SheepSlapper

He used the same title and wrote on the same topic. That's where the similarities end. Shanley says:

* Get company funds diverted to the cause

* Start a feminist bookclub for men

* Get better management training in your company

* Get women hired

* Don’t speak at events or on panels where women speakers aren’t represented

* Encourage diversity at conferences you go to

Jeff says:

* Abide by the Hacker School Rules

* Really listen

* If you see bad behavior from other men, speak up

* Don't attempt romantic relationships at work

* No drinking at work events

The only place they overlap in their respective messages is each of them saying "be the change you want to see in the world" in their own way. So I still don't get the plagiarism claims, even with the warped definition.

As for Atwood saying that he didn't link to her piece because it was too negative: There are two very different tones to take when writing about this (or most any) topic. Jeff, in his piece, acknowledges the issue and maintains a pretty even keel. Yes, it's a problem, here's how I think we can fix it. On the other side, Shanley is writing in a very aggressive tone towards men. It feels less like she's trying to affect social change, and more like she's shouting at passing men from the top of a soapbox.

Truth is, if I were writing a piece that was taking a subtle jab at Shanley's writing, I wouldn't link to her either. If I felt like she was trying to contribute seriously to the issue, then I would in a heartbeat, but that's not how her piece reads.

Edit regarding your edit: I agree with some of the issues the author had about Atwood's take on things, though I think claiming that Jeff not linking to Shanley is yet another way men dismiss or marginalize is grasping at straws. Imaginary straws.

For the record, I don't like either piece (cards on the table, I don't really care for Sara's either). Jeff thinks we shouldn't drink at work functions, because men + women + booze = sexism or something, and Shanley wants us to reverse the (perceived) discrimination with some sort of affirmative action for ladies.

I was just pointing out that the two pieces have the same topic and the same 4 word title (because Jeff was being snarky. If that's a crime, lock me up now). Otherwise, they couldn't be more different. Shouting "plagiarism" in this case seems pretty disingenuous, and feels like people are manufacturing outrage just for outrage's sake. Being that this is the internet, I can't fathom why I expected anything different...

Which I find humorous, because I just finished reading both, and the only thing the two articles share are their titles. Shanley's article is written with an actively aggressive tone towards men, while Jeff's seems much more reasoned and thought out. And both articles answer the question "what can men do" differently. So why the hullabaloo?

This article is a long winded way of saying either:

a) Steal a badge b) Social engineer your way into the event, or c) Social engineer a free badge

Totally. There hasn't been an incentive for them to upgrade, so they haven't. As more people get into the space and do cool things on top of POS systems that play nice with developers, they might be more inclined to switch/upgrade so they can have the same cool features as everyone else.

The industry is definitely moving in that direction, but POS companies are behemoths that haven't had to innovate in the past 20 years, so it'll be slow and painful.

Probably the biggest problem is that documentation doesn't exist, is wrong, or is the crappy "GetItems returns Items" variety.

POS companies will often charge you a large sum of money in order to work with their systems. I think we paid Micros $10k to be able to integrate with their junk, and we had to fly to Maryland and sit in their offices for 2 days while they ran around being useless.

Workflows can be vastly different. If you're trying to write an IPOS interface that abstracts all that pain away for the client that's interacting w/ the system, it can lead to weird situations. Some POS systems will let you open a check w/ nothing on it (Aloha) but some won't (Micros). And on Aloha, if a server logs in and looks at that empty check before you put something on it, it'll automatically close. There are a ton of edge cases that you have to test, and the way two POS systems work in similar conditions are never the same.

Getting menu data out of a POS is a nightmare, as there's usually a ton of unused junk that you don't need. Often there are many duplicates, so the Onion topping you add to a taco is different from the Onion topping you add to nachos, and both are different from the Onion topping you'd put on a burrito. Despite the fact that it's literally the same onion being used. Sometimes, menu items that are on sale for happy hour or something aren't different items, but they get modified with "happy hour". You don't want your users seeing that junk, so you have to do a bunch of magic behind the scenes to submit the normal item AND the happy hour mod when the user orders it.

I could go on, there's a LOT of this weirdness when working with POS systems and most of the time you don't know what it'll be until you've sat there banging your head against your desk because when you order a Sandwich + fries it works, but a Sandwich + garlic fries will only add the fries to the cart. Feels good when you're finally done with the integration, but it's hell getting there.

Oh, and a lot of the time there is no real API, you're changing database files or doing some sort of dark voodoo magic to get the thing to work. Sometimes you get lucky and there's a SOAP service or some COM calls you can make that'll play nice with the POS, but that's hardly ever the case.

