MetaFilter posts tagged with programmers

India's Outsourcing Problems

PreacherTom — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 04:31:54 -0800

India's Outsourcing Problems One of the most controversial aspects of the global economy has been the newfound freedom of companies from physical location and the subsequent spread of outsourcing jobs. No country had embraced tech outsourcing with the passion of India. Of late, problems there are beginning to rise: engineers start a project, get a few months' experience, and then bolt for greener pastures, bringing a level of attrition that replaces entire staffs within the course of a year. Combine that with salaries in Bangalore that are rising at 12% to 14% per year and it is no surprise that companies are leaving India for a slew of emerging hot spots for IT outsourcing such as the old Soviet Bloc, China, and Vietnam. This comes as companies such as Microsoft continue to laud outsourcing and proudly proclaim that it is here to stay, and it looks as if Ho Chi Minh City will be the next Bangalore.

Their programs control your bank account

nkyad — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 01:08:02 -0800

DailyWTF is a "Programming Bloopers" repository and forum, collecting, dissecting and making good fun of badly written code. Programmers can appreciate their fellow coders' strange or plainly funny problem solving techniques. Sometimes programmers will square the wheel while reinventing it. Or take the best practices to the insanity level.
Some programming knowledge required.

How much is too much?

Duug — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 10:03:42 -0800

Disgruntled spouse 'outs' Electronic Arts' harsh employment practices, and by implication disses the whole American 'work 'em 'till they drop' ethos. Is this the start of a quiet revolution or is the American Way too entrenched to be stopped?

Primates as Programmers

SandeepKrishnamurthy — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 07:39:14 -0800

Primates as Programmers. New firm breaks the mold. Hires primates as programmers leading to significant cost savings!

ed — Fri, 31 May 2002 11:20:16 -0800

The Dark Side of Google? Google's first annual programming contest was a shrewd way to encourage Java and Python programmers. But this may be shrewder than the programmers who entered the contest realized. David Egnor may have nabbed a cool $10,000 as the contest winner, but for all the other entries, Google nabbed "worldwide, perpetual, fully paid-up, nonexclusive" rights.

arnab — Fri, 03 May 2002 23:01:15 -0800

Competition to "reverse engineer" mystery program.
Another cool thingy from the HoneyNet Project; they're inviting people to convert a binary file into its original source. So, who's participating?

hellinskira — Wed, 19 Dec 2001 15:41:55 -0800

"It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential." But now the techies in Silicon Valley who prospered with that dash are having children with far more pronounced problems. Is having too many shy programmers in one spot the equivalent to pissing in the gene pool?

lagado — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 06:19:50 -0800

Software projects are notorious for time and budget overruns (examples that come to mind include Mozilla and the Denver Airport baggage system). There are a large number of design methods, development processes, and programming methodologies that claim or hint at objective estimation of development schedules, project complexity, and programmer productivity. Unfortunately, they're all bunk.

"The creation of genuinely new software has far more in common with developing a new theory of physics than it does with producing cars or watches on an assembly line."

Programmers, try telling that one to your next customer.

moz — Fri, 06 Jul 2001 14:11:02 -0800

The giant list of classic computer programmers takes you back to a time when one person could realistically author a computer game and have it published. Of course most of the people on this list will have worked on small teams to produce games, but the diversity of the games on these people's resumes is awesome. In particular, I notice Michael Cranford (responsible for The Bard's Tale I and II, the Centauri Alliance, and ports of Donkey Kong and Super Zaxxon) and Robert Woodhead (Wizardry 1-5). As an interesting sidenote, Robert Woodhead went on to Animeigo, a japanese animation publishing company in the US. What memories of these old sk00l games do you have?

christian — Tue, 06 Feb 2001 09:25:21 -0800

Vatican might name Saint Isidore of Seville the patron saint of Internet users and computer programmers. The world keeps getting weirder, doesn't it?

gluechunk — Mon, 02 Oct 2000 12:15:04 -0800

In general, if you want to use drugs and keep your job then become a programmer.

mathowie — Tue, 04 Jan 2000 14:03:24 -0800

Ha! The Y2K nuts still aren't giving up their cause. These guys need to face defeat. They were wrong. We lucked out. The programmers saved the day. Let's move on now, shall we?