I brought another car on auction from http://wwiw.auctionvancouver.com/
This is the 3rd car i buy/sell through the same. Do i do it again ? depends but mostly i will go for a private sale or a new car.
Why ?
First car i brought : Pontiac grand AM 2000 SE - $3500 for a 186k km run car
total pay after tax and other fees : 4500+. Now brakes and other tuneups another $1000.
Total spending : $5500. Only maintenance expenses and no problems
Second car : sold old 198x Honda : Sold for $150, in hand after fees $49;
Third car : 1998 Volvo S70 ( i fall in love in first sight but had no idea on price ). Brought for $4000. after fees etc $5000, now in tune ups and breaks, $1000 ( its not with me yet ).
Total $6000, i searched in craigslists : price starts from $4500 to $6000. I am sure they are negotiable.
End result : Its better if you can get car below $3000 than normal buy else :-(.
© yankandpaste®
Showing posts with label Reflections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reflections. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Paying for the Rich - A Carbon Tax story
Finally i am understanding - we live for the rich to take advantage of us.
Everybody say - Lets go green.
The Question is How much green ?
Now i see every where selling has a green or a Hybrid word associated to it.
Lets come back: As my background , I have a kid who is going to be 2 yr old.To save some money from income,we decided not to send kid to daycare ( yep we need to give half of my wife income to daycare to take care of baby and day care work from 7-5 and we work from 9-6 ).For this we make a bit hard decision of working in shifts ( my wife works at night and i work at day ).
Her job is 30 kms away from the place we live ( yes we looked for jobs near, as we don't have degrees from here ( her degree is accredited to equivalent to Masters in Canada but Canadian employers never give a chance for her to attend interview. So she got option from an Australia based company). I drop her at night and go and pick her in the morning. I own a Pontiac grand AM which gives me 9.8 kmpl. We use car for transport as night its not safe for her to take public transit.Apart from this i take public transit and because of these tax additions there was a fare increase recently.
Now Carbon tax :
Gasoline: 2.41 cents per litre in 2008, rising to 7.24 cents per litre by 2012
Natural gas: 49.88 cents per GJ in 2008, rising to 149.64 cents per GJ by 2012
It added around 20 cents per day to my gas bill ( as of now ). As the gas prices were sky rocking, it has null effect, still it did its job of taking money out of me.
Canada is a cold county (kool place ) and everybody uses Gasoline/Natural gas in winter.Winter is yet to come, let me see how much more i have to pay.I am sure its going to hit me hard in winter from all places. Yes i think it was a smart move to introduce it in summer with giving a $ 100 incentive to hand.
Fine , I pay and money is gone out of me. Now the second part starts
Where this tax money goes ?
Last day i was watching a TV - a news special saying Trucks go green :- Introduction of Hybrid Trucks. Wow green!! . I started listening. Some sales people talk - We are committed to go green. I felt again WOW!!.
Me more listening.
The truck owner association president :- "We are committed to go green and we expect Gov to divert funds from carbon tax to aid buying more Green trucks"
Wow!!, What a nice way of taking my hard earned money as his business investment.
Am i a Fool ? or do we need these systems to help or overkill us ?
© yankandpaste®
Everybody say - Lets go green.
The Question is How much green ?
Now i see every where selling has a green or a Hybrid word associated to it.
Lets come back: As my background , I have a kid who is going to be 2 yr old.To save some money from income,we decided not to send kid to daycare ( yep we need to give half of my wife income to daycare to take care of baby and day care work from 7-5 and we work from 9-6 ).For this we make a bit hard decision of working in shifts ( my wife works at night and i work at day ).
Her job is 30 kms away from the place we live ( yes we looked for jobs near, as we don't have degrees from here ( her degree is accredited to equivalent to Masters in Canada but Canadian employers never give a chance for her to attend interview. So she got option from an Australia based company). I drop her at night and go and pick her in the morning. I own a Pontiac grand AM which gives me 9.8 kmpl. We use car for transport as night its not safe for her to take public transit.Apart from this i take public transit and because of these tax additions there was a fare increase recently.
Now Carbon tax :
Gasoline: 2.41 cents per litre in 2008, rising to 7.24 cents per litre by 2012
Natural gas: 49.88 cents per GJ in 2008, rising to 149.64 cents per GJ by 2012
It added around 20 cents per day to my gas bill ( as of now ). As the gas prices were sky rocking, it has null effect, still it did its job of taking money out of me.
Canada is a cold county (kool place ) and everybody uses Gasoline/Natural gas in winter.Winter is yet to come, let me see how much more i have to pay.I am sure its going to hit me hard in winter from all places. Yes i think it was a smart move to introduce it in summer with giving a $ 100 incentive to hand.
Fine , I pay and money is gone out of me. Now the second part starts
Where this tax money goes ?
Last day i was watching a TV - a news special saying Trucks go green :- Introduction of Hybrid Trucks. Wow green!! . I started listening. Some sales people talk - We are committed to go green. I felt again WOW!!.
Me more listening.
The truck owner association president :- "We are committed to go green and we expect Gov to divert funds from carbon tax to aid buying more Green trucks"
Wow!!, What a nice way of taking my hard earned money as his business investment.
Am i a Fool ? or do we need these systems to help or overkill us ?
© yankandpaste®
Paying for the Rich - An ICBC story
Finally i am understanding - we live for the rich to take advantage of us.
Let me tell the full story
I was driving last day and my car skid and hit side of the road. I was not on high speeds or my car was not bad. But i think i was a bit fast for the climate ( it was drizzling and road became slippery ). I travel the same way for last 3 yrs and never had any problems.Why it slipped on that day ? I am not sure because i travelled on same road 8.5 hrs before. lets be back to story.
So car skid and hit the concrete barrier. Fortunately nobody got injured (yes i had my 2 year old boy in the car ) but the car got some repairs, I reported the incident to police and some towing company towed the car to ICBC.
