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The typical solar PV power installation requires access to a private roof and a big budget. However, wouldn't it be possible to get around these obstacles by installing small solar panels on window sills and balconies, connected to a low-voltage direct current (DC) distribution network? Author decided to power Low-tech Magazine's home office in Spain with solar energy, and write articles off the grid.
modified 20-May-16 14:34pm.
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Alphabet CEO Larry Page testified in federal court this morning, saying that he never considered getting permission to use Java APIs, because they were "free and open." "It was established industry practice," says Page, as Oracle v. Google nears end.
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At I/O this year, Google displayed its vision for a more ubiquitous and conversational way of interacting with technology. Brought to you by people who went so you don't have to
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We started a stealthy project at Google several years ago to see what we could accomplish with our own custom accelerators for machine learning applications. My TPU is a neural-net processor; a learning computer.
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I want to talk about practical, everyday things that people who aren't deeply technical can do to better protect themselves. I better go home and delete the "my secret online identity" textfile on my desktop.
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Online tracking: A 1-million-site measurement and analysis is the largest and most detailed measurement of online tracking to date. We measure stateful (cookie-based) and stateless (fingerprinting-based) tracking, the effect of browser privacy tools, and "cookie syncing". Could there be an ocean too deep?
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Some have criticised Google for falling behind when it comes to social networking and new communications services, but the company is now working hard to catch up. Today, the company announced a new video calling app called Duo — a high-definition app for Android and iOS devices. 5 years later, Google answers
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A Kurdish region of Syria that borders territory held by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has received an $11,000 donation in allegedly stolen bitcoin from a vigilante hacker. Pretty sure Robin Hood gave to the poor and not militant groups, but I get where they're going with the analogy.
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A brief history of a dominant Google's soul-searching competition battle in the EU. Ivan vs. Goliath
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We’ve heard a lot about Uber’s plans to create its own self-driving vehicle, but we’ve always been curious to see what it would look like. Today, Uber gave us a glimpse of its current self-driving car. Spoiler alert: It's Navy Blue. Wait. Black? Wait.
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Tesla Motors Inc. said it will sell about $1.4 billion in stock to help pay for an expansion that includes its forthcoming Model 3 electric car and boosting annual production to 500,000 vehicles in 2018. More cars, more batteries.
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Talk about charging forward.
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Netflix really wants to show you how fast (or slow) your Internet connection is, and to do so it has launched a new website at Fast.com that conveys the real-time speed of your connection to the Web. AKA "Please stop filing your complaints to Netflix about speed issues and start filing them with your ISP."
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Never before has a skill been mythicized to such an extent: You not only need to have talent, you also need to be passionate to be able to become a good programmer. I'm just gonna slowly back away from this one ...
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All depends on what level of success you want.
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Maybe I would hire some without talent, but without passion to the job...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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{TODO: Insert humorous comparison to QA here...}
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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You do need talent and some passion, but not to such ludicrous extents as wanted in today's world. You don't need to have God-like knowledge of all platforms nor do you need to live, eat, and breathe programming passion. A working knowledge of the basics and a willingness to learn new things will get you farther than knowing everything about each system and language (and compiler, runtime, standard library, API, and so on).
Programmers that hold themselves to such high standards scare off people who seriously want to become a developer. There are examples on every site, here on CP, on StackOverflow, and many other places. Some sites are working on keeping such things to a minimum, and others aren't really doing anything.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.
Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???
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Agreed, there's such a thing as too much. And no matter what that thing is, the "too much" makes it a bad thing.
However, I see the "passion" for programming as the "want" of learning something more. The "passionless" only ever want to learn as much as needed so they don't get fired, and that is not a good idea.
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Living life well requires talent and passion. Programming is no exception. If you are the exception, then you're dead.
Marc
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Passion shouldn't be required but for any profession if you want someone to become good at what they do you need some sort of interest and drive.
You don't become a mechanic if you are a fanatic environmentalist which hates everything fossil based. But as long as you don't mind getting your hands dirty you don't need to know every different motor sport and name every driver, every car etc..
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In my view, the required list of attributes is as follows (in descending order of priority):
- Integrity
- Ability to pay attention to small details
- Intelligence
- Knowledge of standard algorithms and their trade-offs (time, space, complexity, etc.)
- Knowledge of the tool sets to be used
- A moderate amount of obsessive-compulsiveness (as in "I'm gonna fix this bug if it's the last thing I do")
Learning programming languages and libraries isn't difficult for anyone with the above skills, and as long as he/she delivers good-quality code within the deadline - I couldn't care less whether they are "passionate" about their work.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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This is always a situation of someone wanting to be in a profession due to monetary gains or bragging rights. "Why do I need to be good at it?" "Why should I learn more?" etc. etc. etc.
Sure sign that they should not actually be in that particular profession. And no, it's not limited to programming. I'm also in the Architecture industry (the construction kind), and I've seen the same with Architects who don't have a passion for designing a "better" building, or worse, cannot envision the 2D drawings into a 3D shape. Usually you see them "design" something on plan, then needing it to be modeled (by someone else) into a 3D virtual building before they see that the bunch of lines they scribbled on paper cannot actually work, then keeping at doing it until finally they hit on something which isn't un-build-able (usually by accident)...  And then comes the part where all their buildings look the exact same ... i.e. once they've finally hit on such accident, they keep doing it that way since last time it "worked".
And this is what I have found in programming. Someone without the passion will not even attempt to try and be "better" or make their programs better from last time round, they'd only ever do the minimum required for the project. And thus also be in that situation of (I'm going to be found out and fired) every time they're even slightly outside their comfort zone, i.e. only "learning" (at best) when forced to. While someone with passion would see such situations as a challenge and actually seek them out. Sure you can hit the same keys and regurgitate the same old programs, but that just makes you a one dimensional typist, not a programmer.
Talent is perhaps not as important, though it does save a lot of time at the start. E.g. it takes a long while for someone to come to grips with the logical thought processes involved in changing a problem into a set of tasks for a computer to handle. But it is "learn-able", just takes time for someone who hasn't done similar before or already think in that way.
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Well, with moderation.
Talent is a huge help for the programmer since it allows to quicken many steps through intuition rather than careful/long/boring thinking, leaving more time for the real thinking.
Passion is needed because programming often becomes really frustrating, so either you're stubborn or you're passionate, otherwise you give up (and ask gimmecodezzz in QA).
Still untalented but clever/stubborn/passionate programmers can be valid coworkers, sometimes they seem to be a little "thick" but they get the work done - or they try the "guru" tricks read in cheap books increasing difficulty of an order od magnitude.
Talented but lazy or non passionate are usually innovators, since they want too get the job done and know how but don't want to spend their lives on it - their work is usually dirty but reliable for the given specifications.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
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