Trolling 101
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You need to grow up and stop slinging tips on unsuspecting forum members :mad:
'I'm French! Why do you think I've got this outrrrrageous accent?' Monty Python and the Holy Grail
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He's a software consumer, not a software producer. For him it's just a menu change whereas for those of us who produce software it's learning XAML or a new database access framework or a new set of UI standards - where half the time we are working with incomplete frameworks so we have to write work arounds until version X fixes the problem - etc. If it was my job to understand that given a new UI I simply have to recognize that button 'A' is now located under submenu 'B' I wouldn't have much to complain about either. I'd use my spare time to write troll articles for ZDNet.
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He's right in a wider sense. I've been at my new place nearly a year now and there are a good number of people who have been here for over 10 years and it's as if the last 10 years never happened for them: COM presents fewer deployment problems than .net Delphi > everything else Database diff scripts by hand ORMs are inherently evil Unit tests are a waste of time UML, what's that? We put everything in the same assembly so there wouldn't be any circular references Interfaces are too complicated to be of any use besides which, why would you want to swap out components anyway? I know singletons, so I know design patterns, right? Spending 2 minutes a day updating SAP is too much effort and we'd rather get angry mails from the CEO and spend half a day at the end of each month in a blind panic trying to remember what we did Things move on, and if you don't move on with them you're effectively moving backwards.
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He's right in a wider sense. I've been at my new place nearly a year now and there are a good number of people who have been here for over 10 years and it's as if the last 10 years never happened for them: COM presents fewer deployment problems than .net Delphi > everything else Database diff scripts by hand ORMs are inherently evil Unit tests are a waste of time UML, what's that? We put everything in the same assembly so there wouldn't be any circular references Interfaces are too complicated to be of any use besides which, why would you want to swap out components anyway? I know singletons, so I know design patterns, right? Spending 2 minutes a day updating SAP is too much effort and we'd rather get angry mails from the CEO and spend half a day at the end of each month in a blind panic trying to remember what we did Things move on, and if you don't move on with them you're effectively moving backwards.
jim lahey wrote:
UML, what's that?
UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. It's a standardised way for overpriced consultants to produce diagrams that confuse end clients into thinking they are adding value to a project by describing the project in such a way as to absolve the consultants of any blame when the project inevitably fails.
*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington
"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier
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Here is a troll article[^] if I've ever read one. Apparently people frustrated with the ridiculous change of pace in our industry need to 'grow up'. Ken thinks that developers are upset because they've been in a coma for 10 years.
Only a developer who's been in a coma for the past ten years could wake up and be shocked by what he's seeing.
Then I read his credentials and noticed that he's a system administrator which means, of course, that he uses UIs but he doesn't create them. It looks to me that his learning is limited to learning how to use the new UI - and that is quite a bit different than learning how to create a new UI. Towards the end he writes:
I'm just saying that the UNIX command line hasn't changed and isn't likely to, so for those who like a static environment, that's one alternative--but not a negative one.
And you'll note in his credentials:
15 years of experience with Mac, Linux, UNIX
Oh, okay....I think I see how this works now. Spend your time working in a back room using UIs that don't change instead of developing UIs that change on a weekly basis and then rag on UI developers when they get a bit testy. :laugh:
MehGerbil wrote:
15 years of experience with Mac, Linux, UNIX
...and on the next line, "and Windows." He does have a valid point. Though, his friends argument that Windows 8 is so much different is utter crap. You can still write normal Windows app that work perfectly find in Desktop mode. There's nothing that says Windows 8 only supports "Modern" apps.
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^]
Dave Kreskowiak -
Here is a troll article[^] if I've ever read one. Apparently people frustrated with the ridiculous change of pace in our industry need to 'grow up'. Ken thinks that developers are upset because they've been in a coma for 10 years.
Only a developer who's been in a coma for the past ten years could wake up and be shocked by what he's seeing.
