Why The New Guy Can’t Code

The premise is a decent one.  Make developers show they can code, kind of like a portfolio that an architect or an artist puts together even before they finish college.  Is this a reasonable standard? I do feel like hiring developers feels like hiring blind.

We’ve all lived the nightmare. A new developer shows up at work, and you try to be welcoming, but he1 can’t seem to get up to speed; the questions he asks reveal basic ignorance; and his work, when it finally emerges, is so kludgey that it ultimately must be rewritten from scratch by more competent people.

via Why The New Guy Can’t Code.

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How To Perform Nearly Any Task From Your Browser’s Address Bar

For those of you who miss using quick command-line shortcuts to accomplish tasks, this post by Lifehacker might be for you.  I have to admit that sometimes it is more trouble that it is worth, but I also like the ability to quickly add something to my google calendar without going through 5 clickes to even get to the page.

 

It works like this: when you enter text on a web application, the result is often the web page sending that text along to a server as part of a URL. A Google search for lifehacker android results in a URL of http://www.google.com/search?q=lifehacker+android. By finding the right URLs—for Google Calendar events, Google Maps directions, Twitter statuses, and more—we can use keywords in the address bar to submit text to any of those web sites.

via How To Perform Nearly Any Task From Your Browser’s Address Bar.

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Windows Vista EULA

 For those of you who don’t like to pay attention to contract law, the Windows Vista EULA may prove to be an eye-opener.

A great summary here:

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/423 

  The terms of the Vista EULA, like the current EULA related to the “Windows Genuine Advantage,” allows Microsoft to unilaterally decide that you have breached the terms of the agreement, and they can essentially disable the software, and possibly deny you access to critical files on your computer without benefit of proof, hearing, testimony or judicial intervention. In fact, if Microsoft is wrong, and your software is, in fact, properly licensed, you probably will be forced to buy a license to another copy of the operating system from Microsoft just to be able to get access to your files, and then you can sue Microsoft for the original license fee. Even then, you wont be able to get any damages from Microsoft, and may not even be able to get the cost of the first license back.

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NYT: A Word to College Freshmen

New York Times has an Op-Ed piece from William Chace, a former president at Wesleyan and Emory.  It’s worth a read, and discusses the cost of college education.

I know you’re worried about money. I’m not telling you or your folks anything new when I say that Laudable looks expensive. The tuition increases here, just like those of our competitors, have outstripped the rate of increase in the consumer price index for years. This fall, tuition, room and board averages almost $32,000 at Laudable and other private colleges, and more than $15,000 at public ones.

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NYT: Exercise = Weight Loss, Except When It Doesn’t

A good article in the New York Times regarding exercise and the not-so-simple health effects. I’ll post it for now and comment on it when I get a little more free time…

But for many, whether they say so or not, a desire to lose or control weight is a major motivation. Deciding if exercise is an effective method, though, can be a challenge.

On one hand, you may have heard that exercise is not very useful for knocking off extra pounds, though it helps to maintain weight. Or you may have heard that only weight-bearing exercise — like jogging or brisk walking — can help you lose those unwanted pounds, while activities like swimming and cycling are not helpful as far as weight goes.

At other times you may have wondered why, after you took up activities that were supposed to burn 500 calories a day, you failed to lose that pound a week.

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