• (cs)

    I hate to be a grammar nazi, but... RINGED?! SERIOUSLY?!

    How do companies like the last two even stay afloat as long as they do? I just don't get it, it's like you don't even have to try to get a company going, just having your marketing dept lie to enough people works... while companies started by techies who don't understand marketing almost always fail unless they can find someone to sell their services.

  • Menahmenas (unregistered)

    I think I would get along with and Bob.

  • (cs)

    We don't comment here.

    The sad thing is.. that's not just a pithy remark.. my current employer drank the Agile Koolaid and thinks that comments shouldn't exist.

  • (cs) in reply to Menahmenas
    Menahmenas:
    I think I would get along with and Bob.
    You would have made a complete sentence, but the wind kept blowing your fingers off the keyboard?
  • kmarsh (unregistered)

    I would comment, but it's just too windy right now.

  • Seriously (unregistered)

    OK, has anyone ever done one of those interviews where you get a feeling right away that there is no way in hell I would ever want to work here, but you end up taking the job and liking it? If so, please tell us all about it.

    Otherwise, when your instincts say run... run!

  • Marvin the Martian (unregistered)

    Who would want to work in a DOOM level? Thousands of geeks that came of age in the mid-nineties, that's who!

    The potential for the most awesome company spirit is there, including but not limited to weekly teambuilding laser-tag shoots right at Drink-o'clock.

  • Ian (unregistered)

    It's all fun and games until the Arch-Viles come.

  • Fregas (unregistered) in reply to Marvin the Martian

    OOP is so overrated anyway:

    http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/oopbad.htm

  • getofmylawn (unregistered) in reply to Seriously
    Seriously:
    OK, has anyone ever done one of those interviews where you get a feeling right away that there is no way in hell I would ever want to work here, but you end up taking the job and liking it? If so, please tell us all about it.

    Otherwise, when your instincts say run... run!

    Well, I once had an interview for a software development position. The rest of the team was for some reason located 200km away from where I was supposed to work, and during the interview it was made clear my real job would be to maintain a 30year old COBOL application. I ran.

  • Yanman (unregistered)

    I like OO because it makes me feel like god. """ Hello tiny little object, why don't you go enjoy yourself with the rest on the heap? If you don't be have, you'll end up null!! """

    Imagine the powers we have!

  • Rudy (unregistered) in reply to Fregas
    Fregas:
    I'm not agreeing with everything Mr. Oopbad has to say, but in 1981 I could type as fast as I wanted and even if the computer fell behind it would eventually catch up without losing a single keystroke. Now I find myself waiting for windows to gain focus and repaint, waiting for text boxes to get an active cursor, and interrupted by annoying pop-ups. This is not now and then. This is constantly, all day.

    Even though the hardware is about a billion times faster, the software has made things slower. I spend a lot more time waiting on my computer than I used to.

  • (cs)

    I once lost a job (long story) and decided to look in the newspaper just on the off chance I could find something awesome. I found a company with a really cool name and called to see if I could get an interview. The guy asked me to come over immediately if I could, so I did.

    It was a house. I walked up to the door and it was slightly opened. I said "hello" and a deep voice boomed "come on in". I did, and followed the voice to a dirty, dark office. At a computer sat a rather large man who was almost naked, sitting on a chair covered with a towel.

    He invited me to sit down on the chair across from him (also at a computer, but it was facing towards him instead), also covered with a towel. After I did, he volunteered that the towels are there because he and his wife frequently work naked.

    I thanked him, left, went home, took a shower, and started a proper job search. No ... just kidding. I took the job on the condition I could work from home. It lasted about 11 days. Worst job I ever had.

  • @Deprecated (unregistered) in reply to kastein

    Seriously, I would have told Ray that "OOP is the underlying core technology to ASP.NET, and Phil is a primadonna idiot", and then walked out. Or something to that effect.

    Even better if Phil is still in the room.

  • (cs)

    Against my better judgment, I'm posting this:

    it took all of three seconds to realize that I didn't to work there.
    I think you something there.

