Why Quit?  Because the other company has bigger monitors. - <AUTHOR> http://sef.kloninger.com/2012/05/engineering-culture-litmus-tests/ <comment><USER2> For the engineers I've hired onto my team, I insist they be provided the very things that I want as an engineer:

      - Two big monitors
      - New dev machine/laptop, running latest bits
      - A top-of-the-line chair
      - Some natural light (not to be confused with *natty light*)

These are the non-negotiable items, and having taken a few senior mgmt positions, it's now something I state upfront: this is how we roll, no exceptions.

There's a second tier, depending on the environment: personal whiteboards. This is a function of the physical space, obviously; but anytime someone has a brilliant idea, I don't want them waving hands in front of me, I want expo markers flying around.

Aside from standard company stuff, that's it. And it's across the board -- everyone gets this. Everyone is valued, because your time is valued. I expect a lot from my team, and don't want anything petty getting in the way -- especially a few pieces of hardware and furniture that are negligible compared to the cost of the engineer.

It might not be everything in the world, but it sure seems to keep everyone happy because they are seriously productive.

<comment><USER3> Natural light can't be emphasized enough. I just moved to a window-less fluorescent fishbowl shared by three analysts/developers, and I've never had so many headaches.

<comment><USER4> I hate natural light and windows; give me a windowless room where I can set the temperature, light level, etc. exactly, independent of time of day.

The first thing after "private offices for anyone who wants them" is "24x7 HVAC adjustable as close to individually as possible"; I have a shared office in an invite-only coworking space which I largely don't use because the HVAC shuts off at 6pm and is on again at 9am, with huge windows -- it's barely ok in the evenings/mornings during the week, but unusable on weekends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Valuing an employee's time is definitely something that should be considered.

But even taken a few steps further than "I need another monitor to increase productivity", and you're floating dangerously close to self-entitlement, and simple, pathetic whining.

At Yahoo, I distinctly remember a thread on devel-random where one employee, in a single post, complained about things like how ugly the color scheme of the walls were, the fact that buildings in Mercado had too many floors, so when he left work, he has to stop at all the floors, and that the parking lot had flies that would get stuck in his hair gel. He called Yahoo the "worst place in the world to work at" because of this. It was incredibly sickening how ridiculous the email was.

The employer-employee relationship is a balance. If it swings too far in one direction where the employees get their ass kissed every day, then you breed self-entitled spoiled brats that are intolerable to work with. If it swings too far towards the employer, you get a dictatorship. I've worked in both environments, and neither of them are any good.

But to quit because you think that monitors are a litmus test about the engineering culture is ridiculous and is more of a reflection on you than the engineering culture. If you have a problem, solve it like an adult. It sounds like the employee didn't even mention it to his boss until he left. (It also sounds like the boss didn't bother asking the employee at their 1:1's about what they thought needed changing, or maybe he was just unapproachable.) Maybe it was just an oversight, maybe they didn't have the money, who knows. Life in general is a lot easier if you're flexible and less of a prima donna and go with the flow. To keep quibbling over the minutiae and extrapolate that to mean something more than it is, to me, is more whining than anything else.

<comment><USER6> > It also sounds like the boss didn't bother asking the employee at their > 1:1's about what they thought needed changing, or maybe he was just > unapproachable.

I'm an owner / CTO of a consultancy, and this point always frustrates me. We are only 12 or so employees, and we're all very comfortable with one another (we'll have game nights at the office, watch the GSL, etc). Still, when me and my partner have a 1:1 or talk to the employees, about 80% of them _will not_ tell us their concerns or things they need.

It's a huge problem for us - we are very interested in spending our money on benefits, etc. that people care about, rather than just guessing, but it's virtually impossible to do this. Story time:

We had a designer leave recently (I <3'd him, awesome guy) to go work somewhere else, and a huge part of his decision, in the exit interview, was about a difference in health insurance between the two places. We had met with him 2 months prior EXPLICITLY to ask him (and other employees) if they wanted us to pursue any changes to health insurance, and were universally told that our existing benefits in that regard were fine.

