Posts by EarthDog

What can you do when the pup of programming becomes the black dog of burnout? Dude, leave

Re: Been there. Golden handcuffs were my problem

I need a change of pace. An opportunity for more growth. I'd like to ry my hand at doing X. Seeking new challenges. Seeking a smaller environment etc.

Kill the blockchain! It'll make you fitter in the long run, honest

Re: A large consultancy at a tech conference this week

Not so fast. It needs to be containerized BYOD 24/7 serverless leverage synergy apps with social media capabilities.

US Congress mulls expanding copyright yet again – to 144 years

Re: Copyright, Patents all screwed.

Life + 50? Why? So the person's freeloading relatives can make money with no work and then brag about what clever business people? And then decry the poor for being lazy parasites? If you want to see parasite go to a pricey resort town and watch all the trust fund babies stuffing their monthly checks up their noses.

Agile development exposed as techie superstition

Re: RE: that core premise has always been at the heart of best development practices

you get it. see "Agile is Dead" by a creator of the manifest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M

Re: Thank the heavens

The intent was that agile be an adjective, not a proper noun. A philosophy or approach to software development. Not a rigid methodology which is what it was sold as.

Re: Agile is b*llocks. Any non-idiot knows this.

and always write it with a small "a" and not as a proper noun.

Re: Coming back to this article and comments a day later

first off agile is an adjective, not a proper noun.

Re: Let's get rid of these myth too

Have you done studies on it? Would you publish your results online?

Re: Let's get rid of these myth too

Have you measured your output? How? Never underestimate the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

Re: Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter

Here are some ways sociologists, use what fits https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/sociological-research-methods/sociological-research-designs-methods

I think I was talking about observational and case studies. But even so they try match up groups, e.g. while studying education level and it's impact they would try to control for age, ethnicity, income level of the subject's household while growing etc.

As far as burden you can run reports on defect escape rate, features delivered etc. which should be documented somewhere.

Re: Ahh, Agile -- process fad du jour...

Management fixates on surface details; we must use Jira, have standup, sprint planning, training classes etc. So But they do not grasp the underlying spirit and social messages. They buy the books, read the articles etc. but done read deeply enough. It's sort of like "everyone successful is wearing wide ties so I look successful and so will be successful". I somestimes refer to "cargo cult" management or programming.

Your post is a good example of using appropriate tools and being agile when developing software, use what works. If waterfall works, use it.

And then there is the matter of 2 week sprints. Everyone fixates on that. But to be agile you adjust sprints to the the complexity and organizational friction you encounter. Maybe 3 weeks or 4 weeks or whatever you need.

Remember, agile is an adjective not a noun.

Re: Daily meetings

Are you using a silo'd QA or embedded? Embedded seems to work better

Re: Agile is b*llocks. Any non-idiot knows this.

This is the perspective of one of the original authors of the agile (small "a") Manifesto. An interesting talk titled "Agile Is Dead" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M

Let's get rid of these myth too

They have no scientific foundation.

they are:

10x programmer

Exponential Defect Cost Curve

The Software Crisis

https://blog.fogcreek.com/10x-programmer-and-other-myths-in-software-engineering-interview-with-laurent-bossavit/

Well there is another approach often used in Sociology. Find 2 groups with as much overlap in factors as possible such as tool sets, problem domains, team sizes, maturity of the product etc. Make sure they are using different development methods. Gather data for both projects and compare. Repeat the process for several projects and throw in some longitudinal studies as well. Then over time you'll have a series of naturalistic studies from which inferences can be drawn.

Pointless US Congress net neutrality vote will take place tomorrow!

Factional fighting.

This is a battle of for net neutrality barons vs against net neutrality barons. The bet is that the for oligarchy will give you more support that the against oligarchy fights you and it will give you the money you need to win elections.

Facebook stuck with IRS bill after court tosses $7 BEEELLION appeal

Re: Fight Fair IRS!

"Zuk is surveilling the world"

Fixed that for you, no charge.

six figures is gross

not net. If they are anything like other business take about 10% or less as net.

UK Ministry of Justice knocks down towers, brings IT BACK in-house

Re: Outsourcing - does it *ever* really work?

"If you actively manage, oversee and hold the outsourcer's feet to the fire, you can make it work."

If you replace "outsourcer" with employees you are in fact doing nothing different. There is no difference; you cannot walk away from project management, human negotiations, picking the right workers (every time I worked for a body shopI ended up being interviewed by the permanent staff as well as body shop managers), cost controls, etc. There is no free lunch.

Re: Tower of tickboxes

When I hear "Tower" I immediately think "Silos".

'Computer algo' blamed for 450k UK women failing to receive breast screening invite

So manslaughter is OK

Because preventing it it too costly.

Pentagon sticks to its guns: Yep, we're going with a single cloud services provider

Re: JEDI Cloud

Yes nice acronym. It reeks of marketing through and through. Now that's innovation!

