Elsewhere, a for-profit prison extended their contract[1] with Feds barely a month after the Department of Justice said it would end[2] contracts with private prison operators.
Those who haven't lived through a depression will never understand your plight and obviously not be able to "see" the challenges you face -- how oddly suppressed your voice is against this entire world -- but walk out of this ditch right now. It is going to kill you and even then the world will not understand your pain because it's designed that way.
You don't have to contribute or be a part of the machinery. Do not feed the for-profit machinery that you, like many of us, sorely dislike. Go into non-profit mode perhaps?: help a charity, give shelter to other underprivileged people or may be start an open source movement to make the machinery bleed.
Don't just sit and lose these moments explaining your situation to people who're blind and deaf and presumably dumb. They'll never see. They'll never see until this depression hits them for reasons of their own.
It may not!, but usually healing others is also self-healing.
One has to figure this path for themselves.
> I think you need to fix the depression issue first.
Absolutely! However, solving inability to work is equally important. Otherwise the patient will fall back into a depression again.
P.S: The comments above were for OP's inability to work, find work or be motivated about it. It isn't a solution for depression, which obviously needs thorough professional or medical help.
> "Could you write out what an HTTP request and response looks like on the board?"
Why should anyone remember what an http request or response should look like? Statically typed vs. dynamically typed language?
Fuck.
Are these entry-level positions or for someone with 10 years work-ex? A simple search on Google can tell anyone the answer of these questions, why do you expect people to carry an imprint of it in their memory? If the problem they'll work on mandates knowing these things it'd be pretty easy to solve with just one search. It is exactly questions like these that are worth kicking the host organization back in the butt.
Either your interviewing process is hilariously stupid or you're just spiking it up to boost the ego here.
Static versus dynamic typing is so fundamental that I don't see how a programmer could be remotely competent without having been exposed to those concepts enough to have internalized them. It would be like an accountant not knowing what the number 4 is. Yes, you can look it up, but if you need to then how did you ever get this far?
OK, ask me that question about defining the difference and I'll argue with the question, and back up my argument with examples of how type systems are far more of a spectrum of different cases than a stark static/dynamic binary.
And then your non-engineer phone screener who's expecting the answer to match the scripted sheet will conclude that I don't know this "fundamental" thing and thus am unqualified.
> It would be like an accountant not knowing what the number 4 is.
It's a hypothetical no-go! Every person, even the fourth grader knows the number 4. So why ask a question that measures their ability to remember 4, say 4 or show that they know 4.
> I don't see how a programmer could be remotely competent without having been exposed…
Invest in people and people will invest back in your business. Interview process that I follow at my workplace has just one goal to assess: whether or not it'd be great to work with this person and spend over ~50 hours per week with them.
Absolutely! This is super super important. Fun to work with, not annoying to waste time with.
> know nothing about computers
It's sad that you think this way of people who couldn't answer your questions at the expected level.
> Or are there actually more criteria than you let on here?
Yes! One way to know if they're any good or not suitable is by giving them a problem statement like so:
'Design X, feel free to choose a language that's suitable for this problem', and then may be proceed to hint with: 'You might want to look at advantages of Static versus dynamic typing'… and then let them ask whatever questions they want to ask or read up or search or start implementing whatever.
Observe what they do -- and how fast can they get to the decision of what language and why. And how to make X (break down of steps) or if they can dive and start making X there itself. Note, if they had theoretical knowledge of what you seek during an interview it will work to their advantage naturally. Or sometimes not.
Of course, this process may not work for you as it does for us -- therefore seeking direct answers about static vs dynamic language may not be such a bad question after all (I get it), but expecting people to accurately remember what an http request or its response looks like may not be fruitful at all. It can throw good people off guard and ruin the rest of the interview for them.
Well, following Netflix's mantra - it is a team and not family that you are hiring for. Anyone can Google and find answers, doesn't mean you would hire everyone, would it?
There are a number of basic items that a competent programmer needs to know off the top of his head. If they had to google for every single item, then their productivity goes down the drain and so does the entire team's productivity. You should fix your hiring.
It is also a ridiculously dogmatic question. Many people believe into a fallacy that static typing makes safer programs, for example, and expect that somewhere in the answer.
How is it dogmatic? Sure, there's a lot of dogma around which one is better, but simply explaining what each one is and what's objectively different about them isn't remotely dogmatic.
I have yet to see a large static typed program that didn't -- somewhere -- run into the limits of static typing and contain a set of workarounds, using void* or linguistic equivalent. That's code a dynamic language doesn't need.
The only code you can be sure isn't buggy is code that doesn't exist.
void* is usually not a symptom of limits of static typing, but limits of the [type system] design or human brain. You can think of it as "ok, I give up. Anything can be passed here, proceed at your own risk, compiler will not save you here, errors will show up at runtime". Even the memory safe Rust does not do without such unsafe blocks. In dynamically typed languages that is everywhere, though.
