nocto

times have changed. welcome to a world where the programmer who knows how to tap into other people’s brains and experience using the internet has a decisive advantage.

shussssssh, joel! you’re giving my secrets away! i heard a quote a long time ago; i can’t remember quite how it went, but the gist of it was “good programmers plagarise”. before i heard that, and a story to go with it, i had an idea that i’d be a better programmer if i learned to do everything from scratch. then i realised that i didn’t have to invent the wheel myself. i can use other people’s wheels and i can see how they work and so i can make better software myself because i’ve tapped into their knowledge.

i googled for the quote without getting anywhere. i’m sure “plagarise” was the word used in the original. i found stacks of computing courses with warnings to students not to commit plagarism in the execution of their labwork. but the real world differs from the world of the student lab. if i find a tool that does the job i want then i try to use it rather than rewrite it. if i find a piece of code in the public domain that solves the problem i try to understand it and use it. sometimes one has to trust in black magic but, as joel rightly points out, it’s the ability to tap into brains and understand that’s useful not just the ability to help yourself to those brains.

i want at least a bit of a wireless network in my home. i haven’t found it particularly simple to find out info about wireless networking. zdnet uk have been about the best source of info i’ve found so far. part of my problem is that until i know exactly what i can and can’t do with this hardware it’s hard to know exactly what i want to do. that i want my laptop to be wireless is a given. whether i want wireless desktop machines depends very much on the abilities, reliabilities, upgradabilities and cross-platform-abilities of the hardware and software involved. and the price of course.

an interesting opinion seen on a mailing list:

september 11th shows us another reason why working from home makes good business sense

a couple of years ago i was interviewed as part of an audit by a customer looking to buy software from my company. one of the questions they asked us was how would the product be supported if a plane crashed into our building. i suspect this question has become more than hypothetical to a fair few people now.

i live in fear of getting to the end of my life and discovering that i missed out on doing a whole stack of things that i wanted to do. one of the problems is that i forget exactly what it is that i want to do. sometimes i find out afterwards that i could’ve done something magical if only i’d thought of it at the right time. and once you’ve done a thing it’s easy to forget that it was one of your must do things.

one of my must do things is to see the northern lights.