Comments for Black Bag Operations Network

Comment on Education vs Training by Art McCray

Art McCray — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:38:23 +0000

Hear, hear! I did a *lot* of interviewing at Big River, and the correlation ‘twixt Java and “No, thanks, we like you as a customer,” was very high. About as high as the level of education in the Big World is low. Over time I devolved to asking mostly:
1. Compare and contrast lists, trees, and hashes.
2. Write a c/c++ or pseudo-code function to reverse a string in place.
3. (assuming success with #2) OK, now reverse it by words–in place.

Never mind 2 and 3. Less than 50% of the graduates with a Master’s degree in CS could answer #1 satisfactorily. Masters of Computer Science from good schools, universities with good reputations (e.g., Berkely, U of Oregon, Duke, U of Texas), and with GPS 3.7 and above (I devolved there over time also). Training is useless in CS–the language of the decade keeps on rolling; over the course of my career (five decades) there have been at least five, more likely six (Pascal?) or seven (pick yours: PL/1, Cobol, Perl, VB, VBScript, Basic, &).
Lots of words to say that I endorse the real solution: proper education, and degrees that mean what they should. “Coders” are useless outside the IT dept. at BigSlow Corp.

Comment on At the Dynamic Languages Symposium by todd

todd — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 01:06:13 +0000

Or I had to take an important phone call and came back into the talk late. Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt though.

Still, it looks like you’re retracing the path of Squeak. So what’s truly new about it?

I think it is a good exercise to write the entire system in itself – this is where Smalltalk gets much of its power. Hopefully, Python will benefit similarly. But I’m still more interested in seeing how it would work out if you started with the COLA environment. I’ve already seen what can be done with the Squeak/Slang Python/RPython approach.

Comment on At the Dynamic Languages Symposium by Jacob HallÃ©n

Jacob HallÃ©n — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 23:50:55 +0000

Yawn. PyPy is not about generating code for different backends.
The interesting parts are in the JIT generation, the handling of
parallellism, the flexibility and plugability of the implementation.

This was in the talk, but either it went over your head, or you
had already filed PyPy as uninteresting and just ignored it.

Comment on At the Dynamic Languages Symposium by todd

todd — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 20:58:18 +0000

Adding more backend targets doesn’t seem like progress. Squeak already runs everywhere.

I’d be more interested to see what a python on COLA implementation looks like. It might be the shorter path.

Comment on At the Dynamic Languages Symposium by Christopher Armstrong

Christopher Armstrong — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 16:52:36 +0000

It would be rather impressive if Squeak had a .NET code generator ten years ago.

Comment on Blanchard’s Law by Black Bag Operations Network » Blog Archive » I’m a topic on Lambda The Ultimate

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 00:39:12 +0000

[...] It seems Blanchard’s Law is gaining traction. [...]

Comment on Vonage is a Rip-Off by ali

ali — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 22:41:24 +0000

As many of us were seduced by the lure of cheaper prices, so was I. The problem was that with the cheaper prices, so came the cheaper service. I own a small business and rely heavily on my phone and fax service to be up to par. Boy was I mistaken. The system is unreliable. To make a call was fine, but half of the time the reciever of the call couldnt hear me. The faxing was just pathetic. I would have to resend my fax five or six times in order for the reciever to get it. The service depatment is a joke. I am not a person who is closed minded by any means but when I have a problem with a system I just feel a little more reasured by talking with someone who is in the same country. Of all the times I have had to call I have talked to one who spoke english, although in Canada, and another in New Jersey. I am switching back to the regular land line as of next week and am looking forward to sound service. Just a note to people looking for a cheaper service, alot of the phone companies now in order to compete have lowered there prices. Just remember from my mistake “you pay for what you get”. You want ultra cheap, your gonna get ultra cheap service.

Comment on A-Z Countdown Begins Now by todd

todd — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:07:32 +0000

Thanks, although from my perspective – it is a totally commercial venture.

Comment on IE7 Launches (Yawn) by todd

todd — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:00:16 +0000

I wonder how long the users will put up with being second class citizens.

Comment on Blanchard’s Law by Raoul Duke

Raoul Duke — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 19:36:54 +0000

I wonder if there is really no chance of some less dynamically typed system offering similar power? I can’t name specific instances off the top of my head, but it seems like there have been some efforts to make static things more flexible of late. (Not trying to be a dynamic/static bigot, just curious.)