• Cowardly Dragon (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Hmmm. Female Programmers...

    I worked at Andersen Consulting in the mid 90s, ground zero for Idiots Right Out of College, so they had a fair number of women. I'd actually say that in this group of generally-untrained new hires that have to go through six weeks of boot camp to train C and some SQL, the women did as well as men.

    Outside of that, of all the Indian contractors I've worked with, the two best, by far, were the only two females. Indian males are generally  pompous and lazy and write horrible code but could talk up a resume, but the two females were better than the other ~50 Indian males I've seen.

    However, all of the truly talented IT people I've seen were all men, so women competed with men for average competence, but the talented outliers were all men.

  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:
    Mung Kee:
    phelyan:
    I don't know whether this is typical of programmers in general or just the Java guys...


    I'm primarily a Java developer but do a fair amount of work with Perl and C (++).  I agree with you fundamentally but the primary reason you find so many p*ss-poor Java developers is that it isn't as easy to hang yourself with Java.  I have worked with some very good Java architects, but every single one of them has some roots in 1st and 2nd generation languages.  They skip most of that in CS/CE programs these days.  We should be very thankful that APIs are becoming more robust and easier to use, with these types of people out there.  Although this mboard makes me think that this hasn't had such an impact yet.  :|


    One specific problem of Java is the over-abundance of frameworks and similar stuff. Java comes with a real big class library, but that's not enough. A typical Java project will also include Ant, EJB, JUnit, Log4J, Struts, Xerces and so on. Any "programmer" who knows the necessary buzzwords will likely get hired; and copy-and-paste (with trivial adjustments) from examples will be enough for many weeks.
    While this can be enough to count as a valueable part of the project, it says nothing about the ability to write programs.


    I neglect to see the problem in an over-abundance of frameworks (and I think you meant "tools").  No one is forced to use anything.  If you don't want to use Ant, build manually or write your own build tool.  If you don't want to use EJB, write your own container that handles lifecycle/transactions/pooling etc.  If you don't like Log4J, write your own logging tool.  Don't like the MVC model of Struts?  Go back to client-server.  And Xerces?  Is Java the only language with an XMI API?  I think not.  I don't know what your primary discipline is but your view on Java and the people who use is obviously the product of your ignorance.  Surely you handle some of these concepts (logging/separation of application layers/unit testing/XML parsing) in your job.  Do you reuse these components across projects or do you rewrite them every time?  I can assure you that you're more likely to find someone that has experience with Log4J than you will find someone that has experience with the "ammoQ Logging".

    You did, however, touch on a very significant problem with the open-source movement.  Most of the projects are half-finished crap with tenuous documentation.
  • (cs) in reply to Mung Kee

    Mung Kee:

    You did, however, touch on a very significant problem with the open-source movement.  Most of the projects are half-finished crap with tenuous documentation.

    This is true.  And the rest of the projects are half-finished crap with no documentation!

    I'm all for open source, but geez, does most of it ever suck as far as code quality.  And you thought corporate WTFs were bad!

     

  • (cs) in reply to Mung Kee
    Mung Kee:

    I can assure you that you're more likely to find someone that has experience with Log4J than you will find someone that has experience with the "ammoQ Logging".


    Way to bite someone's head off. I don't think ammoQ was critisizing the libraries themselves, but making the statement that it's better to be able to write said libraries rather than use/know them (or in his specific instance, know their buzzwords).

    I'm all about using the powerful tools as well, but how many people have we seen on these WTFs who have jobs as "XML Programmers"?
  • (cs) in reply to Roger Daltry
    Anonymous:
    If this is even true, this is a management WTF more than a coding one.  If they didn't notice this was all that was happening they deserve what they got.


    Yes, a management WTF, but in general, I think that a lot of IT workers deserve some of the blame, too.  The line about managing programmers and herding cats comes to mind.  Cowboy programmers are not independent heroes; they are a curse, yet the mentality is often lauded..

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wrichenko

  • (cs) in reply to SurfaceTension
    SurfaceTension:

    Way to bite someone's head off. I don't think ammoQ was critisizing the libraries themselves, but making the statement that it's better to be able to write said libraries rather than use/know them (or in his specific instance, know their buzzwords).

    I'm all about using the powerful tools as well, but how many people have we seen on these WTFs who have jobs as "XML Programmers"?


    Honestly, I wasn't aiming to bite his head off and apoligize to all if I came off as such.  All I was saying is there is some value to not having to worry about these peripheral, but necessary, components of your application.  If someone slips through the cracks on buzzwords alone, that's an interviewer or process WTF, not a Java WTF. 

