84398269
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snydeq writes:
InfoWorld's Bob Violino offers several hard-learned lessons of devops implementations gone awry. 'There are plenty of examples of how devops works well and delivers tangible improvements for companies in a variety of industries. But sometimes it doesn't work well. Things can go wrong with devops just as they can with any other aspect of IT. Following are some examples of devops initiatives that failed on at least some level and what the organizations involved did to address the problems or prevent them from happening again.'
84267659
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snydeq writes:
Ever wonder what motivates people who swindle others on Craigslist? Roger Grimes did, so he set up a fake Harley Davidson ad on Craigslist, and requested an interview with each scammer who replied to the ad. One agreed, and the man's answers shed light on the inner world of Craiglist scamming: 'If you mean how often I make money from Craigslist, it depends on the day or week. Many weeks I make nothing. Some weeks I can get five people sending me money. But I respond to a lot of ads to get one email back. I’m not only doing Craigslist — there are many similar places. I haven’t counted, but many. It takes many emails to get paid. That’s what I mean. Some weeks I lose money. It’s harder than most people think. But I don’t have to go into a place at a certain time and deal with bosses and customers. I can make my own time.'
83702069
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snydeq writes:
Misconceptions and 'best practices' may have your team spinning wheels rather than continuously churning out productive code, writes InfoWorld's Steven Lowe in a round-up of agile practices gone wrong. 'The problem with most approaches to agile is not a problem with agile; it's a problem with Agile, the Capitalized Methodology. Agile isn't a methodology. Treating it as one confuses process with philosophy and culture, and that’s a one-way ticket back into waterfall — or worse.'
83626139
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snydeq writes:
Tools masquerading as languages, maddening syntax, dusty code that won’t die — InfoWorld's PeterWayner discusses seven programming languages we love to hate even though we can't live without them. 'From Gödel and Turing, we’ve learned that logical mechanisms have edges where scary things occur. Sure, maybe it’s our own fault, we humans, for misusing or misprogramming. But if the programming languages force our brains into weird yoga poses, it’s hard not to blame them for our ills,' Wayner writes. 'And we often can’t do anything about it. The installed base may be too large for us to jettison the language that irks us. The boss may love a stack so much he can’t hear the screams coming from the cubicle farms. The cruel truth is that there may be no better options.' What languages have you shaking your fists at the console?
82975329
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snydeq writes:
InfoWorld's Dan Tynan offers an inside look at how high-tech software vendors such as Adobe, Oracle, and IBM play hardball over software licensing, pushing customers to 'true up' to the tune of billions of dollars per year — and using the threat of audits as a sales tool to close lucrative deals. 'When it comes to software audits, the code of omertà prevails,' Tynan writes. 'It’s not a question of whether your organizations’ software licenses will get audited. It’s only a question of when, how often, and how painful the audits will be. The shakedown is such a sure thing that nearly every customer we contacted asked us to keep their names out of this story, lest it make their employers a target for future audits.'
82825143
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snydeq writes:
Youth may be what HR wants, but nobody bangs out code like a longtime programming pro, writes InfoWorld's Peter Wayner in a second look about what we can learn from our programming elders. 'Alas, the computer industry has a strange, cultish fascination with new technologies, new paradigms, and of course, new programmers,' Wayner writes. '[But] programming geezers have valuable wisdom you can’t absorb simply by watching a TED talk on YouTube or fast-forwarding through a MOOC. They understand better how computers work because they had to back when computers had front panels with switches. They didn’t have the layers of IDEs, optimizing compilers, and continuous integration to save their bacon. If they didn’t build it right from the beginning, it wouldn’t run at all. The young punks won’t know this for years.'
82675501
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snydeq writes:
Flame wars in the bug tracker might be exactly the right (harsh) feedback your code needs, writes Peter Wayner in his run-down of the insults no programmer wants to hear about their code or coding skills. 'The technology world is a bit different than the pretty, coiffed world of suits and salesdroids where everyone is polite, even when they hate your guts and think you’re an idiot. Suit-clad managers may smile and hide their real message by the way they say you’re doing "great, real great pal," but programmers often speak their minds, and when that mind has something unpleasant to say, look out, feelings.'
