Social

social@lists.alug.org.uk

1 participants
257 discussions

Linux world Ireland
by Adam Bower 18 Sep '01

18 Sep '01

Hi people, anyone planning to go to the linux world Ireland in November? the home page is here http://www.linuxworld.ie/ I figured it would be fun to go and get rather drunk in Ireland on the pretence of going to a linux conference :-) I better have a job by then so I can actually afford this..... Adam -- This message is Copyleft - all rights reversed Adam

1 0

that vax fridge-freezer
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 18 Sep '01

18 Sep '01

David's vax is: "...... a Microvax3100M20e and a Microvax 3400." if this settles any arguments there were on IRC last night. Claimed by the previous owner to run OpenBSD. David? Jen

2 1

Re: [Alug] CS students vs Engineers
by MJ Ray 15 Sep '01

15 Sep '01

[moved to social] Mills <planet14(a)boyznow.net> writes: > who have. Mr Mankin flames all CS students by calling them "pig > ignorant" in a self styled flamewar. Mr Mankin tells CS students they Please can we stop using the word "pig" as it sets off content filters ;-) I kid you not: I've booted someone from the list for sending automated "please don't send abusive emails" replies. Bad MTA. > do not know about grammar, while in the same email he wrongly calls > university lecturers, "teachers". This helps to show the small > knowledge of universities the writers have. I was a university lecturer. I am happy to be described as a teacher. If we do not teach, why lecture? > Hiring English or Philosophy graduates instead of CS is wrong, and > disgusting. CS students are interested in computers and therefore their > work. They also have more knowledge about computers and have a > personality profile that is better for doing programming. The also generally think that they know it all and some of the candidates who are brightest on paper have no social or personal skills. [1] As a result of bad experiences when recruiting, I now far prefer to hire technically adept graduates from other disciplines, or preferably computing students with a minor in another subject. > Please apologize or action may be taken. See above at [1]. What exactly do you think you're going to do to Raph? If it's an empty threat, you've demonstrated my point. If you're going to DoS or haxor him, you've demonstrated my point still. Making such threats is generally a lose-lose situation. Took me years to learn that. -- MJR Thesis watch: 27% This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/

2 1

Re: [alug social] Re: [Alug] CS students vs Engineers
by MJ Ray 15 Sep '01

15 Sep '01

David Freeman <david_freeman(a)alug.org.uk> writes: > This explains why you didn't want to employ me :o) When we've got 300 people and can hide skilled ninja koderz in a back room, ask me again ;-) -- MJR Thesis watch: 27% This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/

1 0

Re: [Alug] CS students vs Engineers
by MJ Ray 15 Sep '01

15 Sep '01

Adam Bower <abower(a)thebowery.co.uk> writes: > I am not an authority on this either and could someone please correct > me if I am wrong but I think people should only be using the > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk address as the uea one is no longer supported? Indeed. I found out yesterday that stu.uea.ac.uk will cease to be before the end of the year. UEA's computing service has changed its position on a number of issues, so removing the need for it. > Anyway on with my reply :) No. Please reply twice. The reply to main should just say that you are replying to social and people should follow the discussion over there. This is now wildly off-topic for main. -- MJR Thesis watch: 27% This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/

1 0

Re: [Alug] CS students vs Engineers
by Adam Bower 15 Sep '01

15 Sep '01

Can we continue this discussion in the Social list now please, I would set the reply to header but pine is being a POS today (another reason to go back to mutt) I am not an authority on this either and could someone please correct me if I am wrong but I think people should only be using the main(a)lists.alug.org.uk address as the uea one is no longer supported? Anyway on with my reply :) On Sat, 15 Sep 2001, Mills wrote: > Hiring English or Philosophy graduates instead of CS is wrong, and > disgusting. CS students are interested in computers and therefore their > work. They also have more knowledge about computers and have a > personality profile that is better for doing programming. It sounds as No, you don't choose who you employ just because they have a degree in that subject, you employ the best person for the job. I have met people who can do things with computers far better than most of those with a CS degree, just having a degree does not necessarily make you the best person for the job, getting a degree in CS obviously helps though if you want to work in computing. > skills. Mr Mankin attacks universities but uses Linux, a clone of UNIX > which is an OS made popular by it's use in universities. Linus was a > CS student himself. So what happens to CS students who have worked at > zero pay for several years including weeks of 50+ hours, they are, in > your view, supposed to accept the dole queue. Universities are great places for people to go and study and learn, I am sure Mr Mankin does accept that universities can be good for learning. Also your comment about Linus and Linux shows you know very little about the early days of Linux. Linus had many arguments with his course teacher about OS design and also had a flame war (resolved a long time ago) with Andrew Tanenbaum (if you don't know who he is then google is your friend) which shows that elements of the academic community were actually against Linux at one point, indeed many parts of the academic world of OS design are still against the Linux approach to doing things. I also know of people who have gone to university who are really good programmers etc. but they have gone there to study subjects such as art or law or some unrelated discipline. The reasoning being that if they already know the subject really well then they would be better off becoming multi-talented. I know that if i was to go to university in the future (a distinct probability) that there would be no way I would consider studying computing, I already know enough about computing I would want to learn something different that I could put my computing knowledge into to enhance. > Please apologize or action may be taken. ? Adam -- This message is Copyleft - all rights reversed Adam

