| last updated:14 Aug 2003 12:57 UK time |
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| JOS Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 10 Aug 2003) | View Other Weeks |
| stock return software | Sun 10 Aug | Ted Graham |
| Ive been investing in individual stocks since 97, and I have a general idea how Ive done, but now I want to compare to the overall market (or my S&P indexes) to see if I should give up. Anyone have reccomendations for software that will let me enter all my purchases and sales and give me % returns and compare to the S&P? Ive got most of my trades in Yahoo, but it doesnt compare to the market and Im not in love with the interface. Free and web based would be good. I also have a recent copy of Money that came free with my last tax software, but I havent installed it. Thanks, Ted |
| Sun 10 Aug | Norrick | 'I also have a recent copy of Money that came free with my last tax software, but I haven't installed it.' Isn't is amazing how often we already have the answer to our own questions? |
| Sun 10 Aug | Tom Vu | Excel or write a quick web app. If you want to pay TradeStation is good. |
| Why does Microsoft keep changing the interface? | Sun 10 Aug | Robert Jacobson |
| Sorry, I just need to rant here... Every time Microsoft comes out with a new version of Office or a new version of Windows, it changes the user-interface elements -- the look-and-feel of menus, buttons, etc. For example, Windows XP spawned the new candy-colored look. Now, with Office 2003, theyve taken this to a new extreme, with rather garish (in my opinion) blue menu bars: http://www.microsoft.com/Office/Preview/images/editions/word-reading_large.gif As a developer of add-ins for Office, I dont really care about the aesthetic merits of one interface design over another. (I actually like the XP look, for example.) What bugs me is the inconsistency -- that theres no _standard_ look for user-interface elements. There are at least four competing themes -- the classic Windows 95/98/2000 look, the Office 2000 look, the Office XP look, and the Windows XP look. Now theres a fifth one (Office 2003) on the way. To make matters worse, Microsoft always keeps its latest-and-greatest user interface libraries proprietary. Until Visual Studio .Net 2003, for example, there wasnt an easy way to get Windows XP-styled buttons in your projects. (Its still a bit of a kludge to do, and doesnt support certain other elements like XP-styled toolbars.) If I want my product to look and behave like a modern Windows application, I either have to turn to a third-party component vendor or a freeware alternative. Either way, I have to cross my fingers and hope that the component doesnt turn out to be buggy. The cynical side of me says that this constant reinvention of the interface is just a shameless marketing practice -- to shout out that the latest product is *New* and *Improved* because it sports a different interface. Given that the Office applications are very mature products, Microsoft might believe that user interface improvements are necessary to keep users on the upgrade treadmill. In contrast, Apple seems remarkably restrained by promoting and enforcing a consistent look-and-feel for all Mac apps. |
| Sun 10 Aug | John Topley (www.johntopley.com) | In spite of what lots of people believe, I really don't think that the Office and Windows groups in Microsoft talk to each other that much! Office doesn't use the standard operating system common File dialogues, for example. Of course it's a shameless marketing practice. However, users don't notice improvements under the hood but they do notice changes in the UI. It's a bit like The Iceberg Secret - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000356.html I don't think Apple is blameless either, their own guidelines state that the only applications that should have the 'brushed metal' interface are the iLife apps, but that look has now made its way into the Finder in OS X 'Panther'. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Ged Byrne | I think you've hit on the head: it's all down to marketing. I used to support a large office of salespeople, and they hated having software that wasn't the latest. It's just like their company car: it has to be top of the range for the sake of status. The enhanced look and feel not only screams out that somebody is using the latest version. It also means that others can tell when somebody is still giving their powerpoint presentations in Office 97. |
| Sun 10 Aug | somebody | >> Until Visual Studio .Net 2003, for example, there wasn't an easy way to get Windows XP-styled buttons in your projects. << Getting the Windows XP style controls is a simple matter of adding a small XML manifest either to the app's resources or to the same directory as the app (in an appropriately named file). Since the file-based approach is independent from the EXE build, you can even add the styles to applications that you didn't build (assuming the standard Windows controls are used). http://www.codeproject.com/w2k/xptheme.asp Rumor has it that the next version of VS.Net will support one of the newer Office styles (not sure if it's the XP or 2003 style). |
| Sun 10 Aug | Robert Jacobson | Somebody -- Thanks, I know about chaning the manifest. However, it's a cludgy solution. It's actually easier with VS 2003 -- you can call System.Windows.Forms.Application.EnableVisualStyles before the screen paints, and it will enable XP styles for most controls. (Even this is a bit esoteric though -- Microsoft should simply have an 'XP style' option in the properties window for every conrol.) Unfortunately, this don't work for all controls -- some controls will stubbornly stick to the classic Win 95/98/200 look. The bigger problem is that I actually need Office XP-style toolbars (to go with my Office XP addin.) And I also need Office 2000 toolbars, since my add-in is backwards-compabable and I want the user interface to be consistent with the host app, and I suppose I'll now also need Office 2003 toolbars for forward compatability. Maybe this will be available in Visual Studio 2004, but I can't just wait for a year. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Simon Lucy | The reason for not having an 'XP' style property is that everything can be styled externally, whether you love or hate themes. Now if they'd just give in and implement XBL and XUL I'd be very happy. |
| Sun 10 Aug | peter f. | Thought it was so that people won't assume the programs are the same, since the interfaces are different. Saves a lot of frustration. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Norrick | Fire and motion, baby. Fire and motion. |
| Sun 10 Aug | JWA | We're using DotNetBar for our interfaces. They have predefined styles for all of the mentioned versions of Office and it has worked great for us. It's not from MS, but it is a good third party control for doing them all. Also, have you looked at how the Office 2003 interface renders in non-XP Windows? The blue reverts to the usual gray, but the orange for the highlights remains. One more thing to support (Althought DNB does this too). --Josh |
| pocket pc development resources | Sun 10 Aug | anon |
| Does any body know any good sites, forums, books for developing pocket pc applications using eMbedded Visual Basic? Thanks for the help. |
| Sun 10 Aug | | http://www.devbuzz.com Should be all you need to know. |
| What tools do you use to create your feature set? | Sun 10 Aug | Kenneth Zha |
| Hi All, Last week, I have being assign a new groupware project from my company. This is my first time writing the feature set and use cases for the software requirement document for such a big project. Its going to have a feature set similar to MS Exchange Server. Normally, I either use a spreedsheet or a word processor to write the feature set and then use an UML editor or Visio to create the use cases for small and medium size projects. I have being pondering what is the best way and best tool to write the feature set and use case that it can be easily sortable and viewable by different criterias. For example, I want to sort the feature set by release and risk, or by release and priority, or by functional area. If I write this in a word document or excel, I cant sort the spreedsheet or document and also its very hard to navigate throught. Therefore, I thought the best option is to write and store the feature set and use cases in a database where you can easily create different types of sorting templates. That way, you can export them to a html document as your final feature set or use case document. Also, you can easily create your own reports and charts. Since this is similar to a bug tracking system and shouldnt be that hard to write one either. Therefore, I thought I can easily find a tool that will fulfill this requirements. Unfortunately, I search all over the web from various software portal sites, news sites, and magazine sites and came back for the past 4 days and came back with an empty hand. So I ask you all. What tools do most big companies use to create and manage their software requirement documents, specially for the feature set and use case? How would you tackle this problem? Whats your thought on this? Thanks in advance. -Kenneth |
| Sun 10 Aug | Dan G | It sounds like you want whats called a 'requirements tracibility matrix' try googling for that, maybe you will find some templates. I just do mine in Excel |
| DAOs and TransferObjects (Core J2EE Patterns) | Sun 10 Aug | Walter Rumsby |
| Im currently reading Core J2EE Patterns (2nd edition) and was reading about Data Access Objects. These make a lot of sense to me as they provide a good way of hiding data access code from other parts of an application. What confused me was that this book suggested passing and/or returning TransferObjects to/from DAOs. If I understand it correctly, the authors are suggesting that in the case of a business object Customer, database access should be handled by CustomerDAO and CustomerTO should be passed/returned to/from the DAO. Why take this approach and not simply pass/return Customer/a collection of Customers? |
| Sun 10 Aug | anon | Customer is likely to encapsulate a lot of Customer related behavior. All you want to move is the state, not the behavior. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Walter Rumsby | Hmm, That makes sense - although what is the overhead per instance of 'all that' behaviour (i.e. they're just method definitions)? I understand the purpose of the TransferObject if you're communicating remotely, but isn't it just adding a layer it I'm using POJOs? |
| Sun 10 Aug | James Ladd | Check out The Server Side for a full discussion on patterns and their pro's and con's. http://www.theserverside.com/patterns/index.jsp Regs, |
| How to check which type of database a website uses | Sat 09 Aug | Anne Levin |
| Back when the internet was in the pre-hype phase there use to be an online tool where when you type in the URL, it will return information on the web-sites OS, database etc I cant remember the name of that tool and I was wondering if there are any online that can work the same majic? |
| Sat 09 Aug | Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com) | OS, yes. Database, no. Same tool as always. http://www.netcraft.com/ Any web site that exposes its database implementation enough to be sniffed at will is in pretty sad shape. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Mr Curiousity | This is not simple, but sometimes can be done. 'Web Hacking' discusses how to check the database engine. The key is to malform URLs or screw up parameters in a way that the database will generate an error which will be sent back to the user. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Mickey Petersen | Or exploit strings sent directly to the SQL engine; such as the case with username- and password fields. This can be done by inserting a comment character and building your own query. Well, that's what 'they' say, anyway... |
| Sun 10 Aug | Daniel Shchyokin | hmmm ... if a string passed via url is automatically executed, there could be all kinds of mischeif to do |
| Sun 10 Aug | Clay Dowling | The smart developer escapes any string data to prevent miscreants from doing badness to the database. |
| Sun 10 Aug | James'Smiler' Farrer | One thing you could do is if you assume the db server is on the same IP, try portscanning and see if you can find any db servers running....... But then anyone with an ounce of intelligibility would have this all firewalled up anyway |
| CityDesk profitable? | Sat 09 Aug | Boris Yankov |
| Joel, How do you cope to get profit from CityDesk by giving away new versions etc. It should be a great secret :) |
| Sat 09 Aug | Ed the Millwright | It creates goodwill which generates recommendations. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Bernard Vander Beken | Free upgrades have one advantage for Fog Creek. They simplify support (mostly one major version to support instead of two) and maintenance (the V1 bug fixes in V2 do not need to be fixed separately in a V1 service pack). |
| Sat 09 Aug | Patrick Lioi | I would imagine that the special 'loophole' mentioned on Joel's site is intended to sway more people who were on the fence due to 2.0's price jump. If he takes a hit on each sale, but generates enough extra sales, it looks like charity to us, while giving them a better bottom line. |
| Sat 09 Aug | www.marktaw.com | > If he takes a hit on each sale What hit.... are you saying it costs more to produce a copy of citydesk than $70 ? |
| Sat 09 Aug | Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com) | Remember that 1.0 was basically not marketed at all, except for via his blog and word of mouth. While it's tempting to believe that a popular blog like Joel's means EVERYBODY has heard about it, well... that's just not the case. :) |
| Sat 09 Aug | Oops | It also creates 'buy-in', is that a term? Users have a $400 product and are more likely to buy CD 3,4 etc. than switch.
