daven11

Yes I've often maintained that we could just drill a hole in the middle of Australia and dump the worlds nuclear waste in it. Its the perfect spot, no ground water (if you make sure its west of the great artesian basin), geologically and politically stable, no one lives there for miles, and there's already a shit ton of radiation there anyway - thats where the Uranium comes from.

One problem would be transporting it, but again, solvable problems, we tanker oil around the world, so it can be done. The trouble is though political. No one wants all that nuclear waste in their back yard, even if no one ever uses the backyard.

Fukishima added to the problem - if the Japanese, whose engineering skill is the best in the world, have problems then what about the rest of the world? I see this as a very valid objection.

One of the problems I see in the popular mind is the idea that radiation is somehow unique and only occurs in nuclear reactors, and any of it appears somewhere then we're all dead. The coal industry makes sure no one finds out that the amount of radiation expelled by coal powered stations exceeds that produced by nuclear reactors https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

As you say the amount to be stored is pretty small, and could probably be dumped down a hole in an afternoon and home in time for tea

An anecdote - I went to a radiology clinic a while ago for a tour (writing some software) and we stopped by the room where they store the radioactive material, pretty low level stuff and all stored away. The manager taking me around said "This is where we store the radiocative stuff" looking at me and waiting for a reaction - a bit of fun I imagine he has - expecting me to run away and panic, but I have a physics degree so no drama - he was disappointed, and we laughed. But this is the public mind - radiation is scary stuff that causes mutations and kills you, so there's a real marketing problem. No doubt this has been pumped up by the oil and coal industry over the years.

I find that one hard to believe - I can't believe Bill would open himself up to cartel laws, the others however :-) Though that would explain a few things

Wow, that's the bit you don't hear in the papers. Ever thought of writing a book with this stuff?

Thanks folks, it's really interesting to hear the road less travelled. Any others?

Thanks for sharing, I'm pleased to hear you recommend going to school, it seems there's an exceptional few who can make it without a degree. I'd thought there'd be more, maybe they have better things to do on their weekend :-)

Indeed, and you could do the old trick of making a ram disk for your compiles

I have to ask - any stories you can tell?

That's great - did not having a degree ever cause you problems?

oh, I just had a look and the base model doesn't have an SSD - I'd really not consider developing without an SSD any more. It will work but compile times are slower, how much I couldn't say. But then I've developed for years without an SSD before that so...

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lol, I think you may be an exception :-), kudos to you by the way

Are you sure? - from the site https://support.apple.com/en-is/HT4432

Mac mini (Late 2014) Mac mini (Late 2014) does not have user-installable RAM. You can configure the memory in your Mac mini (Late 2014) when you purchase it.

I'd ask over on http://apple.stackexchange.com to get a couple of other opinions to :-)

I'd get 8GB, I do have trouble now and then with the 4GB, but only because of the VM (I have to reboot), 8GB will give you a longer lifetime I think (I didn't think you could upgrade the RAM in the mini's any more).

I use a macbook air mid 2011. 1.7 Ghz i5, 4GB 133MHz DDR3, 128GB SSD, intel HD graphics 3000 384 MB memory, and it works fine. I run Yosemite on it and develop iOS apps. I actually run a Windows 8 VM on it as well - but I have to be careful with the memory usage :-). I keep looking for an excuse to upgrade it but I have no reason :-(

If you buy from Apple you can return it in 14 days no questions asked - at least in Australia last time I looked. I tried this once with an external hard drive (too noisy) and it was not a problem.

That was what a degree was for in the old days - it was to teach you how to learn. There are other paths nowadays I suppose, but a degree is a tick from an institution (who are experts in learning) that you can learn something and presumably if you've done this you can learn other stuff.

I was self taught then did a CS degree, so have a foot in both camps. Some of the things I learnt in the degree which I never would have learnt by myself were (and others have mentioned some of these) - algorithms, relational theory, O-notation, symbolic logic, stats, CSP. Then there were things I learnt myself that I never learnt at uni because I wanted to - assembler, 2d/3d graphics, c++. Then there are things I've taught myself since uni - compiler theory, database optimisation, functional programming (actually did this at Uni but couldn't see the point then - hardware was rubbish then though), web stuff.

So difference would be in broad for my case - uni gives you the theoretical foundations that you probably wouldn't learn yourself, teaching yourself programming gives you the hands on stuff you'd never learn in depth at a uni. Two sides of the same coin I suppose, it would be rare to have a self taught person learn the theory that you'd learn at uni, and I don't think you'd ever get that depth without some uni training imho.

The other thing that comes to mind is if you're smart and self taught - why wouldn't you do a degree? The only good answer I can think of is that you're so friggin awesome you're churning out code that everyone says is awesome and google or apple has hired you already, there are perhaps 10 people in the world like this - everyone else do your degree :-)

Managers who hire specialists in a field (i.e. me) then proceed to tell them how to work. It's solvable, but the cost is me taking on the risk of ignoring managers and proceeding, or present the reasons why their approach will fail and wait.

i don't want to rain on your parade but you do know there are a gagillion of these around

I looked at flex/air a year or so ago for the same requirements - ended up using Delphi. It was uncertain at the time whether flex/air would be around (it may be different now), also Delphi has a very mature 3rd party component market.

until someone comes up with a way to determine what is bad versus good then that is perhaps the best there is. I use companies to do all sorts of things for me - watching software is just one more thing.

...or come up with a better way to download and install software, oh wait a minute Apple did that and made a billion dollar industry downloading apps.

we've come a long way since the 70's...

Delphi - I'm all alone

For those who don't live in Brisbane. The brisbane times is a free paper put in peoples letter boxes, best known for it's local restaurant reviews and fashion. I wouldn't take it's views on overseas IT procurement very seriously :-)

way faster than in the browser

of course - run it in a VM - I do it every day

A 50"? How close do you sit to that? I have a 27" Dell which is a beautiful monitor and a couple of 24" monitors - but I'd probably just get 2 or 3 x 24" next time, I find the 27 a bit big, 50" I'd find overwhelming.

Wait till you go back to your own code in 1,2,5 years and think who wrote this rubbish - only to look it up and find out it was you :-)

We call them brownstones in australia - because they are all made of sandstone

If you want to do web browser then javascript

For apple (IOS/OSX) then objective C or maybe Ruby or lua

Embedded programming then C

Microsoft you have a large choice C# or VB.Net perhaps

Android is Java

Enterprise programming then Java or C#

Pose value haskell or scala :-)

It depends on your background and what you want to do. I think every developer should know C or C++ but not as a starter unless you like serious hacking. Javascript is the language of the web browser so you'd need to know that for any browser programming. Enterprises run on C# or Java.

Then of course there are all the scripting languages python is perhaps the most popular for general scripting, or powershell for windows

I use a very simple version of function point analysis. Write down all the different things you know you need to do, beside each one write easy, medium or hard. easy takes 0.5 to 1 day, medium 2-3 days, hard 3-5 days. If you think any bits are very hard then break it down - if you can't then you've found something you don't know - and you have to focus on that - this is a risk and flag it as such.

If it's a big project then chop it up into deliverables, so you can monitor your estimates along the way.

..there's a lot more but something to get you started.

(if you have to deliver on your estimate - double it :-). When you double your estimate - make sure you don't work to your doubled estimates - otherwise you'll have to double it again :-) )