Idiotic programming style edicts
in [General Programming]
|
From: Jennifer Usher on 29 Apr 2010 22:17 "Phil Carmody" <thefatphil_demunged(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message news:87r5lymzc3.fsf(a)kilospaz.fatphil.org... > The best use of CS students working in industry as part of their > degree is to guarantee that a maintenance programmer can be kept > in a job for years removing all the crud they put in. I wasn't thinking in terms of an internship, but something within the college environment. Otherwise, you have a good point. Of course, the same thing can probably be said about new graduate working on their first project after graduation. -- Jennifer Usher
From: Jennifer Usher on 29 Apr 2010 22:19 "Walter Bushell" <proto(a)panix.com> wrote in message news:proto-F63119.07531329042010(a)news.panix.com... > Some words are tabooed in some contexts. For example, politicians and > people in the public eye usually avoid using the word "niggardly" even > though it is a word of impeccable provenance. Most people have no idea what the origin of the term is, and will simply react emotionally. -- Jennifer Usher
From: Jennifer Usher on 30 Apr 2010 21:18 "Huge" <Huge(a)nowhere.much.invalid> wrote in message news:83vdjaF41nU1(a)mid.individual.net... > On 2010-04-30, Jennifer Usher <jennisuzan(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> "Walter Bushell" <proto(a)panix.com> wrote in message >> news:proto-F63119.07531329042010(a)news.panix.com... >> >>> Some words are tabooed in some contexts. For example, politicians and >>> people in the public eye usually avoid using the word "niggardly" even >>> though it is a word of impeccable provenance. >> >> Most people have no idea what the origin of the term is, and will simply >> react emotionally. > > Too long. > > "Most people have no idea." > > There. That's better. True. -- Jennifer Usher
From: Richard Bos on 11 May 2010 10:05 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn(a)garlic.com> wrote: > raltbos(a)xs4all.nl (Richard Bos) writes: > > Yup. A very corrupt, untrustworthy professional investment adviser, but > > someone who made his profession out of giving investment advise. > > one might claim that it just represented the culture One might only do so correctly if one left out the word "just". Yes, the culture around him was corrupt; but he was _the_ prime example of it. Richard
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler on 11 May 2010 11:24
raltbos(a)xs4all.nl (Richard Bos) writes: > One might only do so correctly if one left out the word "just". Yes, the > culture around him was corrupt; but he was _the_ prime example of it. re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#69 Idiotic programming style edicts something interesting seems to be going on with (at least) my news server. The post (in this thread) from 26apr mentioning the name "Madoff" is still at the news server ... but your followup ... my followup and several other followups ... my news server claims have been canceled or expired(?). The person that tried for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff ... testified that environment of transparency and visibility is more important than new regulation (towards fixing the current environment). As per previous post ... slightly more than decade ago, I got called in to enhancing/redoing protocol used in the industry for doing trades ... but the work was suspended fairly early when it turned out that a side-effect was significantly increased transparency and visibility. The "Madoff" testimony basically said that w/o transparency and visibility in how things operated ... then the investors are totally dependent on oversight and regulatory enforcement by the gov. regulatory agencies ... and during much of the period, the gov. was doing very little (congress repealing Glass-Steagall, preventing commodity futures from being regulated, SEC doing little or nothing regarding SOX). Numerous aspects of the financial mess, in aggregate, are much larger than Madoff ... and specifically things like AIG are individually larger. Huge amounts of institutional retirement funds went into triple-A rated toxic CDOs ... and one of the justifications for current fed. obfuscation is to not show how big that risk really is (trillions, not simply billions). The congressional hearings into the rating agencies had testimony that the unregulated mortgage originators were paying the rating agencies for triple-A ratings on toxic CDOs when both the sellers/originators and the rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A rating (claim was that something like $27T in toxic CDOs were cycled during the period). Wharton business school article estimated that something like 1000 people are responsible for 80% of the current financial mess and it would go a long way towards fixing things if the gov. could figure out how they would loose their jobs. The message in the Madoff hearings was that the current environment enables all sorts of bad things ... but it has been in the vested interest of significant parties to maintain the status quo (a side-effect was enabling Madoff activities). There have been some articles referencing poor computer risk applications being responsible ... but the counter has been that the business people were directing the risk departments to fiddle the inputs until they got the desired outputs (the increased compensation for the business people was so large that it eliminated any motivation regarding what it would do to their institution, the economy, and/or the country). .... the magnitude of the problem is so large ... that it is way outside of the bounds of even the worst risk applications (and any common sense .... unless there are significant financial motivations to ignore/disregard the indications). SOX had provision for SEC to do something about rating agencies ... but nothing other than a report appeared to have been done. It appeared that SEC was doing so little during the period, that it prompted GAO to start auditing financial filings of public companies. GAO started database of the financial filings that they identified as fraudulent and/or accounting errors (supposedly under SOX, required action by SEC .... including putting the responsible executives in jail). some recent posts reference gao audit/database: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#36 Happy DEC-10 Day http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#81 Happy DEC-10 Day http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#33 The 2010 Census http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#15 The Revolving Door and S.E.C. Enforcement http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#16 The Revolving Door and S.E.C. Enforcement http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#67 The Python and the Mongoose: it helps if you know the rules of engagement -- 42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970 |