Agreed; digging through loads of comments soaked up waaaaay too much of my time, but often hid little gems worth even more than the original articles. Which means you did something right... Let's hope/. will keep soaking up my time for at least another decade!
I especially agree on your last remark, maybe because that's exactly how programming classes were set up at my university. In the first year, we start with functional programming, to give the guys who have been coding in C/Pascal/ a bit of a shock.
This way they find out that there are more ways to program (and therefore more ways to look at a problem) than the imperative or object-oriented approach they've always been using. Add a class in programming techniques to that (using both imperative and functional languages, and implementing some functional algorithms in imperative languages), and you're set.
Besides, I've never officially learned any programming language in all those years at the university (as a Comp.Sci. major!); the teachers expected you to teach yourself a new language if it was needed for an assignment. Worked out fine when I got a job, because right now it means I'm switching programming languages every couple months, and picking them up pretty fast.
Pray for what? That everyone writes good code? And what is good code?
I'm new at my current job (3 months now), and am in the lucky situation that the guy who wrote all code I have to work with is sitting right next to me to explain it. But then still... it's a madhouse around here so he doesn't always have the time for it.
The least you can do, is document the reasoning behind what you coded (needs to be no more than 5% of the code you wrote), and let the code itself tell the rest of the story. Without that small fraction of documentation you will get lost, unless you've had the exact same training as the others who work on the project.
I agree that a law forcing encryption software to have a backdoor is useless. It will be too easy to circumvent, and give a false sense of security. To give a better example than you did: it would be like a ban on airplanes carrying more than 50 passengers (which is more likely to have prevented disaster on a scale like in NYC than a ban on encryption would!).
But you're wrong about the mandatory backdoor being like gun control.
Gun control exists because guns are lethal. Yes, I know the phrase 'guns don't kill people, people do'. But guns are designed to kill, which in some cases can be usefull (pest control), but usually is illegal (murder). And because of this design, it is very easy to kill: it's the ultimate 'point'n'click interface'.
Encryption on the other hand is designed to hide information. This can also kill, but to kill using encryption requires a lot more effort, and usually the actual weapon used to kill is not the encryption itself. Also, encryption has many more legal and harmless applications than guns do.
At first this sounds OK, especially if you look at the 'garage inventors', who spend a lot of free time to create something new.
BUT... as far as I understood, most inventions today are done in research labs of companies or universities, because it requires huge investments. Too much for any private person, but feasible for (some) companies.
Now just imagine how eager those companies will be to do research (or let their employees do research paid by them), if their employees keep running away with new patents, leaving the company behind with the bills (and no patent).
I'm afraid companies will have to be able to hold patents (even though I like the 'garage inventor' principle a lot more), because that's the only way to ensure that the more expensive research will continue.
Okay, it doesn't render in NS (at least 4.7/Linux). But it does in Lynx, and doesn't choke on JunkBuster.
If you really want to see a messed up page:
Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It won't even load if your browser/proxy doesn't identify itself as Netscape/IE > 4.0!
I think you're not quite correct on this one: Fireworks are built for either the loudest bang or the brightest flash, while explosives are built for the biggest blast. Usually fireworks have fairly small amounts of explosives in them, packed in relatively large amounts of paper or plastic, so piling up a lot of fireworks will give you just a lot of little explosions most of the time, because the fire first has to burn through the paper/plastic before it ignites the powder. Even if this takes half a second, this is enough to spread the energy of the blast over a much longer period of time than the split-second of one large explosion.
Why there was a big blast in Enschede is still not clear; there are several theories about it: - The company stored high-order explosives as well as fireworks. Very unlikely, Dutch government is very strict in regulations with explosives and weapons, and the company was known as very good and safe. - The company stored raw titanium or magnesium for light-effects in a relatively large quantity. The fire-brigade didn't know this, tried extinguishing the fire with water, and hydrogen gas was produced by a reaction between the titanium and the water. - Because of a small fire the temperature and pressure in one of the bunkers got so high that the fireworks inside ignited, and the actual blast was not the fireworks going of, but the bunker literally bursting open. Quite unlikely, because these bunkers were built to withstand a blazing fire for at least 10-15 minutes.
