harkyns_castle

You sound hesitant and not confident of your own ability.

Personally, the first thing I'd do is remove myself from people like that. What a painful way to live - there are a hundred other different environments.

If you feel like you need to be there, you probably have already realized it - they are full of shit - that is sales. Most sales people are confidence tricksters, they spin bullshit. You have a potent weapon, a brain. Use it, whip them down. They're generally morons, with confidence.

But, I would say get out of the environment.

Give it some more time, all dissenting posts will be greyed out hehe.

Ultimately I guess it depends on whether you're optimistic about human nature, over time.

I think we're seeing a gross abuse of it, esp. from the leaders of the US and the people pulling the strings. But, I'd like to think we improve over time, despite this kind of evil. And there is no doubt in my mind its an evil, perhaps not biblical, but a vast and greedy, sickening selfishness.

Pity we won't be around to see it if and when it turns right, but time is a great healer. I don't think the level of greed we're seeing now can be turned around in a generation.

Not just surveillance, we also need a reason to keep the war machine going. And there'll be demands for more money for national security after this. Ad infinitum until there's a revolt or some kind of political evolution in the states.

That fiat cash will get tucked away by some established families and companies, revolving doors aplenty, and then a new threat will be invented/created when this one wears out. The Fed, or the people behind it, will sit back with their hands crossed on their fat, corrupt bellies and say, well, at least we'll enjoy the planet while we live. Screw the rest.

Most sensible companies ignore LinkedIn now from what I've gathered/listened to, although it has been a while.

Still quite a strong, what I would call, "shill" force out there though.

Didn't foresee all this nonsense when I started to enjoy IT back in the younger days.

Wish I didn't see it now either. What a mess. Long live the petrodollar and killing other humans for a fiat currency.

I'm rooting for the trees. Here in Tasmania we're seeing some ancient trees being turned into woodchips because it makes short-term sense for greedy politicians and people with an IQ thinner than said trees. "What will I do when I can't hack trees down?! Oh no!"

I can't understand why anyone would be on LinkedIn, after their nefarious practices.

The last straw was the one where they requested your email login details, and proceeded to spam your contacts with join requests. What kind of a prick of a company does that?

I guess they factored in the people that'd pay attention to that kind of scumbaggery, and those that wouldn't and figured they'd end up on top. Guess they did too. You're a product, not a customer, when you're on LinkedIn, much the same as Facebook.

The nail in the coffin for me has been recruitment agencies stressing I should be on it - any advice from the vampires like that is a good sign you should be doing the polar opposite.

I guess the supply/demand thing is going to differ between cities and places in the world.

Where I live (Australia), plumbers and electricians often have a higher rate than quite senior developers ($200 call out rate with minimum hour charge and then $200 or so each hour on top etc), yet companies look aghast when you ask a similar rate, despite it being quite an intensive game to wrap your head around.

Then they hire someone that thinks node.js is a sensible idea, and end up paying double to have things fixed up when that ends in disaster, so perhaps it works itself out in the end.

I don't know, but the one thing I will say is that they're often interesting, or at least some of them.

I tried one, and I've seen it since, which is a challenge i.e. they'll present you with a basic page saying "Try JSON", or something of a similar ilk. Then you have to follow the rabbit hole (automating a solution in a scripting language generally) until eventually you're met with a page with actually how to apply to the real job.

I like companies that do that.

The one I saw the other day was a grid of dots (say 300 or so), with some filled in. They gave you one second to count the dots and submit the form, so the trick is parsing the HTML in < 1 second and responding within the session.

Edit: You'll have to switch up the game now hehe.

Metrowerks Codewarrior has fond memories for me too (although I have never had a problem with Eclipse aside from bloated J2EE bundles like WSAD etc. It's easy to set it up to be quick and unobstrusive I've found).

In terms of making a difference, I think we face the "tyranny of the majority". Whilst a lot of "us" feel strongly about where this is all going, it seems like the average Joe just hears from the media: "Its to protect you from XYZ threat of the month". Annoys me greatly.

Very much agreed. It sounds like OP is a bit burnt out, and I had much the same thing - I said to myself I'll do my own thing, I've done the hard yards, I'll just sit down to think of something, got a few good ideas... time keeps ticking though, and unless you have endless cash, the bills will keep rolling in. Discipline and focus I guess is pretty important to doing the solo thing.

It's easy to forget the plethora of shit jobs out there once you've been doing software development/ops/IT for a while. Sure, its painful, and some companies more than others, but I agree with another poster that often it's more what you put on yourself versus what's forced on you (at least in my case I think that was often true). I guess it's vital to look for that work/life balance and a company that will offer that (not just lip service); or do your own thing, but that can be pretty hard work too - it's not just coding then, it's all the roles, even the ones you hate.

If there were an easy answer, we'd all be doing it.

[edit] added bit.

