Minecraft is a great example. Written at a time where all major games had teams in the hundreds, and multi million dollar budgets. Everyone had declared the solo programmer dead.
- Matching buy and sell orders in an in memory book. Normally each symbol will have its own book. - the database is written to after the transaction, multiple machines track the transaction, and log files are written too.
If or when we get a Digital Driver it will change commutes forever, and for the worse. I can see people in camper like vans so they can sleep on the 10 hour commute, or not even go home during the week, just let the car drive all night and drop you off at work in the morning. The concept of home will be totally gone.
but he's grateful to have some sort of technical job at 70
I would say that having any job at 70 is an accomplishment. From my perspective I have not see age discrimination, I have worked side by side with developers that where 50+. In fact I'm still one of the young guys on my team and I'm in my late thirties.
What I have seen is experience discrimination. Guys who started on one platform in the 80's are out of luck these days. Also folks that stayed with a single company for too long. (IE 10+ years is way to long). Protip: Always work in one of the top 3 programming languages. Today that is C, Java, and Dot Net.
Forgive me if I sound biter. I was once like you. Here is my story and I hope it helps.
I have always been a fast learner, and have always been able to take on greater and greater responsibilities at companies. My employers have always loved me. But raises where always very hard to get (if ever) and I was always paid below what I knew I was worth.
The only way I was able to get what I wanted was to move to other companies, and eventually to contract development.
Ever since I watched Babylon 5 and have seen an entire series setup and resolve expectations over a number of seasons I thought that other shows would follow. I thought that Lost, and Battlestar would follow B5's example as they led me to believe. In the end I'm just left felling mad. I NEVER want to watch an episode of Lost or BSG again. It just feels like a lie.
Note to writers. You don't have to do the big mystery thing, you don't have to setup expectations of how its all going to end. Just do a simple episode by episode series (Like ST:TNG, DS9, and Voyager) it works fine, and I'm not left feeling mad.
This is kinda vicious but my strategy is if someone else's coding isn't good enough or they make massive mistakes, I don't just let it fly. You don't have to be their boss, you only have to be working on the same project as them because you're the one putting up with missing object methods and bad documentation and poorly written code. Tell em to rewrite it before you can use it and correct them and generally let them know that it has to be acceptable or they get to fix it. If anyone asks about project delays, don't hesitate to throw them under the bus and accurately report that they were the reason for the delay because their code didn't work. Soon it'll become really obvious that they're the inferior employee who should be replaced if possible. Do note that if you're the one always screwing up, I hope you expect the same thing to be done to you. Get better at programming or get a different job.
What is your strategy when joining a successful project, (Version 3.0 just shipped and makes the company money) and you consider the existing code-base and developers to be of low quality?
I can't see how you could throw anyone under the bus in this case.
While I believe TDD is a great technique for getting code with 100% Statement coverage, I do not feel it allows you to refactor code mercilessly. In order to refactor code you need to know its history, who wrote it and why, what does it do in the scope of the application. This takes time that some developers, (Certainly developers new to an existing project) don't want to spend.
The only scenario where you can refeactor mercilessly is when you have 100% Path coverage, Not statement coverage (100% Statement coverage is trivial and all code should have that.) If you don't have 100% Path coverage on your application (And I think outside of medical and aviation you won't.) you can't refactor mercilessly. You must be cautious and always question the added value of a code refactor.
Personally I've had better luck with free apps. Flash Banner Took 2 hours to write, and has made over $200 though ads. (That's money transferred to me, not pending earnings)
Not much mind you, but still a decent return. (Minus the $99 dev fee of course)
Storing countless photos and hours of video is a nice idea, but really what is the point? Are you going to review it all? If all you do is maintain data from the past what kind of a life is that?
You should be very careful what you hold on to. It becomes a weight that you have to carry. Filter it down to the very best, and only keep that. You might find it easier to keep a smaller amount of data.
