Developers spend their day building the foundations for other people's businesses. As a developer, you would have to be severely lacking in motivation to not want to do it yourself.
That's not necessarily true. Running a business means a lot of non-technical work that most developers can do without. For example, I don't think I'm lacking motivation or ambition, but I'm far happier building the technical foundation of somebody else's business and getting well paid for that, rather dealing with all the chores that running a business on my own would involve.
Every employee in any company or business is either building the foundation or part of the foundation of another person's business. Being a developer isn't any different.
It's appealing because Ubuntu is the distribution that people are most familiar with. These sorts of issues aren't seen as important outside of the legal niche.
It's like when you install a copy of Debian and look for Firefox, but instead see something called Iceweasel - I assume that still happens? The name is so passive aggressive.
To work in technology, especially programming, you have to put a heck of a lot of effort into the subject. If it's not some legacy technology then that also means learning constantly (on your own initiative). That's what I like about programming, it rewards knowledge and ability - whereas other careers reward other attributes.
I look at the Twttier-style feminists (I don't mean the traditional equality types, but the extremists) and can only think that they are doing it for their own gain. If they really wanted to participate in their targets of anger, they could just do what everyone else does: work hard at a hobby for years, even decades, and maybe, just maybe they too could dominate the field.
There are many examples of girls being actively refused entry in to technology classes[1] based on their gender. When the education system itself is prejudiced against women it's unreasonable to suggest women aren't getting tech jobs because they're unwilling to put in the effort - they can't because they're blocked from doing so.
I would say this a sample of 1 - and from a biased source, too.
My daughter graduated form high-school last year. Not only had I not heard a single case of girls being refused entry to anything - most of the times it seemed like my daughter and her female friends (most of them straight "A" students in a very competitive high-school in the Boston, MA area) were almost harassed to join the math club, the robotics club, etc.
None of them had any interest - they all found it "boring". The reasons are complex and a another topic, but in short, part of it is biology, part of it pop-culture where "nerd"/"geek" is not something you want to be.
Please do not downvote just because you disagree - it is against the rules.
I was questioning the statement "many examples of girls being actively refused...", because the poster provided an example of ONE incident. I provided valid observations from my own experience, providing contrary evidence, just to make a point that we cannot form an opinion based on one event.
Your comments are fine in my book. They reflect an uncomfortable reality that many don't want to accept. And yes, the link isn't the best of sources, their owner courts controversy and has made some terrible mistakes recently.
The justification given is extremely interesting as well (if misguided?). We generally wouldn't have a problem with a girls-only tech program because girls are disadvantaged in tech. But boys in school are lagging behind in lots of school subjects. Still, one wonders why robotics is supposed to improve literacy.
It's probably not robotics per se that are supposed to improve the boys so they won't fall behind over the summer. It's probably anything that gets them thinking systematically.
They probably went with robotics over something like French history because the program can only work if it is interesting enough to get kids to sign up.
If women decide to talk about anything other than their "equality" under the law, they are The Extremists who are "doing it for their own gain"? (What does this phrase mean? I would assume women would be engaging in feminist discourse for their own gain, who else's?)
I don't think you understand because I was being too concise. There are standard feminists and I have no problem with them, in fact, many even bat for both sides, so they will help to promote equality issues that men face.
On Twitter however, there is a more extremist crowd who go after people, manipulate facts, get people fired (who dare to have a different opinion), organise offended mobs, all sorts of unfortunate behaviour. To put it simply: they are pushing their selectively puritan views on bystanders who give in too readily and, in the process, become famous from those actions.
I work with business analysts. At first, I didn't think well of them - their job is to turn business rules into software requirements. They kind of understand the business, and kind of understand software. My feeling, which I was embarrassed by, is that I could do their jobs better than they can.
After having been here a while, I still feel the same way, but I'm not embarrassed by it. I have to understand everything that a business analyst does, and also how software works. Our company tells us we should spend 30% (!!) of our time on professional development. I think that's totally awesome. A business analyst recently made the comment "I don't even know what I'd spend 30% of my time learning about."
Most jobs really are about getting along with people. Even engineering jobs. But engineering requires paying substantial intellectual costs up front, and then paying on a continual basis, in a way that most other professions simply do not.
I think "other careers don't require knowledge and ability like mine does" is the perfect example of illusory superiority.
In my experience, competent people are pretty good at making their jobs look pretty easy, but actually trying to do it without their built-up knowledge and ability is another story. The feeling that you can do their job better than they can might fade if you had to do it for a couple months. There are a lot of edge cases and unexpected complexities you don't get properly exposed to just looking over someone's shoulder sometimes.
> I think "other careers don't require knowledge and ability like mine does" is the perfect example of illusory superiority.
Actually that's plenty fine. Just do a quick thought experiment: a career like garbageman or janitor. Some careers require more knowledge work than others. There's nothing wrong with that.
When did this attitude of "everything's equal all the time and nothing's different" become so pervasive and accepted?
If someone disagrees with the statement "programming is a fundamentally different career from everything else in terms of ability and knowledge required" it does not follow that they believe "all careers including garbageman and janitor are equal in ability and knowledge to programming and none of them are different."
If someone disagrees with the statement "programming is a fundamentally different career from everything else in terms of ability and knowledge required" then they almost certainly don't know how to write good software.
It's a usability mindset thing. Apple's software is great if you can live within their vision. Microsoft aims at everyone from newbie to an elite power user. Linux, well, you can do anything you want but it's on your head if you screw it up (or it screws itself up).
To view it from a political perspective, it's a scale from authoritarian (Apple) to libertarian (Linux). Those who are used to surviving on their own probably don't appreciate the rules (like putting up with superfluous visual effects).
The great thing about advertising is it funds you no matter if you are famous or not. Bad thing is you have to live under their corporate censorship and all the baggage that goes with using third party sellers (privacy and inefficiency).
To use some of the examples in the article, not everyone can rely on national license fees (BBC), corporate sponsorship (NPR), consistently making a loss (The Guardian), search engines (Mozilla), having a legacy business (CNN) etc.
FWIW, my post is not a rant against advertising in general. It's about doing it with such a large volume of code & third parties involved, leaning on my bandwidth & CPU to cover for a lack of coordination.
Toward the end of the post I say something like "what if we actually accepted the fact that ads are a way of funding the web at large" and mention some Mozilla efforts in that direction
A lot of the big names are smaller competitors who were bought out. If I wanted to buy into a big name like that, I would make sure their founding headquarters were based nearby and that they are run by the same soft of people that started it.
Our rail system is set up to be mediocre and expensive. Much of it was built privately long ago, then it was nationalised, cut down and improved. Then is was 'privatised' - I use quotes because the train operators don't really have a say in what they do. The banks own the trains. The network is run by a non-profit. The government funds it, decides on the rules but takes no responsibility when it goes wrong.
I have heard several interviews with drivers. It reminds me of every other VC funded technology company that creates a platform. Those drivers do well as early adopters, but I suspect its downhill (for them) in the long term.
Been reading about modern Amiga hardware recently like the upcoming X5000 with Amiga OS 4.1. Almost tempted to try it. I forced myself to use Windows, OS X and various Linux for years, but they never felt right.
Amiga was well represented until the late 90s when the print magazines died off and that was the death knell. Both Amiga and Atari were in Computer Shopper too, albeit token pages.