    BTW, do companies even staff "XML Programmers" anymore?  And, since XML is just a package, isn't this the equivelent of a mailman?
  • (cs) in reply to Mung Kee

    Mung Kee:
    SurfaceTension:

    Way to bite someone's head off. I don't think ammoQ was critisizing the libraries themselves, but making the statement that it's better to be able to write said libraries rather than use/know them (or in his specific instance, know their buzzwords).

    I'm all about using the powerful tools as well, but how many people have we seen on these WTFs who have jobs as "XML Programmers"?


    Honestly, I wasn't aiming to bite his head off and apoligize to all if I came off as such.  All I was saying is there is some value to not having to worry about these peripheral, but necessary, components of your application.  If someone slips through the cracks on buzzwords alone, that's an interviewer or process WTF, not a Java WTF. 

    BTW, do companies even staff "XML Programmers" anymore?  And, since XML is just a package, isn't this the equivelent of a mailman?

    I'm a member of the "XML team" according to a lot of people where I work.  It's not worth the time to try to explain why that's not really accurate to mainframe people.

  • (cs) in reply to Mung Kee
    Mung Kee:
    Forgetting whether it's true or not, let's have some fun with it. 

    1.  The Java standard, initial-caps in class name, wasn't followed.
    2.  Interesting that she perceives herself not as a concrete object, with attributes all her own, but as a mere String. (so goes her coding skills)  This brings me to my next point.
    3. When I call a method like getPaula(), I don't receive a Paula object.  I receive an attribute of Paula, whos value is clearly misleading, nay, blasphemy.
    4.  It's obvious that she hasn't gotten past the HelloWorld application in her Java book.  By the looks of it, she hasn't even mastered passing parameters.
    5.  Since there is no mutator method, it appears that she has a pretty firm belief that she is truly "Brillant" <sic>. 
    6.  The "Bean" suffix of "paulaBean" must be referring to the size and magnitude of the cerebrum.


    I really like your analysis!

    Dan
    </sic>
  • (cs) in reply to Mung Kee
    Mung Kee:
    If you don't want to use Ant, build manually or write your own build tool.  If you don't want to use EJB, write your own container that handles lifecycle/transactions/pooling etc.  If you don't like Log4J, write your own logging tool.

    ...and if you don't like the built-in rounding function, or string functions, or whatever, write a WTF :)

    I'm astounded that nobody has defended the code much yet... I thought that was a DailyWTF-forums tradition! I guess there's not much code to defend, but at least that means it's lean, free of duplication and feature-creep. I'm going to defend it by hypothesising that Paula was French, and spelt brillant correctly in her mother tongue.

    By the way, I'm a female programmer, and I write good code, according to me (though I'm sure I have written a few WTFs recently, since the development environments I'm using are new to me... I'm madly reading documentation to find out what the WTFs are.) I've worked with almost as many female programmers as programmers named Steve. Of the two I can remember seeing code from (not counting myself) one wrote WTFs and the other didn't.

    This reminds me of 'Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie' only I can't think of a programming term to rhyme with 'movie' which would make the reference to an otherwise irrelevant movie somewhat amusing. I can't match JavaWocky.

  • (cs) in reply to NSCoder

    Aha, at last I am bitten by the forum-WTF, and, like everybody else does the first time that happens to them, I'm going to reply to myself acting surprised.

    WTF? I think there's something wrong with this forum software. If it were running on XML, JavaScript, VB.NET, MBSA 2.0 and AutoSync 3.8 (I don't know what the last two products are, but they're currently being advertised on microsoft.com, which is enough to convince some managers that they're the best thing ever for any purpose. Bad choice of acronym though; I know what BSA really means) over the Grid with an Access database it would be much better.

  • Robert (unregistered) in reply to x-sol(lazy)

    When I was going through my divorce I basically came in to work and just surfed or stared at my monitor for eight hours every day.

    Were you married to Paula? Maybe that explains it!

  • Sam (unregistered) in reply to ferrengi

    "If this type of thing happens all the time where people get paid without doing any real work, isn't there something the company can do to get back the money that was stolen? Can't the company sue the employee for lying about their skills and not doing their work? Or is it just not worth the time and effort for the company to go after the crook?
    "

     

    Depends on the contract, but keep in mind the money wasn't "stolen" (at least not in the legal sense).  Paula's technically probably not a criminal (mmm, from this), because all she did was violate the terms of a contract, which is a civil offense.  The company may sue for restitution and possibly fraud, however (fraud would be treble (3 times[Y]) damages, so 3 times whatever they gave her plus money lost from the time she said she was actually doing the work).

