NO!!! You do NOT post a question... Until you've actually put in some WORK yourself to see if the question has already been answered!!! I've been using StackOverflow for decades... I'm a Senior Developer... And not ONCE have I felt the need to post a question, because usually, the answer is already there... Somewhere!!! Only post a question once you've exhausted all other options. And even if your question IS new and unique, be prepared to receive toxicity anyway... Because you know... You are dealing with lots of individuals who find Human Emotions alien to them... But hopefully, not so much toxicity if your question has already been answered numerous times!
The coding interview process is not to test just your ability to remember code solutions but also to see if you are able to prepare, plan, and grind! It’s on purpose like that. That’s how you filter the people who don’t put in the work. To be clear you won’t be doing that at your job once you get the job. Definitely not a representation of what coding life is about 😂
Good riddance. I asked a question on SO long time ago when i was just starting. Got told i didn't do enough research, and told me to Google it, provided me with a link to outdated information, then promptly closed the thread. How dumb are some people? I got to SO BECAUSE of Google
The recent deal with OpenAI just shows that owners and management as well lost faith into SO and trying to get some extra money before the shutdown. Like many here mentioned already, SO and allmits brothers and sisters and parents innthe same org are just toxic a* - like the whole system was modelled exactly after the Bastard Operator From Hell saga.
Such a great video, thanks for sharing your thoughts! I’ve worked in product and project management (15yrs!) and now a re-skilled as a developer, so I can see both sides of the argument! Agile is not the problem, but the interpretation of it, is what causes so many issues. Biggups!
Well I don't know if it was only because Australia was so slow to take it up or the computers just too big and bulkey for most home user's even the banks in Australia were still using manual bank records when I left high school in 1981 and even the government railways were only getting NCM/CNC by that stage
In my 30+ year developer career I've realised it's not the programming languages themselves that are the hurdle. Yes, some languages are simpler than others, but the real challenge in development is getting your head around the systems-architecture that your programs need to interact with and control.
Stack Overflow had it coming. If you have a shitty attitude towards your customers, you can't expect to stay in business. I would not ask a question if I was an expert. I don't mind researching a topic but sometimes you just need a pointer in the right direction, not a shit answer.
I think its not right to say no one knows COBOL. Most of us started our career with COBOL. Most of us can still code in it. Just that most people don't ask for it anymore. IBM actually had a converter program once to pump out COBOL code. The issue is COBOL programmers are very expensive as more retire. That's the problem.
WoW! Agile is not problem then 🤔....simply the Greed for Power and drive for Numbers (Capitalism) has distorted what actually is a very productive process!! This is so sad to hear 😢.....TLC said “don’t go chasing waterfalls...”, so let’s sail away instead 😁 P.S. Love the content #Brilliance
One thing I liked about COBOL: I could get a call at 2am about an error, the console operator can read me the lines of code, and I can debug it without ever really waking up.
Awesome video content, and also cool stuff behind you :D Is that all Lego sets? I don't recall Lego having Concorde in their offer, but It's been a while since last time I've checked :P
It’s important to see the other side as well. The key to improving and learning is putting some effort in what you do. So if someone who’s new just asks for answers without making a basic attempt to solve the problem for example Google, ChatGPT…etc of course that would annoy experienced devs. So I completely understand the dev who said we’re not here to do your homework but actually what I disagree with him/her is that is a very simple answer as the user probably doesn’t know about this specific python library. It’s not like the user asked them to write a script to solve a larger problem. But to me, I don’t know why you would ask this in stack overflow when ChatGPT will give you a brilliant explanation with examples and you can any further questions and clarify any doubts instantly. Also I think the question ‘why would you want to do this anyway ?’ is a bad way of framing the question: ‘What are you trying to do, because there might be a better way of doing this “ and in that case the dev is even more considerate as they are trying to solve your problem rather than just give you the answer you think you need. There’s always a trade off between how much time and effort you put in solving a problem and how much you learn about problem solving. Reaching for help easily all the time and you’ll learn nothing and spending too much time on solving a problem that is not important in your life goals will also hinder your progress. The hard part is knowing that right balance of what you really need to know.
In your example, you don't see the actual problem of using a language (Python) that the answer no longer pertains to because the language is so badly designed that it has broken compatibility several times in major ways? That is the exact, core problem with "Stack Overflow": the blind leading the blind. To make matters worse: "Stack Overflow" has always been that way, since day one!
The paradox of "Stack Overflow" has always been that the answers are of low quality, even when they work, and it takes someone with deep insight and experience to recognize what the actual clean, high quality solution will be from that low quality answer. The industry's inside joke is "woe to you if you ended up on Stack Overflow looking for a solution!"
We used SCRUM for IT system operations. The teacher said that this method is not fitting our work load. The management wanted to implement it anyways. This was such a s-show.
My first language was Fortran.We spent 6 months on COBOL and Pascal as a comparison to Fortran. 1200 baud modem with 6 Sperry terminals. Exciting times....
