The Whiteboard

12:35 AM

0

A: Is there a massive shortage of software developers?

Not only StackExchange claims that there is a shortage of software developers (or multiple open positions for each developer), Microsoft does that too. TotalMobile says that too. The truth is this a myth, as illustrated by researchers from Rutgers, Georgetown, and American University. The repor...

Ixrec

@psr I'm not sure about that answer, since it's kind of assuming that everyone who gets a STEM degree is equally skilled/useful

psr

@Ixrec Well, if there were a shortage and recent graduates weren't getting hired, then you would have to assume that employers were able to identify the less useful in the interview process. I find that implausible. Also, if you are arguing that we need more STEM education (national teach your dog to code day or whatever) this refutes the idea that more of what we are doing now would work.

Ixrec

agreed that just "more STEM education" wouldn't accomplish anything

perhaps I'm less skeptical about the idea of interviews actually working

Marissa Wilson

Just curious, if you were to measure a shortage or surplus what would be a better metric than unemployment numbers?

psr

@MarissaWilson Wikipedia says the definition is "not available at any price".

Marissa Wilson

12:48 AM

@psr Would that then be an unemployment rate of 0 and still surplus jobs?

psr

@MarissaWilson Basically. I think it's considered full employment if a small number of people are out of a job at a given instant because it just doesn't take 0 time to line up a new one in all cases.

Ixrec

the fancy term for that is "frictional unemployment"

user55340

Btw, during the 8-5 timeframe, I'm on a phone... which really limits my ability to type. It's a bit after that now - so I can type better chat comments in chat...

Robert Harvey

@Ixrec Yeah, but two-to-one graduates to hires is still a pretty high ratio. Either employers' expectations are unrealistically high, or the schools can't graduate people who can be effective software developers. Or some truth in between.

user55340

Between visa shenanigans and the extreme disconnect that some employers have with with the asking rate of the developers, it can be a bit difficult to judge the 'shortage'.

user55340

12:53 AM

I don't believe that it exists. That employers are more often looking for the impossible experience dev or the one that will work on intern wages.

psr

If you don't take people claiming a shortage literally, and assume they mean "the economy would grow better if people magically had more software development skills", then - yes. Or any skill. I guess software dev needs little other resources so if you remove the "needs qualified humans" constraint it could really take off.

Robert Harvey

Still, a genuine shortage would drive up wages, like it did in 2000.

psr

@RobertHarvey Yes. Even people claiming spot shortages, or shortages of sufficiently magical developers, should be able to cite wage growth in whatever specific area they are talking about.

I don't think many people are honestly saying there is a developer shortage (unless they are parroting it). I think it's purely a tactic to ensure there are enough STEM graduates (and/or immigrants) to keep wages lower.

user55340

The other point is that many of the developers aren't qualified. I've seen more than a few in the "took a certificate class at the community college and can do php" or "did a dev boot camp and can write ruby on rails"... and yes, there are lots of those positions out there... but there are also lots of "we can't fill the Java, C#, and other roles for internal development"

psr

@MichaelT Are there really people who can't fill a position if they bump the salary by 50k/year?

Marissa Wilson

12:58 AM

Theres also people who get degrees but have no idea what they're doing.

I'm finishing up my master's and theres several people in my program (SE) that have no idea how to code.

user55340

@psr There are places where they won't bump the salary by even what amounts to $4k/year.

user15026

@MarissaWilson SE? Software Engineer?

user55340

Employer^^ kept the hourly rate under the exempt number (meant they were paying through the nose for overtime) because if they go above the exempt value they can't mandate overtime.

Marissa Wilson

@Ash

Woops, still learning this

@AshleyNunn Yep.

psr

@MichaelT But that's not really a shortage. By that logic there's a shortage of Lamborghinis to lease, because I won't pay nearly what they go for.

user15026

1:00 AM

@MichaelT I know someone who tried to tell me her mobile app programming course at a college was the same as anything anyone who went to university could do, and she keeps telling me she will get a job at Google with those creds.

user15026

I have yet to find a way to explain to her that that is highly unlikely.

user55340

@MarissaWilson Unfortunately, there's a stereotype amongst industry coders that academic coders don't write maintainable code and are rather unemployable for that reason.

user15026

@MarissaWilson No worries! You can always edit your messages (press the up arrow on your keyboard in an empty chat box, and it will bring your last message up for editing. Do it again, and it will bring up the previous one, and so on)

Marissa Wilson

@MichaelT so I'm seeing. Out of my class of 60 I'm one of 15 or so that has a job coming out of school.