  • Sam (unregistered) in reply to Xepol

    Xepol:
    "But his mother tells me he's really smart"... Ya, its the business equivalent of "he has a nice personality"......

    Wow, there are times I'd accept "smart" over any claimed programming ability, if he really was smart.  Smart people can learn to program (at least passably).

  • (cs) in reply to Mung Kee
    Mung Kee:

    I neglect to see the problem in an over-abundance of frameworks (and I think you meant "tools").  No one is forced to use anything.  If you don't want to use Ant, build manually or write your own build tool.  If you don't want to use EJB, write your own container that handles lifecycle/transactions/pooling etc.  If you don't like Log4J, write your own logging tool.  Don't like the MVC model of Struts?  Go back to client-server.  And Xerces?  Is Java the only language with an XMI API?  I think not.  I don't know what your primary discipline is but your view on Java and the people who use is obviously the product of your ignorance.  Surely you handle some of these concepts (logging/separation of application layers/unit testing/XML parsing) in your job.  Do you reuse these components across projects or do you rewrite them every time?  I can assure you that you're more likely to find someone that has experience with Log4J than you will find someone that has experience with the "ammoQ Logging".

    You did, however, touch on a very significant problem with the open-source movement.  Most of the projects are half-finished crap with tenuous documentation.

    In my own private projects, I can decide which tools/libs/frameworks to use. But if I want to get a job, I will be forced to use the tools/libs/frameworks specified by the project leader. Unfortunately, because of my ignorance, I do not know the specified tool/lib/framework. Or, due to bad luck, my experience covers the wrong tool/lib/framework. For many tasks, there is more than one alternative. Struts? Too bad if I only know JSF. Hibernate? Too bad if all I've previously used is Torque.... Printing: FOP? JasperReports?
    They invent this stuff faster than you can learn it. So you bullshit your way into a job and learn as much as necessesary on the fly. Or, if the second part fails, you become Paula Bean.
    (P.S. anyone who knows System.err.println also knows most of  "ammoQ Logging ;-)
  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:

    In my own private projects, I can decide which tools/libs/frameworks to use. But if I want to get a job, I will be forced to use the tools/libs/frameworks specified by the project leader. Unfortunately, because of my ignorance, I do not know the specified tool/lib/framework. Or, due to bad luck, my experience covers the wrong tool/lib/framework. For many tasks, there is more than one alternative. Struts? Too bad if I only know JSF. Hibernate? Too bad if all I've previously used is Torque.... Printing: FOP? JasperReports?
    They invent this stuff faster than you can learn it. So you bullshit your way into a job and learn as much as necessesary on the fly. Or, if the second part fails, you become Paula Bean.
    (P.S. anyone who knows System.err.println also knows most of  "ammoQ Logging ;-)

    Sadly, I can't say I disagree with you.  I think this speaks to what someone said in a previous message (in this thread I believe).  There is a certain arrogance with Java developers (and other languages) that comes with knowing the latest API and, in many cases, that API is usually a different way to do the same shit.  But this "revolutionary new technology" is the best and only way.  Take RPC for instance.  You can call it CORBA/RMI/XML-RPC/Web Services, or WTF you want, but at the end of the day it's all just RPC and it's all just Request/Response.  So I say, keep bullshitting.  These wankstains that buy into this garbage will never know.
  • (cs)

    What's obvious to me is that this class is the kind of thing you find in a "learning java" tutorial. This Paula person could not program in Java at all prior to this job. They could not possibly have had a technical person on the interview panel, and did not do any project tracking. A management WTF if ever there was one.

  • (cs) in reply to OneFactor

    God I have Paula Beans all over my previous job. Especially down at the "DBA" area of the department. Three DBAs are there. Number One is quite competent but some find her too arrogant. She's the type that people find too cocky, but in my opinion, she has the right to do so anyway.

    Number Two is a loudmouth who doesn't know jackshit about SQL. When nobody's looking, she'll ask Number One to work on some most of her tasks. And then she'll type up a report trumpeting what she had "accomplished." One time when Number One wasn't around, Number Two called her up on the cellphone not even caring that Number One was in the sickbed. Of course she accomplished things through the guidance of Number One, but Number One's name wasn't in the accomplishment report.

    Number Three is a guy who likes to pass on jobs. If he doesn't know what to do, he'll simply say "that's not my job." He's more interested in having to handle Oracle projects than SQL administration tasks. Thing is he's always bragging that he's a Microsoft Certified Professional. His salary is thrice that of Numbers One and Two, but he never wants to do overtime and leaves One and Two to do all-nighters when it's needed.

