Joel on Software Painless Bug Tracking

Keeping a database of bugs is one of the hallmarks of a good software team. I never cease to be amazed at how few teams are actually doing this. One of the biggest incorrect facts that programmers consistently seem to believe is that they can remember all their bugs or keep them on post-it notes.

A warning to students:

Help us save talents from exploitation. Please share this page with other friends, specially friends in other universities and colleges, Thank you!

http://www.faceintel.com/collegecorner.htm

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Seven LEAN Years

Unemployment among older American high-tech workers is skyrocketing. Engineers and software programmers, in particular, are theoretically the most in demand; yet engineers and software programmers over age fifty are destitute. If a person of this age group prefers to stay out of management and instead use their highly-trained skills and experience to do real work, this person is looked upon as some kind of a dinosaur, an ignorant buffoon who is socially inept and ready for the scrap-heap. Unemployment among this group of older workers is roughly one in five. Underemployment -- the condition of working in a low-wage job because no appropriate high-wage position is available -- is anywhere from 20% to 80% of this group. Age discrimination in the high-tech fields is now so pervasive that it has become an accepted cultural norm.

Call me a dinosaur if you like but I know that I would hate being in a management position - a 'suit'. I much prefer to avoid the Peter Principle trap. I guess that's why I returned to academia.

I've just noticed that Dave has included a link to this site in the left navbar of Scripting News. I'm in illustrious company there. Boy!, this means the pressure's on to keep this site fresh and interesting. I'm not worthy ;-) Thanks Dave

Joel on Software

I'm pretty psyched, because UI Design for Programmers's going to appear in print soon.

Good luck with the book Joel. With the extra chapters and a forward by Dave W coupled with your experience, enthusiasm, and writing style, it's sure to be a success. Could be one for the recommended reading list for my students.

I'm up late having underestimated the time it would take to arrange the [52.223] LLP Practical #05 for my students. Oh well, at least it's done now.

XO/2 - Introduction

XO/2 is an object-oriented, hard-real time system software and framework, designed for safety, extensibility and abstraction. It takes care of many common issues faced by programmers of mechatronic products, by hiding general design patterns inside internal mechanisms or by encapsulating them into easy-to-understand abstractions. Careful handling of the safety aspects has been the criterion by which the system has been crafted. These mechanisms, pervasive yet efficient, allow the system to maintain a deus ex-machina knowledge about the running applications, thus providing higher confidence to the application programmer. The latter, relieved from many computer-science aspects, can better focus his attention to the actual problem to be solved.

XO/2 originates from the ETHZ Institute of Robotics. In the past couple of years I have had the pleasure of teaching and supervising several excellent ETH students when they were studying for a year at Strathclyde.

BBspot - Linux Bashing Now Considered a Hate Crime

BBspot is a satirical news and comedy source and meant to be funny. If you are easily offended or don't have a sense of humor we suggest you go elsewhere.

Via LTSeek - Campus unplugged

Wireless-enabled laptops, combined with a wireless Internet network, hold the promise of transforming American higher education by giving all students instant Internet access wherever they are on campus..... Students can also have ready and frequent interaction with their professors - not to mention the freedom to tap resources anytime, anywhere.

But not everyone is convinced the step is a good one. Along with quick access to academic resources comes the ability to play games constantly, surf the Web in class, and talk online to friends instead of seeing them face to face. Lost in the newly "instant" culture may be time for contemplation, or even unwired solitude.

Also via LTSeek - Boston Globe Online - Colleges target essay fraud

Most of the essay topics on Duke University's application are the typical, window-on-your-soul-in-three-pages variety: What book has influenced you most? Describe a surprising intellectual experience. Name someone whom you admire but disagree with, and tell why.

This fall, however, Duke officials added an unusual question to end with: Is this writing your own?

In Monday's edition of SiT David made some valuable recommendations on how assessments should be constructed in such a way to minimise the potential for plagiarism. Thanks David..

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Wooden Spoons (Some Rules Kids Won't Learn in School)

Claim: Bill Gates published a list of 'Rules Kids Won't Learn in School.'

Status: False.

[This] list is the work of Charles J. Sykes, author of the book Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves but Can't Read, Write, or Add.

Dave Winer's Moore's Law for software?

I'd argue that a computer science undergrad today should learn C and assembly language, for a complete education, but most of the code the programmer of the future will write will be interpreted and running on a high level virtual machine that optimizes programmer effectiveness.

Dave's a man after my own heart. If any of my students are reading this then go read Dave's article, check out his site, read some of his archived material. You'll learn a helluva lot. I did - and still do. Dave's also the architect of Frontier and Usertalk which together make my favourite programming environment.

The Register:P4: Tom's Hardware has another rethink

A number of Tom's readers pointed out that it was unfair to judge the P4's performance using software not optimised to use the processor to its full potential and towards the end of last week, some dedicated folks at Intel Munich worked through the night to recompile the FlasK MPEG encoder to incorporate SSE2 code and mailed it to THG.

The results were illuminating. The P4's performance jumped from a pathetic 3.83fps to 14.03. Interestingly the 1.2GHz Athlon also improved thanks to Intel's tweaks, moving from 6.43 to 11.14fps.