  • bd (unregistered)
    it took all of three seconds to realize that I didn't to work there
    Oh come on, you accidentally the whole WTF.
  • @Deprecated (unregistered) in reply to Rudy
    Rudy:
    Fregas:
    I'm not agreeing with everything Mr. Oopbad has to say, but in 1981 I could type as fast as I wanted and even if the computer fell behind it would eventually catch up without losing a single keystroke. Now I find myself waiting for windows to gain focus and repaint, waiting for text boxes to get an active cursor, and interrupted by annoying pop-ups. This is not now and then. This is constantly, all day.

    Even though the hardware is about a billion times faster, the software has made things slower. I spend a lot more time waiting on my computer than I used to.

    Oh, so you installed Vista, then?

  • cybaz (unregistered)

    If they would let me have a chaingun, I would love to work in a DOOM level.

  • Jeff (unregistered) in reply to joelkatz
    joelkatz:
    he volunteered that the towels are there because he and his wife frequently work naked.

    I thanked him, left, went home, took a shower

    Did you at least stick around long enough to check out his wife? I mean, umm...

  • Tim (unregistered)

    Am I the only one who read the Doomed story and wondered who the hell Tim was? You have an introduction to a managing director, who during a tour, "Bob appeared". And then goes on to describing Tim, and Bob, with an interview that starts with small talk (neither of whom were proficient in)....

    Could this story have gone through the "Re-write to make it a little more fluid, less dramatic but sounding better" machine?

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to joelkatz
    joelkatz:
    After I did, he volunteered that the towels are there because he and his wife frequently work naked.

    What did the wife look like? Sounds like the start of a letter to Penthouse Forum.

  • Skieved (unregistered) in reply to joelkatz
    joelkatz:
    I once lost a job (long story) and decided to look in the newspaper just on the off chance I could find something awesome. I found a company with a really cool name and called to see if I could get an interview. The guy asked me to come over immediately if I could, so I did.

    It was a house. I walked up to the door and it was slightly opened. I said "hello" and a deep voice boomed "come on in". I did, and followed the voice to a dirty, dark office. At a computer sat a rather large man who was almost naked, sitting on a chair covered with a towel.

    He invited me to sit down on the chair across from him (also at a computer, but it was facing towards him instead), also covered with a towel. After I did, he volunteered that the towels are there because he and his wife frequently work naked.

    I thanked him, left, went home, took a shower, and started a proper job search. No ... just kidding. I took the job on the condition I could work from home. It lasted about 11 days. Worst job I ever had.

    After reading this comment, I went home and took a shower. I think I have to go back home again to take another shower after posting, too.
  • Stu (unregistered) in reply to Marvin the Martian

    Except for the fact that you would be working with Bob. I don't even know Bob and I have horrible visions of him print_r in the back of my head.

  • (cs)

    The sad truth is that all it takes to run a business is to be a good bullshitter and have enough money to keep minor overhead - nothing else even remotely matters like having a good product, paying for good equipment or paying people a decent wage.

    Seriously, you have no idea the number of small-time idiots I've seen that shouldn't stay in business yet do, and manage to turn a hefty profit despite cutting all kinds of corners and not even understanding WTF their business is.

    I find it very ironic that scam artists stay in business and are successful while honest people routinely end up desperate for income.

  • (cs)

    "evernwhere"? How can you make a typo like this?

  • ibwolf (unregistered) in reply to Seriously
    Seriously:
    OK, has anyone ever done one of those interviews where you get a feeling right away that there is no way in hell I would ever want to work here, but you end up taking the job and liking it? If so, please tell us all about it.

    Maybe not quite on that level but...

    After the dot com bubble burst I found myself unemployed and went back to school to get my masters while the job market improved.

    About a year later I applied for a government job that seemed decidedly uninteresting but had the virtue of being located on campus and I figured it might just be a tolerable way of earning a some money while I finished my masters.

    The interview didn't exactly start well as they were well behind schedule and I wound up waiting almost 45 minutes. I nearly left after 15 minutes but the HR person came out and to let me know it would be "just a little longer" ...

    The interview was less an interview and more a presentation of their plans. I had no clear idea what I would be doing.