    WTF, this world. These people are all over the place.

  • (cs) in reply to Mung Kee
    Mung Kee:
    Take RPC for instance.  You can call it CORBA/RMI/XML-RPC/Web Services, or WTF you want, but at the end of the day it's all just RPC and it's all just Request/Response.

    EJB were also meant as a way to build distributed systems, but people seem to have forgotten that during the years.
  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ

    ammoQ:
    Mung Kee:
    Take RPC for instance.  You can call it CORBA/RMI/XML-RPC/Web Services, or WTF you want, but at the end of the day it's all just RPC and it's all just Request/Response.

    EJB were also meant as a way to build distributed systems, but people seem to have forgotten that during the years.

    Forgotten?  Don't have to know something before you can forget it?

  • BP (unregistered) in reply to x-sol(lazy)
    Anonymous:

    I just want to say that if you don't think this happens maybe you should read up on welfare and how many slobs are on it, even better find an estimate of the number of children per slob.....

    I worked at a place once and you could goto the can at any given point and find someone sleeping in there, there was this one guy who never apeared to work but was always out front flirting with the female security guard. It's great I wish I had no integrity and could sleep in the can, flirt and call it a job well done. As far as I know these people still work there......

    As someone else said unfortunatly it's usually the very talented and knowledegable person with no degree who doesn't get hired and the degree sporting can sleeper whith plenty of BS for all that does. You should have to take a test..... a hard test; like here is a noteback write all the code needed to create a calcualtor in _______ language you have 4 hours, go! You take your existing working calculator code for _____ language and compare. I supose though the boss would need to know his head from his ass to do that.

    Thankfully where I'm at now the boos does know code.



    Your dumb-ass comments about welfare aside (Yah, Yah, I'm a Semi-Socialist Canadian Bastard), I've been in the no-degree situation since I started 12 years ago (I'm a Graphic Artist by education), and it still gives me trouble... It bothers me to no end when I join a new company and have to replace my ClueX4 in the first week because some of the people with comp-sci degrees need a little moral adjustment.

    My current boss did have me do a "hard" test before he offered me a job (see: http://www.xp123.com/xplor/xp0201/index.shtml) and I found I actually enjoyed doing it; once I started it was like a puzzle I had to finish... however it would certainly scare away 60% of the people I've ever worked with!

    I plan to torture folks with that test myself the next time I'm tasked with finding a new employee.

    BTW - WTF is with the Captcha validation? It almost never works the first time!
  • BP (unregistered) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:
    Mung Kee:
    Take RPC for instance.  You can call it CORBA/RMI/XML-RPC/Web Services, or WTF you want, but at the end of the day it's all just RPC and it's all just Request/Response.

    EJB were also meant as a way to build distributed systems, but people seem to have forgotten that during the years.


    Yah, EJBs are also a good way to consign yourself to hell.
  • x-sol (to lazy to login) (unregistered) in reply to BP
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I just want to say that if you don't think this happens maybe you should read up on welfare and how many slobs are on it, even better find an estimate of the number of children per slob.....

    I worked at a place once and you could goto the can at any given point and find someone sleeping in there, there was this one guy who never apeared to work but was always out front flirting with the female security guard. It's great I wish I had no integrity and could sleep in the can, flirt and call it a job well done. As far as I know these people still work there......

    As someone else said unfortunatly it's usually the very talented and knowledegable person with no degree who doesn't get hired and the degree sporting can sleeper whith plenty of BS for all that does. You should have to take a test..... a hard test; like here is a noteback write all the code needed to create a calcualtor in _______ language you have 4 hours, go! You take your existing working calculator code for _____ language and compare. I supose though the boss would need to know his head from his ass to do that.

    Thankfully where I'm at now the boos does know code.



    Your dumb-ass comments about welfare aside (Yah, Yah, I'm a Semi-Socialist Canadian Bastard), I've been in the no-degree situation since I started 12 years ago (I'm a Graphic Artist by education), and it still gives me trouble... It bothers me to no end when I join a new company and have to replace my ClueX4 in the first week because some of the people with comp-sci degrees need a little moral adjustment.

    My current boss did have me do a "hard" test before he offered me a job (see: http://www.xp123.com/xplor/xp0201/index.shtml) and I found I actually enjoyed doing it; once I started it was like a puzzle I had to finish... however it would certainly scare away 60% of the people I've ever worked with!

    I plan to torture folks with that test myself the next time I'm tasked with finding a new employee.

    BTW - WTF is with the Captcha validation? It almost never works the first time!

