text:
Do you work for Blizzard?
As one who has plied this trade for decades, I'll tell you that programmers are human beings, just like everyone else.
We urge for recognition, and we need money.
You just do not tell us to do what you want us to do without recognizing the hard work we have put into debugging the products.
And you will not go anywhere if you do not pay us.
As one who has plied this trade for decades, I'll tell you that programmers are human beings, just like everyone else.
We urge for recognition, and we need money.
You just do not tell us to do what you want us to do without recognizing the hard work we have put into debugging the products.
And you will not go anywhere if you do not pay us.
If we need recognition in order to do work of acceptable quality, we have an ethics problem. For people with a sense of professional ethics, recognizition and remuneration are pre-conditions for staying at a company or project. But they are never pre-conditions for doing developing software with a professionally acceptable level of quality. Professionals leave, when the time is right, when they feel unrecognized or underpaid. But they do not deliver shit.
Barring the unavoidable hacks that must happen here and there, software professionals with work ethics do not deliver shit even when unrecognized or underpaid. The greater problem in the software industry is not the lack of recognition (and certainly not the lack of good pay). It is the scarcity of developers with a sense of work ethics.
So.. you are saying good code equals company goes bust? Straps on flameproof suit and helmet...
So.. you are saying good code equals company goes bust?
It's kind of worrisome, isn't it?
So.. you are saying good code equals company goes bust?
It's kind of worrisome, isn't it?
The perversity of the universe tends towards the maximum
Larry Niven (I think).
In a sense. When a development staff are happy, working normal hours, and cranking out quality code, the management from newly minted MBAs on up to the CEO all have a single thought: "If I squeeze hard enough, I can get a few more nickles out of that department for my bonus check". So they decimate the workforce and rattle off platitudes like "work smarter, not harder" at an ever increasing rate. They set "stretch goals" but punish people severely for not meeting them. They demand shorter deadlines and more
Google's code that they have released seems pretty decent.
Google's code that they have released seems pretty decent.
I don't know which code you were looking at, you are probably right. But I can tell you, I've spent a lot of time in the Android codebase, and that thing is giant mess. Everywhere you look there are bugs. You can report them and they don't get fixed. There is undocumented behavior. More than once I've wanted to throw my monitor out the window in a rage after working on Google code. I hate their stuff.
What companies do you know that produce good, high-quality code?
Consistently or occasionally? From what I've seen, your average company produces one or two great products and a lot of half-assed projects. I call this the Lightroom-Flash spectrum. On the upper bound, you have code that is fairly well written (apart from that case-sensitivity maps bug, ahem...), and on the lower bound, you have... well, Flash.
What distinguishes one from the other? IMO, you can roughly quantify it as: q = 1 / (t_sub_r * b_
I used to work for a company that produced avionics software. Obviously, we had to write solid code.
The On-Board Shuttle group is (was) even more bad-ass than that. [fastcompany.com] For them, 5 9s (99.999% failure rate) was unacceptably lax.
But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider
Heh, that raises a question. I often complain about other people's code, it's a typical developer hobby. I can name a lot of companies that produce lousy code, but What companies do you know that produce good, high-quality code? I was depressed to find I couldn't think of many. Maybe Sun before they disappeared, and NeXT, before they disappeared, and SGI.
The small companies I've worked for have aimed to produce good code. The insurance company where I had my first professional programming job, we aimed to produce good code (and we methodically refactored badly written legacy code inherited from a contractor.)
When I worked for Citircorp Latin America Division, I remember every development team aiming to have some quality in their deliverables. With other large companies, I've seen teams producing shitty code, but also teams having outstanding performance.
1. Pair programming usually improves coding standards
2. Code Reviews can promote improved standards
3. Don't let them maintain code they've worked on before unless it's been round the rest of the team
I don't find constant pair programming improves standards. I find it slows development to a crawl while leading to developers who are either mentally checked out or goofing around most of the day. Or depending on your developers, arguing over inanities. Or they just leave- I wouldn't stay at a job where I was going to literally have someone standing over my shoulder telling me what to do all day.
Code reviews are good, but you have the same problem as the OP does- you have to convince people not to half
1. Higher Pay
2. Good Management
3. Beatings
Pick any two.
1. Higher Pay
2. Good Management
3. Beatings
Pick any two.
4. Hire the consultant in China who did such good work for that cat video guy [slashdot.org]
What you have just described is what happens when Management does not see value in what you do.
To them, you are just an interchangeable cog. Like, the brand of air conditioner in the office. Or the janitor. It has no bearing on their success and they don't really care what you think about anything.
The way they see it, if you don't do your job, they'll just replace you with something else.
Your best bet is to leave. And do as little work as possible in the meantime.
Like, the brand of air conditioner in the office. Or the janitor.
My father was an air conditioner and put me through college you insensitive clod!
I view management as cogs too, they are fairly interchangeable, and on their own worthless. Put them all together in a bag and you get a percussion instrument. Percussion instruments are essential to music, and you can bang on them with sticks or mallets.
Other than doing as little as possible, I wholeheartedly agree.
You should work hard while you're there though, if for no other reason than because doing things the right way in the wrong environment is really, really hard and you'll learn a lot. Properly made code doesn't interface well with awful code, but it's a task you'll have to do at least occasionally for as long as you're a developer. Being good at that is an invaluable skill.
It's also nice to not feel awful about what you left behind, if you're the
Not necessarily; had the same problems described by poster in former work place. We solved it by locking down commits, bug reports and had the database guys drive development.
No development was allowed without a bug/feature request, no commits where allowed without a bug reference. Database guys made the calls since the company money where in their domain.
In the beginning there was a bit of unrest, but the rest of the crew quickly realized it was actually really nice to know exactly what went where and why.
Your inability to proof-read the text of your submission does not give me hope for your team. ("I am part of engineering team...", "...non-existant...", "...we would can eliminate...")
Yeah, on Slashdot...I crack myself up. Editors!
Of how much time and productivity is being wasted on inadequate practices and how much you'll improve your product, discover bugs faster and generally innovate with your improvements. Worst case, you'll need to do a shame trip on a few egregious offenders (pick their work and try to exclude names) and show how you'd do things differently.
The benefit from your improvements must be obvious, immediate and beyond reproach.
Fair warning: You cannot change the mind of management if they're more worried about maintaining the status quo. A very likely issue, if it's been this long with no improvements. All of the above will only work if your 2-3 people have any position of authority within the company. In my experience, the old-dogs don't want to or can't change, in which case you'll be on your own.
Of course, you will also earn the ire of those around you if it's that type of atmosphere. People fear change when they're not the ones doing the changing.
I agree but I think the presentation needs a lot of concrete examples of wasted money. Technical debt is very expensive but most managers don't really understand it and how it impacts their schedules, competitiveness, and the bottom line. All they know how to do is count features but they really need to understand software development more so they can make more informed decisions.
to outsource your work to someone in India giving you time to peruse Reddit?
Yes a LOT more QA is needed also out side the box testing needs to be done do not just have auto tests they are easy to code to pass them while failing big time.
Yes a LOT more QA is needed also out side the box testing needs to be done do not just have auto tests they are easy to code to pass them while failing big time.
You also need a management that is willing to stand behind the QA team. QA can be a thankless job and when you start trying to teach new tricks to a bunch of old dogs who have gotten away with sloppy work for years it can lead discontent in the ranks. When the QA team starts doing things like limit developer's freedom to do projects in any language they happen to have the hots for at the moment, implement a code syntax checker to enforce coding standards, mandate a set of standard coding tools, make devs wr
And give the QA team enough authority to prevent buggy releases.
No. Please god NO.
QA is not the Release-Police and shouldn't _ever_ put themselves in the role. QA's role is to tell you that something _is_ a buggy piece of shit, that Devs have been too stressed, that planning didn't go into architecture, and that all the "Crunch" is going to come back and haunt twice over.
QA can have the role of saying that something stinks, but should also be able to tell you _where_ and _what_ and in some cases _how_ it stinks.
However, QA should not be able to say "We won't release t
Hopefully you have a QA team...if your project is large enough and you do not have a QA team, consider proposing the concept to management. Proper controls and planning on unit test, functional test, system test, solutions test, things like that are all really required to help keep large, multi-developer projects in check, especially in this day and age of migrant coders, on-and-off contractors, and out-sourced-then-imported coding jobs.
My wife works in QA, and simply having a QA team is not adequate. Yes, it is one more check (or balance), but it's also redundancy that can quickly overwhelm the primary focus of your coding team.
You need strong leaders in your coding group. If you have strong coders, and they're not strong leaders, think about structuring the work in a way that forces the code into spec. Find ways to develop those leadership attributes, and train the other coders to conform. The nice thing about working with coders is that a structured training program (training, as in behaviouralism) will work - routines, structure and cause/effect (or compulsion loops) are much easier to implement with an emotionally detached, logical group of individuals. You can actually discuss the "training" routine (but don't label it as such) and expect a level of rational resistance to change. Rationality can can be worked with, and in my experience, you don't get people who are much more rational than coders.
