An ambitious software developer with ambitious ideas planning to start a, err, startup. But have to get out of this ennui brought about by over indulgence first. My ideas have been brewing for a couple of years and I seriously hope they find fruition inside 2016 (I planned for 2015 but couldn't happen due to unforeseen circumstances). And oh, I will fund my company with my savings as I am not a fan of the claws of vulture capitalists. I will publish many of my projects as FOSS.
For non technological fields, I would say philosophy, investigative journalism and fiction (books, movies etc where you cover your bases). One might add whatever political analysis do too but to me they are basically fence sitters who say things without accountability or liability and are simply glorified whatiffers.
I might be completely wrong but I think if you request from a position of strength, in that you have pleased all the interviewers and they are visibly eager to hire you ASAP, then it seems possible that they let you have a look, if not the core logic at least the less critical parts. Whether or not it is rude depends on how you make the request. :)
About horrendous code, I haven't changed many companies so I wonder how many real world products that are some years old have code bases that are not some sort of a hard to figure patchy clutter if not down right trainwreck.
As for employees looking at my code, it isn't as straight forward. The code I upload to public repos like github are meant to be seen, used, extended and/or appreciated by peers, so letting potential employers look at them isn't a problem. However, when I mention that I have some personal projects brewing, which to me are potential business ideas, I would not let them in on too much detail much less look at the source code. Even if then agree to sign an NDA I wouldn't let them as I don't trust big corporations.
Often while searching a book or other items on google, the item that I want is shown within an ad box on the right, and invariably found on the big river, but the 'ordinary' link to that item won't appear on the first page! I am a bit lazy to click on next page arrow, and also have no grudge against google to cause them a 'loss', so I say what the heck and click on the item. As to when, probably last week sometime.
Yes, especially web front end development. I still get hits from as far back as 2008. I do do a quick read though because some of the experts are decent enough to point out the changes for the current time, either as an update to the answer or a comment.
> To be fair, asking on SO isn't all that difficult. It just requires a little patience, to read and understand the guidelines, and to craft a high quality question.
This is what is troublesome. There are far too many questions with many impassioned comments that suggests they were closed and reopened multiple times. It seems the interpretation of rules is done too stringently and arbitrarily for most people's liking.
> I'm amused to see programmers.stackexchange get a positive call out, because it used to be the paragon of moderator intolerance. Perhaps that culture has changed for the better.
I had a nice run there as a participant compared to stack. Even as a lurker, I don't find that many questions meted out the stack treatment.
There are three ways to use stackoverflow - ask, answer and lurk.
Asking is hard as the admins are quite intolerant of anything that doesn't abide by the rules, in their opinion. That said, small quick queries, those that would get shot down when posted as questions, are best asked in chat rooms and you will get a useful answer. The notification comes in handy when a chat room question is answered after an extended period of time.
Answering is harder, as questions are usually highly problem specific (due to the rules), mostly particular framework or domain related, and only those who have faced similar issues can make meaningful posts. Often times the multi hundred thousand rep kings can get away with non answers (some even get accepted) in spite of a lesser rep king complaining about that in the comments.
That leaves with lurking. Lurking has benefited me immensely. It seems every problem you have is already answered in like 2010.
The programmers.stackexchange is much better as it allows opinion based, discussion oriented posts although the admins seem to be getting intolerant there lately, which is a bit odd.
There are these two stackexchange qna threads [0] [1] that I had bookmarked a while back. I came across another one [2] that mentions something called "bus factor"[3], which I found quite amusing, though this question is about freelancing. I think there is enough material in all these combined and the links they point to to sufficiently address your concerns.
We read code in order to understand it, and I believe one must read code with whatever technique that lets them understand it best (I know nothing of this subvocalizing thing; I came here to see what it was). For me, reading code is a deliberate activity, in that one must spend some time with it and not whiz past it. Further, speed reading seems irrelevant, not to mention counter productive, when dealing with code.
I lie on my back on the terrace watching white clouds sail across the blue sky. Looking at the kites swirling in the draft is somehow relaxing to me. At night, I look out of the window at the sky with sparkling stars or distant city lights. The calmness of the night, with nothing but clock tick, and light breeze, inspires me quite a lot. During this routine I just let my mind wander. If this goes on for more than 30 min, my mind automatically switches to the problem I am stuck with. In rainy season its a bit frustrating as this routine isn't possible. I just punch bag.
It is bad form to block default UI,and it will only annoy and anger your users. The solution to this is to append your own menu to the default context menu. However, this cannot be done AFAIK. Probably a standard that allows that would be something worthy of consideration. So the only way to deal with this is custom UI elements. (As a Windows desktop developer moving to web development, I was quite dismayed that I couldn't simply get menu handle and append. In general, moving to straight jacketed webapps from desktop background where almost everything was possible was quite frustrating and painful.)
You know, when humans find it hard to make sense of software requirements expressed by other humans in order to produce usable software, I am not sure if AI can. Also, all this AI thing as it stands now is mostly about data processing. So until NLP becomes a reality, in that Turing test is smashed to pieces, I am sure programmers won't become irrelevant.
However, I see programming becoming more of a DIY thing. In fact, one might argue that it started out as DIY, with scientists and engineers hacking software for their own use. Still, the task of building non trivial software, based on off the shelf tools or custom made, will need professional programmers (aka software engineers), much like how despite people increasingly DIYing many things there still are carpenters, electricians, automechanics, tailors etc. So I would say there will be more.
About excellent programmers, I don't think everyone can agree on what parameters constitute excellence, and it is quite arbitrary, so that part of the debate will rage on even in the future.