    If it wasn't about spread sheets it could be an okay test... then again I hate spread sheets and excel and since no one has forced me to use either yet I'm off the hook.

    For MS jobs they could just have the applicant take the assesment tests. I always score second with the fastest time to complete....

    http://assessment.learning.microsoft.com/test/home.asp

    with those you can even get a feel for if the person has the skills you require...

     

    yeah what is with the damn CAPTCHA not working the first time...?

  • Ethan (unregistered) in reply to kdd

    Feh.  My wife, a software engineer (with a M.S. in applied math) has so far made it through 4 or 5 "right-sizing" cycles.  This isn't (solely :-) based on her good looks.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to stevekj
    stevekj:

    Mung Kee:

    You did, however, touch on a very significant problem with the open-source movement.  Most of the projects are half-finished crap with tenuous documentation.

    This is true.  And the rest of the projects are half-finished crap with no documentation!

    I'm all for open source, but geez, does most of it ever suck as far as code quality.  And you thought corporate WTFs were bad!

     

     

    I wholeheartedly agree. My attempts to install Ubuntu Linux in the weekend have left the a sour distaste in my mouth for anything open source. Microsoft may abuse a monopoly, they may charge ludicrous amounts for restrictive licenses, but damnit, Windows can install simply.

    So Linux has an app called mke2fs, which will format a partition/hdd. With the -c tag, it scans for bad sectors, and compensates accordingly. So.... why does the Ubuntu install use a piece of software that formats without compensating for bad sectors, thus leading to errors when the actual install occurs? Why can't I use this software to set my partition as / without having to format it? I've already formatted it!!! Stop screwing it up!!

    (Please note, I have now learnt about mount. But come on, an install which is supposedly Linux newbie friendly that requires dropping to a shell to actually install? Oh, and, while the Linux thing of setting an HD to read-only if an i/o error occurs is a nice touch, having a rudimentary shell with no man pages in is not the best way to learn about it, AND WHY CAN'T THE PROGRAMME TO UNMOUNT (so as to remount) BE CALLED UNMOUNT?! Why call it Umount? That's just obnoxious.)

    /end opensource rant

    But yeah, if Linux freaks ever want their favourite OS to be taken seriously, they've got to pick up the game. As for documentation... there are some brilliant Python modules out there, quite often the documentation is a hello world example, and a list of all objects/methods and arguments. That's if you're lucky.

  • Z (unregistered) in reply to Bob

    Ok, I'll bite at this :)

    Anonymous:

    I wholeheartedly agree. My attempts to install Ubuntu Linux in the weekend have left the a sour distaste in my mouth for anything open source. Microsoft may abuse a monopoly, they may charge ludicrous amounts for restrictive licenses, but damnit, Windows can install simply.


    Both Linux and Windows are easy to install, but only if you:
     1: allow the install to wipe the computer clean
     2: have a working computer (I've been bitte n by faulty hardware by both OSs)
     3: use a pre-decided installation-structure.
    Usually, people compare installing Linux without 1&3 to installing Windows with all three. However, in your case I don't know what you wanted to do.

    Anonymous:

    So Linux has an app called mke2fs, which will format a partition/hdd. With the -c tag, it scans for bad sectors, and compensates accordingly. So.... why does the Ubuntu install use a piece of software that formats without compensating for bad sectors, thus leading to errors when the actual install occurs? Why can't I use this software to set my partition as / without having to format it? I've already formatted it!!! Stop screwing it up!!

    (Please note, I have now learnt about mount. But come on, an install which is supposedly Linux newbie friendly that requires dropping to a shell to actually install? Oh, and, while the Linux thing of setting an HD to read-only if an i/o error occurs is a nice touch, having a rudimentary shell with no man pages in is not the best way to learn about it, AND WHY CAN'T THE PROGRAMME TO UNMOUNT (so as to remount) BE CALLED UNMOUNT?! Why call it Umount? That's just obnoxious.)

    /end opensource rant


    I'm not sure I would call Ubunte the newbie-friendly version of Linux, just the newbie-friendly version of Debian. If you want a more newbie-friendly Linux, try Linspire, Xandros, Fedora, ...

    Anonymous:

    But yeah, if Linux freaks ever want their favourite OS to be taken seriously, they've got to pick up the game.



    I couldn't agree more. I don't like spending time installing and uninstalling things.

    Incidentally, when applied to applications, thats one of the reasons I don't like Windows. If I want to try some piece of software on a Linux/BSD-machine, it is usually free, and can be installed simply using apt-get (Debian-based systems), ports (BSD), or portage (Gentoo). I generally try to stay away from rpm's, OTOH (dependency hell). If I didn't like the app, it is usually very simple to get rid of it also.

