Same question to you that I asked the other commenter. Is there any journalist of SVN's approximate stature who gets nearly as much press on/.? RMS is all I can think of, and he's a good deal more "famous" than SVN. Maybe Bruce Schneir? Ray Kurzweil? But, again, both of those guys have more name recognition outside the/. microcosm than SVN.
By the way, didn't members of the Zuck PACk create, fund, and appear on Code.org, which lamented the sad state of U.S. CS education and featured a slick documentary showing technically clueless little kids, just weeks before launching their pro-techie immigration push?
Mostly because there are other folks writing on the same stuff and I don't seem them on slashdot nearly as often. SVN has a penchant for producing output that appeals to the/. crowd, and not just because it pertains to Linux/OSS.
An average of 3 articles per year since 2006, that's indeed a veritable TORRENT of articles. Shocking.
How do you suppose it would compare to the "article rate" of other journalists who've had stuff posted on slashdot? My guess is "multiple standard deviations higher".
The estimates published by Consumer Reports are pretty good. They very closely match my observed results with a 2007 Honda Accord and 2007 Honda Civic.
...but we might run out of able to be cheaply extracted and processed oil and gas. We keep picking the low-hanging fruit. Technology marches on and fruit that was previously not low-hanging can become low-hanging, but that only goes so far. Over time, the cost of extracting and processing oil and gas will continue to increase. Presumably solar will continue to become less expensive. The hope is that at some point solar will start to be cost-effective relative to oil and gas even without govt. subsidies. At that point we won't completely stop using oil and gas, but global demand will take a nosedive.
There's something to be said for choosing not to be an early adopter. My Java programming skills are technically "dated". That said, I'm currently having no problem staying employed working as an Android dev. Android experience is, obviously, less dated, but neither was I "early" to the Android game.
1. Allow me to submit that it is not possible to learn a new language / development stack at a sufficiently deep level to produce "elegant" output in one day.
2. Yes, my time is that important. I'd rather spend it with my family. Or sleeping. Or pretty much anything than futzing around in a foreign dev environment "just because".
How about "I know how to write quality code, but I'm no longer interested in spending the necessary cycles to learn every new faddish tech. that comes down the pipe"?
If the code on the whiteboard was supposed to be syntactically correct C code then yeah, that'd be a problem. Almost every time I've had to spec out algorithms on a whiteboard, though, it was made clear that I was to work in terms of pseudo-code. What they were interested in was my understanding of the algorithm, not the minutiae of any specific language. That said, I've had other exercises in interviews that were specifically designed to test my knowledge of language specifics. Just not on a whiteboard.
Degrees, and the school that granted them, do matter with respect to getting hired. Clearly you still have to interview well, but your educational credentials count too. Even past the point when they no longer should, i.e. when you've accumulated enough work experience that employers should be looking at that instead of where you went to school. Computer Science degree from MIT says "whatever other flaws he may have, this guy is pretty intelligent". 2-year degree from ITT Tech. says "what's wrong with this guy that he couldn't manage a four year degree?"
Since you mention teaching it's worth noting that in the U.S. teachers in STEM fields are in much higher demand than the liberal arts. If you get a CS or math degree and a teaching certificate you're in much better shape than the guy with an English or History degree and a teaching certificate.
After undergraduate I went ahead and got a M.S. from a top 10-15 graduate program. My work experience since having left school is not especially impressive. For the most part, I haven't had any trouble getting jobs. I suspect that the level of interest recruiters have shown in me is due to my degree.
I will agree with you, though, that most C.S. programs don't do a great job preparing one for real-world software development. At least, not automatically. Depending on the program one might be able choose specific classes that would provide adequate preparation, but without having actually done real-world software development it's hard for most undergraduates to choose wisely.