We have since modified our health insurance to be just fantastically good, because apparently this was a concern (and we've had to forego a few other things in order to be able to afford it). But the point is, this is a guy that I was friends with, and he just would not tell me what weight to give the health insurance benefit vector.

It's maddening because I'm a very data-driven guy, and for whatever reason I can't get good data on employee concerns to save my life. Does anyone have any pointers here?

<comment><USER7> Coming from the UK, I'm always amazed at how important health insurance is in the US, and what a broad range of quality of healthcare there is. Our company provide a free, private healthcare (BUPA), but I've never felt the need to use it.

Recently, I had surgery for an ACL tear. Unfortunately, for some reason, it later went septic. The day the consultant found it was septic he rushed me into surgery that afternoon and I spent the next 6 nights on IV antibiotics, followed by a course of oral antibiotics. At no point did I have to worry about how much all this cost - and I didn't ring BUPA just because I couldn't be bothered and it was all perfectly satisfactory care.

When I was a kid I had extremely bad asthma. A new respirator type device had just been invented and I was one of the first in the North West to have one. These things cost thousands of pounds at the time and there's no way my parents would have been able to afford it, but they got it loaned to them completely free. It quite possibly saved my life.

I used to think how lucky I was that I wasn't born in some third world country where I would probably not have survived, but recently I've started to be glad I wasn't born in the US.

You guys really need to sort this out.

<comment><USER8> All that would likely have happened in the US also. Most people have health insurance. The ones who don't still get medical care, it just costs them money. If they don't have the money, they can settle with the hospital on a payment plan they can afford. It's definitely not perfect, but it's not as bad as it seems at first glance. I'll see posts about people's 30,000 dollar hospital bill, but in reality they'll never end up paying that much.

<comment><USER9> I work for one of the top 10 hospitals in the United States. Our health insurance, ironically, isn't all that great. Co-pays are relatively high, certain things not covered, etc. So it got me thinking about health insurance and how it affects us (US residents), in comparison to our European counterparts.

One may argue that Europe went too far with their "social" expenses (hence, the current financial meltdown). Possibly. However, their view of healthcare (education, and other items) as a BASIC human right is one I strongly believe in. Healthcare should NOT be a luxury item. Yet, it is treated as such in the US. Almost exactly a year ago, I had a bike accident right off the Golden Gate Bridge. For 10 minutes I was limping my way to Sausalito until I happened to run into a police officer who thought I should be picked up by an ambulance to taken to the hospital (although they suspected that I had a concussion, broke my arm and shoulder, I came out with just scratches). I HAVE insurance, but for weeks after this injury, I was opening my mailbox at home, expecting a $20K bill (just the 15 minute ambulance ride was $2000). I was absolutely terrified. Imagine... and I _HAVE_ insurance. Luckily, I ended up paying just a few co-pays, and the issue was resolved.

One of the benefits of a great employer in the US (like you have -- Microsoft, for example) is "Health insurance, Dental covered" etc. That's how they post it in job boards. Shouldn't health insurance be a given??

To your argument that things are settled through loans, etc: I am utterly against it. Obviously, statistics show that these things don't work. The hospital I work for serves an under-served population. People suffering from chronic diseases and who should be seeing a doctor on a regular basis do not. Why? Cost. They end up showing up in the ER with a MAJOR issue months later. Their condition is much more complicated to treat, and significantly costlier. So, we "saved" on a silly, cheap follow-up, but ended up spending a huge amount later. And guess what? These patients can't pay their bill anyhow, so we have to write the expense off.

I am familiar with quite a few people who would have loved to change their jobs, or even start their own business, but are too worried about losing their health insurance benefits. Is that the right way to go for the US? Probably not.

[edited: put it initially under the wrong parent. text left as is]

<comment><USER10> > One may argue that Europe went too far with their "social" expenses (hence, > the current financial meltdown)

One may argue that if she has no understanding of the European financial meltdown, and just wants to find evidence for the failure of the welfare state where there is none. The crisis happened primarily because of the Spanish real estate crisis, and it became exacerbated because of (1) structural flaws in the monetary union and (2) imposition of rapid austerity.