I couldn't agree more. A few years back I wrote integrations for various Micros/Aloha POS systems, and it was painful. The industry as a whole seems to be stuck in the 90's.

I've still got some of their Spooning[0] shirts from an April 1st of yesteryear. Good stuff.

[0] https://bitbucket.org/spooning/

I kept waiting for him to get on the apps and try to book the same places himself, and when it didn't happen I was kind of disappointed. It's like you say, if he got approved then there was definitely some racism at play. If not, then it was just bad timing. But since he didn't try it, we can only speculate.

You hit the nail on the head. It's the programmer's responsibility to stay relevant, not some company's. But the best companies will take an active role in ensuring their programmers stay up to date (since it's in the company's best interest, too).

Any time you distinguish a group based on gender by definition it's sexist, plain and simple. Is that bad? Arguably not (then again, some people would say it's an issue).

Once you start to give one group preferential treatment based on their gender, that's sexism. There's a difference between the -ist and the -ism, but it's an important one :)

They can point at a house and say "I built that" even if someone else did, and how are you going to know the difference? The same way as you verify that someone in software did the work they said: put in the due diligence. That part can't really be avoided.

Is anyone else tired of being assigned homework when applying for jobs? In both this and the author's previous article on hiring, he mentions giving people tasks to complete by a certain deadline as part of the hiring process. For someone that's just starting out as a programmer then maybe that's reasonable, but for those of us that've been in software for years, what's the point?

You wouldn't ask a carpenter to make you a closet before you decide if you want to hire them, you look at the other houses they've created (at least, you should. There's a lot of crappy carpenters out there, and it feels like I've worked with them all). You don't ask your mechanic to change your oil for free, and then MAYBE you'll let them fix your car. So why is this just the status quo for software developers now? I have a job and family, why the hell would I want to spend my free time jumping through hoops for you when you could easily look at all the work I've already done?

I dunno, just my $0.02. I've been asked to do a lot of dumb programming challenges before job interviews, and I'm over it. I'm a professional and my time is valuable, why would I want to waste it figuring out how many ways you can turn a string of numbers into math problems?

/rant. Whew.

I disagree that silence should be the default, I think that whatever the majority of people in the environment want should be the default, with the understanding that we should try to accommodate everyone. If I was the one developer out of 8 in my office that thrived on quiet, I wouldn't have punished the other 7 by mandating that silence should be the default[0].

If you're in a loud environment and need quiet, then communicate that to your boss. Ditto for <insert productivity issue here>. They've got a vested interest in you doing your best work, and will try to make it work the best they can for everyone. If they don't, then they're probably not worth wasting your skills on anyway (plenty of fish in the sea). But if you don't speak up, then you've no one to blame but yourself.

[0] Pertinent side note here, after about a year of working in the loud office, the owner mandated that we stop the distractions. No more TV, fewer breaks to mess around, etc. He thought it was affecting our work, and boy was he right (but not in the way he thought). The net result: Our productivity went down. Measurably. Strange world we live in, eh?

Anecdotal Devil's Advocate:

The most productive I've ever been in a job was when I shared an open office totaling around 500 square feet with 7 other devs. There was always something blasting on the TV in that office. There were always people discussing/arguing about one aspect of our software or another. Jenkins would blare a Lo Pan sound clip[0] on build success/failure. And yet, with all this, I put out the best work of my career (both in terms of speed and quality).

I'm not sure why, but it probably has something to do with the atmosphere that was less like a business and more like a place I'd like to go hang out during the days. It didn't feel like work, which was oddly conducive to getting things done. And if someone needed to concentrate and couldn't with the noise, they could toss headphones on and drown out the nonsense (which most of us did very, very rarely) or take a conference room.

Oh, and the private office I had a few years prior to this (incidentally about the same square footage as the 8 man office) had the opposite effect on me. Not great quality, no passion for the job, super quick burnout. For whatever that's worth.

So what I'm saying is: If you need silence, cool. Seek it out. Do whatever it takes to be the most productive you can[1]. But not everyone wants to live in a sound vacuum, and some people thrive in the environments that are the polar opposite of what you think is ideal. Some of us like collaborative spaces and occasional distractions they bring :)

[0] http://www.realmofdarkness.net/pc/sb/movies/lopan Our build failure was "Now this really pisses me off to no end!"

[1] How do I make things bold here? Because that's supposed to be bold. In <blink> tags. font-size: 3em.

I found that out the hard way. Six months ago I got a job in SF that paid me 50% more, and moved to the East Bay where I pay almost 3x the rent (for the same square footage, in a much crappier neighborhood). I could buy a nice house where I'm from (WA) for what I'm paying in rent now, and that stings a bit.