81664385
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snydeq writes:
From JavaScript to big data to devops, InfoWorld's Paul Heltzel breaks down developers' best bets for bolstering their careers in the coming years. 'Companies are now frequently looking for someone who is comfortable with every layer of the development stack, has the ability to extract insights from massive data sets, and can think strategically about devices to come, all while reconsidering old systems using the latest languages and frameworks. It’s enough to have no idea where to start,' Heltzel writes in his survey of recruiters, CTOs, CEOs, and other executives who offered their must-have technologies to try, strategies to consider, and soft skills to master.
81563069
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snydeq writes:
The high demand for data scientists has many IT pros contemplating a lucrative career shift, InfoWorld's Bruce Harpham reports, offering a look at who's hiring, what employers are looking for, and how some IT pros (and non-IT pros) are making the shift. 'Data science is rapidly becoming one of the hottest careers in IT. The field’s rise to prominence has been driven in part by the fact that its raw material — structured and unstructured data — is being produced at record levels. But it’s the ready availability of robust, low-cost data science tools, ranging from Microsoft Excel to Python to Hadoop, that has organizations of all sizes pursuing the kind of data analysis.'
81278357
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snydeq writes:
Stuffing bits in databases is boring, InfoWorld's Peter Wayner writes, so why not program everything around you? 'The barrier between bits and atoms is disappearing, with programmers no longer confined to the virtual realm, in part thanks to the Internet of things becoming more real. Now we can do more than write ones and zeros to a disk: We can actually write code that tells a machine how to extrude, cut, bend, or morph atoms,' Wayner writes in a survey of programming languages for doing just that. 'Rapidly developing domains such as autonomous cars, smart homes, intelligent office spaces, and mass customization require programmers to be savvy about how changes in data structures can lead to changes in objects. If the term “object-oriented programming” weren’t already taken, it would be perfect.'
81017853
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snydeq writes:
InfoWorld's Peter Wayner takes a look at the new services and pricing models that are making cloud computing more powerful, complex, and cheaper than it was a few short years ago. 'We get more, but using it isn’t always as simple as it could be. Sure, you still end up on root on some box that’s probably running Linux, but getting the right performance out of that machine is more complex,' Wayner writes. 'But the real fun comes when you try to figure out how to pay for your planned cloud deployment because there are more options than ever. ... In some cases, the cost engineering can be more complex than the software engineering.'
80813009
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snydeq writes:
InfoWorld's Paul Solt outlines how Apple has made good on Swift’s emphasis on performance, approachability, and ease in its latest update, offering up seven worthwhile enhancements to Swift 2, along with code samples. 'Many of the enhancements to Swift, through both the Swift 2.0 update and subsequent Swift 2.1 update, have made the language more explicit and intentional, and in turns, Swift 2 code will be safer and easier to maintain for years to come (especially now that Swift is open source). New language constructs (keywords) in Swift 2 improve the readability of control flow — the order in which lines of code are executed. Thanks to these new keywords, collaborating on Swift code will be much more productive and efficient.'
79471523
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snydeq writes:
Collabora Productivity has released a distribution of LibreOffice Online as part of a joint venture with ownCloud, makers of an open source file hosting and sharing system a la Dropbox, InfoWorld reports. The Web edition of the open source productivity suite still has a minimal feature set, but documents are editable in the desktop version LibreOffice. 'A preview build of the product more closely resembles Google Docs than LibreOffice. Despite the editor being a little sluggish and the feature set minimal, the product did allow for basic creation and editing of word processing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. "This initial version allows basic editing," the Collabora press release stated. "Collaborative and rich editing are on the roadmap."'
79411317
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snydeq writes:
Thanks to technical advances and increased adoption, securing your data and communications is a lot easier than you might think, writes Fahmida Y. Rashid in an overview of encryption tools for everyday use. 'To date, the primary challenge preventing encryption from being a routine factor in most people’s computing lives is the fact that it is still relatively difficult to employ. Encryption has traditionally required users to jump through a lot of hoops to get it to work, but that is slowly changing. Here we list various encryption technologies you can easily use to protect your data from prying eyes and to communicate online securely and privately. The more people use them, the harder it gets to take away our right to privacy and security.'
79247237
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snydeq writes:
Misconceptions and flawed implementations may have many organizations missing the true upsides of devops, writes Adam Bertram in his article on devops practices gone wrong. 'Saying that your company embraces devops and regularly practices devops techniques is popular nowadays, and it can serve as great PR for bringing in great talent to your team. But in truth, many companies — and technical recruiters — that are proclaiming their devotion to devops from the hilltops aren’t really devops organizations.'
