Tuesday Link Dump
March 20th, 2007 -- by Augie De Blieck Jr.
Media:
- Politics makes strange bedfellows: Finally, something I agree with NPR about.
- Ten Worst Spin-Off Shows of all time. I kinda liked “That 80s Show,” though.
- The Apple TV is now shipping. No, I didn’t order one.
- Apple rumor du jour: New designs for the iMac coming?
Ruby-Related
- There are job listings, and then there’s this job listing. I like the hacker ethos of what Vonage is looking for. I’m not at all qualified for it, but it certainly sounds cool.
- Geek news that makes my day: Work has begun on a porting of Martin Fowler’s REFACTORING book to the Ruby language. I’ve read bits and pieces of the book, and it looks to be a must-read for any serious programmer.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Damn, I don’t even remember some of those spin-offs! “The Tortellis”? Good Lord!
Um, was Mr. T actually on “Aftermash”? I never saw it. And I didn’t think “That ’80s Show” was all that good, but the blonde on it was hot, IIRC. (I think she played Eric’s cousin on a “That ’70s Show” episode.)
March 20th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Oh, indeed. That blonde was hot. And Mr. T is in the AFTERMASH picture because AFTERMASH was on against THE A-TEAM, according to the article. I don’t remember that, but I do remember watching a few eps of AFTERMASH.
I remember watching M*A*S*H as a kid, but I don’t think I quite got what it was about until much later.
I’ve heard of half those spinoffs — I remember watching THE BRADYS (the name of the actress who was the new Marcia is on the tip of my tongue); a couple of local DJs had some cameos in one of the episodes — they were a Brady party where some guy choked, and they actually showed their horribly-acted reaction shots.
Based on yesterday’s blog post, Augie, I guess I’ll now have to pick up REFACTORING. I’ve never heard of the book until now, though.
And go NPR — anything that can help force the RIAA into the new music age is a good thing.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Juan – As I recall, the wife on THE TORTELLIS was Casey Kasem’s wife. Crazy, eh?
Phil – I remember watching one episode of THE BRADYS when I was younger and being done with it fairly quickly.
REFACTORING is a fairly cool book, but tread carefully – it’s a $60 hardcover textbook kind of thing. And I don’t think there’s a PDF-only version of it on-line, either, to save you any money. Even on Amazon, it still runs $50 or more.
March 20th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
That 80’s show blonde was Brittany Daniel. She’s on the Game now . although She’s probably better known for Joe Dirt. (She really is hot.)
I do somewhat remember that Enos show and that awful Brady show too
March 20th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
How come Joey isn’t up there? That was shockingly bad.
March 21st, 2007 at 7:28 am
I liked JOEY — the first season, anyway. The second season fell off the rails, though.
March 21st, 2007 at 8:13 am
Couldn’t watch much of JOEY. Then again, I didn’t watch most of FRIENDS, either. Loved it in college, then I lost interest in it.
March 21st, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Meant to reply yesterday, but didn’t… I couldn’t tell whether you were talking yourself out of going for the Vonage job.
No one is born into the hacker ethos, and rare is the person who can develop it on his or her own. It’s no crime to admit that previous jobs and previous environments haven’t afforded an opportunity to be the kind of programmer one really wants to be. The whole “hacker ethos” can almost be summed up as “I want to be a more effective programmer.” In that regard, just being able to articulate the desire to have the hacker ethos is 90% of the way to really joining it.
There are slim pickings for good programmers nowadays, and many people I have interviewed recently are usually bad programmers with misguided opinions about how clever and edgy they are. I can tolerate programmers whose skills quite aren’t where they should be, IF they can demonstrate a certain level of self-awareness about their limitations and have some idea about how to correct them.
March 23rd, 2007 at 7:42 am
David – I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting old and creaky, but I’m not the fresh-faced kid out of college anymore who can program for 16 hours a day for fun. Life’s too busy and complicated for me now to do that. It makes it a lot harder to keep up with anything that’s going on in programming these days.
Oddly enough, as I get older, I am less interested in learning the Latest and Greatest and more interested in the theoretical concepts behind programming. I still want to learn new stuff — and am on a tear for Ruby and Ruby on Rails at the moment — but I could read an entire book on Code Refactoring and be pleased. I could read JOEL ON SOFTWARE and be thoroughly interested and entertained.
Maybe I’m just turning into a different type of hacker than I ever imagined I’d be? Or maybe since all of my languages are nearly dead to the world now, I’m just looking elsewhere.
I think I’ve gotten good in job interviews with expressing to the interviewer that I’m willing and able to learn, if given the opportunity. But there are enough programmers out there who already know so much of this stuff, that why would they ever want to take a chance on the newbie? It’s a little frustrating, and it makes me whine out loud sometimes. Sorry about that.