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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (11997)	10/1/1998 2:54:00 AM
From: Charles Hughes	Respond to of 14631

So, was there any evidence of support at five? Or, was what I saw just the lack of interest I thought it was? I think Informix is just tracking the market. Comments? (If I have to take my politics elsewhere, as woodpecker said I should, then it's gonna be dull. Even the shorts aren't spinning right now, having given up till after earnings, I suspect. Maybe I should start following Pepsi :)

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (11997)	10/1/1998 3:48:00 AM
From: Hardly B. Solipsist	Respond to of 14631

I do agree that programming hasn't changed much in forever. Languages like Java are a significant improvement in some ways, but it's really pathetic that after all this time something this minor can be regarded as an improvement. And there isn't anything in Java that wasn't already around in the mid-70's somewhere, so 25 years to go from what everyone knows about to it's starting to be used commonly is depressing. I think that a big part of the problem is just that no one knows how to do it better. On the one hand, no big advances in productivity have come along (sure the right tools in the right hands are a big help, but it's still almost entirely the programmer, not the tools), but it's also the case that management seems to completely ignore the fact that there are huge differences in productivity between the best and the average (or even the worst) programmers. I have never worked anywhere that pays the best people anything like what they are worth relative to the worst ones, although MSFT appears to come closer by giving the real stars a lot of stock and pretty much promising to make them rich in a few years (and doing it so far). But I think that this is a big problem in all engineering disciplines. If you want to make more money you need to stop getting a salary and become a business type. If I cared about money enough, I would have tried to do something in the financial world. Say currency arbitrage or options trading. If you work in a business where money is the product, apparently you get free samples (at least the people I know with math backgrounds that chased money make a lot more than I ever will -- however, they don't seem to like their work, and I do). Being a good programmer is like being a good musician. You can take all the lessons you want, but most people just don't have what it takes, and they never will. I think that part of the reason that enrollments in math/CS/engineering don't keep growing is that it's hard -- you can BS your way through political science and English classes, etc., but getting through in hard science/engineering classes requires that you work at it, and unless it's intrinsically interesting to you, you probably won't stick it out. (The classes that I have seen don't do much to make it more attractive, either.) I think that our society would benefit from increasing the supply of scientists, and better math and science education earlier in school would help not lose whatever percentage of talented people we waste by making them hate math as little kids. But I think that the real problem in the area of software is that we don't do anywhere near as good a job as we could of mass-producing our product (and it's easier to manufacture than anything else). Hollywood makes a movie and everyone gets a chance to "use" it. But until recently most people couldn't get at software, and so you might waste a real talent writing code that 100 people were using. If distribution gets better somehow (and I don't mean mailing CD's around, of course), then a really good program might make a zillion dollars for the author the way a best seller does, and then at least we might make better economic use of the talent we have (and the incentive for developing that talent would increase).