Posts by Al7 posts • joined Thursday 22nd March 2007 13:15 GMT
Why they decided to release a phone without access to a 'Socket' class is beyond me. Sure, many things will happily work over HTTP, but many things won't - VOIP being a good example. I want to love this phone as developing for it is easier and less painful that both iPhone and Android ... but I'll wait till v2 thanks.
I never really understood why Microsoft were going for cross platfrom anyway. Silverlight is a great way to reuse .net code and, if designed with Silverlight in mind, an easy way to push desktop WPF apps onto the web. Surely everyone can see Silverlight based versions of Office apps coming? I imagine that Microsoft have realised that if you can run Office through your browser on Linux then a number of businesses would have less reason to buy Windows. A less cynical view might be that allowing COM support in Silverlight means there is a massive existing codebase that can be reused rather than having to port it all to .net.
Who knows, but did anyone really believe that adopting a Microsoft product would ever have been fully cross platform?
While I still think it is incorrect to slate CS grads who have been taught mainly Java, I agree that you need the right tools for the job. Being a CS grad (like I am) doesn't make you a genius. I am quite happy to accept that I would not be the correct person for the job when it comes to complex mathematics involved in the banking industry.
Sure, I have debugged code by hanging 'scope probes off the end of SPARC chips and have written code for various obscure embedded platforms. It does not make me an expert on set theory. You want a math grad for that.
It's sad that CS is becomming so undervalued in the industry. There is a lack of people taking the course and this then means that some bodies 'dumb' it down. I'm sure we're not too far off the day when course CS101 is 'How to use MS Word'.
CS grads will never be the answer for all programming jobs in every industry. We serve a purpose, and the skill of a recruitment consultant is to know what that purpose is. Generalising about the languages we learn is missing the point.
Anyway, how did an article on free MS tools become a rant by me on degree courses? :)
I don't mean to be rude, but do you have a clue what you're talking about? Since when is Java only taught at universities where the students aren't clever enough to learn C++? Unless I'm missing something, many top universities teach Java to undergraduates (Cambridge being one of them).
The whole point of a CS course is not to arm you with great knowledge about how one specific vendor's tools work. It is also not aimed at turning you into a code monkey capable of churning out C++.
A CS course is designed to give you a grounding in the skills and concepts that will help you over your career. Anyone can churn out C++ code ... it's not tricky. Compare the code of a CS graduate and an engineer and they will be very different even if they both work equally well. The CS guy will know when to implement design patterns, when to refactor, and what tools to use. The engineer will, most likely, give you a monolithic horror.
I'm not sure how you call Java 'braind damaged shit' but then say C# is great. Do you not realise that they are very similar in design and language? For an experienced Java programmer to write nicely designed C# code, it'd take less than an afternoon of training.
Unfortunately, I guess you can't expect intelligent discussion from a recruitment consultant ... it's what people who dropped out of university tended to become. After all, he probably despises us CS grads because he is forced to look at how much we get paid :).
Al
Aberley House Hostel is a place where homeless people can go while they try to get back on their feet. In this country, crime is only allowed to be committed by tax payers ... so the only option was to put him on the offenders register. Of course, had he been a rich pop star mixed up in multiple (and not just 2 or 3) drug offences, he'd have been let off and told not to do it again.
The amusing thing about this is that I got an email from BT this week offering me a free V-box for their new digital TV service. I was, of course, interested as I like any new gadget especially if it costs me nothing.
Once you read the small print you realise that there is a £60 installation fee (I think I can manage to plug in an aerial and hook up an ethernet connection) plus a £30 connection fee (someone clicking a button in BT headquarters?). On top of this I need the BT Home Hub (only £30 if I pay online) and have to renew my connection to BT Broadband for 12 months. So, £120 plus a year subscribing to BT Broadband.
I believe the cost with sky is approximately £0 if you subscribe for a year (plus they actually have to do some work in fitting a dish rather than plugging in two cables).
I'd say that £120 of upfront fees for a free box is quite a percentage more than £0 of upfront fees. Perhaps BT should take part in a 'clearer advertising' campaign?
I notice that they have registered 'lvequals.com' ... I can't imagine anyone will call it that. I guess that the £2mill to stick an '=' on the end of the name is less than the guy wanted to sell up 'lv.com'
