Things you'll never code
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The poll on the main page about things that interest you got me to thinking... It's one thing to be interested, but another thing to actually have any realistic chance of doing anything serious in a given area. The time investment for a lot of new things these days has gotten huge, and to be anything more than a code monkey using a magic wand style high level API you will have to really dig in. But life is short (even if it doesn't seem that way to some of you at 18 or some such) and diving deep into one of these areas will come at the expense of things that you might be less interested in but that would probably be more practical or that are immediately necessary. And if you are older, it becomes even more of an issue. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really have a lot of interest in letting Amazon or MS effectively be part owner of my product, and just use some cloud API that I have no control over or understanding of the workings of. I always want to understand and control what I'm writing. But things like AI and serious DNN based speech recognition, which I am very interested in, I've dug into enough to know that I won't be able to go there. They are already too 'mathematics doctoral thesis'-like for me to take on in the time I have left, at least without completely discarding any existing obligations which ain't too practical. It's kind of depressing to realize that there are races you'll never run, arms you'll never lay in (well, OK, that includes 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of them), and code you'll never be able to write. Things have gotten so much more complex now. Back in 'my day' when we coded by rubbing sticks together, a single person could pretty much encompass almost all of the art and science.
Explorans limites defectum
I'm here/there with you. I can't know it all but I've come to grips with that. But I know something and how do I save others from wasting time? I'm old and gray too. Where I work we have a couple of different attitudes on using others code. The "build it our self" mentality is strong with some of them. A couple of years ago there was a meeting to discuss developing a requirements management system for use to use as the free one we were using apparently wasn't meeting our needs. Everyone was for it but I kept my mouth shut until I was specifically asked to comment as my unusual silence had been noted. I spoke for a few minutes but the gist of it was why the hell do we have the arrogance to think we can develop a system to manage requirements when we can't even write one. There were no more meetings on the subject. Most of the reason I'm here today I find to be very close to the reason you started this thread. I'm working in an environment (SMART on FHIR) that is deep and wide. I want to share the knowledge I've gained but I'm so overwhelmed with new stuff I have to learn and become an 'expert' at that I find it daunting to figure out how to write a blog and other articles on those subjects. I was looking for mentoring and ended up here. So, yes, this about me.
MArk (The Code Gorilla) B.
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Another problem with using some monolithic cloud API is that the company responsible for it will inevitably adbandon it, and even worse, may just delete it when their "new thing" is available. This is the primary reason I don't load jquery or anything like that from a remote location on the web. I don't trust the host to keep the files around as long as I might need them, and a perfect example of that is our 13-year old app suite that use ancient versions of everything.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013BTW, this just happened to the other guy in my company. He has another company (well a couple, you know how that whole serial entrepreneur thing works) and they were using something I think called Busy Beacons from Google I guess it was. They were working on a product and had it testing in some places, and then Google just dropped them. So all that work went poof.
Explorans limites defectum
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The poll on the main page about things that interest you got me to thinking... It's one thing to be interested, but another thing to actually have any realistic chance of doing anything serious in a given area. The time investment for a lot of new things these days has gotten huge, and to be anything more than a code monkey using a magic wand style high level API you will have to really dig in. But life is short (even if it doesn't seem that way to some of you at 18 or some such) and diving deep into one of these areas will come at the expense of things that you might be less interested in but that would probably be more practical or that are immediately necessary. And if you are older, it becomes even more of an issue. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really have a lot of interest in letting Amazon or MS effectively be part owner of my product, and just use some cloud API that I have no control over or understanding of the workings of. I always want to understand and control what I'm writing. But things like AI and serious DNN based speech recognition, which I am very interested in, I've dug into enough to know that I won't be able to go there. They are already too 'mathematics doctoral thesis'-like for me to take on in the time I have left, at least without completely discarding any existing obligations which ain't too practical. It's kind of depressing to realize that there are races you'll never run, arms you'll never lay in (well, OK, that includes 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of them), and code you'll never be able to write. Things have gotten so much more complex now. Back in 'my day' when we coded by rubbing sticks together, a single person could pretty much encompass almost all of the art and science.
