There definitely is on the east coast. Just as an order of magnitude guess I'd say we were interviewing 10% of the resumes we were getting and offering jobs to 10% of the people we interviewed.

We had lots of requirements but we were ok with people that only knew a small subset (not a specific subset either) and then demonstrated the ability to learn the rest.

Agreed.

The cost of training someone from scratch is pretty expensive (even if you didn't pay them you need to use significant senior developer time). And most of the early jobs they can do you can already get done easily and cheaply elsewhere.

I agree training people is completely worthwhile - but by using interns and new grads you get someone else to have covered a lot of the basics of that training for you already.

To anyone interested in the posted wargames...bandit is supersimple so far basically Unix file utility stuff (wouldn't really call it a wargame). Level 13 was pretty annoying though, just finished that. Going to take a break and tackle the rest later.

http://www.overthewire.org/wargames/.../bandit0.shtml

i've mostly worked on natas so far, which is for web security and similar to stripe CTF. Easier so far, but I stopped on level 11, and I imagine the last levels will be quite a bit more difficult than the first 10, which I was able to finish in under an hour. It's a fantastic learning model imo.

Of course, someone had to write something inspired by this one:

http://gkoberger.github.com/stacksort/?

I read half of problem 0, got stuck, then quit. Do I get a cookie?

lol'ed again at "Warning! This is probably the worst thing ever!"

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/middle-ground

Clojure people: Probably old news to you, but figured I'd post anyway, looks like a new web framework: http://pedestal.io/

C sucks because while you are pushing bits and you are close the machine, you aren't actually playing on the metal, so you should chose assembly. Don't do assembly in safe mode either because it isn't good enough to bug-out the assembler. You want to destroy your entire machine kernel and BIOS.

Clojure sucks because it isn't a full-out Lisp. It doesn't have TCO and there aren't enough parenthesis. It also isn't really a functional programming language. So either chose Scheme or Haskell.

JVM sucks because it is yet another VM layer of abstraction, so you shouldn't use that either and prefer to compile to assembly. The security isn't really up-to-par because you didn't write it yourself.

Python is all middling IP, FP, OO, and yadda yadda. It is a good teaching language, but surely you can use Scratch and at least teach a 6 year old.

Sorry if I missed the point.

apology accepted

Brand new to me. Building on Compojure + Leiningen is dead-simple. I know it sounds egotistical and all, but the language doesn't really need pre-fab frameworks of this size to be productive.

This quote scares the hell out of me:

Pedestal is a collection of interacting libraries that together create a pathway for developing a specific kind of application.

With that out of the way, the documentation looks first-class and I am sure it is an excellent framework. I probably would not touch a framework, or any library, from the Clojure community unless it has been around for at least 2 years, or it is maintained by a core contributor, or it is so needed that I can't do anything without it. I know Relevance is well-known and probably long-term, but I'm not feeling it yet.

I'm also weary of Rails programmers creating Clojure frameworks. I know it sounds terrible, but I've seen enough verbosity and tread macros to last a lifetime and this framework continues down that path. I've always said that Clojure will eventually need it's own version of Rails to ever take off, but I think that it won't help much in the long-run. Either you want to do Lisp or you don't and no amount of frameworking is going to change that.

If the promise of Clojure is supposedly that you can bend the language to your will, what will happen when you're not creating this undefined "specific kind of application?" All the promise get's blown out of the water at the first hiccup and need to reverse-engineer.

One day, we'll all have our perfect language to end all languages. Until then, C is a pretty awesome language.

So, what was your point?

This could be a very long conversation, but the cliff's notes is that no, it's not just that different languages have different strengths and weaknesses and it all depends on what you're doing and your personal preferences. I believe that is a cop out, and simply untrue.

Of course, that view has a little bit of truth to it, and it sure sounds nice, but it is still wrong. If you really need speed or are doing low-level programming, feel free to make an argument for C. As a language for expressing ideas, and for writing concise code -- that is, as a computer programming language as used in the majority of applications -- it is absolutely terrible compared to things like python, ruby, clojure, etc. I would go so far as to argue that if you don't understand why that is so, then you don't understand how to properly structure programs.

I wasn't saying that I would use C to build a web app any more than I would use Python to create Halo 4.

