Tamerlin

50 ms·

511.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I don't think that this is all that bad an idea, even though Apple's not much of a silicon design shop. Microsoft isn't either, and yet they were able to REDUCE costs by getting a custom-designed processor for the XBox360 (yes, I know that
512.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I was also. I've worked for several startups, and indeed their first mistake was to develop software in crunch mode, and their second was to throw more people at it because it was late. In every case, the result was software that required a
513.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Most software projects use the sweatshop method. (We're late, throw more people and more hours at it.) And most software projects fail. Although that isn't any more definitive than anything else, it does give DHH's view some weight, and so
514.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Though you do have a completely valid point, it's also true that a lot of people should take some lessons from their example. Until people realize that working a lot of overtime tends to generate a lot of technical debt, they'll keep doing
515.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Mine's been going a similar route... I actually even relocated because the job description sounded pretty exciting (technically challenging, even), but it ended up being the same sort of thing as the government contracting work that I was t
516.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I rather dislike it, because I have to kill it in order to free up memory for Photoshop. My laptop only has 4 GB, and my image scans end up being around 1 GB each. I need that memory!
517.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Sort of. Those are the ones that tend to get promoted to management roles and proceed to use the same reward system for the people who come after them. In the end, you end up with a culture of long work hours because "that's how it's done"
518.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
In the 12 years that I've largely wasted as a professional software engineer, what I've noticed is that the best developers never work a lot of overtime for extended periods of time. Sure, it happens that they end up staying late to get som
519.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I fear that it's happening, because of our weak education system and the decreasing cultural appreciation for intellectualism in American culture. Our education system and our culture also discourage imagination and curiosity, both of which
520.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
That's what you get from companies that don't understand the value of experience.
521.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
What I'm working on is fine-art photography, and the web site that I am designing is primarily intended as aa marketing tool, though I do plan to sell from it.
522.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
This trend is similar to the loss of creativity in education. My theory is that it's also a side effect of having teachers who aren't experts in their field; after all, how can you expect someone who doesn't understand physics to teach phys
523.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Actually, you'd be even better served looking at F#, since it has the functional programming characteristics that make functional programs more easily parallelizable than languages like Java. Of course, you can also use things like LINQ and
524.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
"Dell are the biggest low-end computer manufacturer which are, for the most part, significantly cheaper than their competitors. You sacrifice build quality and design to get that." You do have to sacrifice SOMETHING, and you're right that i
525.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
"The lesson? Shut up and code." The author's full of it. Though I agree with the idea that not having cool features doesn't make a language suck (though it can certainly make programming in that language less fun), the rest of his stuff is
526.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
IMO it's just a case of MS being late to the party (again). Personally, I think it's good for Flash to have some competition, and I like the fact that Silverlight includes support for Ruby, C#, and F# for code-behind programming. I also agr
527.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I hike in the mountains regularly (with a 50 pound pack) and spend 6-8 hours a week in the dojo. :)
528.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Fair point, particularly since Microsoft didn't start out evil -- it was in fact Apple that tried to sue Microsoft into oblivion before Windows took over the computing world... back when Apple was a $4 billion-dollar behemoth and MS was an
529.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
That's a very good point. IMO the biggest problem with unit tests is that so many people mis-use them, believing that they are a replacement for QA, integration testing, and load testing. You need people to look at your user interfaces to v
530.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I've worked for three well-funded startups that failed for another reason, though all of them ended up making the same mistake: they couldn't develop software. All three made some of the most common mistakes in software development, and tri
531.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I recommend checking out powernotebooks.com before you decide. You might like what you see there. I have a Sager that I recently purchased from them; it's a great machine, well-built, and since it's factory direct, it's less expensive than
532.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
It's worse, actually; the vast majority of the programmers out there today aren't implementing squat, they're providing life support for the bad programmers who came before them. (This has come very close to driving me entirely out of the f
533.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
That's also a good point. I think there's a disconnect there in a lot of cases, several of them being former employers of mine. I think the ones who stray from "frugal" to "cheap" are failing to consider the value of what they're spending t
534.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
That's a very good example of what frugality is. A lot of people seem to equate "frugal" and "cheap" which is wrong; fragality is only spending money when you need to. Or in your case, you determined that the cost of spending $500 for a Goo
535.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I started feeling that way also a while ago. Before the tech boom hit full-swing, the government contractors were the place to be to work with new technologies. It was at SAIC that I was able to get our division to implement a major project
536.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
I agree. Then again, most of the people that I've met who share the threads are evil mindset write bad code and can't manage requirements, like a certain project manager I had who was full of "trivial" last-minute requirements... I suspect
537.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
There are times when it makes sense to use more threads than CPU's though; one good (and common) example is web application servers. Applications that use resources like databases that are I/O rather than compute bound can be significantly
538.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
They're not. You can get custom machines from www.powernotebooks.com, and their prices do beat both Apple's and Dells. I also recall the press release when Asustek won the contract for Apple's MacBook... though I don't remember whether it w
539.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
That's the main reason that I also stayed out of the games industry, even though playing games is what lead me into programming during high school. One thing that always makes me wonder about the perpetual crisis mode folks is that the vast
540.
by Tamerlin 18y ago
Most of the time in my experience, the "crisis mode" resulted from poor planning. The leadership tried to fix the situation by convincing the employees to work longer hours, which invariably made things far worse in the long run. The realit

More ›