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IT is more obscurantist than most fields	3 votes - 100 %
IT is not more obscurantist than most fields	0 votes - 0 %
-	0 votes - 0 %
I should keep looking for .NET senior developer jobs	3 votes - 100 %
I should look for LAMP or Ruby developer jobs	1 vote - 33 %
I should look for Project Manager/ Team Leader jobs	1 vote - 33 %

3 Total Votes

The Sleeper Has Awakened | 39 comments (39 topical, 0 hidden)

Interesting piece on the iPad by wiredog (4.00 / 1) #1 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 01:37:05 PM EST

and Microsoft.

Earth First!
_{(We can strip mine the rest later.)}

But a bit wrong by ucblockhead (4.00 / 1) #2 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 02:06:32 PM EST

It is currently trendy to talk about the desktop dying as tablets/phones take over the world. The analogy is to the way PCs took over from mainframes.

The trouble with this line of thinking is that the desktop is not so much a class of machine as a way of interacting. While it is true that PCs took over from mainframes, this misses that the method of interacting with the device was unrelated. I'm sitting here, typing into a keyboard while watching my words on a large screen. This is not conceptually different from the way people used mainframe computers in the seventies.

Tablets represent a new mode of interaction with computing equipment, but that mode of interaction is unlikely to kill the older modes of interaction. The reason for this is that the success tablets and phones represent less a replacement of the old model and more an addition of a new model that works in new environments. A tablet is much easier to use on a bus than a laptop. A tablet is not easier to use than a traditional keyboard/mouse/screen interface in an office cubical. So if the tablet "takes over" from the PC, it will do so by having connectors for keyboards and external monitors, and by gaining software that works well with these peripherals. That software will (in my opinion) will look a lot more like current PC software than current tablet software, because you don't need big, fat thumbnails with a 24" monitor.

This graph compares apples and oranges, at least partly. People do not use iPhones for the same purposes as they use Macs (at least mostly.) It's like comparing bicycles with cars. Sure, both can transport you places, and even replace each other a bit, but no one reasonably thinks one will entirely take over for the other. You're not going to ride a bike across country and your not going to store your car in a closet in the basement.

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[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

[ Parent ]

means of interfacing by wumpus (4.00 / 1) #11 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 07:18:50 PM EST

It would be just as easy to claim that PCs were just "a new means of interfacing" to computers than the old mainframes with their punchcards and VT100s. The touchbased computer threatens to takes much of time spend "consuming media"* from the desktop, as well as finds new uses in much the way the desktop found new uses not done on mainframes.

The mainframe didn't die in 1992, although IBM came pretty close. The desktop won't die in 2012 or anytime soon. Just don't look for the same continual growth of 1980-2000 (also I can't say that Moore's law hasn't been making new hardware terribly more appealing outside of SSDs).

Wumpus

[ Parent ]

Moore's law by ucblockhead (4.00 / 1) #13 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 10:47:56 PM EST

CPU speeds have finally outrun applications. We're close to being in the same situation with storage. The limit now is bandwidth.
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[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

[ Parent ]

: Bandwidth by Breaker (4.00 / 1) #29 Sat Mar 24, 2012 at 04:42:46 PM EST

Merekat can probably steer you righter than I, but some of the research being done on that right now is mental. Massive, massively quick usage of old fibre, kind of like the jump from the old 56K modem to ADSL on the same copper wire jumps.
Ain't going to be long and fibre will be cheap enough to put in most places, if they haven't got it already.
I am looking forward to the next innovation, yet I'm buggered if I know where it will come from. Back in the day - I could see processors getting faster and cheaper, disk space and memory too.
The next big wave is going to be awesome. Direct mind interfaces, optic implants - who knows?

[ Parent ]

I was more of a sys-admin than a coder... by Metatone (4.00 / 2) #3 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 03:04:24 PM EST

but I went through a career transition some years ago that sounds a lot like yours.

I ended up giving up and starting again in a different sector - but that was at least as much about location as anything else.

One thing that did work well in getting me into PM type roles that logically followed on from what I'd been doing before was a Prince2 qualification. It's a practical PM system, despite it's association with government. Fergus O'Connell and Scott Berkun's books are better for nitty gritty, but I have to say Prince2 helped me think through what a full-on systematic PM arrangement looks like.

The qualification isn't cheap, but it's not massively expensive and there are a bunch of places doing it in one week courses and the like. That's a chunk of time, but I found it easier to fit in than something like an OU course. Of course, a scan of the job ads will tell you if it would be useful for you.

why don't you buy an by jump the ladder (4.00 / 1) #4 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 03:28:10 PM EST

Advanced book on .NET and spend a couple of weeks boning up on that before the next tech interview. It'll be easier than learning a whole new software stack.

