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Admin
Was the project so small (which is odd given all the people involved) or are those prices a bit low, even for 2012?
Admin
My normal line of advice would be to not say this. Announce your favoured estimates, for sure, but don't just pile in and insult everyone.
Admin
Sounds like Argle's sons learned a valuable lesson there. Don't work for moronic companies. Shame it's almost impossible to avoid, at least in the USA.
Admin
This has been posted before, hasn't it? I definitely recall the "Facebook uses PHP so we need to also" and the "I said 5 months and was terminated", but the version I recall had no mention of the guys' three sons also working there.
Admin
I think this is just a class of story that happens a lot. The worst one in my experience was when I worked for a tech company that wanted to be Southwest Airlines, because the owner read a lot of business magazines and this was the era where the business press was lining up to genuflect in front of Southwest. Was our business anything like Southwest's? NOPE. But goddammit, we had to take lessons from them.
Admin
Honestly, the mount of European arrogance on display in some of these comment threads is just astounding. I could you a nice long list of companies just as bad if not worse over in the EU and UK, so lets stop pretending that the US has the monopoly on stupid.
Admin
Yeah, I think "CEO goes to a conference and comes back deciding to rework X to be a new version of Y" is a cliche because it happens so dang often.
Admin
You are hereby awarded the "Easier Said Than Done" trophy for 2026.
Admin
My first boss in IT back in the 90s subscribed to all the airline magazines and executive leadership magazines, so he'd see what they were reading about and wouldn't get blindsided when they asked for something that made no sense.
Admin
Given the results of the 2024 election, I'd say we at least are the market leader.
Admin
And those who were in charge the four years prior gave no cause for concern whatsoever? Seriously, give it a rest.
Admin
Maybe, but at least that guy does something. In the UK the current mod just sit there and do nothing. Except raise taxes, of course.
Admin
Seems like an absurd estimate to not drink the kool-aid and expect to be kept on. There's a list of Cognitive Distortions that people make (i.e. known bugs with human minds), but I don't think I've seen a list for corporations. Maybe I'll have AI try to generate me one...
Admin
I agree with
dpm. Not only is that almost impossible, the major issue is that it may not be obvious upfront. Sometimes you can't tell before getting a foot in the door, even for small companies where you start talking to the boss during the intro meeting.What I've found useful is to chat casually with the lower ranks. That's when I got the real picture of what it takes to work in the place. Works wonders also when moving between departments in the same large corp to figure out whether the local micro boss is some kind of small Napoleon.
Admin
Speaking as someone from a long line of die hard Democrats, as well as being one for a nearly half a century, I just cannot fathom how anyone being honest with themselves and those around them can say that we were better off under the previous administration. The party that I always knew has devolved so far that it is very difficult to even recognize today.
Admin
@MagnusPI: Good point; stupid is pretty universal.
To me at least it's the extreme absence of anything resembling civilized worker protections in the US that contrasts both brightly and badly versus the EU's reality. Imperfect though the EU's rules may be.
CEO-worship depends on human nature and is fairly universal. Worker protection and wages depends on political will and hence is at least potentially different around the world.
Admin
True, it is a bit shocking how many people voted for a word-salad spreader who got zero primary votes.
Admin
"What I've found useful is to chat casually with the lower ranks." A long time ago I interviewed with a company where I knew one of the employees. After the formal interviews wrapped up around 2pm she took me aside and told me: "I've been here since 7am and haven't had time to even go to the bathroom. Are you sure you want to work here?" Excellent advice, that.
Admin
Just so I understand correctly, your position is that the current Trump administration is so far and away superior to the Biden administration that you cannot imagine how anyone can fail to see it?
Admin
Frankly, it is just painfully obvious. Again, coming from my stated background, it has just been appalling the lengths of which the people of my long time party, both in political positions and those working in the news media, had gone, to hide what was really happening and allow many things to transpire that should never have been allowed, and then to turn around and completely deceive the public once more about those working to clean up the various messes.
And while I contributed to it, we should really end this line of topic as it really does not belong here. That anyone feels this is an appropriate platform for that is part of the overall problem.
Admin
HaldCenturyDem is the real WTF here
Admin
Ugh, Remy, please, could you exorcise these Kremlin bots?
Admin
Fascinating to watch groupthink take hold in a comment section about groupthink….
Admin
You can tell there are KremlinBots here, so far no one has mentioned PHP as TRWTF.
Admin
Politics? On my tech debt site?
