Jesus, dude. Get a grip. The question was about over-40 programmers, not over 90. I'm 42. I write Java code for one of them there new-fangled Internet companies. I also run marathons, study martial arts, and rock climb. What the f*ck have you done today, junior?
Even more pathetic, i read through the whole thing hoping that there might be an explanation of why one light saber can block another light saber (which would only be possibly in the real world if the beam were made of charged particles). It's kind of like trying to figure out why there are beaches in Bikini Bottom.
Rumor has it that Google hired two of the principles from MusicNet, a provider of digital music content (metadata and audio encodings). What this means is hard to say. My guess is that they won't get immediately into the music download and streaming business, but rather will first provide something for music similiar to their "movie" keyword searches.
I've been hearing this same advice since i began my career way back in the Cretaceous period. It's largely nonsense promulgated by the timid and uncreative. There are obviously cases where a person's financial situation is so tenuous and his or her support network so meager that you really must follow this plan. But if your situation were that bad, you wouldn't be contemplating quitting your job in the first place.
So, if you are looking at your life in terms of where your rent money is coming from for this month, then you shouldn't quit your job. Otherwise, start to think of your life and career in terms of *decades*. There are two competing forces here. The first is that life is short and you want to enjoy it; the second is that life is not so short while sitting in a cube. Keep in mind that your working life may span 50+ years. You might have to not only change jobs, you might have to change *careers* simply to avoid getting bored. Finally, while there are some difficulties involved with a period of voluntary unemployment (you might have to explain it to a mortgage lender some day for example), don't worry about what prospective future employers might think.
I know this is a narrow view, but i think that hardware support is less of an issue on Linux because so many Linux boxes are web/database/etc. servers. From my standpoint, i only need Linux to support my ethernet interface and i'm pretty happy.
Hardware support is (i think) more of an issue for desktop Linux, but i still think that it's secondary to software support. If Microsoft wants to displace Linux, they still have to provide an inexpensive, open source, reliable server platform. This is irrespective of the truth/fiction of various studies purporting to show that server TCO is lower for Microsoft platforms (though i doubt the studies). For some organizations with heavy server demands (say, Google) the ability to tweak the code is not optional.
I used to work for an organization that had a "sabbatical" program. Rather than devoting a certain percentage of your time to an independent project, you could take a 6-8 week sabbatical to work on your own project. The catch to this was that you had to write a proposal of what you wanted to do during the sabbatical period, and it had to be approved by management. Generally, getting approval required that you do something at least peripherally related to the business (which meant almost anything to do with computing), and that the proposal seemed feasible. Note that most of the same rules apply to the sabbatical work as to any other work you did on company time-- that is, the company owns what you produce-- so this wouldn't be an opportunity to bootstrap your new startup.
These are all very good points. With enterprise software it's hard to extract the specific attributes of a machine and determine from this how well your system will work. In other words, i might hope that a system with a lot of memory, fast network connections, and RAID is going to give me lots of transactions/second; but it's seldom that simple.
I think i would ideally want to see how various configurations of an n-tier application operate on the machine, using different applications servers. That's a pretty tall order though. Perhaps you could look at the SPEC or TPC benchmarks or similar things. Think in terms of overall capacity planning rather than simply processor speed or memory size. The people purchasing the machines tend to think in these terms, like if i need to support X number of transactions/second presuming Y number of server threads how much machine do i need?
So Mr. Nygard doesn't get to express his opinion on Slashdot because he's a filmmaker, but you do because you're a Libertarian/Christian/Star Trek fan? I think maybe you've been reading a bit too much Ann Coulter.
I just went to Amazon and bought myself a copy of Trekkies 1/2; and i bought an extra copy as a gift for a friend. So there;-)
I think there will be a bunch of Google-based meta businesses appearing over the next couple of years. In a couple of different industries i've seen a rough trend: a bunch of information that didn't used to be on-line is now on-line. The initial reaction is "Wow, this is great, i can do all sorts of stuff i couldn't before". But after a while you start to hear: "This isn't information, this is data. I need something to categorize, qualify, and support decisions".
So, i predict that we'll see more businesses that 1) allow alternative visual views into search results, 2) use data-mining techniques to create decision support tools, 3) provide "consulting" services to hopeless search-hampered users.
I suspect some do take the rant seriously. There are fairly reasonable people out there who haven't the slightest idea why somebody would appear to give away valuable labor. And, probably, the GNU Manifesto didn't help.
