Maybe you need to read what I've written. I know that I'm not part of his world but I at least understand there is a world outside of what I do. He just thinks that everyone here is the same as him and what he does must be the only thing in software development.
I apologize if it came off caustic - my point was purely understanding, to not be critical of his 'bubble' while admittedly working in one of your own.
That insight should help you understand the relevance of LinkedIn because it operates across 'bubbles'.
I'm all in favor of replacing LinkedIn with something decentralized (or just less exploitative), but isolating yourself on GitHub (which is not even the software dev industry but a minority subset of it) is not a solution, it's immature clique-ish behavior.
I agree with your (likely more than) partially formed thoughts; there is still a lot we don't know. In my case, I often work with CSS and TDD would not just add complexity, it conceptually does not make sense with my workflow. It is human nature to generalize solutions. But in our industry, we sometimes find ourselves generalizing 'development' when that is an enormity in and of itself.
From the article: "Besides, how do you know if the CSS is correct? Remember we are doing TDD. We are writing our tests first. How do you know, in advance, what the CSS should be?"
I see a significance in that Herbalife, Groupon, and LikeAlittle seem to be selling sales vs. other businesses using salesmanship as a medium. It's a fine line, but a distinct one nonetheless.
Does anyone have examples of similar businesses to the aforementioned? Curious how much of a trend this actually is.
I agree that the merger approval is the original and bigger problem at large, however, unlike AT&T/Alltel this does not seem like 'monopoly prevention' but in fact just the opposite. Calling it 'saving-face' doesn't even do the situation justice.
Sure, Comcast sells off 1.4 million viewers. The gap from No.1 to No.2 post-merge then grows from ~11m subscribers to nearly ~25m. Not only that, but as the LA Times article points out, this is "a fast-evolving industry that requires huge capital investments to maintain..."
Competitors will be reluctant to enter an industry with such significant capital barriers, and why would they? Comcast owns their customers before they've even started.
Based on what I've seen and heard, Comcast has history of doing things like this. They have entered in contract with apartment complex across the nation and have mandated each apartment to have their service. The consumers have been at their mercy whether they like their content or not or even want it. Comcast has gotten too large, it is very dangerous when one company controls so much of media in the country. Where are the regulators?
I've often found ideals don't quite translate into practical application. Within economics, political theory, etc., I think TDD also deserves a place as a 'wonderful ideal' that fails simply because it does not take into account it's implementing process: human action. Not to mention that the way many programmers learn and code today seems at odds with the structured nature of creating tests.
Maybe there is a better approach to writing maintainable code than TDD? I imagine a world where all code is understandable, readable, and instantly recognizable, but once again we arrive at the fork where the 'ideal world' deviates from the real one in which we all reside. Shame.