I've done a fair bit of contracting, and most interview processes are ridiculous imo. You can't glean anything much of value from a face-to-face interview with a software developer; at least, it can range from the fact they either can't answer questions, or they can answer them perfectly with all the right idioms and (language)-speak. Doesn't really help to determine whether they'd be a valuable asset I don't think (well, the former you can dismiss, but the latter you can't rely on solely). Of course, there's a lot more you'll get from the interview related to interpersonal skills etc.

I think a coding test is vital... that's the first step in filtering out the ones that can talk the talk versus people that can write nice code. I had to conduct interviews for a team in another country at one stage, and I had (supposed) PhD students that couldn't write a Hello World in the language of choice. Had they have been selected just on their resumes, they would've got in easily.

Then beyond that, there are fast learners that can pick up anything given a bit of time and become the leaders in the group, then there are people that can't. Interviews I don't think will find the former.

Then at times these people will get thrown together on teams and you wonder why there's friction... because you've hired some people that aren't helpful, and the others in the team know they'll have to carry them. For expensive jobs, I think its worth taking the time to do a few rounds, provide some good coding challenges, and not to be too pedantic about things if you think the candidate has the experience to pick things up despite not having learnt the latest * framework (of which we seem to get new ones every day).

I tend to go for Samsung, yet to have a problem with them in the PC space. My Samsung phone otoh has developed a few blue pixels which I'm not enjoying.

I wouldn't say I'm good at great UIs, but my approach has been that of a bowerbird - find things you love using, and copy them.

Over time, you'll gradually pick up approaches that you like and refine them, and combine them. Though I imagine a quick course in HCI, UI design, UX wouldn't hurt either.

Most C++ codebases I've seen have the brace on a fresh line, most Java codebases at the end of the line (at a guess born of the Sun guidelines and default Eclipse formatting perhaps). I started with the former, but prefer the latter now.

To me its more about conserving an extra bit of vertical space... I like my methods/functions quite compact. In the past I liked the balanced nature of the braces though.

Makes absolutely no appreciable difference though of course, as long as you don't get into a formatting war with your team.

I also cut my teeth programming on the old Apple IIe. Brings back some fond memories... bought a big tome at one stage that had an assembler you could 'install' by typing out pages and pages of machine code... I devoutly typed out all umpteen pages but I never got that assembler to work, even with checksum bytes at the end of every line. Back then programming felt like working magic to me. Ty Woz.

> whereas Git does not [...]

Git's "sparse checkout" feature can grab a part of a larger repo from memory.

Looks nice and easy to plug in, just at a quick glance I'd prefer to see some of the visualisations or output that it produces. Lot of stars for ten days on github.

I quite like Eclipse's debugging support (for Java), though I haven't used it for C. I think you can get GDB integrated into Eclipse's CDT with breakpoints etc.

Haven't used DDD either but it looks interesting too:

http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/

Very true, although I suppose most scams prey on vulnerable people. Be nice to think there's a special circle of Hell for people that'd do this to other people. Are there no laws in Pakistan that prevent this kind of thing from operating? It sounds like its a fairly well known thing... I guess money is greasing the corrupt wheels.

I'm in between moving, but when I unpack I have a bit of a PC graveyard and can piece together something if you're still stuck. Even a Windows key I guess if you're that way inclined.

Hopefully some of the numbnuts in the US will get up and vote about it.

Hopefully some of the numbnuts in the AU will get up and vote about it.

Hopefully some of the numbnuts in the NZ will get up and vote about it. (Kia Kaha)

Yes I understand its a downvote post. Just wondering what will change this hellish situation.

Couldn't have said it better myself, a really well said point or series of points.

Honestly, I'll all for it. But the article had nothing of substance. After a deluge of NSA/GCHQ/ASD/Canadian/NZ links lately, this is like saying, "They're spying on us". Sure, and I despise that, but what's the point of posting this until there is something of substance posted? Whet our tastes?

> It's not always a choice; where I worked, as architects we sometimes had to put on our hero-capes and wade into code to save the day.

I think its a matter of context, and one "architect" from one organisation to another will differ greatly.

I've never seen a good "hands-off" architect in my experience. They've normally been the failed developers, or the ones that have been able to network to such an extent they get to a hands-off role. But, that's in context. Dilbertian almost.

Hehe yeah. "We're going to release some things", as far as I can tell.

I'm not sure the point, lead with something interesting.

* Not to say I don't think it's worthwhile. Just a bit dry atm.

I've been using open source for ages, and have rarely taken the time to look at the source.

But, at least its there.

I sometimes wish there wasn't such motivation to hack software. If we were all working towards a common good (in my case I'd like to see us doing a bit of space exploration, renewable energy tech etc), and we wouldn't need to exploit stuff.

But, we're humans. Greedy little scumbags hehe, always looking for the short term gain. All varying forms of politicians.

It probably isn't a bad idea to get a job programming. Depends on the bugs though, and, well, working for free. I'd like to think that won't be the only way to get a job in programming.

I hate this focus on "Show me your Github account etc". Some people work commercial jobs where all their work is done for private companies - the lack of open source work has absolutely no bearing on how good you are. If you choose to do open source work, well, I applaud that, but this kind of thing annoys me.