Search for Rapid Application Development from the 90's.

Powerbuilder is one such tool that started getting built in early 1990's. What is old is new again.

Note quite, the commercial insurance companies have stepped back. CAE is a government managed and mandated organization. Outside of CAE you it is almost impossible to get Earthquake Insurance.

http://www.earthquakeauthority...

Note that in the last few years, the CAE has moved from unreasonably expensive to reasonable. This thread has got me rethinking :).

Exactly. My original comment wasn't naysaying, it was responding to the actuary tables.

When the actuaries say it isn't a good business, then we should be *very* worried. The government support of their communities balances their existence and economic activity against the cost of rebuilding - even though the rebuilding won't last.

If they are still issuing policies, then it is accepted as a risk. This matches TFA in that there are a number of scenarios, the "likelihood" of an event due to Climate Change has definitely increased, but not the extent that people are uninsurable.

In areas where it is a certainty (earthquakes in California, Floods in other parts of the country), the insurance companies step back and don't insure.

How do you measure productivity?

Delivered code per engineer, or delivered code per dollar (rouble, rupee, etc). Depends on your measure. As AC says above, the costs for junior engineers are disproportionally lower.

+1

A common issue with code reviews is that the engineer making the change presents the completed implementation and the design *at the same time*. The collaboration early on to ensure a good design or theory of operation really helps cut down on the pain of code reviews.

I'll take the consideration even further.

1) Similar to Amazon Echo - Skills allow integration of voice commands with third party services (called Skills). This ties into the third party - off the shelf parts.
2) Facebook just acquired wit.ai (http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-buys-voice-recognition-startup-1420496634), a voice recognition company
3) Messenger already has text to speech
4) Amazon Echo is a simple command language - https://developer.amazon.com/p... Echo is (really cool) but arguably dumb - "ask..to..,” “askfor...,” “tellto...".
5) Facebook doesn't have an assistant (Apple has Siri, Google has Now, Amazon has Echo). Facebook is missing an assistant.

I would see Zuckerberg being his own alpha customer. Possibly his little project that will keep him active with technical chops.

This looks like a partial back-story for Mark Zuckerberg's AI announcement.

Chat bots with a high quality Voice Recognition and Text to Speech engine fit into this model very easily. Make the bots backed by an AI engine and you have Mark's solution.

Surplus has changed, but it still exists in manufacturing areas. But it's not the type of surplus store you used to see. The HuaQiangBei area in Shenzen is the new surplus store. It's primarily rolls of SM tech that is suitable for Pick and Place equipment. Because that's where the manufacturing is at. The surplus around Shenzen is actually really cool.

With miniaturization, and on-demand prototyping, the need for companies to have surplus enthusiast level stuff is way down. You do electronic layout, send it to a low volume prototyping company and they will then send it back to you in a few days/weeks. Even those prototyping stores will only surplus unusual items, with standard items being shared across different customers.

The prototyping with with non-SMT is getting kind of rare. Hell, I have seen anyone even consider Wirewrap. These days a lot of prototyping is built around microcontroller and sample boards for ASICs. And the glue between the logic boards are a few resistors or capacitors.

Say drone now and you get the image of either silent military killers remotely controlled or quad or hexacopter buzzing around.

The military drones will get more autonomous and even more scary. We haven't hit a real arms race in remote killing machines. It will come.

The copter drones aren't going to fly (excuse the pun) long term. The noise that comes from the drones as the beat the air into submission is not scalable to many of them. I'm a tech nerd, but I'm not going to enjoy having continual buzzing. Drones for particular uses (search and rescue, mapping, task specific data gathering and so on) will likely win.

Our day to day life won't be from drones as we know them. The drones of the future will probably be either silently flying (bird like?) or on the ground, or underground. They will increasingly take the "need human agility, but not human smarts". Deliveries to an extent are an obvious area.

If you consider those as aircraft and the faa would likely consider them aircraft then yes.

Obviously not.

A drone is a craft capable of sustained flight in a 2 mile hemisphere.

Below treeline for something that is capable of flying up a mile in the sky is clearly an aircraft. A ball is unlikely to go above tree line, unless you are catapulting, in which case if you go high or into the flight path your could probably run into issues. Ballistic aircraft, possibly?

Some of the autonomous drone people I know have great pride in having a system that can fly 30 miles, uncontrolled, dropping used batteries as it goes. Just keep out of flight zones and don't be a sick is my view.

mapbox has a really useful map https://www.mapbox.com/drone/n.... FAA have a really simple description https://www.faa.gov/regulation...

It shows the exclusion zones around the airports. Defined as Class B airspace.

The rules are fairly simple. Ground or above is controlled airspace. ATC must know and must be able to know where your aircraft is. You could possibly argue that below the treeline/building line should be considered safe, but the rules are clear.

Likely the company repeatedly flew in the area north of central park which is restricted. In particular this company has been doing it for a while with both UAV and manned aircraft, and should have known better. For this type of fine, likely they had been warned too.

You've been dropped in an environment that is legacy and probably has production problems. Use that to your advantage.

You've been also dropped in a leadership role (not management, leadership).

Your #1 target should be to make yourself redundant (which ironically is likely to get you promoted, it's called succession :).

So look at doing something like identifying #1 problem (Pareto charts help). Ask for volunteers (or volunteer some people), give them the problem to solve, use whiteboards, etc to help them discover the solution. You may facilitate and provide hints to get things done. Empower and guide the people you are helping.

Read up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., you are likely in a #2 or #3 combination. You can help lead people to move to a #3 with leadership, with the idea to get to #1 over time (with their help).

Of course there might be some issues that you might need to solve like EOL systems and any budget that may be needed. If the OS is old, then probably the HW is old as well. Budget for that is probably going to be your biggest issue.

Although the articles mentions that there is a meaningful financial benefit to the certifications, the challenge is finding industries and companies that recognize and value the certifications. The companies that I have worked at (in particular software) the certifications would be mostly meaningless as a recognition of skill and understanding. Hardware, logistics, regulated companies will likely have a higher value in a PMP or a CRISC.

However, there is a secondary worth to these certifications as a professional. You may end up seeing the world differently. With practice you can begin to intuitively see elements of the certification in your daily professional life. This secondary insight will help you as a professional.

For example, developers with PMP and CRISC don't "pad" estimates, they estimate the risks and unknowns, something that a lot of regular developers don't do. They see estimates as ranges or with relative confidence, those levels of ranges help give better estimates to make better decisions.

The certifications help you indirectly as a professional. That said, you can still skip the certification and read the text books (like the PMBOK), but that won't necessarily fill in all the gaps you may have in understanding.

I doubt that we will be awash in coders as a result of high school literacy in code.

This is much the same that a high school curriculum of science, math, language arts does not make the world flush with chemists, engineers, theoretical mathematicians. What it does create is a community that has a level of appreciation, and the potential to specialize in that particular field.

Think of it as having a whole lot of engineers that have become managers. They can still code if they needed to, but generally won't. However, the engineering concepts are known even if they aren't being used.