People that revolt from a position of abject poverty and unemployment are extortionists?

We do not get anything in return? How about this? We don't get our heads on a pitchfork. Put millions of people out of work and bad violent shit is bound to happen. Fucking history is right there to tell you this. How stupid can we be that do not see the self-preservation benefit of not putting millions of people out of work?

This is the stupidest false dichotomy bullshit I've seen in a long time. No one is saying no to automation. What the concern is, how do we plan to introduce automation in the trucking industry while simultaneously handle the 10 +/- million people that will be affected? Do we just introduce automation and let markets self-heal (which is pretty much dog-eat-dog), or do we put in place transition job and training programs to ameliorate the impact of unemployment until the bulk of people is able to transition into other job sectors.

That you miss the gist of the problem shows that you are not as smart as you think you are, or you simply do not care. Don't know which is scarier.

Been in this business for 20 years, 9 different companies in various industries, doing application and system/embedded development. But whatever. If you want to play my lightsaber is bigger than yours, by all means, knock yourself out, you win.

We are obviously talking about processes in general. But if we want to talk about shitty IDEs, languages and coding-level artifacts, let's do it. Yes, there are shitty IDEs, bad languages and such. They make work difficult, if not painfully insane, but none of that stop good workers from delivering good work (or at least avoid the number of sophomoric WTFs from piling up.)

Back in 1994, I once had the disgrace of having to do support report generating programs on PICK systems, using nothing but ed (not even vi for ${DEITY:-FSM} sake), using a bastardized language that mixed sh-based constructs with SQL-like statements for multi-column databases and PICKBasic.

That last thing, PICK Basic, utter crap that made GW-BASIC look like Haskell. At least GW-BASIC supported named labels for your GOTOs. PICK Basic oth only supported numeric labels. Imagine that if you can. You can have named labels in most assembly languages, but not in PICK Basic. Wrap your head around that if you can.

Anyways, the existing programs were a monstrosity we inherited were a monstrosity. We started fixing that by establishing standards and procedures for creating new programs (or introducing changes in new ones). We established a hierarchy of numeric labels - labels in the 1000-1999 range for initialization, 2000-2999, 3000-3999 for general computation, 4000-4999 for reporting/output and 5000+ for error handling and abnormal termination.

Those are the tools we had for that specific job, and as ugly as they were, we found ways to deal with them, to increase value for our employer while minimizing the number of WTFs that had been piling up for years by incompetent code monkeys.

There is no question in my mind that PICK systems were pure crap because they required us to put significantly more attention to detail to avoid introducing WTFs. Thank God that was just one job I had to do, and that I have never had to deal with that ever since.

And I've experience deja-vu moments like that, in Java, Visual Basic, C/C++, FoxPro, you name it. There is no language or IDE out there that does not have some unbelievable collection of WTFs.

But none of them cause people to unavoidably fuck it up again and again and again. Wielder, not tool.

When we had our choice to pick, we try to pick the best tools we can get.

But more often than not, we do not. And when that happens, what do you do? Do you go on auto-pilot and let the tool WTFquery imbue themselves into WTFs in your own code?

No. Not at all. You use your skills and find ways to make that shit work, to put some structure, some standards, some sane mechanisms and patterns and practices to maintain some quality in your work.

It can be done. Actually, it is done, and it has been done. Wielder, not tool. Always.

I didn't say every tool is perfect. I said that every tool has a function, has a context, and that works in that context. But hey, I guess I have to go Barney Style in these realms.

Why would you use a hammer made out of plastic straws? What is the use of that tool? What is the purpose? What is the context? These are obviously rhetorical questions used to highlight the stupidity of your counter example.

For that matter, why don't you go and say "good luck hammering nails with a bar of soap, a saw, or a roll of toilet paper"?

Which is true. But here we are talking about tools, concepts and processes that are known to produce good results when used intelligently (or that should be known by anyone worth his/her salt in this industry.)

The context should have been apparent, but I guess we needed to go Barney Style with it.

