Comment greatest post in quite a while.... (nt) (Score 0, Offtopic) 287
(nt)
(nt)
Did anyone else notice the story submitter's alias links to a sex toy shopping site?
It's only accepted as long as infighting between developers continues to waste energy on all sides. A war of attrition that's characterized open source for so long that no one knows any better (1984, war is peace). A "benevolent dictator" should roundup the sound guys and stop their fucking around. Mark Shuttleworth shaped Ubuntu up to be the ONLY decent desktop linux distro, Guido van Rossum made Python a uniquely usable and efficient programming language (ditching backwards compatibility with the 3.0 release), and Steve Jobs carried Apple out of the gutter. So many open source projects flounder without strong (and sometimes arbitrary appearing) direction.
Fantastic investment when the extent of enemy combatants' airpower are RPG's that can't hit anything above a few hundred feet, and much of your population has no running water.
Huh?
How many meetings do you have?
This always gets a laugh, valuable when potential engineering hires usually seem quite dry. Meetings usually waste time, and their answer will give you a better idea of how much real work you can actually achieve.
What's your relationship with academia?
This question is good if you're interested in more researchy-work, or have grad school on the horizon (or in your past). Companies that associate with universities tend to do more serious research. If you plan to attend grad school, working for a company connected with academia will get you a letter of recommendation appearing much stronger to the professors who handle PhD admissions.
Is there a dresscode?
You'll probably know the answer to this beforehand, but some companies aren't so clear. The aeronautical engineering field is generally business-casual, but I've interviewed at two aero companies where anything goes. For some people, this can be a significant workplace comfort issue and indicative of overall work environment.
How selective are you with tuition reimbursement?
Most engineering companies will compensate you for taking courses at a nearby university (or online). Some companies only pay for courses related to your work, others will let you take courses in anything. It can be a nice perk to finally take that astronomy or life drawing course you couldn't squeeze in during undergrad.
Well, I work in a team engineering environment where everyone already HAS Word and KNOWS Word, and no report is a solo effort. I can't force everyone to spend weeks learning my cool pet app/language and let other projects fall by the wayside. These people aren't programmers. I don't know, is lost productivity due to cost of switching rational enough for you? Not everyone is a contract programmer working from home, which is something a lot of Slashdotters seem to miss.
Oh, and I've run linux for seven years (Mandrake, Slackware, Gentoo, then Ubuntu), most recently for six months as my only OS - until I switched to Mac. Before OOo (which I use at home without issue), I used StarOffice in high school to write my chemistry reports. The lack of understanding from FOSS advocates, and their presumptuous attitudes impedes their attempts at inroads more than the quality of their software. New solutions MUST play nicely (more like FLAWLESSLY) with existing solutions if there's to be ANY change, unless the existing solution is obviously flawed to users. Most of the time, it isn't. Corporate inertia. It sucks, but that's the real world.
Yeah, the Ribbon is much more efficient. The key was recognizing that context-sensitive menus reduce user workload in finding what he needs. There are two approaches to displaying functions in an application to a user:
#1, the static interface, is traditional. #2, the dynamic interface, is the Ribbon, but also the Mac OS top task menu, and the toolbox in the Gimp. We're less used to context-sensitive menus in word processors, but when we realize that these have become fullblown page layout and formatting packages, it makes more sense. People aren't just typing letters in word processors, but also formatting newsletters, compiling engineering reports and writing technical PhD theses (with equations, charts, tables of contents, special characters out the wazoo...). These have blossomed into powerful apps for combining and organizing text, mathematical, graphics and tabular information, far more than the typewriters they originally replaced. With that current usage, a dumb interface with forests of menus or tabs doesn't make sense and totally slows down the project. The application should, and can, take care of the user's needs a bit more, and with the Ribbon in Office 2007 it's worked splendidly.
I keep Word because I still need to format documents. Notepad isn't appropriate for a 100+ page document with a table of contents, figures, equations, tables etc. Is there a more convenient way of formatting a complex technical report that doesn't involve some kind of word processor? It doesn't matter if it's being printed, organizing such a body of work and conveying the information clearly requires more than a text editor.
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne