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Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

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Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#181

Post by chubot »

msla wrote: post #35

I do not doubt this: > Most open source software is written by programmers who are full-time employed by companies which directly consume the software, at the explicit or implicit blessing of their employers. It is not charity work, any more than they charitably file taxes. But I wonder how many important Open Source projects were started that way, by employees of companies which wanted to use those projects. Linux,…

Yes, I think this sentence oversimplifies things. The conclusions should be divided between:

1) Most open source software written and released today

2) Most open source software you use

The code in category #2 is much older on average.

Most people here use bash every day, but as far as I can tell, there's about one person behind it, who doesn't get paid for it (Chet Ramey).

And you're right that a lot of projects start free, and then get commercial contribution once they are valuable. Linux, git, hg, and Python all fit that profile.

In the "non-company" category, I would put Linux, git, hg, gcc, Apache. A lot of people still use Apache. nginx was in this category too until very recently.

SVN is interesting because it was started by a company (CollabNet), but I believe they diverged and the company no longer had much economic interest in it.

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that the story is really complicated. It's not as simple as what's in that Tweet.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#182

Post by deanjones »

hoodoof wrote: post #155

> Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. Simply not true. Ask the Winklevoss twins.

Yes, it's evidently, demonstrably, the case that ideas have value, because this is enshrined the concept of intellectual property. Even in a world where IP didn't exist, his statement would be wrong, because there will always be people who can sell an idea, and the value of something is exactly what someone else will pay for it.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#184

Post by vm »

simonbyrne wrote: post #100
vm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no no. Debt is not universally better. Debt can wipe out companies. It requires payments that equity does not. Miss one payment and you're in default. It's extremely risky for companies that are young and volatile. Debt vs. equity is always a case-by-case situation. Debt is cheaper but comes with strings attached. Equity is pricey but more flexible.

But it isn't in your creditor's interest that you go bankrupt either.

Bankruptcy can definitely be in the creditor's interest. It can take possession of the company's assets, and then sell them off to recover principal (in addition to many other outcomes - bankruptcy is complicated).

Debt incentives do not align with equity.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#185

Post by valuearb »

bambax wrote: post #39

> Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. This is oft repeated, but not always true. Take the Nazis (bear with me). The Nazis had the best execution ever . They almost drowned the whole British army, which had previously conquered the world. While fighting battles all over Europe and being one of the most bombarded country in history, they continued to produce tanks, planes, submarines, oper…

Terrible analogy. Nazi execution was horrible post invasion of France. Hitler's conservative generals hadn't foreseen how effective their blitzkrieg tactics were at the beginning of the war. That justified his own delusional view of his own greatness and Nazi superiority, even though he & the Nazi's had nothing to do with the success, it came from german armies brilliant strategies/tactics/training/soldiers and preparation.

So then Hitler stopped listening to his generals, and went on to micromanage the war, and made one terrible decision after another.

• Not invading Britain before starting a war with the USSR, where Germany was outnumbered by over 3-1.

• Focusing the Russian invasion n Moscow instead of the far more important strategic objective of Kursk's oil fields. Not only did Germany needed more oil, but Kursk was also nearly the USSR's only supply. They got close to Kursk, but didn't destroy tthe oil fields when they fell short, and Germany's war efforts was handicapped by oil shortages the rest of the war. Your air force can't use it's superiority if it can't leave the ground, and neither can your tank commanders if their tanks can't start.

• Sending a million man army to attack Stalingrad when it had little strategic value, then abandoned it, losing every single man. When you are outnumbered 3-1, you can't fight wars of attrition, every man counts.

• Rejected the Army's plan to liberate Ukrainians and recruit them to fight as allies against the USSR. This would have almost evened the man-power disadvantage with a fresh supply of soldiers who hated the USSR. Instead he declared them sub-human, ordering them liquidated to make "living space" for Germany, and turned Ukrainian resistance behind German lines into a devastatingly powerful asset of the USSR.

• Ordered the ME-262, by far the worlds fastest fighter, to be launched with bomb mounts that slowed it substantially so it could only be used as fighter bomber, while Germany was being bombed relentlessly and had lost command of it's own skies.

• Wasting huge amounts of resources on wonder-weapons such as the V1, V2, that had almost no impact on the Allies war efforts.

• Also includes the Maus and Tiger Tanks, which sucked resources away from building more of their best tank, the Panther.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#186

Post by peterwwillis »

> Most open source software is written by programmers who are full-time employed by companies which directly consume the software, at the explicit or implicit blessing of their employers. It is not charity work, any more than they charitably file taxes.

There are perhaps 1000 OSS projects that make up the software you use on a daily basis. Many of these have core developers or maintainers who are hired by a company to write or maintain that software for them to consume.

But there are literally millions more open source projects, almost entirely developed by hobbyists.

Github alone has 24 million developers, with 67 million repos (25 million of which are public), and 1.5 million organizations, in 200 countries. The top languages used there are JS, Python, Java, Ruby, PHP, C++, CSS, C#, Go, and C. (Github, btw, is not the only repository of open source code)

Most open source software is most definitely not written by one kind of dev. But there _is_ an underlying motivator behind almost all open source: "I need this code." As long as there is someone who needs it passionately enough to take it upon themselves to craft and produce it, without regard to commercial gain, it will stay alive. Open Source is basically woodworking, and our computers are the chisels and saws.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#187

Post by ramses0 »

jogjayr wrote: post #101
toasterlovin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. So I think it kind of makes sense that our society is confused about the purpose of higher education.

> because they are not allowed to use IQ tests There's actual employment law that prohibits using IQ tests? I'd never heard that before

It's related to anti-discrimination / "psychology-test" laws. If there is any sort of "test" given as a condition of employment, it must be relevant, standardized, non-biased, reviewed by specialists and approved, etc.

http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Test1...

The value and definition of "IQ" is widely disputed and generally seen as of limited relevance to the actual work and performance of that work (uncorrelated). Look it up and do some research if you're interested, this is just a quick showing of _why_ tests may be considered bad.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#188

Post by deanjones »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #167
hoodoof wrote: post #155

> Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. Simply not true. Ask the Winklevoss twins.

That's a near-perfect example of his point.

You are aware, I assume, that the Winklevoss twins were awarded $65 million for "their" idea?

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#189

Post by git_rancher »

chefandy wrote: post #102
pavlov wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If IQ tests were a reliable measure of any job capability, surely the brilliant minds at Mensa would already have made a mint by selling recruitment services.

Well, part of the problem is that mensa is a total crock of shit.

You may not know this but a primary purpose of Mensa is to help "smart" people find other "smart" people to socialize with. In that sense it succeeds (I'm a member).

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#190

Post by JepZ »

wnoise wrote: post #3

> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.

I think there is a thin line here. For example I was taught I to programm Smalltalk. On the one hand that is not a commonly used programming language and on the other hand it teaches Object Oriented Programming like no other language.

So yes, after that you can't start as a Senior Java Developer but I think you have a very good foundation to quickly pick up other Object Oriented languages.

So you do not have to teach the latest hyped language to give students the ability to programm. Instead you can use clean languages to teach CS and let your students excercise them to show you that they understood what you taught them.

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