Profitability wise, depends on # of copies sold. New offices, plasma TV's ($7000) and trips to Norway don't come cheap, but my envy is showing |
| Sat 09 Aug | xyz | How much was the pro version of 1.0? People who just paid full price for it will feel ripped off. |
| Sat 09 Aug | www.marktaw.com | $300 - some people do, but people understand his motives & his reasoning and go along with it. They know he's not ripping anyone off. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Dave | > How do you cope to get profit from CityDesk > by giving away new versions etc. The equation may have had a lot to do with the number of disgruntled Home edition users there would have been (who'd IMO be very much LESS 'likely to buy CD 3,4 etc. than switch') because the edition they were using was cut as unprofitable. > People who just paid full price for it will feel ripped off. A number of them have voiced they feelings in the CD discussion group. The majority of those seem to be rolling with the punches. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Patrick Lioi | Marktaw: 'Takes a hit' as in 'less dollars to keep in his pocket per sale', as in the '$270' he calculated for you on his post, as in '$270 that won't go into his pocket'. |
| Sat 09 Aug | www.marktaw.com | right... because you know those $70 guys - especially the existing $70 customers - really were willing to pay $300, but were holding out on Joel until he made a deal like this. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Sam Livingston-Gray | Personally, I think it's going to generate a one-time jump in sales from anyone who was on the fence (I've already got one person to buy it now). Joel's written something about the effectiveness of 'limited-time' offers -- and in fact, when you download the free version of CD, you get a coupon for 20% off if you buy within 72 hours. (At least, that used to be the case. I'm not sure if they're continuing that right now.) Then all those people who bought it will start using it and recommending it to their friends... and Joel gets still more business. Seems like a good plan to me. |
| Sat 09 Aug | www.marktaw.com | artificial scarcity. Gotta love the idea of scarcity with a product that can be reproduced an infinite number of times. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Dave | It won't be long and there'll be nothing artificial about the scarcity of CD for $70. |
| Sat 09 Aug | www.marktaw.com | Dave, it's a marketing term. Look it up. Reminds me of those commercials I see for some technical school on late night TV 'better call now, our operators will only be here for the duration of this program.' |
| Sat 09 Aug | Dave | I have no doubt that they're doing well by it as well. I've been in touch with a couple of CD fence sitters. Don't know if they've taken the bait or not but I'd expect it's having an effect. Last chance for the greatest deal of the century and all that. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Ged Byrne | What Joel is really doing is removing the home edition. If Joel had said, 'CD2 is coming but there will be no home edition' there would be gnashing of teeth and 'Oh joel, we cannot afford to buy pro.' Instead he says we have a marketing loophole, and everybody says 'kerching!' |
| Sun 10 Aug | www.marktaw.com | Good point Ged. He's not giving something away for a lesser price, becuase he was already selling the product at that price point. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Patrick Lioi | marktaw: my point *exactly*, sorry it sounded otherwise |
| Sun 10 Aug | www.marktaw.com | =P no problem Patrick. It's simple misunderstandings that get blown out of proportion that make the world go around. |
| What *is* that icon on the home page today? | Fri 08 Aug | Joel Spolsky |
| Recognize it? |
| Fri 08 Aug | oc | No cheap flights from here. Sorry. And beer is horribly expensive there, too. |
| Fri 08 Aug | eclectic_echidna | That is the sound of inevitability. -- ee |
| Fri 08 Aug | Chris Martin | It looks like the hall at a school or something in some movie I've seen. Can't remember what movie though. |
| Fri 08 Aug | www.marktaw.com | hmmm that *is* familiar... It looks like something I see on flags at parks or something. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Norrick | :shocked: THAT is the spitting image of an icon I recently designed for an application I'm working on! I only showed it to one person; how did it make it's way to you? *cue Twilight Zone music* |
| Fri 08 Aug | somebody | Is it the new CityDesk icon? And a ploy to get people who link directly to the forum to see the CityDesk upgrade offer? : ) |
| Fri 08 Aug | Mickey Petersen | It looks like a square, 32x34, with a variety of colors. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Geometry Pedant | A square, 32x34? 8-} ... ahh, geometry 8-} |
| Sat 09 Aug | www.marktaw.com | Joel loves doing this kind of thing. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Prakash S | looks like a wave, blue water, white sky ...sort of like the legendary modified BMW symbol:-). |
| Sat 09 Aug | Tom (a programmer) | It's Pepsi without the red, no? |
| Sat 09 Aug | Xpander | I'm thinking....Ghostbusters. I don't know why. And here's to my first Fog Creek post! |
| Sat 09 Aug | John Topley (www.johntopley.com) | I was going to say that it's a new icon for CityDesk 2.0 but then how could I recognise it? I hope Joel's going to tell us before he goes on holiday! |
| Sat 09 Aug | rrobin | Joel at his best; he sure knows how to tickle the curiosity of his readers.. I'm wondering what kind of story he has to tell on this icon when he get's back from vacation! Happy hollidays, from Holland where it's a stunning 36 degrees Celcius.. |
| Sat 09 Aug | DWD | Along the Pepsi theme, I heard that Pepsi was releasing Pepsi Vanilla this weekend. Could be a good guess by the previous poster. |
| Sat 09 Aug | B# | Aurland fjord in western Norway |
| Sat 09 Aug | Jason Watts | If Google had a reverse-image search... |
| Sat 09 Aug | Pablo | The sea, a water wave. |
| Sat 09 Aug | dev | A checkbox sinking |
| Sat 09 Aug | B# | I had a print years ago that incorporated digital art and the painting 'The Next Wave.' I can't find it or an image but it looks familiar. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Joel | A seasick icon. First it rotates your screen 45 degrees, then it rotates it 90 degrees every 2-3 seconds. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Aleksander Slominski | This is black and white copy of promotional image for 'Poland Now' campaign, see: http://www.terazpolska.pl/ |
| Sat 09 Aug | B# | It's a representation of Joel winking at Michael when he came up with the Loop-hole marketing scheme for CD 2.0. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Bernard Vander Beken | It's the perceived trend of the economy. On the left, you see the dotcom hype. Then, the economy goes down. On the right, there's some hope that things get better. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Smile | It is pretty obvious to me: A white worm is taking a nap on uneven grass, after a hard working day :-) |
| Sat 09 Aug | B# | Bernard For some odd reason that went through my mind as well... I would be worried if I were you. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Joe Grossberg | Waybe it's a new Fog Creek app's icon? It looks sort of like fog above water ... i.e. Fog Creek. Joe http://www.joegrossberg.com |
| Sat 09 Aug | Hanan Cohen | It's an icon saved as JPG instead of GIF, which would have been much smaller and clearer. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Patience Constable | Mystery meat. You click the icon and who knows what happens? Should I click it? Hmm... Maybe there's a tool-tip? Wait a little longer... |
| Sat 09 Aug | www.marktaw.com | > Mystery icon: what's this? 1. An icon. 2. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2003/08/08mystery.jpg 3. A teaser / marketing ploy. 4. An 084F6F blue swirl below an FDFDFF white wavy line below a E7E8E3 box that's surrounded by an A8AA9F border 5. Looks like that photo of Seattle, doesn't it? 6. What that other poster said, fog above a creek. 7. Another famous work of art that Joel will make us feel stupid for not knowing. 8. Something Joel threw together in an hour and decided to put on his homepage. 9. Mouseover: '?' 10. A bunch of 1's and 0's transmitted through digital lines and projected onto our monitors. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Roel Schroeven | You probably mean 'It's an icon saved as JPG instead of PNG, which would have been much smaller and clearer.' Apart from the patent issues, GIF doesn't support more than 256 colors. That was fine 10 years ago, but isn't acceptable anymore. PNG supports up to 16 bits per color IIRC, has alpha transparency (though that one is not very well supported in Internet Explorer; don't ask me why) and I suspect a number of other advantages over GIF. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Freddy | It's a direct ripoff of the Fluent Media Monitor Poll graphics - see right column at http://econtentmag.com. Then again, it could be a completely original fog above a creek! |
| Sat 09 Aug | Bo Yang | I used to work on image compression, so I think it's a good icon for 'wavelet'. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Nick | I though fog above a creek too. I'm guessing it's the icon for City Desk 2.0? |
| Sat 09 Aug | Nick | By the way, do we win a free copy of City Desk 2.0 if we guess right? |
| Sat 09 Aug | van pelt | Sheesh, what are you guys, thick? That's clearly a 'save as...' icon. |
| Sat 09 Aug | ! | Duh.. it's a 'boss key' icon. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Patrick Gaumond | Hint from: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/oldnews/pages/December2002.html 'It's no secret that the direction FogBUGZ is going is to become a better tool for communicating with customers. ' So I presume it's the new Helpdesk-CRM-Fogbugz4 secret thing ! |
| Sat 09 Aug | Patrick Gaumond | Or it's the icon for the ASP-to-PHP compiler... |
| Sun 10 Aug | Paul Harrison | It's clearly the delete hard disk and erase backups icon. The small size means several such icons for commonly used tasks can be placed on a small toolbar without taking up valuable screen real-estate, although being small also means that actually hitting the button you want requires some dexterity. By hovering the mouse over the icon, a short note ('dhd/eb...') makes its purpose clear. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Doug Walker | My vote is that it is the new fog creek logo. |
| Sun 10 Aug | David Carlson | Looks a lot like the channelwave icon at www.channelwave.com Perhaps this is Joel's distributed 'find similar icons' algorithm at work.. |
| Sun 10 Aug | John Topley (www.johntopley.com) | Roel, There are no patent issues with GIFs any more. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Robert Chevallier | -- Bet 1€ it's the new FogCreek logo. Seems this teasing news is 'Hallway Usability testing' for internet applied by Joel as promoted by Joel in http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html and his book. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com) | John, there are still some patent issues, but not in the US any more. I believe some European patents for LZW still last into next year. |
| Sun 10 Aug | John Topley (www.johntopley.com) | I stand (well, sit-down) corrected! Thanks. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Dominic Cooney | Joel needs a logo for something, and has decided to make readers unpaid researchers by asking whether they have seen this logo before. |
| Sun 10 Aug | ajs | Actually, .GIF does support more than 256 colours. In the old days, nobody needed more than 4 colours anyway, so nobody writing .GIF software worries about it. By the time it became worthwile to worry about, .JPG was up and running. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Trevor Ash | 'Seems this teasing news is 'Hallway Usability testing' for internet applied by Joel as promoted by Joel in http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html and his book. ' Bingo! Those were my thoughts too. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Albert Benzer | It's the gradient tool in photoshop 7 |
| Sun 10 Aug | Frederik Slijkerman | Surf's up! Turn off your computer and turn on your wetsuit! |
| Sun 10 Aug | B# | Anybody else smell a new product? |
| Sun 10 Aug | Sean Winstead | Rogue Wave logo |
| Sun 10 Aug | Brassman | If you view the page's source, there is a commented section explaining what this icon is. |
| Sun 10 Aug | B# | Ok, I'm an idiot... I can't find the comment?!? |
| Sun 10 Aug | Heston Holtmann | That particular ICON, as is.. has no more or less particular significance over any other possible icon Joel could have posted. So why is everyone wasting their time trying to find out the relevants of a picture that has no _absolute_ value or any real meaning. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Matt Cramp | No there isn't. The only comment of note in the source is the one explaining the error in 'The Bug'. I can't really see Joel doing something so obvious, especially if it does turn out to be the icon for CityDesk. After all, look at all the people trying to work out what it is. It's genius! |
| Sun 10 Aug | Brennan O'Keefe | Bacardi Vanilla. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com) | 'Look at all the people trying to work out what it is. It's genius!' How is it genius, exactly? A handful of die hard Joel fans are postulating about it on a message board that the general public would never visit. I'll admit it's given the board some weekend traffic, but I can't say that I see the vast marketing value here. :) |