As for the rest, I agree.

<comment><USER9> > One may argue that if she has no understanding of the European financial > meltdown, and just wants to find evidence for the failure of the welfare > state where there is none

There there. Relax. I was not arguing that the social measures were the only cause of the financial meltdown. They are, probably, a contributing factor. You brought up Spain, which in particular, I am quite familiar with due to personal relations with a Spanish. Real estate was the major factor (as it was in the US), that is true. However, when Spanish citizens tell me they show up at the ER for a sore throat because the ER is closer to work/fit their schedule/whatever instead of setting an appointment with a doctor, I think that's a big "social" expense that could and should be avoided. Why do they do that? Because it's free! So who cares, right? There's nothing wrong with providing free health insurance (and I'm a big advocate for it), but showing up to the ER without a reason should be penalized.

Also, when I hear that people who have no desire to work (because they're homemakers, for example) show up at the unemployment office simply to collect unemployment or just to be eligible to "fun" courses (to fill up their days), that's a social expense (in Spain, if you're unemployed, even for an extended period of time, the government will pay for all kinds of courses, be it knitting, accounting, or something else). Those are expenses that affect a country's well-being. I AM all for these things. But that's what I meant that they may have gone too far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The monitors, I totally understand and agree with. That's about actual productivity.

But choosing your own e-mail address? There must be a thousand little details like that in my life, every day, that I have no control over, like the color of my desk, or the sound of a coworker's voice. By all means, try to find a workplace that suits you the best, but if a seemingly tiny detail like that bothers you so much, unless company policy turns your e-mail address into something offensive, I can't help but feel you're going to have a hard time being happy anywhere.

Am I the only one who's literally never thought about their corporate e-mail address form before?

<comment><USER12> May I ask how many letters there are in your last name? Mine has nine letters, and it killed me to work somewhere that my username was "mschiral" and I had to type most of it _but then stop two letters early_.

It's like Shave and a Haircut without the "two bits".

<comment><USER13> Where I work, your username is automatically assigned in this fashion:

First letter is U or V depending on whether you are temp or perm employee. Next 4 letters are first 4 of last name. Final two letters are first 2 of first name.

I'm vmamema

Nice to meet you

<comment><USER12> Be grateful your name's not Ashton Agincourt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had a stint working at a massive corporation. I was given a "recycled" machine (full of crap from the previous user), whatever keyboard and mouse I could scrounge up from empty desks nearby, and two 19" monitors of different brands, one of which suffered from serious burn-in. Oh, and my work environment was filthy when I got there, I didn't have all sorts of access set up, and I had probably the noisiest spot on the floor. These conditions left an indelible negative first impression when I arrived, and things only got worse.

It takes an honest commitment by the People in Charge to ensure the best possible work conditions, and that commitment needs to be asserted every day. When you stop caring about the environment in which your developers work, then you've stopped caring. And that lack of care will be apparent the whole way through -- from top-level processes, to architecture, right down to the desks at which people work.

At least I had an Aeron chair. So I had that going for me, which is nice.

</comment><comment><USER4> Of all the "big companies" I've seen, Facebook has the best internal IT. A lot of those policies were set by Yishan Wong; basically, if something can be done more efficiently by an individual employee than by using IT, the process is broken. (<http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/>) Facebook IT is basically a cache, but if something is faster to get from the Apple Store or whatever, that's how they did it -- not sure how it is done now.

It's hilarious how in big companies it takes weeks+ to get things done in IT which could be trivially accomplished with a credit card and web browser, for less money. Yes, there are security policies (which should be enforced in the infrastructure and by user policy, not by end user hardware alone, and it should be carrot vs. stick for common builds), but things like ordering keyboards and chairs shouldn't be bottlenecked.

<comment><USER15> If you think corporate IT is dysfunctional, try working at a government agency or a public university.

Something as simple as buying a new desktop computer to replace a ten year old, dying computer turns into a multi-week affair where every step of the purchase is stymied by some layer of bureaucracy. (Inevitably, one of those layers of bureaucracy is on vacation this week and won't get around to rejecting your purchase requisition until next Monday.)

