First of traditional Yakut meetings was yesterday. We got together at Identra HQ.
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| Heated discussions taking place |
Basically we get know each other a little bit in this first meeting. We discussed about Ruby and Rails as well. Hopefully we will have deeper discussions at each meeting from now on.
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| Erek Göktürk |
Erek is organizing and at present hosting this event. If you are interested in Rails and Ruby, go ahead and join Yakut.
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| Left to right: Özgün, Volkan and Arda |
I met the founders of kariyerGENÇ last week. It is job search service for new graduates. During our conversation Sinan asked told me I should sign up too. I must say I’ve found it flattering that he considered me young. So I signed up. The service is built around the main value of building your CV online easily. OK, let’s build a CV. Aren’t CV’s fun.
I have edited and edited and edited… Finally, last section; proficiencies. Huh, which proficiencies could a new graduate possibly have? Let’s make it the last part.1 I scrolled through the dropdown of options to find Python and Django. No Python! Unsurprisingly no Django. But wait, the list doesn’t have Ruby, RoR, LISP either. But they included some programming languages I have never heard of; like HTML. What is this HTML programming language?
Basically I was left with the choices of Java and C. I couldn’t select them because neither is my main programming language. I can only select them after I select Python. So I left that section blank and sent them a contact form thing. It’s not cool not having an e-mail in your contact us section guys. If you are concerned about SPAM there are ways to evade e-mail harvesting bots. Please don’t be afraid of people who prefer using e-mail. I got a timely reply. From a nobody. Again, not cool. I am person and I’d like to communicate with another person. It’s OK to publish a generic e-mail on the site. But the reply should come from a employee e-mail and contain the employees name. I give you my name and e-mail when I contact you, right? You should have the decency to do the same when you reply.
Anyway, the reply I got was brief. In short it said “OK, we’ll do it.” Nice. Except they didn’t. I checked yesterday and they still had HTML programming language and not Python. Oh, well. So much for the orange ties. I deleted my account for the reason of being totally useless. It could be useful feedback if you asked why, when your users delete their accounts, you know?
In fact kariyerGENÇ is not doing it wrong. They’re just taking a picture of The Industry. The picture is correct, The Industry is doing it wrong. But that’s another topic for discussion2. What was disappointing for me was the lack of agile in kariyerGENÇ. I don’t mean agile methodology here, I mean agile technology. Technology and infrastructure that changes and adopts fast. For instance; how long would it take to make the change in a Django project? Yes, Django. The framework most people ignore or haven’t even heard of. You would just log-in the admin, add a new proficiency, save, optionally run a custom management command. 10 minutes at most.
It doesn’t matter much even if they add new proficiencies now. First of all a fixed list of options doesn’t work well where there are virtually unlimited possibilities. Second of all that dropdown is hideous, and increasing the number of options will only make it worse. Instead they should just let people tag themselves, WordPress style. Django-tagging does that automagically. You know, Django, the framework you don’t list in your proficiencies.
The language for web development in Türkiye is PHP. Java is on the rise, in a couple of years it will be as popular as PHP. I am not kidding myself; these two and that horrible propriety thing that I don’t even want to name are industry standart in the world. But they also use other technologies. At least they experiment. At least they know that other alternatives exist. Here those minorities doesn’t even exist.
I frequently hear people saying “Python is a toy language“. Because for them there are serious, proper programming languages for grown-ups and serious, proper frameworks for grown-ups as Cal Henderson said …and everything else is a toy. You can’t use Python/Django for anything professional. Well, Markafoni did, with much success.
Think about it for a second; if what the majority have generally chosen the best, wouldn’t we live in a better society & environment than this? Just think about it.
Meanwhile I’ll be playing with my toys. 
1: Actually kariyerGENÇ got it right here; in reality most of the new graduates have no proficiency. So, they’ll pick I know Word and Excel here even though they aren’t really proficient.
2: …and flame wars.
I’ve just voted Qooxdoo for Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything category.
You can use the link below to vote yourself:
Here is an idea; a keyboard that can learn your keystrokes and adjust its key shapes accordingly. This can’t be done with keyboards with actual physical keys on them. But with an OLED surface or something similar, it is possible.
It should record which keys are pressed and the exact coordinate. It should also take backspace into account. And then it should distort key-map slowly in such a way that keys are hit more or less in their center.
