fabricode

If you're employing someone putting together sprockets on an assembly line, then yes, productivity may be the most important thing to you. If you are employing managers, designers, programmers, advertising folks... then maybe productivity is not your primary goal. Maybe getting the smartest work from them is more important than getting the greatest amount of output.

Personally, I'd rather have one brilliant, game-changing program/algorithm/policy/advertisement than one hundred mediocre pieces of output.

You certainly know your market better than I do, but it seems to me that you are taking advantage of a viral effect. As people use Jira (for instance) and they move around from one company to another, they're likely to recommend using Jira at their new places when they get sick of Rational, Remedy, Bugzilla, etc.

People using Jira and realizing that there is a bug tracker that doesn't stink are very likely to bring that message to their next company. The word about a great product spreads... like a virus, albeit a slower moving one than pet rocks.

"Try the new app right now, its beautiful:"

As clever as it is, it would have been far more effective if you had checked your grammar before printing two hundred flyers.

Perl specific maturity items would be:

1) Do all packages have documentation (pod) stored in the package file(s), and is it up to date?

2) Are there tests built using TAP (e.g. Test::More), and is this built into some kind of continuous build/test server?

3) Have a set of perlcritic rules been set up for the shop? Are these checked as part of code-review or scm check-in?

4) Is there a consistent set of rules for how external packages are brought into the current build? How are local changes to CPAN-originated packages handled?

These are the kinds of policies I'd expect to see implemented in a mature Perl Shop. The policies listed in the original post are those which I'd expect to see implemented in a mature software firm.

If you're working with educated people, it's a lot easier to say, "apply DeMorgan," than to say, "why don't you negate the clause, remembering to negate each of the internal clauses, and switching the and's to or's and vice versa."

There exist people who use the names to sound intellectual, and these people are annoying, but just because some people enjoy spouting (in the general public) "obscure" rules and names, that doesn't mean that using such names is without value.

Wrong is the wrong word :)

What you're looking for is "invalid". An argument is valid if and only if the conclusion follows from the premises. In other words, if the premises are true then it cannot be the case that the conclusion is false. Since a logical fallacy adds nothing to an argument, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Since the conclusion can therefore be false, even if the logical fallacy is true, the argument is labeled invalid.

Just for completeness... A more strict standard is soundness. An argument is sound if and only if the argument is valid and the premises are true. If an argument is sound, then the conclusion is necessarily true. Obviously, the argument invoking a logical fallacy as its premise is unsound because it is invalid.

It is also perfectly possible for the conclusion to be true even though the argument itself is invalid and unsound.

If you still would like to apply the label "wrong" to it, then I'd say, "The argument is wrong, even though your conclusion happens to be true."

(Note: I can't see the post that started all of this off as it has been deleted, so I'm not making any comment on the truthiness of his/her conclusion)

For all of us that don't have access to such facilities, this kind of before/after diary might be very interesting.

That said, it reads almost exactly like the opening to "American Psycho". Sure, Bateman's routine is slightly different than yours, but both narratives have the same affect.

Best of luck, and I can't wait for your article on business cards!

My dad was a programmer, and I was always hacking away on the computers that we had around the house (sure... it was an Atari 800.... but you'd be amazed at what you can do on that little thing). Unfortunately, he never worked with me on any of my code ever. He never taught me anything about design, about computer languages, --nothing--. Perhaps I could have been more aggressive about getting him to help me, but I was an introvert's introvert. I was the kid in school who blushed when his name was called during attendance.

Looking back, I can't believe the wasted opportunity. You should enjoy this activity with your daughter for what it is. Forget the other 1,000 paragraphs you wrote about why.

I'm glad that you did this, and your daughter will be too.

( I read your article twice to make sure I didn't miss it, but I sometimes skip a sentence, so please pardon me if I got this wrong. )

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What is a self-interview? Well, it's when you ask yourself a question then immediately answer it. Are they occurring more now than before? Listening to people on TV news shows and NPR seems to show that more are doing it now.

Why would people do this? Because it makes it sound as if they're answering a question that has been asked -- even if the answer they're giving wasn't actually in response to the actual interviewer.

Can we stop this now? I sure hope so.