The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

C-Octothorpe · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Somebody:
I have been fielding calls all day.
Bobby Jo Stuart and Tim Van Der Hoot can not access their login. PLEASE HELP!

CAPTCHA: NISL what!

Tell them to stop being losers and get rid of those multi-part names...

DEFECT STATUS: Closed

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
Somebody:
I have been fielding calls all day.
Bobby Jo Stuart and Tim Van Der Hoot can not access their login. PLEASE HELP!

CAPTCHA: NISL what!

Tell them to stop being losers and get rid of those multi-part names...

DEFECT STATUS: Closed

That was step one on our issue resolution checklist. They were saying something about family name and being important or something. I stopped listening part way through to look at a shiny paperclip on my desk. Anyways, management may just have to fire these two to get this resolved.

C-Octothorpe · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Somebody:
C-Octothorpe:
Somebody:
I have been fielding calls all day.
Bobby Jo Stuart and Tim Van Der Hoot can not access their login. PLEASE HELP!

CAPTCHA: NISL what!

Tell them to stop being losers and get rid of those multi-part names...

DEFECT STATUS: Closed

That was step one on our issue resolution checklist. They were saying something about family name and being important or something. I stopped listening part way through to look at a shiny paperclip on my desk. Anyways, management may just have to fire these two to get this resolved.

Excellent work!

D-Coder · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

dgvid:
So, wait, this code was written by a cow's stomach?

No, by noodles.

Power Troll · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Justice League:
Sock Puppet 5:
nulla:
I bet the guy who wrote this had a college degree.
You moron, no one who actually attended a college for 4 years could write something this hideos.
I think I might have a universal solution to all three of the problems:
Problem 1: Degree vs. No Degree Problem 2: There are no women in IT Problem 3: I think these arguments are all about trolling.

Universal Solution: People that play with computers and haunt these forums are universally immature. I can not tell you why this is the case, but I can tell you how it has caused the above problems.

Problem 1: Degree vs. No Degree Most of the kids I went to school with had no respect for what they were learning and thus did as little as possible. The most clever of them went on to do work that required their degree--video games (as unfortunate and under-compensated as work in that field is), the FSA, and other academic disciplines. The ones who thought they were clever and spent time giggling, enamored with their own intelligence, discussing minutia with colleagues, doomed themselves to careers in business software--that which requires very few reasoning skills: just follow the patterns that have always been in place. Those who don't follow the patterns create the epic VB and J2EE WTFs that cross my eyes and are far more idiotic than anything I've seen displayed here. Immaturity kept them from REAL education, and they are several thousand dollars poorer, gaining no skills whatsoever.

Problem 2: No women in IT Women ARE (obviously in general) more mature--eager to learn and to please the ones in authority over them. They will generally go the college path of the career. Then they encounter the immaturity of their colleagues and generally choose a different brainy discipline. Those that persist are generally the stand-offish ones. In college, the good-looking ones are worshiped (but never talked to, immaturity remember) or ignored. In both cases, the 5th-grade maturity level divides the sexes. The few that "make it" to the working world are typically very hostile from their experience. They are then seen as "overly-defensive" and avoided.

Problem 3: Most of the folks in the above categories have too much time on their hands and spend their time trolling these forums. I am one of the damned. I was good in school. I was also immature. Now I'm stuck in b*$%ness software. But I pass the time (generally logged in as Nagesh or boog) by chumping all of you knuckleheads.

This is my confession. This is my future.

Wow, what a troll. A++, would read again

Matt Westwood · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

[quote user="somechick"][quote=ShatteredArm]2) You don't think part of the reason there are so few women in IT has something to do with the fact that 90% of CS students are men? I had entire classes in college where there were no more than two or three girls, out of about fifty total students.[/quote]

As a female in IT, I think part of the reason there aren't more women in IT is the boys' club attitude. There's a certain level of arrogance in this field that is intimidating (or at the very least a turn-off) to most women. As the oldest (of 5) and the only girl in my generation, it doesn't bother me, and I can generally see through the big attitude to the actual technical aptitude of someone.