Now the real story :
Dialed ICBC - The first made the claim and asked options. Then real understanding started. If i make a claim even its $100 its going to have subsequent insurance increase of 55% next year 45% second year and 35% third year and 4th year it will be back to my current rate. This means around $5000 extra to my budget over 3 years. I brought the car for $3500 2 years back.This means ICBC write off my car is going to give me $3500 max.
Afer i heard all maths from icbc i dialed one of my friend for a second
opanion and he revealed his story which finally end up in not claiming and fixing car himself.
Now i started thinking, what about rich ? They own cars of $35000+, a skid means $10000 min. They also pay the same insurance extra as me if they claim ( so extra $4000 ) and $6000 for free.
From where this money comes ? From mine and your insurance. Finally we pay insurance for
For making ICBC profit full
For giving free money to Rich ( last 3 yrs i paid more that $7000 as insurance to ICBC and now i have to write off my car which adds another $2000 ( after my own use deduction )
Time to think - Do we really need these systems ??
ICBC ? http://www.icbc.com/
Expect another article on Carbon tax, This is another way the working class pay for rich to remodel/expand their business.
© yankandpaste®
Let me tell the full story
I was driving last day and my car skid and hit side of the road. I was not on high speeds or my car was not bad. But i think i was a bit fast for the climate ( it was drizzling and road became slippery ). I travel the same way for last 3 yrs and never had any problems.Why it slipped on that day ? I am not sure because i travelled on same road 8.5 hrs before. lets be back to story.
So car skid and hit the concrete barrier. Fortunately nobody got injured (yes i had my 2 year old boy in the car ) but the car got some repairs, I reported the incident to police and some towing company towed the car to ICBC.
Now the real story :
Dialed ICBC - The first made the claim and asked options. Then real understanding started. If i make a claim even its $100 its going to have subsequent insurance increase of 55% next year 45% second year and 35% third year and 4th year it will be back to my current rate. This means around $5000 extra to my budget over 3 years. I brought the car for $3500 2 years back.This means ICBC write off my car is going to give me $3500 max.
Afer i heard all maths from icbc i dialed one of my friend for a second
opanion and he revealed his story which finally end up in not claiming and fixing car himself.
Now i started thinking, what about rich ? They own cars of $35000+, a skid means $10000 min. They also pay the same insurance extra as me if they claim ( so extra $4000 ) and $6000 for free.
From where this money comes ? From mine and your insurance. Finally we pay insurance for
For making ICBC profit full
For giving free money to Rich ( last 3 yrs i paid more that $7000 as insurance to ICBC and now i have to write off my car which adds another $2000 ( after my own use deduction )
Time to think - Do we really need these systems ??
ICBC ? http://www.icbc.com/
Expect another article on Carbon tax, This is another way the working class pay for rich to remodel/expand their business.
© yankandpaste®
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Complexity theory
Last day was talking a friend ( he is am immigrant from Iran ) about howz his friends etc. From him i got this complexity theory
In the place we have friends whom we have a lot to talk in common. Once we immigrate or go away from them , for first years we will dial back a lot talk to them etc. Later the frequency of communication goes less , and less and less. This time you will be building your roots ( a circle of complexities ) here and your friends will building there own roots. After some time you guys may find that there is less/ Nothing to talk because your complexities are different from your friends.
Once again :- what you share common with a friend who studied in school where you were very close with him/her and how much time you can talk now and what subjects ?
© yankandpaste®
In the place we have friends whom we have a lot to talk in common. Once we immigrate or go away from them , for first years we will dial back a lot talk to them etc. Later the frequency of communication goes less , and less and less. This time you will be building your roots ( a circle of complexities ) here and your friends will building there own roots. After some time you guys may find that there is less/ Nothing to talk because your complexities are different from your friends.
Once again :- what you share common with a friend who studied in school where you were very close with him/her and how much time you can talk now and what subjects ?
© yankandpaste®
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
A Year happened
Its an year passed, after we started the yankandpaste. Last year we want to make sure we can post things for an year ( make a habit). Thatz not for this year.
This year we will focus on in depth stuff than news. Yes the posts will be less in number - even i don't get wondered if there is only 12 posts for an year or a post per month but we will cover in depth.
The second focus is to introduce the new companies started by friends, This is to give an intro about the new areas friends are working.
Let us work on something in depth :-)
© yankandpaste®
This year we will focus on in depth stuff than news. Yes the posts will be less in number - even i don't get wondered if there is only 12 posts for an year or a post per month but we will cover in depth.
The second focus is to introduce the new companies started by friends, This is to give an intro about the new areas friends are working.
Let us work on something in depth :-)
© yankandpaste®
Saturday, March 29, 2008
The Home Market - My view on Vancovuer
Last few days, was browsing through mls.ca for home listings and was talking to realtors, private sellers and some friends who own houses.
The people who brought houses some year back are trying to sell and get profit.
The new people who brought houses are really struggling on the payment.I am strongly expecting the housing crash to affect Vancouver too. Reason : more people take loans through consultant, the job of consultant is to get a big money,so lot people have taken more than they can afford.They all expect the money to go up and get more money out of it.
If a home has income of 60k /annum he gets 5k per annum, in a normal scene without tax, 5 k to hand and 2.5 k for mortgage. But the fact is total money is not coming to hand, there is taxes, and then people wont consider other expenses related to home while buying (heat and hydro ). They are going very up than expected. If one person of home goes sick ? full budget to more loans.
The high pay jobs are information based and they are shifting to places where there is low pay. Now how people can expect they will get paid high for providing services to the low pay people.
Finally these people who brought houses for high money expecting somebody will buy for more money is going to end up as losers.
The finance guy was saying : "If you need i can arrange more money ". I felt he is saying "my commission is based on how much you take".
The realtor was saying " For buying a house: buy a house and them wait than waiting to buy a house" . I felt its this way, " i wanna get my money, so buy now".
What i decided is wait, and not to pay a 250k worth house 500k because somebody is saying prices are high. As there is no more high pay job opportunities no point in saying prices are up.