1 0

Re: [Alug] CS students vs Engineers
by Adam Bower 15 Sep '01

15 Sep '01

On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Mills wrote: > Raphael Mankin wrote: > ><flamewar> > >As an employer of programmers of some 30 years experience I find that > >CS graduates are generally a dead loss. I would much rather employ > >English or Philosophy graduates: at least they know that they don't > >know. They also tend to have some knowledge of the world outside > >computers, unlike the CS graduates who can best be described as pig > >ignorant. > ></flamewar> > Please apologize for these comments. Why the hell should anyone apologize for that!! It is an opinion, of which others don't agree, anyway here is my take on this I wasn't going to reply as I didn't want to generate any flamebait but however..... My experience is that CS grads can be very good however most are only about average. If you do get a programmer who has a degree in some other subject then usually they are better than the CS student as they are thinking "out of the box" whereas CS students are quite often all taught to be sheep (as in they all learn more or less the same thing). I am not saying that if you are a CS student (or grad) that you are crap, just that getting a degree in CS doesn't automatically make you an expert. I have plenty of experience of people who never did a degree being absolutley s***hot when it comes to coding but this is probably as they are gifted in the art of programming, and I also think that if they had done a degree in CS then they could of learnt many bad habits or been taught to not be original. Anyway I am just using my right to free speech... feel free to flame me or discuss futher PS the reply-to on this mail was set incorrectly, I have changed it back to the main address and to the social list where this may be better discussed from now as it could degenerate! Adam -- This message is Copyleft - all rights reversed Adam

2 2

Re: [alug social] Me'n Mark blathering on
by MJ Ray 13 Sep '01

13 Sep '01

Alexis Lee <alexis(a)turton.com> writes: > Yes, but just what can you _do_ with a function except rewrite it or > call it? Function division and subtraction?!? If you like. Personally, I tend to use them in catch statements and other such things. Thunks are often handy, too. > All the rewriting you might want to do deals with a function as a piece > of text, and thus is better dealt with using existing string functions > plus eval(). Not quite as syntactically pretty, but it does mean you're > not duplicating the string library. Functions aren't strings! Think about manipulating their parse structure trees in a similar way to XSLT manipulating XML trees. No, I don't do that quite so much with variables, but macros are powerful tools. > > Yes, but the power comes if you don't do bad cohesion like that and > > you compose functions. I very rarely use begin... The time when I do > > is when I'm trying to interface with something procedural, such as a > > database. > hum, I understood you were meant to start your program with a begin. I > guess that's just a useful thing to do. No, I hardly ever use it. You only start your program with begin if you're making the popular mistake of writing procedural code, I think. My recent programs (in guile) consist of a use-modules line, then a single structure. -- MJR Thesis watch: 27% This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/

2 1

More Language Fun
by MJ Ray 13 Sep '01

13 Sep '01

It became apparent that, while Java is a good language for small applications, Java is not adequate to address the needs of current/future high-end applications, normally written in the much more powerful and versatile C/C++ languages. Java is slow, and requires all C/C++ applications to be completely rewritten. Often, applications ported from C/C++ to Java produces product at high cost. from http://ivm.sourceforge.net/icvmcpp.html So, Java is doomed now? -- MJR Thesis watch: 27% This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/

2 1

Re: Me'n Mark blathering on
by Alexis Lee 12 Sep '01

12 Sep '01

I'm moving to stick this on social. Quote from the news article I finally accessed: -- Suppose someone else used a language called Kwook and was trying to understand the benefit of first-class integers in C. He might point out that in Kwook, you can declare an integer like this: int four_hundred_eight = 408; Then whenever you need 408 to be the argument to a function, you just pass a pointer to the four_hundred_eight integer. If a function (say, addition), needs to return 408, just return the same pointer. How would you explain to the Kwook programmer that first-class integers are better? -- OK, I can see why it's a pain having to reference and dereference by hand. Does first-class mean that references are constructed autom., or that the thing can be copied? I see no point in copying a thing unless it can be altered. And if the point is to be able to create a copy of a function which can be altered, what's wrong with (let ((a "display") (b "hello")) (eval list(a " " b)) ) (or equivalent written in non-babytalk Scheme). MJ Ray wrote: > What is a Cache object? Yes, that's a philosophical question ;-) An object which holds references to other objects (held locally) to allow faster retrieval thereof. I'd guess you could do something funky to try and ensure that all those objects were held in RAM at all times. I think I see why you think it's a philosophical question, but the idea of recursive caches isn't all that interesting, so perhaps I missed it. > Yep, Guile is Scheme. And how many current browsers include JREs? > Isn't that a dying trend? Java is surely a language which has had its > day in the sun... now to see how it weathers a winter. True, Java isn't being shipped with IE6, it's an installable component. But I believe Mozilla still has it. And Java is apparently achieving massive growth in the embedded/handheld device markets. It has the massive advantage of being structural (or procedural or whatever I'm meant to call it... Cish), which is how most people learn to think when they're taught to program. Incidentally, if you do this: (begin (define function1 (lambda (x) (...))) (define function2 (lambda (x y) (...))) (function1 2.5) (display (function2 3.8 "Hello")) ) doesn't that look rather structural? I'm really struggling to get a grip on this functional stuff. > Huh? My personal site is entertainingly broken at the moment (try it > in moz), but I don't recall there being any non-relative internal URLs > on it, as that's a pet hate of mine. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ from your sig. Left nav bar. Moz 0.9.2. Alexis -- "You got what everyone gets. A lifetime." - Death (Sandman by Neil Gaiman) "I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education" - Wilson Mizner "It doesn't matter who you vote for. The government always gets in."

1 0

← Newer
1
...
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Older →

Jump to page:

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

Social