We might never know what caused the blast, but all I know for now is that we were extremely lucky everything went so perfect after the disaster; the mayor and public services (from all over the country and across the border from Germany) did one perfect job!
My 2ct. for this thread; hope you enjoyed it.
Tijn
PS: Later on in this thread they're bickering about which lager's the best? Try Grolsch: three weeks after the blast the part of their factory that didn't burn down was running again!
You're missing part 3: those that can't teach, write manuals.
My 'experience' (tho it isn't much, 1 year studying Educational Science & Technology) is that teaching is quite hard, and a student can learn hardly anything from someone who knows all about the subject, but nothing about teaching. By the way: even writing (good) manuals is pretty damn hard. Guess that's why I went back to studying CS...
Greetings, Tijn
Re:Unlearning is ESPECIALLY necessary for new grad
on
Too Old To Code?
·
· Score: 1
Interesting comment about Minsky's 3 periods (hadn't heard it before). I guess my Uni/dept. of CS is now on the edge of 2 and 3, hope they don't move into period 3 too fast. Over the last months (while working on my master's thesis) I have experienced a lot of what you mentioned about getting stuck in a swamp of trying to do things too perfect and then getting nothing done. Hopefully I'll mess things up just often enough (and pay enough attention) during the rest of my graduation project to learn to accept the world can't be perfect, and neither can my work be.
Thanks for the insight.
Tijn
Gee... will this mean that after graduation I only have 3 years left before the old (27+) folks' home?
Maybe a stupid remark, but as far as I can see the only difference between using XML (with DTD's) and EBNF (extended Backus-Naur Form for those without a CS degree) is that in the resulting language you have to have tags with instead of any shape you like. If you had a standard way of writing down an EBNF specification of a language (essentially the same as writing a DTD), and some way to specify it's meaning (probably the same as that Schema-stuff; haven't really understood that yet) you'd be in the same place, but without the , right?
So what's new about XML? Just the fact that HTML-viewers (e.g. browsers) can handle it more easily? Or the fact that specifications for a language are slightly easier to write?
Hi all... (Sorry 'bout the slight off-topic, this was too good a chance...)
Yeah, I'm in a similar situation (plan to graduate about one week before the show, but from a Dutch university). Looks like a great place to meet & greet the local IT crowd. (Networking's all that counts:-) ). So Ottawa is the place to be for IT-guys? I was thinking of Montreal, but hints about the best place to be for IT are greatly appreciated. Good to hear anyway they've got
<SHAMELESS PLUG>If you happen to know anyone who could help me get a job in that area (Canada has that cute little 'you can get 12 months working experience here' visum for recent graduates) I'd like to hear about it... and I guess you could cash in on a little bonus from my future employer... Anyway, getting a job in Canada from this side of the big lake is kind of hard. Anyway, check my site for a little more info. (Darn! Have to update that one REAL soon!)</SHAMELESS PLUG>
Small correction: If I've never known about what you were doing in your garage, and I've (by chance) worked it out in the same details as you did, I think I should be rewarded for my work. To put it in other words (please don't flame me for this, I'm just trying to make it a little clearer): You've been plain stupid that you didn't claim the invention, and you've been (according to the ideas behind IP laws) non-social by withholding your ideas from the rest of the world.
To put things in perspective: I do agree that it should be impossible to patent something that has been published but not patented/used commercially. I guess this is what you meant by your comment, but if you did, could you please state it a little clearer?
Things have moved on in the Netherlands too since Pulp Fiction: According to this (try Babelfish on it if you don't speak Dutch) some politicians are proposing to give police officers the right to do 'preventive searching' of visitors to bars and nightclubs. It's just an idea still, right now the police must have a strong suspicion (they will have to convince a judge that it was a reasonable suspicion) that someone carries a weapon or drugs before they can search him/her. About privacy regulations: they are pretty cool around here: If I'm not mistaken, I can ask someone to remove information about me from their records, and they will have to comply unless they can give a valid reason why they wouldn't have to (for instance: a service contract for some product). And oh yeah, they will have to notify you when they store information about you! It makes tracking information about you a lot easier. Try this (and have your Babelfish ready) for the full text of the law on registration of personal information.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed; digging through loads of comments soaked up waaaaay too much of my time, but often hid little gems worth even more than the original articles. Which means you did something right... /. will keep soaking up my time for at least another decade!
