You are wrong. See, a significant number of cases involving police abuse are based on cops' allegations that the victim is/was a perp and that they acted in self-defense to explain why the victim/perp was beaten to a pulp or whatever. Now it will be harder for them to claim they acted in self-defense or that the person was acting irrationally or disobeying orders while claiming "ooops my camera was broken, take my word for it."

Also, the rate at which cameras "get broken" will become public record. A high incident of "broken video recorders" will raise eyebrows and closer scrutiny (specially if a strong correlation is found between those incidents and citizen's complains of abuse.)

It is not perfect. No solution is. And sure there will be ways corrupt/abuse cops will try to (and succeed) circumvent the system. But it will make such acts harder to commit. Your assertion that this will do little to nothing is erroneous.

Yeah, but people don't care about moral and intellectual questions. They care about whether Kim Kardashian is going to have another royal wedding, in yet again another white dress!!!!

So you argument boils down to obviously maybe ?

Good point. Similarly, Boston proper is very expensive, but some of the suburbs have real state cost of living closer to, say, South Florida, and thus the overall COL is not as murderous.

That is a stupid rebuttal, for one could say that "Newport" is a rebuttal against Boston. Shit happens anywhere. And, as horrible as it might have been, if the Aurora shooting is a statistical anomaly, then, it has no effect on the positive conditions that would make people call Denver a "hidden treasure".

And and a lot of those positions have mediocre pay and require not that much of technology depth. I know. I've worked on Java for a long time, and really, most web/enterprise stuff is really simple integration. It's barely engineering, and more plumbing.

Openings for C and C++ remain constant and will remain so simply because they cater to specific needs that won't go away with managed code.

Another thing. Look at Java job postings for the very best and brightest of companies (Adobe, Google, Apple, Lockheed Martin). Typically they desire (or even require that) people understand C and C++. Why do you think is that? I know that this is going off the tangent, but it should make you think about your claims that unmanaged code is going away.

I mean, for fucks sake, what language do you think the runtimes required for managed languages are going to be written? And if less and less people are competent in hard languages that are absolutely needed for problems that will not go away, who do you think will get paid the most.

The one thing I hate about many Java programmers (I am a Java developer btw) is that they look at technology from a lowest-common-and-dumb-denominator POV. They pigeonhole themselves into being one-trick ponies believing that such approach will provide stability in the future. This eventually shows in their quality of work and in their limited understanding of how software and hardware is supposed to work (which influences how systems are architected, designed and implemented.)

Suit yourself.

Which is great for very important and specific classes of problems.

And a significant % of web applications written in Java, .NET or, say, Ruby, have security holes up to the wazzo.

You might not get buffer over runs, but you certainly get null pointer, illegal arguments, index out of range, and invalid state exceptions (corresponding types as per each language.)

Memory leaks? You get similar manifestations of those in managed languages (abandoned file handles, database connections that are never released). Memory specific, you can bring a VM to the ground if the creation rate of objects is so large that it causes the garbage collector to utilize CPU beyond a given threshold. In Java, for example, you can get an OutOfMemoryException if the GC is trashing the CPU even if you have plenty of memory allocated to the VM

. Anyone who works in software for a living (and that is at least decently good at it) knows these issues. Anyone else thinks these problems are exclusively the domain of unmanaged code.

A lot of times you do not require such rich language libraries in unmanaged code. If you are writing a device driver for a memory constrained platform, you wouldn't (shouldn't) be needed a, let's say, uber-rich concurrent container class with even richer iterator semantics. That is just one example.

If you are finding yourself with a significant need for a rich library, then you should be using a higher-level language.

This only shows the significantly shallow view (or exposure) you have with respect of software technology. Look around you. There are more devices using unmanaged code that managed. Your toasters. Your microwaves and termostats. Your termometers. Your remote control. The cable/dsl/wireless modem that allows you to connect internet to post ignorant shit. The operating system and the myriad of hardware device drivers that make your computing experience possible.

What language do you think they are written with?

It is absolutely disturbing to see people think that unmanaged code is somehow waning away. That is where the money is. Those jobs are not decreasing. The jobs using managed code, that is the number that is increasing (and their salaries for the most part decreasing unless you are really a very good, Sr-or-Principal-level Java/.NET/Ruby/Python software engineer or architect.)

* source : 18 years of programming experience as a Java/JEE application and C/C++ systems developer in both the commercial and defense sector.

And our jobs will go to India or China, and programs will begin to write other programs making us developers obsolete, the earth is flat and the sun orbits it, blah blah blah.

That is an oxymoron. Of course you have to change with the times. But changing with the times does not necessarily mean changing languages. It means evolving your skill set. You are looking at the problem of being up-to-date and marketable as if it meant one should become a language-trick pony. There are code monkeys, and there as software engineers.

This is true, but it is also irrelevant. How hard is it to learn COBOL? If you get a chance to make $200K as a COBOL programmer in a city with very low cost of living, for example, it would be stupid to pass that in favor of using the latest tech blink for 75% of that in SV.

Let me know when communication technology, operating systems and device drivers are written in Java or Ruby. Again, your views insinuate a very shallow and limited exposure to what is out there in terms of the software industry.

It is because of its COL that it is not listed. Baltimore would come over the DC area because of its lower COL, but it would still trail Denver and Atlanta. I'm very surprised that Baltimore is not over NY and that Houston and Dallas (which are as cheap to live as Austin) are not in the list.