Maybe I should put this in perspective:

You like to mention how Lisp and Clojure (do you even use Clojure?) is a great language and you always seems shocked that I would consider anything besides Lisp great for anything else. I recall this reaction from you when I mentioned I liked CSS and now C.

This is the perspective you probably don't understand. I learned Lisp shortly after learning just enough Python to write simple programs. You probably have a deeper appreciation for Lisp because you were programming in many other languages before you were introduced to it, so apparently you see some magic to it that I don't know exists. For me, it's just part-and-parcel and there is no feeling of mind-expansion or some Shangri-La oi' joy near death experience realizations in Lisp. Sorry, I can't share that feeling with you. Notice how I always append adjectives like "supposedly" to all the great things Lisp does?

Just like Lisp would be a mind-bending and expanding language to someone who never seen it before, C is mind-bending and expanding to me. Does it suck that you can't nest functions and return arrays? Do working with strings have to be this damn difficult? I don't know the answer to these questions. I just know that it is a new perspective and I just so happen to like this new perspective. It forces me to see problems in a new light and that is all I can ask for when I learn a new language.

Maybe ****ing around with pointers and pushing bits around is fun in my opinion. What difference does it make to anyone if I enjoy that stuff and why wouldn't C be awesome if it is the only language that lets me do that without tearing my hair out?

Speaking of things inspired by xkcd comics:



You can play the game here:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/banthar/hell-tetris

My opinion of a language has nothing whatsoever to do with your enjoyment of said language. Fortunately the reverse of that is true.

You are entitled to enjoy whatever you want -- I don't begrudge you that at all, and in fact I do get the hackerish fun that can come with messing around with C and understanding how the machine works (not that I'm an expert in that, but I've done enough to appreciate it).

The big picture that you're not seeing, imo (or perhaps don't care about) is that the ultimate goal should be the ability to use a computer language to naturally express thought and high level concepts. Unless you are building really low level stuff, this will come up everywhere -- there is probably not a single useful application you will ever build (web app or otherwise) that is not built on concepts that ultimately have nothing to do with a computer. The computer, and the computer language, are just implementations details (but there are better and worse implementations). This is the big picture concept that I am trying to hammer home -- I'm not trying to be a dick, but it is so important and you seem like someone who cares and is willing to listen.

Understanding why CSS and C are not friendly to natural thought is just as important as learning them, imo.

Low-level languages make the task of that expression and modeling difficult, and high-level languages make it easy. As to whether or Clojure or ruby or python or a 100 other languages is better for that, now your middle ground, everything has its strenghs and weaknesses argument is fine by me. But you should see the fundamental difference between them and C.

Good post. I have nothing to add or subtract from it at this moment.

Really don't see how you're being a dick in your post. I find the thoughts highly interesting and I do agree with you that a language should allow you to express yourself and I do get the idea that the machine stuff isn't always relevant.

Anyone know any good tutorials for making stuff look good in iOS? I.e. going over making custom UI elements. Appcoda and Ray Wenderlich have a few, but it isn't quite enough for me.

Billions of man-hours have been spent chasing this bug. I've probably spent a week of my life beating my head against the wall over it.

The only thing I can think of that comes close is chasing down Microsoft proprietary curly quotes, double-hyphens and ellipses.

I will be participating in the Startup Institute web development rampup program. It's like one of those programming bootcamps/accelerators , but part time. Is there any interest in me starting a thread about my experience?

http://rampup.startupinstitute.com/web-development/

LOL!

Juk

How come there isn't any software for making 3D videos and photos from two regular photos/videos? At least I couldn't find any made for using 2D original files.

This should be quite simple in theory, especially for photos. You would just need to know the distance between the two original shots. This would be similar to Googles photosphere (which is amazing btw)

Stuck on 22..not sure exactly what to do, found the scrip that cron executes but no way of modifying anything...guess I'll just have to wait until cron runs and cat the file being written by the script?
Currently tail -f said file (which is empty) :P

There's a decent chance the challenge might be broken, too. The script is owned by the user I try to get the pw for but executable by my current user however the stuff the script tries to do requires permissions of the owner. Might be that +s is missing on it or something.

As is I think the only way of getting it is waiting until the cronjob runs and then cat-ing the file it writes. Cronjob seems to run every minute but the filesize is 0