I used to be a programmer with no degree. I'd like to think I was pretty darn good at it... I knew several languages (C, C++, Python, Perl, Java, and several more) that I had taught myself. I did this for about 9 years, before I finally got a degree in CS, and then got a Master's in CS shortly afterward.

One thing this did for me is open up my mind quite a bit. I'm still a good programmer, but I now know programming isn't it. There's a lot more that goes on when it comes to developing good software, and though I could code up some pretty good stuff really quickly, now my code is better, more thought out, and most importantly, I am much more likely to ask the question "Is this really the problem we're trying to solve?" leading to actually useful code instead of neat stuff it turned out really wasn't what was needed.

In addition, I'm better at interacting with people. I used to have the attitude "This makes no sense to me, therefore it's stupid" and now I realize that maybe I don't have all of the information, there's something I don't know (this is key!) which would help me understand and realize my position isn't exactly right, and so I don't just get mad and storm off anymore when things don't make sense.

Getting a degree made me a more well rounded person... I found a love for history, music and literature that I didn't quite have before. I can have conversations that don't just involve the latest tech and video games. (though I still love talking about that stuff)

I guess my point is... a degree doesn't make a great programmer, but a degree can help make a better person (which is the whole point really... it's not to "learn a trade", it's to expand your horizons and explore the world and become a critical thinker) and so given the situation, I would likely lean toward hiring a great programmer with a degree over a great programmer without one.

There are techniques that allow searching within encrypted files, but they rely on the client creating the index. You can then search the index for an encrypted search term and, if you know the keys, interpret the answer. Getting this right is quite tricky (there are several research papers about it), so he's right, but it's not impossible.

The main reason that I suspect DropBox discourages encryption is that they rely a lot on deduplication to reduce their costs. If everyone encrypted their files, then even two identical files would have different representations server-side if owned by different users, so their costs would go up a lot.

I, for one, am in favour of removing bread from the human gene pool.

Yes, almost certainly. The market for compiler engineers is very much a sellers' market at the moment. Universities neglected it for so long that most people graduate from undergraduate degrees with basically no knowledge of how a compiler works (if they're lucky, the know how compilers worked in the '80s), so there are 10 jobs for every person.

In The Humane Interface, written in 2000, Jef Raskin made the same complaint. The time between turning a computer on and having written a program to add two numbers together on, say, a C64 or a BBC Model B, was about 30 seconds. On a modern computer of the time, you wouldn't even have finished booting - starting the IDE would take even longer. The problem is, this misses the point. There are lots of scripting languages with REPL environments, including a POSIX shell and PowerShell on Windows, that can do this as a single command once the computer is running (on OS X, you can add numbers in Spotlight, so it's even quicker - just hit command-space and type the sum). If you want to write a more complex application, it's vastly easier today. Extend that simple calculator to show an editable history and show equations, and you'll find it a bit easier today. Now extend it to be able to print - if you've ever written applications to print in the era before operating systems provided a printer abstraction then you'll know how painful that was.

I don't understand why you think 'yum install gcc' is somehow different from 'download and run the installer for the VS command-line tools'. Especially on a modern Linux distro, where libraries come with -devel variants to save you the 10KB taken up by the headers in the normal install, so you end up having to install a load of headers as well to get the system useable.

I was a consultant for a few years and didn't find that it did. Most of my customers found me, as a result of my open source work (usually to work on the same projects, sometimes to work on projects in similar fields). Contract negotiation didn't take very long (they list some requirements, you mutually agree on a date, you pick a number, if they haggle then you politely decline).

Or buying _The Essential Hal Clement, Volume 2: Music of Many Spheres_

Seeing photos of these always reminds me of Hal Clement's hard SF short story ``The Mechanic'' --- still copyrighted though, so not at: http://www.unz.org/Pub/AnalogS...

Well worth tracking down a copy of the book _Space Lash_ to read it though.

Let me guess, they outsourced this particular code to EDS?

That's not quite true for dental work, but the price is capped, so you'll typically pay £18.50 to see a dentist, £50.50 if you need something done, or £219 if you need something serious. It's only free if you qualify for extra assistance, which is automatic if you are under 18, under 19 (25 in Wales) and in full-time education, on income support or similar.

Your comment would be much more insightful if you're read all of the way to the end of the first sentence of the post that you replied to.

I can't get how such an idiotic drivel would be considered "insightful" by anyone.

Did it ever occur to you that the East German government (which was always under considerable pressure from the USSR, and remembering Russian tanks rolling through East Germany), and the East German people didn't quite agree about politics and economy? How does your statement "private property was outlawed" match the fact that in any decent family, as soon as a child was born the parents would order a car for him and her (which, due to long waiting lists, would just be ready for the child's 18th birthday).

The article just claims "cheating". However, cheating happens in different situations. There is cheating on your friends or family or neighbours, and there is cheating on authorities.

In East Germany, the authorities were out to get you. Spying on you. Trying to catch you out. Your neighbours on the other hand were the people that you had to rely on and that had to rely on you. A person coming to you and asking questions was highly suspicious and probably up to no good. Everyone would lie to them. But not to your friends and neighbours.

That's probably still there, so if some scientists will come and ask questions, whatever the questions, nobody raised in East Germany will have any problem lying to them. Will they cheat to take advantage of their neighbours? I doubt it.