| Developer Liability Insurance | Fri 08 Aug | Tracy D. |
| Greetings, all... In another topic that Ive since lost, I remember someone mentioning the now-mandatory liability insurance when speaking of contracting/consulting. I can understand the need to legally CYA under certain special circumstances (health care contracts, stock trading software - something where lives or a lot of money can be lost due to a bug), but is this really necessary for normal circumstances? Does the one-man shop need to budget for liability insurance these days? Thoughts? |
| Fri 08 Aug | Philo | It depends on your client. Imagine you're contracting for an established company, and you forget the where clause on a delete statement, which wipes out two years of data. Yes, it should have been tested. Yes, they should have had backups. And yes, they can sue you. So - lose the house or buy insurance? Your call. :-) Philo |
| Fri 08 Aug | Ron Porter | ...except that around here (Saskatchewan, Canada), I can't get insurance without *both* a Masters and a bunch of experience. Maybe the 'can't get' isn't literally true, but the cost is literally prohibitive for a one person shop. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Philo | Ron, it would be interesting, and might be worth your while, to write a letter to the CEO of one of the insurance companies inquiring into their requirements, and why they think that two years of schooling means you won't make mistakes? You might even look to see if there are any white papers about correlations (or lack thereof) between education and bugs in code. Next step, if they seem unresponsive - send a letter to your government insurance regulators asking *them* to look into why the insurance companies are being elitist. Philo |
| Fri 08 Aug | Tracy D. | Would that be any different for a FTE? |
| Fri 08 Aug | Sam Livingston-Gray | Tracy- What do you mean? IANAL, but it seems like a company would be liable for damage done by their FTEs... |
| Fri 08 Aug | Herbert Sitz | It certainly is a good idea to be insured. (And it also goes without saying that you want to do business as an entity that will shield you from personal liability (e.g., as LLC or as a corporation).) But it also makes sense to disclaim liability in your license agreement to the full extent allowed by law. For an example of how one company does it, see paragraphs 11 -14 of the MS EULA: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vmt/VMT_EULA_3493.asp |
| Fri 08 Aug | Mike Gamerland | Philo is correct. In fact, many of the 'vendor managers' are now using this as another scare tactic. 'You have all these contractors and if they screw up it could cost you millions.' I had a customer require $5 million in liability in order to keep a contract. This is about $5-7,000/year to cover. Just another cost of doing business. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Peter Breton | Either the client or the go-between (if you have one) may require that you carry Liability Insurance, so, yes it can be a Cost of Doing Business. I'm dubious as to how much the insurance really helps (*), and so I didn't carry it for my last contract. My current one requires $1 million General Liability, so I'm carrying it again. I pay about $500. (* I do business as a corporation, so I already have some protection. I'd think you definitely want the Don't-Take-My-House insurance if you're not corp-ed or LLC-ed or working through a company that is covering you). I'm not an expert on insurances (nor a lawyer), but my understanding is that there are basically 3 kinds of insurance that consultants commonly carry: * General Liability * E&O * Disability I believe General Liability is property damage and 'everything else'. Errors and Omissions (E&O) is specifically about 'malpractice' and 'breach of contract'. Disability pays in the event that you become disabled. I believe 'malpractice' is NOT the hitting the delete key screwup, but rather a gross failure to observe normal procedures. If, say, the company had a policy of testing all SQL on a test database first, before production, but you decided to wing it on the production database without direct approval to do so... you get the idea. Many computer consultant books and Web sites cover these insurances at least briefly. Finally, if you read the insurance company literature, you'll see things like this: 'Do you really need professional liability insurance? If you are in computer consulting, the answer is a resounding “yes!” ' Obviously this should be taken with a grain of salt. Hope that helps, |
| Sat 09 Aug | Tracy D. | Sam, For clarification, I was wondering if a FTE would have the same risks within their own company - could Joe the FTE be sued by his employer for data loss, etc. example: ----------- Say Fred the PHB bullies Joe the FTE into deploying some e-commerce app on an unrealistic deadline. Joe works all weekend and gets it done on time. Since the executives are screaming, the PHB decides to bypass QA and deploy it to production with 'developer testing' only. As it turns out, said application miscalculates sales tax for every 14th item ordered from the site. By the time accounting notices the error, an estimated $500,000 in sales tax is 'missing'. My question is...Does Joe the FTE have the same (or similar) liability when the executives start screaming and go looking for a scapegoat? |
| Sat 09 Aug | Dave | > the PHB decides to bypass QA and deploy it ... This would clear Joe the FTE wouldn't it? |
| Sat 09 Aug | Trollumination | A full-time employee is only liable for losses to the company in cases of gross negligence. 'Just following orders' doesn't measure up. Nuking the entire production database and any backups because of righteous anger over planned outsourcing of FTE's whole deperatment does - and it carries criminal charges as well. But as for a simple honest mistake, or a deployment of something buggy under pressure from above, this is pretty much the same as the case of the scratched company car discussed here last week. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Ron Porter | Philo - re: writing the CEO and contacting the gov't regulators is almost funny! In SK, the insurance company IS the gov't. Yeah, there are other ones around in some niches that the gov't allows (including this one). I found it easier to just make sure every contract makes note of the fact that final testing and verification for accuracy is the responsibility of the client and that anything that gets past them is their fault, not mine. It's worked so far. Any potential client that doesn't like it has to get by without my help, and I still get (mostly) enough work to keep the wolves at bay. |
| Computerizing Bad Business Practices | Fri 08 Aug | anonymous |
| Im sure many people have been in this situation before. You are forced to write a program to handle a complicated business process that doesnt work well to begin with. This often causes the program to be several times more complicated than it needs to be. Simplifying the process and making it more efficient would probably lead to much simpler code and help the business as well. No one knows (or cares) why the process is done the way it is, they just know that it is done that way. Usually they did it that way manually or it was done that way in another computer system that wasnt designed well. Another possibility is that everyone else in their industry does it that way even though there are much better ways to do it. Have others succeeded in getting companies to actually change a business process in this situation? |
| Fri 08 Aug | DJ | The key is to have a project sponsor high up enough that realizes this is a hugh opportunity to rethink and realign their business processes. Without that support it usually is hopeless. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Clay Dowling | My experience has also been that the sponsor needs to have the power to over-ride objections from lower ranks. There are undoubtedly people who are deeply invested in the current process, and they will fight it kicking and screaming, even if it makes their job easier. People don't like change, especially people who have a functional mindset (i.e. clerical workers). If they have the power to stop the change, they will. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Israel Orange | Remember that highly-paid thread a few posts down? I suspect that those who are competent to identify inefficiencies and get buy-in from change-amenable execs are much more likely to be highly paid than those who simply implement tools for monkeys. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Mr Curiousity | Speaking about monkeys ... Start with a cage containing five monkeys. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result: all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when any monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it. Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Again, replace a third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs. Why not? Because that's the way it's always been around here. And that's how company policy begins. |
| Fri 08 Aug | K | Mr. C, is this a summary of an actual study? If so, could you provide a link or publication information so that everybody else can check it out? |
| Fri 08 Aug | FullNameRequired | I just assumed that was how he spent his time...torturing poor monkeys... |
| Sat 09 Aug | | And to make it even worse, there are no more clean monkeys left. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Stephen Jones | Read 'The Periodic Table' by Primo Levi. There's a story in there about how he met another chemist in the late 1950's who asked his opinion about a formula in their factory which he didn't understand. Levi was gobsmacked because he had worked at the company just after the war's end and had specified that chemical because they had a contaminated lot that they needed to purify. He'd then left the company, but the additional chemical was still used even though it wasn't needed. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Julian | Still, don't be overconfident in your ability to propose better business practices. Outside consultants often provide lousy advice since they don't understand the situation sufficiently well. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Mr Curiousity | Mr. K and FullNameRequired! Sorry to disappoint you, but I never had anything to do with the monkeys ... Instead, I have to deal with human beings which are in their behavour did not get too far from our relatives in the animal kingdom ... I wish things were different, but they aren't ... |
| Sat 09 Aug | Evgeny /Javadesk/ | My team developed a bid EAI billing system with a lot of business logic, that drives the whole electronic processes, for a Telco (10M subscribers) in the US. It works 18 months in production without fail and that is the result of very good architecture and design. The project is done via a sub-contractor company, which is on the contrary is not happy. Why? Because 'no defects - no money'. So, I think, problems with business logic, design or implementation may accur when development groups not able or don't want (for future money) to make it ideal... |
| Sat 09 Aug | www.marktaw.com | I've heard the monkey thing before. I heard a similar thing about cannons... There are a set of instructions for loading a cannon & firing it, and one of them makes no sense but everyone does it... reach back. Eventually the new guy finds out that they're reaching back to grab their horse who is gonna wanna run away, but there are no horses any more, but it's been codified into the way they do things. > People don't like change, especially people who have a functional mindset A lot of those people are afraid for their jobs and that's why they don't want to change. They're afraid they won't be needed under the new process, won't do the new process well, or won't be perceived as doing the new process well, etc. |
| Sat 09 Aug | | I would have thought a reach back would be a procedure to help avoid having your hand smashed by the breech when the gun fires. Also, I sympathise with Evgeny. I did a new version of a big web app for a Fortune 500 company that also worked flawlessly. Also, the company's staff were able to take it over and operate it in 2 hours. Big success. But no more revenue for me. Meanwhile an old app done by another company kept breaking all the time, needed a few days work every week for making changes, and gave that other company a great revenue stream. Lesson: Have bonuses for meeting agreed maintenance and performance criteria. |
| Sun 10 Aug | JSnodgrass | When approaching management about simplifying the process, you should be very careful not to appear as though your system design is the most important factor in the equation. Sr. Management has been jerked around by ERP vendors such as SAP and PeopleSoft, which all but require businesses to re-engineer themselves to fit the software. So management is accustomed to hearing IT depts whine: 'The business is a mess! The processes aren't standardized! This project will require complex custom code ... etc.' This makes management wonder if they're getting real value/ROI from their IT investments. Software that supports/models complex real-world processes is not simple to create. If you're not experienced and comfortable using flexible, highly productive tools, you should probably outsource the development. |
| Sun 10 Aug | mb | (On monkeys and cats, a zen koan via diveintomark) http://diveintomark.org/archives/2001/11/13/what_i_do_for_a_living |
| Nice to know we're not the only ones | Fri 08 Aug | Philo |