  • (cs) in reply to Jon Limjap
    Jon Limjap:
    God I have Paula Beans all over my previous job.


    Paula Beans are good with cheese and chips.  Refried Paula Beans are the best!

        dZ.
  • (cs) in reply to Z
    Anonymous:
    Ok, I'll bite at this :)

    Both Linux and Windows are easy to install, but only if you:
     1: allow the install to wipe the computer clean
     2: have a working computer (I've been bitte n by faulty hardware by both OSs)
     3: use a pre-decided installation-structure.
    Usually, people compare installing Linux without 1&3 to installing Windows with all three. However, in your case I don't know what you wanted to do.


    You forgot, very important #4:
    4. Make sure the hardware conforms to the specs and is listed in the Hardware Compatibility List.

    I can't count how many Windows 2000 installations went wrong because of a SCSI card or some other piece of hardware that Windows apparently didn't like.  People just assume that "if it runs Windows, it must run Linux -- any Linux", without thinking that a particular component might not be supported.  The same when upgrading Windows machines.

        -dZ.


  • (cs) in reply to DZ-Jay

    I can't count how many Windows 2000 installations went wrong because of a SCSI card or some other piece of hardware that Windows apparently didn't like.

    Yeah. On the other hand, apart from completely unsupported disk hardware (i.e. stuff for which there's no drivers in the install kernel) I've never seen linux or *BSD fail to install due to unsupported hardware. The worst they would do is simply ignore that hardware.

    For example, one of my servers started off as a PowerMac 9500. It now has a G4 processor and an adaptec SCSI 160 card, among other things.

    The SCSI card is not seen (as bootable) by open firmware, MacOS refuses to acknowledge its existence, and it requires a specially hacked kernel to be handled properly by linux. But it does work properly, as witnessed by the fact it happily talks to my 300GB Sun StorEdge array. Boot order on this machine is a bit - odd, but only happens about once a year, so who cares.

    The (somewhat rambling) point being : Even if large parts of a machine's hardware is unsupported, unless that unsupported hardware is absolutely required for the installation, an operating system installation should not fail as a result. It may well need some work to get things up and running 100%, or even not be 'usable' post-install, but the install itself should not fail.[1]

    People just assume that "if it runs Windows, it must run Linux -- any Linux", without thinking that a particular component might not be supported.

    The machine should. Certain peripherals might not work (winmodems etc) but the machine itself should be capable of running linux / netBSD / whatever

    Simon

    [1] Interesting factoid discovered from buggering about with my 9500: MacOS 9 will boot on a machine which has no video card. I could probably make an auto-install CD to carry out an install on such a machine.

  • (cs) in reply to Z
    Z:
    Ok, I'll bite at this :)

    Anonymous:

    I wholeheartedly agree. My attempts to install Ubuntu Linux in the weekend have left the a sour distaste in my mouth for anything open source. Microsoft may abuse a monopoly, they may charge ludicrous amounts for restrictive licenses, but damnit, Windows can install simply.


    Both Linux and Windows are easy to install, but only if you:
     1: allow the install to wipe the computer clean

    If you want a dual boot, one thing that worked well for me was buying a second hard-drive.  Then I was able to install Linux without getting near the Windows install.  Piece of cake.

  • (cs) in reply to tufty
    tufty:
    > I can't count how many Windows 2000 installations went > wrong because of a SCSI card or some other piece of > hardware that Windows apparently didn't like. Yeah. On the other hand, apart from completely unsupported disk hardware (i.e. stuff for which there's no drivers in the install kernel) I've never seen linux or *BSD fail to install due to unsupported hardware. The worst they would do is simply ignore that hardware. For example, one of my servers started off as a PowerMac 9500. It now has a G4 processor and an adaptec SCSI 160 card, among other things. The SCSI card is not seen (as bootable) by open firmware, MacOS refuses to acknowledge its existence, and it requires a specially hacked kernel to be handled properly by linux. But it does work properly, as witnessed by the fact it happily talks to my 300GB Sun StorEdge array. Boot order on this machine is a bit - odd, but only happens about once a year, so who cares. The (somewhat rambling) point being : Even if large parts of a machine's hardware is unsupported, unless that unsupported hardware is absolutely required for the installation, an operating system installation should not fail as a result. It may well need some work to get things up and running 100%, or even not be 'usable' post-install, but the install itself should not fail.[1] > People just assume that "if it runs Windows, it must run > Linux -- any Linux", without thinking that a particular > component might not be supported. The machine should. Certain peripherals might not work (winmodems etc) but the machine itself should be capable of running linux / netBSD / whatever Simon [1] Interesting factoid discovered from buggering about with my 9500: MacOS 9 will boot on a machine which has no video card. I could probably make an auto-install CD to carry out an install on such a machine.