My advice to someone graduating high school who wanted to eventually do software development would be this: go to the most respected 4-year university you can, but don't bankrupt yourself with huge loans. It's a balancing act. While there, figure out what skills employers need/want and make sure you get them. If you can do this through classes offered at your university then great. If not, then it's incumbent upon you to make up for what your degree lacks. Strongly consider stretching your degree out to six years if necessary in order to accumulate some "real-world" work experience before graduating. Don't put yourself in the position as a recent graduate of having to rely entirely on your educational background to score a job.
It's better not because they support the device for longer, but because you get the updates sooner after they're released. Typically the first phones to get updated to the latest, greatest Android version are the Google reference models.
Steven Vaughan-Nichols is the biggest anti-MS pro-Linux zealot out there. His pronouncement that "Windows is dead" is approximately as credible as Bill Gates saying "Linux is dead".
I bow to your experience. My recommendation was based more on the "theory" of AppEngine than the actual reality. That said, if you were asked to recommend a PaaS solution that supports Java and has the potential to scale "way up" with minimal effort, what would you suggest? Think "AppEngine done right". Others have mentioned Heroku and OpenStack; have any thoughts there? Others I'm omitting?
Swallow your pride and go with App Engine. Here's my thinking:
1. GAE eliminates a lot of otherwise time-consuming setup work. You're just one guy. If you want to ever get this thing finished you need to spend your time coding and not setting up servers, mucking around with database settings, etc.
2. GAE is scalable w/ little to no extra effort on your part, assuming you code your app correctly.
3. GAE solves the problem of serving a user base that's geographically distributed all over the world.
4. GAE lets you keep coding in Java.
5. GAE is pay-as-you-go. If nobody visits your site you're not out a lot of money.
If someone bombed one of your small cities would you be unconcerned until they bombed a major one? Successful deployments in both Austin and K.C. suggest Google is capable of replicating their model. While losing the revenue from Austin and K.C. is not by itself great cause for concern, the prospect of Google scaling up its fiber deployments certainly is.
For what it's worth, Austin is the 13th largest city in the U.S. and Austin/Round Rock is the 35th largest Metro. area. It has the highest projected population (and job) growth of any large metro area.
Gigabit bandwidth is somewhat less compelling for the consumer who doesn't stream HD video and/or share movies. Don't get me wrong; it's nice. It's just not as much of a quantum leap as you might expect since most sites on the wider internet don't even exhaust the bandwidth of much slower connections. How much more quickly is espn.go.com going to load with 1Gb/s down compared to 20Mb/s down? Not much.
I might actually be more interested in the "free" option, since I currently pay approx. $40/mo for AT&T's high-end DSL connection that's not much faster than 5Mb/s down. With $300 of sunk cost I could save myself $480/year going forward.
Drastically lower latency to a wider range of sites in the U.S. could be a boon for gamers, though. Anybody in Kansas City care to share some latency stats?
Your comment suggests a misunderstanding of the model he's using. The model isn't "watch ads in order to get free access; otherwise you don't get free access". His model is "everybody gets free access whether you watch the ads or not; oh, by the way, please watch the ads". Approximately half of his readers aren't willing to watch them.
Slashdot Mirror
Same question to you that I asked the other commenter. Is there any journalist of SVN's approximate stature who gets nearly as much press on /.? RMS is all I can think of, and he's a good deal more "famous" than SVN. Maybe Bruce Schneir? Ray Kurzweil? But, again, both of those guys have more name recognition outside the /. microcosm than SVN.
By the way, didn't members of the Zuck PACk create, fund, and appear on Code.org, which lamented the sad state of U.S. CS education and featured a slick documentary showing technically clueless little kids, just weeks before launching their pro-techie immigration push?
These two things are not contradictory.
Mostly because there are other folks writing on the same stuff and I don't seem them on slashdot nearly as often. SVN has a penchant for producing output that appeals to the /. crowd, and not just because it pertains to Linux/OSS.
An average of 3 articles per year since 2006, that's indeed a veritable TORRENT of articles. Shocking.
How do you suppose it would compare to the "article rate" of other journalists who've had stuff posted on slashdot? My guess is "multiple standard deviations higher".
