ludflu

> the amount of socially necessary labor decreases with each passing year.

Isn't this Lump of Labor fallacy? There is not a fixed amount of work available because human desire is limitless. (and therefore so is human suffering, but that's a different discussion!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

as someone who works for TR, this makes me sad.

I hear what you're saying, and I basically agree. However, I still see some shops building new product with Jakarta Struts, hand coded javascript, and no continuous integration. They spend way too much time doing things that could be automated, which would allow them to spend more time on quality, or more features. (Say, if you want to use a java webstack, have you heard of spring & jquery, and maybe you should try hudson for your builds?) So, its also important to keep abreast of whats happening in the field, so long as you don't fetishize the newest/latest thing.

relevant visualization of where research happens: http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.8087.1355853889!/image/c...

> The UK used to have something similar;

British imperialism didn't work well for anyone. I certainly hope America abandons its imperial pretensions. As an American, it doesn't make me proud.

> FBI/CIA agents doing police-work without reporting to local authorities

That's not "police work"! That's criminal activity. But I can tell I'm preaching to the choir.

That's what I was thinking. Any direct answer to that question would delight the swarms of injunction-happy Apple lawyers.

If you're under age 70, and you wear a bow tie, you might be Tucker Carlson.

also, interesting he doesn't have anything to say about the incumbent. http://www.philadelphiacontroller.org/biography-of-city-cont...

Is there a term limit or something? They're both dems.

as a Philadelphian, this is great.

I'm skeptical. The article didn't include a specific use case. I'm not sure exactly what their customers are doing with it.

over a long enough time horizon, quantity == quality

yup, came here to say this and also - wonder - why haven't they done this already?

I'm a strong proponent of TDD. In my experience its more productive, and results in better software. But....

I've been in this position before: We have a large existing codebase with no unit tests to speak of, and the business is not willing to fund efforts to refactor or add unit tests. It is very hard to add unit tests after the fact. Not impossible, but its alot of work, and business folks really don't care.

yes. sometimes i feel as if i need special restraints built into my desk chair to properly "appreciate" the java code i am required to read and debug.

"it" meaning the conclusion about the exponential increase in the cost of fixing bugs over time.

He didn't say it was false. He did say it was unsupported.

Much respect for the frankness and forthrightness with which he addressed this. I've always taken the exponential increase in the cost of bug fixes with time for granted. I won't do so in the future. We need more empirical studies of software development!

except that they had to write unit tests - whereas the compiler/type system automatically checked the type safety of the code this guy wrote.

(Not that writing unit tests for haskell code is a bad idea - QuickCheck is WAY more powerful than junits, for example)

> Cost is orthogonal to educational quality.

I've heard this (anecodotal) argument alot. Is there any empirical backing for it, and within what parameters does it hold true? My mother taught at a very expensive private school, which enabled me to switch from a lousy public school . The difference in the quality of teaching was dramatic. Private school teachers don't get paid alot more than public school teachers, and often less, although they are compensated with fringe benefits like I enjoyed, and prestige. In any case, elite private schools certainly get better results, which is why rich people pay alot of money to send their children to elite private schools. (Lots of this is attributable to the selection process, which is part of what parents are paying for.)

In contrast, public inner city schools can't choose their student population, and lack basic things like, books, paper, and air conditioning in the middle of the summer. I'm sure that proper and equitable funding of public education wouldn't solve all the problems in US public schools, but starving them of much needed resources certainly exacerbates the problems they do have.

Although vanishingly unlikely, I don't think this is a bad question. You'd have to be big enough to somehow threaten Oracle. Not many companies fit that bill.

i'm an atheist myself, but gratified to see this guys beliefs being respected. its one thing i hate about reddit.

no, it would be constructive if he offered ways to improve the test. he didn't.

interesting thanks. so freedom of speech and lots of other stuff has been incorporated, but not everything in the constitution applies to states automatically

its my understanding that due to the supremacy clause, federal (constitutional) law trumps state laws. in some cases, state laws can grant addiitional rights, but they can't abridge the rights granted by the constitution.

i liked this comment: how much does he regret giving tmobile 6 billion dollars for a failed merger attempt?

Here's my python version, with some commentary. http://datadigger.tumblr.com/post/9709584448/monty-hall

As someone who has written apps for blackberry devices: they brought it on themselves.

Their platform is a nightmare to code for, and they are unwilling or unable to fix it.

i hope they dont kill TestFlight

good article. I've found myself in various of these roles in different jobs. But it really is hard to do them all in the same project.