The only reason by technician (4.00 / 1) #5 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 04:10:50 PM EST

I know anything about Reich, like most men of a certain age, is Kate Bush, who played Reich's son in the Terry Gilliam directed video / short film for her song Cloudbusting. Prog rock can be good for obscure knowledge (and possibly little else).

: And apparently by technician (4.00 / 1) #6 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 04:11:54 PM EST

Gilliam helped conceive of the idea for the video but didn't direct it. And now I'll have to watch it.

[ Parent ]
: Hey now by houser2112 (4.00 / 1) #16 Wed Mar 21, 2012 at 07:19:59 AM EST

Dems fightin' woids.

[ Parent ]
: Egads. by wumpus (4.00 / 1) #19 Wed Mar 21, 2012 at 09:55:47 AM EST

Do I have to go back to K5 for some Robert Anton Wilson fans? I think one of his books (likely the sequel to the Illuminatis! trilogy) was about 10% footnotes to Reich.
Wumpus

[ Parent ]

David Mitchell by Herring (4.00 / 5) #7 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 05:16:50 PM EST

Is allegedly engaged to Victoria Cohen. How is this fair? He gets to see her tits and I don't. He might even be allowed to touch her bum.

Fuming.

You can't inspire people with facts
- Small Gods

It is fair, by ambrosen (4.00 / 4) #8 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 05:20:37 PM EST

because he's an sweet natured chronically awkward overinformed nerd with a bad haircut. Just possibly, I might find that inspiring.

[ Parent ]

It's different though by Herring (4.00 / 1) #9 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 06:02:19 PM EST

If you were allowed to touch her bum, you might tell me what it was like (I'd keep it to myself - honest).

You can't inspire people with facts
- Small Gods

[ Parent ]

: I find your comment juvenile and in poor taste by ambrosen (4.00 / 1) #10 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 06:27:52 PM EST

Are you comparing David to Lembit?

[ Parent ]

my last girlfriend by TPD (4.00 / 1) #18 Wed Mar 21, 2012 at 09:10:57 AM EST

said one of the things she liked about me was that I looked like David Mitchell, I am still waiting for my Victoria Cohen look a like.

why sit, when you can sit and swivel with The Ab-Swiveller^TM

[ Parent ]

Awesome, I just trolled fifteen year old by georgeha (4.00 / 1) #12 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 07:26:59 PM EST

with that otter cumbersnatch thing, she's into Sherlock.

LAMP by ucblockhead (4.00 / 1) #14 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 10:53:13 PM EST

That sort of stuff is easy to learn because the tools are essentially free. Pick a some high-tech thing like Django or Ruby on Rails and make yourself a silly home project. Write a server that tracks the books you've read in one of the hot hipster coding tools. Unlike .NET, you can get started really fast, especially if you have a Mac or Linux box. Even with Windows, though, you can usually download and be learning within a half hour.
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[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

Most of the .Net stack is also free by lm (4.00 / 1) #20 Wed Mar 21, 2012 at 12:17:51 PM EST

At least for personal home use. Unless things changed since the last time I checked. Microsoft has been regularly putting out `Express' versions of their databases and development tools for a few years now.

Kindness is an act of rebellion.

[ Parent ]

What I mean... by ucblockhead (4.00 / 1) #21 Wed Mar 21, 2012 at 03:06:12 PM EST

Just yesterday I needed to prototype a simple web server. I was able to download MAMP and create a basic PHP script in under 15 minutes. My experience with Microsoft development tools is that it's never that easy.
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[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

[ Parent ]

I'm not a big one to defend Microsoft by lm (4.00 / 1) #24 Wed Mar 21, 2012 at 07:31:10 PM EST

But, in this case, installing IIS and doing something with VBScript (or WSH or Powershell) is pretty straightforward, as is installing PHP.

Now, if you want to talk about configuring MSDTC for distributed transactions in a way that is properly battened down when not using a VPN, sure, it's way harder than it should have to be.

Kindness is an act of rebellion.

[ Parent ]

Not sure that's still true by TheophileEscargot (2.00 / 0) #25 Thu Mar 22, 2012 at 01:42:26 AM EST

It's not that hard to do. But IIS is only available on the more expensive"editions" of Windows. The free visual studio and development things miss out some features, which is confusing if you're trying to Google for advice and your version doesn't have it.