I currently deal with a tech support guy who thinks he's god's gift to bits, and treats everyone else like a 3-year-old. (It's not just me. I was paranoid there for a while, until he was on the phone with a manager in my organization and told him "Uh, no. Wrong Answer." in the way you would correct someone adding 2 and 2 to get 7.) But the product is ... well, let's just say that the backend wouldn't have passed an exercise in a DBA for beginners class, and the web front-end wouldn't pass for looks in any evaluation of HTML today. To the point where I've considered how to anonymize it for a WTF. This guy knows his product, but doesn't know how broken it is, and doesn't understand that say, we'd want to be able to report on the tickets that we put into the system.

One of the other reasons I don't think there are a lot of women is because they just aren't as interested in taking things apart and learning how they work as men are. I don't know if it's learned behavior. All I know is I got the "make 100 things from this breadboard and wire" kits as a kid, and enjoyed them. Then again, I always liked my math and science classes, and I loved the first-order logic class that I took my 2nd time around in college, but my brain only goes up to Calc II, as I failed Calc III twice before giving up a 2nd time on formal education, and I would have needed another three math classes for a CS degree. 15 years later, I don't see the need for a degree to continue in the field I've chosen, and I have test anxiety that makes it difficult to get certifications -- but I'm employed, and I enjoy what I do. [/quote]

When I did my maths degree a few years ago (via adult education, most participants were over 30), there were considerably more women than men on the pure maths courses (particularly number theory), but women were totally outnumbered by men on applied maths (particularly wave mechanics). And the women on the pure maths courses were far more likely to be party animals. Don't know why, just adding this piece of information to the mix.

Matt Westwood · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Somebody:
C-Octothorpe:
Somebody:
I have been fielding calls all day.
Bobby Jo Stuart and Tim Van Der Hoot can not access their login. PLEASE HELP!

CAPTCHA: NISL what!

Tell them to stop being losers and get rid of those multi-part names...

DEFECT STATUS: Closed

That was step one on our issue resolution checklist. They were saying something about family name and being important or something. I stopped listening part way through to look at a shiny paperclip on my desk. Anyways, management may just have to fire these two to get this resolved.

Oh, I understand. You log in as "Somebody" because you're too embarrassed about your name to own up to it. You used to be a proud Robert Smith but there was already a Robert Smith in your company so you had to change your name to Ponsonby Smuttyballs in order to render it effectively unique so as to future-proof the user database.

C-Octothorpe · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
Somebody:
C-Octothorpe:
Somebody:
I have been fielding calls all day.
Bobby Jo Stuart and Tim Van Der Hoot can not access their login. PLEASE HELP!

CAPTCHA: NISL what!

Tell them to stop being losers and get rid of those multi-part names...

DEFECT STATUS: Closed

That was step one on our issue resolution checklist. They were saying something about family name and being important or something. I stopped listening part way through to look at a shiny paperclip on my desk. Anyways, management may just have to fire these two to get this resolved.

Oh, I understand. You log in as "Somebody" because you're too embarrassed about your name to own up to it. You used to be a proud Robert Smith but there was already a Robert Smith in your company so you had to change your name to Ponsonby Smuttyballs in order to render it effectively unique so as to future-proof the user database.

Thats Ponsonby Smuttyballs445 to you, good sir!

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

You had me at firstSpaceLastName

boog · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

SCSimmons:
I kind of want to see the code in the stored procedure now.
Wait, I take that back. I don't ever want to see that.

I'm interested to see the stored proc. Knowing that first and last name are not unique in the database, I'm interested to see which route Rumen chose for handling multiple records with same first/last names:

only return the login for the first matching record
return logins for all matching records, in a comma-separated string
die magnificently; Seppuku

daily · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
Coyne:
Rumen is just making sure sure the user is really authorized: Twice the security!

Two factor authentication!

Something you know: your name, and something you are: uh, your name...

Right?

and something you have: a name.

Justice · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

ShatteredArm:
2) You don't think part of the reason there are so few women in IT has something to do with the fact that 90% of CS students are men? I had entire classes in college where there were no more than two or three girls, out of about fifty total students.

You had two or three?