Be careful here. A cert's worth is not defined simply by the lessons that come with it. It is also pixie dust or glitter that you use in your resume.

I'm not joking. During the last recession, I became unemployed (just 7 days before my first child was born). I had the skills, and references, but I could not make any progress in getting interviews with my resume. Then it dawned on me to call one of the recruiters I was using and asked her if I could see the resumes of the people her firm has placed in jobs in the last few months, the ones with the better salaries (names and personal info blacked out of course.)

Every single resume I saw had some type of certification it it - SCJP, ECSP, whatever. I worked on Java for a decade, but never cared for certificates. But when I saw the resumes, I immediately took the SCJP exam, nailed it, and put SCJP certificate # on my resume.

That was the only change I made on my resume. And voila, I started getting calls.

At any given time, but specially during economic downturns, there is a ton of people looking for jobs, and HR departments get bombarded by them. And they rely on keyboards and certs to filter resumes to a manageable number.

It is stupid. It doesn't guarantee shit. But it is what it is.

In this career, anyone should expect a downturn once a decade (if you are lucky), or two or more if you live in an area with crappy local economies. So protect yourself by getting a few certs specific to your career (or the ones that are more popular in job searches in your area of residence.)

They don't make you a better programmer, but they can give you an edge in passing the moronic keyword filters put in place by HR departments.

It is stupid, but unless you live in a robust job market like SV, it is what it is. That's my personal anecdote. YMMV.

No. It's just that people suck at doing quality work. People released shit when using procedural/modular programming. But that's people, not procedural/modular programming. Then OOP came, and people did more shit with it. But that's not on OOP, but on people.

I can say that with confidence because I know teams and companies that have delivered quality work using either any (or all) of these paradigms.

Same with processes. People have done good work with waterfall, and bad work with waterfall. Good work with spiral/iterative process, and bad work as well. Same with RAD, RUP, all flavors of agile, XP, Scrum, Kanban, etc.

It is people. It is organizations. A group of engineers that do good work with one reference process is very likely to do good work with most other processes, newer or older than the reference process by which they are currently being measured.

Newer processes are typically better than older ones when applied to general cases. Better as in helping ameliorate cost or increase delivery, or pretty much optimize some type of software development KPI. But that neither implies older methods are bad or that newer methods guarantee better deliveries.

It's never the tool, but the wielder. Give a process to a good engineer, and he will find a way to get things to work. Give any process to a code monkey, and you are just going to get a lot of shit flinging irregardless of the process of choice.

^^^ this. Pretty much almost every person I've seen in BJJ (or Judo) has a technical/professional job. Training is not cheap, and it requires a certain type of income to keep it up. It is also worth noting a significant number of UFC fighters wrestle in college.

You are right, but for most things, late 2000's tech is still fine. Slap moar ram and a SSD, or cluster the crap out of it, and voila, Franken-server to the rescue. It might not work when facing the public internet, but for internal usage, that thing can still be made to rock.

The only problem with old hardware is that it gets near its points of failure. Hardware is hardware, thus it will degrade. But newly fabricated tech that is equivalent to not-too-old tech, obtained with a cheaper price tag, what's there not to like?

This is not an endorsement of Russian tech, but an observation on the value of old technology, or technology that has not caught up (and is not trying to catch up) with the joneses.

Geographically, it might be in Asia, but culturally, the majority of people aren't. And even if that weren't the case, what the hell does it mean Asian? Central Asian? Far East Asian? Siberian? Those three grossly oversimplified labels apply to Russia (and many other former USSR states for that matter.) Grossly oversimplified as they are, these stand for significantly different things.

And we are only discussing the Asian'ness of Russia, without even entering into the whole continent? Asian as in the Near East/Asia Minor? Central Asia as in Iran or Kazakhstan or Mongolia (the later, culturally, is a Central Asian nation)? Far East as in China, the Korean Peninsula or Japan? Japan in many ways is a unique Western Country, or a country whose Asian'ness is no longer in tandem with what 'Far East Asia' embodies. And we are not even touching South East Asia and South Asia at all.

