IT Professional

[2scoops0406]

I am an IT "professional" of 16 years experience 9 of them as an independent contractor, It'll probably be a cold day in hell before I wade into any of the problems that are aired on this forum. This is not 'cos I don't want to help, but rather that it is now all so complicated that often we "pros" can't even fix our own computers!! So take heart, you are not alone!! .... I will have a look and see if I can usefully comment on anything

 

[Igorian]

Hi Eddie, welcome to the forum.

I've been at it since about 1981. The thing I have noticed is that once you have managed to master a subject, it's already out of date.

 

[2scoops0406]

Plus the fact that I've been subverted and am now a permanently employed manager, also, rather distressingly on half the salary I used to be on

 

[Igorian]

Plus the fact that I've been subverted and am now a permanently employed manager

So, you're not an I.T. Professional anymore then!

 

[AdamW]

Well, here is one to keep the old-school IT professionals happy:

"If only you and dead people can read hex, how many people can read hex?"

The reason computers are now so complicated to fix is that they are so easy to use! That's a very sweeping statement and I can see a million holes in it, but whatcha gonna do?

 

[Igorian]

Here's one for you. Why do real programmers know that Halloween and Christmas are the same?

 

[Robb]

"If only you and dead people can read hex, how many people can read hex?"

Easy! The answer is F6 2C 04 D3

 

[AdamW]

Nope, it would be "DEAE", i.e. "DEAD + 1".

It is quite interesting, because I have posed that to several people at work. The knarly old programmers and engineers who cut their teeth in the 70s get it within 10 seconds of seeing it written down. They were brought up to think of debugging as reading through memory dumps in hex and trying to check that memory addresses are being addressed properly

The new-school of programmers and engineers didn't get it at all, perhaps because debugging is half-done by new compilers.

I am proud that it took me about two minutes, but I am a right geek and the only clock in my living room is in binary. Plus despite being a young'un I spent many an hour reading through hex tables trying to figure out why my code wasn't working. Great fun

 

[2scoops0406]

One our our youngsters at work the other day asked me "what's hex" I didn't know whether to laugh or cry

 

[AdamW]

One our our youngsters at work the other day asked me "what's hex" I didn't know whether to laugh or cry

Next time give the answer "Why little Johny, it is octal squared!"

Or would it be the square-root of octal? Depends how you look at it I suppose! Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed.

Anyway, just give the youngster the old:

"There are only 10 types of people: those who can read binary, and those who can't".

If he doesn't get that, get educational on his ass and teach him how to count in different bases. It can't hurt for anyone to know binary and hex, even if there is little use for either for anyone who doesn't programme assembler or machine code.

Just draw him a table, which reads (from right to left) 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, 2^3 2^4 and then explain how you just add up each digit. That is how I was taught and it clicked straight away.

 

[2scoops0406]

Can't I just hit him instead? It'll save a lot of time.

 

[phil_ballard]

even if there is little use for either for anyone who doesn't programme assembler or machine code

Don' forget that HTML and CSS still do colours as #redgreenblue, eg #77A74F and so on ......

 

[AdamW]

I wasn't aware of that, not being that knowledgable on web design. I suppose it would make more sense, otherwise you would have 8-digit colour numbers!

EDIT: just realised what you had written there, so it would be 9 digit colour numbers, 0-255 for each of red green and blue.

Hex is our friend.

 

[phil_ballard]

Just view the source of this page (In Internet Explorer that's simply View > Source) and you'll see it all over the place

 

[AdamW]

Oh, I see it.

I will never figure out something though: HTML was dreamed up and invented by an Englishman. Yet it spells "Colour" without the u. That is almost as annoying as Windows allowing you to select "UK English" (should be called "English (Standard)" as they do with other languages) but then spelling "Favourites" as "Favo-rites". Or Office insisting that I put z's all over the place when writing words such as "recognise".

Oh, and am I the only one pi**ed off with the fact that in Austin Powers 1, the Ministry Of Defence is spelt "Ministry of Defense". And Mike Myers was brought up in England. No doubt if he hadn't been, it would have been "Miniztry of Defenze".

Damnit Phil, you've got me going now!