I work for a bank as SWE, previously worked at the same bank as platform engineer, we are heavily invested in both public cloud and Mainframe Nice video! For me, there is quite a glaring error/omission though. The issue is not the language COBOL, but the fact that its usage is tied to (IBM) Mainframe. It does not make to discuss one whilst not really talking much about the other. Business don't love COBOL, but they do love that Mainframe is near indestructible when done right. Buying a Mainframe is a serious investment and tbh, they work, very well. They are incredibly reliable, near enough bulletproof. So reliable that there is not a platform that you can just buy or rent which has similar reliability. Public cloud providers are constantly positioning themselves as Mainframe replacements, but there's a reason the shift is as slow as it is; it's just not easy. So it's not just a case of some old language that won't die, it's a platform that is not easily replicated or replaced. It's certainly *possible* to create a platform on-premise or in the cloud which is as reliable, but it's a lot more effort and it's a lot more complex than swapping COBOL for e.g. Java. And FWIW, the COBOL shortage is not as bad as is made out. India has legions of COBOL programmers available. Call your local Tata Consultancy Services or any other bodyshop, they are ready to help.
A lot of this is about scrum, not agile in general, but basically correct. However Scrum is worth reading up on. I like the idea of a scrum master who does project assistance and deals with stuff other people don't have time for, but doesn't own the project. The "Master" is really supposed to be a slave.
I refer what "Agile" has become as "Fragile". Management functions on the principle of checking boxes on a list. The usefulness of the list is irrelevant. Management tends to view meetings as how things get done, because that's what they do.
Problem with agile in my experience is that documentation has been left out of the equation so, especially as it tester when you join a new team and want an overview of even part of the application there is absolutely nothing to go on. Ok, up to a point you can design tests for the changes but you can't get a handle on the bigger picture and god help you if you need to assist UAT
on scrum/agile PMs being spies - i 100% agree that they're on the side of management against development. i don't know about intentionally planted for that purpose, but only because I don't want to give credit to upper management for having that level of thought and effort ;) I think they earnestly believe more management = more good
As you mention Agile isnt really the issue. Having been in this game for some 30+ yrs, Ive seen production systems come and go, to name a few that I "had" to do courses on, Topdown Bottom Up, Waterfall, Kanban (of course), Agile and a number of other weird ones more relevant to manufacturing that software eng. The reality is, processes _arent_ the cause of bad development environments, people are. I have worked in _amazing_ agile projects (where I was team lead, scrum master and system architect in different projects) and I have worked in utterly chaotic and stupid agile projects. The key differences are _not_ the process, they are the people. Whether its management structure issues (this is very common in big industries like gov and defense) or whether its the ego's and developers being utterly fanatical about following strict agile processes (this destroyed one project I worked on). In one agile project I had a _single_ person be so obnoxious and just toxic to the whole team we sat down with the Chief Engineer to 'extract' them from the team and have them work on solo tasking. The team then built absolutely excellent simulation systems and solutions from then on. So before you become "that dev" that says "oh agile sucks", look around. See what is causing the main frictions and remove them. Sometimes people just dont _like_ high communication environments, so remove them and use them more effectively. Something I will say, one of the most successful projects I helped run/develop with a wonderful team resulted in some of the best communication across disparate skillsets (3d artists, C#/C++ coders, Java coders, designers and scenario creators) which had many of these people actually expanding their skillsets and working on tasks they had never done - artists doing C# and Scripts, Designers doing C# and script, and coders jumping into Art and Design. That was actually _due_ to the agile processes we put in place to make people feel comfortable helping each other when their loads (tasking) seemed a little high. This works.
Programming in COBOL is easier than coding in C-derived languages, where you spend your time matching opening and closing curly brackets, or. as I call it, "matching pubic hairs".
Quick bit of info about AI and NNs in general. These are _not_ new algorithms or ideas. They date back a _long_ way. They were abandoned and reinvigorated multiple times over the last 50+ yrs. They suffer one very well know flaw - if you _over_ train these systems their quality of response actually gets worse, not better. This is why these models by themselves will _never_ be good AI. At best, they will be rudimentary chatbots (which is where they seem to be prevalent atm). In fact this fault was pointed out by two prominent AI researchers at Microsoft a few years ago (releasing a paper specifically about this). These researchers were "let go". Which is kinda sad, since they were just pointing out clear flaws in the systems themselves (which is what good science is all about, isnt it?). The amount of hyperbole and marketing about "AI" is mostly that. And people need to look a little deeper too. If OpenAI and ChatGPT really _are_ revolutionary, then its been two years, where are all the outcomes we should be seeing change wise. I see vast amounts of investment, and developer tech fanboyism about it, but I dont see any revolutionary applications. The AI activists always say.. oh.. its coming.. its coming.. you wait. Well.. two years in the tech industry is an eon, and its kinda interesting there still isnt that killer app, just killer cost of services and "AI experts". Beware the AI.. I say.. its not the AI that you need to worry about.. its the tech ind BS marketing and spam you need to be worried about.
I would still be programming COBOL if firms in the UK hadn't outsourced most of the work overseas. I had to turn to testing on a lower salary but, money aside, I was much happier as a programmer
I'm still active (since 1986) in a financial company in europe. Using PL1 (PLI) as main language since... ...ever. Those days on VSE and MVS, now on z/OS. We had about ten percent Cobol-codes but replaced them with PL1. Today a few codes are implemented in Java - but Java has it's issues in some details to perform like the older languages when it comes to handle very big amount of data in batch-processings and there is a higher maintenance to keep them up to date. In contrast some old codes are untouched over years - not to say decades - and still running.