Explorans limites defectum
I agree totally. I have so many interests and so little time to do them. I'm old now and what I do with my time is limited so I try to chose things that I can do as opposed to what I would like to do...that list is so long I don't even have time to read it!
I do all my own stunts, but never intentionally! JaxCoder.com
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Thirded. I use them but MAN I don't like it. Especially when I can't dive into them via the debugger.
MarkTJohnson wrote:
the debugger.
I've heard of that thing. I believe it's something inexperienced developers have to use, right?
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other. Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it. Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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I agree totally. I have so many interests and so little time to do them. I'm old now and what I do with my time is limited so I try to chose things that I can do as opposed to what I would like to do...that list is so long I don't even have time to read it!
I do all my own stunts, but never intentionally! JaxCoder.com
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Quote:
I'm old now and what I do with my time is limited
First of all, please forget such thoughts. Live/learn/enjoy and don't think about age! This from also an "old" one ;)
It does not solve my Problem, but it answers my question
My problem is I have so many other interests that I have to budget my time accordingly to be able to get all I can done. Travel, camping, photography, reading,computers, embedded devices (IoT lately), Windows Forms apps, Web site (my personnel site), etc..
I do all my own stunts, but never intentionally! JaxCoder.com
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The poll on the main page about things that interest you got me to thinking... It's one thing to be interested, but another thing to actually have any realistic chance of doing anything serious in a given area. The time investment for a lot of new things these days has gotten huge, and to be anything more than a code monkey using a magic wand style high level API you will have to really dig in. But life is short (even if it doesn't seem that way to some of you at 18 or some such) and diving deep into one of these areas will come at the expense of things that you might be less interested in but that would probably be more practical or that are immediately necessary. And if you are older, it becomes even more of an issue. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really have a lot of interest in letting Amazon or MS effectively be part owner of my product, and just use some cloud API that I have no control over or understanding of the workings of. I always want to understand and control what I'm writing. But things like AI and serious DNN based speech recognition, which I am very interested in, I've dug into enough to know that I won't be able to go there. They are already too 'mathematics doctoral thesis'-like for me to take on in the time I have left, at least without completely discarding any existing obligations which ain't too practical. It's kind of depressing to realize that there are races you'll never run, arms you'll never lay in (well, OK, that includes 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of them), and code you'll never be able to write. Things have gotten so much more complex now. Back in 'my day' when we coded by rubbing sticks together, a single person could pretty much encompass almost all of the art and science.
Explorans limites defectum
Dean Roddey wrote:
and code you'll never be able to write.
Conversely, there's code I wish I never had written. Not that the code was bad per se, but rather the industry / technology / management which I endured writing the code. Two industries I've worked in so far that I will never ever do again: financial and insurance. I found both to be evil and soul sucking, especially as I learned what went on behind the scenes. Favorite industries: commercial satellite manufacturing, security (video surveillance stuff back in the 1990's), control systems / sensors (mainly high speed, low light level, and multispectral cameras), and of course the "lay in my arms" industry -- lots of cool hardware (*cough*) to play with there -- bill acceptors, fingerprint readers, barcode scanners, annoying receipt printers, etc. Basically, my favorite industries involve innovation, hardware, and UI / UX / usability challenges, and the ones I loathe involve writing SOAP calls to get some number that is used to increase some rate that the consumer has to pay which basically just lines the pockets of "the man."
Latest Article - Azure Function - Compute Pi Stress Test Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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The poll on the main page about things that interest you got me to thinking... It's one thing to be interested, but another thing to actually have any realistic chance of doing anything serious in a given area. The time investment for a lot of new things these days has gotten huge, and to be anything more than a code monkey using a magic wand style high level API you will have to really dig in. But life is short (even if it doesn't seem that way to some of you at 18 or some such) and diving deep into one of these areas will come at the expense of things that you might be less interested in but that would probably be more practical or that are immediately necessary. And if you are older, it becomes even more of an issue. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really have a lot of interest in letting Amazon or MS effectively be part owner of my product, and just use some cloud API that I have no control over or understanding of the workings of. I always want to understand and control what I'm writing. But things like AI and serious DNN based speech recognition, which I am very interested in, I've dug into enough to know that I won't be able to go there. They are already too 'mathematics doctoral thesis'-like for me to take on in the time I have left, at least without completely discarding any existing obligations which ain't too practical. It's kind of depressing to realize that there are races you'll never run, arms you'll never lay in (well, OK, that includes 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of them), and code you'll never be able to write. Things have gotten so much more complex now. Back in 'my day' when we coded by rubbing sticks together, a single person could pretty much encompass almost all of the art and science.