The fun part is last day ( march 28 - spring ) was snowing in Vancouver )
© yankandpaste®
The people who brought houses some year back are trying to sell and get profit.
The new people who brought houses are really struggling on the payment.I am strongly expecting the housing crash to affect Vancouver too. Reason : more people take loans through consultant, the job of consultant is to get a big money,so lot people have taken more than they can afford.They all expect the money to go up and get more money out of it.
If a home has income of 60k /annum he gets 5k per annum, in a normal scene without tax, 5 k to hand and 2.5 k for mortgage. But the fact is total money is not coming to hand, there is taxes, and then people wont consider other expenses related to home while buying (heat and hydro ). They are going very up than expected. If one person of home goes sick ? full budget to more loans.
The high pay jobs are information based and they are shifting to places where there is low pay. Now how people can expect they will get paid high for providing services to the low pay people.
Finally these people who brought houses for high money expecting somebody will buy for more money is going to end up as losers.
The finance guy was saying : "If you need i can arrange more money ". I felt he is saying "my commission is based on how much you take".
The realtor was saying " For buying a house: buy a house and them wait than waiting to buy a house" . I felt its this way, " i wanna get my money, so buy now".
What i decided is wait, and not to pay a 250k worth house 500k because somebody is saying prices are high. As there is no more high pay job opportunities no point in saying prices are up.
The fun part is last day ( march 28 - spring ) was snowing in Vancouver )
© yankandpaste®
Is the chip war back on?
2 cores, 4 cores ? 3 cores next 6 cores
Happens, Thatz how chips works. AMD came up with a 3 core chip at a lower price than quad core.
read : http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207000251
and Intel planning for a 6 core chip.
parallelism in OS may be a very great stuff for some time.
© yankandpaste®
Happens, Thatz how chips works. AMD came up with a 3 core chip at a lower price than quad core.
read : http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207000251
and Intel planning for a 6 core chip.
parallelism in OS may be a very great stuff for some time.
© yankandpaste®
Monday, March 17, 2008
100-year-old model for electric car coming back
To promote itself, Detroit Electric--a new joint venture between Zap and China's Youngman Automotive Group--plan to release a limited number of cars based around the Detroit Electric, an electric car produced by the Anderson Electric Car Co. in the early part of the 20th century.
details : http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9894597-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
© yankandpaste®
details : http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9894597-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
© yankandpaste®
Child like intelligence created in Second Life
Do you really think we are in a second life ?
Hindu philosophy says all around you is maya. The news is man is able to create intelligence in the virtual world called second like. so the creature in second life thinks like a 4 yr old person.
read details at :
http://itnews.com.au/News/72057,childlike-intelligence-created-in-second-life.aspx
I think we too are. there are 4-5 virtual worlds created initially and somebody was doing experiments. Then they tested the server to server communication and that how we have whites, Blacks, Asians , South Asians etc etc happened.
© yankandpaste®
Hindu philosophy says all around you is maya. The news is man is able to create intelligence in the virtual world called second like. so the creature in second life thinks like a 4 yr old person.
read details at :
http://itnews.com.au/News/72057,childlike-intelligence-created-in-second-life.aspx
I think we too are. there are 4-5 virtual worlds created initially and somebody was doing experiments. Then they tested the server to server communication and that how we have whites, Blacks, Asians , South Asians etc etc happened.
© yankandpaste®
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
2 escalators :Simple life, Its just choice
Was walking from skytrain station to work, there are 2 escalators in front of me, I came to one and found its not working, still lot people walking on it as 2 raws. Switched to the second one which is working, stood on the raw which doesn't walk, the walking raw was almost null and i found later one guy walking up on that raw.
Was wondering life is also like this :
Lot people walks on the stagnant one - and they reach up
Lot people are stagnant but they reach up because the system is moving.
Some people who walks on the moving system so they reach up in half time than rest.
Which one is good ?
I don't know, i felt all has its advantages
The walking on stagnant on says : When going gets tough the tough gets going and they are healthy because of walk.
The stagnant people : They enjoy the free moments on laziness still moves (look at me and my thoughts at that time )
The walking people on working system : They reach to half time so they can do more things in the time others reach that level
Simple life, Its just choice.
NB: escalator: a power-driven set of stairs arranged like an endless belt that ascend or descend continuously
© yankandpaste®
Was wondering life is also like this :
Lot people walks on the stagnant one - and they reach up
Lot people are stagnant but they reach up because the system is moving.
Some people who walks on the moving system so they reach up in half time than rest.
Which one is good ?
I don't know, i felt all has its advantages
The walking on stagnant on says : When going gets tough the tough gets going and they are healthy because of walk.
The stagnant people : They enjoy the free moments on laziness still moves (look at me and my thoughts at that time )
The walking people on working system : They reach to half time so they can do more things in the time others reach that level
Simple life, Its just choice.
NB: escalator: a power-driven set of stairs arranged like an endless belt that ascend or descend continuously
© yankandpaste®
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Apple Mac - a love starts
Last weeks, i got chance to work with Apple Mac computers, started with Min mac, then a G5 PPC to iMac PPC and now on a iMac Intel core dual.
Initial days i was not happy ( even my for locking the screen was not there, but after discovering the hot corner - yep its really impressive now for me - No crash, No slow down nothing, the system works great. Now i really started thinking of buying one.
very good quality :-), Finally i came to know that Apple OS is open source :
From a free Book :
The Mac OS X architecture comprises nine components :
Darwin— The open source core operating system. Darwin includes a full BSD implementation (more on that later in the chapter).
QuickTime— Apple's award-winning multimedia technologies are built in to the graphics foundation of Mac OS X.
OpenGL— OpenGL is the SGI-created industry standard for 3D graphics. Although OpenGL is heavily challenged by Direct3D on the Microsoft platform, even Microsoft grudgingly supports the standard.
Quartz— Apple's new 2D imaging framework and window server based on the PDF format. Quartz breaks new ground in handling the onscreen interface.