It doesn't have to be a permanent arrangement, and it doesn't have to involve raises. It does have to give your team an opportunity to make the transition to a new way of coding without feeling threatened. Think of it as a clean break from a bad relationship. You can't stay friends, you need a complete change of scenery.
Everything you wrote is correct and well taken. However, all the things you bring up are not nearly sufficient, and I would argue they are not even the most important. As an analogy, during the '60s, '70s and '80s Detroit automakers developed a reputation for shoddy workmanship. But they did spend a lot on quality control - tons of workers were assigned the job of "reworking" botched vehicles that came off the assembly line. And their dealers learned to do their own fix up work before moving vehicles onto the showroom floor. During the '80s, after the Japanese and Germans started kicking Detroit's butt, a slew of quality consultants came along with essentially the same recommendations:
1. Mistakes have to be caught EARLY in the process, when they can be corrected in a cost-effective manner, not LATE
2. Vehicle design and manufacturing have to be better engineered to reduce the incidence of errors introduced during assembly
In other words, testing is important, but good architecture is much more important. Without good architecture you are doomed to running a treadmill to keep the bugs out as the code is churned for feature development and maintenance.
Hopefully you have a QA team...if your project is large enough and you do not have a QA team, consider proposing the concept to management
I worked for a company that had a QA team. Basically, the presence of the QA team was seen as confirmation that every engineering decision was right and correct. Never mind that nobody ever listened to what the QA team said. The fact that they were allowed to speak up at meetings was proof that everything we did had "passed QA."
Get your team to write "Good Code", eh?
Does your team write bad code? Do they think that their code is bad?
Why do you think that your team writes bad code?
I'll bet a nickle that the problem isn't your team. I'll bet that you're the type to write a factory factory factory under the banner of "flexibility" and not understand why everyone groans at your "superior" code.
This is one of those times when I wish I had mod points. "spot on my friend, spot on"
GP is part of the problem. For people like him/her, it is not about good code or bad code, it is about 'my way or the highway'.
Calling someone "factory factory factory guy" without any basis is how you get mod points on Slashdot without being correct. For all one knows the submitter might be exact opposite.
I'll bet that you're the type to write a factory factory factory under the banner of "flexibility" and not understand why everyone groans at your "superior" code.
That is so 2008! These days we've shown that an abstract singleton factory method bridge prototype facade is the only way to go for maximum flexibility! Get with 2013!
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go write my unit tests for the old factory factory singleton - see how the old way makes it difficult to test!
Get management buy in, and have them pad your estimates to allow a little bit of code rework in each release cycle.
If that fails, lie about your estimates and use the extra time to rework the code in each release cycle.
the goal is to remove as much money as possible as soon as possible from customer's pockets and to put it in the pockets of your senior executives and stock holders. now shut the fuck up, quit jacking off on company time whining on slashdot, and get that shit shoveled out the door!
(1) Code reviews. At first, just get 'em to grab a passer by to look at their code prior to check-in. If the PB cannot understand what they've done, they haven't finished the job. Later on you can upgrade to more stringent reviews, but the first thing is to get *some* reviews happening *at all*.
(2) Comments and (some) documentation. You need to lead by example. This stuff isn't optional.
(3) Unit testing. If your code base is a pig, you'll need to start somewhere and begin teasing out the "bits that think" (easier to UT) from the "bits that talk to things" (these are harder to UT and you can get away with integration testing here until you're in better shape). Unit testing is a skill anyone can learn. Sack 'em if they refuse to do it!
(4) Simplify your processes and your architecture where possible. Avoid trendy bandwagons. If the obvious thing works and is maintainable, then that is probably the best way to go.
(5) Longer time-scales (at least for a time)
If you're being hot-housed, you get something that ostensibly works out the door, and "to hell with the unit tests". I someone told me "I need X in a week", I'd just hash together any old crap that essentially meets the requirements. If they told me "do it as quickly as you can, let me know when it's done", then I'd probably spend a bit more time planning it out so that I could make a better job of it, and be reporting my progress along the way.
I've had great success acting on my own initiative and begging forgiveness afterwards.
That being said, the bottom line is I was able to show marked improvement. If your tools and processes have no tangible benefit - then I'm sorry, but you're going to have to pay the price for your insolence.
Ok.. those are strong words in the subject, but inducing a culture change quickly is something you can incentivize. I'm not sure of your particular situation, but here's two ideas:
1. Bribe them. Companies usually call this merit based bonuses. Break the goals of the team(s) into individual goals. If a particular module is due to be rewritten for the next release, then pay a bonus if it gets done correctly and on time. If it's not done correctly, don't pay the bonus. If it's not on time, don't pay the bonus. With regards to it being "correct", that falls into the next item..
2. Punishment. If the code sucks, don't commit it. Force the programmer to rewrite it. That even might mean rearchitect it if there was architecture involved. Programmers hate repetition. They will very quickly learn that if they are forced to do something over that they can do it better the first time. If they find themselves working late hours to meet a deadline, perhaps because a bonus is riding on it, they'll get better.
Most important, make sure your deadlines and features are realistic. Are you sure they are? Are people being sloppy because they feel too pressured? Shipping a buggy feature isn't a feature.
and we know what needs to change technically
Which we?
Is the technical team than need to be convinced? Either you convince the guys to do the right thing (write better code as part of professional pride) or you need to convince the managers to impose doing the things right (i.e. better processes, tools, infrastructure). Did you note the difference between doing the right thing (part of the leadership) and doing the things right (part of management)?
If it is the management team that need to be convinced, then either:
a. the cost of lack of quality is
"Our code quality and general engineering quality focus has been very weak"
So you want people to write good code on top of crappy code. This is hard for people to do. Just as it would be in any field to fix up crappy work. A carpenter, plumber, artist... will all be demotivate worked on a botched job.
"and it is impossible for a newcomer in our team to get up to speed and be productive in less than a month due to unnecessary complexity"
How many newcomers are joining your team that this a problem? Lots of chu
That ought to work.
What you are describing is a work place that does not follow modern software engineering practices. Management does not see the value in it. It will not devote the resources to cleaning up the code or refactoring. It will not develop training for new employees.
Of course, two or three of you want to change it. I think "you" are two young people who don't understand that management doesn't care you have an older friend who agrees it could be better (although he understands nothing will change).
I think it'
How do we effect the social change necessary to convince them of what is better and encourage them to take the effort to do it?"
Make small incremental changes If you try to make all the changes at once, you have a high probability of failure; both at the implementation level, and at the 'convincing management' level. Choose a small change that has a high probability of success, for example, set up Hudson to do automated builds. When people see benefit from that, they will be more likely to make other changes. One thing at a time. But:
we have frequent buggy releases,
This raises a warning flag. Are you adding bugs to the product that get released? If so, you are the
You have the wrong focus. Expending your energy to "How do we effect the social change necessary to convince them of what is better and encourage them to take the effort to do it?" will get you nowhere. If you want to improve the code, it is not the programming team you need to convince. You already state that code suffers to meat the deadlines.
If you want code to improve, you need to convince management of the value of the improved code, so that it becomes their priority. Until they value it, the deadlines
We feel that if the right thing is done every time, we would can eliminate our issues and still release at the same pace.
Nope. Writing better code generally requires more time. People will try to tell you otherwise, but either they're just off base, or they're confused by the fact that the amortized time of writing good code is less than of writing code as quickly as possible. That is, if you write all quick+dirty code, you reach a point each new feature you add takes much longer than if you had written
it is impossible for a newcomer in our team to get up to speed and be productive in less than a month due to unnecessary complexity
The miracle worker. The mutant mastermind.
New to the team, Core component. Mission critical. Up to speed in less than a month?
A group of 2-3 of us want to change [things]. How do we effect the social change necessary to convince them of what is better and encourage them to take the effort to do it?"
Who is "them?"
Your supervisors or your managers?
More importantly, who are you?
Not the team leaders, quite obviously, and probably no more than a bare five to ten percent of the team, if that. Unless you have the social skills to build a much broader consensus for change, you'll get absolutely nowhere no matter how good your techn
In every other engineering discipline I can think of, where the word "engineer" actually means something, releasing sloppy and buggy work means you'll either get fired or sued. Possibly both.
Think of your products as buildings or structures. They have to live up to certain standards, have to work when they're put up (ever seen someone replace the foundation of a sky scraper after it's been built?) and have to be stable. Or worse - imagine chemical engineers who designed your drugs, or the mechanical enginee
What you have are people who are apathetic about the quality of their work and who are in-fighting among each other. You already have formed an "Us and Them" (you mentioned that "2 or 3 of us" know what to do) situation which projects negative energy at the them side (works both ways) and further feeds the lack of a cohesive and collaborative space.
Here's how you fix it, find something beautiful about the people you work with and compliment them on it. Look for the positive in people and let them know what
There's a decent Wikipedia article on it. Accusing your management of allowing one of the now-classic dysfunctional management failures to grow could get some discussion going.
We feel that if the right thing is done every time, we would can eliminate our issues and still release at the same pace. How do we effect the social change necessary to convince them of what is better and encourage them to take the effort to do it?
Write a business case showing how much these "issues" are costing your company, and by extension, how much your proposed changes is going to save.
