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Wow that's an excellent blog, and seriously one of the best ones I've read recently. Expertly combining facts into a readable and engaging format is never an easy task, but this manages it effortlessly.
Your niece has a gift. Maybe they could look into writing for New Scientist or something. Discussing scientific ideas and making them enjoyable is truly a gift. I also like the nice clean layout.
Superb 
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
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I posted it because this was exactly the reaction I expected. Even though I'm not a neuroscientist, she explained things in a way that a thicky like me could understand.
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: I am inordinately proud of her.
and rightly so!
This is truly, an amazing bit of work on her part. Word of mouth advertising, here we come.
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Preface: I'm self-employed, developing and selling one single app. Without open source components that allow me to take a short route for certain tasks I wouldn't get anywhere. So I'm deeply thankful for anybody devoting their time to open source (and publishing it under a license that allows commercial use..).
One particular open source project that I benefitted a lot from is the C# protocol buffers port from Marc Gravell. From his blog I learned about the "new kid in serializer's town": "Cap'n Proto"[^]. Have a look at it if you're remotely interested in serializing stuff - it sounds absolutely amazing!
Marc Gravell started a C# port but as he's already maintaining A LOT of open source projects besides his actual work he's calling for help.[^]
Maybe you're in a company that has an interest in a C# port of Cap'n Proto and would be willing to devote some capacity to it. Or maybe you know someone who knows someone. Who knows? I thought if I can't contribute to the project myself, at least I can help spreading the word.
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Hi Manchanx, "Good on you" for taking the high-road of developing your own software !
Just in case you've missed them, CodeProject has two excellent major-league serialize/de-serialize projects for .NET C#:
1. Mehdi Gholam's fastJSON, and fastJSONBinary projects: [^], [^]. Mehdi has been developing and supporting these projects since 2011 with many, frequent, updates. imho, this project is one of the "crown jewels" of CodeProject.
2. The newer arrival (since September, 2014) by Christophe Bertrand, "Universal Serializer" [^]. imho, this project will become one of the "crown jewels."
My initial experiments with "Universal" suggest it is extremely powerful: I've been able to serialize a complete Windows Form with complex 3rd. party Controls on it, and de-serialize it back into existence with a few lines of code, and the file-size of the serialization was quite small !
Of course, I do appreciate, and respect, the work of the prolific Marc Gravell, and his collaboration with Guru's Guru Jon Skeet on Proto-Buf.
cheers, Bill
«I'm asked why doesn't C# implement feature X all the time. The answer's always the same: because no one ever designed, specified, implemented, tested, documented, shipped that feature. All six of those things are necessary to make a feature happen. They all cost huge amounts of time, effort and money.» Eric Lippert, Microsoft, 2009
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Quote: Hi Manchanx, "Good on you" for taking the high-road of developing your own software !
Hi Bill, thank you! Do you originate from Australia? I like that phrase 
Actually I found both of those articles recently but didn't get around to comparing them to protobuf in my environment yet. But I have to agree with you, those articles do look very good.
Have you had a look at Cap'n Proto? It's a completely different approach. It will (as far as I have understood it so far) not be able to serialize BCL-Classes but when having to serialize custom DTO's/POCOs it will outclass any other serializer.
Cheers, Sebastian
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I read the article link below and it makes me wonder why people kept on insisting that IT hard skills it less relevant to IT career. People with soft skills working in IT department is not IT career. Soft skills are management and leadership trades which are applicable to IT department as well as anything else. Management can't carry out the hard technical tasks that IT skills people can and they will paid dearly to get it. In this world of constantly changing technology especially IT skills, very few are half-good at both soft and hard skills. To be very good at something, we have to devote all of our resources(time and money) to acquire and stay current with that skills.
http://www.cio.com/article/2878675/careers-staffing/why-soft-skills-are-key-to-a-successful-it-career.html[^]
Companies should stop looking for people with both skills because they are only going to get half-good skills people.
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Leng Vang wrote: Companies should stop looking for people with both skills because they are only going to get half-good skills people.
Some people naturally have the 'soft' skills or leadership qualities regardless of any other skill sets they may have and these are very often (in my experience of only about 25 years in IT) complimentary whereas there are many more very good developers who will never be able to lead and will always make poor managers.
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Karel Čapek wrote: developers who will never be able to lead and will always make poor managers
Yup, that's me, I keep telling them I cannot do a managers job, it took an offer to quit before they understood!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Leng Vang wrote: Management can't carry out the hard technical tasks that IT skills people can
Bit of an overgeneralisation that. I can think of at least a dozen managers who I know who have excellent technical skills, and are good at management.
Leng Vang wrote: Companies should stop looking for people with both skills because they are only going to get half-good skills people
Complete and utter horse doo-doo. If they can find them, then great. I'd hate to have such a narrow minded bigoted view of the IT profession.