Oh well, might as well join it. I know next to nothing about American politics, but I think Biden was better than Trump, because a politician that does absolutely nothing is a politician that does no damage (that's the Australian model---we vote in the useless to keep the people who can cause damage out). Of course, some damage is from other sources but could have been stopped by a politician doing their job (See: the youth crime epidemic). But at least from we get on the news here, it seems that Trump is causing more damage himself than Biden was allowing (See: wars, doge, etc.). The US does not have a monopoly on stupid (See: Taxinta Allan), but it is definitely the market leader (See: "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens").
Now that I've expressed my political views, let me be a hypocrite and say that politics shouldn't be discussed here.
Admin
What does Hippo stand for again? :-)
Admin
Yes, of course, “no damage.” Those high egg prices while Biden was president? Never happened. A speech in front of a Nazi-themed background calling half the country dangerous (followed dutifully by people in this thread dismissing them as “Kremlin bots”)? Nothing, we can be sure. Prosecuting people for exercising their right to protest? Nah. Etc., etc.
As for DOGE - we can start with the fact that after it did its work, and in particular closed down USAID, suddenly lots of information is oozing out about eye-watering corruption in certain (blue) states; suddenly candidates in foreign countries who actually care for their constituents are getting elected. All just a coincidence, I’m sure.
Admin
The story is mine and I have to admit that it invites a lot of opinion. This, of course, makes it fundamentally political. I've been a life-long Libertarian, so I don't much like either of the major parties. I lean towards how A Human put it: useless people tend to be safer than the ones who manage to do things.
Admin
It's sad how quickly the lessons of the great Commander Montgomery Scott have been forgotten. You're supposed to multiply your estimates by four so you seem like a miracle worker when you do it in a quarter of the time.
Admin
As an outsider who has been looking into american politics for decades now I can confidently say that for the longest time it's always been the same thing. As least as far as the rest of the world is concerned. Trump bullying Iran is not really any different than what Jonson did in Vietnam. And your workers rights and basic human rights have been on the chopping block at least since Shrub. To name a few.
The only difference between than and now is that Trump has dropped all pretenses and is saying out loud what was previously done in quiet. So it looks like a shocking development where as in fact it more closely resembles a continuous line.
Admin
Bullying? You do realize that Iran has been a flat out terrorist state for over 40 years and finally something is being done about it, but lets just throw out ridiculous loaded talking points from those who have made it their life's work to deceive people. The amount of falsehoods coming from those who have vastly benefited from the status quo of decades past is astronomical. Stop getting all your information from those who have every reason to misrepresent and obscure information. I am not speaking as supporter of anyone, but simply as someone who is just plain tired of all the willful deception coming from those insanely desperate to get back into real power, a party that cannot even be trusted to run their own primary elections, as it's easier to just throw out the results wholesale and appoint someone who wasn't even on the ballot.
You want to argue with legitimate points, then go ahead, as there is many things the current administration could improve on, plenty to be critical about. But leave out the BS talking points from media henchmen and do your own homework and learn to think for yourself, then we can have a real discussion (hopefully in a much more appropriate venue.)
Admin
The previous administration didn't start a war against a nation that controls a strait through which a sizeable chunk of the World's petroleum products must travel. Nor was Biden a convicted felon, nor was he impeached twice, nor did hew admit to sexually assaulting women on tape. Nor was he cosying up to Epstein. Nor did he attempt to extort favours from the president of Ukraine. Nor did he incite an insurrection. Nor did he dismantle what paltry things the US was doing to fight climate change. Nor did he preside over the destruction of USAID this condemning millions of people world wide to death and destroying what was left of America's reputation abroad.
Seriously? You really think Biden was as bad? I have no words.
Admin
Here's the first WTF
Don't lend money to family members, especially if it's to fund something as risky as a new software project. If at some point you need the money and they can't pay you back, it's likely to strain your relationship.
Obviously then there is the decision to rewrite a C# project in PHP. I would hesitate to even go in the other direction, if there is more than a year's development behind you.
Admin
@ Meir It's not just that she got zero primary votes as well as wasn't even on the ballot, in 2019 she was on the ballot and came in dead last, being completely rejected, only for Biden to chose her only based on race and gender (by his own admission) so her being chosen twice was a double smack in the face to their own voters.
@jeremypnet I don't even know where to begin. This just is not the place for this.
Have you ever done any research of your own instead of taking for granted everything CNN and MS$whatever throw out there? And no I am not a supporter of the current admin, nor do I watch Fox News, but dear laminated lord there is a massive difference between being critical and just succumbing to propaganda. This is why so many idiots keep burning cities and rioting under false pretenses, they just can't seem to figure out for them selves that they a constantly being lied to. This need to stop - both the deceptive information shoving, as well as using tech sites as your platform to push it.