If your purchase exceeds some magic dollar amount and has to go out for bids, ${DEITY} help you. You might put out an RFP for a toaster and end up with Purchasing selecting a bidder offering a lawnmower because they're a small business, woman-owned business, or minority-owned business, and that fact gave them enough extra points in the selection matrix to beat all of the bidders offering a toaster.

<comment><USER4> I spent most of 2004-2010 working on government/military (including NATO and Iraqi and Afghan government, which were the worst) IT contracting.

For instance, it took me 5 months and a 3-star general's approval needed to make a (trivial) firewall change, between two lobes of a network all at the same accreditation level. It only happened THAT fast because making the change had a measurable impact on trauma care (i.e. it probably saved >1 life).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm shocked at how few companies let their knowledge workers pick out their machines. I've been using OS X since 10.1, but I keep going to companies that stick me with Windows, despite the fact that I'm probably 10-20 percent less productive (maybe more when you factor in all the OS X-only software that I'm used to). My last job eventually got me a Macbook Pro, and I'm trying to work on this new employer.

I was able to get a big external monitor but only after asking. It's not something that you're asked about when you start.

I don't work for a software or engineering company, and I enjoy the work, but I'd really like to be on a machine that really worked well for me and my needs. I really dislike Windows software in particular, and have found some real gems on OS X.

Too many companies try to nickle and dime IT spending. Saving a few hundred dollars or so on an employees machine isn't going to do you a lot of good if that means a lot of lost productivity.

The problem is that the people at the top often spend more time in meetings than working and only do email, PowerPoint, Word and Excel. They don't quite grasp how a better system could lead to more productivity, because their jobs aren't to produce things.

Of course, if you don't understand how your employees produce things, maybe you shouldn't be at the top.

</comment><comment><USER17> I see lots of different comments here about monitors. I think you're kind of missing the point.

The point of the article is that engineers value being trusted and allowed to create the work environment that bests suits them.

Whether you prefer 3 x 23" monitors or a single 30" monitor or even a 13" MacBook Air, you should be able to use the tools that make you most efficient (especially if you're being paid $120k+… what's the impact of a $1,000 27" display on the cashflow).

<comment><USER18> This is exactly it. At my company, the cost of someone's engineering rig ends up being a rounding error. So the prevailing popular setup these days is a loaded Macbook Air or Pro (sometimes with Linux installed instead of OSX) and a 30" monitor. I think the only real restriction is that we do not run Windows, which would be an impedance mismatch and support hassle for what we do (massively parallel real-time analytical databases). Of course, this means people have to support their own system if they run some odd OS flavor but no one seems to mind. Whatever makes people happy.

For that matter, we also let everyone pick their own email address as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the meta-point sort of makes sense. Places that don't skimp on resources which are a comparatively small fraction of salary (monitors, fancy coffee makers, catered food, etc...) are more likely to value their employees.

That said: I use a single 15.6" laptop on a stand (or, of course, in my lap) for pretty much everything I do. I find the added productivity of always having everything I work on in front of me in exactly the state I always use it outweighs any benefit of a fancier workstation. I wouldn't know what to do with a 30" monitor.

<comment><USER20> Speak for yourself. In operations, I have far too many graphs and widgets and knick-knacks, and I can really use all the real estate given to me (particularly when in command). I have duals and still don't have enough. At my last job, I even stuck a USB dongle on my iMac for a third, but it ended up being a painful experience and negatively impacted things like Exposé.

You can never go too _Star Trek_ when it comes to cool graphs. It's not a pissing contest, either, honest; I genuinely need all of that information in front of me in a crisis.

<comment><USER21> IMO graphs should be on a separate machine(s)/monitor(s) for all to see & watch, this could clear up space for your own work. While encouraging knowledge to be disseminated.

Any critical information you could still keep close, but the less important stuff can be pushed to central monitor(s).

