After doing tens of programs with pointers and stuff ...

Uh huh, guess you didn't really learn how to use them.

The point was to LEARN, so when you get in the real world, you can develop a solution where pointers (or whatever structure/technique/language feature is most appropriate) makes the most sense.

~ Free food: Bought at a cost ration of greatest weight per dollar, which translated into cheapest food medically allowed. Joke I heard was: Grade E Beef-substitute, suitable for Americans worst and finest, served to our military and death-row inmates. With the way the Army operates, I was lucky to get two meals a day from cooks. Breakfast usually consisted of coffee and cigarettes, a bagel if I was lucky. Lunch and dinner was at the dining facilities where everything was rationed out using grade school sized portions. I ate the best when I was in the field or on vacation.

Oh man, I'm so glad I was in and out way before the era of obscene contractor takeover. At least we knew that if the E-6 in charge of the mess served up rotten food, he would get Article 15'd at least.

Your post reminds me of one time I got in line for chow for dinner. Yum, roast beef: we could smell it form outside the building. I slide my metal, WW2-surplus tray down the line and the E-2 ladles me a nice portion.

I sit down and start tearing into the meat, but nearly gag in horror when I get a piece into my mouth. I pull it out and realize that it is 100% fat/gristle. The brown gravy camouflaged the fact that there was no meat. I dig around and find a few bits of actual meat. Maybe the size of a quarter, if you mash them all together. So, I did what I always do when faced with crap from REMFs:

I carefully pour the grease-infused watery brown gravy onto my potatoes and (white, pasty) bread, drink my water, and think of creative ways to frag low-bid contractors. If I hadn't had night duty, I probably would've Hoggled when I got back to the barracks. God damn Army.

Pretty hard coding Ruby when you're with a hooker, I guess..

Hugh Jackman HACKED INTO THE PENTAGON while he was "with" a hooker.

Don't tell me that some rinky-dink website would be harder.

No. No. Just stop paying him, and it'll work itself out.

In the meantime, Bob, we're gonna need to move your desk downstairs into Storage B.

You will never be unemployed again, because you work for more than one person

FIFY.

When I am employed by a company, I have one "client". When that client lets me go (rif/outsource/fired/whatever), I have no other income.

When I have 3-4 clients and one client lets me go (can't afford my rates/personality clash/they went crazy and I had to fire them/they hired someone fulltime/etc), I have other clients that keep some $$$ coming in.

As long as I have n+1 clients (where n = sufficient income), then I'm doing well.

Pffft, amateurs.

I code with cosmic rays.

I trust the slashdot community, that's why I'm here. Not for the slashdot editorials on clouds or Buisness Intelligence.

Welcome to /.

Would it be better if he was thrown in a cage with other, no doubt, rather more hardened criminals?

...said the pimply-faced 40-something basement-dwelling recluse whose prison "experience" is watching reruns of Oz.

Way to quote-mine Random People On The Internet, I mean, Wikipedia. Here's the next paragraph:

Historian Gregg L. Frazer argues that the leading Founders (Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton, and Washington) were neither Christians nor Deists, but rather supporters of a hybrid "theistic rationalism".[23]

Sigh. Unfortunately, we have gone through a 236-year-long exercise in Religious fanatical masturbation, with no end in sight.

During the constitutional convention, there were attempts to add Christianity to the Constitution's preamble, and they were all ignored/thrown out by the core architects (Franklin, Adams, and Madison).

During the first few decades of the new republic, several amendments were proposed to add the same; none made it out of Congress.

Eventually the religious zealots gave up and went home. Until the Civil War. Recognizing the war was a direct result of "God not being mentioned in the constitution" (yes, they actually believed that) attempts to amend the constitution to add Christianity were renewed, with the same result: epic failure.

Every couple of decades, we forget and try to do the same old thing again. As always, it fails. Thank dog.

FIFY.

If you ever take a constitutional law class, you'll understand the limits to free speech, and your examples aren't outside any of them.

Speech that can incite panic (e.g., yelling fire in a crowded theater) and "fighting words" (i.e., direct, immediate threats of harm) are two examples of non-protected speech.

He's coming right for us!

* BLAM *

(thud)

Agile is not about being more accepting of risk: it's about engineering risk out,

I actually wasn't talking about Agile the process but agile the adjective (hence the quotes). Perhaps I should've said 'flexible' or 'responsive'.

If he can't deploy to production in one step, he needs to fix that first.

I'm not talking about from dev box to production. I'm talking about the physical act of someone running a single command (or for the Winlazy, pressing a button) then walking away. All code checkouts from source control, database changes, app server code deployments, web server restarts—whatever—happen without user intervention.

He should also be able to roll back in one step.

For all the meetings, forms, etc., it sounds like there is A LOT of CYA in that company. In that case, it is cultural and can only be changed from the top. Until/unless the company becomes less risk adverse, there is no point in trying to become more "agile" (i.e., risk-accepting) except making your job easier. Build your tools/scripts/whatever to make it easier to do stuff.

tl;dr: If you want a more nimble company, switch jobs.