Telastyn

Stereotypes start with a kernel of truth.

user55340

1:02 AM

@psr Very true. There is a shortage of sports cars at $10k for me to buy.

Marissa Wilson

@AshleyNunn Oh thank you! That is going to be very very helpful

user15026

@MarissaWilson I'm someone who often says her fingers go faster than her brain, so I am bad for having to edit my messages. :)

psr

@MichaelT I said lease because someone would likely have said I could resell it. Which I would.

user15026

You have a...five minute window, I think? to edit.

user55340

@MarissaWilson one of the things that would impress me (if I was interviewing) of an academic coder is experience with 'software engineering' tools. Learn git.

user55340

1:04 AM

If you can get Jenkins and a bug tracker on the resume too it points to "someone who isn't just writing throw away code and has some interest in the engineering (rather than pure science) side of computing."

user15026

@MarissaWilson also, if you want to link your reply to a specific message, hover over the end of the message, and you will see a flag (to flag the message for mod attention, if someone posts something offensive or the like), a star (to star it, and then it will appear in the list on the right side of the room, which allows people to find things easily later (generally, in most rooms I am in, stars are for things that are interesting or funny, for some value of such), and a little arrow.

user55340

To be taken tongue in cheek... but there's a grain of truth to it:

user15026

The little arrow is what creates a reply (your message will start with a colon then a number, that's the message number it is replying to.)

user55340

user15026

(Also if someone has explained all that already, feel free to tell me to shove it. I just like helping :P)

Marissa Wilson

1:08 AM

@AshleyNunn No this is helpful! Is there an autocomplete for names? (As I clearly tried before?)

@MichaelT One that always got me was recruiters kept asking if I knew OOP. I have Java on my resume, I assumed OOP went without saying.

user15026

@MarissaWilson If you start typing, names should pop up above the chat box, you can tab through them to select the person you want.

user20683

@MarissaWilson knowing Java is no guarantee of knowing good oop practices

user55340

@MarissaWilson To recruiters, its a buzzword. They have no idea of what OOP means or its implications.

user15026

Also, if you just type three letters of a name, like you did for me there in that message, it will ping the first person in the room that has those three letters.

user15026

@MichaelT What does it mean?

user55340

1:10 AM

That said, I've worked with a programmer who couldn't give up C. He wrote one .java file with all static methods in it.

user55340

@AshleyNunn Object Oriented Programming. As opposed to... well, functional, logic based, procedural, declarative... its something HR puts on the resume and recruiters ask about it though tech people just sigh.

user15026

@MichaelT Ah, okay. :)

user20683

it's a pity there are around 4 different setups that can be termed "OOP"

user55340

The only time it really makes a difference is when there are multi-paradigm languages (Python, Perl being the two easiest ones to write either procedural or OO... its harder to write non OO ruby, but not impossible).

user55340

Sometimes you find people writing OO php also...

Marissa Wilson

1:13 AM

I always assume Object Oriented goes without saying, it'd be like telling me you know Word. Aspect Oriented or something, that'd be worth noting.

user55340

Aside - aspect oriented still bothers me... spooky action at a distance in the code.

Marissa Wilson

I can't disagree. It's not a style I can easily work in.

Jimmy Hoffa

1:34 AM

@MichaelT it used to bother me too, but I been using it for the past couple years in my office and I've gotten comfortable with it for a small few specific things; namely trace logging and caching

oh and auth

user20683

I look at aspect oriented programming and just kind of shrug

user55340

I'm going to be doing it for some authentication on rest endpoints... but I still think its spooky action that is harder to track through.