It's like slashdot is Vaughan-Nichols's own private distribution channel. Slashdot stories quoting or linking to him in reverse chronological order:
Microsoft's Most Profitable Mobile Operating System: Android: May 09, 2013
Microsoft's "New Coke" Moment?: May 06, 2013
Windows: Not Doomed Yet: April 19, 2013
UEFI Secure Boot and Linux: Where Things Stand: August 03, 2012
Linus' Lessons On Software Dev Management: September 26, 2011
7 Days With a Google Chromebook: July 18, 2011
Linux-Friendly Alternatives To Skype: May 19, 2011
Bill Gates Doesn't Work At Microsoft Anymore: June 23, 2010
Here Come the Linux iPad Clones: March 12, 2010
Fast Wi-Fi's Slow Road To Standardization: December 10, 2009
Apple Pushes Unwanted Software To PCs, Again: September 28, 2009
London Stock Exchange To Abandon Windows: July 03, 2009
Confirmed Gmail / Google App Outage: May 14, 2009
Why It's Not Business As Usual For Microsoft: June 09, 2008
Malware vs. Anti-Malware, 20 Years Into The Fray: May 06, 2008
Truth Behind the ClearType/OpenSUSE FUD: April 12, 2007
Groklaw No Front for IBM: February 15, 2007
That was only the first 3-4 pages of google results.
The estimates published by Consumer Reports are pretty good. They very closely match my observed results with a 2007 Honda Accord and 2007 Honda Civic.
...but we might run out of able to be cheaply extracted and processed oil and gas. We keep picking the low-hanging fruit. Technology marches on and fruit that was previously not low-hanging can become low-hanging, but that only goes so far. Over time, the cost of extracting and processing oil and gas will continue to increase. Presumably solar will continue to become less expensive. The hope is that at some point solar will start to be cost-effective relative to oil and gas even without govt. subsidies. At that point we won't completely stop using oil and gas, but global demand will take a nosedive.
There's something to be said for choosing not to be an early adopter. My Java programming skills are technically "dated". That said, I'm currently having no problem staying employed working as an Android dev. Android experience is, obviously, less dated, but neither was I "early" to the Android game.
Couple thoughts:
1. Allow me to submit that it is not possible to learn a new language / development stack at a sufficiently deep level to produce "elegant" output in one day.
2. Yes, my time is that important. I'd rather spend it with my family. Or sleeping. Or pretty much anything than futzing around in a foreign dev environment "just because".
How about "I know how to write quality code, but I'm no longer interested in spending the necessary cycles to learn every new faddish tech. that comes down the pipe"?
If the code on the whiteboard was supposed to be syntactically correct C code then yeah, that'd be a problem. Almost every time I've had to spec out algorithms on a whiteboard, though, it was made clear that I was to work in terms of pseudo-code. What they were interested in was my understanding of the algorithm, not the minutiae of any specific language. That said, I've had other exercises in interviews that were specifically designed to test my knowledge of language specifics. Just not on a whiteboard.
This doesn't match my experience.
Degrees, and the school that granted them, do matter with respect to getting hired. Clearly you still have to interview well, but your educational credentials count too. Even past the point when they no longer should, i.e. when you've accumulated enough work experience that employers should be looking at that instead of where you went to school. Computer Science degree from MIT says "whatever other flaws he may have, this guy is pretty intelligent". 2-year degree from ITT Tech. says "what's wrong with this guy that he couldn't manage a four year degree?"
Since you mention teaching it's worth noting that in the U.S. teachers in STEM fields are in much higher demand than the liberal arts. If you get a CS or math degree and a teaching certificate you're in much better shape than the guy with an English or History degree and a teaching certificate.
After undergraduate I went ahead and got a M.S. from a top 10-15 graduate program. My work experience since having left school is not especially impressive. For the most part, I haven't had any trouble getting jobs. I suspect that the level of interest recruiters have shown in me is due to my degree.