I have said this before: safety benefits of static typing show up when you are working with at least data structures, not simple variables. Imagine you have an external endpoint or library call that is specified to return a single object and does exactly that. At some time after release you are the maintenance programmer responsible for implementing spec changes:
* The object returned no longer has member/property x, it is obtained by other means;
* The endpoint returns list of such objects.
How sure are you that tests in dynamic language cover these cases? My experience shows that tests very rarely get designed to anticipate data changes, because data is driving test design. Which is more likely for a test: a) to test whether object returned contains keys x, y and z; b) to check if the object returned is_list() (see appendix)?
Static typing covers such cases. Static typing is not something that magically saves oneself from shooting them in the foot, but is nevertheless a safety tool that CAN be used. It is of course a burden if one does not intend to use it and that is the core of the debate.
Fun thing: in the second case if your code manages to convert input list to a map and assign one returned object to a key that coincides with the removed property and map access looks syntactically the same as property access (a very specific set of assumptions, though), the bug can butterfly quite deep into the code before manifesting :)
Static typing is basically a bunch of free type-based unit tests. You can write safer programs in dynamic languages, but you need to write and maintain a lot more tests.
If the type system is not expressive enough and you have to get around it?
The claim that "dynamically type language" allows code to more closely follows the business logic has merits. And you could follow from that to claim that type system could be causing more bugs (ie less safe).
I would not want to work for or with him, if he asked me that in an interview, I'd walk out.... if he think thats what good computer scientist should know...
While the GGP idea was just misinformed and basically outright dumb, it doesn't mean that just because a politician chooses to use a tool or a person a a given time then they will protect that person or tool in the future. The world is full of examples in the contrary.
Bottom line, just because Hilary's campaign is using Signal, it doesn't mean that in the future her administration won't gag them or make legislation available in order to use them so spy on their own citizens.
I hate this bullshit propaganda that goes like "this is skeuomorphic and the other thing is not". There is nothing in the world of software that isn't a skeuomorphic equivalent of some thing or some process that has already existed in this world.
Look at Object Oriented Programming, for example. Look at 'Code is poetry' for a comparison. Look at button design. Look at page design {Header, Footer, Body} of a webpage. Look at flat design for that matter! Look at iWatch interface with hands of a clock/watch. Look at the dialpad on your mobile phone.
Tell me which one isn't skeuomorphic? Zilch! Yawns… at these skeuomorphism police.
>Consideration of "good" vs. "bad" of anything is essentially a trait of use vs. them propaganda.
Value judgements are both very, well, valuable AND not "propaganda".
Some things ARE plainly worse than others for some uses or in general too.
Nothing "propagandish" about aknowledging that. Even if you are wrong in your evaluation it's simply a mistake, not propaganda.
Propaganda is a method you employ to convey things (not necessarily judgements even, could be calls to action, warnings, etc) in order to brainwash people to accept them.
As such, it is orthogonal to judging things as good vs bad.
Thus, I deem this argument "bad". And not in a Michael Jackson way.
Not with the anti-skeuomorphism tirade however. That is pure propaganda.
Anti-skeuomorphism picked up momentum only after Apple's iOS7 update -- around the time when Tim Cook took over and Apple (and its fanboys) moved away from purpose-inspired design to selling 'flat and clean' (supposedly purpose-oriented) design.
Whether it was good or bad move for them eventually is another subject altogether.
>Not with the anti-skeuomorphism tirade however. That is pure propaganda.
Maybe let's put it this way: a lot of it is misguided and/or throwing the baby with the bathwater.
But it does have some merit in some cases: when the skeuomorphic design dictates the use according to non-existing in the digital world constrains.
For example the dreadful DVD player apps of yore, that mimicked physical DVD players, making us push the same inconvenient buttons we hated on the physical devices too, but without any reason like the physical objects had.
> dreadful DVD player apps of yore, that mimicked physical DVD players, making us push the same inconvenient buttons we hated on the physical devices too.
Yes! But you see those were "bad designs" even in physical world and those were copied over to apps. It's isn't a fault with skeuomorphism per se, but in the design that were referred from.
> Sorry for the rant, you're just responding to a demand. It's a demand I'd rather see met through educating better data visualisation than through prettier gauges.
If there is demand it's probably good to respond to it as it is. There is no need to fucking educate propaganda like you said about skeumorphism or no-skeuomorphism.
Besides can you give one example of any software product that is not skeuomorphic? There is none to begin with. So please stop using this bullshit cultural kool-aid to troll and exclude designs that probably don't suit your elitism.
Good design is one where a user doesn't lose focus from the task they had on their mind -- be it in physical realm or software. In fact for this reason alone there is no well-designed software in the world, anywhere, that doesn't rely on skeuomorphism at its core.
It's quite hilarious to see how a certain class of developers think (or portray) that something is skeuomorphic, and therefore, undesirable, when in fact there is nothing (zilch!) in software that is not stemmed on skeumorphic thinking.
Starting from Object Oriented Programming to visual design, everything in software is a skeuomorphic inspiration of what we have experienced offline before.
