This is the era of rating by the number of lines of code produced, when rated by people who don’t have any idea how many of those lines are actually required.

Programs are bloated generally, but really cursed with a lot of code that is never, ever called, or even reachable. It is left in because the new team is only supposed to look at new features, not make an organic whole of the program.

Yup! That’s what happened to me essentially.

I went for an interview after making it to the shortlist for a head of department role in a very large global company some years ago. The head of the whole IT division interviewing me was about 10 years my junior. He told me that he couldn’t hire me because I’d have his job in 6 Months. If anyone didn’t deserve such a position, it was him. And yet, that level of insecurity and inexperience is so common these days sadly.

The problem you, Bryan, and Badtux have, is intelligence, common sense and experience. 🙂

There was no worse experience than going in to a client’s to do an install and then having to explain why the hardware is busted and the install is impossible.

You end up wasting your time getting someone else’s problem resolved, so you can make your money and not screw up your schedule.

It’s amazing how many company’s assume that everything new works, so if they put something together from new parts it will just work.

In San Diego county I always checked the voltage when I went to a new client, because they have a third world electrical grid. There were places in the older part of town where getting a voltage above 100 from a wall socket was a good thing. You went through a lot of power supplies in that county.

On the front lines you learned who was watching their product, and who was just churning them out, or you had a lot of annoyed customers.

QA and burn-in lead to happy users. If a supplier or product had a bad run, it was dead to the local guys. Even with good margins, you don’t need the bad feelings.

But if it hadn’t been for me, the only person in the company who had the slightest clue as to how to actually manufacture computing hardware in a quality manner, that company would have delivered shit to customers. And my reward at the end for making sure that this company could actually ship quality supportable product to its customers was a bad evaluation because “we’re not really sure what you do or what value you add to our company”, swiftly followed by my resignation letter as I accepted a job from one of the many, many companies that were ringing my phone off the hook asking if I was available to work for them.

So now you know why so many companies deliver shit product to people. It’s because the people who know how to deliver quality product get the “we don’t know what value you add to our company” evaluations and quit. Luckily I have no connection with the hardware side of the business at my current company, and don’t have to deal with that anymore, not to mention that we’re small enough and our senior engineering staff hardware-savvy enough that we know the value that our manufacturing department and its final quality assurance measures add to our company. But I tell ya, being in this business for a while sure makes a guy cynical…

– Badtux the Computer Penguin

Now that they have prisoners and third-graders building the components that can’t be put together by robots, there is definitely a lack of quality control.

An article on XAMPP that might be interesting for you, and gives more information on what it is and why it’s useful. 🙂

XAMPP: The PHP Developer’s Dream

One of the primary reasons I use it, is that it makes installation of the AMPP stack easier on Linux, OS-X and Windows, and gives a common config and tools.

A good, solid parental control package should be a money maker, especially when there are bandwidth charges involved.

I remember the old days when everything was burned in for at least 48 hours before being sold. At the end, a 10% failure rate out of the box was considered good for a component. “Better, faster, cheaper”, became “cheaper”, and I don’t mean less expensive.

I went for a job interview some years ago as the Service manager for a large insurance company. I discovered that the previous guy had been there 8 Months, which in that company and that job, was considered long service. Their service department had more staff than the sales department! What’s wrong with this picture?

needless to say, I beat a hasty retreat even though I was offered a good package and well above industry standard wages (about 30% higher. Again, what’s wrong with that picture?) LOL

As an manager for a large project many years ago, I made sure everything was designed for all imaginable contingencies with a goal to minimizing downtime. We were successful. Out of over 6k units sold, fewer than a dozen needed repairs or service within 5 years. And they were simply replaced. The Company saved a fortune when compared to another companies lousy produce (which was cheaper) that it replaced. Nobody cares about that these days though. It’s all abut short-term ROI now.

One of my projects (when my hand heals and I can do stuff) is a Linux based firewall/junior smartass control/gateway system. 😉 LOL An engineering and ex-IT friend was complaining that his 16YO son is always bypassing the security and chewing up the Internet bandwidth and the bills are going through the roof. He’s given up trying to stop him short of pulling the plug! Having been something of a junior smartass myself, I have a handle on it. LOL I’ll spend a month evaluating things and then a solid bit of planning and strategy with various people I know. There is simply nothing out there (for any reasonable price at least) that will do the job. I am aiming for a price-point under $500. Will be an interesting project for me. 🙂 It sounds simple, but I know it isn’t by a long shot! I love that kind of challenge, it’s been too long. 🙂

I do not want to do this even though I would go to the airport “clean” having shipped everything ahead by UPS. If they can’t hack it, I’m going to price a cheap box that I can set up here and ship to them, because that’s got to be cheaper than the air fare, parking, hotel, etc.

– Badtux the Flightless Penguin