| Ah, one great thing about globalization - growing proof that the negative stereotypes assigned to Americans arent always because were USAian, but because were human (in other words, it aint just us) I just got this from an EDI mailing list: Dear EAI Architect, How are you doing ! I represent Zend Consulting Services, a premier Recruitment Solutions and Executive Search firm specializing in Information Technology and Senior Level Recruitments. We deal with several of the Best IT organizations. At this time we are recruiting in Large numbers for our one of our Multinational clients in Mumbai and Pune. [...] I am seeing a *lot* of job openings lately that dont happen to mention theyre in India. After ten years of Where is this Oregon? Dont forget we dont all live in the US now Im getting hard proof that geographic myopia is not a uniquely American thing. [grin] Philo |
| Fri 08 Aug | z | Oregon is in Wisconsin. Now do I have to explain where Wisconsin is? :-) |
| Fri 08 Aug | Chris Tavares | And Milwauke is in Oregon. Go figure. ;-) |
| Fri 08 Aug | Nick | Philo, Oregon is between Redmond and Mountain View. The members of Portland Java User's Group think it's closer to Mountain View while the Portland Dot Net User's Group think it's closer to Redmond. :) If anyone actually cares, Milwaukie, OR was named after Milwaukee, WI, but the founding fathers got the spelling wrong. Doh! |
| Fri 08 Aug | Chris Tavares | Actually, the founding fathers of Milwaukie (sorry I spelled it wrong above) actually chose the spelling deliberately, from what I heard. You see, they didn't want to confuse people about which city they were talking about. ;-) |
| Fri 08 Aug | sk | Correct spelling seems to be a problem for the majority of americans today. Sad. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Sam Livingston-Gray | I live in Portland (that'd be in Oregon, naturally), and I think you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find a town in Oregon that *wasn't* named after another city somewhere else. Or a person (e.g., Boring). With the possible exception of Drain, Oregon. I have no idea what they were smoking... hey, maybe someone moved there from Weed, CA? (= |
| Sun 10 Aug | sgf | 'I live in Portland (that'd be in Oregon, naturally),' Unless you live in Maine...naturally :) |
| Is EDI still a hot topic? | Fri 08 Aug | Clay Dowling |
| Im a couple of years out of the field, and I was wondering if manufacturers are still hot for EDI. If they are, what new technology has come to play in the last couple of years? Is everybody moving to XML transactions for EDI? Are manufacturers moving from ANSI formats to others, such as EDIFACT? |
| Fri 08 Aug | Herbert Sitz | Was EDI a recent hot topic? I've done a bit of work in the last year or so with EDI systems, without even knowing that EDI was some sort of standard for data interchange. I just thought the systems I was interfacing with were legacy systems with outdated modes of interaction with the outside world! I did come to appreciate it a bit more, after I worked with them a bit, but I'm surprised it was ever a hot topic. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Philo | 1) EDI is the standard for HIPAA interchanges, which are now mandated by federal law for all medical data transfer. [this is highly simplified, but to give you an idea of the demand] 2) Any business system older than three years that talks to other companies will likely use EDI EDI is *everywhere*, but it's in the areas that most programmers don't see. The reason you don't hear more about it is that everyone, Microsoft included, seems to think that by pushing XML, that makes it the de facto standard. Problem is the thousands of companies that have spent six or seven figures on an EDI-based business system don't get the same level of excitement over change for the sake of change. So, in summation - EDI is *not* a hot topic in the IT press, but for the billions of dollars in transactions that move around every day, it's a very hot topic. Philo |
| Fri 08 Aug | Clay Dowling | Much thanks for the update. In answer to the questions, it was indeed a hot topic among manufacturers a few years ago. I made a very nice living programming EDI systems a few years back. I hadn't been aware of the development on the hospital front. I've never programmed to the HL7 standard (which is what hospitals use), but it didn't look significantly different than the ANSI documents used for electronic commerce. Myself I wouldn't mind seeing the change to XML for interactions, provided a common DTD was agreed upon. With the old ANSI documents it was hard to get agreement between different divisions within the same company. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Philo | 'Myself I wouldn't mind seeing the change to XML for interactions, provided a common DTD was agreed upon' XSD. Schemas are the new DTD's and (IMHO) better. There are some movements to create an XML standard for EDI documents. One that I saw was incredibly messy - the group in charge seemed to think that every XML element had to be individually unique, so they were huge. Tags looked like: InvoiceInvoiceItemServicesServiceItemServiceCharge Which I find unreadable. They seemed to miss the point that XML *can* be contextual. Philo |
| Fri 08 Aug | Tom Vu | EDI is huge in a business sense but not sexy in a tech sense. It is ecommerce before the internet revolution. I remember reading about how XML was going to change EDI transactions in 97 or 98. The XML/EDI group (or SGML) has been around for just as long and its mail archives from 97 are nice to read. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Philo | 'EDI is huge in a business sense but not sexy in a tech sense' Do you mean as in 'nobody's writing about it' or 'it's no fun to work with'? Because I take issue with the second statement - I think it's fascinating and I have a great time playing with it. Heck, how often do we get national standards to back up our work? Philo |
| Fri 08 Aug | Herbert Sitz | I'm curious, are there any tools out there that simplify working with EDI? The only two times I've worked with it I've written the code from scratch. (Well, at least the first time was all from scratch; the second was a modification of the first.) Anyway, it seems like there ought to be a somewhat easier and faster way. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Clay Dowling | We certainly don't get national standards for automotive EDI. Each of the auto companies have their own standard. I'm suprised to find somebody who really enjoys working with EDI. I'm technically competent with it as well, but at times it gets 'interesting' to be the liason between the supplier and automaker. Some of that interesting relationship is why I dropped out of doing EDI work for a while. Just out of curiosity, Philo, what platform do you work on? Most EDI job postings I'm seeing right now seem to be using AS/400, SAP or both. I used to work with UNIX and NT. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Philo | Right now I'm nursemaiding a custom system I built in C# against SQL Server. Next on the list is a biztalk implementation for a different group. Even with the automaker specs - YOU HAVE A SPEC. I've got the full X12 guide online here. 'How many characters in this field?' check the spec - 30. That's the answer. On the other hand is the wonderful world of business applications where specs aren't written and answers change daily. I'll take a spec, thanks. :-) Philo |
| Sat 09 Aug | Evgeny /Javadesk/ | From my experience EDI is not hot, but still in use, mostly in big companies. It costs them money to move to XML, that process is very slow. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Sam Livingston-Gray | Gah. On the topic of ANSI X12 271 (a health insurance format being used for HIPAA compliance), all I can say is 'GAH!' That was the most annoying data format I have ever seen in my life. It was fractally annoying -- every little bit you look at is just as annoying as the whole thing. And who ever heard of a hierarchical format without end tags? The only reason I didn't tear my hair out was that I buzz my head! Yes, Philo, you do have a spec, but at least with your typical flat-file layouts it's conceivable that a user could remap the fields. And in Access (yes, I implemented an X12 reader in Access 97 -- don't ask), it's just one line of code. Thus far, that's been my first experience with EDI, and I sincerely hope it's my last. But (desperately attempting to turn this into an on-topic response rather than just a vent) there's definitely work to be had in EDI. After all, if the spec were simple enough that users could figure out how to import it on their own, what would all those EDI programmers do for a living? ;> |
| Sun 10 Aug | ajs | EDI spec annoying? When you're trading stocks or sell car parts, you don't want the users to redefine the formats! That's why it works! EDI is easy. In my experience, all concerned parties define a set of messages. The messages consist of items of data, the format of these is set, as Philo above hinted at. You may need a quantity field. It gets defined as Numeric, 12 digits, no decimals. It gets a Name - Quantity, and a Code. First you define all of the fields needed in your messages, like so. Fields 1-5. 1 - Name, X30 2 - Colour, X6 3 - Part#, 999999 4 - Quantity, 999999999999 5 - Weight, 999.999 The format of the messages themselves seems complicated, but it's really simple. There is a bitmapped header, followed by ASCII data. A 'Buy' message may have 3 fields, Part#, Colour and Quantity. That means we'll be needing fields 2,3 & 4. Out bitmap header is then 01110000. (ie 1 byte). The rest of the data gets tacked on. (X is the bitmap) Message = 'X Green000123000000000001.' Here we are ordering 1 of Part 123, in Green. Data is padded, so no need for delimiters, length bytes and such. The other fun bit is that fields can be optional, in this case colour could be optional. To leave it out, just turn the bit off, and leave out the data. To decode, check the bit map (ah, 2nd bit is on, that's Colour, so take the first 6 bytes). Repeat. EDI is a neat system, even if it's not sexy (generally mainframe & non-internet - wot's X25?) |
| Sun 10 Aug | Clay Dowling | AJS, X.12 is the ANSI standard that most of us have to program to, unless we're lucky and get edifact (the UN standard, heavily used in Europe). The format you're describing looks nothing like ANSI X.12. We don't get a bitmapped header, and we don't have fixed length fields. We get a file with two mystery delimiters that we have to figure out by reading the document. Because the actual EDI document is likely to be enclosed by data specific to the transmission protocol (and a single company is likely to use multiple transmission protocols to communicate with it's various customes), it's moderately entertaining to figure out exactly what the delimiting characters are. They're in positions 4 and 106 of the fixed length header. But it's possible for the transmission data to look just like the header, so your code has to double check things, like make sure the appropriate data follows the header. As bad as that sounds, I found it pretty easy to do in C and C++. It's less easy with other languages, such as the Progress 4GL, and it wasn't much more fun with Visual Basic. To be honest, the standards aren't the hard part, and they don't lead to any real stress. The hard part is that EDI shows up any weakness in business practices. A customer with 100 trucks sitting in his receiving lot gets very testy when the shipping clerk couldn't be bothered to record the trailer number they sent the parts on. The place it shows up is the EDI document, and the first person to hear about it is going to be the fellow who put in the new EDI system. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Philo | 'They're in positions 4 and 106 of the fixed length header.' Heh. I just burned an EDI tools company on this. You should be checking 4, 106, *and* the first character after the first '>' (Hint: if you're validating EDI and just checking 4 & 106, then one bad character in the envelope is going to void the entire document) Philo |
| Bob Noxious -- the true story | Fri 08 Aug | The Real PC |
| [How about an update, RealPC? Did the guy start using headphones or what?] Oh, I forgot to report what finally happened. I spoke to our mutual boss, who said he would ask Bobs supervisor to tell him to start using headphones. The next day the music was gone! However, that was only because Bob came in late. As soon as he arrived, he turned on his speakers louder than ever. I waited a while, becoming quite angry and frustrated, still unable to work. After a while, Bobs supervisor went in and spoke to him about headphones. I went in also and completely lost my temper. I said Bob you are driving me crazy and I cant concentrate because of your music. It starts out low and gets louder and louder as the day goes on. I have some good headphones you can borrow, if you want. Bob replied that he had listened from outside his cubicle and was not able to hear anything. I told him that my hearing is better than his. Later on my boss asked what happened and I told him. He said I should have complained to him and he would have taken care of it (well I did, and he didnt, but I didnt want to say that). Ever since then -- and its been weeks -- I have been able to concentrate and work and have not heard anything from Bobs direction. Of course he probably hates me now. And everyone knows that The Real PC is actually capable of getting angry. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Not Joel Spolsky | Depending on how loud you were in Bob's mgr's office, you may also be looked upon by everyone as the office nutcase now. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Wake me up inside | So you woke up? Grats~ |
