but it is not news. Whether this phone then has over-sized memory or grossly over-sized memory is even less news.
You cannot sign the 36 bits with the contents of the QR-Code. Not possible. Hence the data may be obscured, but it will not be authenticated or protected. Basic crypto. Which you do not understand. You may want to look up the "Dunning-Kruger Effect".
Quite often the "troublemakers" are also gotten rid off in such a step. You know, those people that insist on a strategic view, that want R&D, that want IT security to not suck, etc. These are usually those that ensure a tech company has a future.
Indeed. Anything for their bonus and fuck the company and its employees. These people are dangerous psychos without even a shred of honor or integrity.
As mass surveillance is exclusively done in totalitarian states, it is pretty clear there is a strong faction on government that wants this very much. This also means that to any citizen there is no sane way to be for mass-surveillance.
But hey, Hitler got cheered into office. The masses are stupid.
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Experience and observation. Making bad programmers less bad is not the same as making average programmers exceptional.
A fair summary.
Nice ad-Hominem argument. It just says you have nothing better.
You "typo" argument is bogus. There is only a small class of "typos" that can be found by strong typing. Most of them can also be found by a reasonable "warning" system where the compiler allows it but tells you it is probably not a good idea, and quite often by better naming. In the greater scheme of things, these errors are irrelevant. The added freedom that non-strong typing provides is worth much, much more in the hands of an expert. For low-competence coders, strong typing helps, no argument about that.
And when we are doing ad Hominem, here is one for you: If JavaScript is your only not strongly typed language and you are just getting into it, then you are simply incompetent.
It's not even just for programming that's dysfunctional, everything gets screwed up with management. I see software people whine that it should be done like other engineering, except that other engineering is dysfunctional as well. Seriously, picking pre-built and well tested components, applying the math, and creating a circuit is a myth too. Most places just cobble things together, they'll argue forever about saving two cents on a board but then go and add a component that's never used. If the boss designs part of it then everyone's too afraid to correct it, or politics gets involved. When it's done, it's tossed over the brick wall to software who are told to work around any defects.
I completely agree. It is absolutely staggering how bad a lot of electronics are designed. By now I have a close look at everything I buy before even switching it on, and usually I find some gross developer incompetence at work. These people often do not even understand the basics and manage to screw-up the reference designs by "improving" them. And the number of people that cannot even read the basic information in datasheets (like "Absolute Maximum Ratings") is truly astonishing.
Not at all. In fact, the industry keeps making exactly the same mistakes that Brooks describes. You seem to have missed basically all he writes and seem to have focused to the technology in use back then.
Actually, you cannot make the less efficient engineers as efficient as the most efficient ones. It is not something they learned that makes them exceptional, it is who they are.
As to the MMM, I completely agree. And it will stay hugely relevant as long as it gets ignored. Current technical management has usually never even heard of it.
Short-term planning is detrimental to long-term survival. Seems to be applicable on a global level, including survival of the current civilization. I predict that in a few centuries, the current time will be known as the "Age of Stupidity", where we had everything to turn this planet into a paradise and failed abysmally because of greed and stupidity.
I believe the cycle goes something like that:
1. fire competent local people
2. import incompetent foreign ones that are cheap
3. wait for a while
4. huge loss of profit.
Indeed. They had to push some new 'better' thing to make even more money. Remember how DOS used to support slightly larger disks every release and the only way to upgrade was to buy the next version at full price? That is what made Microsoft rich.
I couldn't agree more. The industry certainly has the arrogance to overlook its abysmal failings, but that is about where its capabilities end.
And thereby making anybody competent less efficient. Strong typing is akin to training wheels. If your people are so incompetent or inexperienced that their productivity increases with strong typing, then your problem is not the language. You knowledge of language impact on productivity is at least 10 years out of date.
I seriously doubt that. Creation of large pieces of software is abysmally inefficient in basically all examples I have seen. The only exception are situations where a small team of up to 5 people does it all, akin to Brook's "Surgical Team'. These small teams are routinely much more efficient and effective than teams of 20, 30 or 50 people. It has been known since Brook's seminal "the Mythical Man-Month" that creating software does not scale and the only way to accelerate a project is to use better people, but not to use more of them after a certain, very low limit.
As to scaling up organizations, measuring things is more difficult here, but my impression is that something very similar applies: In a large organization, bureaucracy, meetings, infighting, careerism, etc. kill so much productivity, that it is often surprising they get anything done at all.
I think this person has no clue what he is talking about.
It should be. It is not for Android.
Google is a lot less competent in many areas than they think they are. For example, their research papers suck badly. That they do not really know how to handle Android is no surprise. Maybe if they had hired some people with experience and maturity instead of highly-intelligent but otherwise retarded ones.
Good definition. I like it.
But in computer science you can take it one step farther. 90% of everything is crap, and 90% of the stuff that is worthwhile is designed to keep away the crap.
Very true. My chosen field has decided to screw itself over repeatedly and with a vengeance. I really do not get the level of stupidity that gets applied. It is like every moron that can barely write a line of code insists on shaping the "future" of CS. CS also still fails to really be engineering or science. This is just pathetic, given the time it had to evolve.
They certainly qualify as support for malware.
Hehehehehe. Well, sane init-systems usually manage to give you a shell so you can find out what is wrong, but systemd finds that this is beneath it as you have obviously insulted its creator by using it not exactly as was ordained.
And that is the real core of the criticism on systemd: It is a misanthropic POS, that does not respect its users one bit. Resembles its creator in that way.
While I agree on systemd as the default being utterly demented for Debian and a complete violation of the principle that Debian stable must be rock-solid, you can replace it with sysvinit after installation, or even before if you give the installer some configuration.
Seriously, who does? People using their phones as toys instead of phones is all good and fine, but it is not news. Whether this phone then has over-sized memory or grossly over-sized memory is even less news.
You cannot sign the 36 bits with the contents of the QR-Code. Not possible. Hence the data may be obscured, but it will not be authenticated or protected. Basic crypto. Which you do not understand. You may want to look up the "Dunning-Kruger Effect".
What, actual capitalist thinking? That is so yesterday. Today, unreflected greed is the new capitalism!
Quite often the "troublemakers" are also gotten rid off in such a step. You know, those people that insist on a strategic view, that want R&D, that want IT security to not suck, etc. These are usually those that ensure a tech company has a future.
Indeed. Anything for their bonus and fuck the company and its employees. These people are dangerous psychos without even a shred of honor or integrity.
As mass surveillance is exclusively done in totalitarian states, it is pretty clear there is a strong faction on government that wants this very much. This also means that to any citizen there is no sane way to be for mass-surveillance.
But hey, Hitler got cheered into office. The masses are stupid.