    Still the salary was acceptable (barely) and the job was convenient and they were willing to make allowances so that I would be able to attend classes etc. So I took the job, figuring I'd finish my degree and be out of there in 18 months, 2 years tops. Its now been over 6 years and I'm not going anywhere.

    It was partially luck. I got assigned to a very interesting project and wound up working on some very cool code. When that was over changes in management etc. led to a promotion to team leader (job interviews here are now ACTUAL job interviews) and I've enjoyed getting our IT infrastructure into tip top shape.

  • terrukallan (unregistered) in reply to Fregas
    Fregas:
    OOP is so overrated anyway:

    http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/oopbad.htm

    An excerpt from that page that caught my eye:

    Named parameters can optionally make routines very Smalltalk-like. Some people erroneously think that OOP invented named parameters.
    I wonder if the author realizes that Smalltalk was among the first object oriented languages and comes much closer to being purely object oriented than any mainstream language in use today? Admittedly, the author makes no direct statements about the relationship between Smalltalk and OOP. The implication, though, is that Smalltalk had named parameters before OOP languages came around, incorrectly supposing that Smalltalk is not itself OO.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk

  • (cs) 
    *twitch*
    ...So many mistakes... 
    *twitch*
  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    joelkatz:
    After I did, he volunteered that the towels are there because he and his wife frequently work naked.

    What did the wife look like? Sounds like the start of a letter to Penthouse Forum.

    Hello! McFly! Still stuck in 1984? Penthouse forum didn't survive the inter-tube revolution!

    (I'm not sayin', but I'm just sayin'!)

  • ih8u (unregistered) in reply to TarquinWJ
    TarquinWJ:
    Menahmenas:
    I think I would get along with and Bob.
    You would have made a complete sentence, but the wind kept blowing your fingers off the keyboard?

    Against my better judgement, I started reading the comments. Then, against my better judgement, I continued to read the comments. Now, against my better judgement, I am posting a comment. Finally, against my better judgement, I am going to do that lame CAPTCHA thing. Does the author of that story have good judement?

    CAPTCHA: aliquam -- sounds latinny (too bad that was years ago)

  • (cs) in reply to Jeff
    Jeff:
    joelkatz:
    he volunteered that the towels are there because he and his wife frequently work naked.

    I thanked him, left, went home, took a shower

    Did you at least stick around long enough to check out his wife? I mean, umm...
    In situations like these, the Nudist Rule applies: the people you get to see naked are not the people you want to see naked.

  • MadtM (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    [quote user="ObiWayneKenobi"]The sad truth is that all it takes to run a business is to be a good bullshitter and have enough money to keep minor overhead - nothing else even remotely matters like having a good product, paying for good equipment or paying people a decent wage. quote]

    Yeah? Try running a restaurant.

  • (cs) in reply to Tim
    Tim:
    Am I the only one who read the Doomed story and wondered who the hell Tim was? You have an introduction to a managing director, who during a tour, "Bob appeared". And then goes on to describing Tim, and Bob, with an interview that starts with small talk (neither of whom were proficient in)...
    Tim was inadvertently from the following line:
    The atmosphere of silence and despair was overpowering, and no-one seemed to be around. That is, until and Bob appeared.
  • (cs) in reply to MadtM
    MadtM:
    Yeah? Try running a restaurant.

    A restaurant is a different story since yes, it requires a certain level of decency or it can be shut down due to health regulations, but haven't you ever seen Kitchen Nightmares? There are a lot of restauranteurs out there who have no idea how to run a restaurant, either.

  • Tom Clarke (unregistered) in reply to Rudy
    Rudy:
    I'm not agreeing with everything Mr. Oopbad has to say, but in 1981 I could type as fast as I wanted and even if the computer fell behind it would eventually catch up without losing a single keystroke. Now I find myself waiting for windows to gain focus and repaint, waiting for text boxes to get an active cursor, and interrupted by annoying pop-ups. This is not now and then. This is constantly, all day. Even though the hardware is about a billion times faster, the software has made things slower. I spend a lot more time waiting on my computer than I used to.