Then write out clearly what you want to change, how much that costs, and exactly how those changes can be objectively measured (i.e. so someone outside can know if real change has been implemented or if only lip service been paid).
Then offer to put your money on the line, and offer to take a share of the P&L that resulted in this change you wish done, on the condition that the changes have been implemented measurably.
Make your presentation to your manager, his manager, all the way up to the big boss who is ultimately responsible for these related costs and profits.
Then let them decide. This is the most important part, your job is to do the work, their job is to make decisions. Don't presume you can do their work better than they do. If they decide against it, don't make a fuss, don't try to implement your changes by subterfuge, find another job if you wish, but respect that your management had made a decision.
It sounds to me like this is a group of 2-3 developers who want to improve processes, without (currently) support from the business, which just wants to keep shipping on time. If you can't get management support, you're going to have a hard time, so that's the place to start.
If your management doesn't understand the concept of Technical Debt [wikipedia.org] and how it's costing the company time, money and reducing your agility and competitiveness, that's where you need to start. How to go about educating them is something that you're going to have to figure out for yourself, since you know the people and the context, but I'll give you a warning: people don't like to be told they don't know their business. If you try to approach it like that, you're very unlikely to be successful. And, frankly, unless the group trying to initiate the change is already among the top performers, and has a track record of successfully delivering, you're unlikely to be successful no matter how you go about it. So you first need to get the guys the management perceives as being their top contributors on board.
Still, if you can get the conversation started in the right way, technical debt is a concept that business people can easily grasp, because it so closely parallels the notion of financial debt. For that matter, you should make sure you understand it thoroughly as well, including the fact that it often makes perfect sense to take on technical debt in exchange for a business advantage which is likely to have sufficiently-large rewards. Never forget that the purpose of the code is to generate revenues, not to appeal to your sense of aesthetic purity.
But, technical debt slows progress and massively increases the financial impact of bugs. The interest will be paid -- there's no avoiding it or deferring it -- and as the debt grows it becomes a burden which sucks up all resources. If you can get your management to understand and agree on that, you've won, as long as you don't screw it up.
To avoid screwing it up, do not embark on a massive development process re-engineering effort. If you do, you'll fail. You'll delay the next release, cost the company large amounts of money and customer goodwill and completely undermine everything you said.
Instead, figure out what one thing you can change which will have the most immediate significant and measurable impact. Do that, show the benefit, then move on to the next incremental improvement. This is hard. It requires you to not only figure out what will help the most, but also how to measure the before and after states, and to ensure that your measurements won't be gamed or encourage counterproductive behavior. Also, spend a lot of time thinking hard about how to make the change in a way that will have the lowest negative impact on productivity -- because anything you change is going to hurt at least a little, in the short term.
Though you need to look at your own situation, my prediction is that the thing that will do you the most immediate good is code reviews. Automated testing is a bigger win, but has a steeper up-front cost and the value is harder to quantify. With a little care, it's easy to document the financial benefits of code reviews. But to make them work, you first need good code review tools -- sitting around a table with printouts wastes everyone's time and rarely accomplishes anything. Spend the time to find a good code review tool that you can integrate into your workflow, set it up, test and validate it and be sure that it's going to work well before you ask people to use it. Note that this is all a lot of work, and unless management is extremely enthusiastic you'll probably have to do a lot of it during evenings and weekends.
Once you have it working for a while go back and pull out a bunch of reviews and take some time to carefully analyze what kinds of bugs were identified and fixed in the review process, and try to estimate what it would have c
The question presumes that developers are choosing to write crappy code and just need to be convinced to write good code. That's silly. Either they're capable of writing good code and want to, or they're not. If you have to convince people to write good code, then you have poor developers.
That's not to say there aren't external factors that degrade the maintainability and robustness of the code, and the questioner suggests things are rushed to get stuff out of the door.
You can try to get management's agreem
I think not enough people understand that coding is just a small part of producing a working software system. A system starts with an idea in someone's head - when this is formally documented, we often call it User Requirements. Now note that that system already exists, although not in a machine-executable form, but as a vision in someone's head. So formal software lifecycle processes usually define various levels of documentation/specification. Each of these refines and details the previous level. So each level already represents the system, but starting at a very abstract ("in the head") level, until you get to the very concrete ("machine-executable") level. (QA/testing runs in parallel, ensuring that the product at each level complies with what was specified (the product of the previous level).
Enhancements also start as enhancements to the User Requirements and down the process, it is just an incremental addition, which is obviously a smaller work package than the original system. I don't have any experience of Agile methodologies (as you might be able to tell - military market), but if that is your environment you might be able to adapt the above, and allow for the tweaks that make Agile what it is. In effect most Agile methodologies have a lot less levels, and also divide work into a lot more but smaller incremental enhancements, enabling one to go through the remaining levels much quicker. Either some Agile or the older more formal methodologies are good, it depends on your circumstances which would be better.
What I'm saying is that changing the coding to be better alone, is like giving some paracetamol to someone with a brain tumor. Your way of working needs fixing, and it will probably not only involve your coders but all people in the process starting from the people that provide requirements - since everyone works on some level of abstraction of the system. Formalized processes are sometimes helpful in this, as it can be a standard condition of employment to comply with company policies and procedures. In effect, you need to turn your team from a collection of individuals who do much as they please, to a single organism that is "better than the sum of its individual parts" (see "Heterozygous" for a biology analogy).
Furthermore, all the above documentation can be helpful to newcomers (and existing employees) to get up to speed, since one can select the document at the desired level of abstraction and learn what you need to know at the quickest speed. Reading code (even good clean code), being at the lowest level of abstraction, can be quite time-consuming and frustrating.
Now it IS a big problem to get people to write good, to-the-point, unambiguous documentation - documentation that is as terse as possible and still verbose enough to contain everything that is needed - and that can be understood by someone other than the author.
Now to your question: (1) Do developers/employees in general, perceive that there are problems with the way they are working? If they are unhappy, then they might be more open to change that would improve their experience, than if they are quite content. (2) Once they are looking for improvement, it might be shown to them in the form of published work ("best practices") on this, or other companies' way of working, or even a small "pilot study" team in your own organization. (3) Many possible solutions exist, some contradicting others, and your org needs to find the one that will best work for them. I would say if people can provide input, they might be more accepting of the solution. Of course, an organization consists of lots of individuals so management is needed to provide (some) direction. (4) Be open to adapt/tweak for further improvements. (5) Use some carrot and stick to reinforce, but be careful of polarizing management vs employees - rather try to have people praised or censured by their peers, even if it is just weekly voted "biggest boon|booboo awards" that sit on someone's desk but don't do much else.
The only way of producing good quality code that I know of, is by introducing rigorous quality assurance, and by management realising that code is not ready for release until it has passed all QA tests. Not meeting deadlines is a minor sin, releasing unfinished code is a major one.
QA is something that should be integrated on all levels:
- When developers estimate the work, they have to learn that it takes much longer than you expect; even if you can accurately estimate how many hours a piece of code will tak
Joel Spolsky wrote a number of articles, years ago, that are really relevant. I'm going to link to and quote some of them:
The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code [joelonsoftware.com]:
1 Do you use source control?
2 Can you make a build in one step?
3 Do you make daily builds?
4 Do you have a bug database?
5 Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
6 Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
7 Do you have a spec?
8 Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
9 Do you use the best tools money can buy?
10 Do you have testers?
11 Do new candidates write code during their interview?
12 Do you do hallway usability testing?
Joel says you should be getting at least ten of those twelve. Sounds like you aren't. So, next article is relevant:
Getting Things Done When You're Only a Grunt [joelonsoftware.com]:
You could just leave, I suppose. But presumably, there's some reason you're stuck there. The stock options haven't quite vested, there's no better place to work in Podunk, or perhaps your boss is holding someone you love hostage. In any case, dealing with life on a bad team can be infuriating. But there are strategies for improving your team from the bottom, and I'd like to share a few of them.
And those are:
"Strategy 1 Just Do It", setup a build server, write the make file to automate the build process, etc.
"Strategy 2 Harness the Power of Viral Marketing", setup your own bug tracker. Use it for your own bugs. If someone sends you a bug in an email, add it to the tracker and reply saying that it would be so much easier if the person just added it directly to the tracker themselves. Setup local version control. Use it. Etc.
"Strategy 3 Create a Pocket of Excellence", be excellent. Write specs and follow them. Write schedules and follow them. Etc.
He continues with "Strategy 4 Neutralize The Bozos", "Strategy 5 Get Away From Interruptions" and "Strategy 6 Become Invaluable".
Another article Top Five (Wrong) Reasons You Don't Have Testers [joelonsoftware.com] explains that you need an independent Q&A team with real power, while Things You Should Never Do, Part I [joelonsoftware.com] says don't throw out code and rewrite from scratch and Incentive Pay Considered Harmful [joelonsoftware.com] says what it says on the tin.
Browse around the site and read some of the other articles as well. There is a lot of good advice there.
I use technology in order to hate it more properly. -- Nam June Paik


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THE detested 10 per cent surcharge whacked onto taxi fares for the privilege of paying by a card won't survive the new year if the Reserve Bank gets its way.