It's definitely been a fun experience (there're TONS of cool things to do here), but had I known 6 months ago what I know now... I'm not sure that I would have made the transition.

Seems like to do a good code review, the reviewer needs to know the scope of the code they're looking at, and where it fits in the big picture. Hell, maybe even the big picture too.

If you outsource code reviews, you lose that perspective and it comes down to "will it compile, and does it look vaguely correct?" which isn't super valuable.

That being said, if you can overcome that problem then the idea becomes a lot more enticing :)

I don't have an ATM card either, and it's not that bad. Yes, there's maybe a 5 minute wait to speak to a teller on occasion, but all it takes is a photo ID (and sometimes my bank issued credit card, depending on what I'm doing with the funds) to access my money. And I go to the bank to get cash maybe a few times a year, pull out a grand or two, and keep it in a safe at home until I need it (going every week or two would be lame).

You're right that fraud is going to happen, it's part of life. The difference is, when you use a credit card, your money hasn't gone anywhere. If it's a debit card, that money is no longer in your account until (if?) the fraud gets resolved. I know first hand how much of a pain it can be to lose thousands of dollars for a few weeks while things get sorted out, which is why I switched to credit cards. That, and the free money they pay me. Mmmm, delicious free money...

I switched to credit cards a few years back for the same reason. My debit card got compromised and about $4k was missing from my account right around the time I was supposed to pay tuition. It was a giant pain in the butt, but eventually the bank got it all sorted and the university let me pay a few days late.

With a credit card, that money isn't gone until I pay the bill, so disputing fraudulent charges is much easier. Also, cash back is nice.

Get a new bank? Only transfer money into the debit account when you're going to withdraw that amount right then? Or don't use cash if you can avoid it?

Yeah, there are a lot of assholes on the internet[1]. You can either choose to let it get to you, or you can recognize it for what it is and get on with your life.

[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

As someone who's addicted to both, I can't really tell if this revelation is good, bad, or otherwise.

I can't agree more. Legal isn't the same as moral, and conflating the two is pretty disingenuous.

My professional goal (hell, my life goal) is to work on things that make a positive difference in the world. Laws don't necessarily come into it (and sometimes are in direct opposition to this). I believe (or naively hope) that other people in my profession feel the same way, otherwise the future is going to get... interesting.

Maybe 2.7 or 3.1 of the ACM code?

2.7 Improve public understanding of computing and its consequences.

Computing professionals have a responsibility to share technical knowledge with the public by encouraging understanding of computing, including the impacts of computer systems and their limitations. This imperative implies an obligation to counter any false views related to computing.

3.1 Articulate social responsibilities of members of an organizational unit and encourage full acceptance of those responsibilities.

Because organizations of all kinds have impacts on the public, they must accept responsibilities to society. Organizational procedures and attitudes oriented toward quality and the welfare of society will reduce harm to members of the public, thereby serving public interest and fulfilling social responsibility. Therefore,organizational leaders must encourage full participation in meeting social responsibilities as well as quality performance.

Or number one on IEEE?

1. to accept responsibility in making decisions consistent with the safety, health, and welfare of the public, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment;

Given, what's "best for the public" is up for debate (at least according to the people doing the collecting).

Same here (2006-2011), and it was actually pretty fun to talk about the ethical issues that can arise in our profession(s).

IEEE Code of Ethics: http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html

ACM Code of Ethics: http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics

So, the standards exist but people choose to ignore them. Which, I guess since you're not forced to be a member of either professional society as a "computer person", isn't all that unreasonable. But personal ethics should win out in these situations without someone else having to tell you that it's wrong.

"en English professor"

Sorry buddy, gotta downvote you now. Based on that typo I can tell that this comment lacks quality and doesn't add to the discourse.

Good on em. I used to work for an E La Carte competitor that used iPads instead of Android devices, and it's a tough market right now.

There exists a lot of resistance from the waitstaff who see tabletop devices as job killers, and customers are pretty much divided down the middle (they either love em or hate em). It seems like dining was always going to trend towards something like this, it was just a matter of when. Restaurants are pretty old in their way of thinking, and it's quite the accomplishment to get 100k devices on tables.

A lot of people commenting seem to think that salary is the only form of compensation in a job, as well. I'd gladly trade a few thousand dollars a year to be excited to go to work, with people I enjoy, instead of working a corporate gig where I'm miserable and working on boring projects.

Yeah, that's how Reddit got off the ground. Worked out pretty well for them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeDzx4SUME