<comment><USER20> I think it should be both. It's a lot harder to see stuff from a distance. Put it in front of me, please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Two monitor stories:

1\. In my last job I calculated the price of a nice monitor as a percentage of my salary and told my boss that it would only have to make me 0.4% more productive for it to be a good investment. Did I get a new monitor? Nope.

2\. A friend of mine works at Google in Sydney and I went to visit. The first thing that struck me as I gazed out across their cube farm (they have a nice office, but it's still a cube farm) was that the OpenGL screensavers on every single desktop were running at a decent framerate, a marked contrast to my workspace, which runs the same screensavers but only 10% have the right video drivers installed :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Monitors are nice indeed, but the one infrastructure item that would get me to turn down a job offer is Lotus Notes. I depend entirely too much on email to be able to do my job to saddle myself with that piece of junk. Using Notes is like trying to run a marathon with snowshoes on.

<comment><USER24> omg - does that still exist?

<comment><USER25> Yes, I work for a large insurance company, and we're wedded to Notes until death do us part.

And it's not just for email, it's for a huge number of custom applications that use the Notes framework.

<comment><USER26> Greedo - it's not in North Carolina, is it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Agree with the monitors.

The email thing less so. A consistent email format, helps people remember and communicate better.

Yes it has less of "YOUR" ego imprinted all over it, but surely there are a plenty of other ways to express yourself?

Seems a bit petty, and creates admin more work for you sysadmin and his managers. "email@example.com". See, now you need a policy against that sort of unpleasantness. Becomes more complicated. "Just use common sense" as a policy also has issues, because what is acceptable to some, and "common sense", is not to others.

The size of the company, is also relative to the number of policies/guidelines needed. Social acceptability is easier to pull off, in a small group, where the values are easily sub-communicated.

That does not scale however.

<comment><USER28> Yeh I agree with that, I recently joined a new company and was a little disappointed that I wasnt asked what email I wanted 'firstname.lastname@example.com' (dale is usually just rare enough that I can get firstnames in these situations)

I got firstname.lastname@example.com, and within a few days I realised that every time I needed to email someone I didnt know I never needed to go searching for their email address, I already knew it.

<comment><USER29> I wonder why corporate email systems aren't smart enough to take reasonable action. The first time I try to send a message to 'dale' the system should be able to infer the recipient from context. With a good naming convention to avoid false positives (forcing subsquent dales to add a distinguishing letter) this system would be very reliable.

<comment><USER30> Unfortunately, I've been singed when Gmail decided 'dale' actually meant 'firstname.lastname@example.com'. So, please no second-guessing in email addressing.

With good directory typeahead (I won't mention the system because its blue and yellow and smells), it's not really a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I totally get the monitor point, totally disagree with the email point though. Absolutely zero of my personal identity is tied into how company related correspondence are routed to my inbox.

If the email thing really is that big a deal let a cookie cutter corporate email address be a constant reminder to you that somebody else owns your time until you build something of your own, and then you can decide email names.

</comment><comment><USER32> Strictly speaking, I would leave for two monitors rather than a big one. Productivity-wise I find that makes all the difference. But the point about the engineering culture is certainly valid.

<comment><USER33> I'm just the opposite. I was offered a couple of 20" monitors but asked for a huge monitor. Do not regret it.

<comment><USER31> I'm in the one big ass monitor camp too, I've got two 20s right now and one is almost wasted (it's the Outlook, chat client, and music playing holder). I've tried actually utilizing both but my field of vision feels off the whole time because I dont like having the break between the two centered, too much context switching. But to each their own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This has always been a tell for what kind of management runs a software company. If you can't get a 24" monitor because the guy in charge has a 24 and has to have a 30 before anyone else can have a 24, time to run away.

<comment><USER35> Haha, yeah. That happened to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Google is the only employer that ever offered me a 30" monitor from day one. Google was also the absolute worst employer of my professional career. I've gone into why on other threads - just take it as a given that Google and I really really clashed culturally - and the best thing to do was to leave as fast as I possibly could.

That said, I can certainly see a manager who asks upfront what I need to be productive as a good sign and an absolute refusal to consider such needs as a bad one.