The bank this week tightened the wording of surcharging rules due to start next year, making explicit for the first time that they apply to ''the taxi industry''.
Cabcharge typically imposes a 10 per cent surcharge, subject to the GST, on the metered fare, flagfall, booking fee, any tolls and the GST, making the total impost at least 11 per cent of the fare.
This year's inquiry into Victoria's taxi industry, chaired by former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Allan Fels, found that as much as half of the surcharge was paid to drivers in rebates rather than used to process the payment. Its best guess was the cost of processing was about 5 per cent of the value of the transaction.
The rules, starting from March, will allow credit card issuers such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express to require retailers to limit surcharges to ''reasonable costs''.
Where there is a dispute, card companies will be able to take merchants to court and require them to provide evidence of their reasonable costs. The Fels report noted that Cabcharge refused to provide it with data on its costs.
The cost to business of accepting credit cards varies between industries but the average cost for retailers is 0.87 per cent for MasterCard and Visa and 1.84 per cent for American Express.
Airlines and hotels, which often charge more than this, have also been accused of imposing excessive surcharges on customers.
Despite the RBA explicitly identifying the taxi industry, Cabcharge said it had received legal advice it would be excluded from the changes. It maintains the 10 per cent charge is not a surcharge but a ''service fee''.
''Our legal advice is that this does not apply to us,'' a spokeswoman for the company said on Friday. ''As an aside, given the competitive nature of the taxi industry, if 5 per cent could have been achieved it would have been done by now.''
However, this claim was rejected by MasterCard and the consumer group Choice. Cabcharge shares had also fallen 5 per cent by Friday afternoon, after a similar slump on Thursday, suggesting investors think it will not escape the rules.
The country manager of MasterCard Australia, Andrew Cartwright, said the new rules ''clearly'' applied to Cabcharge and MasterCard would be pushing for surcharges to be lowered across a range of industries.
''Clearly there are examples of certain industries where it's the view of many that the consumer is being slugged with an excessive surcharge,'' he said.
While he was unable to say how much consumers should be charged for paying on credit when taking a taxi, he said it was certainly lower than the current surcharge.
The head of campaigns at Choice, Matt Levey, described Cabcharge's claim that it would be unaffected by the new rules as ''absurd.''
''It should be the first cab off the rank when it comes to the new surcharge rules hitting home,'' he said.

subset: commoncrawl


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Humberside Variety fundraising in Hull
Start:5 April 2014
Time:Saturday 5th April between 10am - 4pm.
LocationSt. Stephens Shopping Centre in Hull.
Download as vCalendar (for Microsoft Outlook etc.)
Once again Humberside Variety Branch, in conjunction with Spinoff Productions, will be having a fundraising day in St. Stephen's Shopping Centre. This is to raise the profile of Equity. This year the chosen charity is The Daisy Appeal, a local cancer charity based in Cottingham, which will share the money raised.
Between the hours of 10am -4pm there will be a variety of entertainment. Last year there was music, face painting, balloon modelling, dancing and The Really Useless Meal! As well as a tombola and a stall of Equity information for potential new members.
Please come along and support this event, or if you can volunteer an hour or so to perform please let us know.
Further details and contact information
Christie Clifford
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Telephone: work 01482 848031


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T O P I C R E V I E WRichard EastonWho is still alive from the Explorer 1 team? There were a lot of people around for the 50th anniversary but, alas, many have died since then.mikejI exchanged emails regarding Explorer I with George Ludwig this past August.Richard EastonThanks for responding. Dr. Ludwig was at the Vanguard 50th and I have spoken with him. Is anyone else still around?
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Writing the Bioware Way 25
How They Do It
The core of the BioWare writing process would sound familiar to most programmers: iterate, iterate, iterate. To that end, the company aims to get writers involved in a game's creation early in the process. They make it a point to have a writer in the room during the broad concept stage of game creation. From an org char perspective, writers are a part of the design department. Currently the company has 73 designers on 5 projects, with 26 of those folks being members of the writing team. Titles on the writing team include lead writers and managing editors, writers, and technical editors.
Projects are broken out into three distinct phases: Prototyping, Pre-Production, and Production. Prototyping is primarily early story and setting concepting, looking for new ideas, trying to figure out how to do things in a different way. They ask how they can explore the IP they're working on while staying true to the core concept. This is the 'cheapest' phase of the work, by far. Pre-Production, then, is about nailing things down: defining characters and story arcs, and working out systems and work pipelines. Production is the longest phase by far, with several distinct sub-phases making it up. This is all about generating the guts of the game, and the goal is to know what the company is going to make before they get here.
The prototyping phase is also the phase with the least number of people involved. Whoever has been tapped for the lead writer position, as well as the managing editor, will lead the charge on the writing portion at this stage. The primary goal of this phase from the company's point of view is to create and refine the technology that matches the project's vision. Phrases that apply to the technology also work with the writing here: dirty and ugly is okay. Stupid ideas are entirely worthwhile. Because changing things at this phase costs effectively nothing, writers and designers are encourage to experiment as much as they want to arrive at a novel vision of the project's goal.
The goal for Mass Effect, as an example, was to "Create a cinematic experience where conversation occurs in real time." Jade Empire, a previous title, did conversations the 'traditional' way. Responses to NPC dialogue were fully displayed on screen, and the player could read the block of text and choose the one most appropriate to their disposition. In contrast, Mass Effect has players choosing from among short sentences that hit at the emotion of a response, rather than the specifics. This allows the tension and interest in a scene to be maintained without bogging things down in piles of words.
Prototyping for writing is primarily all about themes. What motivates the action for the game? What are the 'big words' that can be used to describe the plot? (Mass Effect might include words like Hope and Space.) What is the very highest level of the plot arc? Who am I? Where do I start? What am I doing? One of the writers makes sure to point out that an equally important question is: whose ass do I get to kick?
At this point in the game's life-cycle, the team is ramped up to a group of 4-5 people, with a handful of writers joining the lead and managing editor. This is also the point in the game's life-cycle where the team goes to a lot of meetings. The reason? Now that there are lots of broad strokes set down, there are a mountain of questions to be answered. These questions are more specific in nature than those touched on in the Prototyping phase. For example, what is the 'voice' of the game to be? BioWare games tend to be fairly serious, but there's often room for humor as well. Will the game be aimed at Teens, or will the title shoot for an 'M' rating? What will the format of the game's quest journal be like?
This is also the stage where the team devises the workflow pattern they'll be using in the Production phase. Details like how and when information has to be passed to level designers and artists, what tools the team will be using, and even nit-picky details like resource naming conventions are all nailed down at this point. Within the writing team, story arcs, sideplots, characters, acts, chapters ... they're all divvied up to individual members of the team to own. What exactly these 'chunks of content' are varies from game to game. Some folks are assigned the task of working out asset lists; character inventories, creature inventories, area inventories ... essentially, what needs to be described and eventually created? Ultimately pre-production is a balancing act, seeking to find out what the team needs vs. what it can get. "By the end of pre-production the team should be ready to generate final content, and have a solid workflow established with the level designers and artists." This is a direct quote from the presentation, and was accompanied by a laugh: this is a pipe dream, a blue-sky fantasy. In reality, the teams are never quite at this point when they hit the Production phase.
BioWare titles are huge, from a writing standpoint. Most are in the neighborhood of some 500,000 words, with more than a million possible in some of their games. The work for those thousands of words is divided across the writing team in specific areas of responsibility, be it by chapter, planet, character, or plot. Each assigned writer then 'owns' that part of the game. The have a lot of control over what happens with that part of the story, and that ownership gives each member of the team a 'buy in' to the game ... as well as accountability. The lead writer and managing editor, meanwhile, are responsible for maintaining the consistency of the game's 'voice' across the entire project.
Writers complete several passes on their area of interest, working on something like a narrative prototype in the first pass. The prototype bridges the Pre-production work with the Production work, with 'pawns' placed in their representative box levels. The goals here are basic things like "how do we move the PC from one area of the game to another?", and "Is there a chance they could get lost?" As a group, the writing team focuses on the technical structure of the story. How the story unfolds as the player moves through a level is the ultimate prize, and planning this out often involves assistance from a technical designer and level artist. Even at this stage, the actual work still involves rapid iterations and high end narrative flow. Dialogue is often 'temp' or placeholder material, and writers are encouraged not to get bogged down in details.
After this very initial stage, the senior staff review the prototype writing elements. Everyone from the lead writer to the project director might be involved in these reviews, depending on the importance of the writing to the story. This group is also looking for ways to advance the story beyond dialogue, thinking along the lines of cutscenes, ambient action, level art, and gameplay. Once this stage is approved, the writer moves to the 'first pass' stage.
On the first pass, a writer puts down the actual dialogue for all characters in his part of the story, using their robust conversation scripting tool. They embed basic scripting for plot state variables into the conversation using the story manager tool. The rule is that if an interaction or conversation is too complicated for these tools, it's too complicated for the game (and ultimately the player). The end result of the first pass is a playable level with all dialogue delivered in a text format. At this point it's sent on for peer review. This review is the cap for each pass, where other writers on the team play through the level and offer comments and feedback to the creator. The feedback is delivered in an open group setting, moderated by the managing editor to avoid bad feelings. After the group session, rewrites are planned based on the feedback from the writing team, with the individual writer and lead writer collaborating to see these put into place. Often major changes to the plot can occur at this stage.
