Another Belated Microsoft Memo [Coding Is for Youngsters!?]

Re:Memo
(Score:5, Insightful)
by tomhudson (43916) Alter Relationship on Friday November 18, @08:59PM (#14068428)
(http://groupehudson.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday November 17, @12:15PM)

Writing memos is cheap,' he says, whereas 'writing software is a whole lot harder.'"

It's not cheap - its easy. He's writing memos now because, like a LOT of people who used to code, he can't write software any more.

This has happened to a lot of former coders - they hit a certain age, and they just can't see themselves writing code any more. They don't want to learn yet another language or 5. This doesn't happen to everyone (hey, I just pulled a 9-5 ... that's 9 AM to 5AM, and I'll be hitting the half-centry mark next year), but it does seem that a lot of coders are gone well before they hit 40.

You could probably divide coders into 2 groups - those who code because they can, and those who code because they're curious. The ones who code because they can, eventually, they can't.

But curiosity never stops. When you've been coding for 16 hours, and you figure you're all done, but it would be neat to "write a quick little program to write a program" (because programs that write programs are the happiest programs in the world), and you go and do it because you WANT to and you're curious as to how well its going to work out and you know you won't be able to sleep until you "scratch that itch" . . . if you're still doing that a couple of decades later, you aren't the memo-writing type.

This phenomenum (people peaking in their 30s and then they drop out) isn't limited to just IT. Look at how many "management types" simply can no longer do the grunt work in their own problem domains. They've lost their edge. Sure, they make up for it with experience, in a lot of cases, but there's no replacement for a sharp edge AND experience.
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Memo
(Score:5, Funny)
by Donut2099 (153459) Alter Relationship on Friday November 18, @06:28PM (#14067857)
(Last Journal: Thursday February 10, @08:48PM)
Note to self: learn to write software

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AJAX and Comet
(Score:5, Insightful)
by bigman2003 (671309) Alter Relationship on Friday November 18, @06:30PM (#14067869)
(http://insidewoodland.com/)
Personally, the whole AJAX thing is cool, and at the same time scary.

I'm a web developer, and right now I am really getting into the stride of making very good apps, very quickly.

With AJAX, the expectations will rise considerably. The development effort will go way up...all to do the same things we are doing now.

I know that this sounds stupid to a lot of you...but think about games. Better graphics increase development time and effort, but don't necessarily make a better game.

Soon, EVERY web app will need to be an AJAX app...even if it doesn't need to be.

The age of simple software is once again coming to a close.
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It's called 'Atlas'
(Score:5, Informative)
by 1000101 (584896) Alter Relationship on Friday November 18, @07:56PM (#14068232)
Microsoft has a project called 'Atlas' that has a set of prebuilt controls and javascript files that you can use for your projects. It can be found at asp.net [asp.net]. The nice thing about this project is you can define an Atlas (it's just AJAX really) control the same way you define a typical asp control ( vs. ) and then link in the pre-defined .js files. I have been reading about AJAX for a while now on Slashdot (my employeer has been using it for quite a while now and I didn't even know it) but hadn't tried it out. Atlas is so simple that I had my first page converted in a matter of minutes. An earlier submitter pointed out that not all pages need to be converted or built using AJAX but the customer is demanding it. This is an interesting topic, and I have considered this myself. I have found that almost every page in the types of websites that I create don't need this technology. Most of them are your typical form where you just insert data and update a database. If you don't need a high level of interactivity, AJAX might not be the best option.
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http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=05/11/19/025221

Wall Wart Pet Peeve
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Ritz_Just_Ritz (883997) Alter Relationship on Friday November 18, @09:03PM (#14068443)
My pet peeve is the almost unlimited combination of wall wart connectors, polarity, output voltage, output current, etc. Wouldn't it be so much easier if there was some sort of standard wall wart power supply with a standard connector? If you're a gadget geek, you wind up with a rather unwieldy pile of these things in your home and many of them invariably wind up staying plugged in all the time. You can tell they're using energy since they're always a bit warm to the touch, even when the actual device that's supposed to use it isn't even plugged in. Once they standardize the form factor, perhaps they could actually enhance them to the point where quiescent energy usage is much lower.
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I'm doing my part
(Score:5, Funny)
by Rufus88 (748752) Alter Relationship on Friday November 18, @09:15PM (#14068491)
I unplug all my clocks when I'm not using them.
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