</comment><comment><USER37> Just a thought I'm not sure I actually believe myself: Does catering to every trivial whim (email address? really?) of your employees create a culture of entitled whiners? I've never worked at such a place, so I wouldn't know.

<comment><USER38> Yes. But what's the point of spending all that money on employees if they aren't 100% happy?

<comment><USER39> To get the most work out of them for the least amount of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I too fall for the big monitor fallacy, I like running an external monitor at high rez. One screen with a web browser and the other with a split terminal vim split in 2-4 panes. But it's really just moat. I could do well with just one terminal and a little better short-term memory. If I work focused and take breaks, I can work with just one terminal window @ fullscreen, control-z for task management and a web browser to switch between.

Just look at zedshaw. He works with a couple of junk linux laptops and a white macbook, and gets the shit done. The hardware doesn't matter that much, especially if you're doing your work in the terminal most any computer is fast enough.

I suspect though, that when it comes to guitars he has a little more equipment jones.

I used to work on a white macbook 1:st gen for years, but I bought a new mbp 15" a couple of years ago so that I could run vmware and not have the machine melt every time there was flash on a webpage.

In short, equipment doesn't matter that much (unless you're running an IDE), it's more important to take breaks and stay focused.

<comment><USER41> This article wasn't about equipment. It was about external signs about culture. You can use whatever you love, be it iPad, old MB or Dell workstation with Windows on it. Whatever get job done.

But if company not willing spend money (quite little in the long run) on equipment - this is a sign that this place is bad for engineers since management value engineers less than equipment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> If someone's complaining about the size of a monitor as a reason for leaving then there's a good chance that it isn't the monitors! People don't like burning bridges when they leave a job, so they are highly unlikely to say the real reason - especially when the person that's asking for the reason is the actual problem.

<comment><USER43> Yeah, the monitor isn't the reason; the monitor is a symptom.

Best Buy is selling 27" monitors for about $300 and 30" monitors for about $1,500. As a percentage of a full-time developer's salary, depreciated over three years, $600 is pocket change and even $3,000 is defensible. So if a company is nickel-and-diming its developers over this kind of thing, what does that say about the overall attitude of the management?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Screw the monitors, as long as I have some good coffee, a filtered water machine, and my desk is close to the bathrooms (see previous two reqs), I'm in heaven. Well that and actually having something worth working for. Greenfield projects are the best, followed by high-profile, high-pressure applications where you directly affect the company's bottom line. Sadly none of these can be found in the corporate jobs I've been working at lately.

</comment><comment><USER45> Those are both good indicators, and at least some companies get them right. I would add a few more that almost no one gets right: does the culture create meaningful chunks of interruption-free time (Paul Graham's "Maker's Schedule")? Do programmers get quiet places to work?

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit My first work email ever was first initial and last name. It made sense. I liked it. That is what I used when I got my own domain later. It is what I got @gmail. Interestingly, every job I have had since that first has also used the same format. If I was given the chance at my next job to pick my own email address.. it would probably be the same. :)

</comment><comment><USER46> The email comment makes no sense. If someone is so adamant they need a specific email address, what else will they be unreasonable about? I'm more interested in whether the company does everything possible to make the office a place you never want to leave. The right equipment for every job should be default. Food follows closely after, followed by nontraditional work spaces. Some of my best work is done either standing at a desk or sitting on a couch with my feet up. Flexible schedules also seem more important than an email address.

<comment><USER47> Well, you shouldn't compromise on any of those if they're important to you. And if you don't care about your username, then great, one less thing to have to worry about.

But I think for anyone that does care about their username, it's a sign of respect when the company lets you choose it, and a sign -- not the end-all, but a sign -- of trouble ahead if they can't, and the OP's point is valid.

(The thing about large monitors isn't the end-all-be-all way of judging an employer either! These are just litmus tests that give a very quick way of judging whether they have an engineering-focused culture. I'd expect these factors to largely align, but hey, if there's somewhere that gets both these tests wrong but everything else right and is still an awesome place to be an engineer -- more power to them.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well said Matt, thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I think the monitors thing only matters if it's applied consistently, such as getting the biggest/latest/greatest when starting or when requested by the employee for a work reason. If the company doesn't give that to you in the first place but does when you are pressured to get a project done, that's not valuing you - that's desperation. The previous department head in my company has resorted to something similar and that was a complete turn-off as it was more about his ass being saved than caring for his people.