The second pass of writing incorporates feedback from the peer reviews and rewrites suggested in the first pass. These changes can vary widely in scope, from small plot elements being nipped or added all the way to major character changes. Major changes to the story at this point necessitate another peer review like the one that capped the first pass writing. Minor details are signed off by the lead writer, and don't require another major discussion. At this point the bulk of the writing is more or less 'done' from the individual writer's point of view, and is sent on to the senior review phase.
At this point key stakeholders in the project evaluate the dialogue with an eye toward the game as a cohesive whole. The project director and lead designer are usually the two that do most of this reviewing, and provide very specific feedback on the writing. Instead of sweeping changes, these suggestions are tightly directed to keep the writing, plot, and characters in line with the rest of the game. The writer incorporates the senior review feedback. which usually only requires very minor rewrites. At that point the dialogue is passed on to an editor (who is not the managing editor), who checks the work overall for basics like spelling, grammar, and adherence to the intellectual property the company is working with. At this point the dialogue moves to Quality Assurance.
QA plays through the game with the dialogue in place, not only testing out the gameplay but the dialogue as well. QA is the first set of eyes outside of the writing team and stakeholder group that has read the material. They provide a useful 'gut check' on the way the writing feels. The writers incorporate QA feedback into the dialogue, and this may require more discussion with the lead writer about minor changes to the text. At this point, changing anything is very expensive from a manpower perspective. Rewrites as a result have to be much more limited in scope. With yet another pass at the writing done, it finally moves on to full realization in the Voice Over stage.
Scripts of the dialogue are printed out and sent to the studio, where actors play out the parts the writers have created throughout the creation process. The dialogue is recorded, processed, and added into the game, where it's once again reviewed by key members of the development team. Even at this stage, it's still possible there may be some rewrites. Some lines 'read well' on paper, but don't work that well when spoken out loud. The writers here note that this is why it's so critical to read your work aloud to yourself as you go. Rewrites at this stage are almost always about polish, or related to the actor's performance. Actors will sometimes ad-lib an addition to the script that works better than what was written. Sometimes just the opposite will be true. Either way, what's spoken and what is in the script have to match up, and changes are made on either side. At this point it's very expensive to make any changes to the script, as it requires more time in the studio for actors.
During this timeframe, the cinematic pass is completed. Writers use the conversation toolset to do the groundwork for this pass, and are able to select things like camera angles, character emotions, music tracks, and related information to accompany their dialogue. During this phase of production, cinematic designers go in and make things actually look good, by adding custom animations, facial expressions, and unique camera movements. When the Final QA and stakeholders sign off on a part of the game at this point, a writer's work is completely done.
The writing group uses two tools to maintain the huge amount of information needed to make a BioWare game. Their primary tool, the conversation tool, keeps track of the thousands and thousands of words written for every NPC/PC interaction. They're visualized as trees, and allow writers to understand a conversation in finer detail than might otherwise be possible. This is the tool that allows writers to lay down basic emotional states for each character as well, to set the scene for the cinematic designers. Once voice-over work is completed, writers can go back and listen to the performance via this tool, to make sure what was said matches up with what was written. Basic camera movements can also be assigned, and even viewed if the scene is available to the tool. The plot manager is the other tool that the writers use ... but it apparently is almost useless away from a network, and very little could be said about it in a public setting.
In-Game Footage
The piece of Mass Effect's story used throughout the demonstration was the conversation had between Commander Shephard and the Krogan named Rex. Just after Shephard completes a mission, the Krogan calls the soldier over to converse about the player's activities. It was another example of the way the company approached storytelling in this game. Players have true freedom to ignore the alien, in which case they'll be missing out on a nice payment. If they do talk to the Krogan, and keep a civil tongue, they can end up with the mercenary joining the group. Further down the road, the choice of whether or not to have Rex in the PC's party has an (apparently) large impact on the way the game's story resolves. The footage was also notable because the Commander Shephard shown in the footage was a woman; though the company has long said that you have the option of playing as a female character, to my knowledge this is the first time footage with a female protagonist has been shown to the public.


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Skip to comments.North Carolina man: I'm activist, not terrorist ( Rainforest Action Network )
Posted on 09/05/2012 6:39:56 PM PDT by george76
A Charlotte, N.C., man says he was arrested unfairly on a traffic violation because police were worried he would organize protests during the Democratic National Convention.
Tyson's lawyer, Derek Fletcher, says a police report of the arrest claimed his client was on a terrorist watch list and should be held until the convention ends Thursday. Tyson says he's an activist with the Rainforest Action Network. He thinks he was targeted by police to stop him from organizing protests
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The one thing liberals will not put up with is free speech!
James Ian Tyson believes his arrest was intended to keep him from speaking out against climate change during the Democratic National Convention
This type of crap has gotten way out of hand under O's watch. He has subverted the Constitution and doesn't think it applies to His Highness; only the peasants. Remove the tyrant in November and exile him to another country.
After reading the full article it's obvious Obama has been busy compiling lists of activists that oppose him so the local police will have a reason to jail you so you can't protest. This is unconstitutional in nature if the protest is peaceful. This guy was arrested and jailed on the way to protest at the DNC suggesting a premeditated an pre-planned effort. I wonder how many others were arrested on the way to the convention. This should get your blood boiling if you are a true patriot:
Obama, EPA actions make cap-and-trade more likely
Obama seen as anti-coal figure
Global Warming on Free Republic
Latest from Global Warming News
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.


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Who are we?
Irish Network-Philadelphia, ("IN Philly") is an inclusive network of Irish, Irish-Americans and friends of Ireland, that come from all walks of life, 'from boots to suits', located in the greater Philadelphia Area.
IN Philly is part of Irish Network USA which was launched by former Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), Brian Cowan in March 2010. IN USA facilitates and enables Irish Networks across the USA to connect with each other.
What do we do?
Through frequent social, cultural and business events and our online community, IN Philly provides a forum for its members and friends to connect, re-connect, and develop relationships that will foster, promote and preserve Irish heritage, culture, and community in the Greater Philadelphia region.
How can you get involved?
Benefits of membership


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Does the daily mail know that you can use 3d printers and laser cutters to manufacture hoodies and knives? Monstrous!
I'm sure the UK government will be shutting down the program forthwith. After all, the idea that kids could get access to knives is terrible...and a crime in and of itself.
Knives? Pfft. Guns!
They're going to train terr'rists! And arm them!
Run for the hills!
Or something....
It won't work, will it?
It was good fun, but all it taught to kids was a very rudimentary concept of program flow.
Considering how limited the original Mindstorms kits and default software compared to the stuff being used today, you have to learn way more than "rudimentary concepts" to modify things.
If you want to make kids tech literate, you deconstruct something they use in their every day lives, when they're old enough to be capable of it.
How does this make anyone "tech literate?"
good example would
My sympathy is with the 'start at the bottom and work up' approach; but I suspect that one advantage of choosing some abstract but 'real-world' example would be to keep a greater percentage of the class on task.
At some point, you have to decide on a level of abstraction(or just go directly into a mixture of solid-state physics and theoretical CS). Even something like a humble resistor, much less an entire AtmegaXYZ with happy convenience libraries, is an abstraction, and one that people spend their entire c
But this isn't about that approach. It's about pushing for one's preferred topic over another without providing real support for the notion that tinkering with Twitter would make kids more "tech literate" than tinkering with an Arduino.
I know that I'd prefer to work with an Arduino, rather than screw around with web development even for a minute. Not everyone wants to work on the same project. The reality is that you'd do well to have two different paths that branch from the same fundamental education proce
Not everyone wants to work on the same project. The reality is that you'd do well to have two different paths that branch from the same fundamental education process earlier, rather than offering one or the other.
The reality to me, is you would do well to realize kids may approach or be interested in things differently than adults. You don't want to underestimate their intelligence, but you might want to be careful about what you expect of attention spans and interest. Depending on the age, and based on experience I've had with teaching science, there would be a rather large bias in kids toward anything that is hands on, that can make something move in the real world, off the computer. While having multiple paths
I tried teaching my six yr old daughter about game design, set up an account with Scratch and went through the tutorials with her. She tried for a day or two, then later in the week she showed me her games. Six sheets of paper, double sided with cut out characters, a controller (d-pad) and point tokens. Each sheet was colored with a "level" and the backs had the score screen with places for tokens. She had double sided tape on each character and put them on the appropriate screen (one hero and six villains)
I was at a 'technology literate' middle school when Lego Mindstorms came out, and the school bought a few of them for the school computer club so people could 'program' and 'debug' the RCX robots. It was good fun, but all it taught to kids was a very rudimentary concept of program flow.