For example: The web scroll is a direct skeuomorphic rip-off of physical scrolls from back in the day! In fact between paginated page-flips of modern physical books and scrollbooks or yesteryears, scrolling is probably the older of the two technologies. Then we have paper-like pages in MS Word or Google Docs with page-breaks in them!
The mobile dial-pad is a cute skeuomorphic rip-off of physical buttoned dial-pads on phones. iWatch/digital watches still do good with clock needles the way physical ones always did. Button, shadow, gradients, flat buttons, round buttons, corner elements, form design and pretty much everything in "good design" are all grounded on, in principle, skeuomorphism.
Hell, we even copied the scrolling momentum!
It's a fact: any ego-strut or marketing-speak from anybody in software that says some "design" is original and not skeuomorphic is simply selling bullshit.
Thanks for this short excursus, but "not skeuomorphic" has never been marketing speak here.
Instead, it has been added only to disassociate from a HTML/CSS imitation of paper (the material) by itself, which quite a few people have been expecting, given the (improvable) title of this project.
> Instead, it has been added only to disassociate from a HTML/CSS imitation of paper (the material) by itself
Assuming that digital screens cannot truly be produced using cellulose and starch (the material) the dissociation and difference in the nature of medium is understood. And then the "software part" has absolutely no role to play in that dissociation.
You can't evade the fact that it is just marketing-speak at every level. I am pretty sure that the dev community likes to believe otherwise, and hence the downvotes, but that's just lame groupthink anyway.
FWIW, I understood it as "we didn't use a background 'texture' that visually resembles a piece of looseleaf paper", and I rather welcomed that particular visual design choice.
Thanks to the unquestionable red tape and annoyingly (really annoying) slow and sloppy work-culture at the USCIS it is a privilege here to share with you that even the EB1 categories of both India & China are now s̶i̶g̶n̶i̶f̶i̶c̶a̶n̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶l̶o̶g̶g̶e̶d̶ frozen [1].
Yes, welcome to 2016.
A significant portion of talent that used to earlier fall in H1B->(Eb2/Eb3) category has now grown up in life and also gone up the corporate ladder to only come back and (re)apply as multinational managers/executive in the EB1C category.
No matter what the USCIS tries to do now it cannot make up for the pile of shit (at the cost of anxiety and torture of millions of legal immigrants) accumulated in the past fifteen/twenty years. The beast is simply too big.
EB1 visas are now taken away by highly skilled and talented "managers" from TCS, Infosys, Cognizant etc. There's a special category of EB1 visas, EB1C which is on offer for managers. Skills that these companies face severe shortage in US include HR, Relationship Management, Finance/Accounting.
It will be interesting to see what happens to these people if Trump were to get elected, given his promise to investigate H1 visas.
Will he ask whistleblowers to step forward? Perhaps deport these "extraordinary individuals" and hand over their green cards to the actually deserving ones in the queue? Or is the number of affected people too small to matter?
Many people on message boards rarely seem to appreciate the actual pull of a person like Trump. Very few people actually want to support Trump, but the system badly needs a shake-up, even one that might well be too arbitrary and might negatively affect more people than it helps. The alternative feels like being the frog boiling in water.
While I am on the matter, I would also comment that the H1B visa lottery mess itself can be cleared quite quickly by someone who is not catering to lobbyists. Ask the ones who obtained their higher degree in the US if they genuinely think there are more people who are qualified to get the visa than the number of people who actually receive it - that is, does it make sense that there would be a lottery for the visa?
I know this opens an entirely new can of worms - why does getting a degree in the US give any more credibility? Here is a not very PC answer: being a student in the US actually gives you a chance to understand the culture and work ethic which makes the US what it is, which is almost 100% lacking in people who suddenly find themselves in the corporate environment of a completely different culture from their country, don't particularly care for assimilating, and often cause a lot of questions to be raised about whether the H1 visa is actually serving its designed purpose.
> why does getting a degree in the US give any more credibility?
It does not! And probably never will. A lot of people who I know went on to get a phd because of lack of options or because of frustration and failure in corporate life. The latter is statistically a sizeable number; consider unless the kid in your class went off immediately after school.
Whereas a multinational manager is usually directly contributing into the US economy for years with sweat and hard work, including engineering and research -- if needed, for their business to survive and grow. I'd rather say they gather and implement more according to the culture and edge it off with cultural gaps between the host country and their own. Of course now we're entering a class war. :-)
With all due respect to the multinational manager who may be extremely good at what they do, everyone knows that there is still some pretty drastic exploitation of the process going on if they are actually coming in under the EB1 category. Here is an easy test: these individuals will very rarely openly discuss exactly why they qualified for an EB1 (if they even willingly talk about it) - and I am fairly certain the deserving ones in the category will feel no such compunctions. Here is another - you can usually find scores of people with exactly the same qualifications as these multinational managers if you actually bother to probe further.
Having said that, I do think the system is too far beyond reform at this point, and people would be much better off trying other countries to showcase their talents, including their own.
[1] https://twitter.com/i/moments/789498562904293376
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/1...
These are pretty quick u-turns by an establishment that's confident about business as usual following elections. Gravy-train!