    Sorry, but is that really OOP to blame? Can someone explain concisely why gaining focus and repainting is an OOP issue? I mean, any GUI based design still has to redraw the screen and grant focus. Why would the language being procedural help with that? I can understand that all the waste GUI's bring with them gets annoying, although I'll admit my typing's not fast enough for it to bother me. But surely you can just choose to turn off the GUI, and run everything through a text-based OS. You'd lose the added features, but if you're not using them... Am I just wondering why "Grandad's blaming his aching hip on the immigrants"?

  • jammy (unregistered)

    I remember when I was looking evernwhere for an interivew. Good job I met and Bob.

  • Tom Clarke (unregistered)

    I think the real question that needs asking in that situation is "If you're not using OOP, what architecture ARE you using?" I mean, I quite like the idea of Table-Orientated and can see a lot of uses for it at the back-end (although always remember, to the end-user THE GUI IS THE SYSTEM), but even well-written assembler normally includes the concept of grouping variables by sense and so on. Certainly, I can't imagine why you'd use an OOP framework and then try and program the OOP out of it. You've still got the gibberish "behind the scenes", but now you can't take advantage of it. A double-layer framework, as it were.

  • Adriano (unregistered) in reply to Spectre
    Spectre:
    "evernwhere"? How can you make a typo like this?
    Easy: instead of moving the index finger up, you move it down. (Assumes QUERTY)
  • Adriano (unregistered) in reply to Adriano

    Argh. QWERTY. Serves me right for using Dvorak.

  • (cs)

    properly written and optimized OOP code is no slower or faster than properly written and optimized procedural code in the same language.

    Bad code [windows] is just bad code.

    PS: The core WinAPI is still proceedural, even if microsoft likes hiding it under OOP wrappers (MFC) and "managed code" [virtual machine] encumbered OOP wrappers (.Net) .

    The increasing hardware demands of windows have to do with a) Inefficient design b) bug for bug legacy compatibility c) WinSxS [vista harddrive space vampire that also slows program loads.. but not appreciably on my vista machine] d) multimedia bloating apps [web browsers, etc] e) incompetent computer science/engineering education that focuses excessively on 'perfect world' processes and teaches in Java and never teaches on 'real world' processes and optimizations and performance considerations

  • Schnapple (unregistered) in reply to Seriously

    Not my story but my favorite Slashdot comment ever

    Contracting Insanity:
    Posted anonymously, because I don't want to be linked with these people. In the interests of their privacy, some details have been changed.

    I'm an information-security consultant. During the big tech downturn a few years ago, a group in Chicago asked about my services. They didn't trust email or phones, though, so I had to make the trip into Chicago to meet them directly. I told them that it would cost them money to have me head out to Chicago, but they assured me there wouldn't be a problem there.

    In the meeting, they presented me with a cashier's check to cover my initial consultation fee and traveling expenses. Given it was the tech downturn, my initial fee wasn't huge, but between it and travel expenses the check was a nontrivial amount of money. A few hours went by as I did a quick evaluation of their systems. Finally, the preliminary assessment complete, I presented possibilities to my employers.

    They thanked me, but warned: "The people we're concerned about are ... very, very subtle. They're also very underhanded and not bound by law." I asked if we were talking organized crime, and my employers demurred. After about another fifteen minutes of careful "I can't effectively help you if I don't know who you're up against", they confided in me their group's purpose.

    They were a support group for people on the run from the Illuminati.

    ("The Bavarian Illuminati?" I asked, wondering if I'd heard it right. I got a fifteen-minute spiel about how the Illuminati isn't Bavarian, and how the Bavarian Illuminati was a disinformation campaign from the real Illuminati, which wasn't even really called the Illuminati but this group hadn't been able to find its real name yet.)

    After fifteen minutes of listening to these people tell me, quite calmly and quite lucidly, the most wacko paranoiac conspiracy theories I've ever heard, I realized I had to get out of there in a big-ass hurry. So I politely told them "I'm sorry, but I'm not comfortable going up against the Bavar... err, the Illuminati. I think you need someone else."

    They said they understood completely. I left the cashier's check on the table, explaining to them that I didn't feel comfortable taking their money if I wasn't willing to help them in their struggle against the, err, Illuminati. I got out of there and headed back home.

