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There is certainly a lack of evidence-based methodology around what we do, and I attribute this largely to the fact that it’s really, really hard to gather and interpret the evidence. "She blinded me with science" (but not code)
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If IT had it's Archibald Cochrane[^] we'd be a long way further down the road of answering these "difficult" questions the way that other sciences do - using statistical meta-analysis of multiple studies to reach our conclusions and to factor out variables we aren't testing for (such as programming language in the author's example)
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I'd have to say that programmers practice "computer science" the same way that computer scientists practice "programming."
While, of course, "practice never makes perfect," programmers and computer scientists may not understand each other when they use the words "practice," or, "perfect."
In many cases, this mis-understanding is deliberate.
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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When your product has millions of users, any change that you make is guaranteed to impact a significant number of people. So, when you decide the time has come to remove a traditional feature, you are sure to encounter some resistance. Fondue Tasting Protocol?
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Holy mother of FUD.
Someone suggests that Chrome consider moving FTP support from a core browser feature to something that's only present if the user opts to install it. It gets zero positive support there. Over a year later someone metoo's it to bugzilla, to an equally negative response. Some mouth-breathing (when the hob on his shoulder whispers into his ear to remind him to do so) so called "journalist", concludes that it's something that will be done and writes a hysterical piece that hyperventilates on the fact that it's being tracked as a "bug" (because bugzilla doesn't make formal differentiation between bugs, suggestions, feature additions, etc) and then slaps [confirmed] in a way that implies that he got confirmation that Mozilla intends to remove the feature, not that Mozilla just confirmed that someone made the suggestion that it should be remove.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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To be fair, in this case Mozilla have confirmed they are looking at this due to the insecure nature of FTP. (See the update at the end of the article).
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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In celebrating Java's 20 years, former Sun CEO McNealy laments James Gosling's departure from Oracle. Braces and semi-colons?
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Today Mozilla is launching an award program specifically focused on supporting open source and free software. Our initial allocation for this program is $1,000,000. We are inviting people already deeply connected to Mozilla to participate in our first set of awards.
OSS-some, get it? awesome? 
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Now I am puzzled, whether to make a living by a commercial software release or an open source software release. 
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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In 20+ years of professional coding, I’ve never seen someone go from novice to full-fledged programmer in a matter of weeks, yet that seems to be what coding academies are promising, alongside instant employment, a salary big enough to afford a Tesla and the ability to change lives. Everyone knows the best way to learn programming is in 21 Days
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Everyone knows the best way to learn programming is in 21 Days
Drawback is it's only for dummies. 
Cheers!
"I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability!"
Ron White, Comedian
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Only for dummies?
Hey, that covers 98% of the programmers I have met! Those who are asking, "Please send codez! Urgent!" 
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I've been coding for way longer than that and I'm still learning. 
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There's no shame in being a slooooooow learner
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I just started learning to code yesterday but I wrote an entire operating system before that.
It was Windows 10.
No learning needed...oh wait, I did learn to touch-type.
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Everyone knows the best way to learn programming is in 21 Days
I actually used those books and I learnt to program. As two very distinct activities.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." -- Mike Hankey
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well, yeah, you can learn C# in 24 hours.
I mean it's one of them modern easy languages right?
I guess you could learn Python in 12 minutes and VisualBasic in 7. Har har har. I just wrote a macro so i'm a computer programmer, right?
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newton.saber wrote: I just wrote recorded a macro
Writing a macro makes to a ninja programmer.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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You are the Genius Programmer. 
I was taking the difficult path of "writing" a macro and here you come along as
Consulting Architect
and you solve it all by telling me,
"Hey, just record it."
Genius!!! 
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There's a guy at work that sent his kid to a 1 year program to learn Ruby on Rails and he expects the kid to make 100k per year afterwards. I said to my coworker that companies are looking for people that have a college degree and internships and can prove they follow through. By going to college, you learn to fail, you learn to work with people from many cultures, and you become educated in more than 1 programming language. These schools remind me of the ITT Tech and other non-accredited or barely accredited short-cut programs that promise one thing, but only seem to break the students heart, confidence, and credit.
I actually think these programs should be outlawed. Obama has promised students of some of the For Profit non-Brick and Mortar institutions to excuse their student loans and banning U.S. military personnel from using their G.I. money to blow on this garbage.
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I am a high school senior currently. I am a self taught developer (6 years and still learning) and currently do freelance web and mobile solution development. I do not plan to go to college. To me it seems like a waste of money. I do not wish to sit in a class and learn stuff I learned on my own years ago. I amy not be the best, I may not even be good, but I still don't think college will do me any good. I have worked in several languages and with many different people. While I don't agree with stuff like Code Academy (just look at their JavaScript tutorial), I don't think college is as important as people make it seem. Especially at the cost.
wow m8 gr8 b8 I r8 an 8/8. though it was a little l8 and it seems you h8 f8, it still has that tr8 that makes you acceler8.
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Hi Jim,
I definitely respect your point of view. I also realize that young people who have grown up with a computer their entire life can have great abilities, even stronger than well-polished veterans. I would like to add that life is a very long journey, a journey much longer than a 3 month project that is enough to live off of for a year.
Learning is the key to success. Just like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerburg have proven, you don’t need a college education to be successful in IT. College is just a path that very smart people put together to create successful graduates. College is more than just getting a degree and getting a job at a company with your own cubicle and computer, college is about becoming educated - educated about the world and showing you follow through with what you’ve started. In college, you get the opportunity to fall on your face because it is a learning experience. You also get to learn about a lot of different topics that will help guide you in different endeavors. It is also a great place to meet women. And lastly and extremely important is that is allows people from different backgrounds and cultures to learn about each other as eventually you'll be working together. For me, I grew up in a "white" section of town and college helped me get comfortable and sensitive to others. In the real world, you have to be able to respect and work with people from very different cultures, religions, and races. Saying the wrong thing can throw a lawsuit at your organization and yes companies are very sensitive to this.
I don’t use much I learned in college at my job. I learned .Net and related web technologies on my own. I learned the basics to a lot of stuff in undergrad. Grad school was better, it pretty much made me instant senior level. Life is long and programming will eventually be in lower demand than today, similar as assembly jobs are today. Just like I do when I do a deployment, I have a back out plan. I make a decent living, but I make as much or more outside of IT and I don’t think I would be able to do that without an education.
Regards,
Joe
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Well m8, you don't go to college to learn to code. At least, not if you study CS at a reasonable university. Maybe one or two classes. The rest will be maths and CS.
So maybe you're already familiar with a lot of discrete mathematics, complexity classes, nontrivial algorithms and datastructures, modular arithmetic, DFA's/NFA's/etc, digital signal processing, linear algebra, linear programming, concurrency theory, and whatever else might be in a CS curriculum. Probably some but not most though. Most things you'd learn are things you don't randomly walk into when making apps and websites.
But it may still be a waste of money at US-levels of tuition because that's pretty crazy.
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