I finally completed my Master’s degree last week. It only took less than 2 years, quite a bit quicker than the 7 years it took to finish my BS degree (being deployed on submarines and dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 didn’t help). > more <

On Slashdot today there was an article from Computer World entitled 10 Things We Hate About Laptops. As I was reading it, I couldn’t believe some of the things being said. I’ve used laptops for a while, though I’ve never had to support them for other people. However, I found much of what was said to either be fallacious or misleading. > more <

Found an article this morning discussing 10 dirty secrets of the IT industry. It’s quite interesting and enlightening. Not to mention pretty truthful, at least in my experience. The comments are also interesting.

If you work in IT or are planning on it, I recommend taking a read. One of my favorites (mainly because I see it far too much in the military/government sector):

3.) Veteran IT professionals are often the biggest roadblock to implementing new technologies

A lot of companies could implement more cutting edge stuff than they do. There are plenty of times when upgrading or replacing software or infrastructure can potentially save money and/or increase productivity and profitability. However, it’s often the case that one of the largest roadblocks to migrating to new technologies is not budget constraints or management objections; it’s the veteran techies in the IT department. Once they have something up and running, they are reluctant to change it. This can be a good thing because their jobs depend on keeping the infrastructure stable, but they also use that as an excuse to not spend the time to learn new things or stretch themselves in new directions. They get lazy, complacent, and self-satisfied.

Found via Slashdot, Frank Wiles writes in his blog about why hiring the top programmers results in a better product and ultimately at a cheaper cost, contrary to popular thinking. His reasons are similar to what I’ve been thinking.

If you’ve ever read The Mythical Man Month, then many of his thoughts will sound familiar. A single expert programmer is equivalent to several average programmers. Therefore hiring a few experts yields numerous returns, such as: > more <

I read a blog post from Paul Graham a while ago and it’s stuck with me since then. In it, he states that hiring programmers proficient in “esoteric” languages means you’ll most likely end up with a better caliber of programmer.

The reason is that people who learn a non-standard language are learning because they like to program and the standard languages aren’t necessarily the best ones available. These people go out of their way to learn a new language for personal enjoyment, not because they have to know it to get a job. Graham calls it the “Python Paradox”: > more <

In the course of pursuing my Master’s degree, I’ve written many papers (with more yet to come). In the interest of helping out others (and to toot my own horn) I’m going to be adding them to my Google Docs account and “publish” the links here.

Please be aware that, even though I wrote them originally for school, they are still copyrighted. If you wish to use them outside of normal “fair use”, please contact me. Heck, even if you link to them, quote them, or whatever, please let me know. I would like to know who’s benefiting from them.

The first couple of papers that I’ve uploaded are listed below: > more <