|
At the extremely basic level, there are basically two good qualities that each programmer should strive for: programming skill and employee skill. Programming skill is basically the ability to write good, solid, performant, maintainable, and all-the-other-desireable-code-adjectives code. This is what coders tend to spend their time harping on and debating about and reading about. Employee skill is the ability to be a good employee and coworker. This means being responsive, being able to communicate well, hitting deadlines, being open to feedback, being able to explain complex things clearly, stuff like that. You can get far without being a great coder.
|
|
|
|
|
Rodrigo wouldn't do well in a team environment, but it's hard to believe that Gabriella "hasn't missed a deadline." Delivering buggy code on time isn't my definition of "meeting the deadline".
/ravi
|
|
|
|
|
I agree with you on this. But I've had many instances where management has said, "I don't care if it doesn't work, get it into production." Seen many instances where code that is not ready has been released because management is more concerned about meeting the deadline rather than the quality of the product.
|
|
|
|
|
Terrence Dorsey wrote: being able to explain complex things clearly,
"No",
"Yes"
"Maybe"
|
|
|
|
|
Amazing thoughts.
What seems to be the paradox is, you can do well without being a great coder. But to get inside [an organization] you need to have to be a great coder.
No one's going to recruit you just because you talk good english and meet deadlines.
-
Just that something can be done, doesn't mean it should be done. Respect developers and their efforts!
Jk
|
|
|
|
|
Terrence Dorsey wrote: You can get far without being a great coder.
I know! Been cleaning up behind them for ages..
What the man means with "being a good employee" does not add up with being a good coder. You're a good employee if you don't complain about the coffee and don't speak against the boss. You're a good coder if you tell the boss that VB6 is dead and that his new Skynet will NOT be developed using a dead language, unless all the documentation will be in Latin.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
if you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
|
|
|
|
|
so many mixed up "Project Management Skill", "Communication Skill" and "Teamwork" which covers everything from correct grammar to arse kissing (imagine all the other buzz words invented by the HR and management)
Good coder = Good programming skill, PERIOD.
That's the kind of people I looked for two years ago when I hired developers for our group
dev
|
|
|
|
|
Quote: However, the point is that managers are the people you need to impress to get jobs and promotions and raises and pats on the back, so in this scenario, Gabriella comes out way ahead.
I don't see the issue here. Gabriella is clearly more suited for management, so she gets promoted into it. Rodrigo continues doing what he does best. Everyone ends up where their skills are most valuable.
|
|
|
|
|
In broad terms, functional claiming refers to writing patent claims that cover the broader function enabled by an invention rather than writing claims to the specific embodiment developed or contemplated by the inventor. In other words, instead of erecting a signpost that points others directly to the invention, functional claiming is akin to building a wide fence to surround the invention in an attempt to claim as much territory as possible. Tech patents, the Wright brothers and open source software.
|
|
|
|
|
The usually quiet world of mathematics is abuzz with a claim that one of the most important problems in number theory has been solved. Mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki of Kyoto University in Japan has released a 500-page proof of the abc conjecture, which proposes a relationship between whole numbers — a 'Diophantine' problem. 1 + 1 = two math stories in a single newsletter. How odd...
|
|
|
|
|
Aghh! He beat me to it.
I actually tried my hand on this.
|
|
|
|
|
Suppose you have a very large dataset - far too large to hold in memory - with duplicate entries. You want to know how many duplicate entries, but your data isn't sorted, and it's big enough that sorting and counting is impractical. How do you estimate how many unique entries the dataset contains? It's easy to see how this could be useful in many applications, such as query planning in a database: the best query plan can depend greatly on not just how many values there are in total, but also on how many unique values there are. By my rough estimate, I believe you'll like this article.
|
|
|
|
|
Terrence Dorsey wrote: By my rough estimate, I believe you'll like this article.