Then they were doing it wrong. You don't just dump the box on the floor and let the kids play. There should be specific projects with goals and graded assignments, so they take it seriously. You need to integrate it with lessons on math and physical science. I work in a Lego-Mindstorms based after school program, and the kids learn a lot about gear ratios, velocity, energy, power, sensors, programming, etc. They also learn about design, teamwork and project management. The older kids (5th and 6th grad
Well, you can always program Mindstorms in C or Assembler or Forth if you want. It isn't restricted to the dumbed down graphical tool that comes with it. But evne what it came with is enough for some good instruction; maybe not in computer science but in thinking about how to solve the problem abstractly.
Your example focuses too much on web stuff. That's a very limited subset of what computers do, even though it's the current cool thing. It doesn't apply to most technology and engineering. The robotics
How about concentrating on reading comprehension, mathematics, and basic sciences, or if one does go into "trades", go into real trades that have proven to be durable careers...
No doubt you haven't read the article, and wouldn't let something like that get in the way of a good rant anyway.
But the plans also include improvements to mathematics and science (I can't comment on reading/writing).
FTA: Mathematics: five-year-olds to be taught fractions for the first time, for a solid grounding at an early age in preparation for algebra and more complex arithmetic. The new curriculum states that nine-year-olds must be taught times tables to 12, with more emphasis on the skills of mathematical modelling and problem-solving.
Science: evolution will be taught to primary school pupils for the first time, with the new curriculum having a greater focus on scientific knowledge, practical work and mathematical requirements. In secondary school, pupils will study biology, chemistry and physics in greater depth, with greater emphasis on mathematical modelling and problem-solving.
Without speculating about the political motivation for it, this looks like an improvement to me.
Without speculating about the political motivation for it, this looks like an improvement to me.
Read the small print, unfortunately it isn't. They want to go back to teaching by rote with no real understanding. Don't be fooled by phrases like "problem-solving", what they mean is learning to solve specific exam-style questions in a mechanical way without needing to understand the process.
All this seems to be to satisfy people who think youngsters are dumb because they can't do certain calculations involving fractions in their head like they can. Most of those people can barely cope with the metric syst
Who should tinker with toys if not children? Or just because something is fun it can't be educational? The best use of 3D printers is education: they teach the basics of design and programming, and are very good at printing short-lived plastic toys.
Now we can introduce even more people to tinker toys that they'll never use after they get out of school!
And you know this how
How about concentrating on reading comprehension, mathematics, and basic sciences
Yeah, we should never expose children to the wider realities of technology. We should hold their noses to the desk, and ensure they never see anything but the insides of books until they can parrot back exactly what they are shown. Just remember that we also need to ensure that we must present math and science in as boring a manner as possible to suck the life and interest out of every student who encounters it.
Not everyone gets to be a rocket scientist when they grow up
Therefore no one should ever be allowed to build a model rocket, or be taught physics, in school.
we need to tailor our education systems to present high-but-attainable options.
Or we should give students every possible avenue and let them experience and experiment with whatever we can and let them determine their skills.
There's no dishonor in being a certified journeyman welder or an electrician or even a plumber, and all can pay very well if the individual learns the skills needed.
There isn't, but limiting education such that those are the pinnacle people can hope for is as idiotic as any stupid thing being done in education today.
Now we can introduce even more people to tinker toys that they'll never use after they get out of school!
You mean critical thinking and the ability to work with computers?
I would say I've used both skills quite a lot in the real world.
I would say most everyone in whatever field would need those skills.
Even McDonalds workers are better served understanding how to think and use computers...
crippling laziness
Obviously no tinker toys would've helped with that.
programmable turtle... time to draw a circle... and well that's how you learn about pi
Sorry to break it to you, but drawing circles in turtle has absolutely nothing to do with pi. You might just be living proof to support OP's argument.
yep thats the end game for Gove the reintroduction of grammar schools kids and dumping of working class kids in dead end secondary moderns - not going to be popular when Tory voters when there average kids don't make the cut though - which is one of the reasons the Tories introduced comprehensives in the firstplace.
Ok, I'll bite.
I personally think Grammar schools are a good idea. It makes much more sense to stream pupils by ability.
When some children arrive at school they have been given a massive head start by their parents who have spent a great deal of time teaching them to read before they even get to school. Other children have parents who do not put this same effort in (probably because they are too busy at work trying to keep a roof over their head)
That advantage gets more and more pronounced as the children ge
I personally think Grammar schools are a good idea. It makes much more sense to stream pupils by ability.
Pity it's mathematically impossible to do that within one school, and on a per-subject basis.
One perfectly valid reason for grammar schools is that kids from council houses are thieving little oiks with nits. I'm rather surprised you didn't mention it.
P.S. If you sincerely believe selection was/is based purely on ability I have several bridges you might be interested in buying.
I personally think Grammar schools are a good idea. It makes much more sense to stream pupils by ability.
Pity it's mathematically impossible to do that within one school, and on a per-subject basis.
One perfectly valid reason for grammar schools is that kids from council houses are thieving little oiks with nits. I'm rather surprised you didn't mention it.
P.S. If you sincerely believe selection was/is based purely on ability I have several bridges you might be interested in buying.
Lol, I actually failed the selection exam (the 11 plus) to get in to Grammar school so does that answer your question regarding ability
To be honest though, I didn't see much point in it at the time as I lived in a borough that had grammar and comprehensive schools but actually went to school somewhere that only had secondary moderns that did not place any stock in the 11 plus exam. I only did the exam because of where I lived, not because of where I actually went to school so it did not matter if I passe
Because the ability to think algorithmically is MORE important in the internet age than most of the rest of high school maths and basic sciences.
It gives kids the ability to examine, use, experiment with the data that's thrown at them from news and magazines rather than just consuming it - yes, even writing a little app to automate one aspect of their journeyman trade perhaps. I thought LOGO to 9th, 10th and 11th graders as an introductory computer class and was delighted when the kids, for their final proj
Men did science and designed buildings and created medical cures and invented complex machines without computers.
George Cayley didn't design his flying machines on a computer. Yuri Gagarin didn't have a computer at school. Leonardo Da Vinci didn't even have a slide rule!
In fact, many pioneers of computing itself didn't have computers at home when they were growing up. Turing, Babbage, Von Neumann.
I think we might be onto something here.
Now we can introduce even more people to tinker toys that they'll never use after they get out of school!
How about concentrating on reading comprehension, mathematics, and basic sciences, or if one does go into "trades", go into real trades that have proven to be durable careers...
Wait... why do we need to teach maths until a kid chooses a career as a mathematician? And science - complete waste of time unless the kid chooses to become a scientist; WTF would you want to teach someone physics if they're going to become a historian? In fact, you don't need to teach people to read until *after* they've chosen not to go into a burger-flipping career, right?
Or alternatively, maybe teaching people a wide variety of stuff is a Good Thing - not only does it give them good general knowledge
From the article : "Pupils aged five to seven will be expected to "understand what algorithms are" and to "create and debug simple programs".
Kids start school at age 5 here in the UK. From my memories of that age 37 or so years ago, there was much playing with sand, learning to read and write and really simple maths (learning to recite multiplication tables, simple addition and subtraction, etc). I learnt to program when I was 12 on the first generation of home computers, but then I was familiar with the b
It's even more obvious: mandating equipment means another expense that the lower classes can't bear, plus more profit for whoever gets to deliver the equipment.
It's a blatant act of reactionary class warfare.
Schools have already had to buy lots of expensive equipment of dubious worth, like having to equip every classroom with interactive whiteboards. This new equipment list will have to be met out of LEA budgets, and they aren't getting bigger.
Decisions on equipment like this are usually made at school level (by the head and by the board of governors). I don't recall any mandate to buy interactive whiteboards.
That said - I can't see why you use that example - they are amongst the most engaging pieces of equipment in the classroom and allow the teachers to "buy in" materials to really add interest to their lesson plans.
The sad thing is how the schools are ripped off by vendors, in fact LEAs pretty much mandate that schools should be ripped off by
about the UK throwing away it's engineering legacy.
So the kids learn to build 3D printers with 15 times the number of parts that are necessary?
Good goals. But who the hell is going to teach all this?
This is already a major problem in math: the set of people who want to teach a bunch of 5-6 year olds is pretty much disjoint from the set of people who like math. I don't want to bash teachers, but if teachers absolutely hate a subject (and trust me, a VERY large percentage of elementary educators hate math - I've taught a lot of them in college), there are going to be major problems.
I can't imagine that these educators are going to be much better w
As a computer and software engineer, I've taught myself mechanical engineering and manufacturing techniques with a lot of help from a laser-cut & press-brake shop owner. The biggest thing people need to learn is that you can design anything you want in the computer but you can't build it. Limitations of the tooling are a big problem. Add to that the fact that CAD assumes that metal is totally flat over any distance and you're going to run into problems. Another lesson is nomenclature. What do you call certain fiddly bits? You know what one looks like but figuring out what to call it so you can find it in a catalog is a challenge.
IMHO, engineering curricula needs to deemphasize theory and put more focus on the real world.
Overheard during recess: "No Mister Bond. I expect you to die."