| Fri 08 Aug | Cletus | 'Of course he probably hates me now. And everyone knows that The Real PC is actually capable of getting angry.' Good for you... Sometimes you have to show you have a pair. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Thomas | Way to go, PC. As was already well-stated, sometimes you just have to show that you've got a pair. -Thomas |
| Fri 08 Aug | Jeremy | Hmm. And people who don't have a pair are shit out of luck? |
| Fri 08 Aug | Milton | I enjoy listening to my radio at a reasonable volume...and if Sandra's going to listen to her headphones while she's filing, then I should be able to listen to the radio while I'm collating. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Cletus | 'Hmm. And people who don't have a pair are shit out of luck? ' Jeremy, All you have to do is give the appearance that they're there.:) |
| Fri 08 Aug | Alyosha` | A pair is useless against a full house. |
| Sun 10 Aug | Martin A. Boegelund | 'All you have to do is give the appearance that they're there.:) ' Yelling in other peoples offices is _not_ the way to show you have a pair, since that's the way women would handle this kind of situation (Yes, I know that women also have a pair, but not _that_ pair). So how do you show you have a pair? Well, try the 'Roadhouse' approach: 'Be nice. And when it's time not to be nice, take it outside!' ;-) |
| Annoying use of Javascript.. | Fri 08 Aug | JD |
| Check this: http://www.voyagenow.com/ If you are not on T1, it will take bit of time to download stuff. And if by chance you want to click on something which is already shown you will be greeted with message: --------------------------- Microsoft Internet Explorer --------------------------- ******* Page not loaded completely ******** ------------------------------------------------------ Please allow the page to load completely. Click OK for the javascript that will follow-up. ------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------- OK --------------------------- Hm...I wonder how annoying one can get! Regards, JD |
| Fri 08 Aug | Patrik | Even more annoying is the fact that the popup calendar for check-in-date which pops up over the 'Room' edit boxes, but the edit boxes are still in front of the calendar. They must have a seriously broken QA department :-) |
| Fri 08 Aug | Geert-Jan Thomas | The popup calendar would appear nicely over editboxes. But they aren't editboxes, they are dropdownlists which have the nasry habit of having a window of their own that doesn't comply with the z-order of HTML objects. Doe anyone have an idea how to deal with this 'feature'? I recently solved this problem by hiding the dropdownlists when the popup area was shown (very similar situation as this one). The popup calendar showed nicely but it's not like the prettiest solution ever. Any suggestions? |
| Fri 08 Aug | UI Designer | Can't be done. You'll have to move the drop downs where they won't be covered by the calendar. |
| Fri 08 Aug | | Disable javascript in your browser. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Wayne | Somehow they're doing it here: http://www.milonic.com/menu/overforms_sample.php |
| Fri 08 Aug | Wayne | Actually, an easy way of doing it is by just setting style.visibility='hidden' on any problematic select boxes. I use this trick all the time. I've never been able to get the select box to be partly showing though like the Milonic sample. I don't really care though if the select box dissappears for a moment while the calendar/menu or whatever is showing. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Joel Spolsky | How does milonic do it? |
| Fri 08 Aug | Brian | Good question... I've always had that problem, and thought there was no good way around it. I had read that selects in IE are windowed controls, and there was nothing to be done about it. Put 'figure out how they did it' in the queue of things to do... |
| Fri 08 Aug | Interaction Architect | They're using popup windows with the Alpha Filter applied: http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/filter/reference/filters/alpha.asp As stated before, SELECT elements are windowed controls and do not participate in z-ordering. Window.popup can be used to cover them. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Philo | 'They must have a seriously broken QA department ' They had one QA guy, but they fired him and they're not going to hire a replacement... Philo |
| Sat 09 Aug | ! | FYI, the form elements are supposed to appear over everything else in order to prevent keystroke capture by illegitimate means. |
| Sun 10 Aug | J | I don't think they're using a popup. I haven't looked at the HTML, but I think they're clipping the dropdowns. If you look behind the alpha-filter, there's no dropdowns, at least on my system. FWIW, you can see a bug in their system. Hover those menus, they cover the dropbox. Now, hover the main page-navigation menus (home, development...) then immediately go to hover the lower ones again. Voila, the drops appear above the menu... |
| To upgrade or not to upgrade ... | Fri 08 Aug | James Thorpe |
| Like most companies we suffer from the constant upgrade cycle foisted upon us by vendors. Given that our systems are not going to be rewritten to take advantage of any new product functionality, these upgrades benefit nobody but the vendors. For example, we currently have a financial system written in Powerbuilder 6.5.1 and Pro IV running on Oracle 7.x It has all the functionality we need, there are no scalability problems with the system, and capacity should be sufficient for another 3 years minimim. All the software is obsolete and unsupported, or minimally supported, by the vendors. It will cost us $1million+ to upgrade to current versions of Powerbuilder, Pro IV and Oracle, for which we receive no business benefit what-so-ever. Why should we upgrade, and what are the risks of not upgrading? |
| Fri 08 Aug | Philo | If it ain't broke, don't fix it - why only three years? Use it so long as it works and fulfills your needs. The risk, of course, is the difficulty in finding programmers to work on the system as time goes on. Oracle 7.3 was a tricky beast - tail end of the old RDBMS regime (the last version before MS put a burr under their saddle and really challenged them on the UI standpoint) What you need to do is draw out a roadmap - plan out the next five years of development. You need to plot past growth and make some educated guesses on future growth vs. application loading. Make a feature wishlist - is there anything you can't implement on the current system due to the technology? Is it indispensible to your business? Is there code maintenance going on currently? How much do your developers cost? Are they likely to stay around? Can you gradually refactor the system? Build in parallel, implement modules that work against the old database but can be moved to the new one; set up a parallel data store and implement new features there, linked to the old data until you port, etc... Takes a *lot* of careful planning. Finally, when you do port, don't get fixated on calendar dates. Try to manage cost, but you cannot manage the calendar. Philo |
| Fri 08 Aug | Just me (Sir to you) | There is no universal answer to 'when to upgrade'. No, 'if it ain't broke ...' is not it either. Not upgrading saves you in the short term obviously, since you avoid all the costs. However, in most cases upgrading becomes more expensive the longer you postpone it. I am not talking about missing the 'special low cost upgrade licence' window for the software. More importantly the skills nescessary for a successfull transfer form the old system will become harder to find and more expensive over time. Their is always a sweetspot somewhere in between holding out to long and unnescesarily jumping to early. Where that lies differs from case to case. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Bella | Jim, you ask smart questions. Common sense is so rare these days.... You make 1 case for upgrading b/c the software is unsupported. Well, upgrading to the new Powerbuider (Does that joke still exist?) doesn't rectify that. Sybase will be gone soon enough.. So you have answered your own questions. Upgrading now would simply be bored programmers looking to amuse themselves, and those times are OVER. What you should be doing is to plan for when your current system doesnt MEET YOUR NEEDS, in 3 years. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Evgeny /Javadesk/ | Hi, my team developed an EAI billing system for a telco (10M subscribers) in the US, which completely replaced their old billing software and improved their business processes. The whole work, from design to production, was done in 2 years. The telco reported 1 year of ROI. I'm not a big company, we not cheap, and we don't use PowerBuilder. But we have a very thorough working knowledge of the technology and may do the job. To start work with us, please submit a Project Planning form on web site with your project information. |
| Sun 10 Aug | James Thorpe | Guys, Thanks for your reponse. The example is only that - an example. We have numerous systems in the same boat. My goal is to put together some sort of risk assessment framework that allows us to defer upgrading as long as possible, and bite the upgrade bullet when the risk gets too high. Hence the question about the risk of not upgrading James. |
| Office politics - good books | Thu 07 Aug | Future cunning politician |
| I was wondering what books people found to be useful on the topic of office politics in larger and large companies. Personally, I found satirical books incredibly insightful. These include Peter principle and all of the Dilbert books with text (not just comics). Also, the movie Office space is quite educational as well. Lets face it, being honest and hard-working is for suckers ... These things just dont work anymore in the real world. Any other pointers to good material on the subject? |
| Thu 07 Aug | one programmer's opinion | In the /. programming forum you find a book review posting for 'The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World'. I read it about a year ago and thought the author did a pretty decent job of telling like it is. Note: you probably won't learn any 'Guerilla Tactics' by reading this book. Even so, I believe a book such as this one should be mandatory reading at all U.S. colleges that have a software engineering/computer science degree type of program. |
| Thu 07 Aug | Philo | 'Let's face it, being honest and hard-working is for suckers' No, we'd just like the slackers to think that so they're easier to step on. :-) Philo's five minute course on getting ahead in the office: 1) Be honest. Always be honest. Be brutally honest. Be the first one to offer yourself up when you screw up. 2) Because if you are honest 99.99% of the time, then that .01% of the time you really need to tell a whopper, they'll believe you. 3) Integrity. Deliver on what you promise, never promise what you can't deliver. Don't say 'yes' when the answer should be 'I'll find out.' If you say 'I'll find out' then find out and follow up. 4) Do it now. If you tell your boss or a peer you'll take care of something, make it your first priority; otherwise you'll forget about it. (see #3) 5) It's not backstabbing when you're telling the truth and the guy deserves it. Don't *guess* whose fault it was, but tell the boss if you know. (If it's really bad then you can go to the guy and do the 'either you tell him or I will' thing). 6) Trust, but verify. 7) Assume nothing. 8) Follow up and check. 9) Always check the documentation. If someone says 'we've always done it that way' RUN for the documentation. Develop a reputation for being the guy who always checks the documentation (less people lie to you then, and they're more likely to check it themselves first) 10) Don't blindside your boss. Postpone, hem, haw, offer to get back to the person, whatever, but do everything in your power to make sure your boss hears it from you before they hear it from their boss, the client, or the Washington Post. That should do for now. Any questions? Class dismissed. Philo |
| Thu 07 Aug | www.marktaw.com | > Philo's five minute course on getting ahead in the office: Brave words from one of the most famously fired people in the JoS forum. :P |
| Fri 08 Aug | Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com) | 'Brave words from one of the most famously fired people in the JoS forum.' If you've never been fired, then you must not be putting yourself out on the line. :) |
| Fri 08 Aug | Philo | 'Brave words from one of the most famously fired people in the JoS forum' I call it 'truth in advertising' [grin] And a high five to Brad!!! Philo |