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: Complete and utter horse doo-doo
That's not something someone with good soft skills would say! 
I agree with you whole-heartedly though.
My blog[ ^]
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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Actually that does show soft skills. You should see what I would have said if I didn't have them. 
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Does it involve more excrements?
My blog[ ^]
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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Much more. Elephant loads.
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Leng Vang wrote: Companies should stop looking for people with both skills because they are only going to get half-good skills people.
I would rather work with a person with great soft-skills and mediocre hard-skills than the other way around. I've worked with people with sh*tty communication, team, and conflict resolution skills, and it sucks -- it's aggravating, time wasting, and, in my opinion, is the primary reason I've ended up rewriting someone else's code, because they wouldn't listen and/or follow instructions. A person with good soft-skills is a lot more capable of learning and taking on new challenges. As Pete said, if you can find both in one person, that's great, but like I said, I want a good communicator first.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: A person with good soft-skills is a lot more capable of learning and taking on new challenges.
I agreed with you up to that point, but that is eminently untrue.
The ability to play nice with the other kids has nothing to do with one's intelligence or eagerness to learn.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Agreed! 
Your time will come, if you let it be right.
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Mark_Wallace wrote: The ability to play nice with the other kids has nothing to do with one's intelligence or eagerness to learn.
Good point, though, using communication skills in a manipulative way (which is what I call "playing nice") isn't really what I meant. I guess the concept of what a good communicator is needs to be better defined.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: I would rather work with a person with great soft-skills and mediocre hard-skills than the other way around
And me the other way round. As a manager, I buy technical competence. I have no willing to get some nice guy who cannot code in my team. I have currently people who are very rough in their commnunication, but they get things done, and this is what I want from them, not being communicative and nice to each-other.
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Rage wrote: I have no willing to get some nice guy who cannot code in my team.
You've just nailed the difference between German and British industries - we could do with a bit more thinking like that in the UK 
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Rage wrote: I have no willing to get some nice guy who cannot code in my team.
Of course, but isn't the team more efficient if it also is capable of communicating well? On the other hand, if all you need is the equivalent of a skilled laborer, then yes, I can see that communication is not really a requirement.
Marc
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Soft skills are a pro in any profession! Some people have them, others don't. I guess they can be trained...
I know how important they are because I didn't have them. I had some nice ideas about my companies' products and code. To bad I told my managers in a way that they didn't WANT to listen to me (basically what I told them is that everything they had was bad and I had the solution to all the problems they didn't have). Later I learned to word it a bit different, more along the lines of "what we have now has some great potential, but what if we changed this a bit and did that too?" I found that management was willing to listen and management found that I did actually have some good ideas, but that my communication skills were a bit lacking. And once I got me some soft skills I got me some promotions because now I had good ideas AND I could communicate them to management and the team
Leng Vang wrote: Companies should stop looking for people with both skills because they are only going to get half-good skills people.
I completely disagree with you on that one. I know some people who have great technical knowledge and soft skills! And I know these people are hard to come by so they're worth something!
My blog[ ^]
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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How About NO SKILLS?
Haha, I worked with a guy who was a jerk (no softskills) _and_ had no hard skills. His code was utter trash and then he'd defend it. Then he'd go to managment behind people's backs and undermine them.
Okay, how bad was his code? He didn't even know how to use a function. Not kidding. He had a bug in a for loop once and it was repeated over 13,000 lines of code about 50 times. Same for loop.
Everyone wanted to fire him but no one ever did.
They just kept passing him along to other divisions within the large corp.
Ineptness Has Its Place.
He was successful, if you consider that he got paid by a company for many years.
I hope this made you laugh, because it was painful at the time.
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I disagree  ... that guy definitely had some soft skills to manage to keep his job!
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Quote: Soft skills are management and leadership trades
I completely disagree. Soft skills are part and parcel of any job - useful for getting information out of people (definitely IT related), useful for influencing how you want to do things (definitely IT related), useful for finding out new things (definitely IT related) etc etc etc. We are all managers (of ourselves). We are all leaders, no matter how "insignificant" our role.
To be honest, in my personal experience, "management" and "leadership" in many places would benefit from learning the true power of "soft" skills and how they could benefit their teams. I once worked with someone who was technically inept ... but they kept "the world" off our backs with enough technical jargon while letting us get on with our jobs (and authorising the training budget  ) ... in other words, they took one for the team. He also kept up enough with changing technology terms to make it convincing.
I guess it all comes down to the definition of an "IT Career" - I've lost count of the times a user has asked me to fix their broken home PC/Laptop or "how do I change my screen resolution" or some such. Doing that stuff is not my "IT Career" but it is for other people - and when I call a helpline (yet another "IT Career") I appreciate the people who have the "soft skills" - not sure what they do to keep "current" at it though.
Have a nice day!
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