Classic— The Classic environment (originally called Blue Box in the Rhapsody implementation) enables existing Mac OS applications to run under Mac OS X.
Carbon— An API (application programming interface) to ease the transition to Mac OS X for traditional Mac programmers. This is based on the original Mac OS API, and can be used to create programs that run on Mac OS 8/9 as well as Mac OS X.
Cocoa— Cocoa (originally called Yellow Box in Rhapsody) is the robust modern API that enables applications to be built from scratch in a fraction of the time it would take traditionally.
Java— For the first time ever, the Mac OS is a player in the Java development and deployment arena. Java 2SE v1.3 is a first-class citizen and distributed with each copy of Mac OS X.
Aqua— Aqua uses the Quartz imaging engine to create the most astounding user interface available on any platform. Applications written in Cocoa, Carbon, or Java can access the capabilities of the Aqua GUI.
Kool stuff to go.
Some body was whispering an IPhone SDK is set to go next week or so.
© yankandpaste®
Initial days i was not happy ( even my
very good quality :-), Finally i came to know that Apple OS is open source :
From a free Book :
The Mac OS X architecture comprises nine components :
Darwin— The open source core operating system. Darwin includes a full BSD implementation (more on that later in the chapter).
QuickTime— Apple's award-winning multimedia technologies are built in to the graphics foundation of Mac OS X.
OpenGL— OpenGL is the SGI-created industry standard for 3D graphics. Although OpenGL is heavily challenged by Direct3D on the Microsoft platform, even Microsoft grudgingly supports the standard.
Quartz— Apple's new 2D imaging framework and window server based on the PDF format. Quartz breaks new ground in handling the onscreen interface.
Classic— The Classic environment (originally called Blue Box in the Rhapsody implementation) enables existing Mac OS applications to run under Mac OS X.
Carbon— An API (application programming interface) to ease the transition to Mac OS X for traditional Mac programmers. This is based on the original Mac OS API, and can be used to create programs that run on Mac OS 8/9 as well as Mac OS X.
Cocoa— Cocoa (originally called Yellow Box in Rhapsody) is the robust modern API that enables applications to be built from scratch in a fraction of the time it would take traditionally.
Java— For the first time ever, the Mac OS is a player in the Java development and deployment arena. Java 2SE v1.3 is a first-class citizen and distributed with each copy of Mac OS X.
Aqua— Aqua uses the Quartz imaging engine to create the most astounding user interface available on any platform. Applications written in Cocoa, Carbon, or Java can access the capabilities of the Aqua GUI.
Kool stuff to go.
Some body was whispering an IPhone SDK is set to go next week or so.
© yankandpaste®
Thursday, January 24, 2008
DID NASA FIND LIFE ON MARS?
A Photos by NASA's Spirit Rover in late 2007 shows a human-like figure is visible sitting on the rocks.
Wondering why they look like a human and not any other animal :-). But lot of debates going on. Lets finally prove its an illusion or a rock.
According to Hindu mythology, there are 14 worlds. We may find life at least in one of them.
© yankandpaste®
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Cheap hydrogen - escape from fossil
Remembering a talk with my father about airplanes. He was saying in some ancient Hindu books talks about some 14 series of planes and he was talking the book says some kind of plane which uses water and some metal for use as fuel.
The new discovery of cheap hydrogen production says its going to be a water and sunlight + some metal
read : http://www.nanoptek.com/
lets wait and see how its going to be
© yankandpaste®
The new discovery of cheap hydrogen production says its going to be a water and sunlight + some metal
read : http://www.nanoptek.com/
lets wait and see how its going to be
© yankandpaste®
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Time to buy a Apple tv ?
Was wondering, Is it time to buy Apple TV ?
$2.99 for old movies and $3.99 for new movies.
k let me calculate :
Cost of Apple Tv : $299
Cost of internet : $50 / month
Cost of movie : $15 /month
How much I pay with netflix and i am sure they have good movie collection.
K fine, I understood its high tech, so comes with a cost ( mostly hidden) once i combine more services the cost will be less ). Do i have any other use with Apple Tv ? as a gaming console or so ?
noo, So i cant use.
May be i expect Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo to do movie online business or netflix to start online movie business with one of these people so that i can use my gaming box for movie also, I love to buy one on those than Apple tv or Apple should come up with a gaming console.
© yankandpaste®
$2.99 for old movies and $3.99 for new movies.
k let me calculate :
Cost of Apple Tv : $299
Cost of internet : $50 / month
Cost of movie : $15 /month
How much I pay with netflix and i am sure they have good movie collection.
K fine, I understood its high tech, so comes with a cost ( mostly hidden) once i combine more services the cost will be less ). Do i have any other use with Apple Tv ? as a gaming console or so ?
noo, So i cant use.
May be i expect Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo to do movie online business or netflix to start online movie business with one of these people so that i can use my gaming box for movie also, I love to buy one on those than Apple tv or Apple should come up with a gaming console.
© yankandpaste®
Sun has announced a £1bn MySQL deal
Sun is making waves in open source.
with open office : http://www.openoffice.org/
with open sparc : http://www.opensparc.net/
with open solaris: http://opensolaris.org/os/
and now MYSQL ( yep i didn't forget Java )
This is what happens if a person with vision is driving. Hats off to Jonathan Schwartz !!. Running his company and making contributions to world in a different model.
© yankandpaste®
with open office : http://www.openoffice.org/
with open sparc : http://www.opensparc.net/
with open solaris: http://opensolaris.org/os/
and now MYSQL ( yep i didn't forget Java )
This is what happens if a person with vision is driving. Hats off to Jonathan Schwartz !!. Running his company and making contributions to world in a different model.
© yankandpaste®
Monday, January 14, 2008
How to recognise a good programmer
How do you recognise good programmers if you’re a business guy?
It’s not as easy as it sounds. CV experience is only of limited use here, because great programmers don’t always have the “official” experience to demonstrate that they’re great. In fact, a lot of that CV experience can be misleading. Yet there are a number of subtle cues that you can get, even from the CV, to figure out whether someone’s a great programmer.