Our department was so hung up on the gender ratio that in order to make the numbers look better, instead of calculating the ratio of men to women, we'd calculate the ratio of men named David to women.

It was usually more than 6 to 1.

C-Octothorpe · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

daily:
C-Octothorpe:
Coyne:
Rumen is just making sure sure the user is really authorized: Twice the security!

Two factor authentication!

Something you know: your name, and something you are: uh, your name...

Right?
and something you have: a name.

Three factor authentication! They have that now?

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
Matt Westwood:
Somebody:
C-Octothorpe:
Somebody:
I have been fielding calls all day.
Bobby Jo Stuart and Tim Van Der Hoot can not access their login. PLEASE HELP!

CAPTCHA: NISL what!

Tell them to stop being losers and get rid of those multi-part names...

DEFECT STATUS: Closed

That was step one on our issue resolution checklist. They were saying something about family name and being important or something. I stopped listening part way through to look at a shiny paperclip on my desk. Anyways, management may just have to fire these two to get this resolved.

Oh, I understand. You log in as "Somebody" because you're too embarrassed about your name to own up to it. You used to be a proud Robert Smith but there was already a Robert Smith in your company so you had to change your name to Ponsonby Smuttyballs in order to render it effectively unique so as to future-proof the user database.

Thats Ponsonby Smuttyballs445 to you, good sir!

I post as Somebody because me mudder told me I was!

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

[quote user="somechick"][quote=ShatteredArm]2) You don't think part of the reason there are so few women in IT has something to do with the fact that 90% of CS students are men? I had entire classes in college where there were no more than two or three girls, out of about fifty total students.[/quote]

As a female in IT, I think part of the reason there aren't more women in IT is the boys' club attitude. There's a certain level of arrogance in this field that is intimidating (or at the very least a turn-off) to most women. As the oldest (of 5) and the only girl in my generation, it doesn't bother me, and I can generally see through the big attitude to the actual technical aptitude of someone.

I currently deal with a tech support guy who thinks he's god's gift to bits, and treats everyone else like a 3-year-old. (It's not just me. I was paranoid there for a while, until he was on the phone with a manager in my organization and told him "Uh, no. Wrong Answer." in the way you would correct someone adding 2 and 2 to get 7.) But the product is ... well, let's just say that the backend wouldn't have passed an exercise in a DBA for beginners class, and the web front-end wouldn't pass for looks in any evaluation of HTML today. To the point where I've considered how to anonymize it for a WTF. This guy knows his product, but doesn't know how broken it is, and doesn't understand that say, we'd want to be able to report on the tickets that we put into the system.

One of the other reasons I don't think there are a lot of women is because they just aren't as interested in taking things apart and learning how they work as men are. I don't know if it's learned behavior. All I know is I got the "make 100 things from this breadboard and wire" kits as a kid, and enjoyed them. Then again, I always liked my math and science classes, and I loved the first-order logic class that I took my 2nd time around in college, but my brain only goes up to Calc II, as I failed Calc III twice before giving up a 2nd time on formal education, and I would have needed another three math classes for a CS degree. 15 years later, I don't see the need for a degree to continue in the field I've chosen, and I have test anxiety that makes it difficult to get certifications -- but I'm employed, and I enjoy what I do. [/quote]

Are you watching me?

But seriously, Wish some people yesterday read your last paragraph!!

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Limish:
C-Octothorpe:
Vlad Poutines:
Justice League:
This is my confession. This is my future.
That you're a virgin?

... and this is about when I close my tab to TDWTF for the day...
You have a tab? You must be a regular customer.

I wonder if that's only the posting Tab, or the reading Tab as well.... Gotta have (at least) two open so we don't lose our place in the reading whhile we think up a quick flame....

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
Somebody:
I have been fielding calls all day.
Bobby Jo Stuart and Tim Van Der Hoot can not access their login. PLEASE HELP!

CAPTCHA: NISL what!

Tell them to stop being losers and get rid of those multi-part names...

DEFECT STATUS: Closed

Damn - I thought you closed your tabs.....

try: Bobby-Jo Stuart and Tim Vanderhoot.

