Once there was a Cat. She was an old, wise Cat. Cat came to the department. The programmers didn’t like Cat. Cat made them work and be honest. “Tell me the Truth!” said Cat. So they told her the truth. The managers didn’t like Cat, either. “Don’t tell us the truth!” said the managers. The managers were sad. They needed to be done. “Done, done, done by Christmas!” they said. ...
I’m typing this on my new, ultra-portable 3.8lb Dell D410. The company isn’t shy about providing us with computers, particularly those from our closest parter. I like it so far; it has no drive bays, but a full compliment of ports and the biggest battery I’ve ever seen…9-cell lithium-ION. Basically, this is the machine that’s to replace all my paper, etc. Probably the best thing is it has integrated 802.11g wireless, freeing me from popping a PCMCIA card in and out of the chassis to put it in the bag. ...
I’m not much for prophesy, but I believe we’ll see the death of the personal computer in the next 5 years, at least in its current form. Reason? Virtualization, the ability to be at one terminal, but feel like you’re on a completely different machine. Case in point: Here at LXK, we go to meetings. Alot. However, in each of those over-attended, useless meetings, 80% of the people have some form of laptop open multitasking–IM to their team or answering email. This ’laptop’ culture has gone through several distinct phases: ...
This isn’t normally a tech blog because: there are enough of those I generally don’t think about computers outside of work However, I wanted to write a quick blurb about subversion. Subversion is a “version control system”, which is a computer program that lets you store incremental versions of things. Back in the old days, when computer programs were on punch cards or tape, there were jobs for people who kept the cards or tapes, catalogued them, and lent them out to programmers who were working on them. Today, that job is fully automated by systems like RCS, CVS, subversion, Clear CASE, PVCS, etc. ...
Today’s wonderful Joel Spolsky article. My comments: Amen. I was taught CS at a very small, liberal arts college, but it was REAL Computer Science, damnit, including sections on Data Structures, pointers, linked lists, compiler design, operating systems concepts, etc. This was from 1997-2001, and even then the shift from “harder languages” and platforms like C, LISP, and pascal to java was already underway. In essence, Joel’s argument in the article is that some people just won’t ‘get it’ enough to survive interesting computer applications in the hardest areas. That is, you can be pretty dim–and I’ve had such people on my team–and stil get by in the Java/J2EE world. Java hides enough ugliness from you that you can be mediocre and get by. ...
Daddy wants one of THESE BABIES Dual-core intel chips, 4x faster than my powerbook….15.4" high-contrast display…YEAH!
As I sit at my desk on a sunny day, I’m contemplating Murphy’s law, which states that whatever can go wrong will, at the worst possible time. :-) today, would seem like that day. I came in this morning to merge and commit some changes to the library, and then do about 3 hours of administrative/clerical stuff that needed to be done, helping out my programmers as needed. Yeah, about that… ...
I get a free subscription to “Information Week,” the softcore executive-digested version of “Software Developer” magazine. In this week’s issue there’s an article by Chris Murphy entitled “Speak Up for the IT Career,” whose thesis is there’s a huge market for talent in IT, but few young people wish to go into IT/Programming in college, so companies are forced to outsource. Telling quote from the article: One of the first IT courses is a beginning programming class, which involves hours on end alone at the computer. “It’s a turn-off because people think that’s all there is to IT, and there’s a lot more than programming…I’d rather be in a team diagnosing problems, not in front of a computer all day.” ...
…no amount of money can make you enjoy a job you don’t like. I’ve bellyached to everyone that will listen, and they’re (apparently) very tired of it. Everybody has problems, and whining about a job that pays you an obscene amount of money to (literally) twiddle your fingers all day doesn’t get much traction with most people. I don’t blame them. It is getting kinda sad that no one sympathizes with me in the least…doesn’t help the crushing loneliness I feel every night when I go home to my empty house, that’s for sure. ...
This is just getting nuts. We have development managers fighting project managers fighting product definition people. We have managers going behind other’s backs…crazy.
I’m assuming the phrase “Come to Jesus” comes from that scene in Flight of the Intruder where Fred Thompson’s character, acting as lead in the court martial of Jake Grafton and his bombardier says, “I hope you both realize that now is the time to come to Jesus.” Anyway, one of my guys screwed-up. Again. I yelled at him last time for his transgressions, and so I get to go to a meeting where a manager gets to “discuss” with me about his options. ...
There are some people doing really neat things with technology. But, on the whole, my company is not doing it. So, I ask myself, why is this so? Some thoughts: * Lack of the “R” in “R&D”. It’s trite to say that 99% of computers is “programming” and 1% is “Computer Science,” but it remains true that the challenge today is analyzing problems and finding appropriate solutions. The thing we’re missing is knowledge transfer from the cutting edge to the troops in the trenches. ...
Here’s a blast from the past I found on ‘Wikipedia’: Dennis M. Ritchie’s Homepage And there, a barely tarnished gem, a PDF of the 1974 C Programmer’s Manual. 25 or so pages that clearly delineate the language that would inspire hackers throughout the world.
This is for all you folks ready to go to college, ready to be the next Alan Turing, John Backus, or Bill Gates. Don’t become a programmer. You’ll either land in some sweatshop like ACS where people yell at you all day to fix the problems they cause by their mismanagement, or you’ll land in some massive corporation, where they’ll force you do to crappy work until you’re burnt-out. Meh. I hate my job. Must be Thursday :-)
I LOVE SuSE Linux Got to troubleshoot a problem today on our Linux box, and despite it’s nearly 3 years of age, the thing just SCREAMS. So good to be back in the Unix/Linux world where things are files, period. Everything works like a file, and the OS isn’t going down, no matter how much you beat on it. Definitely not the most user-friendly of systems, but for the professional who wants to get something done, a good SuSE box with tons of programming goodies and network utilities is hard to beat. ...
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I’m team lead this week. It’s day two, and I’m already wanting to pull my hair out. What I need is someone who’s good on the server to whom I can delegate work. On the client side, I’m covered, but the server is a total disaster. I’m delegating like you wouldn’t believe, and I’m still utterly buried. Honestly, I can’t wait for some of these marketing drones and grandstanding managers to GO THE FRICK HOME so I can do some of the work I should’ve had done last Friday. ...
Giving you a snapshot of how overloaded a software engineer can become when he’s working for a hardware company: My current projects/tasks/research items: On my current product: security: Support for test tools for our next printer family that’s currently in test New server function responsibilities Updatest to a spec that’s 3 months out-of-date Unit tests that I haven’t written bug Reports: 7 outstanding (probably will get more) Field issues: none (for now) ...
Ah, Google, king of this vast meritocracy called the Internet. Check out Google Maps everyone. I may never hit Mapquest again.
Alert Alert Alert! If you’re using FireFox to browse the web, please do the following to prevent a ‘phishing’ vulnerability that could cause identity theft: 1. type about:config into the navigation bar (the same place you’d type a URL) 2. scroll down and find the key network.enableIDN 3. If it says ’true’, double click on that line and set it to ‘false’. This tweak will protect you from getting redirected from a legitimate site to ones where your Identity could be stolen.
Check out this snazzy bluetooth headset Whitney got me for Christmas: Works really well so far…I’m talking to Whitney, and my phone is across the room, plugged into its charger.