I consider myself to be a pretty good programmer. At the same time, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the business side of the fence, filtering technical CVs for projects, interviewing people, etc. Thanks to this, I think I have a bit of experience in recognising good programmers, and I want to share it in this article, in the hope that it may help other “business guys” to recognise good programmers. And, who knows, perhaps some programmers who have the potential to be good but haven’t really exploited this can also read this and realise what they need to do to become good (although, as I’ll argue, that’s definitely not accessible to all programmers!).
In his article The 18 mistakes that kill startups, Paul Graham makes the following point:
“… what killed most of the startups in the e-commerce business back in the 90s, it was bad programmers. A lot of those companies were started by business guys who thought the way startups worked was that you had some clever idea and then hired programmers to implement it. That’s actually much harder than it sounds—almost impossibly hard in fact—because business guys can’t tell which are the good programmers. They don’t even get a shot at the best ones, because no one really good wants a job implementing the vision of a business guy.
In practice what happens is that the business guys choose people they think are good programmers (it says here on his resume that he’s a Microsoft Certified Developer) but who aren’t. Then they’re mystified to find that their startup lumbers along like a World War II bomber while their competitors scream past like jet fighters. This kind of startup is in the same position as a big company, but without the advantages.
So how do you pick good programmers if you’re not a programmer? I don’t think there’s an answer. I was about to say you’d have to find a good programmer to help you hire people. But if you can’t recognize good programmers, how would you even do that?”
I disagree with Mr Graham on this one. I think there are a number of very strong indicators of a “good programmer” (and, conversely, strong indicators of a “not-so-good programmer”) that even a business guy can recognise. I’ll summarise some key indicators and counter-indicators in a list at the end of the article.
#1 : Passion
In my corporate experience, I met a kind of technical guy I’d never met before: the career programmer. This is a person who’s doing IT because they think it’s a good career. They don’t do any programming in their spare time. They’re shocked when they find out I have a LAN and 3 computers at home. They just do it at work. They don’t learn new stuff unless sent on a training program (or motivated by the need to get a job that requires that technology). They do “programming” as a day job. They don’t really want to talk about it outside of work. When they do, they talk with a distinctive lack of enthusiasm. Basically, they lack passion.
I believe that good developers are always passionate about programming. Good developers would do some programming even if they weren’t being paid for it. Good programmers will have a tendency to talk your ear off about some technical detail of what they’re working on (but while clearly believing, sincerely, that what they’re talking about is really worth talking about). Some people might see that as maladapted social skills (which it is), but if you want to recognise a good developer, this passion for what they’re doing at the expense of social smoothness is a very strong indicator. Can you get this guy to excitedly chat up a technology that he’s using, for a whole half hour, without losing steam? Then you might be onto a winner.
#2 : Self-teaching and love of learning
Programming is the ultimate moving target. Not a year goes by without some new technology robbing an old, established standard blind and changing half the development universe. This is not to say that all good programmers pick up these changes and ride the bleeding edge. However, there’s a class of programmers that will never, ever pick up a new technology unless forced to, because they don’t like learning new stuff. These programmers will typically have learnt programming at university, and expect to get by on whatever skills they picked up there, plus whatever courses their company is willing to send them on.
If you’re thinking of hiring someone as a programmer, and he ever utters the words “I can work with that, just send me on a training course for a week and I’ll be good at it”, don’t hire that guy. A good programmer doesn’t need a training course to learn a new technology. In fact, the great programmer will be the one talking your ear off about a new technology that you haven’t even heard of, explaining to you why you must use it in your business, even if none of your staff knows how to use it. Even if it’s a technology he doesn’t know how to use yet.
#3 : Intelligence
Some business people assume that lack of social tact and lack of intelligence are the same. Actually, intelligence has several facets, and emotional/social intelligence is only one of them. Good programmers aren’t dumb. Ever. In fact, good programmers are usually amongst the smartest people you know. Many of them will actually have pretty good social skills too. The cliché of the programmer who’s incapable of having a conversation is just that - a cliché. I’ve been to a few meetings of the London Ruby User Group and I can say that with only a very few exceptions, most people there are smart, talkative, sociable, have varied interests, etc. You wouldn’t look at them chattering away in the pub and think “what a bunch of geeks!” - at least until you approach a group and realise they’re talking about the best way to design a RESTful application with a heavy UI frontend.
This doesn’t mean that they’ll all feel comfortable in every social context. But it does mean that if the context is comfortable and non-threatening enough, you’ll be able to have as great a conversation with them as you would with the most “socially enabled” people (perhaps better, since most good programmers I know like their conversation to revolve around actually useful topics, rather than just inane banter).
Don’t ever hire a dumb person thinking they’re a good developer. They’re not. If you can’t have a great conversation with them in a relaxed social context, they’re very likely not a good programmer. On the other hand, anyone who’s clearly very smart at the very least has a strong potential to be a good or great programmer.
#4 : Hidden experience
This is correlated with the “Passion” point, but it is such a strong indicator that I’d like to emphasise it with its own point.
I started programming when I was about 9, on a Commodore 64. I then migrated onto the PC, did some Pascal. When I was 14 I wrote a raycasting engine in C and Assembler, spent a large amount of time playing with cool graphic effects that you could get your computer to do by messing directly with the video card. This was what I call my “coccoon stage”. When I entered that stage, I was a mediocre programmer, and lacked the confidence to do anything really complicated. When I finished it, I had gained that confidence. I knew that I could code pretty much anything so long as I put my mind to it.
Has that ever appeared on my CV? Nope.
I strongly believe that most good programmers will have a hidden iceberg or two like this that doesn’t appear on their CV or profile. Something they think isn’t really relevant, because it’s not “proper experience”, but which actually represents an awesome accomplishment. A good question to ask a potential “good programmer” in an interview would be “can you tell me about a personal project - even or especially one that’s completely irrelevant - that you did in your spare time, and that’s not on your CV?” If they can’t (unless their CV is 20 pages long), they’re probably not a good programmer. Even a programmer with an exhaustive CV will have some significant projects that are missing from there.
