Some years ago I coined the term "semi-colonic irritation" in an e-mail thread about a simple optimisation UserTalk programmers could use in their UserTalk coding in Frontier.

Needless to say, some novice C programmers I've taught over the years often fall into the trap of ending a #define with a semi-colon as in:

#define FALSE 0;

And then use something like

if (result == FALSE)...

which of course causes the compiler to throw up an error along the lines of "If statement missing )".

I was quite surprised that a Google Search: semi-colonic irritation yields no hits since, IMHO, it's such a nice play on words ;-) No doubt Google will index this post in the not too distant future and there'll be at least one hit for the phrase.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | The blog from the heart of Downing St

"Events at the centre of government could become clearer for the public with the launch of an independent website which aims to let people inspect exactly what Downing Street has said."...

Hmm!

Eric Raymond's The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story rant:

..."GUI tools and voluminous manuals are not enough. You have to think about what the actual user experiences when he or she sits down to do actual stuff, and you have to think about it from the user's point of view. The CUPS people, despite good intentions, have utterly failed at this. I'm going to anatomize this failure in detail, because there are lessons here that other open-source projects would do well to heed. The point of this essay is not, therefore, just to beat up on the CUPS people — it's also to beat up on every other open-source designer who does equally thoughtless things under the fond delusion that a slick-looking UI is a well-designed UI. Watch and learn..."

This should be required reading for every student of CS for their HCI class.

I had a wry smile to myself when I read this paragraph:

"If the designers were half-smart about UI issues (like, say, Windows programers) they'd probe the local network neighborhood and omit the impossible entries. If they were really smart (like, say, Mac programmers) they'd leave the impossible choices in but gray them out, signifying that if your system were configured a bit differently you really could print on a Windows machine, assuming you were unfortunate enough to own one."...

If nothing else read the final two paragaphs of Raymond' follow-up in The Luxury of Ignorance: Part Deux:

"It's been twenty years since the GNU Manifesto and nearly seven since The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I think it's time we stopped congratulating ourselves quite so much on our dedication to freedom and our ability to write technically superior code, and began more often to ask What are we doing to serve the real users? Good UI design, and doing the right thing by Aunt Tillie, ought to be a matter of gut-level pride of craftsmanship.

But if that's too abstract and idealistic for you, think of this. No matter how skilled you are, there are many times when you will be the end user. By learning to demand good UI from others, the time and sanity you save will ultimately be your own."

Wavemarket

"WaveMarket, a pioneer in location-based blogging, today introduced the first comprehensive location-based blogging system that enables users to broadcast and share location-time information from their cell phones with friends, affinity groups or the world. The new technology has implications for consumers, the enterprise and vertical organizations, according to Tasso Roumeliotis, WaveMarket founder and chief executive officer."

via Scripting News - Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career

..."Enrollments are down at the best computer science schools, where the potential stars of technology's future are groomed. Professors say there is less enthusiasm for the discipline among students, and they worry it may be more than a lingering disenchantment after the dot-com bubble burst.

In an effort to counter the trend, Mr. Gates, who personifies technological optimism and the potential payoff, sought to reassure students that their futures were no less bright in an era of outsourcing. The effect of computer technology, he told them, is just beginning and opportunity abounds. Computing, he added, is an ideal field for fine minds to make a difference in society.

"We need your excitement," he told students at Harvard. "Most of these jobs are very interesting and very social - you work with lots of smart people. I'm excited about the future of computing, and I'm excited to see how each of you can contribute to it"...

As Admissions Selector for my department I can confirm that applications are down on this side of the pond too. UCAS stats show a 20% drop nationwide in computer science applications with, it would appear, a disproportionate drop, in applications to the good universities - those with 'traditional' CS degree programmes. Given that this disproportionality must be balanced out somewhere, I conjecture that the 'fashionable' degrees such as computer games technology and the like are seeing less of a drop and may, indeed, be seeing a rise in their applications.

I'll need to keep an eye open for evidence to support this conjecture.

Talking of outsourcing the Ask Joel - Offshoring thread is an illuminating read. Not forgetting David Anderson's contribution to the Outsourcing Debate which is a follow-on from his RE: Computing Curricula 2001 (CC-2001) post here. I've just checked and, as expected, David has picked up the Ask Joel thread and has just posted his own comments in his Embrace Transparency - the Antidote to Offshoring post:

"A good thread at Joel Spolsky's Ask Joel forum, is discussing, offshoring. What's really interesting about this is the amount of opinion without much in the way of objective data. The guys who mention cost as the motive are on the right track. The real problem is that the industry isn't measuring the right things and making an objective assessment of offshoring is difficult when there is a lack of information in the (software development) economy. What's missing is data on lead time and client-valued functionality produced.

Quoting from the 3rd sentence in my book, "Senior executives, perplexed by the spiraling costs of software development and depressed by poor results, poor quality, poor service, and a lack of transparency are simply shrugging their shoulders and saying, 'if the only way this can be done is badly, then let me do it badly at a fraction of the cost.'"...

Disclaimer: I'm proud of David's achievements as he's an old student of mine - as regular readers will know!