I was once like the article poster. Scratching my head, guessing at awnsers. The bottom line was that i was never sure if what i was reading apllied to me.
So I called a big law firm and asked to speak with an IP lawyer. He reviewed all my paperwork and gave the real awnsers I was looking for. It cost 400 bucks, and was worth every penny.
We should be doing both. Hell we should have missions going on right now to all of the interesting and reachable planets. Cassini cost 3.26 billion. Even at 100 x this the cost is still manageable. So why not send out 100?
Probe, balloons, rovers, subs, do it all!
There is so much to learn that would impact everything we know today. In my view it would be a great investment.
From what I have personally experienced, and seen in the market in general it was not until mid 2003 that we saw a recovery from the dot com bust. It's only been five years, and to be honest wages have only recently gotten back in line.
How the heck am I supposed to get ahead when these downturns happen every 5 years or so? How does one build wealth, get married and raise a family? I mean I just got my 6 month emergency fund restocked, and now I might have to use it?
I've been in the business since 98. Are these 5 year cycles normal?
I think the response might be that you should only get paid for writing new software. So in the above example you build a perfect product give it away for free then people will pay you to build a custom version (or something else) for them.
But if the original is perfect would they need a custom version? Also would they not choke on the cost of custom development (Lets say $200 a hour) vs just using a free product?
The argument does not make a ton of sense to me. How can a programmer make money if everything is under the GPL?
Moving on is the best possible thing a young kid can do. Any company will reward a productive employee, even if they are just out of school. If they tell you that you are just too young then they should quit.
I've seen lots of kids move up fast. They learn the system, work hard, and get ahead. The too young line / you gotta pay your dues, ranks right up there with 'It's against company policy to give you more then a 2% raise.'
It's nice to see comments about the pitfalls of refactoring. (I'm sure it would be different on reddit:) ) In my experience it is very rare that any refactoring will actually improve an application.
Slashdot Mirror
Minecraft is a great example. Written at a time where all major games had teams in the hundreds, and multi million dollar budgets. Everyone had declared the solo programmer dead.
Think urban sprawl is bad now? Just wait until you can sleep or work while driving. 8 hour commutes would not be uncommon.
No, Kirk. The game's not over. To the last I will grapple with thee.
- Matching buy and sell orders in an in memory book. Normally each symbol will have its own book.
- the database is written to after the transaction, multiple machines track the transaction, and log files are written too.
Agreed, In my view very few jobs should require University.
They way it is these days Post secondary education has established itself as the gateway to a better life.
If or when we get a Digital Driver it will change commutes forever, and for the worse. I can see people in camper like vans so they can sleep on the 10 hour commute, or not even go home during the week, just let the car drive all night and drop you off at work in the morning. The concept of home will be totally gone.
and see
but he's grateful to have some sort of technical job at 70
I would say that having any job at 70 is an accomplishment. From my perspective I have not see age discrimination, I have worked side by side with developers that where 50+. In fact I'm still one of the young guys on my team and I'm in my late thirties.
What I have seen is experience discrimination. Guys who started on one platform in the 80's are out of luck these days. Also folks that stayed with a single company for too long. (IE 10+ years is way to long). Protip: Always work in one of the top 3 programming languages. Today that is C, Java, and Dot Net.
Forgive me if I sound biter. I was once like you. Here is my story and I hope it helps.
I have always been a fast learner, and have always been able to take on greater and greater responsibilities at companies. My employers have always loved me. But raises where always very hard to get (if ever) and I was always paid below what I knew I was worth.
The only way I was able to get what I wanted was to move to other companies, and eventually to contract development.
Ever since I watched Babylon 5 and have seen an entire series setup and resolve expectations over a number of seasons I thought that other shows would follow. I thought that Lost, and Battlestar would follow B5's example as they led me to believe. In the end I'm just left felling mad. I NEVER want to watch an episode of Lost or BSG again. It just feels like a lie.
