Re: [tlug] Running without Gnome/KDE/xfce/whatever. (was: Ubuntu 16.04-LTS Japanese Text Input)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Raymond Wan writes:

 > In past company jobs, I have worked with vendors that develop
 > software for us (i.e., I represented the client).  And I was
 > appalled at what software development has become.

Man, you've been skimping on your reading then.  Start with The
Mythical Man-Month and read between the lines to realize just how
SNAFU-ed IBM development practices were in the 50s and early 60s (and
they achieved World Domination and Fred Brooks got to be Monday
Morning Quarterback for Life, so it worked out OK ;-).  Then go on to
Ed Yourdon's "Decline and Fall of the American Programmer" to find out
just how bad the U.S. industry sucked in the late 80s/early 90s, and
then his "Resurrection and Rise of the American Programmer", in which
Eddie-kun discovers in 1999 or so that the rest of the world sucks
just as bad, so the U.S. still has a chance.  (Incidently, after
getting multiple accolades for "world-class software development
organizations" in D & F, Japan is reduced to a single footnote in R &
R!  Sad, sad, sad.)

Executive summary: While things are horrible now, they could be worse.
And frequently have been.  :-|

 > [*]  Yes, it could be a problem with the companies we were
 > approaching.  We didn't have a lot of money so we could not
 > approach large vendors -- only small/medium sized ones.

The large ones are often worse, at least in Japan.  The problem is
that they don't do very much programming in-house, they farm it out to
subcontractors, which tend to farm it out to subcontractors, which
....  And since all you've got is management and "systems integrators"
in the chain, who don't actually do design or coding, they jealously
guard the communications channels and their level of requirements
documents, effectively preventing the actual programmers from ever
learning, let alone serving, the actual client's needs. :-(  And of
course at the very top end of the scale, they want to sell you a
"cloud solution", not the software itself.  Which is a completely
different can of worms, and the only problem that a can of worms can
solve for you is composting.

That's why when I have a friend who needs software written, I
introduce them to Curt (wow, was that really 10 years ago?) or one of
the other one/two-man shops with serious OCD I know of.  Of course
there are large projects that require more than such a shop can do by
itself in time, but largish companies tend to delude themselves that
everything they do is big, whereas in fact many of their tasks are
small enough that a lone independent contractor can do them better,
faster, *and* cheaper.  You do have to pick the right contractor....

P.S. I was at a talk today where the lecturer put up a chart showing
that the *pay* rankings in Japan for several languages was headed by
Python, Perl, Ruby, C/C++, Java (about a 10% hit vs Python), PHP,
Javascript, C#, Swift, and Objective-C (by now a 25% hit vs. Python).
I guess if you know two languages you can add the salaries? ;-)