You realize you just slashdott'ed/DDOS's an Air Force server, right? That's hacking against the U.S. Government, tantamount to treason. You're goin' to jail, buddy!

That's why I code everything for Silverlight. It's backed by Microsoft, a multibillion dollar enterprise with a long history of excellent support. How could I go wrong?

> Why don't you just compile the damn libraries and 'gcc' for deployment?

Because those savvy enough to have a good legitimate reason to suspect the latest version will solve their problem don't ask me to. They compile it in user space and prove their suspicion correct. Then they ask me to deploy it more widely to others who will use their code, which I do.

> Programmers don't use their own custom versions of libraries because they really really wanted to.
Uh, what terribly above-average user base are you lucky enough to support where not a single one of them attempt to procrastinate actually debugging their code by having you install the very latest of anything and everything they can think of just in case it might help? No all of them are that way, but there's always enough of them to make servicing such requests a full-time job if one were to entertain them all.

Sysadmin vs. Programmer Flame War! YES, I'm totally in!!!

As for programmers knowing what they're doing, how about things like:
* this code totally worked yesterday, you must have changed something. Oh, wait. I meant it worked on that other system. Where I compiled my own version of libfoo and totally screwed with my LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
* I wrote this code in objective-c on my Mac because, but gcc supports objective-c, so you can just recompile on your production Linux system.
* I /must/ have the very latest version of libbar because maybe that will fix this strange behavior that I can't explain even though it means compiling from source rather than simply installing packages from the distro and have no idea what changes the latest version even has that might be related to my problem.

Admittedly, many of our "programmers" are scientists who know their science well but code only because computer models drive the science these days, so my degree in CS and experience as a sysadmin (and programmer) probably makes my thoughts on what you need not completely irrelevant. And in my experience, stuff like the above certainly isn't exclusive to scientists playing programmer, but a symptom of the fact that computers and software are overly complicated and it just takes more experience and patience that one would think it should to make them do anything.

But XML is the most abysmal failure of a language ever. SQL is really how we represent most useful data, but if falls down when representing hierarchies. That's where XML comes in. But XML fails horribly at relational data. There are (or were) too many supposedly validating parsers that didn't validate the uniqueness of xml:id attributes. And even if yours does, XML data is ugly and nearly impossible to read and write relational data in manually. And, unlike SQL, which is simple and elegant, xpath almost as bad as ldap in terms of having an ugly and unreadable syntax. So when I need hierarchical-relational data, I'd much rather struggle with SQL's difficulties representing hierarchies than XML's difficulties representing relations.

And even when we're talking just hierarchical data, the APIs for reading XML are horrible. It takes so much code to get anywhere that I can write my own parser for a simple make-it-up-as-I-go config file more easily than I can use the XML APIs in ever so many cases.

And WTF is with attributes? Sure, it sometimes looks cleaner when I'm editing XML by hand, but when coding I have to know not only the name of the thing I want but whether it's an attribute or another tag.

The APIs suck and there's just no obvious and universally agreed upon mapping from an XML file to in-memory object space like ActiveRecord and tons of other ORMs do for SQL.

XML = BIG FAIL! The proof is in the fact that only the Java and M$ idiots with more time than sense jumped on the XML band wagon. The rest of us invented JSON, YAML, or just continued to DOS-style '[block]\n option=value' config files for BOTH configs AND larger data sets.

So no, not every mid-level web programmer should know XML. In fact, programmers of all levels should avoid XML like the plague that it is.

And can someone please invent a language that represents both relational and hierarchical data well, including a text-based data format and schema, query language to grab subsets of a data set, efficient binary protocol to transfer datasets, fast query and storage engine and a simple API to shuffle data from serialized form to objects or arrays in memory. And while I'm at it, can someone do something about the Israelis and Palestinians already.

We run such a shop, but I'm a sysadmin here. I apologize. But you know that guy down the hall. The one who likes to copy .so files around from machine to machine because he thinks he knows what he's doing. The one who installs hundreds of god-only-knows-what pieces of software on his workstation. The one who's computer I can't just reimage because he swears he needs all this stuff that such as process would remove. He's why you're not root. And it turns out there are a lot more of him than you'd think.

> Seriously, web programming is for chumps,
Really? The web rules because you don't have to install software on any computer other than your own server and HTTP naturally handles networking and caching for you, allowing your program to run anywhere. True, the W3C is completely impotent and the modern web is a bit of a kluge, but no so much more so than everything else that the no-install, run-anywhere benefits don't dominate. Web is the ONLY way to go.

> Let's talk about having to support multiple version of multiple browser on multiple versions of multiple operating systems on multiple platforms,
You probably haven't done it for a while. Since IE8 or so, FF, IE and WebKit are actually reasonably consistent at rendering things. I use reload 8+ browser windows every time I made a change, but now I just use FF and test things across browsers near the end. Works fine.

> all with multiple sized screens.
Okay, I'll give you that one, especially with mobile. But if you're not coding a site with more sidebars and ads than actual content, HTML does as good a job as Java's Swing, Awt and layout engines in other GUI languages and is far simpler to code.

