If you want to watch a documentary about the forming of Compaq and its rise, Silicon Cowboys is not bad.
Trailer is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wjJYqUkHd8
You can watch the documentary on Tubi https://tubitv.com/movies/559438/silicon-cowboys
Readit Newshackthemack commented on Compaq’s Rod Canion broke IBM's hold on the PC market every.to/feeds/b0e329f304... · Posted by u/vinnyglennon
In the 90s, when I used various text editors like Ultraedit, Nedit, Pico, Nano, Vi, and my co-workers used Dreamweaver, Visual C++, Visual Basic, NetBeans
I was in the "TABs are superior" camp but only for the initial indention of code blocks.
But somewhere along the way, editors added features that let you see invisibles, and let you set up smart tabs so that you could hit tab, but it would interpolate 4 spaces (or whatever you set) into the document, and let you shift+tab back the indention or TAB the indention, but put in spaces.
More importantly, the mass of people who all coalesced on using the same editor in the web development sphere, Sublime then Atom then MS Visual Studio Code, has made it easier to just say "set your editor to do this".
I have changed my mind to using SPACES now because the editor lets me fake using TABS.
hackthemack commented on The Big OOPs: Anatomy of a Thirty-Five Year Mistake computerenhance.com/p/the... · Posted by u/SerCe
I complained a lot about OOP all throughout my 25 years a developer. I wrote a ton of C++ and then Java and nobody can refute my expertise with those languages. I saw so many people make mistakes using them, particularly with forcing taxonomies into situations that weren't conducive to having them. Then, when I began complaining to my colleagues about my feelings, I was ostracized and accused of "not having a strong enough skillset." In other words, the dogma of the time overrode the Cassandras saying that the emperor had no clothes. Meanwhile, the simple nature of C and even scripting languages was considered out date. The software dev community finally realized how bad things had gotten with Java and then the walls came a tumbling down. I far prefer writing non-OO Python (or minimal use of classes) to anything else these days. I went all around the language world--did projects involving Lua, Clojure, tons of Groovy, then moved on to Functional Java, Kotlin, and Golang.
Similar experience. I would be the one the entire team would turn to when a really hard problem to debug came up. Yet, when I would say that OOP is not great and is over-complicating the code, I would be scoffed at. I never could reconcile how I was "leaned on" to fix things, but ignored in proposing different paradigms.
I recently read a quote, paraphrasing, Orthodoxy is a poor man's substitute for moral superiority.
hackthemack commented on The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management danielsada.tech/blog/micr... · Posted by u/dshacker
It's more in favor of the employee than a lot of people admit. The problem isn't the negotiating power it's that there's so much noise when you're switching companies it's impractical.
Unions could only make that worse.
"It's more in favor of the employee than a lot of people admit."
But is it equal? It is hard to scientifically to prove, but it sure seems like companies have way more leverage than a lone developer.
I am not trying to antagonize you, btw, I am just seeing where you come from in your points.
hackthemack commented on The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management danielsada.tech/blog/micr... · Posted by u/dshacker
There is not a single problem competent developers have that unions would solve and in many cases they would exacerbate the ones we do have.
Most of the issue is that there's too much administrative policy (whether the imposition is internal or external doesn't matter) for us to effectively communicate and collaborate. Unions would only add to that while collecting fees from us. Most of us are intelligent enough to know this which is why we never form them.
"There is not a single problem competent developers have that unions would solve"
Question for you about this. Is the balance of power in negotiation equal between a lone developer and a company?
I ask, because in my little world, it sure seems like the company has way more of the cards than a developer does.
hackthemack commented on The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management danielsada.tech/blog/micr... · Posted by u/dshacker
I wish people were not so adverse to unions. The company will never be your friend. You will almost never have much leverage over what the company wants to do. The information you have will most likely be very asymmetrical to what the company has insight into, putting you at a disadvantage. Unions are imperfect. Unions will have its own inside politics. You will pay a union fee.
I think humans are fundamentally flawed in not being able to see alternate history. If they have to pay a union, they will not see all the benefits, and only focus on the 50 dollar union fee.
I started working in IT in the 90s and I would say "yes" but I realize my observations do not carry scientific rigor. It would require knowing the thoughts and practices of millions of people. Such is the curse of social science.
I do not think most people think of themselves as being "ageist", but it manifests in their actions. Usually a department will be filled with a group of young people, and in the interview process, someone will say, "I do not think this person would be a good culture fit". But they do not realize that they just do not want an old person because they seem different then what is already in the team.
I also have a hunch, that "leet code tests", in the hiring process has a hidden agenda of weeding out "older people". Those kind of tests are usually on knowledge one might have learned in a college course and subsequently forgot about. Or, if you are juggling a family, you may not have time to go do all day knowledge crunch study to get the algorithms into your head.
Companies do not want to come right out and say "we do not want to hire old people", but they selfishly want the most value for their buck. They want to drive down wages and extract value. What is more valuable to a company? A middle aged programmer who has to go home at 5pm to help take care of the kids? Or do they get more value out of a young person just out of college who has something to prove?
I have seen perfectly reasonable people pass over hiring older people because they do not want to hire someone who might know more than they do, or someone who might push back on decisions. They want someone young who will just do what they say.
As a society, I do not think we address such issues well.
hackthemack commented on Flash Back: An “oral” history of Flash goodinternetmagazine.com/... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
In the article (which is quite good to read), they wrote "The iPhone is often cited as the reason for why Flash started to decline, since it led to significant user demand to have Flash-free sites. However, I think Flash’s fate was truly sealed once Google made an HTML advertisement designer app."
I worked in the industry before flash, during flash, after flash, and in my little corner of the world, the iphone not supporting flash was the biggest factor in the decline of flash. Every executive and bigwig could not drop their blackberries fast enough, and grab the newest status symbol iphone. Once management all had iphones, then flash just would not do, and the directive came down to make the website "good" for iphones, which usually entailed adding excessive white space, large lettering, and big buttons.
hackthemack commented on Java at 30: Interview with James Gosling thenewstack.io/java-at-30... · Posted by u/chhum
What was the viable alternative?
Microsoft had C#, at one point IBM pushed SmallTalk. C++ for these environments is doable but going to slow you down at development a lot, as well as being much harder to secure.
At that time the dynamic alternative was Perl, and that remained true basically until Rails came along.
I am not sure. C# came long after Java already made inroads into the Enterprise space. It was a different time.
I would say that many things in IT are not chosen on technical merits alone. You have people that do not want to accrue any blame. Back then, by choosing what IBM endorses or what Microsoft endorses, you absolve yourself of fallout from if and when things go wrong.
Back in the 90s, it felt like IBM, Redhat, Sun kind of, sort of, got together and wanted to keep Microsoft from taking over the Enterprise space by offering Java solutions.
Trailer is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wjJYqUkHd8
You can watch the documentary on Tubi https://tubitv.com/movies/559438/silicon-cowboys