Please welcome . . . Anton Chekov!

6 Programmer Analysts with Java, J2EE, Weblogic, Websphere (before Java you should have programmed in C++ not VB or Visual Basic)

I don’t entirely share the author’s view that programmers can be ordered up like pizzas — Java, C++, hold the VB — and I would point out, sadly, that the hiring path for developers is now littered with jackasses who don’t know that VB and Visual Basic are the same thing . . .

Thus spoke The Programmer.

Women represent nearly half the workers in the U.S. — 46.6 percent. However, they always have been underrepresented in I.T. Even more discouraging is the fact that the percentage of women working in I.T. jobs is not growing but dropping.

— Why Women Leave I.T.

Why is that discouraging? Who exactly is discouraged by it?

Here’s a simple explanation: Maybe women don’t want to work in IT. Is there nothing more rewarding that a woman can do with her life than work in IT?

IT in the post-dot-com era is a stagnant industry. A lot of people in it would like to get out of it, but they need the money.

I don’t encourage my son to get into it, nor would I encourage my daughter to get into it, if I had one . . .

Thus spoke The Programmer.

When I used to drop my son off for a half day of pre-school, he’d try every trick in the book — Dad, I need someone to push me on the swings! — to get me to stay just a few more minutes . . .

Continue reading Dropoffs Through the Years

Misspellings are in the original document:

I am not the most organised person in the world. I have a poor short-term memory, so I write things down. But because I have a poor short-term memory, I loose the paper. I tried to become more organised — I brought Getting Things Done. Then I lost it. I feel I might be more organised if I stop loosing my organisational aids.

Shark Bites Australian Snorkeler in Half

— Associated Press

This is such an inane activity — snorkeling, that is, not biting people in half — that if you find yourself engaged in it, it’s a pretty good indication that your life has already gone on way too long.

Continue reading Sharks: Another Reason I Don’t Snorkel

A photographic comparison

Of course it is only a game, but somehow the Trojans, bursting out of that stadium tunnel, have come to stand for a way of life. The sight of those USC teams rolling across the Coliseum grass, dominating their opponents — and without a single penny of government aid that the UCLA’s and Oklahomas and Nebraskas depend on, damn it. All of it happened, year after year, because the school annually turned out a phalanx of new achievers, men who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and went on to become the cream of their crops and the captains of their industries, men who started companies and expanded businesses that created jobs and took people off the welfare rolls, men who took care to plow back their superabundance into the institution that launched them, so that the Trojan tradition of independence and excellence would go on and on. Yes, the sight of that wave of cardinal and gold articulates everything. Maybe you cannot comprehend that. But a Trojan can.

— Sports Illustrated, November 28, 1988

A little-known sketch of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland . . .

WINNIPEG, Manitoba — A Los Angeles man who sneaked into Canada in February to see his Internet girlfriend will be deported — minus all his fingers and some of his toes, the Winnipeg Sun newspaper reported Tuesday.

Continue reading Love Hurts — So Does Frostbite

“How did you multiply this times 2.5 and get this?” I ask.

He looks at the problem for a while.

“I multiplied it a different way,” he says.

ME: Shouldn’t this answer be 41 instead of 71?

HIM: No, Alex.

ME: Why are you calling me Alex?

HIM: What is “no”?

He’s reading a word problem aloud:

“Maggie was traveling with her family on the Oregon Trail. The first day, they traveled 11 miles, the second day they traveled 9 miles, and the third day they traveled 14 miles.”

Pause.

“Now that was a good story!”

We’re trying to figure out a directory structure that lets us organize project documents in a way that’s less confusing than the current directory structure. We’ve got a lot of documents and nobody can find anything when they need it.

Thinking outside the box for a minute, maybe a better question would be: Do we really need to produce this many documents?

Thus spoke The Programmer.

I swear to God this is a real email from a once-promising manager with degrees from Brown and Princeton, who recently accepted a new position as Chief of Staff to the CEO, and now uses her Ivy League education to put out emails like this:

Effective immediately please ensure that all written communications at [insert company name here] have a minimum font size of 12. In particular, [insert CEO's name here] has asked me to convey that he will be ‘throwing away’ any communication he receives (over email or on paper) that does not meet this criteria [sic].

Please call me with any questions or comments, and hope everyone has a great weekend!

I always say if you’re going to misuse the word “criteria,” at least do it in a highly readable 12-point Verdana font . . .

Thus spoke The Programmer.

See what song was #1 on your birth date and pretend it’s the theme song for your whole life! Makes as much sense as anything else!

Mine is “To Know Him is to Love Him.”

Here’s another idea: Go back nine months from your birth date and see what your parents might have been listening to when . . . you know . . .