Note to writers. You don't have to do the big mystery thing, you don't have to setup expectations of how its all going to end. Just do a simple episode by episode series (Like ST:TNG, DS9, and Voyager) it works fine, and I'm not left feeling mad.
Well said.
I'm in the same boat. First Baby due in Dec.
What is your strategy when joining a successful project, (Version 3.0 just shipped and makes the company money) and you consider the existing code-base and developers to be of low quality?
I can't see how you could throw anyone under the bus in this case.
TDD enables you to refactor mercilessly
While I believe TDD is a great technique for getting code with 100% Statement coverage, I do not feel it allows you to refactor code mercilessly. In order to refactor code you need to know its history, who wrote it and why, what does it do in the scope of the application. This takes time that some developers, (Certainly developers new to an existing project) don't want to spend.
The only scenario where you can refeactor mercilessly is when you have 100% Path coverage, Not statement coverage (100% Statement coverage is trivial and all code should have that.) If you don't have 100% Path coverage on your application (And I think outside of medical and aviation you won't.) you can't refactor mercilessly. You must be cautious and always question the added value of a code refactor.
Personally I've had better luck with free apps.
Flash Banner Took 2 hours to write, and has made over $200 though ads. (That's money transferred to me, not pending earnings)
Not much mind you, but still a decent return. (Minus the $99 dev fee of course)
This really opens the floodgates for cloud computing. I can't wait to port to this platform.
Why store so much data? Because you can?
Storing countless photos and hours of video is a nice idea, but really what is the point? Are you going to review it all? If all you do is maintain data from the past what kind of a life is that?
You should be very careful what you hold on to. It becomes a weight that you have to carry. Filter it down to the very best, and only keep that. You might find it easier to keep a smaller amount of data.
I was once like the article poster. Scratching my head, guessing at awnsers. The bottom line was that i was never sure if what i was reading apllied to me.
So I called a big law firm and asked to speak with an IP lawyer. He reviewed all my paperwork and gave the real awnsers I was looking for. It cost 400 bucks, and was worth every penny.
Am I the only one that read DARPA's IBM-Led Neural Network Project Seeks Inmate Brain at first?
We should be doing both. Hell we should have missions going on right now to all of the interesting and reachable planets. Cassini cost 3.26 billion. Even at 100 x this the cost is still manageable. So why not send out 100?
Probe, balloons, rovers, subs, do it all!
There is so much to learn that would impact everything we know today. In my view it would be a great investment.
From what I have personally experienced, and seen in the market in general it was not until mid 2003 that we saw a recovery from the dot com bust. It's only been five years, and to be honest wages have only recently gotten back in line.
How the heck am I supposed to get ahead when these downturns happen every 5 years or so? How does one build wealth, get married and raise a family? I mean I just got my 6 month emergency fund restocked, and now I might have to use it?
I've been in the business since 98. Are these 5 year cycles normal?
I think the response might be that you should only get paid for writing new software. So in the above example you build a perfect product give it away for free then people will pay you to build a custom version (or something else) for them.
But if the original is perfect would they need a custom version? Also would they not choke on the cost of custom development (Lets say $200 a hour) vs just using a free product?
The argument does not make a ton of sense to me. How can a programmer make money if everything is under the GPL?
A great icon set can really punch up a product. Check these out http://www.iconshock.com/.
I've tried to use free ones, but they just don't have the same quality.
Moving on is the best possible thing a young kid can do. Any company will reward a productive employee, even if they are just out of school. If they tell you that you are just too young then they should quit.
I've seen lots of kids move up fast. They learn the system, work hard, and get ahead. The too young line / you gotta pay your dues, ranks right up there with 'It's against company policy to give you more then a 2% raise.'
Give em hell kids!
It's nice to see comments about the pitfalls of refactoring. (I'm sure it would be different on reddit :) ) In my experience it is very rare that any refactoring will actually improve an application.
The worst part of refactoring, it breaks merges.