Explorans limites defectum
I look at apps in my phone and sigh... maybe someday.
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The poll on the main page about things that interest you got me to thinking... It's one thing to be interested, but another thing to actually have any realistic chance of doing anything serious in a given area. The time investment for a lot of new things these days has gotten huge, and to be anything more than a code monkey using a magic wand style high level API you will have to really dig in. But life is short (even if it doesn't seem that way to some of you at 18 or some such) and diving deep into one of these areas will come at the expense of things that you might be less interested in but that would probably be more practical or that are immediately necessary. And if you are older, it becomes even more of an issue. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really have a lot of interest in letting Amazon or MS effectively be part owner of my product, and just use some cloud API that I have no control over or understanding of the workings of. I always want to understand and control what I'm writing. But things like AI and serious DNN based speech recognition, which I am very interested in, I've dug into enough to know that I won't be able to go there. They are already too 'mathematics doctoral thesis'-like for me to take on in the time I have left, at least without completely discarding any existing obligations which ain't too practical. It's kind of depressing to realize that there are races you'll never run, arms you'll never lay in (well, OK, that includes 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of them), and code you'll never be able to write. Things have gotten so much more complex now. Back in 'my day' when we coded by rubbing sticks together, a single person could pretty much encompass almost all of the art and science.
Explorans limites defectum
Quote:
Back in 'my day' when we coded by rubbing sticks together, a single person could pretty much encompass almost all of the art and science.
Back in the early 80's when I was a Professor of Computer Science I probably knew, or knew about, 85% of what tech there was to know in our industry. These days I might know as much as 0.85% of what there is to know after over 40 years of experience it in!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Another problem with using some monolithic cloud API is that the company responsible for it will inevitably adbandon it, and even worse, may just delete it when their "new thing" is available. This is the primary reason I don't load jquery or anything like that from a remote location on the web. I don't trust the host to keep the files around as long as I might need them, and a perfect example of that is our 13-year old app suite that use ancient versions of everything.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
The poll on the main page about things that interest you got me to thinking... It's one thing to be interested, but another thing to actually have any realistic chance of doing anything serious in a given area. The time investment for a lot of new things these days has gotten huge, and to be anything more than a code monkey using a magic wand style high level API you will have to really dig in. But life is short (even if it doesn't seem that way to some of you at 18 or some such) and diving deep into one of these areas will come at the expense of things that you might be less interested in but that would probably be more practical or that are immediately necessary. And if you are older, it becomes even more of an issue. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really have a lot of interest in letting Amazon or MS effectively be part owner of my product, and just use some cloud API that I have no control over or understanding of the workings of. I always want to understand and control what I'm writing. But things like AI and serious DNN based speech recognition, which I am very interested in, I've dug into enough to know that I won't be able to go there. They are already too 'mathematics doctoral thesis'-like for me to take on in the time I have left, at least without completely discarding any existing obligations which ain't too practical. It's kind of depressing to realize that there are races you'll never run, arms you'll never lay in (well, OK, that includes 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of them), and code you'll never be able to write. Things have gotten so much more complex now. Back in 'my day' when we coded by rubbing sticks together, a single person could pretty much encompass almost all of the art and science.
Explorans limites defectum
Do we hate ourselves for the code that we never wrote more then the code that we tried and failed at? Or put - do you want to spend 5 years figuring out how to code a neural net to convert "Hello" into audio speech. Or use existing work to improve a neural net to play a game with your kid while you sleep?
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Do we hate ourselves for the code that we never wrote more then the code that we tried and failed at? Or put - do you want to spend 5 years figuring out how to code a neural net to convert "Hello" into audio speech. Or use existing work to improve a neural net to play a game with your kid while you sleep?
