Eclipse 3.0 M2 - New and Noteworthy
Eclipse just keeps getting better and better.
I particulary like the duplicate code fragment finder in this build.
Corporate Pimps - Dealing with Technical Recruiters
Because recruiters are universally maligned, their clients have no more respect for their opinions than you do.
The recruiter has no technical knowledge. The skills you’ve spent years acquiring are just empty keywords and acronyms to them.
All so true it hurts. The only good thing about the downturn in the technical job market is that the Recruitment Consultants (as they label themselves in the UK) are getting it in the neck even worse than we are.
Anyway, some good tips here.
Via Alan Green.
Bruce Eckel, The Ideal Programmer.
An interesting, if unfocused, semi-rant about the poor quality of the average coder.
Some interesting numbers: 5% of the programmers are 20 times more productive than the other 95%. The majority (probably that other 95%) of programmers don't read books on programming. Now, I'd love to take this at face value - after all, I read a lot of books on programming. But most books probably don't make people into better programmers, just better informed programmers. In fact, it's often the complete opposite. The code examples in most tech books irritate me greatly, for example - they get across the narrow technical point that they are attempting to illustrate, but apart from that, they are often good examples of how not to code.
There are, however, a very few books which can make one a better programmer, I think. Code Complete and The Pragmatic Programmer, for example, should be mandatory reading for anyone who makes a living cutting code. Other good examples might be the GoF book, or Bitter Java.
How many people in our profession really love what they do? Not many - 95% (the same 95% again?) are in it for the cash - indoor work, with no heavy lifting. There do exist, though, programmers who do not love what they do, but do nevertheless approach it in a professional manner. I know - I work with some of them. But the couldn't-care-less brigade are always present, too...
Python 2.3 release candidate 1 was released on Friday.
I've been running beta 2 for a while, and it's good.
There may have to be another release candidate, since 2.3 currently doesn't work on Cygwin. But the Python dev team are hoping that it's a Cygwin bug rather than a Python bug, and that release candidate 1 will be the only one.
In any case, there is a pretty hard deadline on 2.3 final - it needs to be out by the 31st if it's to make it into the next OS X release.
Update: Looks like there will be a release candidate 2.
Today is my 23rd birthday.
23 in hexadecimal.
Not the first time that I've measured my age in hex, and probably not the last. So much easier on the ear that way, I find.