It is easy for the media to create an issue by making reports about printed guns. It would be more difficult for the media to report on 3D printers causing radical shifts in society. Right now 3D printing is a bit more than a gimmick but not really a technology ready for prime time. This fall the first home will be printed by a 3D printer. You can bet that the rush is on to find ways to print all consumer goods. Perhaps we will have 3D printed bicycles soon. The point being that we are seeing th
The comprehensive changes sound generally good, abstract though they are. Since we're dealing with abstractions, I'll keep it abstract:
If English schooling is anything like American (apologies, I haven't got much of a clue--I'm coming at this as I hear it as a "yank"), it will take time to implement these changes, and by the same token, it's comparatively easy to write a wishlist of changes that "sound good." The pessimist within murmurs that this seldom translates to real systemic improvement, which demand
Every school computer should be running Linux. Not only would this save millions, but you can instantly pop up a shell and start programming in any language you want for free (C, Java, Python, etc). Kids can pick up a Pi to continue their hobby from home, without parents needlessly shelling out for expensive PCs or laptops. No need for expensive IDEs either.
The way you can so easily create custom Ubuntu distros, it's mind-blowing there isn't a UK tailored version of Edubuntu (different versions for differen
Kids could transfer their work from a Rasperry pi at home to the virtualised one at school. The only sticking points would be anyone starting to use Open GL / open GL ES could run into problems.
No GPIO pins on a virtual machine...
If you suspect a man, don't employ him.


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Critics scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.
out of 100
Metascore®Mixed or average reviewsbased on a weighted average of allcritic review scores.
The movie's real locus of anger must have been the director, Ang Lee, once he realized what an epic clod his computer wizards had wrought.
A comic-book superhero has seldom squandered so much screen time being conflicted about his heritage and destiny -- and I don't mean conflicted in a sexy, Wolverine-y, ''X-Men'' way, either; a big-budget comic-book adaptation has rarely felt so humorless and intellectually defensive about its own pulpy roots.
Read Full Review
There's a fine line between darkness and glumness, one that "Spider-Man" bounced off buildings to avoid. The Hulk lumbers across it.
Hits on all cylinders -- a smart blend of acting, direction, editing, design, costumes and effects.
A movie likely to rally huge audiences who want to take another roller coaster ride. And though it may disappoint a few of them, it's also a film that gives you something to think and feel sad about. It smashes you -- gently.
See all Hulk reviews at Metacritic.com
OK for kids 13+
The Hulk lacks personality; not a great movie.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that this movie has a great deal of comic-book-style "action violence," meaning that there's a lot of destruction, but it's not very graphic. Some viewers may be upset by the tragic family events in the story.
Violence: A great deal of comic-book-style "action violence," meaning that there is a lot of destruction, but it is not very graphic. Intense action and peril.
Sex: Brief non-sexual nudity.
Language: Mild.
Consumerism: Tie-in to vast quantities of related merchandise.
Drinking, drugs and smoking: Not an issue
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology.
© Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.
Movies.com, the ultimate source for everything movies, is your destination for new movie trailers, reviews, photos, times, tickets + more! Stay in the know with the latest movie news and cast interviews at Movies.com.
Copyright © 2018 FANDANGO MOVIES.


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Please tell me how how much cost I have to beard for made one site.
How long is a piece of string? It all depends upon your requirements. Many developers/software houses do fixed prices for simple sites up to a given number of web pages. Google will list them by the thousand.
However, the initial cost may be artificially low to get your business. The cost of maintenance/update of the site may be significantly higher. So do not assume that the initial cost is indicative of the long term cost of ownership.
Well, if you have a little knowledge or Wordpress and hosting cpanel then it won't cost you must, in $30, you would have a website, you need a domain name and hosting... thats it..
It is up to you that which type of site you want to make it, like Static or Dynamic and there many things in a site.
Its depend on your meta and which type of site you want make it like static or dynamic.......
Many sites give you a package plan and they also include an option of "project builder" where you can add your project requirement and things that you want get done and they can tell you how much its going to cost you.


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Germanys present energy policy of rapid renewables deployment under the Energiewende has resulted in higher energy costs that will place Germany in a less competitive position in the world economy, says a new study by IHS, A More Competitive Energiewende: Securing Germany's Global Competitiveness in a New Energy World.
The study examines German competitiveness in a world of changed shale gas development. The study considers alternative paths to transitioning to a lower-carbon energy policy, the role for natural gas in achieve these objectives and quantifies the effects on German global competitiveness. The study concludes that greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) have increased.
The study says that a rebalanced approach could return the Energiewende to its original goal of providing a competitive transition to a low-carbon economy while generating substantial benefits to Germanys gross domestic product (GDP), jobs, income, trade position and government revenues.
The IHS study compares the effects of remaining on the present course of the Energiewende with an alternative, lower-cost power system focused on mature renewables (such as onshore wind and solar) and a greater role for domestically-produced natural gas.
The economic benefits of a lower-cost power system compared to the Energiewendes would include:
Gross domestic product: A GDP increase of nearly 28 B, or 0.9%, in 2020, and 85 B, or 2.5%, by 2025. The impact on GDP is even larger in the longer term, reaching 138 B, or 3.4%, by 2040.
Employment: A net total employment increase of 207,000, or 0.5%, in 2020, and 559,000, or 1.3%, by 2025. The economy would support nearly 1 million additional jobs by 2040. The total job creation would more than offset the slower pace of employment growth in the green industries.
Disposable income: Average disposable income increases by 123 per person in 2020 and by 847 per person in 2040 as the economic benefits resulting from moving towards a more competitive Energiewende extend to virtually all the citizens of Germany.
Government revenues: Nearly 40 B in additional annual revenues by 2030, rising to 68 B by 2040 resulting from increasing economic activity and royalties from gas production.
Manufacturing exports: Net exports for the manufacturing sector will rise by 36 B in 2030 and 63 B by 2040a 20% increase as lower energy prices support German manufacturings competitiveness.
Germanys current path of increasingly high-cost energy will make the country less competitive in the world economy, penalize Germany in terms of jobs and industrial investment, and impose a significant cost on the overall economy and household income, said IHS vice chairman and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Daniel Yergin. But there is an alternative path that can get the Energiewende back on the course originally intended, which will allow Germany to retain much of the decarbonization benefit created by adding renewables while reducing overall costs.
The study notes that, while Germany has experienced increasingly high energy costs due to the rapid pace of renewables deployment, its GHG emissions have risen. The higher GHG emissions are the result from a greater reliance on coal-fired power, the phasing out of nuclear power and slow progress on energy efficiency. The power-sector emissions are moving out of line with economy-wide carbon dioxide (CO2) CO2 reduction targets.
At the same time, electricity prices, which were already higher by international standards and have been increasing at a greater rate than in competing markets, are responsible for 52 B in net export losses over the past five years. The higher energy costs will make Germanys highly integrated industrial sector less competitive, with negative impacts on the wider economy.
Germanys supply chains and industry clusters are some of the most sophisticated in the world and connect energy-intensive and non-energy-intensive businesses alike, said Ralf Wiegert, director, IHS Economics. To argue that that industrial policy should focus on the greener, less energy-intensive industries and accept or even welcome the exit of energy-intensive industries from Germany, misses the point. Policy that places Germanys energy-intensive industry at a disadvantage to global peers will have broad implications across the entire domestic industrial landscape and Germanys overall economy.
The study notes that North America has become a much more competitive location for manufacturing and exporting due to two factorsGermanys high electricity prices and the US shale gas revolution has reduced natural gas prices to one-third the level of Germany.
A more competitive Energiewende would reduce the cumulative cost of the power system by 125 B from 2014-2040, mostly through a reduction in offshore wind deployment. It would include an increased role for domestic natural gas, which produces half the CO2 emissions of coal, to mitigate increases in GHG emissions. The benefits of reduced capital spending would be partially offset by increased spending on fuel and emissions.
GHG emissions would remain at levels near that of the present policy framework, with a net increase of around 10% from 2014 to 2040. Without an increased role for domestic natural gas, GHG emissions from a lower-cost power system would be nearly 20% higher, the study says.
Development of local gas supply in Germany and elsewhere in the EU would boost energy security and reduce European gas prices by as much as 20%, the study says. Lower priced gas would make lower-carbon, gas-fired power generation more economic than coal.
IHS estimates that more than 20 billion cubic meters (Bcm) per year of shale gas production is possible in Germany by 2030, with production peaking at more than 25 Bcm by mid-decade. Germanys resources could support domestic natural gas production through the 2030s that would be equivalent to more than 35% of current German gas consumption.
Total shale gas production in the 28 EU countries could exceed 70 Bcm in 2030 and rise to nearly 90 Bcm in 2040, a similar level to Norwegian pipeline exports to the EU and more than two-thirds of Russian exports to the EU last year, the study finds.
Shale gas development would also be a key contributor to the increased economic benefits identified in the study, accounting for about 77% of the increase in GDP in 2020 and nearly 44% of the GDP increase in 2040.
The study also examines the role of rebates from the Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz (EEG) the Renewable Energy Act surcharge that have partially shielded energy-intensive German industry from the rising cost of renewables support. The study finds that maintaining the existing EEG rebates for energy-intensive customers is essential to recognizing the economic benefits of a more competitive Energiewende.
