mtVessel

Pro tip: If you're going to pull out the "combined experience" cliche, anything less than 25 years just emphasizes how little experience that is.

I live 20 minutes outside of New York City. I put up with an extremely high cost of living for easy access to the incredible resources of a great city. In my new, "narrow" plan, I can only see doctors in my home county. Outside of ER visits, I cannot see a single doctor within the confines of NYC. I've never had to make such a choice before.

For routine stuff, my local doctor is fine. But when I broke my ankle, I didn't go my local hospital. I went to one of the foremost orthopedic hospitals in the world. That, in a nutshell, is why I live where I live. But I could not do that under my current insurance.

Would my outcome have been any different if I'd seen a local doctor, as opposed to a world-class doctor? We'll never know, but I can't stand not having the option.

This is why we can't have nice things.

"Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is." -Richard Guindon

What does "battery-operated" have to do with the razor blade model? Distracting.

Many people stay even after they realize they're underpaid, simply out of inertia. Companies knows this, and by getting you to accept a low-ball offer, they're just taking a calculated risk, and reaping the benefits in the interim, if not the long run.

A sufficiently large program in [any language] is not readable as a description of its own behavior. I think it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking this is not true for expressive languages like Ruby or Python, because there are precious few projects of sufficient complexity written in those languages.

If you think I'm wrong, please show me the Ruby equivalent of an os kernel or Photoshop, and I'll reevaluate my thinking.

More importantly, every program can be seen as, at some level, a description of its own behavior. But none contain a description of the system's intent.

That's what specs are for.

I agree with your analogies, but I think that there are at least a few intermediate levels between high-level process description and code that benefit from some sort of spec. Good specs fill the gaps between the zoning and the pavement.

The reason why the author has a hard time finding a specific diagnosis is because her "maladaptive daydreams" are a symptom, not a disease. Her real problem is an inability or unwillingness to engage with reality, which is a component of any number of personality disorders.

Really, this inclusion of ridiculously overspecified symptoms and diseases-du-jour in the DSM has got to stop. It makes a mockery of what little credibility psychology has left.

What is it that's holding your attention when you're "not paying attention"?

I haven't used IntelliJ, but "Set Next Statement" was what I missed most using Eclipse.

I know that's received wisdom in some parts, but is it actually true? Is it true for other engineering disciplines? Is it true for hardware design? If not, what makes software special?

I think it only seems true because of the amount of money people are willing to invest in software development, relative to other ventures.

Please feel free to regale us with tales of that experience!

Nonsense. Next you'll be telling me that attractive people make more money and get promoted more often.

Me, too. Thankfully, this hasn't affected my level of productivity.

But shitty policing does?

Yeah, the application of the term was a total stretch.

Agreed. Without that auxiliary verb, it was really hard to know the author was kidding about Buzz Lightyear getting a vasectomy in A Bug's Life.

*rote ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning

It's not just "business people". This was published the same year as the Agile Manifesto. We know which route developers chose.

Hmm. Guess I should have looked it up before posting. Serves me right for not being more bi-curious.

Point taken. Um...the one(s) where a 'fortnight' is still a thing?

So you're saying that when I correct someone publicly, I'm not being an insufferable pedant, I'm contemporaneously documenting usage for future linguists!

Ooh, I'm gonna get so much mileage out of that one.

Biweekly means every two weeks. Semiweekly means twice a week. (Fortnightly doesn't mean anything outside of the Commonwealth.)

Please keep (politely) correcting people. It's only us against the hordes!

Thanks, I was wondering about that, too. That diagram helps explain it. But I still don't understand circle 3. According to perspective rules, shouldn't the moon appear much, much smaller, since it's so far away?

I think what's meant is that it will be easier to create software on Linux that uses MS enterprise packages, like SQL Server, Sharepoint, etc.. So devs can make use of the MS ecosystem without being totally locked into it. Especially since cloud-based services like Azure means never having to buy/host/maintain any Windows boxes at all, if you don't want to.

Sure, and Borders should have pivoted from selling books that have already been published, to becoming an outlet for people who want to self-publish. I mean, hey, there's loads of people like that on the internet! It must be a viable business model. /s

Fine, but every developer I know works long hours and is squeezed for productivity. Isn't that just the reality of the field? If the choice is a) drab cage or b) gilded cage, I'll take the one with the subsidized lunch and massage chairs, thanks.

IANAL, but isn't it incumbent upon IKEA to issue a C&D, whether they want to or not, in order to show they are actively using their trademark?

From what I've heard, if they didn't, someone else might have a case that their trademark is open to use.

Your gender-related analysis is a bit incomplete. You should state that you're only including records for which gender is specified.

- Overall, 20.4% of the records have an unknown or unspecified gender, for which the average grade is 84%.

- Every class has between 6-29% with unspecified genders. In four of the courses, there are more unknowns than the difference between male and females.

A more interesting analysis (to me) is completion and grade vs. engagement, which they're clearly trying to track by including data about student events. I'm not sure how to approach this. On first glance, it seems that for some courses, it's equally likely a student in the top 10% of engagement (going by # days student interacted with site), will have achieved either a spectacularly high or low grade.

Maybe it's time I take one of those Data Science courses, myself.