    I agree.  I was merely pointing out that, in my experience, when people complain about problems installing certain flavors of Linux, it has been because they had an old machine running, say, Windows98, and decided to install RedHat on it ("what they heck, the geeks say that Linux is soooo good that it runs on old hardware, let see...") without even checking the hardware compatibility.  Then they complain that Linux sucks when everything doesn't go smoothly.

    But, as I have seen first hand, if you do the same thing with Windows (take an old Win98 machine and try to install Windows 2000 without checking the specs or hardware compatibility), you will encounter problems too.  Migrating (upgrading) from and to a different version of Windows is usually not as painless as proclaimed in the glossy ads.  Yet the myth is propagated that installing Linux is "hard" while Windows is a breeze.

        dZ.

  • thefatkid (unregistered)

    Alright, someone fess up now, the REAL reason she was hired was because she had really nice, er, um, EYES, right?

  • (cs) in reply to Bob
    stevekj:

    Mung Kee:

    You did, however, touch on a very significant problem with the open-source movement.  Most of the projects are half-finished crap with tenuous documentation.

    This is true.  And the rest of the projects are half-finished crap with no documentation!

    I'm all for open source, but geez, does most of it ever suck as far as code quality.  And you thought corporate WTFs were bad!


    Example ?
    The only OSS i have found matching this is stuff that was cr@p to begin with and they though it would magicly become better if they let everybody look at the poor source.
    I dont complain about the many free ( as in pizzza ) programs that exist for Windows with similar aspects.

    Somebody:
    So Linux has an app called mke2fs, which will format a partition/hdd. With the -c tag, it scans for bad sectors, and compensates accordingly. So.... why does the Ubuntu install use a piece of software that formats without compensating for bad sectors, thus leading to errors when the actual install occurs? Why can't I use this software to set my partition as / without having to format it? I've already formatted it!!! Stop screwing it up!!
    I have used Mandrake, Slackware and Gentoo and none of them will do this.
    Somebody:

    (Please note, I have now learnt about mount. But come on, an install which is supposedly Linux newbie friendly that requires dropping to a shell to actually install? Oh, and, while the Linux thing of setting an HD to read-only if an i/o error occurs is a nice touch, having a rudimentary shell with no man pages in is not the best way to learn about it, AND WHY CAN'T THE PROGRAMME TO UNMOUNT (so as to remount) BE CALLED UNMOUNT?! Why call it Umount? That's just obnoxious.)
    Mandrake ( Now Mandrivia ) doesnt require any shell ever. Also if you really really are stuck thinking that an unmount command must be called 'umount' a simple command can fix this : ln -s /bin/unmount `which umount`.  Happy ?

  • (cs) in reply to x-sol (to lazy to login)
    Anonymous:
    ....

    For MS jobs they could just have the applicant take the assesment tests. I always score second with the fastest time to complete....

    http://assessment.learning.microsoft.com/test/home.asp

    with those you can even get a feel for if the person has the skills you require...

    ...

    I had a look at the test and it basicly goes like this :

    How much do you know about our products ?
    How much do you know about our products to get them to work when they dont ?

    I hope this isnt serious

  • (cs) in reply to DZ-Jay
    DZ-Jay:
    ...
    I can't count how many Windows 2000 installations went wrong because of a SCSI card or some other piece of hardware that Windows apparently didn't like.  People just assume that "if it runs Windows, it must run Linux -- any Linux", without thinking that a particular component might not be supported.  The same when upgrading Windows machines.
    Or even better - "if it i can get it to work on Windows after spending 4 hours and 6 BSODs then Linux is evil if it cant get it working automaticly".
  • epo (unregistered) in reply to aksteele

    Somebody should make a movie called 'Saving private String Paula'

  • (cs) in reply to JimNtexas
    JimNtexas:
    I'm having trouble buying this one.  I admit, except for a few short contracting gigs I've always worked in companies that made and sold products that were mostly software, not for companies that made lint rollers or something and just have an IT department.

    But even in the IT department at the Lint Roller company, do they not use source control?  Can a developer work for weeks and months without checking code that needs to work as part of a larger project? 


    Do they not build the whole project from time to time?  You guys sound like your shops have 10 people working for months on different parts of the solution, and then you just expect all the parts to work together the day before the delivery? 