The economic motivations of people who create free/open source software are very mysterious to many people, even people who are technically savvy. It's hard to ascribe some sort of market model to this behavior and explain why a substantial number of people would engage in something that seems vaguely altruistic. You're absolutely correct that this doesn't translate into ruining the economy, but can you adequately explain to the layman *why* there is an army of altruistic and excellent programmers, and not a similar pool of drug developers? I believe that it's because software is one of the few endeavors where you can create something useful with *only* labor, but i still couldn't explain it to, say, my mom.
I think it's more like Peter Gibbons and his dream of doing nothing (from the movie Office Space for those without cable). This is a dream that I, and most other post mid-life crisis victims, share. If you're still gung-ho about your job, you're probably either a) young, or b) faking. Youth definitely is wasted on the young.
That seems correct to me. I can't see how these matrices would help in making decisions, since they just seem to characterize a problem in very simple terms. To make a decision you'd need to know which point(s) in the continuum to choose based on some objectives. This is the basis of the computational technique called multi-objective (or Pareto) optimization if anyone's interested.
My biggest problem with these 2x2 matrices is that they alway tend maximize the value of the people creating them. For example, the "best" quadrant often tends to describe the characteristics of executive management types. That, and i always envision the famous Dilbert cartoon ("I see that most of you are here in the ugly/stupid quadrant").
Why not just use existing trust models? Thawte will give you a free e-mail certificate, and then you can go through a process of getting extra credentials added to that certificate, by providing identifying documents to certain individuals trusted by Thawte. Seems like a workable but not too intrusive system to me.
Though it's more mundane than all of these protocol sniffers and vulnerability assessment tools, what i could use is a free/cheap tool that combines identity management and policy management in Java/J2EE environments.
Certain of the app server vendors provide functionality through their console products, but it would be nice to have a vendor neutral product that would let me browse/edit identity data regardless of the source (LDAP, the OS, whatever), let me map application roles to the environment, and let me examine and interchange various policy files, maybe using XACML as the lingua franca. Maybe also something that would keep track of JAAS login modules and JAAS config files.
Like is said, a bit boring, but it'd make it easier to assemble and deploy applications, and to move applications between app servers.
Yeah, but the problem is that the reds will just blow the darn thing up and it'll wrap itself around the planet a couple of times killing everything in its path. Oh, no, wait, that's on Mars. Never mind.
I think the population of Indiana would start a civil war before they'd submit to being required to use a computer by the government. I mean, these are people who've rejected daylight savings time.
I've got two kids (7 and 10) and i've been programming for 17 years. During my kids' lifetimes i've started a company and worked for a large defense contractor.
The truth is that software development is, by comparison to most professions, very low stress. I've been able to telecommute, help out in my kids' classrooms and coach their sports teams. When they were infants i was able to help with the midnight feedings and (with the help of caffeine) i still got in my hours.
Many real-world jobs have far less flexible hours, significant travel, early mornings or late nights for meetings, and they often don't pay as well. Being a coder is probably one of the better jobs you can have as a parent, IMO.
It's impossible to explain to somebody who doesn't have children, but the fact is that you will find a way to be a good parent if you are motivated to be a good parent (fortunately, this will be completely obvious to you as soon as your child is born). You'll just figure it out because it's the most important thing you can imagine. Really. I promise.
Let me try to put a slightly less cynical spin on this. If i were to die, i would hope that my family would mourn for a while, but after time they certainly should care about my money. This would include 1) bank and investment accounts that are not already joint, 2) life insurance info, and 3) possibly a will.
This information is important for my family's future, and so it's accessible to any and all possible survivors (on protected paper records). On the other hand, i hope they have no interest in my Slashdot password, my ATM PIN, or my encrypted e-mails.
I think it depends on the person. My 94 year-old grandmother has been bitter and bored since she was about 35. She's in great health for her age, but she spends most of her time doing crossword puzzles. Most of her friends and two spouses have died, but she lives on. Too mean to die, my mother says.
I think that there are certain people who could do productive work for hundreds of years in a variety of fields (imagine an immortal Linus Pauling). But i think there are also those who are motivated to greatness by looming mortality. And, sadly, there are many for whom life is so miserable that they don't want to continue.
Frankly, i think that immortality or even a significant extension in longevity would conflict with so many aspects of the human psyche that it's impossible to predict what would happen. I don't think it's so much a matter of remaining engaged and active as it is a matter of re-imagining what life means without death. I think society's ideas about success, family, work, and education would have to change radically.