Then I read his credentials and noticed that he's a system administrator which means, of course, that he uses UIs but he doesn't create them. It looks to me that his learning is limited to learning how to use the new UI - and that is quite a bit different than learning how to create a new UI. Towards the end he writes:
I'm just saying that the UNIX command line hasn't changed and isn't likely to, so for those who like a static environment, that's one alternative--but not a negative one.
And you'll note in his credentials:
15 years of experience with Mac, Linux, UNIX
Oh, okay....I think I see how this works now. Spend your time working in a back room using UIs that don't change instead of developing UIs that change on a weekly basis and then rag on UI developers when they get a bit testy. :laugh:
It reminds me of my brother. He just started law school (late start as he's 32 y/o) and posted on facebook that he was going to try IP law because it was the perfect combination of law and his technical experience. I'd like to point out that he has a business degree and works in a car shop (of which my fiancee built their website- he didn't even do that). I wanted to commend "What technical experience?" but decided not to embarrass him in front of his new law school friends. Some people really do believe that being a user qualifies as technical experience. :doh:
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It reminds me of my brother. He just started law school (late start as he's 32 y/o) and posted on facebook that he was going to try IP law because it was the perfect combination of law and his technical experience. I'd like to point out that he has a business degree and works in a car shop (of which my fiancee built their website- he didn't even do that). I wanted to commend "What technical experience?" but decided not to embarrass him in front of his new law school friends. Some people really do believe that being a user qualifies as technical experience. :doh:
wizardzz wrote:
Some people really do believe that being a user qualifies as technical experience.
You mean it doesn't? Damn. I've built my entire career based on that.
*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington
"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier
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MehGerbil wrote:
15 years of experience with Mac, Linux, UNIX
...and on the next line, "and Windows." He does have a valid point. Though, his friends argument that Windows 8 is so much different is utter crap. You can still write normal Windows app that work perfectly find in Desktop mode. There's nothing that says Windows 8 only supports "Modern" apps.
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^]
Dave KreskowiakDave Kreskowiak wrote:
You can still write normal Windows app that work perfectly find in Desktop mode. There's nothing that says Windows 8 only supports "Modern" apps.
That however isn't the point. An analogy... If I have been working on cars for 15 years every single day for 10 hours a day then I no longer think about where the wrench is. It is always in the same place and I reach for it with no conscious thought. So now they are going to move the wrench and maybe even put it in a box. It makes absolutely NO difference to me that the box has a really cool latch and that I can get the box in 15,000 different colors. All that matters is that I will now spend quite a long time re-learning where the wrench is. This is even more true about the pencil. Because I don't use it very often. But over many years I learned where it was. Now it too is in a different place. And it will in fact take me years to learn the new location (with a bit of time each time I need to find it to spend looking for it.) And keep in mind that I only work on the car's engine. I don't work on the radio, I don't work on the dashboard and I certainly don't paint the car. So it certainly doesn't matter to me that all of those now come in new and improved colors.
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jim lahey wrote:
UML, what's that?
UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. It's a standardised way for overpriced consultants to produce diagrams that confuse end clients into thinking they are adding value to a project by describing the project in such a way as to absolve the consultants of any blame when the project inevitably fails.
*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington
"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier
That describes it perfectly. It is also useful for making flowcharts. Wait, flowcharts? What are those?
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image. Stephen Hawking
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Dave Kreskowiak wrote:
You can still write normal Windows app that work perfectly find in Desktop mode. There's nothing that says Windows 8 only supports "Modern" apps.
That however isn't the point. An analogy... If I have been working on cars for 15 years every single day for 10 hours a day then I no longer think about where the wrench is. It is always in the same place and I reach for it with no conscious thought. So now they are going to move the wrench and maybe even put it in a box. It makes absolutely NO difference to me that the box has a really cool latch and that I can get the box in 15,000 different colors. All that matters is that I will now spend quite a long time re-learning where the wrench is. This is even more true about the pencil. Because I don't use it very often. But over many years I learned where it was. Now it too is in a different place. And it will in fact take me years to learn the new location (with a bit of time each time I need to find it to spend looking for it.) And keep in mind that I only work on the car's engine. I don't work on the radio, I don't work on the dashboard and I certainly don't paint the car. So it certainly doesn't matter to me that all of those now come in new and improved colors.