    The real reason I didn't take their money was I was afraid word would get out in the information-security community of just who I'd worked for. I wanted to be able to outright deny ever knowing these people, ever meeting these people, ever being party to their insanity.

    There is no Illuminati. There are no runners from the Illuminati. I was never approached by people who wanted to create a secure network for people who were on the run from the Illuminati to communicate with each other over.

    No, I was approached by a bunch of dangerously delusional people.

    But whenever information-security geeks get together and share stories about the weirdest clients we've ever had--at least, the clients we can talk about--well. I've had fellow geeks buying me beers for the last couple of years just on the strength of these wackos. :)

    http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137983&cid=11542897

  • (cs) in reply to Schnapple
    Schnapple:
    Not my story but my favorite Slashdot comment ever
    Contracting Insanity:
    story of near miss with tinfoil hatters

    http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137983&cid=11542897

    Wow, that's pretty crazy. Reminds me of the story about the guy on rentacoder who wanted anti-hacking software written to deal with all sorts of things, and listed that giant zip archive of screenshots "proving" psychopathic, criminally insane hacking.

  • Tom Clarke (unregistered) in reply to terrukallan
    Bob:
    I wonder if the author realizes that Smalltalk was among the first object oriented languages and comes much closer to being purely object oriented than any mainstream language in use today? Admittedly, the author makes no direct statements about the relationship between Smalltalk and OOP. The implication, though, is that Smalltalk had named parameters before OOP languages came around, incorrectly supposing that Smalltalk is not itself OO.

    I doubt it. That whole article smacks of "OOP languages suck. Well, okay, that technique makes sense, and obviously that one made life easier, but I don't like that C++ one that isn't really OOP".

  • iToad (unregistered) in reply to Bappi
    Bappi:
    Jeff:
    joelkatz:
    he volunteered that the towels are there because he and his wife frequently work naked.

    I thanked him, left, went home, took a shower

    Did you at least stick around long enough to check out his wife? I mean, umm...
    In situations like these, the Nudist Rule applies: the people you get to see naked are not the people you want to see naked.

    The Internet Rule probably also applies: That which has been seen, cannot be unseen.

  • (cs) in reply to Schnapple
    Schnapple:
    Not my story but my favorite Slashdot comment ever
    Contracting Insanity:
    There is no Illuminati. There are no runners from the Illuminati. I was never approached by people who wanted to create a secure network for people who were on the run from the Illuminati to communicate with each other over.
    Just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean everybody isn't out to get you.
  • (cs) in reply to Jeff
    Jeff:
    Did you at least stick around long enough to check out his wife? I mean, umm...
    Towel on chair == incontinent. Eewww.
  • (cs) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    Jeff:
    Did you at least stick around long enough to check out his wife? I mean, umm...
    Towel on chair == incontinent. Eewww.

    Or excessively hairy.

  • configurator (unregistered)

    I've always wanted to work at a place where the doors slide up.

  • (cs) in reply to Seriously
    Seriously:
    OK, has anyone ever done one of those interviews where you get a feeling right away that there is no way in hell I would ever want to work here, but you end up taking the job and liking it? If so, please tell us all about it.

    Otherwise, when your instincts say run... run!

    Well... not quite as bad as some that we've seen here, but I did have an interview in a pub (albeit a nice pub), with a man who'd spent the last 3 years developing his software at his dining room table. I'd been suggested the job by a friend, who had already been offered the job, but turned it down, preferring more stable employment with the local council.

    The interview consisted of the founder of the company demo-ing his software to me, and listing his (pretty big name) clients.

    I didn't have much to lose (at the time I was in my first 'development' job, which, in reality, consisted of going through ridiculous manual processes to release bugfixes, written by other people, to our customers, constantly), the guy seemed pretty intelligent, and the software seemed at least mostly sane, so I went for it. Thankfully, it was a great job, and worked out brilliantly for me, so it's not necessarily always best to run...

  • (cs)

    So is table orientated software written on paper (possibly using a typewriter), placed on a suitable wooden table, photographed and then uploaded to the computer?

    Skizz

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