How many millions are you allowed to lose or waste before you get fired?

Hint: In the corporate world, it's not that many.

Just once, I'd like to see a politician stand up in front of the cameras and say "We fucked up. We fucked up royally. We blew millions and didn't get a fraction of the benefits for society we'd hoped for. I'm going to take responsibility for that mistake and fire myself."

Unfortunately, many people think that if you express a different viewpoint or opinion than the masses that you're trying to start an argument or a fight. Why is society so hell-bent on crushing dissenting opinions? And not merely silencing them, but villifying them?

I've often been tagged as "trolling" because I don't agree with the crowd. If you knew me personally, you'd know very well that I'm not trying to start a fight, just expressing my opinion. Just because it is not the popular viewpoint doesn't mean my views aren't valid.

Here on Slashdot, I often see people flagged as being trolls just because they don't follow the masses. You'd think a site full of outcasts and oddballs like programmers and technologists would be more accepting of alternative views, but the exact opposite seems to be the case.

In other news, party animals who spent their time on drugs, cannabis, or alcohol instead of studying were more likely to fail their courses.

The prohibitionists touted the study as a great victory for prohibition. The legalizers touted the study as proof that responsible use was necessary.

And the parents raged that their stupid kids were wasting all their time on parties instead of doing some actual work.

I agree 100%.

Far too many parents push their kids way too damned hard and way too damned fast.

Let the kid be a kid while he can! He has plenty of time in life for becoming a programmer, a doctor, a pianist, or whatever fucked up projection of your own hopes and dreams you want to foist on his poor life.

A TV star has more followers than a tech grunt. What a shock.

Next thing you know, someone will purport surprise that a music or movie star is more popular than someone who works for a living.

*LOL*

If you're still thinking in terms of "which SQL" rather than knowing how to move between dialects, then you don't KNOW SQL. You know a product.

And 95% write loops updating one record at a time instead of using a WHERE clause on a single update statement. :(

Myself, I've learned to dislike Python rather than the tabs.

Nobody can see your "junk" without a microscope... :P :P :P

Windows had a colour graphics API; the Macs of the period were still black and white.

Personally I thought the Amiga was better than either (and so I bought one), but they're not around to lay claim to being first with graphics accelerators and special-purpose sound chips.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a "programming" expert. To me, that's someone who has such a broad base of experience with different languages and tools that they can shift between procedural, object oriented, scripted, functional, and other language paradigms with ease.

An "expert" programmer is someone to whom the syntax of a language is "just details" because they already have a grasp on how the language works and what it does based on minimal summary points of it's features.

That's not to say an "expert" programmer will produce perfect code in any language that gets thrown at them, but that they can be up and coding at speed in a matter of days or weeks, producing code as good as and at a volume equal to people who've already had a few years experience with the language or toolkit.

Really, an "expert" is someone who is an expert at learning new things, not someone who has experience with everything out there. They're the people who are so confident in their abilities that they'll jump in feet first on a project using a language they've never coded in with a framework they've never seen, and be confident that they'll still meet the deadlines.

He was also a rather obsequious ass-kisser who would constantly praise my knowledge and skills for 5 minutes before getting around to asking his question. Drove me nuts. How I wanted to just pimp-slap that useless tit!

I didn't start minding the tap on the shoulder until I worked with a fellow who would tap on "the expert's" shoulder every 20 minutes instead of @%)&@)%& using Google or reading the company Wiki. :(

An "Expert" is not someone who knows everything. An "Expert" is someone who knows the most important things, including THE most important thing: how to get the answers to questions that they don't know.