INCIDENT: RESOLVED

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

[quote user="Matt Westwood"][quote user="somechick"][quote=ShatteredArm]2) You don't think part of the reason there are so few women in IT has something to do with the fact that 90% of CS students are men? I had entire classes in college where there were no more than two or three girls, out of about fifty total students.[/quote]

As a female in IT, I think part of the reason there aren't more women in IT is the boys' club attitude. There's a certain level of arrogance in this field that is intimidating (or at the very least a turn-off) to most women. As the oldest (of 5) and the only girl in my generation, it doesn't bother me, and I can generally see through the big attitude to the actual technical aptitude of someone.

I currently deal with a tech support guy who thinks he's god's gift to bits, and treats everyone else like a 3-year-old. (It's not just me. I was paranoid there for a while, until he was on the phone with a manager in my organization and told him "Uh, no. Wrong Answer." in the way you would correct someone adding 2 and 2 to get 7.) But the product is ... well, let's just say that the backend wouldn't have passed an exercise in a DBA for beginners class, and the web front-end wouldn't pass for looks in any evaluation of HTML today. To the point where I've considered how to anonymize it for a WTF. This guy knows his product, but doesn't know how broken it is, and doesn't understand that say, we'd want to be able to report on the tickets that we put into the system.

One of the other reasons I don't think there are a lot of women is because they just aren't as interested in taking things apart and learning how they work as men are. I don't know if it's learned behavior. All I know is I got the "make 100 things from this breadboard and wire" kits as a kid, and enjoyed them. Then again, I always liked my math and science classes, and I loved the first-order logic class that I took my 2nd time around in college, but my brain only goes up to Calc II, as I failed Calc III twice before giving up a 2nd time on formal education, and I would have needed another three math classes for a CS degree. 15 years later, I don't see the need for a degree to continue in the field I've chosen, and I have test anxiety that makes it difficult to get certifications -- but I'm employed, and I enjoy what I do. [/quote]

When I did my maths degree a few years ago (via adult education, most participants were over 30), there were considerably more women than men on the pure maths courses (particularly number theory), but women were totally outnumbered by men on applied maths (particularly wave mechanics). And the women on the pure maths courses were far more likely to be party animals. Don't know why, just adding this piece of information to the mix.[/quote]

Tread carefully. Stating facts like that is sure to upset people, irrespective of how true...

SCSimmons · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

boog:
SCSimmons:
I kind of want to see the code in the stored procedure now.
Wait, I take that back. I don't ever want to see that.
I'm interested to see the stored proc. Knowing that first and last name are not unique in the database, I'm interested to see which route Rumen chose for handling multiple records with same first/last names:

only return the login for the first matching record

return logins for all matching records, in a comma-separated string

die magnificently; Seppuku

Or something stupider than all three of those combined. Real example I've seen in a production application: 4) return a 'not found' message, identical to what's returned if there are *no* records with the submitted first and last name.

Or something stupider than that. I don't know what that would be, and I don't want to know. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

Captain Oblivious · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

somechick:
One of the other reasons I don't think there are a lot of women is because they just aren't as interested in taking things apart and learning how they work as men are. I don't know if it's learned behavior. All I know is I got the "make 100 things from this breadboard and wire" kits as a kid, and enjoyed them. Then again, I always liked my math and science classes, and I loved the first-order logic class that I took my 2nd time around in college, but my brain only goes up to Calc II, as I failed Calc III twice before giving up a 2nd time on formal education, and I would have needed another three math classes for a CS degree.

I got a math degree. My alma mater didn't offer minors or concentrations, but I "would" have been a philosophy minor, based on the sheer number of courses I took in alternative logics -- modal, spatial, temporal, constructive, paraconsistent, mereological, logics with abstraction, etc. The math department course in mathematical logic covered FOL and its models, derivability, ZF and its models, models of arithmetic, the theory of recursive functions, Turing machines, free objects, state machines and other automata, etc.