| Fri 08 Aug | Future cunning politician | ' 'Let's face it, being honest and hard-working is for suckers' No, we'd just like the slackers to think that so they're easier to step on. :-) ' Well we, people that you, Philo, call slackers, know that you know that we are slackers, and have no problem with you knowing that! Guys like you can't stop us, we're the force, we're always existed and will exist! All we need is one chance and your resistance is futile. We are the borg! You'll be assimilated. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Nick | Note: this reply isn't to Future cunning politician. It's for anyone else that might want good books on office politics. Anyone who thinks that 'Office space' was educational and being a slacker is the roadmap to success isn't worth the effort. Read 'What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify the Meanness' by Stanley Bing ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0066620104/qid=1060318601/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-4530871-0576625?v=glance&s=books ) Read it even if you're not a slacker. It's a great book. Okay, it's not a 'great' book, but it's a good summer reading book. It's filled with humorous accounts of those who've risen to the top by being assholes. 'Emotional Intelligence' by Daniel Goleman, Dalai Lama http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553375067/qid=1060318681/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-4530871-0576625 I can't personally vouch for this one, but it's been on my intended reading list for a long time. It's highly touted for understanding social groups and is supposed to be helpful with navigating office politics. |
| Fri 08 Aug | www.marktaw.com | > If you've never been fired, then you must not be putting > yourself out on the line. :) Oh, I have been, and it was because I did the kinds of things Philo suggested. But it's not exactly what the original poster was asking for. |
| Fri 08 Aug | www.marktaw.com | Emotional Intelligence... I enjoyed this book but I don't think it's an Office Politics book. Here's an idea. Read the kinds of books your manager probably reads, if your manager reads. Stuff like The Effective Exectutive, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and anything Amazon says people who read those books read. Read the Six Sigma stuff and the Jack Welsh book. Familiarize yourself with the PMI BOK - Project Management Institute Body of Knowledge. Then you'll find yourself jibing with your boss more often, speaking more of the same language than your co-workers. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Yves | Check out this old thread: 'Books on Office Politics' http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=12738&ixReplies=9 |
| Fri 08 Aug | Ran Whittle | Excellent post Philo. |
| Fri 08 Aug | Keith Wright | It's been awhile since I browsed 'Cubicle Warfare'. As I remember, it cataloges a bunch of different stratagies (though more like caricatures) you can use to survive office politics. One of them was 'above it all' where you just present yourself as too good a person to get involved in that nonsense. Though: 'Every tactic is covered; lying, sabotaging projects (and careers), brown-nosing/butt-kissing, buzzword management programs, manipulating political correctness, and even sleeping with management for fun and profit.' |
| Fri 08 Aug | Vince | I agree. Good post philo. All good advice. I shall take heed. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Future cunning politician | Thanks to everybody who shared his/her views! I like Philo as a person, yet I do not see that his attitutes are that effective in life. Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to stay honest/hardworking/etc. guy, but I look around myself, and this approach just is not working ... Can Philo please explain how his views are effective? He may feel strongly about them, but what about *reality* ? |
| Sat 09 Aug | Prakash S | 'Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to stay honest/hardworking/etc. guy, but I look around myself, and this approach just is not working ...' - This should not be your *approach*, these should be your principles in life. |
| Sat 09 Aug | Future cunning politician | 'This should not be your *approach*, these should be your principles in life.' Really? Is this written out somewhere or one gets hit by a lightning if he/she is not holding such principles? What is bad about being lying/deceptive/sleazy/sneaky/manipulating SOB other than that it is labeled *wrong* by some? Let's face it, the only thing that *practically* matters is survival and prosperity today and in the future. Paradoxically, being always honest is pretty much almost as bad in the long run as being a liar! This is because in both cases people will start avoiding you. Thus pick your principles (masters) carefully! |
| Sun 10 Aug | Philo | 'What is bad about being lying/deceptive/sleazy/sneaky/manipulating SOB other than that it is labeled *wrong* by some?' Get caught, get fired. Get caught, lose work. Get caught, don't get the referral. Get caught, go to jail. Mind you, nowhere in my advice did I advocate looking out for anyone but number one. If you get an offer of promotion that should go to someone else, by all means take it. If you're offered a bonus for something that took ten minutes but everyone thinks you worked all weekend on, take it. There is plenty of room for 'put yourself first' in the rules I posted. You can do it all while being reliable, trustworthy, and having integrity. Mind you, I honestly think I'm wasting my breath talking to you on this - you're a hopeless case if you think ethics are a waste of time. But maybe others will benefit. :-) Philo |
| Sun 10 Aug | Future cunning politician | Philo - 'Mind you, I honestly think I'm wasting my breath talking to you on this - you're a hopeless case if you think ethics are a waste of time. But maybe others will benefit. :-)' Well, don't be so dismissive Philo ... Especially considering that you've actually agreed with my previous post! What you claim is that 'lying/deceptive/sleazy/sneaky/manipulating SOB' won't survive long term. This is an important factor, which I've already aknowledged - 'Let's face it, the only thing that *practically* matters is survival and prosperity today and in the future.' Ethics and long term survivability are actually 2 different things. Note that you yourself advocated some of the shady (unethical?) things claiming that they were good because they gave one an edge in the game. Honesty is mostly good for the long term perspective, although there are exceptions. Same goes with lying, which is mostly bad, yet on few occassions you'd better lie than tell the truth in order to survive/prosper. |
| Oslo Dinner | Thu 07 Aug | sk |
| So, whos meeting up at the Oslo dinner? I happen to live here, so Ill drop by just to get an autograph... Or well, Ill settle for a beer. ;) |
| Thu 07 Aug | Joel Spolsky | I got about 12 replies so far, so there will certainly be a bunch of us... |
| Thu 07 Aug | sk | Great! So there's an opportunity to just drop in for a beer? Don't need no invitation, I hope? |
| Fri 08 Aug | Prakash S | anyone blogging this event? anyone taking pictures? BTW: Joel, are you planning to go to any Scandinavian Death Metal concerts, while you are there:-) |
| Fri 08 Aug | Nimoy's Bilbo | Yes, everyone should blog this 'event.' It's called dinner. It doesn't need any psuedo-journalists writing articles about it in real time, right next to their cat pictures. |
| Sun 10 Aug | GP | Hope the heat wave does not reach Oslo. |
| Age discrimination in high tech | Tue 05 Aug | rick chapman |
| “Investigators are examining whether the move eviscerated Boeings technical capability and played a role in the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1.... The decision to move the jobs was highly unpopular among Boeings workforce, and about 80% of the California engineers refused to relocate, forcing the company to hire workers in Texas and forfeit much of the experience of its California engineering base.” I find this snippet rather timely. I was intereviewed in the latest issue of Soft*Letter by Jeff Tarter about In Search of Stupidity and he asked me WHY high-tech companies seem to make the same mistakes again and again. Heres one reason I gave, and while I was having some fun, Im also dead serious. Rick, the classic Peter Principle says that “people get promoted to the level of their incompetence.” But it seems that a fair number of top executives in software have risen much, much higher. How come? One of the reasons this happens is that high tech and software companies have no institutional memory. And one of the reasons for this problem is that the industry actually operates on the ‘Logan’s Run’ principle: Anyone approaching 40 in high-tech is expected to wear spooky robes and ride the Carousel of Doom on their 40th birthday. Usually they’re blown off the carousel into jobs at Radio Shack or manning the chalupa station at Taco Bell. And all their accumulated knowledge goes with them. “Then, of course, the next batch of young exciting newbies proceed to make exactly the same mistakes as their predecessors, because there’s no one to tell them better and because they spent most of their youth playing video games. And so it goes.” (Reprinted with permission of Software Success) |
| Tue 05 Aug | Marc | I had a long reply. But I boiled it down to this: Yep. Nail. Head. Hit. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Cletus | 'One of the reasons this happens is that high tech and software companies have no institutional memory.' Rick, Your post is dead on. It seems that in software development there is no respect for history. Anything that is aged in software (people, technology, methodology) is considered legacy and put out to pasture. Unfortunately this anti-historical attitude is directed at the general software body of knowledge. |
| Tue 05 Aug | BigRoy | While I expect a fair number of 'young folk' to dismiss this or call it flamebait, it is the best articulation of reality I have seen. I especially like the visual of the 'Carousel of Doom'. While a number of us are making it past 40, we also recognize that we are a shrinking minority. With the inclusion of second and third world countries entering into the mix, I expect the 'Carousel' to begin including many 'under 40.' However, a peer of mine wonders if we will not become valuable _again_ once construction of code is moved off shore. Then the knowledge and experience will be valued and the 'young folk' will be devalued as 'construction workers without experience' |
| Tue 05 Aug | Clay Dowling | I can't honestly expect that code development is going to move off shore in any kind of serious way. I've talked to many people who have made the mistake of using offshore programmers. I havn't spoke to anyone who did it who would do it again. They described it as a logistics nightmare. Even without language barriers, which most had, just the logistics of communicating with somebody on the other side of the planet made it impractical. A built in, multi hour lag in response time made the process too slow to be practical. That said, I do see the bias as I age. The young guy right out of college will work for a lot less money than I will, because he doesn't have the experience or a wife and mortgage to pay for. To a pointy haired boss, there isn't any real difference between the fresh college graduate and myself except the salary. When he has to justify his actions to his superiors, salary is a hard fact he can point to. The benefits that my experience bring are harder to qualify. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Chris | It seems to me that other engineering disciplines value experienced staff much more than software development. Why is this? Does it have to do with the perception that Software Development changes much faster than other engineering disciplines (even if it really doesn't). |
| Tue 05 Aug | SteveM | Well I am *only* approaching 30, but after 8 years as a professional developer I'm already finding it very difficult to stay up to date technically. No. Scratch that. I'm way out of date technically - I just don't have time to stay up to date at work and I'm no longer prepared (as I was a few years ago) to put in the amount of spare time required (I have something approaching a life nowadays ;-) So what am I saying? While I agree with the comments on wasted experience, I can already see why someone would prefer to hire a younger guy with maybe a year or two's post-uni experience and all the latest acronyms on his CV. Add another 10 years and I suspect I will be well overdue at the glue factory. Or maybe I'm just cynical and jaded beyond my years ;-) |
| Tue 05 Aug | Bored Bystander | One thing that I find really 'interesting' about programming is that younger and less experienced people in this field almost universally have searing contempt for their elders and for anyone with more experience. The older ones are viewed as dinosaurs, weaklings, and has-beens. The younger ones are almost always of the mentality that age won't happen to them, or that they will transcend in a Godlike way so that they won't become stupid assed and old. Contrast with 'really' professional fields like medicine and law, where the younger entrants are generally scared to death of not being deemed worthy by their elders, and where the elders actually have the power to disadvantage others who do not professionally measure up. The 'Primate Programmer's Institute' web site that is becoming a cultural phenom is pointing out something that ALL of us know subliminally. It is - that nobody views technology work as worth doing well, nor as worth paying much of anything for, and is certainly not an activity to be respected. Software development is culturally somewhat like the fashion industry. Youth worship, general shallowness of thinking, and trends and fads that last a few months or a couple of years at most. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Elephant | What about the flip side of the coin? I am a developer that has been coding for over 11 years now, been placed in a position of management for 2 years, worked in a multitude of positions at many different types of companies, big and small, commercial and government. I am presently a developer. I read as much as I can about the industry (regarding past, present, and future). I keep myself on the bleeding edge of technology by educating myself and practicing the technologies with pet projects in my spare time. Not too totaly immersed though, in that I work normal hours, and am a avid outdoorsmen and rock climber. So what's the problem? I'm 22 years old, and am one year out of college. People see me and take me to be some hot shot kid, fresh out of college, with no experience. I know that I can make more of an impact than I am making now, yet I'm doomed to be placed into a code monkey stereotype since I just graduated. I realize that I haven't seen it all, or done it all, and I do not place myself anywhere near the '40 crowd'. I am however suffering from another stereotype in the industry; that the young kids may be up to date on new technology, but that's all they know. Very frustrating. |