#5 : Variety of technologies
This one’s pretty simple. Because of the love of learning and toying with new technologies that comes with the package of being a “good programmer”, it’s inevitable that any “good programmer” over the age of 22 will be fluent in a dozen different technologies. They can’t help it. Learning a new technology is one of the most fun things a programmer with any passion can do. So they’ll do it all the time, and accumulate a portfolio of things they’ve “played around with”. They may not be experts at all of them, but all decent programmers will be fluent in a large inventory of unrelated technologies.
That “unrelated” bit is the subtle twist. Every half-decent java programmer will be able to list a set of technologies like “Java, J2EE, Ant, XML, SQL, Hibernate, Spring, Struts, EJB, Shell scripting”, etc.. But those are all part of the same technology stack, all directly related to each other. This is possibly hard to recognise for non-programmers, but it is possible to tell whether their technology stack is varied by talking to them about it, and asking them how the different technologies they know relate to each other. Over-specialisation in a single technology stack is an indicator of a not-so-good programmer.
Finally, if some of those technologies are at the bleeding edge, that’s a good positive indicator. For instance, today (November 2007), knowledge of Merb, Flex, RSpec, HAML, UJS, and many others… Please note that these are fairly closely related technologies, so in a couple of years, someone who knows all these will be equivalent to someone familiar with the Java stack listed in the previous paragraph.
Update: As a clarification to this point, there’s in fact two indicators here: variety and bleeding edge. Those are separate indicators. A good variety of technologies across a period of time is a positive indicator, whether or not the technologies are bleeding edge. And bleeding edge technologies are a positive indicator, whether or not there’s a variety of them.
#6 : Formal qualifications
This is more a of non-indicator than a counter-indicator. The key point to outline here is that formal qualifications don’t mean squat when you’re trying to recognise a good programmer. Many good programmers will have a degree in Computer Science. Many won’t. Certifications, like MCSE or SCJP or the like, don’t mean anything either. These are designed to be accessible and desirable to all. The only thing they indicate is a certain level of knowledge of a technology. They’re safeguards that allow technology recruitment people in large corporations to know “ok, this guy knows java, he’s got a certification to prove it” without having to interview them.
If you’re hiring for a small business, or you need really smart developers for a crack team that will implement agile development in your enterprise, you should disregard most formal qualifications as noise. They really don’t tell you very much about whether the programmer is good. Similarly, disregard age. Some programmers are awesome at 18. Others are awesome at 40. You can’t base your decisions about programmer quality on age (though you might decide to hire people around a certain age to have a better fit in the company; please do note that age discrimination is illegal in most countries!).
As a final note to this, in my experience most average or poor programmers start programming at university, for their Computer Science course. Most good programmers started programming long before, and the degree was just a natural continuation of their hobby. If your potential programmer didn’t do any programming before university, and all his experience starts when she got her first job, she’s probably not a good programmer.
From :http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/
© yankandpaste®
It’s not as easy as it sounds. CV experience is only of limited use here, because great programmers don’t always have the “official” experience to demonstrate that they’re great. In fact, a lot of that CV experience can be misleading. Yet there are a number of subtle cues that you can get, even from the CV, to figure out whether someone’s a great programmer.
I consider myself to be a pretty good programmer. At the same time, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the business side of the fence, filtering technical CVs for projects, interviewing people, etc. Thanks to this, I think I have a bit of experience in recognising good programmers, and I want to share it in this article, in the hope that it may help other “business guys” to recognise good programmers. And, who knows, perhaps some programmers who have the potential to be good but haven’t really exploited this can also read this and realise what they need to do to become good (although, as I’ll argue, that’s definitely not accessible to all programmers!).
In his article The 18 mistakes that kill startups, Paul Graham makes the following point:
“… what killed most of the startups in the e-commerce business back in the 90s, it was bad programmers. A lot of those companies were started by business guys who thought the way startups worked was that you had some clever idea and then hired programmers to implement it. That’s actually much harder than it sounds—almost impossibly hard in fact—because business guys can’t tell which are the good programmers. They don’t even get a shot at the best ones, because no one really good wants a job implementing the vision of a business guy.
In practice what happens is that the business guys choose people they think are good programmers (it says here on his resume that he’s a Microsoft Certified Developer) but who aren’t. Then they’re mystified to find that their startup lumbers along like a World War II bomber while their competitors scream past like jet fighters. This kind of startup is in the same position as a big company, but without the advantages.
So how do you pick good programmers if you’re not a programmer? I don’t think there’s an answer. I was about to say you’d have to find a good programmer to help you hire people. But if you can’t recognize good programmers, how would you even do that?”
I disagree with Mr Graham on this one. I think there are a number of very strong indicators of a “good programmer” (and, conversely, strong indicators of a “not-so-good programmer”) that even a business guy can recognise. I’ll summarise some key indicators and counter-indicators in a list at the end of the article.
#1 : Passion
In my corporate experience, I met a kind of technical guy I’d never met before: the career programmer. This is a person who’s doing IT because they think it’s a good career. They don’t do any programming in their spare time. They’re shocked when they find out I have a LAN and 3 computers at home. They just do it at work. They don’t learn new stuff unless sent on a training program (or motivated by the need to get a job that requires that technology). They do “programming” as a day job. They don’t really want to talk about it outside of work. When they do, they talk with a distinctive lack of enthusiasm. Basically, they lack passion.
I believe that good developers are always passionate about programming. Good developers would do some programming even if they weren’t being paid for it. Good programmers will have a tendency to talk your ear off about some technical detail of what they’re working on (but while clearly believing, sincerely, that what they’re talking about is really worth talking about). Some people might see that as maladapted social skills (which it is), but if you want to recognise a good developer, this passion for what they’re doing at the expense of social smoothness is a very strong indicator. Can you get this guy to excitedly chat up a technology that he’s using, for a whole half hour, without losing steam? Then you might be onto a winner.