Let's hope
Thanks and goodbye from yet another oldtimer!
I especially agree on your last remark, maybe because that's exactly how programming classes were set up at my university. In the first year, we start with functional programming, to give the guys who have been coding in C/Pascal/ a bit of a shock.
This way they find out that there are more ways to program (and therefore more ways to look at a problem) than the imperative or object-oriented approach they've always been using. Add a class in programming techniques to that (using both imperative and functional languages, and implementing some functional algorithms in imperative languages), and you're set.
Besides, I've never officially learned any programming language in all those years at the university (as a Comp.Sci. major!); the teachers expected you to teach yourself a new language if it was needed for an assignment. Worked out fine when I got a job, because right now it means I'm switching programming languages every couple months, and picking them up pretty fast.
I'm new at my current job (3 months now), and am in the lucky situation that the guy who wrote all code I have to work with is sitting right next to me to explain it. But then still... it's a madhouse around here so he doesn't always have the time for it.
The least you can do, is document the reasoning behind what you coded (needs to be no more than 5% of the code you wrote), and let the code itself tell the rest of the story. Without that small fraction of documentation you will get lost, unless you've had the exact same training as the others who work on the project.
Heheh... I'd love to play those old games again on an Intel running at 4.7...
(Hey! Why does this game start with the 'Game Over' screen?)
I agree that a law forcing encryption software to have a backdoor is useless. It will be too easy to circumvent, and give a false sense of security. To give a better example than you did: it would be like a ban on airplanes carrying more than 50 passengers (which is more likely to have prevented disaster on a scale like in NYC than a ban on encryption would!).
But you're wrong about the mandatory backdoor being like gun control.
Gun control exists because guns are lethal. Yes, I know the phrase 'guns don't kill people, people do'. But guns are designed to kill, which in some cases can be usefull (pest control), but usually is illegal (murder). And because of this design, it is very easy to kill: it's the ultimate 'point'n'click interface'.
Encryption on the other hand is designed to hide information. This can also kill, but to kill using encryption requires a lot more effort, and usually the actual weapon used to kill is not the encryption itself. Also, encryption has many more legal and harmless applications than guns do.
At first this sounds OK, especially if you look at the 'garage inventors', who spend a lot of free time to create something new.
BUT... as far as I understood, most inventions today are done in research labs of companies or universities, because it requires huge investments. Too much for any private person, but feasible for (some) companies.
Now just imagine how eager those companies will be to do research (or let their employees do research paid by them), if their employees keep running away with new patents, leaving the company behind with the bills (and no patent).
I'm afraid companies will have to be able to hold patents (even though I like the 'garage inventor' principle a lot more), because that's the only way to ensure that the more expensive research will continue.
Okay, it doesn't render in NS (at least 4.7/Linux). But it does in Lynx, and doesn't choke on JunkBuster.
If you really want to see a messed up page:
Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It won't even load if your browser/proxy doesn't identify itself as Netscape/IE > 4.0!
I think you're not quite correct on this one:
Fireworks are built for either the loudest bang or the brightest flash, while explosives are built for the biggest blast. Usually fireworks have fairly small amounts of explosives in them, packed in relatively large amounts of paper or plastic, so piling up a lot of fireworks will give you just a lot of little explosions most of the time, because the fire first has to burn through the paper/plastic before it ignites the powder. Even if this takes half a second, this is enough to spread the energy of the blast over a much longer period of time than the split-second of one large explosion.
Why there was a big blast in Enschede is still not clear; there are several theories about it:
- The company stored high-order explosives as well as fireworks. Very unlikely, Dutch government is very strict in regulations with explosives and weapons, and the company was known as very good and safe.
- The company stored raw titanium or magnesium for light-effects in a relatively large quantity. The fire-brigade didn't know this, tried extinguishing the fire with water, and hydrogen gas was produced by a reaction between the titanium and the water.
- Because of a small fire the temperature and pressure in one of the bunkers got so high that the fireworks inside ignited, and the actual blast was not the fireworks going of, but the bunker literally bursting open. Quite unlikely, because these bunkers were built to withstand a blazing fire for at least 10-15 minutes.