| Tue 05 Aug | . | Bored Bystander, every post of yours is nearly identical. Aren't you too old to still have the whiney abused tech guy mentality? Of course a young guy doing with two years of experience is going to have contempt for an old guy with 20 years of experience, who is doing the same job as the young guy. Why do all these old guys complain about being edged out of jobs that a guy with 2 years of experience can do adequately? |
| Tue 05 Aug | Bored Bystander | One year out of college and you're already frustrated!? Get a grip. Believe me - prove yourself on a project or two and you will do very well. Most programmer's careers peak parabolically around their late 20's. The best is yet ahead. Don't cop an attititude and justify my sour attitude (yet). :-) |
| Tue 05 Aug | Steve Barbour | The old adage still holds true. 'If it works, it's obsolete.' We used to bandy that one around a lot when I worked in hardware/networking sales, but it seems to hold true for developers as well. I guess we are hardware of sorts. |
| Tue 05 Aug | anon | How much of this bias is two way? I'm forty now, so I see this the end of the track approaching. I've been programming for 20+ years and am now making the move to management. I'd like to think I'm not being promoted to the level of my incompetence. However, after experiencing (surviving) the RDB, OOP, Web, and other waves, I just don't find the pure coding end all that exciting anymore. Been there, done that. On the other hand, I really enjoy the work involved in planning releases, gather requirements, balancing management, technical, and quality demands, etc, etc. I'm having fun. I think our profession is really suffering from the traditional view that programming == coding. In it's worst form, it's snobbery (management automatically means technically illiterate non-coders). Even at it's best, it's a dangerous view that can put implementation details ahead of planning. In some ways it's like saying the carpenter is more important than the architect. I've met so few developers that were really, really interested in attacking the full range of problems facing a software development team: requirements gathering, design, release planning, resource management, etc, etc. For many, developing software is always going to be coding. And along with that comes the attitude that people who don't code are less worthy of respect. This is a dangerous way to think. It often manifests itself in sentences that start like 'Stupid management made me...'. As some of our most experienced brethren leave coding behind and move on to a wider range of responsibilities we, the programmers, begin to listen to them less. We discriminate against our own. Just my opinion. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Simon Lucy | Whilst its true that there's no guarantee that the old cobbler will make you a pair of shoes that fit like skin and protect like steel, its a far likelier bet than expecting the apprentice shoe maker to do the same on the first attempt. |
| Tue 05 Aug | BigRoy | Clay -- you make the points many have. However, the overseas people also recognize them. From your post: ** I havn't spoke to anyone who did it who would do it again. Talk to more people. New project, especially ground up development work is going there. 'We' are left to tend the existing systems until they die. It is on these sites, I am thankful to be a consultant. At least I get the extra dollars. **Even without language barriers, which most had, Are no different than when Hassiem, Sanjay and Kumar are in the building. They speak English as a primary language and this is just hopeful. In fact, I recently saw someone get called racist for questioning the policy. A new approach to removing the issue. ** A built in, multi hour lag in response time made the process too slow to be practical. Yes. So the Indian and Russian firms now agree to work on 'your' timezone. I don't know what this will do to turnover, but they are addressing the issue, by claiming that if you can work with Clay who is in another city, how is that different? And to many it is working... I still see many problems, but at the same time they are working to resolve them. They want the money. |
| Tue 05 Aug | old_timer | I have a certificate pinned up on my wall for having completed my first programming course in Fortran IV in March, 1973. I'm over 55 and have been programming over 30 years. We aren't all put out to pasture at 40. But then, I'm in a sort of low tech field in an old, settled company. I've been a programmer, system manager, unix admin and R&D developer. Now I'm a cross-platform, cross-language porting expert. I have value precisely because of my long and varied experience. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Grumpy Old-Timer | BigRoy said: 'Are no different than when Hassiem, Sanjay and Kumar are in the building. They speak English as a primary language and this is just hopeful. In fact, I recently saw someone get called racist for questioning the policy. A new approach to removing the issue.' I'm not trying to be rude, but could you re-word this? I'm interested in your point, but I can't quite follow what you're saying here... I think I may have had a similar experience (I think)... |
| Tue 05 Aug | Thomas | I think the following story is enjoyable and relevant to this thread: There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. A few years later the company contacted him regarding an impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small 'x' in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, 'This is where your problem is.' The part was promptly replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges. The engineer responded briefly: One chalk mark: $1 Knowing where to put it: $49,999 It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace. |
| Tue 05 Aug | eclectic_echidna | I ask you all this. In how many other fields can you be declared a 'senior |insert job title|' after three to five years? You don't even need a college degree to make it as a programmer. -- ee |
| Tue 05 Aug | BigRoy | Grumpy Old-Timer -- my point, obviously poorly stated... I hear a lot about the 'language barrier.' We have many people from foreign countries in the US and to imply that because a person, with an accent, is somehow more difficult to work with because they are actually _in_ another country, may sound like a good point on the surface, but fails to hold water. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Philo | Elephant: 'So what's the problem? I'm 22 years old, and am one year out of college. People see me and take me to be some hot shot kid, fresh out of college, with no experience' No offense, but you DON'T have any experience. There's more to the whole thing than knowing code. The worst part about experience is that you always think you have it, when you never do. I will give you this piece of advice - the best way to make progress with your subordinates, peers, and superiors is to be humble. Recognize that you're 22, and be in supplicant mode as much as possible: 'Listen, I know I'm new at this, but isn't this likely to do the wrong thing?' kind of attitude. You can do it without selling yourself short, but try not to back people into corners or get them defensive. Entice them to be in mentor/teaching mode and you'll make a lot more progress. As for why the tendency to discard 40 year olds, was it created by the ranks of COBOL programmers who refused to learn anything new? Philo |
| Tue 05 Aug | Dustin Alexander | Philo, May not be my fight here, but I think he was implying that he did have experience. 11 years in fact. He probably grew up with computers, so he didn't have the barriers to adoption that some old timers seem to have. Meaning, he and his generation grew up with the command line over Dr. Seuss and wrote code before they dated. I wouldn't automatically chalk him into the inexperienced arena because he is young. While I wouldn't let many that age run my business, I am sure that on the technical end there are many out there would could match a coder with 40 years of experience line for line. Also remember that the dot-coms would hire anybody, giving just about anyone resume experience, young or old. What exactly is your measurement of experience? I would hire a 16 year old who had contributed disk I/O code to the Linux kernel and done nothing else much quicker than a Cobol programmer who had done the same type of MVS work for the government for decades years. On the other side, I've known 50+ years old programmers with decades of experience that could code an operating system in six months (hyperbole, anyone?), and are on the bench right now because of exactly the type of mindset Rick points out. The mindset is wrong, that the youth is better. Where I think they have it right is that the youth are statistically more comfortable with new technology, because it is not new to them. They are afraid to hire someone who won't learn their new fangled widgets. In my mind, fear motivated management is one of the key things keeping our industry in the state is it today. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Elephant | Well stated Dustin. And my experience is not singularly relegated to coding experience. I have taken that discussion offline however. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Dustin Alexander | Feel free to key me in, if its interesting. I've attached my email address to this message. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Philo | Dustin, I understand that. But *he* needs to understand that someone with eleven years coding experience should be in a fairly senior position where the most important things are not code. When I was at Camel, there were three of us on the architecture team. One guy had twice as much coding experience as I did, but was astonished that with just about every major decision I would bring up the social and political aspects of the issue. (He grew increasingly astonished because I was generally right). Here's a prime example, and a top-ten pitfall: You're a developer hired to automate a process. You need to interview the people who currently perform that process to discern the extant business rules. IMHO anyone who goes into that situation without comprehending that they are interviewing people they have been hired to put out of work is on a fast track to failure. *Understanding* that is just the first step - then you have to *manage* it. These things take experience, and I'm not talking sitting at a console typing code experience. It's a rare 22 year old college graduate that has that kind of experience and can apply it. Application architecture is about more than code moving bits - if you cannot grasp the social issues surrounding your development efforts then you're cruising for a bruising. (by the way, the social aspects of software development were the genesis of this blog and board) Philo |
| Tue 05 Aug | Dustin Alexander | Good thoughts, Philo. I, perhaps, was a bit too specific in my choice of wording. I apologize. Speaking to your other concern, I completely agree with you. The social expertise is much harder to pick up. This is more dependent on the job than the people involved. A lot of coders never get a chance to run a process automation project. In my mind, that kind of work is given to architects and analysts, who are paid more and are expected to have more experience, and then they direct the coders. If this is the point you were trying to make, then we agree. Where we may disagree is that, although, system's analysis experience is not often found in those with less than 8 years of experience, there willl always be people who don't fit into that mold. Our Elephant may be one of those. Perhaps it is just as well that youth is discriminated against. After all, we are not talking about the majority of coders who are young being in Elephant's position. In fact, from my experience, he is a definite minority. I may be bold in saying, but I think programmers with *any* knowledge of business may be a minority in our field (disregarding the obviously stilted statistics of this board.) In our world, ageism to the young is understandable and that towards the old seems ludicrous. Here's a good question for Elephant: Is it not the burden of the young to prove themselves? Or should those in business simply accept? Drawing this apparent contradiction to my previous point, perhaps managers need to be more willing and less afraid to accept the young as experts if they can prove they can do the job. They certainly shouldn't be disregarded. But, if I were in Elephant's position, I would be willing to accept a higher degree of scrutiny, especially knowing that I could withstand it. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Elephant | > Here's a good question for Elephant: Is it not the burden
> of the young to prove themselves? Or should those in
> business simply accept?