I'd rather put in the time and understand it, honestly. That's always been where my interests lie, in implementing OO frameworks, not using them.
Explorans limites defectum
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The poll on the main page about things that interest you got me to thinking... It's one thing to be interested, but another thing to actually have any realistic chance of doing anything serious in a given area. The time investment for a lot of new things these days has gotten huge, and to be anything more than a code monkey using a magic wand style high level API you will have to really dig in. But life is short (even if it doesn't seem that way to some of you at 18 or some such) and diving deep into one of these areas will come at the expense of things that you might be less interested in but that would probably be more practical or that are immediately necessary. And if you are older, it becomes even more of an issue. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really have a lot of interest in letting Amazon or MS effectively be part owner of my product, and just use some cloud API that I have no control over or understanding of the workings of. I always want to understand and control what I'm writing. But things like AI and serious DNN based speech recognition, which I am very interested in, I've dug into enough to know that I won't be able to go there. They are already too 'mathematics doctoral thesis'-like for me to take on in the time I have left, at least without completely discarding any existing obligations which ain't too practical. It's kind of depressing to realize that there are races you'll never run, arms you'll never lay in (well, OK, that includes 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of them), and code you'll never be able to write. Things have gotten so much more complex now. Back in 'my day' when we coded by rubbing sticks together, a single person could pretty much encompass almost all of the art and science.
Explorans limites defectum
"But things like AI and serious DNN based speech recognition, which I am very interested in, I've dug into enough to know that I won't be able to go there. They are already too 'mathematics doctoral thesis'-like for me to take on in the time I have left, at least without completely discarding any existing obligations which ain't too practical." I think you might be selling yourself short there, unless by "time you have left" you mean "I only have 6-months to a year before I die" - even then, I'd still say to go for it. Really, it isn't as difficult as you think. With today's tools and frameworks, while you do need some understanding of what is going on under the hood, it's not like you need to have deep level calculus knowledge (that would really only come into play for implementing such frameworks). It's kinda like making a 3D game - you can either spend the time writing an engine, or just grab one already made (with scenegraph, etc) - and get down to writing your game. Personal anecdote: In the fall of 2011 it was announced that Stanford was sponsoring a couple of online learning classes, being taught by three top-tier instructors. These classes were called "AI Class" and "ML Class". I managed to get myself enrolled into both. It's been said that they didn't expect a huge amount of response from people to take these classes, but they were completely blown away by the number of people who eventually did enroll. The "AI Class" was being taught by Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun. The "ML Class" was being taught by Andrew Ng. Do any of these names seem familiar? They should... These online classes were not a new thing, but they did succeed in showing how to do it properly. Prior to this, online classes tended to be more ad-hoc affairs, cobbled together from pieces, or just courses uploaded for others to browse, but nothing structured properly, outside of a very few paid and expensive offerings. These two courses were really the pioneers of what we call MOOCs today. Anyhow, I took them. It was a struggle. To make a long story short, I completed the ML Class, and got about halfway thru the AI Class before I had to quit due to some personal issues that I won't go into. But I was doing well at that course (though it was right at the edge of my skill and knowledge base). As an example of what a student managed to accomplish via what they learned in the "ML Class": How I built a self-driving (RC) car and you can too.[
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Yes - Jasmine is a framework I have come across for javascript as well as an older unit testing framework I have used the name of which I have forgotten. You can also use something like Cypress with Cucumber and Gherkin to write really decent UI tests using fairly normal English syntax and sentences. As an aside I started learning Python recently, as I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Python has a unit testing framework included within its standard library and by using unit tests and test driven development I was able to develop a working project very quickly.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
"You can also use something like Cypress with Cucumber and Gherkin to write really decent UI tests using fairly normal English syntax and sentences." It sounds like you're just getting pickled.
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"You can also use something like Cypress with Cucumber and Gherkin to write really decent UI tests using fairly normal English syntax and sentences." It sounds like you're just getting pickled.
Indeed and you can use Chocolatey to manage all of that too :).
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