Danish Navy expert finds no trace of exhaust gas in private submarine

what a Danish thing to do:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342492/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

What a Docker shocker: Founder, CTO Solomon Hykes takes a hike

Re: Docker's future is bright

In my experience Docker really didn't help much in managing complexity. For any moderately sized project we ended have containers scatter around like jackstraws with hidden dependencies. Stateless is also fo limited value as there was, on my projects, a need to maintain state *somewhere*. So hacks had to be used to not only save state but to ensure consistency. It turned out to be tricky.

Windows 10 to force you to use Edge, even if it isn't default browser

Look on the bright side.

We can party like it's 1999 and 9/11 hasn't happened yet.

Do the right thing

Is the new motto. It changes a while back. But they do not mention for who.

Screw everything! French swingers campsite up for sale, owners 'tired'

Re: professional restaurant

sausage and gravy?

Woe Canada: Rather than rise from the ashes, IBM-built C$1bn Phoenix payroll system is going down in flames

Re: Without reading the contract specs or anything, I would think their would be withholds

Because ethics and professionalism. This is why we will never has Software Engineering, no one cares.

IBM cop out

They are the professionals. They could, for a fee, helped define the system with the Gov't. I've been through such exercises and this was the way it was done. We had people compare systems, look at workflows, and then help map data and functions. IBM's "you tell us what to do and then we take your word for it" is a cop out.

What was wrong with the old one?

And why can't we move back? Duh! There's always a defacto fallback which is often less complicated than building a whole new system.

Re: It doesn't sound like an IBM problem at all

obviously the users don't know how to use the software and refuse to change the reality of how payroll is done to meet the software's expectations.

Huawei's Not Hot Dog is possibly the Worst Tech Promo Ever

Re: Yikes...

Do you mean the one where it successfully IDs a hot dog, pizza, sandwich, cheese burger, blood sausage, and a bottle of chlorine bleach?

Marketing had them cover those up so it wouldn't make the company look bad....

Intellisense was off and developer learned you can't code in Canadian

And use a transaction block for a test run through so you can roll back

He should've used North

It seems to have died out but it combined the elements of C, Fortran, and uniquely Canadian constructs. I can't remember all the details but programs looked sort of like this,

While beer>0 eh?

if needsbeer(hoser) eh

openbeer(hoser) eh

if beer < 3 eh

hoser<- buddy eh

fin

fin

It also came with the Hockey framework and the back bacon library.

And as the joke goes, they all suck :)

We all hate Word docs and PDFs, but have they ever led you to being hit with 32 indictments?

Yes, you can add a digital check sum to it. If the version changes, the checksum changes. It allows you to track versions.

That reminds me of a story. I was working on a project for a large government organization. We were accepting a new app from a 3rd party and learning the system. The system could run a official report and then save it off. Well it saved it off but for 2 problems; the document which was an important legal document was neither locked nor signed. Which of course meant it could be easily tampered with. I was working QA on that one and flagged as a security breach (said government agency was paranoid about security).

We went to the vendor and asked for a fix. They considered it no big deal. One person went so far as to say "EarthDog cares about it but no one else does". Once our customer found about it they was rather upset.

That lack of professionalism is why I hate working in software.

Bosch and Daimler jump in together on driverless vehicle tech

Free self driving car!

Just sign this EULA over here absolving the company of all blame in case of an accident and permitting it to harvest and sell your personal information. You know, like how often you got to fast food restaurants or pick up booze at the liquor store.

Facebook's big solution to combating election ad fraud: Snail mail

Re: 'The identity theft detailed in the indictment'

But they were transparent about who they were and what their agenda was.

They can use street view as well.

Just use the same tool as you. Tech cuts both ways you know.

Three in hospital after NSA cops open fire on campus ram-raid SUV

White people can't be terrorists in the US.

Re: really?

moving target or not? Adrenelin or no?

Re: really?

In Afghanistan and Iraq it was discovered 5.56mm had poor performance stopping a truck bomb due to poor penetration. NATO 7.65mm became the preferred round of choice. If you look at the picture the SUV has close to a 45% slope on the windshield. That would be my guess.

Due to Oracle being Oracle, Eclipse holds poll to rename Java EE (No, it won't be Java McJava Face)

Re: Isn't it obvious?

As I posted (too soon! I didn't see this post. sorry) earlier it has "Krac" in it.

Krakatoa? It has Krac in it.

Folgers? Maxwell? Might get sued by Folgers. Might get away with it if you say it was named after the scientist.

Go with a planet motif

I'd like to see Planet 10, Nemesis, or maybe GJ 1214 b

Electronic Frontier Foundation chap John Perry Barlow has died

Re: Before we all get wet eyed ...

In the 1800's it was normal. As was life threatening child labor (which, let's face, prostitution is), toxic food (which we aspiring for these days), banks defrauding people, tainted water supply, etc.

The good 'ole days were not so good.