Admin
Iran is not a nice place full of carebears to be sure. But its not like they spent decades wasting lives and money building their network of proxies, their military and a police state because they really have a liking to guns over butter.
Iran's behavior is one of a nation that has been pushed into a corner by international sanctions, threats of violence and general hatred from the worlds largest superpower and which is doing everything in its power to harden its defensive and offensive capabilities in an attempt at deterrence against precisely such an attack as the one which occurred.
And to an extent it worked. America might have had the brazenness to bomb them, murder their legitimate government and start a war but they did not invade nor actually impose regime change as they did in Venezuela. Deterrence was a partial success.
Fact of the matter is that Iran has been systematically stepped on by america and its allies for decades ever since they committed the grave crime of having a revolution against a government you support and toward one that you don't. And calling them terrorists is akin to calling a wife that killed her abusive husband a murderer. Technically correct, but it ignores the much wider context.
Admin
I am not really exposed much to your internal propaganda. So honestly, I don't know much about what you are talking about. Seems like the usual stuff you get everywhere though. As in: We = good - other = evil.
But what I can tell you is what I have observed over the decades. And that is, at least to someone who's been around as long as I have that Trump is not an aberration. He is the expected end result of decades of your country spiraling down.
Your country has, for as far as I can remember been on a steady downward trend in that your politicians are becoming ever more brazen and corrupt and openly so, your workers are being turned more and more into slaves and you've been becoming more and more of an evil empire as time goes on.
From carpet bombing North Korean cities to spreading toxic defoliants in Vietnam and to the kidnapping of one president and murder of another is a strait and uninterrupted line of evil. And your internal politics have not exactly been better. Don't think of the Watergate that happened. Think of the Watergate Nixon wanted to happen, had he not been stopped. Think of the patriot act, the anti communist laws, jim crow.
Trump didn't come out of nowhere. He is not some new thing that walked into your political stage and suddenly created your race issues, deprived your workers of their rights, turned you into a quasi police state and started the first international war ever. These are all things that have been happening for decades. Trump nearly pulled down the curtain.
He is simply an egomaniacal conman who's claim to fame is playing a businessman on TV riding on the coattails of decades of damage done by your political establishment. His entire platform appears to be "I'll piss on you like all the others but at least I won't tell you it's raining." And honestly, he ain't lying.
Admin
Honestly the whole situation reminds me a lot of the late Roman republic. Here's to hoping you ain't heading for your own Cesar.
Admin
@516052
But you're clearly exposed to your own. European propaganda is far worse, which mostly regurgitates the filth of failed new institutions from the States. It seems little has changed from what allowed the second world war to happen which wouldn't have if the European nations had actually done their job instead of sitting on their hands. Much like they are complete cowards when it comes to Putin. And Iran being "pushed into a corner" is the height of your poisoned information well, they have been finding terrorism for decades, it's that, one again, no one wanted to do anything about it.
At any rate, this thread has only shown certain people here simply cannot grasp the concept of -not- contaminating non politics/non news sites for this. It is an absolutely disgusting display that shows a complete lack of moderation here.
Admin
Honestly not really. Where I am from america barely ever gets mentioned in the news other than when Trump says something stupid or when it directly effects us. And even than it typically fizzles out after a week or two these days because the news no longer has the attention span to follow any crisis for longer. That and the occasional report of one of our politicians mentioning you in a speech or something.
Fact of the matter here is that aside from suffering the economic fallout of your wars we in the rest of the world mostly don't hear much at all you unless we deliberately look for it.
Like for example when Trump tried to overthrow the government last time round there was literally nothing about that on our TV. You had to dig into newspaper to even found out it happened. And who aside from ancient geezers like my self even does that?
And you have been pushing them into a corner ever since the revolution. Which is many decades. Yes, they have been lashing out. Yes their actions have caused harm. But would they be doing so if not for you constantly sponsoring their primary enemy, putting them under immeasurable economic pressure and basically radicalizing them all the way?
As far as I am concerned, Irans actions over the years are not excusable, but they are hardly unprovoked and difficult to understand. And it is the height of hubris to claim that america has some form of right to "punish" them for it.
Admin
Show me a rule that says we can't discuss these things here. I am waiting.
Admin
For starters it's completely off topic, which is just plain rude and seriously disrespectful to those who just want to read about the core topic. It's also just common sense and courtesy of others to force your view down throats of others.
