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erictobiaon Why Management is Not a Profession

You make a great point and I do agree to a certain extent. However, there have been some projects I've worked on where having a great manager made all the difference in the world. Having someone that deals with all of the non-technical minutia so that programmers can keep building stuff is really valuable IMHO.

Maybe software could fulfill this role one day, but as you say we're not there yet.

It may be that I'm getting too old and cynical, but when I hear arguments about eliminating the middle-man I can't help but think of a quote from Malcolm Reynolds in the show Firefly:

"About 50% of the human race is middlemen and they don’t take kindly to being eliminated."

erictobiaon Best countries for startups

Any (non U.S.) folks with startups in the countries on this list? Is the article consistent with your experience?

erictobiaon The Programming Elite, Programmers Who Read

This sets the bar for an elite programmer fairly low IMHO.

erictobiaon Ask YC: Excel Generation (Server Side)?

(it only gets difficult if you need to start embedding charts and specifying fonts)

We do need to do some of this

erictobiaon Ask YC: Excel Generation (Server Side)?

The latest (licensed) version of Office we have is 2003. As far as we know using Office 2003 for server side Excel generation is not recommended.

Thanks for the link to the Python framework though.

erictobiaon Ask YC: Excel Generation (Server Side)?

I haven't had a look at that...looks promising. Right now I'd be looking for something I can use with C#.

Thanks for the suggestion.

erictobiaon New functional language - C#

You're right - it has been there since at least 2.0. I threw that in there as an example. I apologize for not clarifying that.

erictobiaon New functional language - C#

It's actually possible to write slightly less verbose code with C# 3.0. For example:

  //...

  char[] someChars = {'A', 'B', 'C'};

  var moreChars = new [] {'D', 'E', 'F'};

  SomeMethod(new[] { 'G', 'H', 'I' });

  //...

I do, however, agree with your sentiment. The language still has some aspects that are quite verbose when compared with dynamically typed languages. You are also right in pointing out that these new features are irrelevant if programmers are not taking advantage of them.