TW looking to hire Java coders to staff positions

[bubbles19518]

I have an idea, lets all just learn PHP and make continiuum a Textbased RPG or MMORPG!

[Ewan]

Yeah, "You can't quit, you are fired".

source
That didn't sound like being axed. You should be less of a lapdog.

He rejoined staff after that and was on for several months before getting axed for reasons which I don't know if I can say here.

[Doc Flabby]

im not sure if coders would want to be staff........surely they gonna have enough on there plate idk

[DoCk>]

Now that is wrong. Try assembler for example. Or have you ever played around with Brainfuck: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainFuck ? :P
What about Darkbasic then? (http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/) A lot easier than to program 3d games in qbasic.

I don't consider BrainFuck, or any of those languages like the ones that claim to be turing-complete yet only various unintelligible symbols, to be anything more than novelties. Assembly language is only useful for embedded device programming, since compilers have become so much better than the vast majority of humans at producing efficient code.

Remember, I based my above statements on productivity... and writing a program using only whitespace or swear words isn't my idea of a good time.

[D1st0rt]

I would consider java much easier than c++ mainly because of the "lack" of pointers and the automatic garbage collection. Most of the syntax is shared between the two languages and a lot of the differences are just different wordings/interpretations of the same concept

[Kuukunen]

I don't consider BrainFuck, or any of those languages like the ones that claim to be turing-complete yet only various unintelligible symbols, to be anything more than novelties. Assembly language is only useful for embedded device programming, since compilers have become so much better than the vast majority of humans at producing efficient code.

Remember, I based my above statements on productivity... and writing a program using only whitespace or swear words isn't my idea of a good time.

Yes I know it's not used, but still Brainfuck IS a programming language. (And what do you mean by "claim"? Are you saying it isn't turing-complete?)

And about assembly. If only few people can do good code with assembly, couldn't you consider it... hard?

(And yea I know I wrote it fast and got terms mixed, assembler is the program.)

[Arikel]

Yes I know it's not used, but still Brainfuck IS a programming language. (And what do you mean by "claim"? Are you saying it isn't turing-complete?)

And about assembly. If only few people can do good code with assembly, couldn't you consider it... hard?

(And yea I know I wrote it fast and got terms mixed, assembler is the program.)

-_- if you go that way i could make a programing language using flex and bison and i could amke it the most difficult ever made language... no one sane uses brain fuck or programes obfuscated code at work... at least no one normal.
About assembly it's not that hard to program using it... although it's kind of tiresome... it normally is only used to program some small routines that can't be made in hardware.
Heh about C++ vs Java discussion... cmon Java already won the war years ago... C++ is much harder to learn and use then Java and Java is much more popular because it's relatively easy to learn and to use, much due to the powerfull IDE like eclipse and net beans... if you need some data structure in Java it already has a full documentation somewhere at the Sun site so it's just checking the Javadoc the Java virtual machine has seen lots of improvements so you don't have to deal with any memory problems anymore and the garbage collector works great... you can't even say that Java is THAT slow anymore... Java is a programing language that can be used to create fairly relyable, fast and big programs in a small amount of time with a small amount of cost compared to lots of other languages.

[D1st0rt]

Java is still not capable of certain things that C++ is. For example, in air traffic control systems when an operator keys the microphone the maximum delay the FAA allows before it transmits is 20ms. This has to be guaranteed, which as far as I'm aware Java can't do because I was under the impression that if it needs memory it will garbage collect whenever, regardless of what it's doing. Visual C++ and C++ Builder are just as powerful an IDE for C++ as Eclipse is for Java, and Eclipse even has a C++ plugin. Don't get me wrong, I'm a java person all the way but like Dock said its important to use the right tool.

[Rodge_Rabbit]

He rejoined staff after that and was on for several months before getting axed for reasons which I don't know if I can say here.

Well I can

Below is a letter to upper staff what actually happened. Please note that I want to correct the issue and his facts, and not start a whole why is rodge axed debate. To my knowledge after the letter most people in upper staff respect my actions and there is imporvement in the process. I am happy in WoW now where i am leading a medium sized guild of 125 players. I retired of SS, since the way again how it did go wasn't right in my eyes and as a player I didn't feel like to be part of the zone anymore.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Upper Staff,

Within this letter, I would like to address the incident that happened between Friday 17th of June and Saturday 18th of June 2005.

All my staff powers were revoked and I was banned from our beloved zone for a short period of time. Officially, I have not been told the reason I was removed from staff. My status was simply changed. I can make a guess though; my knowledge of the sysop password, bots and more. I have known this for more then 6 months, and used it several times during this period of time. During these 6 months super moderators knew of my actions and condoning them.