|
| Tue 05 Aug | Elephant | degre = degree ... (Note: Edit first, then post). |
| Tue 05 Aug | Philo | Elephant's correction there just raised him a whole lotta notches in my eyes. ;-) Philo |
| Tue 05 Aug | analyst | This topic also ties in with the one where Herbert Sitz gave a good run-down on the career prospects for lawyers, and the fact that they do in fact make very good money, particularly as they get older. That explanation highlights the crucial difference in software development - that developers are not in charge of their profession, mainly because there are no legal restrictions on practice. The result is that, just at the stage where other professionals start to capitalise on their experience and expertise, corporate managements cut them off at the knees. Outsourcing is one way this happens. I think developers have to start lobbying for rights and legislative protections such as are enjoyed by other high-investment occupations. Don't worry about outsourcing; that's going to happen anyway. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Bored Bystander | Elephant - >> It is my burden to prove myself, and not for those in business to simply accept. And I welcome the higher degre of scrutiny, knowing that I can withstand it. You have a great attitude, really. >> My complaint is in not being given the chance to prove myself outside of the world of coding. This is more of a trust and perception issue than simply a 'you're too young' issue. A few ideas: What kind of role are you looking for, exactly? Software architect? Project manager? Mentor? Other? I'm not clear on what it is to which you are aspiring. This would clarify your meaning. Having 11 years of solid experience (which you're claiming) at your age is unusual. So you're well outside the norms within which most people fit. Being young in age *and* being relatively new to a company is a double whammy of trust. Even older people are rarely extended a lot of trust on high value projects early on unless they came in the door with a suitable pedigree. To place your 11 years of experience in the context of this thread --- was it *paid*? Even those of us above 40 have a REAL hard time selling nonbillable experience as resume material. If it was paid, then what, exactly was it and how could that experience be leveraged to benefit your employer's goals? Last - I think you know this but still it can be galling at times to experience in real life - dues really don't mean a thing to most employers, unless it's dues spent with them specifically. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Bella | > Anyone approaching 40 in high-tech is expected to wear spooky robes and ride the Carousel of Doom on their 40th birthday. Usually they’re blown off the carousel into jobs at Radio Shack or manning the chalupa station at Taco Bell. And all their accumulated knowledge goes with them. That is the biggest pile of shit I've ever read. Let me correct it....People with SHIT skills are relegated to Taco Bell, either at age 25, 35, 45, or 55. However long it takes to be 'found out'. In fact, let me blow your entire bullshit argument out of the water right here and now: People with GREAT skills are EXPOENTIALLY in HIGHER demand as they age. Yea, you read that right. Assuming the person has maintained a good network of professional contacts. Guess how many job offers Bill Gates would have tommorrow? Oh wait, he's 40+. I guess it's the chalupa line for him also, you imbecile. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Bella | > Most programmer's careers peak parabolically around their late 20's. Yea, right about the time they start buying houses, getting married, and having kids. ie: The age when they NO LONGER focus on their careers like they used to, and have a million other distractions in their lives.. Yet, then they go blame AGE discrimination. Sorry, it's SKILLS discrimination. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Cletus | 'I am a developer that has been coding for over 11 years now...' 'So what's the problem? I'm 22 years old, and am one year out of college. People see me and take me to be some hot shot kid, fresh out of college, with no experience...' Elephant, Is this a typo, or you claiming to have started programming at 11 yrs old? If this is your claim, then I can see why your peers do not take you seriously. Even if you have been programming since 11, how many years have you spent actually writing production code used in a business setting? Second, lets say you are a whizbang genious programmer fresh out of college, you still are missing time put in the 'School of Hard Knocks'. There is just no substitute for this kind of time. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Simon Lucy | Its tricky to maintain a network of contacts when they all get bounced cos they're the same age or older than you. And, it might be instructive to realise that when you do have the mortgage, children and so on you're actually far more likely to focus on those things that are important which include work and getting it done the right way, rather than trying all the wrong ways you never knew before. There isn't a piece of software or technique that anyone writing code thirty years ago couldn't recognise the paradigm for, Oh bum, I used the word paradigm. That includes class structures. Ummm just about. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Bella | > Its tricky to maintain a network of contacts when they all get bounced cos they're the same age or older than you. Looks like you maintained the wrong set of contacts. Note to self: In the future, keep in touch with talented programmers, not people hanging around during boom times. Firms couldn't give a shit if you were 120 years old, if you were the only one who knew how to maintain their cash cow legacy code. The only people who have been 'bounced' have been DEAD WEIGHT. |
| Tue 05 Aug | Phibian | Just wanted to chime in here to point out that not everyone starts working 'fresh out of college'. Several people reading this board, myself included, worked full time right through college. And while I don't think it has been discussed here, the age at which you start working (yup, doing 'production' things) really varies from person to person. Really, age has very little to do with your business background, programming skills or particular domain knowledge. In our company, it so happens that the people with the most experience (in all areas) are also the youngest by a significant amount. So what? Experience has more to do with the opportunities you've had (or made) and what you did with said opportunities. The life choices you made. Etc. Etc. Age discrimination exists at both ends of the scale, but at least you can outgrow discrimination based on your youth (speaking as someone who is finally getting to the point where it is no longer an issue). But in either case it is as dumb as discrimination based on things such as your race. I don't think age discrimination is specific to high tech though. |
| Tue 05 Aug | And the horse you rode in on | I think the discrimination against both the old and the young are the same thing. Both stem from the attitude of not evaluating people on their merits. The young are 'too inexperienced' to know how to do something. Nobody bothers to see whether they can do the job, it's simply 'they're too young, so it must be true'. The old are 'has beens'. They can't possibly still be up to date with modern trends in computing, I mean they have grey hair! Better get rid of them before they try to reprogram your system in COBOL! It's the same attitude, and it comes from over-generalising and trying to reduce people to dot points on resumes. The stupid thing is in an industry where the majority of people are at best borderline competent, trying to guess which ones are actually quality people by playing the experience game is futile. You may as well play whack a mole, because your odds of getting the better person using that metric are simply not in your favour. |
| Tue 05 Aug | mackinac | >>> I mean they have grey hair! <<< When did people start spelling gray with an 'e'? |
| Tue 05 Aug | rick chapman | +++That is the biggest pile of shit I've ever read. Let me correct it....People with SHIT skills are relegated to Taco Bell, either at age 25, 35, 45, or 55. However long it takes to be 'found out'. +++ Well, maybe on the planet you come from. Those of us who live on planet Earth and who have actually worked with people from this sphere (something you clearly cannot know anything about since your conversational mode indicates you can only communicate with people via notes passed through holes cut in blackened out polystytrene walls) know that in high-tech over 40s are automatically targeted for elimination. +++In fact, let me blow your entire bullshit argument out of the water right here and now: People with GREAT skills are EXPOENTIALLY in HIGHER demand as they age. Yea, you read that right. +++ Well, you provide no data for your assumption, and the statement is rather silly in any event. Most people don't have 'great' skills. Many people have 'good' skills and may be competent and experienced yet not be 'great.' This is a concept that you, a member of the UberGeek Elite, may not fully grasp, but there it is. rick |
| Wed 06 Aug | And the horse you rode in on | >>> When did people start spelling gray with an 'e'? <<< No idea, the dictionary doesn't say, just lists it as an acceptable variant. |
| Wed 06 Aug | | Yeh, but Phibian, you were the guy who's going to pay for the company to fix it's own car, are you not? See, experience. You don't have it. |
| Wed 06 Aug | Simon Lucy | Actually Bella, programmers aren't really opinion formers and aren't that important in terms of getting work. |
| Wed 06 Aug | Just me (Sir to you) | Yes, there is age discrimination. I know. I practised it myself when I was younger and less experienced. I am very confident that others on this board could confess to the same. When in my twenties and co-responsible for hiring for programming positions on my team, I would put aside all the over fortyfives, regardsless of the merit of their CV's. I just could not imagine being in charge of someone approaching an age closer to my dad's than my own. Now I know that is bullshit, and that the real mistake was my insecurity with reagards to authority. But that does not change that it happened, and I am pretty my case is not that exceptional. |
| Wed 06 Aug | Just me (Sir to you) | BTW, sorry for the massive typos cropping up in my posts lately. less time -> compressed JOS break. Maybe I should consider typing up replies in Word and copy/paste. |
| Wed 06 Aug | Simon Lucy | Now that this thread is in its 40's I presume it will be retired to wandering shopping malls and being excited by barely clad athletes of whichever gender preferred. |
| Wed 06 Aug | Phibian | 'Gray' is the American spelling of 'Grey' (which is a british-ism). Most of these variants in spelling (color vs colour) can be traced back to the Civil War. Space: I was indeed the person who stated that if you cause damage to someone else's property, you are morally responsible for that damage, regardless of the circumstances. If you weren't done with that discussion, (and have new arguments other than the less than creative 'I disagree with you so you must be a moron' variety) feel free to start a new thread. In any case, I fail to see how that relates to how much or little experience I may or may not have, nor how you came to any conclusions on my age or gender from either discussion. (And btw, 'it's' means 'it is' or 'it has'. The possessive version is 'its'.) Just me - I don't think I can also confess to age discrimination - especially not against the 'aged' :) Having begun a 'management' career early, many of those who I've been responsible for were years older than I was. Since I've been in widely mixed age-groups during my entire working career to date, the age thing has not been all that important to me, although I have run into some 'ageism' myself (it didn't help that I have always looked younger than I actually am, with waitresses still providing me with the kid's menu even when I hit my twenties). Probably as a result of people being wildly off in their estimations of my age has made me more wary of making assumptions about people and their age in general. Unfortunately, I think that most people don't really get that experience (or it was so long ago and so brief that it didn't make an impact). So it's an issue that they don't think about (and perhaps unwittingly contribute to) until it happens to them when they get past a certain age. |
| Wed 06 Aug | Bella | +++In fact, let me blow your entire bullshit argument out of the water right here and now: People with GREAT skills are EXPOENTIALLY in HIGHER demand as they age. Yea, you read that right. +++ Let me explain to you....the obvious. Do you work in IT ? Have you ever hired a friend b/c you KNOW he's a great resource? The longer you work, the more people you work with. The more people you've worked with, the most people who are out there who know FIRST HAND how good you are (or bad you are). And the more people out there who know how good you are, the easier it is to find work, b/c they are dying to get you on their team, and you're the first one on their list.... This 'network effect' is directly correlated to experience, which tends to be a function of age... .... Age discrimination is a scapegoat for CUTTING DEAD WEIGHT....age 8 or age 80... |
| Wed 06 Aug | | Phibian, you continue to display your lack of experience. The reason I and others called you to account was the complete irrationality of your claim, which conflicts with all standard business procedure. Second, the correction over the possessive apostrophe is inappropriate point-scoring. Again, the mark of someone with poor judgement. I know more about the posessive apostrophe than you ever will. Third, your claims about managing multi-age groups sound increasingly hollow. |
| Wed 06 Aug | Steven E. Harris | > Again, the mark of someone with poor judgement. > I know more about the posessive apostrophe > than you ever will. Then why did you take the extra time and effort to type that apostrophe when you know it wasn't necessary? It's better to admit the simple mistake and move on than to attack your editor in self-defense. This 'it's' problem is spreading. I applaud any effort to slow it down, including public ridicule. |
| Thu 07 Aug | Simon Lucy | Exponentially higher in demand, Bella? Do you know what exponentially means? What's its value in this case? People networks do work yes, but only so long as you stay within the network. People lose work for a host of reasons, most frequently it has nothing to do with their skills or their abilities. If you lose work at a time when demand overall is low, and as you've said you've dropped out of this tawdry industry its difficult to see how much current knowledge you might draw upon, then its quite likely that the network as a whole is broken that people are more intent on keeping their own work than promoting the interests of another. Its also true that those that are older are seen as costing more to do the same work, at times extra experience isn't seen as an asset but a liability. There are also occasions where people with long experience, whatever their age, are not hired because they're perceived as being a possible difficulty that they might ask why and ask why cogently, rather than accept what might be a padded out gloppy mess. Age does not qualify anyone for anything (other than a pension), however age can disqualify. |
| Thu 07 Aug | Bella | > Usually they’re blown off the carousel into jobs at Radio Shack or manning the chalupa station at Taco Bell Not for nothing, but I actually know someone who is a top ranked salesman at Radio Shack. He actually gets annual commission bonuses of almost $100k. I swear I am not kidding. But I think he is the freak exception, not the norm. > Do you know what exponentially means? What's its value in this case? It is analgous to exponential in the population growth sense. The demand for a top worker is exponential, b/c as one ages, and has worked with more people, they in turn w |