Drop millions of allocations by using a linked list

I like to think I take a certain amount of rigor in the choices of tools and processes and design philosophy that reduces the amount and impact of bugs... but if we get a customer complaint about our product we don't generally issue a recall and lose millions of dollars.

It's not that I spend any less time learning theory and application and it's certainly no less challenging in some cases than even mechanical engineering but... it's a liability thing.

Also, I don't write software for aerospace control systems.

I've seen companies advertise "software engineer," positions whose primary responsibilities included running a fleet of Wordpress blogs.

Just a matter of perspective I guess.

You probably have the luxury of specializing in one particular language, and maybe a handful of processor architectures. You probably rely on one or a few libraries, and know them backwards and forwards. You probably have your own personal repository of code and tactics that you go back to often. In other words, your knowledge of programming is probably narrow and deep.

Web developers usually don't get that luxury. Top web developers today have to be fluent in a minimum of two programming languages (javascript and a backend language like Python, Ruby, PHP...), use several different fast prototyping approaches (css compilers and wacky templating systems), have a good working general knowledge of everything from the web browser to the web server, and cope with an environment in which at least one of those parts is changing on almost a daily basis. Web development is shallow and very, very broad.

I prefer systems programming but I've worked as a web developer off and on for several years now. I have a lot of respect for any web developer that's really good at it. They aren't lesser programmers at all, and I suspect a lot of them, if they decided to do it, could kick the pants off of most systems programmers.

It changes when the context are not "marginal EC2 instances" but instead energy and resources burning machines, used (often) by ignorant software developers and their organizations allowed and actually encouraged, partly even actively driven into such purely self beneficial behavior models.

For a definition of social: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social ... obviously driving software development into a scarcity of computing power would haven "social" consequences: in the development teams f.e. interactions and priorities would need to change dramatically.

But maybe software development turned almost into a "commodity" because of the commoditization of computing power available to even the most ineffective mental artifact aka program.

And that in turn was possible in large extent by off-loading the true costs of assembly / dis-assembly / disposal and the resources needed to build those machines onto people in underdeveloped regions of the world...

Now what could the social change be, the more expensive computing devices could allow for in those regions?

If people cared about "effectivity" not only via a detour to "uh, i need to recharge my phone, again?!" f.e. but essentially because because they would have to pay the true cost for their ineffective setup of hardware and software?

What could the social change be... ;)

I like to remember the past of computer programming as though it was once friendly and receptive to people of all skill levels. I owe quite a lot to the geeks who came before me and answered my stupid questions, gave me powerful tools to learn with, and accepted my contributions; flawed as they were. Without making a few mistakes along the way I wouldn't be where I am today.

I don't know whether I would have given up if the people I met were more smug and mean-spirited but my progress might have been slowed by it. Life is too short to waste bothering with people who are miserly with their good fortunes. It doesn't cost you anything to be nice and share your knowledge and wisdom. It may pay off when the person you're sharing with rises to stand upon your shoulders one day and pay homage to you.

[0] http://threevirtues.com/