FOXJAZZ

I was surfing io13 and found this interesting article from google

2013-05-16T18:08:41-12:00:00

http://readwrite.com/2013/05/01/10-technology-skills-no-longer-in-demand

copied here just in case the link breaks.

10. Something That Seems Secure Today

The TIOBE Programming Community Index lists C, Java, C++ and Objective-C as the programming skills most in demand right now. But here's the thing. In 2009, Objective-C was barely in use. The rapid success of the iPhone and iPad vaulted the language's popularity. Now, however, just over three years later, its popularity is already stabilizing.

In today's superheated technology environment, even the most popular, most secure seeming technology skills can suddenly become obsolete. That's just the way it is. No matter how in-demand your current skill set, you can never rest on your resume.

Learning Is The Key

Will highlighting the wrong skill set to a recruiter brand you as out of touch - or too expensive to hire? Perhaps. But don't expect anyone to tell you that's what going on. More likely, they may just won't return your call, or let your resume vanish into the ether. (There will probably always be a few legacy jobs in all these areas, but that's about it.)

The only solution is to keep learning - and keep showing that youcan learn. While the pace of skills disruption may well be increasing, learning new skills has never been easier. That includes formal schooling as well as free and low-cost resources like Khan Academy and CodeAcademy, for example.

Here's the bottom line: Since so much technology is fairly new to everyone, why should a company invest in experienced candidates - rather than someone just starting out? Writing forThe Wall Street Journal, business professor and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa, was brutally direct:

It may be wrong, but look at this from the point of view of the employer. Why would any company pay a computer programmer with out-of-date skills a salary of say $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate — who has no skills — for around $60,000? Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead.

It's not just about the money, of course. To justify any salary, it's not only about what you know - now - but what you can learngoing forward. The key to a long career in Silicon Valley, or anywhere in the tech world, is showing that you can learn and adapt - and master - constant change.

Good luck!

Yelp has questionable business tactics

2013-03-27T02:21:53-12:00:00

Yelp has strong arm business tactics, and there is no Yelp about Yelp itself within its business to complain about it. That is one of the reasons for the complaint.

Yelp is well known, and because of that it prays on small businesses by charging small business a FEE to get a false complaint or report off their website.

This is a near criminal action.

I have been to several businesses and asked what they thought about yelp, and hear the same thing over and over. Yelp wants these businesses to pay a high fee to be able to pull false complaints off their board. Any idiot that doesn't like a business can put up a complaint in yelp, and bring their rating down, thus giving yelp leverage over that business. This is not free speech, because yelp asks the business to pay for such services a high fee to change the logic of their system to favor that business.

This is the complaint I have against yelp, and yelp should be obligated to have this notice on their website.

Thank you

Is this a different country?

2012-12-14T05:13:10-12:00:00

Coming the work these days, because I am on the IT floor, is like going to a different country.

About 3 out of 4 persons here are some version of Indian and I don't mean Christopher Columbus Indian.

Lucky for me, my time here is almost up, and maybe I won't feel like a foreigner in my own land.

Anyone else having similar experiences?

context with big data

2012-12-04T18:55:48-12:00:00

If data can encapsulate context, there is huge value in collecting loads of it.

Context is the key to big data, without it, they may as well be swimming in an ocean.

Once context can be deciphered, then all that data will be highly valuable. And I know companies are working on this, however figuring out the context is the holy grail to the bit universe.

mywickr.com

2012-12-04T18:24:50-12:00:00

Its a nice thought that you can send a message that goes poof.

However all you need is an iphone to save the message forever by taking a picture.

Sorry wickr, there is a flaw in thy logic.

c# vocabulary

2012-11-08T18:04:11-12:00:00

I have probably seen and used the word Encapsulation 4 times in my 20 years of programming.

I now know what it is again, after an interview for a c# job. Even though I have used the public, private, and protected key words in classes for as long as c# was invented.

I can sill remember coming across the string.IndexOf function and thinking, why didn't they call it IndexAt, or FindIn.

Now with all the new items like Lambda and Rx, Linq, map and pmap etc, etc. I think the more choices there is to do 1 or 2 things 10 or 15 differing ways, the more programmers think to stay with what works and try and leverage the new stuff only when it really becomes beneficial.

For many, the new stuff is harder to read, because programmers aren't use to seeing declarative notation.

I mean I have probably used yield break, twice in my project where it may have been possible to use it many more times. Or the using statement ( not the declaration of namespace references) but inline using. I never really saw a big advantage to this, other than confusion. It is another form of local encapsulation (oh there 5 times used in my programming career) but who's counting? THE COMPUTERS ARE COUNTING!

In business logic most programming is about displaying lists, selecting items in a list, and sending those choices to some other system or database to keep track of those selections. What makes this difficult is how these items relate to one, each other, and to externally listed items.

Well I probably need to go back to school and learn c# certification so I can say I am an expert in c#. Apparently using all aspects of c# (even unsafe code) in my programming life, doesn't make me certified, just certifiable.

This is a good time to sign off:

Fox-jazzy

windows 8 shortcut link.

2012-11-08T17:46:37-12:00:00

I could have used this html for a windows 8 start page.

http://winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-tip-windows-key-shortcuts-140626

wow ok win8 still needs some work.

2012-11-08T04:14:52-12:00:00

I was on geeks with blogs on win8, and noticed I couldn't create a new post.

Now using chrome with 8 and I am posting.

I am finding things I like about windows 8 and things that I just don't know yet.

Like what's the shortcut key to bring me to a clean legacy desktop?

And also what about those apps that get suspended like the explorer app when you go to mail, and your explorer app was in the middle of downloading a file. So you have to start the download again.

I am impressed with some of the improvements, however I think in order for all these things to be accepted as a matter of well by the masses, chrome or firefox (ie won't do it) needs to upgrade their browsers to work with html5 and css3 fully. Obviously the first group that does that will be the browser of choice for any user.

There are other observations that I am on the verge of making, but I need to research a bit more before making any comments on the new windows store visual studio 12 environment.

Have a good day,

Signing off.

Foxjazz

Upon Reflection

2012-11-06T04:22:17-12:00:00

During my tenure at the last company, I didn't let my career stagnate as others have and as time moved along.

When at work or home, spend 10% of your time learning something new about some aspect or segway of your job so that your skills are marketable in case you lose it. From experience let me reinforce that it pays off. It pays off in your current job because of the education received and the competence increase of your skills which applied will bring recognition.

In these days and times, loyalty to a company is truly at an end. However many companies do care about cultivating their employees which creates a brand of loyalty that can't be replaced. Old companies with the Corp. mentality (or because of the corp. mentality) ever decrease their budgets on organizational sections and thereby do a RIF as a matter of business.

The mistakes they make during this process can be risky. But who am I, but a lowly ole programmer, to judge risk. If you are laid off, be friendly with your past manager, and based on simple questions and help, give whatever help you can over the phone even though you are under no obligation to do so.

It is also quite possible that there are opportunities to make at home with a new company in the future. Just remember that when inquiring about a position, take advantage of the training that is offered, and keep yourself emotionally and educationally fit.

Talk soon,

foxjazz

v-lookup for the easy.

2012-08-13T16:37:41-12:00:00

So this week in programming I used aspose to reproduce the functionality of v-lookup so it’s easy.

2 sheets are loaded, all the user has to do is select the matching column for each sheet and hit Merge.

Then the user can save the resulting sheet.

That’s so our users can do the work very easily without having to learn v-lookup in excel.