hmmm, yeah I have noticed weird behavior a few times, however I run a Java Spring app on there and most of the time it works, its pretty much me that is using it though, I would think that Ruby does use more memory than Java though.
Except there is no finish line. I currently work on an application that is 10 years old, where's the finish line? Its not done in PHP, anyways it has parts that were done very sloppily and "against the grain" and the organization is still paying for it with a higher cost of maintenance.
Would GitHub be a place to look for this? Not sure if they have search by location for users but if they do it could be a good way to find other dev's in your area
I agree, I love EC2 personally, their mini server plan(or whatever its called) is great for keeping a production version of a project running while its still in an initial phase (very low user base) and then you can scale easily without having to learn anything new as you can run basically things the same as you do locally (I run Ubuntu locally and mainly develop for Tomcat so it makes it really easy to keep things the same on there). I looked at Heroku but as soon as I realized it would be rather expensive just to get regular datbase access (so I could run straight SQL if I needed to, etc) it was out.
This is all too true. I have seen exactly this go on where there is a young(ish) PM and at least one developer who is much older. The older dev really should be the one leading the project but they don't have any interest in managing as they prefer to just be a developer. The older dev has been around the block a few times and sees the shortcomings of a project and points this out but, just as you say, they are cast aside only to be proven right.
From what this sounds like, its not their age its their skillset, they have a skillset that has become more and more obsolete and haven't adapted. At my current job there are guys well over 35 who used to work in jobs like what they are describing in the article (semiconducator companies, etc) but they have since adapted and developed new skills relating to web programming, I don't think the way they are portraying this is entirely accurate.
Just to clarify, Heroku and App Engine are essentially just a new breed of hosts, these applications aren't exactly created with Heroku or App Engine, they are using other frameworks that can be used on any host (or at least a lot of other hosts), they are being deployed and hosted there. Tumblr and Wordpress are primarily blogging engines so unless you're just starting a blog they probably won't get you far. What I would suggest looking into are web application frameworks, for example a lot of people who use Heroku are using Ruby on Rails, you don't need to know anything about Heroku to use Ruby on Rails, instead you can run everything locally while developing and learning and only later do you need to worry about pushing up to a host
I agree it can be a positive. Actually, before I really even knew much programming I built an online paintball ecommerce store (using a CMS system that I just customized with my HTML knowledge, etc), I had some business experience that I used to gain vendor accounts with companies, etc and actually was able to move tens of thousands of dollars of products through the site over a few months (exploiting a discontinued item I was able to buy in large quantities that people still wanted) but then it fizzled out, I didn't have the technical knowledge to build the site into my vision but it left me hungry and wanting to learn more, I can fairly confidently say it directly lead to my becoming a professional programmer as I became interested in learning how to build what I had wanted to build originally, I think there's always a positive to take away from things like this.
Figure out a way to buy her out or whatever needs to be done to get her out of the picture, how can someone take a year off as a startup founder? That doesn't make sense.
Yes, they are software companies where its their core product.. basically IMO they had some horrible, broken processes but at least they did rely on engineering for estimates of time.
"Do you also get angry when oil companies hire lobbyists to wine-and-dine politicians until they give favorable exploration rights on federal lands to those companies? "
Yes, this does anger me, what is your point? I think a lot of people are angered by this, however this issue being discussed here is a bit "closer to home" in that we are probably more empowered to do something this issue than that of corruption in political lobbying.
At that level its a bit more of a personal issue but I think it would be wrong to have an agreement in place, sure you can ask and its likely that you would not poach each other's workers because it would damage your own relationship, however to keep this going as your company scales would definitely be wrong. You don't have to poach anyone's employees, but to have formal agreements in place not to do so is clearly collusion. This would also include summarily rejecting applications because they currently work for the other guy's startup.
You deserve to be sued if you try to make agreements like this. Its part of the game, if you can't take it then get out, you don't own people and a big part of why people can make so much money and do well here is because of a system like this, if another company has a need and they can pay more then they get the person, plain and simple. There is no right to entrepreneurship.
If you can, get him to say that in writing (email will do), find a good lawyer and sue him, the more scum that do this that are exposed (at any level) the better off employees are in this industry as a whole.
I couldn't agree more.. software developers in general (and presumably those in other related fields) tend to mostly be autodidacts. Sure, you learn from other employees and from what the company has in place already but usually they are adding value the entire time, its not as if they sit you down for hours every week and put you in a classroom where there is no pressure other than "learn something new". Thats what school is for and anyone who is working in an engineering field is most likely spending time on their own working on projects, etc that improve their skills.
Yes, exactly, one issue that I've seen, at least in the Java world, is the original web application they have is so out of date and obsolete (but its still making money) that you literally have to bend over backwards to not mess things up which means severe restrictions on using new libraries, etc and then this leads to having to do stupid things like forcing people to write their own CSV parser because its too much hassle to put in a library for it and make sure it doesn't break anything.