Thanks for supplying that analogy, because it's perfect! The sole little problem with it is that you said Microsoft put a box in place of the wrench and put the wrench in the box. No, they didn't. They put the box next to the wrench and left it up to you if you want to put the wrench in it.
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^]
Dave Kreskowiak -
He's right in a wider sense. I've been at my new place nearly a year now and there are a good number of people who have been here for over 10 years and it's as if the last 10 years never happened for them: COM presents fewer deployment problems than .net Delphi > everything else Database diff scripts by hand ORMs are inherently evil Unit tests are a waste of time UML, what's that? We put everything in the same assembly so there wouldn't be any circular references Interfaces are too complicated to be of any use besides which, why would you want to swap out components anyway? I know singletons, so I know design patterns, right? Spending 2 minutes a day updating SAP is too much effort and we'd rather get angry mails from the CEO and spend half a day at the end of each month in a blind panic trying to remember what we did Things move on, and if you don't move on with them you're effectively moving backwards.
I was with you up to your mentioning of SAP. Know that SAP is the incarnation of backwards! It is so infuriatingly difficult to use, it is as if SAP development has stopped 30 years ago. I am totally with all those guys who hate to have to update stuff on SAP regularly, because it is definitely not 2 minutes a day, unless you spent 4 weeks of training (and a years wage) on actually learning how to use it efficiently (or more efficiently - I don't think that it's actually possible to use SAP really efficiently). Taking notes on paper everyday about what you did = 1 minute Finding and copying that stuff at the end of the month = 30 minutes. Doing the same with <your editor of choice> = 20 to 30 minutes, depending on if you figured out a way to use the clipboard. (Here at work I didn't - it seems SAP doesn't know how to use the clipboard) Entering everything directly into SAP every day = 5-10 minutes minimum Total effort per month (20 days) = easily 2-3 hours (and that is assuming there are no problems with the system at the times I'm entering data) Of course, if people aren't able to take notes by themselves, then maybe you should ask them to keep a file somewhere accessible that gets updated on a daily basis. Might be just a text file on a network drive. Something that is visible and can be checked without having to ask people personally. Ideally SAP could check on those files and import them, but I suppose that would be too much to ask for a 10 million $ suite...
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I was with you up to your mentioning of SAP. Know that SAP is the incarnation of backwards! It is so infuriatingly difficult to use, it is as if SAP development has stopped 30 years ago. I am totally with all those guys who hate to have to update stuff on SAP regularly, because it is definitely not 2 minutes a day, unless you spent 4 weeks of training (and a years wage) on actually learning how to use it efficiently (or more efficiently - I don't think that it's actually possible to use SAP really efficiently). Taking notes on paper everyday about what you did = 1 minute Finding and copying that stuff at the end of the month = 30 minutes. Doing the same with <your editor of choice> = 20 to 30 minutes, depending on if you figured out a way to use the clipboard. (Here at work I didn't - it seems SAP doesn't know how to use the clipboard) Entering everything directly into SAP every day = 5-10 minutes minimum Total effort per month (20 days) = easily 2-3 hours (and that is assuming there are no problems with the system at the times I'm entering data) Of course, if people aren't able to take notes by themselves, then maybe you should ask them to keep a file somewhere accessible that gets updated on a daily basis. Might be just a text file on a network drive. Something that is visible and can be checked without having to ask people personally. Ideally SAP could check on those files and import them, but I suppose that would be too much to ask for a 10 million $ suite...
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jim lahey wrote:
UML, what's that?
UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. It's a standardised way for overpriced consultants to produce diagrams that confuse end clients into thinking they are adding value to a project by describing the project in such a way as to absolve the consultants of any blame when the project inevitably fails.
*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington
"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier
I always thought it's a fancy tool for creating diagrams to show off to the managers in case they ask what I've been doing for the past four weeks. Managers love pictures! :-D
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I would sympathise with their position if it was really that complicated. It's worth noting that it's not desktop SAP, it's a trimmed down web version on our intruhnets where you use one page for timekeeping. I spend less than an hour a month on it.