We might never know what caused the blast, but all I know for now is that we were extremely lucky everything went so perfect after the disaster; the mayor and public services (from all over the country and across the border from Germany) did one perfect job!
My 2ct. for this thread; hope you enjoyed it.
Tijn
PS: Later on in this thread they're bickering about which lager's the best? Try Grolsch: three weeks after the blast the part of their factory that didn't burn down was running again!
those that can, do. those that can't, teach.
You're missing part 3: those that can't teach, write manuals.
My 'experience' (tho it isn't much, 1 year studying Educational Science & Technology) is that teaching is quite hard, and a student can learn hardly anything from someone who knows all about the subject, but nothing about teaching.
By the way: even writing (good) manuals is pretty damn hard.
Guess that's why I went back to studying CS...
Greetings,
Tijn
Interesting comment about Minsky's 3 periods (hadn't heard it before).
I guess my Uni/dept. of CS is now on the edge of 2 and 3, hope they don't move into period 3 too fast.
Over the last months (while working on my master's thesis) I have experienced a lot of what you mentioned about getting stuck in a swamp of trying to do things too perfect and then getting nothing done.
Hopefully I'll mess things up just often enough (and pay enough attention) during the rest of my graduation project to learn to accept the world can't be perfect, and neither can my work be.
Thanks for the insight.
Tijn
Gee... will this mean that after graduation I only have 3 years left before the old (27+) folks' home?
Sorry, second time around it seems the < and > in 'have to have tags with < and >' got lost...
Maybe a stupid remark, but as far as I can see the only difference between using XML (with DTD's) and EBNF (extended Backus-Naur Form for those without a CS degree) is that in the resulting language you have to have tags with instead of any shape you like.
If you had a standard way of writing down an EBNF specification of a language (essentially the same as writing a DTD), and some way to specify it's meaning (probably the same as that Schema-stuff; haven't really understood that yet) you'd be in the same place, but without the , right?
So what's new about XML? Just the fact that HTML-viewers (e.g. browsers) can handle it more easily? Or the fact that specifications for a language are slightly easier to write?
Hi all...
:-) ).
(Sorry 'bout the slight off-topic, this was too good a chance...)
Yeah, I'm in a similar situation (plan to graduate about one week before the show, but from a Dutch university). Looks like a great place to meet & greet the local IT crowd. (Networking's all that counts
So Ottawa is the place to be for IT-guys? I was thinking of Montreal, but hints about the best place to be for IT are greatly appreciated. Good to hear anyway they've got
<SHAMELESS PLUG>If you happen to know anyone who could help me get a job in that area (Canada has that cute little 'you can get 12 months working experience here' visum for recent graduates) I'd like to hear about it... and I guess you could cash in on a little bonus from my future employer... Anyway, getting a job in Canada from this side of the big lake is kind of hard. Anyway, check my site for a little more info. (Darn! Have to update that one REAL soon!)</SHAMELESS PLUG>
Small correction: If I've never known about what you were doing in your garage, and I've (by chance) worked it out in the same details as you did, I think I should be rewarded for my work. To put it in other words (please don't flame me for this, I'm just trying to make it a little clearer): You've been plain stupid that you didn't claim the invention, and you've been (according to the ideas behind IP laws) non-social by withholding your ideas from the rest of the world.
To put things in perspective: I do agree that it should be impossible to patent something that has been published but not patented/used commercially. I guess this is what you meant by your comment, but if you did, could you please state it a little clearer?
Things have moved on in the Netherlands too since Pulp Fiction:
According to this (try Babelfish on it if you don't speak Dutch) some politicians are proposing to give police officers the right to do 'preventive searching' of visitors to bars and nightclubs. It's just an idea still, right now the police must have a strong suspicion (they will have to convince a judge that it was a reasonable suspicion) that someone carries a weapon or drugs before they can search him/her.
About privacy regulations: they are pretty cool around here: If I'm not mistaken, I can ask someone to remove information about me from their records, and they will have to comply unless they can give a valid reason why they wouldn't have to (for instance: a service contract for some product). And oh yeah, they will have to notify you when they store information about you! It makes tracking information about you a lot easier. Try this (and have your Babelfish ready) for the full text of the law on registration of personal information.