#2 : Self-teaching and love of learning
Programming is the ultimate moving target. Not a year goes by without some new technology robbing an old, established standard blind and changing half the development universe. This is not to say that all good programmers pick up these changes and ride the bleeding edge. However, there’s a class of programmers that will never, ever pick up a new technology unless forced to, because they don’t like learning new stuff. These programmers will typically have learnt programming at university, and expect to get by on whatever skills they picked up there, plus whatever courses their company is willing to send them on.
If you’re thinking of hiring someone as a programmer, and he ever utters the words “I can work with that, just send me on a training course for a week and I’ll be good at it”, don’t hire that guy. A good programmer doesn’t need a training course to learn a new technology. In fact, the great programmer will be the one talking your ear off about a new technology that you haven’t even heard of, explaining to you why you must use it in your business, even if none of your staff knows how to use it. Even if it’s a technology he doesn’t know how to use yet.
#3 : Intelligence
Some business people assume that lack of social tact and lack of intelligence are the same. Actually, intelligence has several facets, and emotional/social intelligence is only one of them. Good programmers aren’t dumb. Ever. In fact, good programmers are usually amongst the smartest people you know. Many of them will actually have pretty good social skills too. The cliché of the programmer who’s incapable of having a conversation is just that - a cliché. I’ve been to a few meetings of the London Ruby User Group and I can say that with only a very few exceptions, most people there are smart, talkative, sociable, have varied interests, etc. You wouldn’t look at them chattering away in the pub and think “what a bunch of geeks!” - at least until you approach a group and realise they’re talking about the best way to design a RESTful application with a heavy UI frontend.
This doesn’t mean that they’ll all feel comfortable in every social context. But it does mean that if the context is comfortable and non-threatening enough, you’ll be able to have as great a conversation with them as you would with the most “socially enabled” people (perhaps better, since most good programmers I know like their conversation to revolve around actually useful topics, rather than just inane banter).
Don’t ever hire a dumb person thinking they’re a good developer. They’re not. If you can’t have a great conversation with them in a relaxed social context, they’re very likely not a good programmer. On the other hand, anyone who’s clearly very smart at the very least has a strong potential to be a good or great programmer.
#4 : Hidden experience
This is correlated with the “Passion” point, but it is such a strong indicator that I’d like to emphasise it with its own point.
I started programming when I was about 9, on a Commodore 64. I then migrated onto the PC, did some Pascal. When I was 14 I wrote a raycasting engine in C and Assembler, spent a large amount of time playing with cool graphic effects that you could get your computer to do by messing directly with the video card. This was what I call my “coccoon stage”. When I entered that stage, I was a mediocre programmer, and lacked the confidence to do anything really complicated. When I finished it, I had gained that confidence. I knew that I could code pretty much anything so long as I put my mind to it.
Has that ever appeared on my CV? Nope.
I strongly believe that most good programmers will have a hidden iceberg or two like this that doesn’t appear on their CV or profile. Something they think isn’t really relevant, because it’s not “proper experience”, but which actually represents an awesome accomplishment. A good question to ask a potential “good programmer” in an interview would be “can you tell me about a personal project - even or especially one that’s completely irrelevant - that you did in your spare time, and that’s not on your CV?” If they can’t (unless their CV is 20 pages long), they’re probably not a good programmer. Even a programmer with an exhaustive CV will have some significant projects that are missing from there.
#5 : Variety of technologies
This one’s pretty simple. Because of the love of learning and toying with new technologies that comes with the package of being a “good programmer”, it’s inevitable that any “good programmer” over the age of 22 will be fluent in a dozen different technologies. They can’t help it. Learning a new technology is one of the most fun things a programmer with any passion can do. So they’ll do it all the time, and accumulate a portfolio of things they’ve “played around with”. They may not be experts at all of them, but all decent programmers will be fluent in a large inventory of unrelated technologies.
That “unrelated” bit is the subtle twist. Every half-decent java programmer will be able to list a set of technologies like “Java, J2EE, Ant, XML, SQL, Hibernate, Spring, Struts, EJB, Shell scripting”, etc.. But those are all part of the same technology stack, all directly related to each other. This is possibly hard to recognise for non-programmers, but it is possible to tell whether their technology stack is varied by talking to them about it, and asking them how the different technologies they know relate to each other. Over-specialisation in a single technology stack is an indicator of a not-so-good programmer.
Finally, if some of those technologies are at the bleeding edge, that’s a good positive indicator. For instance, today (November 2007), knowledge of Merb, Flex, RSpec, HAML, UJS, and many others… Please note that these are fairly closely related technologies, so in a couple of years, someone who knows all these will be equivalent to someone familiar with the Java stack listed in the previous paragraph.
Update: As a clarification to this point, there’s in fact two indicators here: variety and bleeding edge. Those are separate indicators. A good variety of technologies across a period of time is a positive indicator, whether or not the technologies are bleeding edge. And bleeding edge technologies are a positive indicator, whether or not there’s a variety of them.
#6 : Formal qualifications
This is more a of non-indicator than a counter-indicator. The key point to outline here is that formal qualifications don’t mean squat when you’re trying to recognise a good programmer. Many good programmers will have a degree in Computer Science. Many won’t. Certifications, like MCSE or SCJP or the like, don’t mean anything either. These are designed to be accessible and desirable to all. The only thing they indicate is a certain level of knowledge of a technology. They’re safeguards that allow technology recruitment people in large corporations to know “ok, this guy knows java, he’s got a certification to prove it” without having to interview them.
If you’re hiring for a small business, or you need really smart developers for a crack team that will implement agile development in your enterprise, you should disregard most formal qualifications as noise. They really don’t tell you very much about whether the programmer is good. Similarly, disregard age. Some programmers are awesome at 18. Others are awesome at 40. You can’t base your decisions about programmer quality on age (though you might decide to hire people around a certain age to have a better fit in the company; please do note that age discrimination is illegal in most countries!).