Then you're lucky, and your IT or whoever maintains SAP did their job. At my place, I have to log in and enter several fields every single time, even though I shouldn't need to login (I'm authenticated from my windows login anyway) and all of the values I'm asked for are (a) either known to the system or (b) never ever change or (c) can only have one value (or all three). I cannot customize the client to my needs (e. g. number format: requires ',' instead of '.' as decimal point, and I always have to switch from numeric keypad to normal keyboard), nor can I look up the SAP numbers that I need to enter (and I do get errors if I forget them or enter a wrong number, so the system does know and use them). These problems are well known to the admins, but they don't give a damn. With that kind of support, I won't touch the system with a 10 foot pole unless I absolutely need to.
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Here is a troll article[^] if I've ever read one. Apparently people frustrated with the ridiculous change of pace in our industry need to 'grow up'. Ken thinks that developers are upset because they've been in a coma for 10 years.
Only a developer who's been in a coma for the past ten years could wake up and be shocked by what he's seeing.
Then I read his credentials and noticed that he's a system administrator which means, of course, that he uses UIs but he doesn't create them. It looks to me that his learning is limited to learning how to use the new UI - and that is quite a bit different than learning how to create a new UI. Towards the end he writes:
I'm just saying that the UNIX command line hasn't changed and isn't likely to, so for those who like a static environment, that's one alternative--but not a negative one.
And you'll note in his credentials:
15 years of experience with Mac, Linux, UNIX
Oh, okay....I think I see how this works now. Spend your time working in a back room using UIs that don't change instead of developing UIs that change on a weekly basis and then rag on UI developers when they get a bit testy. :laugh:
I've got a better title for an article to answer that stupid article. (I wasted 10 minutes reading that thing yesterday). "You need to grow up and stop chasing every fad that comes down the pike". Whoever wrote that article doesn't have the foggiest idea what a developer does nor what we have to put up with. GUI presentations are just the most visible part of the whole thing. Of course I'm preaching to the choir here. A "troll" is a good description for that article. He's wrong on so many levels that I was going to respond but I decided recently that ZDNet is becoming pretty ridiculous as a forum for pointless arguments. -CB
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+1
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Julien Villers wrote:
You need to grow up and stop slinging tips on unsuspecting forum members
Sounds like you are complaining to me. Are you one of those cranky developers I've been reading about on ZDNet? :laugh:
Seems like everybody on ZDNet is cranky. I've been spending a lot less time reading up there: the discussions that result usually degenerate into name-calling sessions. It's pretty ridiculous. OTOH, around here everybody (even if they differ in some opinion) seems to be pretty civil about it. Maybe that's because most of us here are really professionals? -CB
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It's not a trollpiece, but a sysop that's venting. You give 'em a donut/coffee and all is well. Every new version of Windows and Office, we get the verdicts of the technically and logically challenged. I have explained the rationale of clicking "start" to shut down quite often, simply because I love to jank the cloth from under their feet :) He's partially right; if you don't like the new UI, well, that's your own preference. Your customers (the ones who pay for your code) might have a completely other preference. ..and no, people will not "move away" from Microsoft. They didn't at the introduction of Windows ME, and this Win8 sounds like it's a step up from there. Some companies will skip it; big surprise there - most of the larger ones try to skip a version, saves a fortune on licenses and hardware.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: if you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
..and no, people will not "move away" from Microsoft. They didn't at the introduction of Windows ME, and this Win8 sounds like it's a step up from there. Some companies will skip it; big surprise there - most of the larger ones try to skip a version, saves a fortune on licenses and hardware.
I think there's a good chance that will be exactly the case. I try to envision our company moving to "8" and I just don't see why they would ever consider it. You might get a segment of the company writing to the "Metro" interface eventually but converting all the tech-support desktops into tile-based front-ends? I don't see it. Also, as you point out, why spend the bucks to retool to something that isn't providing some real payback? -CB