Why? I'm not trying to have an e-fight, but I'm ask in earnest (hopefully with the expectation of getting an objective, quantifiable answer.)

Maybe, maybe not. Remember, this is not just a salary comparison, it is a salary/cost-of-living comparison. In that sense, I would believe Austin, Denver and Atlanta to be on top over other metropolitan areas, including Seattle. I would also come to the same conclusion by looking at the number of openings for engineering per capita (where Denver come way above most areas.)

The reality is that Denver, Austin, Dallas and Houston are looking nicer and nicer for the tech worker simply because the total net income (not the gross salary, but the net, after taking COL into account) is significantly better than SV, Boston or Seattle. I came to that conclusion recently after doing the math (salary, COL, number of jobs per capita, etc) looking for a place to relocate off SoFla.

And? Do you find that unlikely? <wtf/>

The problem here is that MS did not provide good alternatives to switch off XP. Vista was atrocious, with Windows 7 being a good alternative. Then came Windows 8 which would not work in most XP-capable machines. I'm writing this from a XP machine with 3gigs of RAM. It is certified to work with Vista, but it is not for Windows 7. It will certainly not run Windows 8.

And guess what? This XP machine works wonders. I've used it not just for browsing, but for running Linux on a VM and to do Java and C++ development for a living. It works better than my supposedly uber-HP Vista laptop.

When the time comes to stop using my precious XP machine, I will turn it into a Linux box,and will probably get me a Mac for development. I've worked with Vista and Windows 8 computers at work. They suck. They fucking suck.

XP worked fine. and I get it. MS has the absolute right to pull the plug, and keeping security patches forever is not economically sensible. However, they should have done a much better work at providing OS alternatives to the XP workhorse (they didn't.)

So people will move out of XP because they really have to (almost forced to) not because they actually had an attractive usability/economic reason that would compel them to.

Exactly. People, even technical people, have to consistently go to google to find out how to do X or Y on MS Office 2010 whereas in 2003, such things were easily discernible. I would say that the 2003 interface was the pinnacle of Office's usability. I cannot understand, from a UX point of view, why things were changed so from 2003 to 2010. There is no inherent functional advantage from the later over the former.

And this is for his grandmother?

Well, it is not rocket science to have more than one resume. You have one work history, but you will use more than one resume format to present it in different (but veritable) ways according to the situation.

See, you are supposed to have multiple versions of your resume (which are true and accurate of course) according to job postings or fields of concentration. If you have a varied work experience, or you are contemplating lateral moves, this is a must.

Consider the following situation I had to deal with recently. After doing some C++ (and other programming bestialities), I switched Java/JEE in the commercial. I did that for about 11 years at several small and large firms (Sony, Citicorp, Motorola, etc.).

Then switched back to C/C++, for embedded systems and communication technology (and a bit of hypervisor research) with a defense contractor. The opportunity was there, after doing e-commerce/enterprisey stuff for so long, this looked very interesting (and more engaging of my CS background) and the money was good, so why not I said.

Then just recently when I tried to go back to Java, and all of the sudden my resume was being sent to the garbage can and job agencies were not submitting me to Java openings I was well qualified for.

Why is that? Well, apparently since I did C/C++ for nearly 4 years (ZOMG! no Java in 4 years!) somehow I became a retard who wouldn't know how to code EJBs, access a database, run an ant or maven build script or put a fucking dynamic web page together. 11 years of Java experience (and 18 years of software engineering) meant shit. I mean seriously?

But such is the world of HR drones and employment middlemen. You can't live out of it, and you have to work with it (or cut through it) in any way possible (otherwise you end up with a shitty job as a neophyte.)

So what I did is that I kept multiple versions of my resume. For a C++ job, I highlighted my recent work describing it in appropriate detail right of the bat, with all the different projects and positions on the first page. This would be my "default" resume.

For a Java job, I would reduce all my C++ work to two lines and bring as much past Java work experience as possible on the first page. Why is that? To ensure the HR drones and staffing middle men would see all the right Java buzzwords on the first page.

There was/is no false information at all on my resumes. I simply omitted work I already did to stress another one. How fucked up is that, that you have to remove some of your recent work history just to get contemplated by human buzzword scanners?

In the end, it worked (sort of since I was able to get a Java position via personal reference and passing the necessary technical interviews.)

But regardless. One should always try to make her case directly to the technical people in charge of hiring. But this is a very rare (and blissful) event. More often than not, you will go through HR or a staffing agency.

That is the general case. And for that general case, you better have your work history in more than one resume format, stressing items according to the desired job position (without lying of course or claiming that you have done shit you have not, of course.)

Companies might be desiring software engineers. But in practice, by accident and plain stupidity, they don't hire for software engineers. They hire for savantism, for autonomous, one-trick-pony drones that operate precisely along the lines of magically selected buzzwords. 10+ years of X, 5+ years of Y and 8+ years of Z. Mix and shake.

Imagine if we were to hire carpenters like that:We seek a master carpenter with 10+ years of experience using a Husky hammer, 8+ years using a HDX philips screwdriver, and 12+ years using a Black & Decker circular saw. Oh, and the brands must be Husky, HDX and Black & Decker, otherwise you are a fucktard who doesn't know how to use a hammer, a screwdriver and a circular saw.

That's how companies hire software engineers in general, and if you are not prepared for that (by knowing how to present your work history in different ways), you will eventually get burned at some point.