As a final note to this, in my experience most average or poor programmers start programming at university, for their Computer Science course. Most good programmers started programming long before, and the degree was just a natural continuation of their hobby. If your potential programmer didn’t do any programming before university, and all his experience starts when she got her first job, she’s probably not a good programmer.
From :http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/
© yankandpaste®
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Tata writes its name in History
$2500 car - is that the only reason for Tata name to be written in History.
read more :
Tata top bidder for Jaguar, Land Rover .
So Jaguar and Land Rover going to in Tata stable.
Is that enough ? nooo, tata makes smart moves on next gen technology. MDI web says "The agreement between Tata Motors and MDI envisages Tata’s supporting further development and refinement of the technology, and its application and licensing for India. "
- About MDI ( the air car company )
MDI is a small, family-controlled company located at Carros, near Nice (Southern France) where Mr. Guy Negre and Mr. Cyril Nègre, together with their technical team, have developed a new engine technology with the purpose of economising energy and respect severe ecological requirements – at competitive costs.
What this means - Tata is all set to be future GM or Toyota
© yankandpaste®
read more :
Tata top bidder for Jaguar, Land Rover .
So Jaguar and Land Rover going to in Tata stable.
Is that enough ? nooo, tata makes smart moves on next gen technology. MDI web says "The agreement between Tata Motors and MDI envisages Tata’s supporting further development and refinement of the technology, and its application and licensing for India. "
- About MDI ( the air car company )
MDI is a small, family-controlled company located at Carros, near Nice (Southern France) where Mr. Guy Negre and Mr. Cyril Nègre, together with their technical team, have developed a new engine technology with the purpose of economising energy and respect severe ecological requirements – at competitive costs.
What this means - Tata is all set to be future GM or Toyota
© yankandpaste®
Monday, December 31, 2007
Welcome 2008
Wish you all a great 2008 :-)
looking back to my 2007 - was great year,
lot changes - even started the blog first time in my life :-)
have great time !!
© yankandpaste®
looking back to my 2007 - was great year,
lot changes - even started the blog first time in my life :-)
have great time !!
© yankandpaste®
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
A PR Story :-)
Updates from CIC in short
=========================
Permanent Residence
We started processing your application on April 30, 2007.
Medical results have been received.
A decision has been made on your application. The office will contact you concerning this decision.
You entered Canada at the Douglas office on December 18, 2007 and became a Permanent Resident.
Thank God, Canada and CIC and Canadian Visa Office - Buffalo for the accepting us ( me and family ) as PR and the fast processing. I applied as Skilled worker immigrant category on Canadian Visa Office - Buffalo.
=========================
Permanent Residence
We started processing your application on April 30, 2007.
Medical results have been received.
A decision has been made on your application. The office will contact you concerning this decision.
You entered Canada at the Douglas office on December 18, 2007 and became a Permanent Resident.
Thank God, Canada and CIC and Canadian Visa Office - Buffalo for the accepting us ( me and family ) as PR and the fast processing. I applied as Skilled worker immigrant category on Canadian Visa Office - Buffalo.
Friday, December 14, 2007
The skills you need to succeed
One of the most important changes of the last 30 years is that digital technology has transformed almost everyone into an information worker.
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity. This isn't true at all.
In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively.
That's true for everyone from the retail store worker who uses a handheld scanner to track inventory to the chief executive who uses business intelligence software to analyse critical market trends.
So if you look at how progress is made and where competitive advantage is created, there's no doubt that the ability to use software tools effectively is critical to succeeding in today's global knowledge economy.
A solid working knowledge of productivity software and other IT tools has become a basic foundation for success in virtually any career.
Beyond that, however, I don't think you can overemphasise the importance of having a good background in maths and science.
If you look at the most interesting things that have emerged in the last decade - whether it is cool things like portable music devices and video games or more practical things like smart phones and medical technology - they all come from the realm of science and engineering.
The power of software
Today and in the future, many of the jobs with the greatest impact will be related to software, whether it is developing software working for a company like Microsoft or helping other organisations use information technology tools to be successful.
Communication skills and the ability to work well with different types of people are very important too.
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
This isn't true at all.
Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.
I also place a high value on having a passion for ongoing learning. When I was pretty young, I picked up the habit of reading lots of books.
It's great to read widely about a broad range of subjects. Of course today, it's far easier to go online and find information about any topic that interests you.
Having that kind of curiosity about the world helps anyone succeed, no matter what kind of work they decide to pursue.
VIEWPOINT
By Bill Gates
Chairman, Microsoft
yankandpaste from : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7142073.stm
© yankandpaste®
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity. This isn't true at all.
In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively.
That's true for everyone from the retail store worker who uses a handheld scanner to track inventory to the chief executive who uses business intelligence software to analyse critical market trends.
So if you look at how progress is made and where competitive advantage is created, there's no doubt that the ability to use software tools effectively is critical to succeeding in today's global knowledge economy.
A solid working knowledge of productivity software and other IT tools has become a basic foundation for success in virtually any career.
Beyond that, however, I don't think you can overemphasise the importance of having a good background in maths and science.
If you look at the most interesting things that have emerged in the last decade - whether it is cool things like portable music devices and video games or more practical things like smart phones and medical technology - they all come from the realm of science and engineering.
The power of software
Today and in the future, many of the jobs with the greatest impact will be related to software, whether it is developing software working for a company like Microsoft or helping other organisations use information technology tools to be successful.
Communication skills and the ability to work well with different types of people are very important too.
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
This isn't true at all.
Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.
I also place a high value on having a passion for ongoing learning. When I was pretty young, I picked up the habit of reading lots of books.
It's great to read widely about a broad range of subjects. Of course today, it's far easier to go online and find information about any topic that interests you.
Having that kind of curiosity about the world helps anyone succeed, no matter what kind of work they decide to pursue.
VIEWPOINT
By Bill Gates
Chairman, Microsoft
yankandpaste from : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7142073.stm
© yankandpaste®
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