Firstly I would like to address the way my powers were removed. I was never informed, either by e-mail, private message or in game “?message” about the removal of my powers, or the reason for their removal. When I logged on and noticed my powers were removed I searched for an online and available smod. The only smod available at that time was lnx, and I private messaged him asking why my powers were removed.

Seconds later I was banned from Trench Wars, totally clueless as to why. After about 30 minutes I noticed smod Weaver coming online. I asked Weaver why my powers had been removed and why I was banned. He replied that it was being discussed amoung upper staff chat and that I should wait. After an hour, I got a PM from lnx that I could login back to TW, with my staff powers removed.

During the wait until I was unbanned I wondered why the sudden removal of powers. I thought that it was possibly the uploading of TWDT maps with configuration files and .lvz files on Friday could be the reason.

Upon entering Trench Wars I checked the access to bots and other systems and noticed they had been changed. However I did notice a weakness, and promptly informed lnx about this. In turn he threatened me with another ban from TW, but because I was AFK when I received the PM I did not notice until later.

A few hours later when the smod qan came online he told me the reasons for my change of status. I have always had a good relationship in game with him as a friend and as a staffer. I trust him completely, and I believe this trust is mutual. He told me that my suspicions was correct, and that my “constant violation” of the sysop and bot passwords were the reasons behind the axe.

I would like to inform upper staff of the times I remember using the sysop powers over the past 6 months. Please note that I never abused those powers to cause damage, change anything, perform any actions that would have had a major influence on the zone and its workings or jeopardise the zone as it is.

I recall the following incidents :

• TWL maps - During my time as TWL Op, I used the powers to actively upload and change TWL maps, including the TWL squad maps, to make adjustments and get the map side ready for TWL. This involved changing all the TWL maps as well as adding new ones. I would also like to point out that during this time the official map uploaders that could upload maps, namely 2dragons, Arilou Lalee’Lay and DoCk> were either inactive or refusing to due to time restrictions to upload the maps when asked.

• Backup Core - Twice I started a bot core from my computer to replace service bots (TWBot, Zonerbot and Robohelp) when both RoboQueen and RoboKing were suffering from long down time, when no one was available to repair the main bots. The first core incident was killed by lnx by banning my core, without informing me.

• TWDT Maps - I was asked by the Moderator Vehicle to upload an .lvz file and add additional arena’s for the TWDT system. Knowing Arilou Lalee’Lays period of inactivity, I accepted the favour asked and fulfilled the request.

I have heard rumours that there other incidents listed by upper staff for my removal from staff. I would like to state these are untrue, and there is no evidence to so much as assume I ever did these things:

• Public setting change / download - I never ever touched nor downloaded the .cfg, .ini and other server system files that enable the zone to function in the way it does. The only exceptions are the mod, smod and sysop lists, which were downloaded within the backup core.

• Illegally regaining forum admin access - During my previous removal of staff powers, I first lost my forum administrator access. I was reinstated as forum super moderator. After asking the Forum Admin Zeus!! I was given my admin status again, which I used to address technical difficulties, not as policy maker. This can be seen in a thread in the Forum Staff forums. However I have NOT used any database access to regain forum admin access as it was said in the rumors. In fact, at that time database access to the forum was separate, and I didn’t have any access to either the forums FTP or database.

I acknowledge that using what I knew was a delicate matter, and not appreciated, despite the fact I used what I knew for a good cause. I take full responsibility for my actions, and will not condone the exploitation of sysop powers. However, during the past 6 months upper staff never took any action or warned me that I had to stop using what I knew. All I was asked to do was to delete the backup file from my computer, what I promptly did when asked.

Furthermore several upper staff members knew of my access, some even approving its use! Namely Pure_Luck, qan, lnx and 2dragons.

The removal of my staff powers may have been necessary but to subsequently ban me was, in my opinion, a bit over the top. My question to you is why didn’t you take any action when you knew that I was using the sysop access? Why was I never warned for my actions or asked to stop?

I believe that some personal opinions and my reduced online time in Trench Wars may have been the main reason for removing my staff powers, and that this incident is simply an excuse to go ahead with it. lnx, the person who removed my staff access, and I have never had a good working relationship, and his decision to remove my staff powers and ban me was as far as I know based on a decision made almost on his own. I don't feel this is right, and that the full super moderator team should be aware of this action.
Yet again I would like to state that I was never warned nor given any feedback regarding the use of the knowledge and my removal of powers. This is simply unacceptable behavior from upper staff, especially with my work that I have done for the zone and its people. I have spend countless hours improving the zone and its systems, in my best way I can. I have never showed in any way hostile actions with my powers, and the punishment I have get for this, is a bit exaggerated.