Yes, I did. Very interesting article
"Any sort of work in VB6 is bound to provide several WTF moments." - Christian Graus
|
|
|
|
|
The issue was naming. My partner wanted to name an abstraction after it's implementation. It's natural. You're in the middle of implementing binary search, so you call the function binarySearch. This is where the ummm... stimulating conversation started. Take a step back, I said. Think about this from the perspective of the caller, I said. "Why?" he said. Once again, what looks like a technical problem--function naming--turns out to be deeply, personally human.
|
|
|
|
|
If your corporate policy prohibits surfing facebook, you won't be able to view Kents article.
|
|
|
|
|
The very first text-based adventure game, titled “Colossal Cave Adventure” was written and developed by William Crowther in 1976. Crowther went through an awful divorce and needed some distraction. He also wanted to keep the connection to his two children up and running. Like any cool programmer/father would do, he created a game for them — “Colossal Cave Adventure”. Originally written in Fortran and developed for the PDP-10 computer family, the game became a classic on several different systems. During the ’80s, it was translated into many different IF programming languages, including the most important one in IF history: ZIL, short for Z-Machine Interpreter Language. Text adventures are alive a kicking. Play one today... or write your own!
|
|
|
|
|
Terrence Dorsey wrote: or write your own! Excellent idea - see here[^].
/ravi
|
|
|
|
|
Apple is busy preparing for a much-hyped announcement on September 12. You’ve probably already heard about this announcement, and how it’s likely to be the big reveal of the new iPhone 5. In fact, at this point, you’ve probably already seen dozens of images of the convention center being decorated in anticipation of the event. While the next few weeks are sure to be full of iPhone-related news, there’s plenty more happening in mobile right now (with recent announcements from Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, and Amazon). If you’re curious as to how these competitor handsets stack up against the Apple heavyweight, then just read below to take a gander at all the features the crowd favorite from Cupertino currently lacks. What do you think of the iPhone 5?
|
|
|
|
|
With his group, UGNazi, Cosmo took part in some of the most notorious hacks of the year. Throughout the winter and spring, they DDoS’ed all manner of government and financial sites, including NASDAQ, ca.gov, and CIA.gov, which they took down for a matter of hours in April. They bypassed Google two step, hijacked 4chan’s DNS and redirected it to their own Twitter feed, and repeatedly posted Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s address and Social Security number online. While Cosmo may be a god, Derek is just a kid. A high school dropout. A liar, fraud, vandal and thief.
|
|
|
|
|
More than one in eight internet users in the UK, US, and France—and nearly one in four American teens—uses a game console to get online, according to studies from 2010 and 2011.... Add in a vast array of handheld consoles with browsers—like Sony’s PSPs and Nintendo’s DS line—and we have 15 years of internet-enabled gaming devices of all sizes and shapes. Yet to date, we’ve talked about game console browsers very little. It’s time we change this. I used to be a web developer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.
|
|
|
|
|
Terrence Dorsey wrote: then I took an arrow in the knee
I used that in a TFS checkin yesterday.
|
|
|
|
|
CodeProject (the Lounge at least) freezes on the Wii browser, but that may be because the Wii browser is based on Opera. The 3DS can't even log in to the site due to some kind of cookie error.
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
Stephen Hawking
|
|
|
|
|
There's an idea called "Turing completeness", which is used to indicate that a system has a particular degree of complexity. Any Turing-complete system is theoretically able to emulate any other. One way to show that a system is Turing complete is to make a "Turing machine" in it. (I'm grateful to Joe Fitzsimmons for the idea to approach the question this way.) This isn't the most common way of demonstrating Turing completeness, but it is one of the more understandable. In the discussion on this site I assemble a Universal Turing Machine from Magic: the Gathering cards. We always knew Magic: the Gathering was a complex game. But now it's proven: you could assemble a computer out of Magic cards.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Good for them. Taking credit for one's mistakes is the first step in learning from them.
|
|
|
|