I'm not sure about ES3, its just my own experience but I've worked for some companies with rather broken processes and they would still involve the engineering team in giving estimates, sure there is pressure to give a lower estimate but I don't see how a company could function by having non-engineering people give firm estimates
Yes, it should be, but in reality the UI usually seems to see the least attention for optimization of this sort, for one, because I think it tends to have people working on it who aren't necessarily true programmers, they are more of designers who do some JavaScripting, and also the company is much more concerned with not wasting the memory on their own servers, they figure that if its just taking up load on a client machine its not as important. Its a bad approach and I will often refuse to use a site if it has bad client side performance / seems like a memory hog but thats just the way things are now
I don't know what kind of work you are doing but $25 is low even if it was a full-time gig, for doing just small tasks its absurdly low, I think you're right to drop them, that they would even expect you to be available for tasks less than 1 hour and then to nickel and dime you on that is ridiculous, you only get that kind of privilege when you're employing someone full time.
Well, its not the "best" in terms of academics but I have found Thomas Edison State College to be the best in terms of catering to transfer students who are in similar situations to you as they are rather liberal in accepting transfer credits and actually applying them towards a degree and they also allow testing out of classes and do provide some sort of credit for work experience. I am in a somewhat similar situation, although haven't been working nearly as long, but I basically have a whole pile of credits from a bunch of different colleges and have recently enrolled her to finish my degree online. Its a state college that caters to students nationally and has reasonable tuition rates. I've just enrolled now and start my classses soon.
As far as I know, by definition (coming from someone with a predominately Java background) concurrency requires multi-core processors, or, for example, a distributed application with at least 2 nodes that communicate with the same central server / "hub" (which would still require a multi-core processor, as far as I know, on the server). The central tenet mentioned with concurrency is often that of "race conditions" where it cannot be predicted which thread or node will access a resource first. If a task isn't executed in parallel, such as it has to wait for the other to finish before it starts / proceeds, I don't see how it could cause a race condition. Admittedly though, I don't have deep knowledge of how high level code translates to actual CPU instructions so it could be possible, or even likely, that if the processor is switching between tasks in such a way that each line of code, so to speak, that is run is from a different method that concurrency issues would occur even on a single-core processor. A language like Java has robust and mature aspects of the language to deal with this so I would be wary of using something like node.Js if this wasn't well documented. Concurrency issues are nasty and I have seen firsthand the mayhem they can cause in legacy applications I've worked on.
Honestly, the question I'm more interested in is how they hide their tracks. From my knowledge, this can be done with a lot of "geographical" effort by going to public locations that are random and far enough from a person's normal routine, and using hardware that can't be traced to you but I wonder if they actually do this or if they normally do their activities from the comfort of their home.
Awesome, yeah, actually I'm planning to move to the SF Bay Area soon, I'm from northern California originally and want to get back there, I think living further out and using BART to get into SF would be fine as it would give me some time to work on things, or even just to use my tablet and read up on things, do research, etc. Just being able to relax and not have to watch the road for the hour commute would be a lot better IMO.
I've thought about doing something like this but I've realized I just can't until I figure out a better commuting situation, either having a very short commute or using public transportation. Sitting in traffic for almost an hour on the way to work is rather draining to where if I'm going to do that I can't seem to bring myself to get up any earlier than I have to as I'd rather use the time spent driving to wake up so its not completely wasted
Well, northern California is a large area, I've checked the area where I grew up (its along I-80, about 70 miles from SF but it would be an awful commute) and its only about 10-20% more to rent a house there than where I am now, but you're right, as far as I can tell, about the Bay Area proper doubling housing costs... and yeah, lol I've been through Richmond enough and know its not somewhere I'd feel comfortable living
The issue is that a 1BR or studio doesn't fit my lifestyle. Where I live now, out of state, I have a 3 bedroom house, a girlfriend and a bunch of pets so living in an apartment is most likely not going to work which is why I'm looking at other options, I think maybe I if I live within 30 min of a BART station that could work. I'm willing to compromise as much as I can, such as renting a townhouse, etc but it seems landlords there are very against pets so its hard to find anything but a house that allows dogs.
I started to write a comment of my own then saw this one. You are spot on with this. What needs to happen is exactly what you are saying. However, I think humans in general tend to like to see the same actors in movies time and time again so finding a way to decentralize production but still keeping popular actors involved can be a bit of a challenge. From what I understand, the actors unions are probably currently limiting some talented people from becoming well known actors so balancing this out could help as well, however I don't think we can get away anytime soon from the appeal that certain people have to audiences, however the rest of it is all interchangeable, in my opinion, writing and special effects work can be done anywhere as can the actual filming of the movies.