I've had three programming jobs out of school and have never had that experience. Though, others in the same positions have shared the same experiences as you. This leads me to believe that it is more about the person than the job (although the job certainly has an impact).
1. Learn to estimate effectively, I usually just double whatever time I believe something will take and usually finish early (without having to kill myself).
2. Don't feel guilty working only 40 hours a given week and are meeting the deadlines you set for yourself. (If you have no input into your own deadlines, that is a problem. But if you have some input and your deadlines are still challenging, you'll need to work on your persuasive abilities)
An apt and constructive criticism. Thank you for it. I am part of the problem, undoubtedly, but unfortunately when I do try to pad my estimates, I usually get back "That should take you two weeks." because management doesn't understand what they are asking for. I should work on my persuasive skills nonetheless.
I don't think anyone is arguing that none of these technologies exist, but saying that the average person shouldn't be overly concerned with any of this.
I don't really care if companies, the government, or my family know what sites I visit, where I travel, or who I speak with and which topics I'm interested in.
Certainly, there are people (like you and others) who have passionate objections to all of this. There is an easy solution: Do not use technology.
On another note, I'm sure many of the readers on this site are actually the individuals responsible for building some of these systems. :)
The higher-education system is in trouble the way I see it. I was a business major (Management) and spent ~5 hours each week on average (5 courses/semester) and graduated with decent grades.
I've since enrolled in graduate CS program. Taking 1-2 classes, I spend 10-20 hours each week outside of class. The contrast between CS and Business courses is ridiculous. I feel that my time as an undergrad was almost worthless.
I'm unsure of why the Business degree was so "easy", but my inclination is that colleges want to keep their enrollment high ($$$) so they try to keep less-than-stellar student's enrolled by watering down the requirements.
I'd be interested to learn whether standardized tests should be implemented for colleges/universities to ensure that student's are getting an education worth the price of enrollment.
Or maybe most students in Business don't really expect to do any real work when they get out. The persistent image presented of the successful businessperson is one who shoots from the hip and doesn't stop to take names, because they're just so damn good they can rule the world without actually trying. They don't need no stinkin education, that's for suckers and the nerds who will all be reporting to them in a few years anyway.
I have no doubt that there are all sorts of interesting things to study in business, but given how the rewards currently work in the business world, the only thing the matters is who you know and how much money you can squeeze from a company by killing all of their actual innovation.
Up/down arrows are not synonyms for agree/disagree but are supposed to reward people for providing valuable additions to the conversation.
Too many times have I seen people downvoted because they provide an unpopular perspective on a topic. This results in HN turning into a circle jerk of similar discussions/ideas and avoids some of the most truly interesting conversations. To me, this is the single biggest threat to HN.
Why would anyone mention any radical ideas when the masses downvote them because it does not match their own?
I think that attitude is a bit harsh. Does it make him a bad person? I disagree. While I can't imagine doing such things, I understand that people have vastly different values regarding many topics and aren't trying to be evil regardless of how opposed the values are to others.
I agree that in this particular case its a bad move to release this publicly because he is a leader of a major company and shouldn't invite such controversy.
yes. While i think all killers are bad persons, i see how a necessary killing may be up for debate. Jumping at the first chance to kill and doing it willingfully indicates that the person is a moral trash.
I think the point is that it is risky to design before you fully understand the problem you're solving. From my interpretation of the slides, they are often working on tasks they have little experience with. Instead of spending time thinking about potential design issues (which may or may not exist), build something that works and the patterns which the feature requires will emerge, enabling an elegant design afterwards.
I had almost received my B.S. Management when I was offered a entry-level job as a Requirements Analyst at an eight-person software company. At this point I had probably written 1000 lines of code in my entire life (JavaScript/PHP, mostly copying tutorials) and had no real intention of becoming a programmer.
After four months, I had become the longest tenured employee (besides the owner, who was non-technical) after everyone else in the company quit. I had no choice but to take the role of Lead Developer on a $170,000 project. Needless to say, I learned to code ... and since then my interest in CS/SWE has snowballed to the point I enrolled in a M.S. Comp Sci program.
I think a lot depends on the teacher. If there is a really good teacher which challenges their students then any course can be a great learning experience (even beyond the material covered). Obviously, it will always be different between schools. If I were you, I'd ask fellow students to see if anyone has taken a truly interesting/challenging course.
I took a Negotiations course my senior year of college and it was easily my favorite class of all time. There was a lot of roleplaying and class debate, but the teacher played Devil's Advocate and poked holes in everyone's arguments. He truly required us to think creatively and analyze a situation thoroughly before speaking/writing, or else he'd rip us apart. It was a breath of fresh air after many other classes were purely focused on learning concepts, rather than applying them creatively.
With a quick and easy modification of your code, you could make a 0 handed clock where the current time is always lined up at the top-center of the screen.
That way, you only have to look at one place to find the time.
1. Learn to estimate effectively, I usually just double whatever time I believe something will take and usually finish early (without having to kill myself).
2. Don't feel guilty working only 40 hours a given week and are meeting the deadlines you set for yourself. (If you have no input into your own deadlines, that is a problem. But if you have some input and your deadlines are still challenging, you'll need to work on your persuasive abilities)