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I would have hired Doug, but...

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Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#141

Post by dotandimet »

Decade wrote: post #116

So far, it looks like nobody is commenting on Dave Winer’s own work. Everybody has been influenced by Engelbart, but nobody uses NLS. Merely the ideas went into all the computers that we use today. Engelbart was so frustrated because he had more great ideas, but they were difficult to develop and he couldn’t get funding. Winer specifically mentions Userland Frontier. It was a useful tool, which I’m sure helped with t…

I've been following Dave for a long while, and I find he excels at leading you towards interesting ideas, starting conversations, discovering and inspiring interesting work by others, experimenting with cool stuff, occasionally just inventing influential technologies. Blogging, RSS, MP3 sharing, podcasting, HTML UIs, sites as apps, REST APIs/Web RPC...

I used Frontier in 1998 as a static site generator, and later as an RSS reader and a blogging tool. Frontier was a very interesting technology, and it was probably part of what made Dave so productive. Imagine a single program that is a web server and a database, a system scripting tool, a scheduler (like cron or Jenkins), an editor and an outliner and a scripting language runtime and an IDE... That's what Frontier was, and building each part of it leveraged the rest, accreting functionality to itself as it grew like coral.

Frontier's integrated approach went against the prevailing attitude in software development, that of UNIX, Open Source and the Web, of worse-is-better, loosely-coupled, modular and specialized tools. But by embracing the web's open protocols and loosely-specified text-based APIs, Dave got more than a decade of remarkably productive extra mileage out of it.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#142

Post by cfmcdonald »

diminoten wrote: post #85
fennecfoxen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the modern world if you're not on a trajectory toward the 1% you're losing. And what, exactly, is it that you're losing? You can have a pretty damn fine life without getting anywhere near the 1%.

Legacy. Empire. Providing for your children's children. Giving your loved ones the kind of life they've never even considered possible. Seeing the smile on your mother's face when you get to tell her she can stop working, that you've taken care of her and your father, and your brothers and sisters. The 1% are living in a way that will last longer than they will, on a scale that the rest of us won't achieve in our lif…

Maybe you are thinking of the 0.01%. The 1% income threshold in the U.S. is about $380K. That's wealthy but it's not empire-building. Most senior software engineers are probably in the top 5% of income earners in the U.S. already, they could easily be in the top 1% with a high earning spouse.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#143

Post by bentcorner »

lectrick wrote: post #133
michaelangerman wrote: post #19

I am 55 and have been programming computers since 1975 when I was 15 years old. Do the math, I have been programming now for 40 years. Recently, I had a conversation with someone else about this topic and I told them that I have never been so excited about my career, the field of computer science, and most importantly the opportunities that exist today in the field of technology. The excitement surrounding too many t…

I’m 43 and I do worry about this. But… not so much. Been programming since 1982 when I was 10... on a Commodore PET. I was instantly addicted, even though it was a green on black screen, needed to load code on a slow cassette-tape device, and was slow as heck. ;) You see, in this career you have to be willing to drop everything and learn a new thing. All the time. Make learning new things part of your career. My stra…

re: elixir:

What do you think about golang or rust?

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#144

Post by vezzy-fnord »

bliti wrote: post #67

As someone who started programming during the mid 80's: - Everything I've learned may be applied to most languages. Meaning that writing testable code generally translates from BASIC to Javascript. - Programming should always make you feel stupid. Feeling comfortable with something means that you stopped learning new things. - Experience != Knowledge. My biggest issue with some older programmers is that they tend to…

It will keep morphing and completely remove desktop computing as we know it. The same way desktop computers removed mainframes and terminals.

I wonder when smartphone platforms will become self-hosting.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#145

Post by woah »

mreiland wrote: post #132
michaelangerman wrote: post #19

I am 55 and have been programming computers since 1975 when I was 15 years old. Do the math, I have been programming now for 40 years. Recently, I had a conversation with someone else about this topic and I told them that I have never been so excited about my career, the field of computer science, and most importantly the opportunities that exist today in the field of technology. The excitement surrounding too many t…

What are you doing that it's keeping your interest? I sometimes find myself getting tired of technology and while I love software development, I often think about not doing it anymore. After a while it gets old constantly dealing with other people's decisions. An easy example is working with Powershell Remoting can be a nightmare if you're not intimately familiar with both Windows itself and Windows Remoting specific…

Sounds like you mostly have issues with Windows? If you were using open source software, you could use your considerable expertise to help improve the issues you've found.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#146

Post by 91bananas »

Dewie3 wrote: post #136
learc83 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>requiring special mechanical keyboard Well youngster, you seem to be falling behind the latest trends. Maybe you're not as young as you think. Don't you know all the fashionable programmers/gamers are using mechanical keyboards?

All that clickety-clack must be so satisfying. And annoying to everyone else.

Screw everyone else. Look out for #1 as he said. I like to know when I clickety-clacked the key I was looking for. Mechanical keyboards ftw.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#147

Post by cgh »

ErikAugust wrote: post #34
intrasight wrote: post #6

When I was a young man, a slightly older associate told me that "programming is a trap". What he meant is that if you are relatively smart, you can get a CS degree, get good at it, and go earn a fantastic income right out of school. I heard the words. I understood the words. I agreed with the words. Even now, 30 years later, I keep asking "is this a trap that I choose to remain in?" I still love programming, but it i…

You should quit now, and try working a multitude of other jobs. Come back to us and see if your definition of 'trap' has changed, or expanded. Software engineering is such an entitled world, it is ridiculous. As someone who has seen the world of menial work, I will never, ever leave it. I feel blessed. You should too. You just don't know it.

Exactly. I worked in a mine to pay my way through university. Never again.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#148

Post by DennisP »

Dewie3 wrote: post #136
learc83 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>requiring special mechanical keyboard Well youngster, you seem to be falling behind the latest trends. Maybe you're not as young as you think. Don't you know all the fashionable programmers/gamers are using mechanical keyboards?

All that clickety-clack must be so satisfying. And annoying to everyone else.

Not all mechanical keyboards are loud or clicky. I use one with Cherry Browns and mostly type without bottoming out the keys, and it's no louder than cheap keyboards.

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#149

Post by davewiner »

biturd wrote: post #104

I was looking at some of the code for one of his projects that is a little node http server. I don't really know JS or node at all, but can someone explain this to me: function secondsSince (when) { var now = new Date (); when = new Date (when); return ((now - when) / 1000); } I'm assuming now returns seconds since some fixed point in time ( epoch ) when when someone passes in the 'when' argument, it must already be…

new Date () returns creates a JavaScript date object.

When coerced to a number, it's the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970.

If you wanted to know the number of seconds since January 1, 1970, you could divide by 1000. Since JavaScript will do the coercion for you automatically you can pretty much treat a date object as if it were a number.

This is basically a utility routine that I use for debugging messages to say how long an operation took.

Here's an example of its use:

https://github.com/scripting/myWordEditor/blob/master/script...

It's especially nice because JavaScript automatically does real arithmetic on the division, so you get fractions of seconds displayed in the console.

I use this routine a lot. Helps me spot performance problems. Nice to have, not a crucial routine.

Hope this helps! ;-)

Re: I would have hired Doug, but...

#150

Post by [deleted] »

biturd wrote: post #104

I was looking at some of the code for one of his projects that is a little node http server. I don't really know JS or node at all, but can someone explain this to me: function secondsSince (when) { var now = new Date (); when = new Date (when); return ((now - when) / 1000); } I'm assuming now returns seconds since some fixed point in time ( epoch ) when when someone passes in the 'when' argument, it must already be…

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