Comments | hirez: I'm not sure what to make of this.

hirez

I'm not sure what to make of this.

Apr 19, 2012 20:30

This is Eben Upton explaining why he/they created the Raspberry Pi.

What I'd not realised is that the number of people in the spod trades who're actually, y'know, any bloody use at all has dropped like a rock.

I guess this is quite handy in re. my continued employment because there aren't any hungry young graduates who can do it better and ( Read more... )

kefrens, wind up robot, hacking of a different sort

Comments 9

badnewswade April 20 2012, 01:17:49 UTC

Got a present for you!

http://www.anthonymayer.net/ah/thaxted/thaxted1.html

A novella about an alternate Cold War universe where one Margaret Hilda Roberts grows up 100 miles further south causing her to become a Communist, Britain joins the Vietnam War and the post-decimalisation currency is known as the Dollar Sterling.

For some reason I thought you would like...

ingaborg April 20 2012, 10:34:28 UTC

Yes - I never expected 'proper' IT skills to become a rarity, and for crusty old codgers who can write C being awarded the same sort of status as the last reed cutter in Norfolk. I expected to be overtaken by the flood.

I'm looking forward to the day when we get hired by the National Trust to work on archaic systems :)

hirez April 20 2012, 10:50:22 UTC

When we visited the 'modern' part of the museum at Bletchley Park, I was wandering about going 'Worked on that... Repaired those... And that one... Oh. Bloody hell.'

Actually, I'm mildly concerned that I'm still having to go 'USE A VERSION-CONTROL SYSTEM YOU WORMS!' fairly regularly.

Youth of today, etc.

Which reminds me of a brief chat with the chief coder of $Popular-OSX-package a while ago. I was opining about something git-related and he went 'Hm. Yes. I should probably use one of those...' At which point I made my excuses and left because pointing and laughing in public would have been rude. I hope he's since seen the light.

ingaborg April 20 2012, 11:44:21 UTC

I can see a new re-enactment society coming forth soon - Old School Programming!

hazeii April 23 2012, 15:37:11 UTC

I was about to have a pop about productivity loss due to (version) control freaks - but seeing git in there saved me some more time.

aoakley April 20 2012, 16:05:12 UTC

I manage 9 programmers. Two are grandparents. One is a great-grandparent. All the ones who are not blonde have grey hair, except the grandmother. I have a budget to recruit 1 permanent and 2 contractors in August. We had a Comp Sci undergraduate send us his CV at random a fortnight ago, showing links to a database-driven website he'd written; this was SO RARE that we immediately called him in for interview and within 36 hours we offered him a sandwich placement (which he has accepted, thankfully; we were worried he'd take a placement elsewhere before we got him to sign - to be honest I'm still worried he'll get a better offer and not turn up). I bet the other two people I employ will be at LEAST aged 37, or will be foreign nationals.

aoakley April 20 2012, 16:07:12 UTC

Oh, and if you're wondering "who worked on that": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harwell_computer ...the answer is "my dad".

serpentstar April 20 2012, 21:31:37 UTC

It will change. The computing dept at my uni, which is nominally the dept I'm in, is expecting to have to up its game in a few years, once we start getting first years who have actually done a comp sci GCSE and A-level, rather than, say, ICT at GCSE level, and photography and philosophy at A-level.