I'm 18 years old and I just got my first significant programming job building android applications for a medical device company. I must say its inspiring to read something like this. I've heard stories from mentors and professors about what it takes to stay relevent in the field computer science. It's odd to think that the technologies I've devoted my time and energy could be all but useless by the time I turn 30. Maybe it's wrong, but I dream of a post Moore's Law era where development tools can finally mature and the best programmers are the ones with 40 years of experience.
I would have hired Doug, but...
111–120 of 244 posts
Re: I would have hired Doug, but...
#112As 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…
With all due respect, how would mobile devices replace/match the computing experience I have now with my 27" computer? How would be that possible? Good spirit and even better understanding of the Zeitgeist :)
They don't, but they're actually not bad analogues for the computing experience we had a couple decades ago. The original 128K Mac (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K) had a 9" display, after all -- not that much smaller than the display you get on an iPad Air. I bet someone who learned how to develop great UIs on those Macs would be right at home doing the same on a smartphone or tablet.
Re: I would have hired Doug, but...
#113I 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…
I'm not 100% sure what he's doing here, however I know when I have used new Date().getTime() it returns something like milliseconds, and thus I had to divide by 1000 to result in seconds, so it appears that he's subtracting milliseconds and getting seconds after the division by 1000.
Typically I believe new Date() is current time/date (http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?filename=tryjs_date_ne...) in my experience.
As far as your question how to deal with 5/8/2015, and 8/5/2015, to be honest I don't know that answer.
Re: I would have hired Doug, but...
#114I 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…
I'm not 100% sure what he's doing here, however I know when I have used new Date().getTime() it returns something like milliseconds, and thus I had to divide by 1000 to result in seconds, so it appears that he's subtracting milliseconds and getting seconds after the division by 1000. Typically I believe new Date() is current time/date ( http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?filename=tryjs_date_ne... ) in my experienc…
Also assuming I can read, it doesn't look like that function is used, (I searched second in the same file, and in the higher level folder, and couldn't find that function called anywhere)
Re: I would have hired Doug, but...
#115Re: I would have hired Doug, but...
#116So 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 the development of RSS, just as NeXT Project Builder helped with the development of WWW. The problem with the Engelbart comparison is that there are countless other development environments, many of them free and/or not in a dialect of C and/or available via git, while the Mother of All Demos was unique.
I think the open-sourcing of Frontier was too little, too late. Frontier is an impressive achievement, but I don’t see why it should be interesting to me.
Re: I would have hired Doug, but...
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought this was a problem of managers for the longest time, but recently I read an argument once that convinced me of the opposite. Tu quoque: the "my boss doesn't understand" problem in companies basically comes from people working for people with lower IQ than them. It's not a skillset gap, it's a pattern-recognition gap. In the military, the best soldiers become officers, and the best officers become generals—e…
In the military, the best soldiers become officers This isn't true in any modern military.
Well there are LE late entry officers in the UK ie you where a squadie before.
And there is some truth I am told in the old adage that the NCO's really run the Army they just let Rupert pretend he's in charge.
Re: I would have hired Doug, but...
#118I 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…
well, it is good that you like the things you do. at your age, we youngsters tend to expect you to be in the management level, not at individual contributor level. from time to time, i would see our team hiring engineer with gray hair and requiring special mechanical keyboard, and we all thought "mm.. interesting."
Hope you don't have to learn this from experience, but even young people can experience RSI and need special keyboards.
Re: I would have hired Doug, but...
#119I play a lot of music with folks older than me... I'm 37, and the drummer in a blues band I play with is 73 (he's a neat guy- he was in the 13th Floor Elevators). I've played with folks in their late 80s, and most of the folks I play with weekly in a large jazz band are between 50 and 70. I also play bi-weekly with an orchestra with members ranging from 12-82. Maybe I lack the same perspective I lacked when I was you…
Am I the only one who noticed "he was in 13th Floor Elevators"? Whoa! That's rad! And props on making music the priority, not worrying about age.
No you're not. I'm listening to "You're Gonna Miss Me" right now.
So is he in touch with Roky?
Re: I would have hired Doug, but...
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a young person my biggest concern with hiring old people is that exact attitude: this is just like $IRRELEVANT_OLD_TECH. Yeah on the surface. $IRRELEVANT_OLD_TECH didn't catch on or it wouldn't be irrelevant but _why_ didn't it catch on? Powerbuilder failed, but was it because you couldn't write a good enough program that way on 1995s hardware? Or because it was ultimately a stupid idea? Somebody like me who has n…
...this is just like $IRRELEVANT_OLD_TECH. Yeah on the surface. $IRRELEVANT_OLD_TECH didn't catch on or it wouldn't be irrelevant but _why_ didn't it catch on?... I'm a young person, too. Lipstick on a pig doesn't make a cow, you know. Arguments like "It's only similar on the surface" I've found tend to give too much credence to incidental properties - this runs on X, it's widespread unlike previous solutions, it's b…
Amen when I was looking at hadoop it suddenly dawned on me that I had been doing map reduce back in the early 80's for British Telecom.