I think in his condescending way he is implying that 5 months is just enough time to teach someone enough programming to be dangerous.
The hard part is I think he might have a point, there is a lot more to been a professional software engineer than I think can reasonably be taught in 5 months (even if you spend that 5 months learning 20 hours a day 7 days a week).
Of course this is all entirely my own opinion, I've seen evidence neither one way or the other to back it up but if I where hiring a software engineer (lets say a web developer because that's mostly what I do these days so the most likely hire I'd make in the near time).
This is at least what I'd expect of someone calling themselves a software engineer :-
At least two programming languages (I don't really care what they are a good programmer can be competent in any of the major web languages fairly quickly).
A solid grasp of HTML, CSS and Javascript (I don't care if you have to google some of this stuff but you should understand the DOM, the CSS selector model and enough Javascript to write a jQuery plugin)
A solid of grasp of relational databases including the following (primary keys, normalization, key constraints, indexes - I'd also expect but not require they'd understand some of the internals and how a query planner works) and a solid grasp of SQL.
A solid understanding of DBAL's, ORM's.
Solid grasp of common design patters (active record, repositories/entity, unit of work)
Solid grasp of MVC and the pro's and cons
Good understanding of either Windows or Linux.
Good understanding of source control.
Good understanding of why comments are important.
Good understanding of unit testing/integration testing.
To use an analogy (I deal with lots of business people, analogies help) You could teach someone to lay bricks to a good standard in 5 months, You could not teach them to be a safe civil engineer.
Your list seems very targeted towards website development and not so much towards a lot of other parts of software engineering. I doubt many software engineers who focus on embedded systems would know much JS or those who focus on trading software, etc.
You'd need to know a lot more about data structures, memory management, hardware in general, and probably be at least passingly familiar with the concepts of verified software and the mathematics underpinning computer science to work on embedded systems.
- Two programming languages: JavaScript and a Server Side languages (rails) in 5 months is not impossible.
- HTML/CSS/JS: A couple weeks.
- Databases: A couple days.
- Linux: Learn the commands on the go on these 5 months.
- Git: A night for the basic add/commit/push/pull. Maybe a couple more nights for branching.
- Unit Testing: A couple days at most.
To use an analogy (I deal with lots of business people, analogies help) You could teach someone to lay bricks to a good standard in 5 months, You could not teach them to be a safe civil engineer.
Not really. The average student takes 36 months. A more enthusiastic and invested one can perform better than the average in 5-6 months (in my opinion). Don't forget that the guy has industry experience even if it's not related to the field in question.
Is it illegal? If not, it sounds like a brilliant plan. I'm shocked that people who work with removing coding bugs on a daily basis are so quick to assume that a "bug" in the tax code is Google's fault.
Keeping your money when you owe it for a service is, yes. It's called "theft of services".
EDIT: Perhaps I should put it more clearly...
If you sell goods on Google Play, I believe there is a fee of 30%. Now, imagine I found a bug in the Google Play store that meant that, even though I sold millions of copies of my app, I actually paid 0% to the Play Store. Do you think that Google would just accept that I'd found a bug in their software and therefore I owed them nothing? Do you think I owe them nothing?
Google chose to participate in a market where the costs were clearly labelled up-front and they didn't even have to pay a penny unless they made a significant profit!
Why the hell should they get away with paying nothing for a service that other people pay a lot of money for?
So (unethical) hackers are also completely blameless, after all it is in fact the software itself that allows this unintended access. Are you willing to endorse that statement?
If not, then Google is to blame for taking advantage of tax loopholes.
* in the interest of greater acceptance, the committee solicits opinions of users for how to design the software
* some users need certain features, and the committee members are open to "suggestion"
* committee members have no issue with accepting suggestions without considering their impact
* committee members have no issue with accepting bribes in exchange for guarantees of certain features being implemented
* committee members actively solicit suggestions because they want money
* there are no repercussions for committee members taking bribes and blindly accepting feature requests, as a matter of fact it's official policy that they do so
Yeah, those "hackers" are definitely to blame here. They're playing the game by the rules and they're winning, and that makes you upset? Personally I'm not even surprised at all.
An analogous situation would be an NSA member sitting on a committee developing an encryption standard. The NSA member suggests a change that the committee members do not fully comprehend the implications of. They accept the standard and henceforth the NSA can crack the resulting cryptosystem. By your reasoning the NSA carries no moral fault here.
Man, the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify tax avoidance is astounding. Those with greater knowledge in an assumed non-adversarial system have a moral imperative to disseminate that knowledge to the others in the system. Otherwise taking advantage of the information imbalance and the other party's implied trust is unethical.
Just because something is legal does not make it right. Those who would outsource their moral thinking to laws are a sorry lot.
Morals and ethics have no say in determining whether to pay taxes -- if you pay too much then the government complains, if you don't pay enough then the government complains. Where exactly does right and wrong fit into this equation?
There are no mental gymnastics in determining how much taxes you have to pay, the only thing that matters is how much you pay.
>Morals and ethics have no say in determining whether to pay taxes
Morals/ethics do have a determination whether the concept of tax is ethical or not, which would then determine the ethics of avoiding said tax. If you take the position that tax is ethical (as a member of a society...) then it is at least on the surface unethical to avoid the intended tax rate (shifting burden, freeloading, etc).
It is impossible to undo the damage done by some forms of hacking. For example, if someone breaks into your email provider and publishes embarrassing emails about you in public, it would be impossible to undo the damage by any reasonable means. Tomorrow the lawmakers could pass a law stating that all tax not paid be returned to the government.
Also in a free market, governments should compete for companies to register their books in their respective countries and the competition between the governments should keep the tax rates fair.
Its not a "brilliant plan". Pretending that Bermuda "owns" your profits is borderline fraud. It may well be illegal too but no one has yet challenged it, though France may do.
Just like anything in life, there's a level of effort to science/math/engineering. If you begin when you're 3 or when you're 30, you still are going to have to give that level of effort. I think people confuse those who started early as winning some genetic lottery but in fact, they simply got started earlier.
iphone 5 is my first and last iphone. After getting the core text exploit via a text message, I didn't realize just how little of "my" data I actually owned. Attempting to delete a single text message via my computer was impossible unless I was willing to pay some company $70. Apple's innovation since Jobs is non-existent (at least Jobs could steal ideas and package them in a unique way). Google is a huge company that still innovates so they get my money.
... what do you think is handling the key pressing?... It's not just CSS. The only thing this does that's different than iterating over every element is it splits the hiding to the CSS engine.
Steve Ballmer is the perfect example of why a business person should not run a software company. The opinion that "Steve knows how to make money" is a poor indicator of a successful leader. Microsoft has alienated developers leaving only enterprise developers to create boring interfaces for users causing many personal computer users to find something more aesthetically pleasing (OSX/Ubuntu). A company based solely on making money is like a marriage based solely around sex and benefit to social-status. If you're a .NET developer and this offended you; good. Money != happiness
This is the tragedy that is a publicly-traded software company. Ballmer's sole responsibility as CEO is to maximize shareholder value, and the Board has to hold him to that. If A CEO prioritizes anything else, they will be fired and will become vulnerable personal lawsuits. It is literally their job description to make money over anything else. Taking the "long view" rarely appeases the Board, because short-term quarterly numbers are what determines the corporation's value.
