I believe he's bemoaning the complexity of frameworks and toolkits rather than the tools used to work with those frameworks and toolkits. Technically he's correct -- things are a lot more complex than they used to be for getting the most basic of tasks done.

But you know what? Business isn't interested in basic tasks any more. They want it secure. They want it scalable. They want a web front end, and a desktop client, and apps for Android and iOS. The days of the old "read billing file, produce accounting records" code have not gone away; those projects were just done 30-40 years ago and don't need to be rewritten, just tweaked from time to time to allow for changes in regulations such as tax law or liability.

Even the last company I worked for wasn't content with a mere rewrite and update of their core business with the new software -- they had a whole new plan of integrating another 5 or 10 vertical functionality features into the system (it was just an autodialer -- they wanted integrated CRM, push button customer calling, call answering, call forwarding, a full phone system with voice mail support and enhancements to the ever popular auto-answering system of branching menus and responses, and the ability to deploy the whole thing as a multi-client web service instead of deploying custom configured hardware to the client sites.)

The frameworks and toolkits have correspondingly become more complex in order to support those needs. Look at the transaction processing systems of old -- you'd buy a number of seperate products including a message queueing system, a report formatting tool, a database engine, and a transaction processor, each of which had their own APIs and documentation. Each tool was relatively simple, but getting them all coordinated and working together was hard as hell. Now you take JEE, buy just about any message processor and database you like, and it all largely works with the same API regardless of which vendor's tools you chose. So while the JEE framework is incredibly complex compared to a transaction processor of old, what it does in total is also saving you insane gobs of time integrating and debugging disparate products. So technically JEE is far simpler than things used to be, despite the ramp-up learning curve.

The same is true of every framework or toolkit I've used for over 10 years -- they tie together multiple vendors products consistently so that only small tweaks are needed to adapt to the vendor's products rather than whole-application re-writes if you decide to swap something out.

Hell, take a look at what I did with Java, six different vendor databases, and JDBC alone for http://msscodefactory.sourceforge.net. The differences between each of those database integration layers are not subtle, but nor are they particularly arcane. All of the products have virtually the same feature set; there are just differences in how you use JDBC and stored procedures for each database. Compared to "the old days", it was a cake walk to do that integration and customization over the past 3-4 years. And remember I worked on that code by myself -- it wasn't a whole team of programmers dealing with the complexity. If one guy can produce that using standardized toolkits in 3-4 years, how can you say things are more complex than they were when it used to take a team of 100-150 programmers 2 years to produce something similar for one database?

Well, you are unlikely to be the *only* one who doesn't think this is all that impressive, because you're unlikely to be the only one who didn't read the article or looking up the device on the company's website.

The robot in question is designed to capture energy from surface waves for propulsion. So it is not a deep submersible, it waddles along a six meters below the surface, tethered to a streamlined surface buoy that it drags along and uses to capture wave energy. Making it through a major storm is a significant proof-of-concept for such a system.

I can't be the only one getting a squee moment from the fact that we might finally have a chance to create practical laser weapons.

Most companies are happy to turn a 10% profit after expenses, employees, and so forth. 20% is a fantasy for them.

Yet the greedy Wall Street pricks aren't happy with a 20% profit.

And so the police were duly called and the individual in question was arrested, right? Women aren't "commonly raped and abused by men" and neither are they beleaguered victims of a relentless onslaught of rapey abuse on the internet, at least no more so than anyone else. I've had lunatics tell me they were going to rape my mother in front of me - end result, they got banned like the losers they were and I never thought about them again, until now at least.

There's a new thing going on, you should check it out, it's called #womenagainstfeminism. Lot of interesting messages for the aspiring rape hysteria peddler on there.

Supported by what you intellectual goatse, the paranoid online ravings of professional victims getting PTSD from twitter who are in fact the most privileged people to ever walk the earth?

And have you listened to what those types of gamers say to everyone they play against? We're talking about mouthy juvenile delinquents of varying ages who've never evolved beyond that of the 12 year old. They're assholes to everyone and they threaten everyone with disembowlment, murder, and other such crap. The only "special" insult they make to women is rape, because they know that will piss them off. And that's all that sort cares about: pissing the opponent off.

Maybe the game industry is worse than others -- I don't know; I've never worked in that sector. But I have never seen women in banking, telecommunications, government, financial services, or the aeronautics industries be subjected to any more or any less jibing and insulting than "the guys" on the team were. Maybe there is just something about gaming that attracts demented juvenile delinquents, but everyone at work received about the same level of respect from their co-workers everwhere I worked over a 30 year period in the tech industry.

Then again, I've been out of the industry for almost five years now. Maybe society has taken this mad rush to the bottom in the intervening five years. If so, that's sad, because tech used to be one of the few industries where women and men were judged more on their skillz than anything else.

And men don't get it? Jesus christ.

Yes and ever since they invented that "slap people over the internet" app patriarchy has grown ever stronger, right?

You incredible thundercuntly deliverer of syphillis to prepubescent children, here's a picture for you.

http://www.pokket.tv/wp/wp-con...

I was in the same situation once. Laid off by Northern Telecom in the late '80s, I started work as a contractor at their head office three weeks later for double what I'd been paid as an employee. :)

It's not the human *touch* that people crave in a complicated interaction with a system. It's human *versatility*.

Thus more personnel does no good, if those personnel are rigidly controlled, lack information to advise or authority to act. The fact that they're also expected to be jolly and upbeat as they follow their rigid and unyielding rules only turns the interaction with them into a travesty of a social interaction.

What would work better is a well-designed check-in system that handles routine situations nearly all the time, along with a few personnel who have the training and authority to solve any passenger problems that come up.

I'm pretty sure birth control exists.