Actually, you can already get a free car-- it's just that they're too small to see.
As for the free Sun stock, i'm with you there. It's obviously a sign of the apocalypse when Microsoft and Sun agree on a business model. The incredible part is that Sun thinks they can compete using that model. I can just see it now:
Boss: "150K for a server? Are you nuts?!"
Me: "No boss, the hardware's free, the $150K is for Solaris 12".
Boss: "What the @#$%?. Surely, you're joking. Can't we run Linux?"
Me: "Sorry, the DRM chip prevents us from running non-proprietary OS's. And don't call me Shirley".
Boss: "Oh, OK. Say, how much is 150K is rupees?"
Slashdot Mirror
Jesus, dude. Get a grip. The question was about over-40 programmers, not over 90. I'm 42. I write Java code for one of them there new-fangled Internet companies. I also run marathons, study martial arts, and rock climb. What the f*ck have you done today, junior?
One other word: binary. Seems like a pretty "neutral data transfer" method to me :-)
Even more pathetic, i read through the whole thing hoping that there might be an explanation of why one light saber can block another light saber (which would only be possibly in the real world if the beam were made of charged particles). It's kind of like trying to figure out why there are beaches in Bikini Bottom.
Rumor has it that Google hired two of the principles from MusicNet, a provider of digital music content (metadata and audio encodings). What this means is hard to say. My guess is that they won't get immediately into the music download and streaming business, but rather will first provide something for music similiar to their "movie" keyword searches.
I've been hearing this same advice since i began my career way back in the Cretaceous period. It's largely nonsense promulgated by the timid and uncreative. There are obviously cases where a person's financial situation is so tenuous and his or her support network so meager that you really must follow this plan. But if your situation were that bad, you wouldn't be contemplating quitting your job in the first place.
So, if you are looking at your life in terms of where your rent money is coming from for this month, then you shouldn't quit your job. Otherwise, start to think of your life and career in terms of *decades*. There are two competing forces here. The first is that life is short and you want to enjoy it; the second is that life is not so short while sitting in a cube. Keep in mind that your working life may span 50+ years. You might have to not only change jobs, you might have to change *careers* simply to avoid getting bored. Finally, while there are some difficulties involved with a period of voluntary unemployment (you might have to explain it to a mortgage lender some day for example), don't worry about what prospective future employers might think.
I know this is a narrow view, but i think that hardware support is less of an issue on Linux because so many Linux boxes are web/database/etc. servers. From my standpoint, i only need Linux to support my ethernet interface and i'm pretty happy.
Hardware support is (i think) more of an issue for desktop Linux, but i still think that it's secondary to software support. If Microsoft wants to displace Linux, they still have to provide an inexpensive, open source, reliable server platform. This is irrespective of the truth/fiction of various studies purporting to show that server TCO is lower for Microsoft platforms (though i doubt the studies). For some organizations with heavy server demands (say, Google) the ability to tweak the code is not optional.
I used to work for an organization that had a "sabbatical" program. Rather than devoting a certain percentage of your time to an independent project, you could take a 6-8 week sabbatical to work on your own project. The catch to this was that you had to write a proposal of what you wanted to do during the sabbatical period, and it had to be approved by management. Generally, getting approval required that you do something at least peripherally related to the business (which meant almost anything to do with computing), and that the proposal seemed feasible. Note that most of the same rules apply to the sabbatical work as to any other work you did on company time-- that is, the company owns what you produce-- so this wouldn't be an opportunity to bootstrap your new startup.
Wait, isn't that the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
These are all very good points. With enterprise software it's hard to extract the specific attributes of a machine and determine from this how well your system will work. In other words, i might hope that a system with a lot of memory, fast network connections, and RAID is going to give me lots of transactions/second; but it's seldom that simple.
I think i would ideally want to see how various configurations of an n-tier application operate on the machine, using different applications servers. That's a pretty tall order though. Perhaps you could look at the SPEC or TPC benchmarks or similar things. Think in terms of overall capacity planning rather than simply processor speed or memory size. The people purchasing the machines tend to think in these terms, like if i need to support X number of transactions/second presuming Y number of server threads how much machine do i need?
So Mr. Nygard doesn't get to express his opinion on Slashdot because he's a filmmaker, but you do because you're a Libertarian/Christian/Star Trek fan? I think maybe you've been reading a bit too much Ann Coulter.
