Idk I can see the job being cozy/easy and I can see it being a pain (Like most jobs).
Every programmer agrees that programming would be beneficial to have as a skill for the job. It probably will become a requirement to have programming under a sysadmin's belt in the future. Writing some scripts to automate stuff should be what a sysadmin is doing so he/she can focus on more important things like you wrote.

I'm waiting for the second generation of smart watches before I buy.
I do not need one currently and do not really feel like developing anything for it.

Definitely think that the watches excel for navigation when walking.

Doubt anyone would notice, they're all to busy walking around with their cell phones in hand and head down aswell.

Here is the link to his speech on the topic at PyCon 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE

I found it pretty interesting. One point he brings up is by 2020 there will be a labor shortage of 1.5million developers in the US alone. So our stock is rising, so DaveT, another reason you should be asking for more not less.

This is interesting and strikes me as a compelling use case.

I was totally wrong about the iPad, so I'm sure I could be wrong about the watch, but I just don't get it. And I actually like wearing a watch.

Like the navigation example - is looking at your wrist really that different than looking at your phone? Doesn't the watch still need to be paired to your phone?

I've had an apple watch for a few weeks and the coolest thing I've found for it is using it to unlock my computer by a prompt on the watch. MacID uses your phone's bluetooth connection to do the unlocking and will send the prompt to the watch. Using it for a remote for all my other things is also nice. The notifications are good too but I had to take hip chat off because of the amount of spam our hip chat rooms get from Github.

FWIW I predicted iPad would be a big hit, but think the watch will be more of a niche thing.

given their expectations for it, it's hard to imagine it not flopping. if it were a phone replacement, i suppose i could see it having a shot at being big. but you a) have to be someone who likes to wear a watch (fine, there are lots of those) b) have to have an iphone and c) still have to carry around your phone, making d) the watch essentially just a convenience interface to the phone.

i know betting against apple hasn't been a good move historically, but if i could somehow wager against the watch i absolutely would

Yah too bad the watch doesn't just piggy back on other users' iPhones.

Would mainly benefit in large cities and there could be a privacy concern with battery usage increase for phones that piggy back the service to the watches.

I think having the watch as a minimalist approach to receive/make texts, receive voice mail and use wifi when available would have been better.

I'm waiting for the future where the piggy back idea takes off. I think it makes more sense to have devices located everywhere that forwards the services, than having the component in the carried device.

Another example is having a video card that can just be plugged by cable into a laptop. Would kill desktop units so companies that do not want to happen, haven't pushed it out yet.

Anyone know of a tool to make setting up and maintaining developer environments easier? I thought I had read about something a while back that made getting a new developer's computer set up easy to do and easy to maintain. Almost like a Git repo for disk images.

Theres vagrant for virtual machine images & docker for some linux container magic I don't really understand. You'll probably also need some provisioning tool like chef/puppet/ansible/salt.

All these tools are tilting as **** ime. The docs only half explain anything and literally every tutorial/example available is out of date and doesn't work. I think its a sysadmin conspiracy.

Any imaging tool? Whatever people use to do mass OS installs in corporate environments?

dd

(I think the default is vagrant+provisioning to set up consistent dev-environments + use whatever you want on your box)

Docker is good. I have a few docker managed apps that can be replicated on any environment with 1 command, or 1 command + a tiny bit of one time setup if you're on a mac.

Fog is a linux server environment that is supposed to male imaging over the network easier.

You don't need to look at it - the watch vibrates to tell you when to turn.

Identification/authorization could be a big use case for the watch - computer, airport, hotel room, Apple Pay, etc.

A isn't true - you could not like wearing a watch but still put up with it if you get enough value out of it. I don't particularly enjoy carrying a bulky piece of glass in my pocket but I still do because it's so useful. B through D are mostly true right now, but computing power will eventually improve to where the phone becomes unnecessary.

How much? (assuming we can work out the details of course)

Y'all are pretty unimaginative, looking at the watch as it is today without thinking about how it could look in future iterations. It's like ranting about the original iPhone not having an app store or something.

https://stratechery.com/2015/apple-m...arable-market/

Yeah I can see that some apps will catch on. I just don't see it being that big of a bombshell. Whereas with the iPhone and iPad I immediately saw a big market.

But to be fair I remember thinking I would never send a text message, then thinking I'd never send an IM.

mrs r has the watch. as far as i can tell all she can do with it is tell time and need to be charged every 12 hours.

Yeah. I don't really give a **** about the money though. I don't apply for a job then research because I'm just interested in the work I'm applying for. The money quote is just a response to a question and it never occurred to me that it may be a signal. Reality is I don't know and don't care. I'll say that next time.

I don't make a whole lot of money now, but I don't really want anything either. If I made $90k, I wouldn't do anything with it.

Is she the market for this?

I'd be in the same boat to be honest with you. I get no joy out of gadgets and feel like my time is better spent not learning UI.

As of today it seems the watches are mostly useful for exercise people. A lot of people are wearing fitbits, so why not get some more functionality with a smartwatch?

I don't think they expected it to be big. Initial production run was something like 5 million I think, very small beans by Apple standards. They put out the Edition to mitigate sticker shock for the horribly overpriced standard one and harvested a pretty good margin on it.

I've been developing an app for a few months now that has a Watch component. Consensus among people I work with (none of whom are Apple fans, admittedly) is that the thing is useless. Development on it is incredibly limited, it's basically a second screen for the iPhone that has bucketloads of limitations on what you're allowed to display on it. The first weekend we had one, a developer took it home and his gf asked him to "make it do something cool". He couldn't figure anything out. It doesn't do anything cool.

Amazing brand, able to hit the market with a product like this that looks bland, is less functional than competitors and costs twice as much and can still get people desperately trying to come up with reasons to buy one. I'm a card carrying Apple hater but products like the iPhone are class leading pieces of tech. The Watch is the embodiment of lol Apple fans to me, it amazes me that anyone would buy one. Just my opinion.

Way too much talk about the Apple watch. Android Wear FTW...mostly because I think Apple watches are ugly
I wouldn't wear an Apple watch with a suit. The Urbane isn't perfect but it mixes way better with a suit imo.

Battery time is 2 days with my usage btw. Will probably go down eventually but hopefully not below 1 day.

The Watch is miles worse for fitness.

Apple Watch:

- $400 retail for the cheapest one with the cheapest band
- Does not have GPS
- Battery life 12 hours

Fitbit Surge:

- Does everything the Watch does fitness wise
- $250 on Amazon
- GPS tracking
- Battery life 1 week

I do like the look of the Urbane better but all current smartwatches are a bit ugly imo.

I feel like the eventual direction of the market will be away from having a screen, once everyone realises that trying to do stuff on a postage stamp size screen sucks. My money is on a nice looking analog watch that also has a ton of smart stuff built in - auto unlocking phone and computer on proximity, NFC payments, car ignition, gps and heart rate, that kind of stuff.

Or you can get pebble time for $90-150.

https://getpebble.com/shop