I'm constantly amazed by how utterly ignorant of their craft most CS graduates are. These people are convinced that programming is "about" telling a computer how to do things, when it is merely a constructive fragment of mathematics -- in other words, a constructive approach to organization and proof. Why has Microsoft introduced features in C# that Haskell has had for 25 years? Because these babies need to be spoon-fed mathematical ideas, because "math is hard". I am not slamming MS for copying Haskell by way of C++, but for taking far too long to do it. I will happily slam MS for implementing these ideas in a terribly unappealing fashion. (To their credit, MS hired Simon Peyton-Jones, one of the creators of Haskell, to work on Haskell and do research in typed functional programming. That is part of why we have Linq and F# now) Compare Haskell's parametric polymorphism to C#'s generics.

Haskell: data List a = Cons a (List a) | EmptyList

The non-graduates are even worse, but then I wouldn't expect someone who didn't study computation to know what an isomorphism is, let alone the consequences of the Howard-Curry isomorphism theorem.

boog · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

SCSimmons:
boog:
I'm interested to see the stored proc. Knowing that first and last name are not unique in the database, I'm interested to see which route Rumen chose for handling multiple records with same first/last names:

only return the login for the first matching record

return logins for all matching records, in a comma-separated string

die magnificently; Seppuku

Real example I've seen in a production application: 4) return a 'not found' message, identical to what's returned if there are *no* records with the submitted first and last name.
Or something stupider than that. I don't know what that would be...

5) return a 'not found' message in a modal alert dialog on the database server

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Bulgarian developers..... Hope it's not something written by the telerik crew lol.

No offense to other Bg devs

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Am I the only one who thinks firstSpaceLastName is Gagarin?

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

'encounter the immaturity and then choose a different path'?eh, actually, observing the immaturity is a lot of fun. that's the reason I stayed :)

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

dr memals:
why is the DB call made twice ?

If this were government work, the DB call would be made in triplicate.

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Captain Oblivious:
Why has Microsoft introduced features in C# that Haskell has had for 25 years?

Because they have to keep their time machine busy with something, or else Raymond Chen will get his hands on it and proceed to do irreversible damage to the space-time continuum?

(Haskell was first defined in 1990.)

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Captain Oblivious:
somechick:
One of the other reasons I don't think there are a lot of women is because they just aren't as interested in taking things apart and learning how they work as men are. I don't know if it's learned behavior. All I know is I got the "make 100 things from this breadboard and wire" kits as a kid, and enjoyed them. Then again, I always liked my math and science classes, and I loved the first-order logic class that I took my 2nd time around in college, but my brain only goes up to Calc II, as I failed Calc III twice before giving up a 2nd time on formal education, and I would have needed another three math classes for a CS degree.

I got a math degree. My alma mater didn't offer minors or concentrations, but I "would" have been a philosophy minor, based on the sheer number of courses I took in alternative logics -- modal, spatial, temporal, constructive, paraconsistent, mereological, logics with abstraction, etc. The math department course in mathematical logic covered FOL and its models, derivability, ZF and its models, models of arithmetic, the theory of recursive functions, Turing machines, free objects, state machines and other automata, etc.

I'm constantly amazed by how utterly ignorant of their craft most CS graduates are. These people are convinced that programming is "about" telling a computer how to do things, when it is merely a constructive fragment of mathematics -- in other words, a constructive approach to organization and proof. Why has Microsoft introduced features in C# that Haskell has had for 25 years? Because these babies need to be spoon-fed mathematical ideas, because "math is hard". I am not slamming MS for copying Haskell by way of C++, but for taking far too long to do it. I will happily slam MS for implementing these ideas in a terribly unappealing fashion. (To their credit, MS hired Simon Peyton-Jones, one of the creators of Haskell, to work on Haskell and do research in typed functional programming. That is part of why we have Linq and F# now) Compare Haskell's parametric polymorphism to C#'s generics.

Haskell: data List a = Cons a (List a) | EmptyList

The non-graduates are even worse, but then I wouldn't expect someone who didn't study computation to know what an isomorphism is, let alone the consequences of the Howard-Curry isomorphism theorem.

Dude, you masturbate a lot.

Also, you're begging the question. Programming at its most basic, is giving a set of instructions to a machine. All that horseshit your spouting is further abstract than what the people who you look down upon do.
Grow up and blah blah blah.

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Oh, and F# is a toy language that's not ready for primetime, so please stop holding it up as an example of why functional programming is winning the battle or whatever.