    Does not the typical lead at least glace at the source control checkins a couple of times a month, just to make sure everyone is singing from the same book?


    If this happened, there has to be a Monica type sitution involved, otherwise it's just impossible to imagine.




    No some big companies definately have team members doing their own thing for months on end.  Version control, what's that?  Oh we just installed SourceSafe but we have to make sacrifices daily to the MS gods so that it doesn't competely fsck our source code.  I've thankfully moved on from that but I still have friends there who report on the current implode-on-ourselves danger level.

  • (cs) in reply to aksteele 
    package test;

    public class paulaBean {

      private String paula = "Brillant";

      public String getPaula() {
        return paula;
      }
    }

    I don't know if anyone has mentioned it yet, but this is an excellent example of the Simpleton™ design pattern...
  • (cs) in reply to thefatkid
    Anonymous:
    Alright, someone fess up now, the REAL reason she was hired was because she had really nice, er, um, EYES, right?

    I had the same mental image.  <drool>
  • (cs) in reply to yawmark

    paulaBean

    yawmark:
    package test;


    public class paulaBean {

      private String paula = "Brillant";

      public String getPaula() {
        return paula;
      }
    }

    I don't know if anyone has mentioned it yet, but this is an excellent example of the Simpleton™ design pattern...

    In fact it's not.  There is a default public no-arg constructor in Java (privided that you don't specify any other constructor).  A Singleton would likely have a private no-arg constructor and a private instance of itself, exposed through a static method (e.g. paulaBean.getInstance()).  The static method would construct a new paulaBean if and only if the local private instance is null.


  • (cs) in reply to Mung Kee
    Mung Kee:
    paulaBean
    yawmark:
    package test;

    public class paulaBean {

      private String paula = "Brillant";

      public String getPaula() {
        return paula;
      }
    }

    I don't know if anyone has mentioned it yet, but this is an excellent example of the Simpleton™ design pattern...

    In fact it's not.  There is a default public no-arg constructor in Java (privided that you don't specify any other constructor).  A Singleton would likely have a private no-arg constructor and a private instance of itself, exposed through a static method (e.g. paulaBean.getInstance()).  The static method would construct a new paulaBean if and only if the local private instance is null.



    Doh!  Sorry, misread ("Simpleton").  I'll shut my hole now.
  • (cs) in reply to whojoedaddy

    whojoedaddy:
    No set method? She should have at least made paula a constant variable.

    "Constant variable." I think that was example #4 in the textbook about oxymorons.

  • andrew (unregistered) in reply to x-sol(lazy)

    I did this once.

    I was asked to do technical review of developers.

    From their resumes they seemed week. Which had me worried, because every programmer i know lies like a dog under the porch on a summer afternoon, when it comes to their resume.

    So I brought my laptop and a screen shot of simple desktop app that could be created by drag and dropping with vc/mfc and tiny/miniscule wiring of controls. I showed the screen shots and turned my laptop over to the interviewee. One guy could not launch Developer studio and another guy confessed instantly that he really only knew c on Unix machines.

     

  • Kenneth (unregistered) in reply to Trev

    What's next:

    public void doPaula() { }

    ? :)

  • (cs) in reply to Kenneth
    Anonymous:

    What's next:

    public void doPaula() { }

    ? :)


    If you're lucky you get a "void" return type:

    public STD doPaula(){}
  • Vandaman (unregistered) in reply to aksteele

    Thank God there is only a minor infusion of the "cheaper cut" in I.T.

  • (cs) in reply to Mung Kee
    Mung Kee:
    Anonymous:

    What's next:

    public void doPaula() { }

    ? :)


    If you're lucky you get a "void" return type:

    public STD doPaula(){}


    Avoid passing your schwanger in as a REF parameter. It may be altered in ways you are not prepared for.
  • (cs) in reply to John Bigboote

    John Bigboote:

    Avoid passing your schwanger in as a REF parameter. It may be altered in ways you are not prepared for.

    <FONT face="Courier New" size=2>here's the prototype:</FONT>

    <FONT face="Courier New" size=2>extern FILE* doPaula(unsigned int guy_count, ...) ;</FONT>

    <FONT face="Courier New" size=2>good god, i've reached a new low. [:^)]</FONT>

  • Leaves (unregistered)
  • (cs) in reply to Leaves

    La Paula, elle est brillant!

  • Hognoxious (unregistered) in reply to whojoedaddy

    whojoedaddy:
    She should have at least made paula a constant variable.

    I agree.  A variable constant would just have been silly.

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