I will agree with you, though, that most C.S. programs don't do a great job preparing one for real-world software development. At least, not automatically. Depending on the program one might be able choose specific classes that would provide adequate preparation, but without having actually done real-world software development it's hard for most undergraduates to choose wisely.
My advice to someone graduating high school who wanted to eventually do software development would be this: go to the most respected 4-year university you can, but don't bankrupt yourself with huge loans. It's a balancing act. While there, figure out what skills employers need/want and make sure you get them. If you can do this through classes offered at your university then great. If not, then it's incumbent upon you to make up for what your degree lacks. Strongly consider stretching your degree out to six years if necessary in order to accumulate some "real-world" work experience before graduating. Don't put yourself in the position as a recent graduate of having to rely entirely on your educational background to score a job.
Was this on a white board? If so, why quibble over syntax?
These seem to be narrowly focused. There are plenty of folks who don't own (or contribute to) projects on GitHub, Google Code, etc.
They're just not very productive relative to how much they expect to be paid.
It's better not because they support the device for longer, but because you get the updates sooner after they're released. Typically the first phones to get updated to the latest, greatest Android version are the Google reference models.
That said, I don't plan to ever buy another Windows PC. When XP finally stops receiving updates I'll probably buy a Mac.
Steven Vaughan-Nichols is the biggest anti-MS pro-Linux zealot out there. His pronouncement that "Windows is dead" is approximately as credible as Bill Gates saying "Linux is dead".
I bow to your experience. My recommendation was based more on the "theory" of AppEngine than the actual reality. That said, if you were asked to recommend a PaaS solution that supports Java and has the potential to scale "way up" with minimal effort, what would you suggest? Think "AppEngine done right". Others have mentioned Heroku and OpenStack; have any thoughts there? Others I'm omitting?
Swallow your pride and go with App Engine. Here's my thinking:
1. GAE eliminates a lot of otherwise time-consuming setup work. You're just one guy. If you want to ever get this thing finished you need to spend your time coding and not setting up servers, mucking around with database settings, etc.
2. GAE is scalable w/ little to no extra effort on your part, assuming you code your app correctly.
3. GAE solves the problem of serving a user base that's geographically distributed all over the world.
4. GAE lets you keep coding in Java.
5. GAE is pay-as-you-go. If nobody visits your site you're not out a lot of money.
If someone bombed one of your small cities would you be unconcerned until they bombed a major one? Successful deployments in both Austin and K.C. suggest Google is capable of replicating their model. While losing the revenue from Austin and K.C. is not by itself great cause for concern, the prospect of Google scaling up its fiber deployments certainly is.
For what it's worth, Austin is the 13th largest city in the U.S. and Austin/Round Rock is the 35th largest Metro. area. It has the highest projected population (and job) growth of any large metro area.
Gigabit bandwidth is somewhat less compelling for the consumer who doesn't stream HD video and/or share movies. Don't get me wrong; it's nice. It's just not as much of a quantum leap as you might expect since most sites on the wider internet don't even exhaust the bandwidth of much slower connections. How much more quickly is espn.go.com going to load with 1Gb/s down compared to 20Mb/s down? Not much.
I might actually be more interested in the "free" option, since I currently pay approx. $40/mo for AT&T's high-end DSL connection that's not much faster than 5Mb/s down. With $300 of sunk cost I could save myself $480/year going forward.
Drastically lower latency to a wider range of sites in the U.S. could be a boon for gamers, though. Anybody in Kansas City care to share some latency stats?
A one-two dose of video games and computer programming was deemed more effective than traditional abstinence-only education.
What kind of subsidies does the provider receive? That should probably be priced in.
Your comment suggests a misunderstanding of the model he's using. The model isn't "watch ads in order to get free access; otherwise you don't get free access". His model is "everybody gets free access whether you watch the ads or not; oh, by the way, please watch the ads". Approximately half of his readers aren't willing to watch them.