Tamerlin

47 ms·

451.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I agree, it's an excellent post. Another caveat that relates to #2 is that a lot of people get so obsessed with the back end that they build it before they figure out what problem they're trying to solve in the first place. Without knowing
452.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
That's an excellent question, and you've already received a few good responses, but here's my view :) The answer to your second and third questions are both "yes." A lot of developers take pride in building complex software. Bad developers
453.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
The Reg once posted an article titled "PC Sales Down" while in the first or second paragraph they had the statement, "PC Sales are up 13%" (or something like that, the number's probably a bit off). I suppose that shows where their prioritie
454.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
That will make the 1 GB images much easier to process. Woohoo! At least until I get a drum scanner, or become insane enough to start shooting 8x10's... or both. :D
455.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Since this isn't the first time someone's cloned the mac (I think the first cloner was NuTech, or something like that), I was only surprised that Apple gave PsyStar so long before filing their suit.
456.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
What, eight cores isn't enough? They're really pulling out the stops on POWER. It's going to be interesting to see how well Itanium stacks up (if at all).
457.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
One important point that you missed is that it is also a de-humanizing view of what we do. It's not limited to programmers, it's typical of corporate america to treat employees like they're nothing but cogs in a machine, rather than people.
458.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
The scope of the project doesn't change the need for concept and strategy.
459.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I guess that depends on how you define "crappy". If by "crappy" you mean "spartan" then sure. If by "crappy" you mean the code is bad, then you're only racking up technical debt, not making progress. ALWAYS start with the simplest solution
460.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Why does Apple need to be independent? How would be in Apple's best interests to take on the massive overhead of being a CPU manufacturer? I'm not even convinced that it would be in Apple's best interests to be in the graphics hardware busi
461.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
IBM isn't "getting the milk for free" from AMD. IBM and AMD are sharing a lot of R&D costs, along with most of the major semiconductor manufacturer's out there (like Samsung, TSMC, UMC, Chartered Semi, etc). IBM and AMD are also trading
462.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Bezos isn't lying. Though it's true that the article's author is exaggerating things a bit, the reality is that Kindle's doing fairly well. I personally believe that the primary roadblocks it's facing are the lack of color (which I believe
463.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
They started heading down that road when they developed Java... because when the rest of the industry outpaced Sun's hardware performance, Java made it easier to get their software off of Sun's platform. And the didn't really do all that go
464.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
"will work to reverse the widely held belief, informed by early troubles upon the operating system's launch, that Vista isn't compatible with many applications and devices." Agreed -- when I read this line, I was wondering whether it would
465.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I've worked in such environments, and as much as I enjoyed the work when I was able to do it, the reality was that we wound up wasting a lot of time spinning our wheels because we accidentally stepped on each other toes. As a result, I wasn
466.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
You're the one who has it wrong. You're just having trouble finding people willing to sacrifice their lives for their jobs, and those aren't the people you want working for you anyway.
467.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Agreed -- that's what prevents the endless rounds of re-factoring, and keeps everyone focused on building a product, rather than drifting off on tangents. We're saying the same thing, here. :)
468.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
It's not. It's usually a route to failure rather than success to begin with, but it's so culturally ingrained into the illusion of a work ethic that we've become a society of butt-in-seat workaholics. Getting stuff done is a prerequisite fo
469.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
It depends also on how you characterize your deadlines. If you allow slippage when things take longer than expected, or to adapt to changing requirements, you can impose deadlines without laying the hammer down. In the end though, that ends
470.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I agree, this could have been described as good programming. :) There's a quote by a well-known author whose name I cannot recall at the moment, concluding a lengthy letter: "Forgive me for writing such a long letter, I did not have time to
471.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
That's certainly true. They're also useful for distributed caches, but that doesn't make B-trees any less useful when the situation calls for it.
472.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
And you call yourself a geek? We all know that the answer is in fact 42! :) Note: Units are, of course, left as an exercise to the reader :)
473.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
So far in my experience the companies hiring want you to know that sort of thing, but that knowledge is largely wasted at most jobs.
474.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Knowing what a binary tree is turned out to be overkill for even most of the senior developer positions I've had.
475.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
At one company I worked for, the IT guys hated the macs. The first reason was that they ended up costing twice as much to match the configurations (extra memory, the requisite software, etc). The second and more critical reason was support.
476.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
It isn't likely, since most of the high-end shops have a lot of custom software on those Linux machines, and even their Linux distros are in many cases heavily customized, beyond what they'd be able to do with OSX. Smaller FX shops that don
477.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
If all you're doing is working and sleeping, you're neither making good decisions nor thinking hard. You're just faking it and making up for your burnout by getting less done. That extra long hours speed the time to market is an illusion. I
478.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
"Just because you've been a developer for 10 years doesn't make you a senior developer." That was exactly my point. It makes you senior, but not a developer.
479.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
What disappoints me the most is that the RoR maintainers made almost exactly the same mistake a couple of years ago, trying to keep a security flaw under wraps rather than being forthright about it.
480.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
That would not have been better, because it implies that seniority implies competence. What differentiates a programmer from a developer in the author's parlance isn't merely experience. A lot of newcomers to the field today build prototype

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