SQLDave · 2011-05-25 Reply Admin

JasonC:
Justice League:
Sock Puppet 5:
nulla:
I bet the guy who wrote this had a college degree.
You moron, no one who actually attended a college for 4 years could write something this hideos.
I think I might have a universal solution to all three of the problems:
Problem 1: Degree vs. No Degree Problem 2: There are no women in IT Problem 3: I think these arguments are all about trolling. Problem 4: ????? Problem 5: PROFIT!

/.. snip ../

Where's the solution? Amidst all that text, I see no actual solution.

I added it for you.

2011-05-25 Reply Admin

Justice League:
ShatteredArm:
Justice League:
Sock Puppet 5:
nulla:
I bet the guy who wrote this had a college degree.
You moron, no one who actually attended a college for 4 years could write something this hideos.
I think I might have a universal solution to all three of the problems:
Problem 1: Degree vs. No Degree Problem 2: There are no women in IT Problem 3: I think these arguments are all about trolling.

Universal Solution: People that play with computers and haunt these forums are universally immature. I can not tell you why this is the case, but I can tell you how it has caused the above problems.

A couple of issues with this argument...

There are those of us who ended up in business software not because we are immature, or stupid, but because we are simply too nonchalant to really care about money or ambition. Think April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation.

You don't think part of the reason there are so few women in IT has something to do with the fact that 90% of CS students are men? I had entire classes in college where there were no more than two or three girls, out of about fifty total students.

Lern 2 reed!

Justice League:
they encounter the immaturity of their colleagues and generally choose a different brainy discipline

This also addresses a previous comment about how there are more female engineers than software engineers.

I've never met a female engineer... How exactly does one go about engineering a female?

Captcha abigo, as opposed to a small o?

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Captain Oblivious:

...

I'm constantly amazed by how utterly ignorant of their craft most CS graduates are. These people are convinced that programming is "about" telling a computer how to do things, when it is merely a constructive fragment of mathematics -- in other words, a constructive approach to organization and proof. ...

Sure, the real world applications that actually do something are not our business. Our business should be high flown architecture. Got ya.

Now, take your pompousness back to whatever planet you think you are on.

Programming IS about telling computers what to do. That's what the word "programming" means. Pro- (before) and -graphein (written). Written in advance. That's all programming is: writing stuff to be done, a to-do list for your computer.

Organization and proof? Both fine, but not part of programming.

The nonsense you just spouted is one of the reason why some college grads suck big time. Because you think your job is to come up with pretty architectures and discuss their relative merits.

If you are a programmer working almost anywhere in the real world(TM), sorry, but that's not your job. Your job is to find solutions for people's problems and implement these solutions in code.

And no matter how good you are, until you understand what your job is, you are a liability to your company.

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Sylver:
Captain Oblivious:

...

I'm constantly amazed by how utterly ignorant of their craft most CS graduates are. These people are convinced that programming is "about" telling a computer how to do things, when it is merely a constructive fragment of mathematics -- in other words, a constructive approach to organization and proof. ...
Sure, the real world applications that actually do something are not our business. Our business should be high flown architecture. Got ya.

Now, take your pompousness back to whatever planet you think you are on.

Programming IS about telling computers what to do. That's what the word "programming" means. Pro- (before) and -graphein (written). Written in advance. That's all programming is: writing stuff to be done, a to-do list for your computer.

Organization and proof? Both fine, but not part of programming.

The nonsense you just spouted is one of the reason why some college grads suck big time. Because you think your job is to come up with pretty architectures and discuss their relative merits.

If you are a programmer working almost anywhere in the real world(TM), sorry, but that's not your job. Your job is to find solutions for people's problems and implement these solutions in code.

And no matter how good you are, until you understand what your job is, you are a liability to your company.

Code Monkey and proud bruva!! I agree. All this process and planning shit is for the managers. We cut code hardcore man!

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

somechick:
ShatteredArm:
2) You don't think part of the reason there are so few women in IT has something to do with the fact that 90% of CS students are men? I had entire classes in college where there were no more than two or three girls, out of about fifty total students.