;-)
I just went to Amazon and bought myself a copy of Trekkies 1/2; and i bought an extra copy as a gift for a friend. So there
I think there will be a bunch of Google-based meta businesses appearing over the next couple of years. In a couple of different industries i've seen a rough trend: a bunch of information that didn't used to be on-line is now on-line. The initial reaction is "Wow, this is great, i can do all sorts of stuff i couldn't before". But after a while you start to hear: "This isn't information, this is data. I need something to categorize, qualify, and support decisions".
So, i predict that we'll see more businesses that 1) allow alternative visual views into search results, 2) use data-mining techniques to create decision support tools, 3) provide "consulting" services to hopeless search-hampered users.
Mentors, the Freshmaker!
(I apologize for this, really, it's just been one of those days).
The economic motivations of people who create free/open source software are very mysterious to many people, even people who are technically savvy. It's hard to ascribe some sort of market model to this behavior and explain why a substantial number of people would engage in something that seems vaguely altruistic. You're absolutely correct that this doesn't translate into ruining the economy, but can you adequately explain to the layman *why* there is an army of altruistic and excellent programmers, and not a similar pool of drug developers? I believe that it's because software is one of the few endeavors where you can create something useful with *only* labor, but i still couldn't explain it to, say, my mom.
I think it's more like Peter Gibbons and his dream of doing nothing (from the movie Office Space for those without cable). This is a dream that I, and most other post mid-life crisis victims, share. If you're still gung-ho about your job, you're probably either a) young, or b) faking. Youth definitely is wasted on the young.
There was a three part series on Metasploit on SecurityFocus in July. See here
60 large is half the money!? Oh my god, i guess i'd better start saving more for my kids' college.
My biggest problem with these 2x2 matrices is that they alway tend maximize the value of the people creating them. For example, the "best" quadrant often tends to describe the characteristics of executive management types. That, and i always envision the famous Dilbert cartoon ("I see that most of you are here in the ugly/stupid quadrant").
Certain of the app server vendors provide functionality through their console products, but it would be nice to have a vendor neutral product that would let me browse/edit identity data regardless of the source (LDAP, the OS, whatever), let me map application roles to the environment, and let me examine and interchange various policy files, maybe using XACML as the lingua franca. Maybe also something that would keep track of JAAS login modules and JAAS config files.
Like is said, a bit boring, but it'd make it easier to assemble and deploy applications, and to move applications between app servers.
-Another Former Hoosier
The truth is that software development is, by comparison to most professions, very low stress. I've been able to telecommute, help out in my kids' classrooms and coach their sports teams. When they were infants i was able to help with the midnight feedings and (with the help of caffeine) i still got in my hours.
Many real-world jobs have far less flexible hours, significant travel, early mornings or late nights for meetings, and they often don't pay as well. Being a coder is probably one of the better jobs you can have as a parent, IMO.
It's impossible to explain to somebody who doesn't have children, but the fact is that you will find a way to be a good parent if you are motivated to be a good parent (fortunately, this will be completely obvious to you as soon as your child is born). You'll just figure it out because it's the most important thing you can imagine. Really. I promise.
This information is important for my family's future, and so it's accessible to any and all possible survivors (on protected paper records). On the other hand, i hope they have no interest in my Slashdot password, my ATM PIN, or my encrypted e-mails.
I think that there are certain people who could do productive work for hundreds of years in a variety of fields (imagine an immortal Linus Pauling). But i think there are also those who are motivated to greatness by looming mortality. And, sadly, there are many for whom life is so miserable that they don't want to continue.
Frankly, i think that immortality or even a significant extension in longevity would conflict with so many aspects of the human psyche that it's impossible to predict what would happen. I don't think it's so much a matter of remaining engaged and active as it is a matter of re-imagining what life means without death. I think society's ideas about success, family, work, and education would have to change radically.
As for the free Sun stock, i'm with you there. It's obviously a sign of the apocalypse when Microsoft and Sun agree on a business model. The incredible part is that Sun thinks they can compete using that model. I can just see it now:
Boss: "150K for a server? Are you nuts?!" Me: "No boss, the hardware's free, the $150K is for Solaris 12". Boss: "What the @#$%?. Surely, you're joking. Can't we run Linux?" Me: "Sorry, the DRM chip prevents us from running non-proprietary OS's. And don't call me Shirley". Boss: "Oh, OK. Say, how much is 150K is rupees?"