Russia escapes such ridiculous descriptions. For all practical purposes, culturally, politically and economically, it is a European country. It is not a Western country, but neither is most of Eastern Europe.

And the term "Asian" means so many things that by itself, it almost means nothing.

Not sure why this gets neg-rep'ed. To be honest, every country needs a degree of self-sufficiency and, *gasp*, protectionism. This is not to say that I'm arguing against globalization and trade agreements that stem from it.

Barring Chicxulub II or, I dunno, Cthulhu's second coming, Globalization is 1) inevitable, and 2) not necessarily a bad thing. Every country needs to do its own balancing act regarding participating in a global economy while protecting its own national-level interests (and a national economy is, after all, a strategic asset). So the Russians, for whatever good or bad, or intelligent or stupid reasons, they are doing that at least in this type of market.

Good for them. The more companies and countries that compete in high tech (or at least try to push their local tech), the better on the long road. It might not be good for us in the US (and in other high-tech countries like Germany or Japan)... so long as we sleep in our laurels. If we do (and we are), then we just deserve a gold medal for the Dodo's Olympics, bestowed by the Darwin's Awards.

On the contrary, this is a good example. That the LEO got fired and arrested is inconsequential to the argument at hand (the probability of a LEO beating the crap out of you for no valid reason.) The LEO's arrest is a consequence of the event whose probability is into question, so this is irrelevant.

As for the old grandpa resisting arrest, well that is still not a reason. For starters he wasn't resisting, he was simply in a state of not knowing what to do in the face of having uniformed strangers "touching" him during a patdown, not understanding WTF was going on.

That is not resisting. No judge in any goddamned court in this country (nor most LEOS) will ever find that as an example of resisting arrest. Let's be real.

So right there is a counter-example of the claim that if you do nothing (code for "act reasonable") will not get you taken like a piñata by a LEO.

Secondly, this "resisting arrest" mantra is very troublesome and common in forums.

What if instead of an old grandpa from India with zero English skills, we have an adult that is clearly suffering from mental retardation, and he walks back/away from LEOs during a patdown.

Is that resisting? And if so, does that warrant a beat down?

What about a deaf person who cannot hear you, who cannot comply with your orders? Is that person resisting arrest? Fuck no.

kfor.com/2014/02/26/dash-cam-video-deaf-man-charged-with-resisting-arrest-officers-cleared/ At some point, LEOs (and people in general) are bound to exercise common sense, decency, and compassion. In Mr. Patel's case, the LEO clearly understood the old man didn't speak English. Logic would dictate that the officer (a college degree holder and thus, supposedly, sufficiently educated to know better) would know that this person was not capable of understanding instructions, nor following them.

That right there blows up the argument that he was resisting arrest. You can't allege resistance to arrest when you (or should know) the person is incapacitated to comply (be them by obvious language barriers or physical/mental incapacity.) I mean, you can argue that it is so, just in the same way we can argue the world was created in 7 days and that the world is flat with the sun orbiting it.

It happens all the time, all the fucking time, for no reasons, for no valid reasons, not even for quasi-reasons that could be stretched into something barely resembling a reason. It just that nowadays, this type of shit gets move visible because the ubiquitous presence of cameras.

As a parent, I agree with the sentiment with caveats. I film with my phone until I'm told to stop. I won't argue, I will simply comply and leave. Chances are my phone will not be taken from me, so the record stays with me. And if the phone is taken from me, I won't fight it. I will comply, hand it over, and go home, call my lawyer and litigate.

I haven't done yet, but I'm in the process of installing front and rear cameras in both our cars. And just by applying common sense, it can be done so without escalating a confrontation.

As a parent, you are completely right to avoid a confrontation. But as a parent, you are not right in doing a modicum of an low-risk effort to improve society. Your children will inherit it.

You don't have to go martyr, but for f* sake, at least show your children you have a backbone and a set of principles.