As a female in IT, I think part of the reason there aren't more women in IT is the boys' club attitude. There's a certain level of arrogance in this field that is intimidating (or at the very least a turn-off) to most women. As the oldest (of 5) and the only girl in my generation, it doesn't bother me, and I can generally see through the big attitude to the actual technical aptitude of someone. ... Stuff ...

As a female in IT, thank you. Thank you for making me feel like the time I waste reading the comments hasn't been quite as wasted today. For the last few weeks, for various reasons, I've been really struggling to "get into" the work I have to do. Somehow I think that'll be easier now. I'm not quite sure what it was, but thank you anyway.

Honestly, sincerely (as rare as that is around here!), Thank You.

Also,

somechick:
I can generally see through the big attitude to the actual technical aptitude of someone.

I really, really wish that more people could see through x to the actual technical aptitude of someone, where x is gender, nationality, age, background, education, whatever. I think that'd help dry up material for this site - surely a noble goal! :)

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Mel:
Also,
somechick:
I can generally see through the big attitude to the actual technical aptitude of someone.
I really, really wish that more people could see through x to the actual technical aptitude of someone, where x is gender, nationality, age, background, education, whatever. I think that'd help dry up material for this site - surely a noble goal! :)

And deprive us of all the entertainment?? We might even have to actually do some work to fill our days! There certainly can't be anything noble about that.

You are no fun.

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Vlad Poutines:
Justice League:
This is my confession. This is my future.
That you're a virgin?

There seems to be a problem in the internets. Replies from 4chan are leaking over to The Daily WTF.

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Sylver:
Captain Oblivious:

...

I'm constantly amazed by how utterly ignorant of their craft most CS graduates are. These people are convinced that programming is "about" telling a computer how to do things, when it is merely a constructive fragment of mathematics -- in other words, a constructive approach to organization and proof. ...
Sure, the real world applications that actually do something are not our business. Our business should be high flown architecture. Got ya.

Now, take your pompousness back to whatever planet you think you are on.

Programming IS about telling computers what to do. That's what the word "programming" means. Pro- (before) and -graphein (written). Written in advance. That's all programming is: writing stuff to be done, a to-do list for your computer.

Organization and proof? Both fine, but not part of programming.

The nonsense you just spouted is one of the reason why some college grads suck big time. Because you think your job is to come up with pretty architectures and discuss their relative merits.

If you are a programmer working almost anywhere in the real world(TM), sorry, but that's not your job. Your job is to find solutions for people's problems and implement these solutions in code.

And no matter how good you are, until you understand what your job is, you are a liability to your company.

Allow me to offer an example which effects a compromise between these viewpoints ...

When given a job that requires you to implement a non-tree-based hierarchy, it is useful to be familiar with directed acyclic graphs. One does not need to be able to prove whatever various ingenious theorems that have been devised on the subject, but it is useful to understand the philosophy behind their construction. If (perhaps as a result of formal academic study) one is familiar with such objects, it is more likely that a well-designed implementation of such a complex data object is the result.

That is: it's useful to know about such things, and it can be fun to explore some of the theory behind them (you may discover something new, which is often a motivator), but you will bore your colleagues senseless if you insist on making sure they understand everything about the subject when it's not relevant to the case in point.

ThePants999 · 2011-05-26 Reply Admin

How many DB calls does it take to change a lightbulb?

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

ThePants999:
How many DB calls does it take to change a lightbulb?

Change it into what?

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Captain Oblivious:
Why has Microsoft introduced features in C# that Haskell has had for 25 years?

Dotnet required quite a bit of magic to support all the things it does now, eg generics. A system that supports static explicit strongly typed generics that also provides full reflection capabilities is not a trivial thing to engineer, especially when you're having to support the same functionality under several languages in a compatible fashion.

That said, any actively developed language L will eventually contain a half-arsed implementation of language X, where language X provides some sort of awesome feature.

Captain Oblivious:
The non-graduates are even worse, but then I wouldn't expect someone who didn't study computation to know what an isomorphism is, let alone the consequences of the Howard-Curry isomorphism theorem.

A decent CS course will teach you all sorts of unusual things that you're very unlikely to come across doing the usual run-of-the-mill self taught or learn on the job as a webmonkey/business software grinder.

