The Pragmatic Craftsman
:: Simplicity from complexity : by Stanley Kubasek ::
The Pragmatic Craftsman
:: Simplicity from complexity : by Stanley Kubasek ::
Bill Gates: The kind of top-notch skills that the U.S. universities create will always be in demand. The challenge for the U.S. is to have an even higher percentage of its work force have these incredibly world-class skills.
I think that’s a great answer by Bill. We’re going to have to learn to live with outsourcing. You cannot eliminate it completely. So what’s the answer? Compete with them and WIN!
If you’re a top-notch U.S. developer you should not worry. You will always be in demand (minus the occasional downturn or correction, of course). But if you’re not, you should strive to be, as you might find somebody else with your skills somewhere else.
Courtesy of TheCounter.com, which logs about half a million unique visitors per hour, the below are the latest compiled stats on JavaScript penetration, browser popularity and more.
JavaScript 1.2+ is active in 94% of all browsers. Only 4% have no JavaScript capability.
Java is enabled in 93%+ of browsers.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.1+ has a 74% market share.
Microsoft Internet Explorer follows with 17%.
Mozilla has a 1% penetration rate. (This is up from .4% a year ago. I think Mozilla share will rise in the upcoming years.)
Netscape 5.x and Opera both also have a 1% share.
Thursday and Friday are the most popular surfing days. (Hmm, interesting.)
A screen resolution of 1024×768 is used on 49% of all computer systems.
The 800×600 resolution is used on 37% of all systems.
A resolution of 1280×1024 is used on 6% of all computer systems.
A resolution of 1152×864 is used by 3% of users.
The 640×480 screen resolution is at 1%.
Wow! Version 1.5 of J2SE contains a lot of good improvements! I personally like Java, and even though it has its limitations & drawbacks, I think it’s the best language out there! And you know what, it’s going to be for a pretty long time. After a period of uncertainty about its future (mainly because of the whole .NET marketing), there seems to be a new life thrown into Java (Eclipse, Web Services in J2EE 1.4, and more). Way to go!
J2SE 1.5 contains the following (among others), very cool features, which will make Java better:- generic types- enhanced for loop- enumerated types (oh, yeah, finally)- static import- formatted input/output (as in c++)- metadata- improved xml support- and more!
The theme for 1.5 seems to be to make the developer’s life a little easier. I like what I’ve seen so far. Good job Java community!
Read a very good article that explains what’s new in 1.5 in more detail: J2SE 1.5 in a Nutshell
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Programs do not acquire bugs as people acquire germs, by hanging around other buggy programs. Programmers must insert them.
–Harlan Mills
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The tragedy of software engineering is not that we don’t know how to plan and conduct software projects, but that we know how and just don’t do it.
–Richard E. Fairley
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Pretty good article “IBM tools revamp targets Microsoft,” how IBM is preparing to fight Microsoft. I am giving my support to IBM, as we — developers (and consumers) — need a choice besides Microsoft. As I said before: More competition is always good.
By the way, I’m already using Eclipse IDE and like it very much.
Plus, if you haven’t visited developerWorks, it’s time you do so: they have a lot of usuful information for a developer. I am also subscribed to their newsletter, which is pretty good.
The U.S. software industry lost 150,000 jobs last year, according to the Cyberstates 2003 report released last week by the American Electronics Association (AeA). In the seven years that AeA has published its report on jobs, 2002 was the first year the software sector lost jobs. In fact, it had posted the largest gains of any high-tech sector to that point. A new trend now seems to be at work, one that programmers can only view with alarm.
If there is a bright spot in the report, it is a lessening of job losses in the software services category, which includes software publishers, custom computer programming services, computer system design and computer facilities management.
“Software services employment fell by 146,000 jobs between 2001 and 2002, compared to 2002 to 2003 where that number dropped 30,000,” said Michaela Platzer, AeA vice president of research.
In the overall high-tech industry, AeA reported that its preliminary data for 2003 indicates that “the decline in high-tech employment slowed considerably.” Another potential bright spot was high-tech R&D, which posted a gain of 7,000 jobs in 2002, according to the AeA report.
“Hopefully, we’ve turned the corner,” Platzer said.
See the whole article at ADTmag.com here.
I think that, as the economy rebounds, so will the programming jobs. I do not believe that outsourcing is the major catapult here: it is, mainly, the dot-com effect and the slowdown in the economy.
If you follow the SCO vs Linux case, as I have, you might find this interesting. I totally agree with Mr. Eben Moglen, general counsel of the Free Software Foundation, who’s saying that SCO’s legal situation contains an inherent contradiction.
- SCO distributed, and continues to distribute, Linux under the GPL (General Public License), thereby giving permission to copy, modify and redistribute
- No distributor of GPL code can add any terms to the license, yet SCO has demanded that parties buy a license
- Anyone who violates the GPL automatically loses the right to distribute (here, IBM is right, saying that SCO has no right to distribute Linux kernel)
This is interesting, but what SCO is doing is starting to irritate me. I wish, once for all, that if they feel that some work has been copied, show exactly which code, and the case would go from there. Stop spreading the FUD. I don’t know who’s trusting SCO and buying products from them, I really don’t.
This week on eWeek.com they have a Tech Outlook 2004
Outlook on Mobile Computing — personally I think that’s going to be big.
2004 for Linux: grows up (or blows up)
What else, I think Mobile, Wireless & Linux will come out winners, and not only for 2004 but over next several years. Mobile, since you get enough speed that you do not need a desktop, plus more cool gadgets are becoming more powerfull, like PDAs and cell-phones; Wireless, because the technology is just cool; and Linux, because it’s free and getting more reliable and user friendly. Also, everything — all of the gadgets — will get smaller and be wireless: that will make them better!
Read what Gates has to say about Web services and Java.
Where should companies spend the dollars freed up from lowering costs? And where should they spend new technology funds?
Bill Gates: Web services is the new architecture for new applications. Web services are being used to connect information that is inside the company in different systems. They’re connecting people and systems in new ways and companies as well. You think of investments for making your knowledge workers more productive. That is the biggest investment companies in any industry make.
There are things that are essentially new ways of doing business, such as creating workflows to connect buyers and sellers together.
How does Java fit into your computing expectations?
Bill Gates: It is a language that we have supported in Visual Studio for many years. … Our whole thing is to use your existing code, to use whichever code you are most comfortable with and be able to combine that with code written in other languages. We have been agnostic about languages and supporting all the new things that come along.
[Excerpt from eWeek] Read the whole inverview on eWeek.com here.