Old fashioned ASP is discouraged in favour of the more complex modern versions. Someone new to it is presented with a dizzying range of options: old ASP, ASP.NET webforms, MVC, the Razor engine (which has completely different syntax for embedding code in a page).

.NET and C# used to be quite nice to develop in, but they've just become so much more complicated and bloated that I think they're becoming a pain. I think C# is the new Ada: used extensively in some sectors, but everyone else laughs at how over-complicated it is.

C# now has more keywords than most languages, it now has an awkward mix of early-binding and late-binding with "dynamic", it has a functional-programming-ish features which you can't just ignore since they crop up in all the online examples with LINQ for data access. It must be sheer hell for a newbie to try to pick it up now.

--
It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

[ Parent ]

Microsoft says otherwise by lm (4.00 / 1) #26 Thu Mar 22, 2012 at 06:28:25 AM EST

Installing IIS 7.5 on Windows 7 Home Premium, Home Basic, or Home Starter

I'll concede that there are quite a few options for which "platform" to use with the newer versions of IIS. But the question I was trying to answer was using the .Net stack. So far as I understand it, all one needs to do is to configure IIS and then one can use one of the built in scripting language to muck around with the .Net objects.

That said, you're probably correct that the .Net object system can be confusing to the newbie. There are some things I do with SQL Server that I'm guessing are influenced by the design of .Net that just seem far more complicated than they have to be. In a previous position, I hand built xsd files to define interfaces for xml calls on Solaris. Last summer I had to get SQL Server to make a SOAP call. I eventually got it done with a bit of hackery. Doing things the right way was kind of bizarre.

I also haven't looked at C# since 2008. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if you're also correct on that issue. But, to be fair, I think you could say mostly the same sort of thing about C++.

Kindness is an act of rebellion.

[ Parent ]

Hmm, it seems now you can by TheophileEscargot (2.00 / 0) #27 Thu Mar 22, 2012 at 06:51:48 AM EST

IIS would not officially run on XP home, and you had to kludge your way around it with an unsupported solution. Hopefully they'll keep supporting it
--
It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

[ Parent ]

There's still a lot of stuff by Herring (4.00 / 1) #28 Thu Mar 22, 2012 at 06:59:51 AM EST

that is only in the paid editions of Visual Studio.

Re. complexity, I notice with the developers here that it seems to take a metric fuckload of code and an imperial eon of time to produce even the simplest web app. When questioned, they talk about "nHibernate Fluent" and "MVC 3" and "inversion of control", but it strill strikes me that to get the data from the form into the database isn't actually brain science. Can anyone say Cargo Cult Programming?

I mourn for C++. It used to be a simple, elegant thing, but it started to go wrong with all these STL collections and iterators and now with C++11 it has been "improved" beyond all recognition. Might be able to crowbar an NHS analogy in there somewhere.

You can't inspire people with facts
- Small Gods

[ Parent ]

I see your C++ by Breaker (4.00 / 1) #30 Sat Mar 24, 2012 at 04:49:57 PM EST

(see what I did there?) and raise you a C.

And yes you're bang on about cargo cult programming. This is a new thing, this will look good on my CV, I have no idea how much harder I am making the processor work, nor do I have to worry about what the hell that Perl-like LINQ statment is doing to my database server.

You kids - get off my stack!

[ Parent ]

: this is why I want to stay embedded. by garlic (2.00 / 0) #38 Sat Apr 14, 2012 at 01:50:40 PM EST

I was happy to tinker with Ruby on Rails on Agile doing web page to data base interfaces to get a feel for it, but I'd rather bit twiddle with VHDL or C and know what the low level hardware / software is really doing.

[ Parent ]

boosh by fluffy (4.00 / 2) #15 Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 10:58:54 PM EST

Nobody seems bothered about whether you can gather requirements or manage relationships or talk to clients, which I always thought were my real strengths.

Sounds like maybe you want to be a product/project manager and not an engineer? Not that there's anything wrong with that. I wish more TPMs had a clue about how engineering actually works.

Not sure what to do. Some people keep advising me to get into the LAMP stack instead of .NET. One thing is I'd rather try to move into project management or team lead stuff: I don't really want to start off on the bottom rung of a different career right now. Another is that entry level jobs hardly pay anything now: don't want to take a 40% pay cut if I can avoid it.