Facebook was the social tool with unexpectedly obvious but surprisingly overlooked idea of integrating small third party applications within a social framework. It is, of course, the user base that makes it work. I will not discuss whether the available apps are useful or not, or they are even functional. Most of them were rubbish. And they still are. But my opinion is; Facebook has nothing to do with it. It is a problem created by no-good developers and escalated to gigantic proportions by irresponsible users’ invites. Nevertheless, it was a great idea and successful execution integrating third party apps. Facebook is, by no coincidence, one of the main actors of Internet1.
Today there is almost no way of social interaction that you can’t engage within Facebook. You can write private messages, you can join groups and write to forums there, you can pinch, poke and even sell your friends, you can try flirting with girls/boys in your friends’ friend list, you can share videos, images, links, apps… An average Internet surfer can do anything with a single Facebook account. It is not because of Facebook’s technical infrastructure but because of its user base. Your friends are in.
The design had changed a number of times. Although people complain a lot, I’ve seen only improvement2. The latest change made it effectively a micro-blogging application with 1000 other features that competing micro blogging utilities don’t have. I would expect no less from a smart company like that.
I have de-activated my account a couple of days ago. This is the second time. And I will most probably re-activate it in the future, so it’s not the last de-activation. Now; I am not the type of person checking my Facebook profile every other hour, watching all the funny videos my friends shared and joining I bet I can find 1M people who loves to eat buggers groups. Seriously what’s with these groups? I can understand the users ultimately decide the purpose of an online tool, but don’t you think it is stupid to use groups as surveys? So that some day a jerk can send you his pitch on that miraculous cabbage pill? And don’t get me started with who has visited your profile, guaranteed groups. Anyway, I bet I can find 1M people who joins any handsome looking group without giving it a seconds thought. But that’s not the issue here. I de-activated not because of some kind of addiction, it’s not even the annoyence of all those useless notifications and app invitations. I de-activated because of fear. Fear of social isolation and degradation.
Log in to your Facebook account and read everything on the page… I’m waiting please read it all… Now answer the following questions:
This is not a Facebook issue. All general purpose4 social networks have this problem when they reach critical mass. When something is emphasized too much and too often it is usually not there. Social gets a lot of emphasis on these networks. It turns out to be a massive waste of time in the end. And people are OK with it, because it’s better than TV. Well, I agree with them on this one. But I stay away from all kinds of narcotics.
Now that I have shared my opinion on how much value social networks create for you5, let’s think about how much value you create for your social network. You tell them about yourself, where you live, what kind of education you have, what you like, what you don’t like and more importantly who do you know and how… yada yada… we all know that. And as long as you have agreed the terms and they play by the rules it is all OK. There is nothing wrong with creating value by sharing your personal information voluntarily.
You change the way you interact with others. You use private messaging instead of e-mail, you share media with built-in sharing feature, you write status messages instead of your blog. You lock yourself in, and this influences your friends as well to accept lock in. Network effect. My fear is; not being able to break this lock in. If Facebook’s growth continues like this more and more people will unknowingly be locked in. That is they will know no Internet outside of a few sites they regularly use. They will for instance see this effort of blogging futile, nobody will read it, if it’s not Facebook. And they will be right. But Facebook doesn’t create a culture for contemplative writing. Facebook wants you to express yourself in 140 or so6 characters as a status message. What are you doing now? Not much. Because much can only happen when you string many nows together.
Don’t get me wrong here I am not critisizing Facebook. I am critisizing the culture that Facebook and others are creating. I mention Facebook because it is the biggest and the most successful of all. I will use it again, it makes getting in touch with old friends possible. I would like to use seperate services for e-mailing, link sharing, chat, etc.. because it minimizes the possibility of a lock in. Remember that you invest your time, no, your life on these free services. It is valuable. Very valuable.
Btw, who wants an isolatr invite?
1: At least in Türkiye.
2: That’s just another feature I guess; you can do your complaining for something you signed up FOR FREE without ever leaving Facebook.
3: Of course you know what I mean, you sick @%#&$?£!
4: A social network built around a specific purpose, if active, would probably create value for its users.
5: Let me be very clear; it’s none. Just in case..
6: I don’t really know how long a status message can be.