Jimmy Hoffa

being able to just put an attribute on a class and know you'll get any exceptions that would have bubbled up to a logger automatically with all the details is might handy so I don't have to write try/catches in any of my methods just to log

and being able to see the full inputs/outputs of every method in the stack that led to that exception because of the trace logging in it

(turned off in config of course, trace logging will destroy your log, but when you have a problem being able to flip a switch and see every detail without having to debug through everything is nice)

we just use it for logging, caching, and auth. It is definitely dangerous in the wrong hands though or used for the wrong purposes

Marissa Wilson

I read a paper awhile back in IEEE on if it was faster to work aspect oriented than object oriented. The conclusion was a definite maybe.

user55340

There's certainly places where its the best tool... I'm just kind of wary of those folks who use it as one of the first tools.

Jimmy Hoffa

1:38 AM

@MarissaWilson see that's the dangerous part; it's totally orthogonal to OO and yet people see the word "oriented" and start thinking it's comparable

user20683

and then you just wind up with "bug oriented programming" and are as good as little bunny foo foo.

2

user20683

scooping up the code mice and bopping them on the head

Jimmy Hoffa

people need to pay less attention to names and more attention to semantics. It's just for decorating things with functionality - simple and explicit functionality - not for replacing behaviours

user55340

So, about that km / mile conversion thing in octal. Take the km, read it in octal. You see a sign that says "100 km/h", thats easy... thats 1*(8^2) - 64 miles/h. (actually 62.13 miles/hour).

user55340

Note that you break the universe when the speed limit is 90km/h.

user15026

1:45 AM

@MichaelT I don't understand the math

user55340

@AshleyNunn Its more a "huh, thats close" without being too accurate. At city speeds and distances, its much less accurate.

user15026

I just dont understand how to convert to octal is all

user114359

This world would be a lot better if Saturday were two days long.

user114359

I would also accept nuking Monday from orbit.

user20683

@Snowman live in Japan, then fly to Alaska when Saturday in Japan runs out

user20683

1:51 AM

or Hawaii

user20683

or like Fiji ish

user55340

@AshleyNunn base 10 has a number like 1234 which is actually 1*(10^3) + 2*(10^2) + 3*(10^1) + 4*(10^0).

user114359

Too much energy required. Plus, it is really just shuffling time around, sort of like DST. I really want to lay around the house an extra day and grill out an extra day.

user15026

@MichaelT Yeah, okay, that I get

user15026

so how do you go from that to octal?

user20683

1:54 AM

@Snowman get a government job in certain states where they have 4 10 hour days

user20683

then you get a three day weekend every weekend

user114359

@AshleyNunn you know how 12 is "one 10 and two ones?" 45 in octal is "four 8s and 5 ones" = 37 in decimal

user55340

The number 100, if read as octal would be 1*(8^2) + 0*(8^1) + 0*(8^0)

user114359

I actually can work a compressed schedule, 4x10 or 4x9 + 8/0

user114359

I finally decided to roll my military time into civil service and work toward that juicy pension

user15026

1:56 AM

@MichaelT Oh, so you just left off the 0 ones

user55340

Yep.

user15026

I g et it now, I think

user55340

Octal is one of those bases that sufficiently old coders once dealt with though it still pops up in places like access on unix systems and, from what I read over on aviation... aviation.

user114359

The only thing octal is good for is non-ACL Unix permissions

user55340

6

A: What is the significance of a squawk code?

The squawk code is assigned by Air Traffic Control to the aircraft and is used for radar identification purposes. It is a 4 digit octal number (each digit has a value in the range [0-7]). The flight crew enters the assigned squawk code into the transponder control panel and the radar extracts th...

user20683

1:58 AM

@MichaelT banking, certain kinds of games, some embedded crap like aviation

user114359

hexadecimal is extremely useful and works similarly, it is a great way to pack binary into a small space (1 character = 4 bits)

user20683

@AshleyNunn base 16

user55340

@Snowman thats a nybble. Half a byte.

user20683

your digits are 0-9 and a-f

user20683

because we ran out of numbers

user15026

1:59 AM

@WorldEngineer Yeah, I remember that kinda from reading CODE

user15026

(which someday I will have the brains to finish)

Duga

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's about programming concepts, which makes it more suited to programmers — Simon MᶜKenzie 41 secs ago

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