I hope with this letter upper staff can once again look over their procedures for removing staff members and take actions more securely and swiftly. Without a clear policy for firing, including complete disregard for informing the individual about why they are axed, and only casually informing other upper staff members, the potential for abuse and unfair axing becomes much higher. I also hope that my personal view of the situation has been made clear and that upper staff will take this view into consideration within the discussion that is being currently held.

Kind regards,

Rodge_Rabbit

[Zerzera]

For example, PL did this for me when I was an ER. It's not uncommon, or written in stone.

Is there still anything written in stone in staff lately? -other than TWPS-

[Doc Flabby]

about C++ vs Java discussion... cmon Java already won the war years ago... C++ is much harder to learn and use then Java and Java is much more popular because it's relatively easy to learn and to use, much due to the powerfull IDE like eclipse and net beans...

Actually Micro$oft is winning this war on the windows platform with C# :P Its free to use and there is a free IDE.

C++ still wins on the hardware I/O front over java.

I can do Java tho its almost identital to c#.... i wonder why :P micro$oft never copy something and then make it 'better' do they?

[Kuukunen]

Btw, if you're interested in knowing what programming languages are popular, I found this page: http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm

Don't take the what that page says without any doubts though. They say they use search engines to calculate the ratings, so I'd guess languages that are hotter get higher ranking. (Like Java or maybe C#.)

I'd put C and C++ in the same box, and together they're far more popular than Java, even by that ranking.

[Ikrit]

The removal of my staff powers may have been necessary but to subsequently ban me was, in my opinion, a bit over the top. My question to you is why didn’t you take any action when you knew that I was using the sysop access? Why was I never warned for my actions or asked to stop?

I remember expressing my feelings of concern about you running a core once and telling you that I had reason to believe you shouldn't be using the sysop pw another time when I noticed you login as a bot... you weren't without warning, you just disregarded what I said because I was a mere <ZH>

[Rob Dougan]

Btw, if you're interested in knowing what programming languages are popular, I found this page: http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm

I'd put C and C++ in the same box, and together they're far more popular than Java, even by that ranking.

...

You get a cookie for being retarded. Gauging the popularity of a language based upon search engine results is a wildly unscientific measure at best. Why so many pages for C/C++? Possibly because it's taught in a large number of schools. Note that forcing students to learn C/C++ does NOT mean that they will use it. They could hate the language and never use it. Case in point: look how high Lisp is (I use Lisp but I don't know that many people who do...sure, AI apps and all that but the AI community isn't *that* large). Lisp is usually taught in programming language courses and usually confuses the shit out of people; thus, a higher demand for information about it. Don't worry, you can easily replace C/C++ with Java in my argument.

They've tried gauging language popularity with book sales, the number of articles about different languages, downloads of IDE's for particular languages, etc etc. I've seen polls before but they're usually worthless because a community site for one language might notice the poll and ask for everyone to vote for his/her language (I've seen MATLAB win a poll because of this scenario). If we're looking for language popularity, it depends upon the audience we wish to measure. If you want to know which language will allow you to get a job the easiest, look through programmer job postings on monster.com or yahoo hotjobs (note, this is highly regional). If you want to know which language is the most popular for a particular task, look for projects out there that solve that task and find out what language each project chose.

Let me point out that just because most of the people out there really like language X doesn't mean it's the best language for their task, skillset, schedule, recruitment needs, budget, or anything else. Would I ever try to write a web service in C++? Depends upon the needs. If it needs to be up tomorrow, hell no. If it needs to come in decently cheap, hell no. If it needs to be as fast as possible, I'd write it in C but that's just because C makes me feel pretty.

TWCore uses Java. Is it a good choice? I think it is. Why? Regardless of what you might think, it lowers the admission bar. Java restricts the programmer and hides him (/her) from having to deal with memory allocation (I'm not debugging anyone else's memory problems...I think that's what awaits programmers going to hell). Sure, Java's slow but guess what: it's fast enough for our needs. In the meantime, we need fucking developers.

[Kuukunen]

*sigh*

I DID say you shouldn't swallow it blindly. It just gives some direction.

But few things about that post. Firstly, if some language is taught in schools, I'd say it counts in the "popularity" of the language. The site itself said it doesn't even try to count the lines written in the languages.

Then Lisp. I'm on this IRC channel with computer science students. I've heard about C there, I've heard about C++. I'm pretty sure someone mentioned Perl, Java and Python. But on top of those, I've only seen talk about Lisp. It's not that dead.

Then about Java. If you're talking about garbage collection, you can do that for C++ too.

TWCore: I'm not completely sure about this and I might be miles off from the mark. But I think I was talking to Mythrandir like ages ago about bots and he said that they've had some problems with having too many bots online so something started malfunctioning. I have no idea if this had anything to do CPU usage or anything, but maybe someone who knows more might enlighten me about this matter.