> Let's talk about the expectation of being an expert at a horrendous number of technologies like HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ajax, GWT, Java, JSP, EJB, XML, JSF,
> Facelets, JPA, JPQL, EL, SQL, PL/SQL, Regex, BASH etc. etc....for the one fucking project!
You do need HTML, CSS, Javascript, SQL and one server-side language. Those languages all have different purposes and do them well. But:
- Ajax - Jquery wraps this quite nicely
- GWT - Just don't
- Java - Does anyone actually write applets? And if you picked it for your server-side, shame on you.
- JSP, EJB, j* - See above
- XML - Why? Haven't we all switched to Json by now?
- Facelets - WTF is that?
- Regex - If you don't know regex, find another career. And that's not web-specific in any way.
- Bash - For the web? I hope you're not sticking bash scripts in cgi-bin anymore?

> Let's talk about the expectation of being an expert at optimising different servers like Apache, Tomcat and JBoss.
- WTF are you doing that you need to optimize for the server. Oh ya, you chose Java for your server-side. That was your first mistake.

> Let's talk about the expectation of being an expert at load testing using various load testing suits.
I think you're remembering the pre-internet days when you didn't need load-testing because there was no way to connect all these computers to generate a load in the first place. If we just wrote desktop apps that connected to a SQL server, you'd have to load-test that too. Except without HTTP, you'd be writing your own client-side and middleware code to handle all the redirection, load-balancing and caching necessary when your load tests revealed that the expected use would cripple your single database server.

> Let's talk about the dismal state of Flash and Java Applets and HTML5.
Ya, I'll give you that one too. But that's why we learned to do most of what we need with HTML/CSS/JS instead.

> I pity the poor web programmer (such as myself), for his or hers is surely a tortured life.
Hey, if this was easy, they wouldn't pay you so much to do it.

Despite the fact that there's a huge number of XP users motivated to switch OSs, I predict that 2014 STILL won't be the year of the Linux desktop.

I actually do use it as my desktop at home and at work. But can KDE please make things like adding icons to the desktop and task bar something you don't have to call your sysadmin for. Win8 was a mistake, but KDE (still 2nd only to icwm) is equally bad.

0) Dr. Evil travels back in time and gets the founding fathers to remove the self incrimination part from the 5th amendment.
1) Eve, a criminal, confesses her crime to Paul, the priest. Paul is obviously sworn to secrecy as is customary.
2) The police suspect Paul, of the crime and try him. When he takes the stand swears on the bible that he will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
3) On the stand, Paul says he's innocent but refuses to answer a more direct question because the answer would information Eve told him in confidence.
4) The jury can't agree to convict Paul of the crime in question, but the prosecutor adds something about refusing to provide evidence to the court and the Jury does agree to convict him on that lesser charge and he is jailed.

In this case, Paul is wrongfully convicted of refusing to self incriminate. The 5th amendment makes it clear that such a thing is not a crime.

Moveover, #3, 'The "benefit" can't be something that benefits all suspects equally, whether they're innocent, guilty of violating a just law, or guilty of violating an unjust law.' ignores the fact that even a small benefit to the innocent is much more valuable than a large benefit to the guilty. I might be able to protect myself from a criminal they couldn't convict, but I've got no chance against a malicious government without checks and balances.

...because hackers have better tools they get for free from the Interwebs. Of course, if it does turn out to be hackers, this Italian firm could always stick a EULA on it and have the BSA enforce. Hackers aren't afraid of the government, but BSA lawyers scare everyone.

It's news that a Google employee is being a dick, since they do have a "do no evil" policy. I hate M$ as much as the next /. reader, but we do have to support windows. We don't put our non-technical friends and family on Linux (still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop). Cut us sysadmins some slack already. @$$.

I have to agree with the majority, DNA is the same as fingerprints and photographs. Of course, them darn coppers shouldn't be allowed to take fingerprints and photographs, especially the latter steals your soul!

So to combat this horribly government overreach, I plan to become a cannibal. With all that DNA from lots of other people constantly in my mouth, they're bound to get a contaminated DNA sample, providing reasonable doubt and ensuring I'm never convicted for my new dietary choices.

Seems better for the 'victim' to leave it up. He can then claim slander and sue whoever posted it AND anyone who reposts it elsewhere. The burden will then be on those douches to have those companies remove the video. Net effect: People will learn to be more careful when posting untrue stuff about others and the Internet will be transformed into a bastion of truth.

Possibly I'm a bit over-optimistic.

> no one seriously expect a tablet to be a PC
As a sysadmin that doesn't get to approve IT purchases but has to support them once they're here, that is absolutely NOT true. Most of my users want an iPad. Most need to be told that they ALSO have to have a desktop or laptop to actually do their jobs.

Why is everyone whining about thousands of taxing jurisdictions when we have computers? This is nothing more than a business opportunity for a few groups of tax lawyers and programmers who start a few companies that make software that throws a tax calculation into the point-of-sale software that most businesses, even small ones, probably already use. It will be a bit of a SNAFU to set up initially, but then will work fine, no matter how complicated various levels of government make the tax code. It will cost a bit, but it won't break the bank. Think turbotax and the dozens of other personal tax-prep software packages. Same thing.

And the benefit? There are two:
1) State and local governments can now collect taxes from all the citizens who benefit from their services in a fair manner.
2) We stop unnecessarily wasting fuel shipping things across state lines to save a few bucks in taxes.

And if you just don't like taxes, don't you at least like the ones that pay for roads, safe water, police officers and firemen more than you like the taxes that pay for bombs, warships, and subsidized corn, sugar and other nutritious foods?