Admin
Admin
Maybe it is not a strict rule (though it really should be.) By the logic you and others are going by, it would be totally okay to go into cooking forum threads and randomly write posts about rebuilding engines and comparing turbo and super chargers. Or invading the subreddit of your favorite television fantasy show and adding comments detailing the fall of Siegfried & Roy and why Las Vegas generally has plummeted in quality. Do anyone of you really not hear yourselves?
Admin
I'm an IT professional and I come here for the funny IT stories. BUT I don't mind discussing politics because I haven't found anywhere on the internet where a left-of-centre guy can respectfully discuss US politics with a right-of-centre guy.
So in that spirit....
To the guy who's angry at people "being prosecuted for exercising their right to protest...."
Are you talking about Jan 6? If so then you can disabuse me of the biased left wing media that i consume,
...because what we heard in Australia was that your president got his supporters riled up with ambiguous exhortations to "fight like hell" whereupon they broke into your seat of government and erected gallows ostensibly to assassinate your vice president, and then did nothing for many hours to explain "no that's not what i meant".
Is any of that untrue or does it lack context?
Admin
And who exactly is forcing you to read and engage with us?
If you don't like what I am writing just skip over it and move on to the rest of the page. It's not like I have a gun to your head forcing you to read and respond to everything.
You kids these days are so spoiled by algorithmically curated content that you have lost the ability to filter things on your own. You just get offended every time something that does not interest you happens to pop up in your line of sight.
Back in my days you'd buy the whole newspaper, read the parts you are interested in and use the rest as toilet paper. And you didn't complain about having to pay for the whole thing.
Admin
And honestly, its a sad sign of the times that people think the way you do.
Public spaces, whether they be a coffee shop, art gallery, social gathering, your water cooler at work or an online forum are third spaces. Their primary purpose for existence is to provide a venue for socialization.
The "topic" the place is not a straitjacket meant to impede socialization but the hook meant to attract a certain demographic in order to facilitate socialization by gathering people with a shared interest.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a discussion about sports or cars or anything else on a cooking forum. Just as there is nothing wrong with having a conversation about things that are not coffee in a coffee shop. As long as the conversation is flowing the third place is doing its job.
Admin
It's one thing when the topic has something to do with politics, it's totally different matter when people go out of their way to hijack and interject
There is the problem with many news agencies abroad running the spliced/edited video of two separate speeches from two different points of the day to change meanings and also they often leave out the part where he clearly said to go peacefully. And they also leave out that it was a very small percentage of people who came to that city that day who participated in the raid, and many of those who did were found to be plants. It doesn't matter what side to hail from, it doesn't matter who you live. Misreporting is wrong.
516052:
There also isn't one to any of yours forcing any of you to take over topics just because you feel like it. People in this and other threads where it's happened have been asking to not do that and you and others just ignore them because you feel like this should be an open forum. This is has happened elsewhere and it has killed good sites, forums, subreddits, blogs, etc. But if that is your ultimate goal, than carry on.
Admin
Honestly the most curious thing about Jan 6 is how little attention it got in the media over here. Like, we get little to no coverage of american politics as is. But I'd have expected that sort of thing at least to get some attention. But no. It was in the news on that day and that was that. On the 8th or so it was already out of the news cycle and forgotten about.
Admin
Where is "over here" ? We can't just magically know your location.
"Public spaces, whether they be a coffee shop, art gallery, social gathering, your water cooler at work or an online forum are third spaces. Their primary purpose for existence is to provide a venue for socialization"
516052, that may be true of general places where people come to to talk about whatever, but places like this are specific topical. The primary purpose of this website is bad code and technology, not auto repair, not nuclear fission, not pet grooming techniques, not political views, not how to get the best air fare, nor how to loose weight, etc, etc. If a tech topic is related to or about something else, fair game, that's part of the topic to be discussed. But in threads like this, someone at decided to derail the topic by suddenly talking about the 2024 election. This thread had which had nothing to do with politics, but about an app being rewritten in PHP. It was not fair game for such a tangent. Plenty of people across many threads have asked that this be stopped. Derailing threads like this is massively disrespectful.
Admin
And people wonder why young people these days are so isolated, lonely and generally miserable and why society is so high strung and fragmented. This is why.
By turning third spaces into walled gardens strictly focused on a topic and nothing else you are destroying their ability to serve as a place for socialization. And when that happens people stop socializing, loose interest and the place dies.
That's how you end up with dead sites with single digit user counts made up only from people that are fanatical about the "topic".
The only thing that is disrespectful is marching into an active conversation and shushing people thus ruining the fun for everyone involved just because you don't like the topic being discussed.