The study finds that if the rebates were phased out, the impact would be immediate and significant. Customers that benefit from the maximum EEG rebates could see electricity prices jump by more than 65% in 2014. German GDP would decrease by 5% by 2020, 1.1 million jobshalf of that in industry would be lost, and real disposable income for residential customers would decrease by more than 500 per year.
Energiewende is Germanys politically supervised shift in direction from nuclear and fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. This idea of a changing power path helps explain the literal translation: "energy turn." This transition is directed at increasing security and ensuring that Germany creates a greater share of its own power in the future.
About The Report
The research was supported by the Verband der Chemischen Industrie (VCI). Additional support came from Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie (BDI), Wirtschaftsverband Erdöl- und Erdgasgewinnung, BASF, Bayer, BP, Central European Petroleum, Dow, Evonik, ExxonMobil, Linde, Total, Vestolit, and Wacker. IHS is exclusively responsible for all analysis and content.


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Census endorsements, Jun 2002
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Census endorsements
Business and Industry
'Good decision-making depends on good data. The census provides one of the most important sources of information we have on the Australian community, giving us a better understanding of how we are developing as a nation. It provides a detailed picture of Australia that becomes the framework for other statistical collections that use the census as a starting point. The census, by helping us know where we are, helps us to create the kind of future we want to share'
Peter Hendy, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI)
'Without a precise snapshot of the Australian population, it's impossible to forecast our future requirements including basics like housing, schools and shops. When you're filling out your census form, think about the difference it will make to have a true and accurate picture of our needs.'
Kaite Lahey, Chief Executive Officer, Business Council of Australia
'Australia's industry and employment base is strengthened through initiatives such as census which provides an accurate and extremely important source of information on the current and future needs of employers and the workforce. By collecting information that is as accurate as possible, we are guaranteeing a solid foundation for our planning.'
Robert Herbert, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Industry Group
'Without census information, we can't get an accurate snapshot of Australia's employment base. It is absolutely vital that we get a true picture of our work and industry demographics so we're in a position to cater for and serve the needs of current and emerging industries.'
Sharan Burrow, President, ACTU
'Many young people today will work in careers that haven't been invented yet. As a society, we have an obligation to make sure we have the capacity to respond to the training needs of the future, and to provide educational options that will benefit both individuals and the nation. It's only through studies such as the census that we can get a handle on what these needs are going to be.'
Margaret Fanning, Executive Director, TAFE Directors Association
'Without a reliable source of data such as the census, the tertiary education sector is less able to forecast trends in education and training requirements. We need information on the characteristics of our population to make sure that there are sufficient university places and choice of courses to meet individual and national needs now and in the future.'
John Mullarvey, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee
'The Australian census is really vital to social research. It's important when people complete their form on 7 August to think about how as an individual you are helping to benefit all Australians, and how the information you provide now, will make a difference to our future.'
Archbishop Peter Carnley, Anglican Primate
'Church groups, welfare and charitable organisations rely on census statistics to complete their work. Whether we are planning homes for the aged, childcare facilities or the location of new schools, it is essential that we have access to accurate and reliable data that gives us a true picture of community needs. For many Church groups it is an essential aspect of effective planning.'
Archbishop Francis Carroll, President, Australian Catholic Bishops Conference
'All Australians can benefit from the census because the information it provides helps us plan for the needs of our community, now and in the future.'
Archbishop Stylianos, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia
Community and Service Groups
'It's important to have an accurate record of our culture and our social history, but even more critical to have information that will help us ensure we can plan for future infrastructure needs. Census data provides all of this and more. It is the most vital record of information on Australians.
Major General Peter Phillips AO MC, National President, RSL
'It's important for all community groups to allocate resources efficiently, and a clear picture of where services are required most means we can plan and undertake activities effectively. The census is a critical source of such information that gives us a true snapshot of where we can make a difference to Australians.'
Roydon Robertson, Executive Officer, Lions Australia
'Organisations such as the Salvation Army rely on accurate statistical and demographic information to pinpoint what services are required and where they are needed most. We need to ensure that our resources can be targeted to best meet the needs of all Australians, whether they live in our cities or regional remote areas.'
Commissioner Brian Morgan, Territorial Commander of the Australian Eastern Territory, Salvation Army
Local Government
'Census information is vital to local government and a key factor in planning activities in cities as well as rural, regional and remote areas. It's most important that we think about the information we provide as part of the census – accuracy is vital to the integrity of the survey and its ability to deliver sound information on which planners in both the public and private sectors can rely.'
Ian Chalmers, Chief Executive, Australian Local Government Association
'Local councils throughout Australia are planning for a range of community services that couldn't be identified without census information. Whether it's gauging the number of Internet users in remote and regional areas or playgrounds for our urban spaces, the census provides a clear statistical and demographic picture that tells us the needs of our community.'
Jim Elvey, National Chief Executive Officer, Local Government Managers Australia
Carers and Seniors
'It's essential that we plan for services to assist seniors, particularly as our population is getting older. Statistics, such as those provided by the census, enable the government to pinpoint what services are needed most and where they should be located.'
Jim Giles, President, Council on the Ageing (Australia)
'The census benefits everyone in our community, but carers particularly can benefit from increased services and supports that can result from such statistical surveys. Privacy and confidentiality are absolute – census information is not cross referenced with other government authorities and the Bureau of Statistics guarantees that it is not sold to market researchers.'
Irene Gibbons, Chief Executive Officer, Carers Association of Australia
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Wednesday, 22 January 2014
Selena Gomez Hits Sundance Looking Happy and Healthy
While Selena Gomez's off-again ex was making headlines in Colorado and Miami over the weekend, the "Slow Down" singer was the toast of Sundance.
Gomez made a quick trip to Park City, Utah, on Monday to attend the premiere of her film, "Rudderless," at the Sundance Film Festival. She generated a lot of positive buzz for her role in the flick and celebrated with co-stars William H. Macy and Billy Crudup following the premiere.
Selena, 21, partied at the Grey Goose Blue Door on Main St. and was in great spirits all night as she sipped on cocktails and hung out with her fellow cast members.
The bash started around 10 p.m. and kicked off with a performance from Crudup and the "Rudderless" band, who belted out a handful of songs from the film. Gomez was spotted rocking out with a male friend, snapping selfies, and taking video of the performance on her cell phone.
Selena then hopped on the mic, and the crowd went crazy when she performed a song from the film herself. Feeling the good vibes, around midnight she got back up onstage and performed an acoustic version of "Come & Get It."
We're glad to report that the actress/singer looked extremely happy and healthy! Last month, Selena canceled the Australian leg of her tour to "spend some time on myself in order to be the best person I can be."
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Mötley Crüe were one of the biggest and most prominent hair metal bands to come out of the '80s, churning out hit after hit of rebellious, freewheeling bliss. Now, over 30 years later, the guys are still kicking it, selling out arenas and touring with other heavyweights, like Kiss.
When lead singer Vince Neil isn't rocking it with the Crüe, he hits the road with his solo band and gives fans a good, ol' fashioned, stripped-down rock show. We caught up with Neil before one of his recent solo gigs to talk about his background playing guitar, writing Mötley Crüe hits and his Las Vegas tattoo parlor!
How long have you been playing guitar?
I would say about 20 years.
As a lead singer, do you think knowing how to play guitar helps you?
You know, I can play guitar, but I wouldn't call myself a guitar player, so I don't know if it really helps your singing, but it's fun to do. I love it when I have a chance to play a song live and also play guitar on the song. It's something different, and it's a different look for fans watching the show.
Have any of Mötley Crüe's hits been especially difficult to write?
There aren't really any hard songs to write. It's usually pretty easy, if it gets hard, it gets shuffled away and something else comes up, or it becomes something you can go back to it and use other parts with it to make it work better. Most of the hit songs have been easy to write, though!
How do you go about writing music with the Crüe?
It starts out with a guitar riff, and then we put it together with the other instruments and put a melody to it. After the melody and song structure are finished, we edit different parts in and out, and eventually, it all combines to become a song.
What inspired you to start your own tattoo parlor, Vince Neil Ink in Las Vegas?
Because I have a lot of tattoos! [Laughs] I decided a long time ago to have a tattoo parlor because it's something I enjoy.
What do you look for in a good tattoo?
In my own stuff, I have different inspirations. I look for something that's happened to me or is going on in my life, and I get a tattoo about it. I would avoid putting people's names on them, though-- girlfriends, stuff like that! That usually never works!
Is there talk of a new Mötley Crüe album?
No- no new album. What I'm hearing is that maybe two or three or four more songs might come out to go with that song we released this year, but it will be something like an EP, not an album. Our schedule seems to have a lot of touring. If something did come out in the form of an EP, it would probably be in the beginning of 2014.


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Surgically Sharp Blades Are Inexpensive to Replace
The CRL Super Scraper Blades are made to fit the CRL Super Scraper Knife.
CRL Offers Three Blades:
SC301 1/2 Inch (12.7 millimeter) Wide
SC302 5/8 Inch (15.9 millimeter) Wide
SC303 3/4 Inch (19.1 millimeter) wide
All are surgically sharp, inexpensive to use and very strong.
Use the blade until it dulls, then replace it with a new one.
Five blades per pack.