Anyone who can't see how mathematics and programming are related, and can't see the point of learning about crazy moon languages in a CS degree is probably doomed to end up writing code for some pretty dull projects. Or be a plentiful source of WTFs when they can't see why their favourite language is a poor tool for a job...

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

ThePants999:
How many DB calls does it take to change a lightbulb?

Nope, sorry, that's hardware, we programmers don't do hardware.

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Really? You think there are few women in IT because there are few female CS students? (I'll draw the conclusion that because there are many males in CS there are few females in CS for you.)

I guess you wanted to have a different argument, namly that there are few female CS students because there are so many male CS students. Can you see the circular logic?

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Sylver:
Sure, the real world applications that actually do something are not our business. Our business should be high flown architecture. Got ya.

Damn straight. Design? Waste of time. Git'r dun. Bish bash bosh, ship it.

Sylver:
The nonsense you just spouted is one of the reason why some college grads suck big time. Because you think your job is to come up with pretty architectures and discuss their relative merits.
If you are a programmer working almost anywhere in the real world(TM), sorry, but that's not your job. Your job is to find solutions for people's problems and implement these solutions in code.

And no matter how good you are, until you understand what your job is, you are a liability to your company.

A company that fosters this sort of attitude that is engaged in any sort of complex work is making a very grevious mistake.

If you're writing yet another database-molesting application, maybe hiring adequate programmers who shoudl show no imagination or understanding is a great idea. Trying to get those same people to write complex systems that need to scale significantly, or do a sophisticated job efficiently, or worst of all, not be a colossal kludge of poorly understood concepts that have been shoehorned into passing a test case but will never been maintable? Big mistake.

I'm currently engaged in porting a quite complex system which uses various fancy bits of machine learning and computer vision, wrapped up in a godawful architecture by merely adequate programmers of the sort you are approving of. Sure, they got'r dun, and met the ship date. Now we're having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on fixing the mess they've made, employing people who understand why you might want a functional style of coding rather than an object oriented one.

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

This was a very good idea. I will try to adapt a similar pattern in enterprise software I developing.

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

That's very interesting!

I'm a woman, I don't have a degree (worked very hard for it, but fell into a friggin' administrative loop in college), and I work in a videogame company.

Exceptions make the rule, I guess.

PedanticCurmudgeon · 2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Timo Soini:
Vlad Poutines:
Justice League:
This is my confession. This is my future.
That you're a virgin?

There seems to be a problem in the internets. Replies from 4chan are leaking over to The Daily WTF.

It's actually more of a law of nature. The worst internet memes will inevitably find their way to comments here, with one exception: "Can't tell if trolling or really stupid."

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Misho:
I know it is a bit confusing but "login" is actually the username. It does not log the user so it is not a security issue. It is used for search for a user when sending a message and similar activities.

FTFY.

frits · 2011-05-26 Reply Admin

pyrexkidd:
I've never met a female engineer... How exactly does one go about engineering a female?

I believe there's a documentary about this very subject. I can't remember exactly, but I think it's called something "Science".

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

PedanticCurmudgeon:
Timo Soini:
Vlad Poutines:
Justice League:
This is my confession. This is my future.
That you're a virgin?

There seems to be a problem in the internets. Replies from 4chan are leaking over to The Daily WTF.
It's actually more of a law of nature. The worst internet memes will inevitably find their way to comments here, with one exception: "Can't tell if trolling or really stupid."

U MAD?

frits · 2011-05-26 Reply Admin

PedanticCurmudgeon:
Timo Soini:
Vlad Poutines:
Justice League:
This is my confession. This is my future.
That you're a virgin?

There seems to be a problem in the internets. Replies from 4chan are leaking over to The Daily WTF.
It's actually more of a law of nature. The worst internet memes will inevitably find their way to comments here, with one exception: "Can't tell if trolling or really stupid."

I like how accusing someone of being a virgin strikes such a nerve around here.

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

Meep:
Doesn't matter if it is. A smart API would memoize (sic) redundant DB calls.

+1. Because everyone knows that executing the same DB call twice has no additional effects.

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