I don't think you'd be starting out at the bottom rung. Sidestepping from one area to another (.NET to LAMP or engineering to management or whatever) is never "starting out at the bottom" if you've been absorbing bigger-picture high-level things rather than being hyperfocused on exactly what you're doing and nothing else. Humans have this amazing ability to transfer their experiences into other abstract areas they haven't yet experienced. Well, some do, anyway.

busy bees buzz | sockpuppet revolution

I was just discussing this sort of thing by ucblockhead (4.00 / 2) #22 Wed Mar 21, 2012 at 04:52:05 PM EST

We were discussing a job candidate, and the general consensus was that if it was a junior engineer going for an entry level candidate, not knowing JavaScript was a large negative as they would take a long time to train while if it was a senior engineer going for a senior position, not knowing JavaScript was a minor inconvenience as an experienced engineer could pick it up in a week.

As a hiring manager, the more experience, the less a particular technology matters.
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[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

[ Parent ]

: Sure, but it feels like by garlic (2.00 / 0) #39 Sat Apr 14, 2012 at 01:55:06 PM EST

as the person handing the resume off to the either, the recruiters and HR drones will see that javascript keyword doesn't show up, and the experienced guy is SOL.

[ Parent ]

Django & Python by Dr Thrustgood (4.00 / 1) #17 Wed Mar 21, 2012 at 07:31:18 AM EST

The few times I've mentioned having very basic knowledge of Django and Python, I've received multiple offers of work within hours. I'm in a slightly different area, working as a consultant these days, but it seems like people are desperate for devs in this area.

If I was going to retrain in any one area, it'd be that ;-)

Ruby (via Rails) always seems to have a surprisingly large amount of work available. Never worked out why.

LAMP's always a good choice, but there's always the joy of trying to stand above the man, dog + world who claim to be experts. If you don't have any commercial experience... that could be fun ;)

Consultant, eh? by Breaker (4.00 / 1) #32 Sat Mar 24, 2012 at 04:53:06 PM EST

Leading Fortune 500 Company?

How's you, anyway?

[ Parent ]

Heh by Dr Thrustgood (2.00 / 0) #34 Sun Mar 25, 2012 at 11:17:35 AM EST

Hehehe, hopefully one day, leading a company of one right now, but the title helps up the daily rates ;)

All good, must write an update soon, but still all going well in my Polish adventures :-)

How's things with you geezer?

[ Parent ]

: Glad to hear if mate. by Breaker (2.00 / 0) #35 Sun Mar 25, 2012 at 05:41:12 PM EST

Married life seems to be suiting you nicely; top work. plspstupdtkthxbai!
I am good thanks. All my recalcitrant ducks are well ordered, the kids thrive and I am still blessed by the fact I get to take MBW to bed each night.
Sorted, as we used to say.
Come over to SE London; I'd bet you can now speak with the locals :)

[ Parent ]

Jorb Situation by jimgon

(4.00 / 1) #23 Wed Mar 21, 2012 at 05:50:40 PM EST

Obviously I don't know what the PM job market looks like over there, but if it's anything like it is here the upswing in credentialism has the market flooded with junior PMs. Also with the rise of credentialism over here there's a corresponding upswing in the bureaucracy of PMing. A team leader who knows how to PM is probably more valuable, but an experienced lead developer is hard to come by. Stick i out on the senior development racket. That and you'll be happier. I miss programming a lot.

---------------
Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."

I am the one by Breaker (4.00 / 1) #31 Sat Mar 24, 2012 at 04:51:51 PM EST

Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony

Etc.

Thought the Orgasmatron was from Barbarella, but I could be wrong. IIRC the invetor of the device was "Duran Duran".

Barbarella by TheophileEscargot (2.00 / 0) #33 Sun Mar 25, 2012 at 03:44:09 AM EST

Wikipedia says:

She is placed inside the Excessive Machine (sometimes mistakenly called the Orgasmatron), a device played like an organ.

Probably inspired by the Orgone Box too though.
--
It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

[ Parent ]

I stand corrected, Sir! by Breaker (2.00 / 0) #36 Sun Mar 25, 2012 at 05:42:42 PM EST

Wonder when the remake will be?

Or indeed, Logan's Run?

[ Parent ]

: WIki says Logan's Run is in production by lm (2.00 / 0) #37 Tue Mar 27, 2012 at 07:33:02 AM EST

Nicolas Refn and Ryan Gosling are both supposedly attached to the project.
They also said that Universal brought Robert Rodriguez onto a remake of Barbarella but then balked at the price tag and Rodriguez shopped the project around to a few different studios without any bites and has subsequently lost interest.
Kindness is an act of rebellion.
[ Parent ]

The Sleeper Has Awakened | 39 comments (39 topical, 0 hidden)