Poor xkcd. Frowning upon people freely interchanging their, they're and there is not being grammar police (unlike complaining about split infinitives, dangling preposition etc). It seems such people that make this mistake are too lazy and arrogant to correct themselves and are too eager to call names. The placard ruined what would have been an average comic..
That depends on whether there are enough real people on it, and it is a vicious circle because everyone would think the same. That said, if you can create one without all the stuff people hate about current social networks, you might make it attractive for enough people to join and set the ball rolling, and I might consider joining. (I am not being facetious.) So it being run by pro profit or non profit is a non issue.
Not at all. It seems these bigcos in their desire to diversify either produce an inferior version of pre existing hit software which will eventually fizzle out (or kept under life support), or simply buy out a viable competitor to the said pre existing hit software. So, unless you are trying to compete with bigcos' A game software products, you shouldn't worry. I don't. One might even look to create a viable competitor and seek a buyout, enjoy the spoils for a while and move on to next idea. Again, I don't.
I personally like deep ocean exploration much more than space exploration as it is extremely relevant to us as living beings on Earth. I hope some like minded sf writers popularize this genre in near future (I don't read sf but a cursory look at it seems space exploration is favored a lot, probably next only to (and intertwined with) time travel).
Techies can only assist the scientists in bringing their successful lab experiments into the real world. I expect scientists to solve problems in two fields - agriculture and water resources (especially drinking water) - before tackling fancier things like interplanetary exploration, brain computer interfaces etc. I understand not all scientists (or their domains) are equal but I expect science to solve basic problems first. Science created the problem by making people live longer, so science must solve the problem as well (half kidding). Once a solution is in beta mode, the techies can go crazy building software and gadgets for it, which is what they do well.
Whenever I read such articles, I am completely at a loss as to what it means to code. Do they mean churning out code, like a codemonkey, for something that some architect has designed? Do they mean getting their hands dirty by pitching in to write some code for something that they themselves have architected? Do they mean doing the whole gig, starting from vague idea to producing a usable software, all by themselves and thus having to write all the code themselves instead of hiring a young ninja?
I can't speculate on the economics part of it all, but I have a different take. I think it will lead to another renaissance of sorts. Assuming that AI and automation are well done, it will give people a lot of free time to indulge in activities like art and philosophy more than what is possible currently (if one doesn't do it, then at least appreciate others' efforts). Liberal arts will come to fore again. There will be more intellectual activity that isn't tied to technology. Wars will become rare (after the last war to end all wars, of course). Fewer people will die (at least in non poor countries) due to advanced medicine. I am not sure what all this critical thinking etc and over population will bring about though. Probably a combination of natural phenomenon like super bugs and massive solar flare will take us back to early 1900s.
IMO in software industry there are only two kinds of jobs that are interesting - ones where you create non trivial user applications using complex high level technologies and one where you create those underlying technologies. It seems you are doing boring CRUD applications, and that at a very high level too, so it is natural to feel bored. If you can't find the former kind of jobs, I would suggest that you learn/improve hardcore CS stuff and apply for a job where you would be building things at lower levels.
Project managers and programmers are blood rivals. So firstly, never seek appreciation from your team. If you get some, always be skeptical of these possible sycophants. Secondly, never try to be their buddy - it will never work, and if it seems to, it just means that they are tolerating you. Thirdly, you should use the phrase "good job xyz" ad nauseum (Programmers know that it is BS most of the time but still expect it most of the time). Lastly, learn Excel, especially merging cells and bordering and coloring them..
From my experience, it is, especially in front end development when you must have cross-browser support. For me the term cross-browser support itself is quite amusing and nonsensical given that there is supposed to be a standard.
One of the worst bugs with twitter webpage is this. When scrolling down to check overnight tweets on the timeline, and when you have scrolled hundreds of them and you click a regular tweet or a quoted tweet to check responses etc (thankfully quoted tweet opens as a popup lately; it used to open a different page earlier causing pissed_level++) and dismiss the popup, the feed is scrolled back up to the top, and to add to the misery, the tweets in the waiting will be expanded too. You would have to be a regular user of twitter in order to make sense of this and/or empathize.
Not a lot of them, about a third only, and certainly not wholeheartedly with gay abandon, which would be a shame as I am really want to do things wholeheartedly with gay abandon. My milage does vary (MMDV).
For me music works only when I am in what I call "mechanical mode" i.e. when all the thinking etc is done and I am only left with doing code review, refactoring, cut paste rearrangement, comment editing etc. Sometimes it gets distracting even then but that usually means I haven't reached the mechanical mode yet.
Anyway, I have a set of songs that I turn to specifically for what you call 'working music'. These songs generally have a broody, even melancholic, feel laced with trance or psychedelic like aspects and there are no sharp rises or falls. In other words, these songs quickly drift into the background and won't interfere, even when they have lyrics. I play these at the lowest possible volume where I can just about hear them, almost as if they are coming from a concert a many kilometers away. And oh, this is my home office routine, not a workplace thing, as I like to hear songs from speakers and not headphones due to the concert thing. And this is usually an after 10.30 pm affair. And of course, played in a loop.
The main songs are these: Russian National Anthem, Israel National Anthem, Dexter Soundtrack - (Blood Theme, Wink), The Last of The Mohicans - I'll find you, Tom Petty - Last Dance with Mary Jane, Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower, Chris Isaak - Wicked Game, Doves' (Blue Crush soundtrack Firesuite, Rise, Here It Comes), Niel Young - Southern Man, Bob Dylan - Knocking on Heaven's Door, JJ Cale (Magnolia, The Sensitive Kind, Crying Eyes), House Soundtrack - Teardrop, Die Toten Hosen - Ich bin die Sehnsucht in dir (German), some country songs too.