</comment><comment><USER49> As a corollary, I've found that salary is a good indicator of how good a company's culture is. Not because of the actual money of course (money doesn't buy happiness, blah blah blah), but because a company that pays its engineers more generally values its engineers more. Most of the "hip" companies with good culture (FB, Google, Palantir) pay quite well, whereas other companies associated with a bad culture (which I will not name) tend to pay poorly. Not always true, of course, but a good heuristic.

<comment><USER50> And facebook sits engineers at grand long tables people complain about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I find his domain highly ironic given his views on email addresses.

My identity is with my personal email addresses. Company address is ephemeral and "throw-away" over the long haul.

</comment><comment><USER52> The real power is to be able to expense the monitor of your choice.

<comment><USER53> This is what all companies should do for "knowledge worker" I/O devices, within reason. For some definition of reason, that is, that at least covers my Thunderbolt display and "large" Wacom tablet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> To be honest these days I kind of expect the company to either provide me with a reasonable budget and tell me to go buy what I need, or let me bring in my own hardware.

Then I can be sure I'm getting what I need (which is, yes, two 27inch mons and a mb pro)

</comment><comment><USER55> Hm, I think a few people have missed the point of the post by the 'omg how self-entitled' posts I've just scanned through. This isn't just about getting bigger monitors, or a fancy email or a dozen other things, it's about companies that don't understand the development environment that works best is whatever the developer needs. Your company makes software? The developers are their biggest asset.

Plus given a blank cheque most of us wouldn't go wild, we understand what we need and skip the rest.

</comment><comment><USER56> Actually on a related topic, do people know what's the typical ratio of capital spending vs revenue of a typical software company? Capital spending should include equipments, IT infrastructure, operation infrastructure, etc.

I was at one company with 1% cap/revenue ratio and it was horrible. People had to bring in their own big monitors if they wanted a bigger one. Of course the CEO was proud with such low ratio.

</comment><comment><USER57> Is it just me or is too many monitors distracting? I find that I have cut down to just one monitor at both work and home. I was using one monitor for work and one monitor for communication. I realized it was easier just to quit the chat apps.

(Mind you, at the company I run, employees get whatever they want, hardware- wise. Everyone seems to have settled on the 27" apple monitor + the laptop display.)

</comment><comment><USER58> Reminds me of the days at the Sun offices in Santa Clara back in 2004. One personal office, two top of the line Sun workstations with 21 inch monitors, an additional windows PC if required. One big whiteboard and two phones. Damn, get into your office, shut the door and get on with your work. It felt like your own personal control room :).

</comment><comment><USER59> Apparently this site is using CloudFlare, and it's failing:

DNS Resolution Error

You've requested a page on a website (sef.kloninger.com) that is on the CloudFlare network. Unfortunately, CloudFlare is currently unable to resolve your requested domain (sef.kloninger.com). There are two potential causes of this:

Most likely: if the owner just signed up for CloudFlare it can take a few minutes for the website's information to be distributed to our global network. Check back in about 5 minutes and the site should be up and running and enjoying all the benefits of CloudFlare.

Less likely: something is wrong with this site's configuration. Usually this happens when accounts have been signed up with a partner organization (e.g., a hosting provider) and the provider's DNS fails.

</comment><comment><USER60> Also let the coders name the internal libraries/apps they write. It's their creation, also improves the culture. Generic names are just not good.

Even our internal servers are called with strange names, //pictures being the main intranet for the studio :) It's all good...

</comment><comment><USER61> I personally like formulated emails. Maybe it's the fact that I really like consistency but it also makes emailing coworkers much easier. I don't want to have to go hunting through a directory to find their custom email.

<comment><USER62> Really, it's not as big a deal as you'd think. You simply know your coworkers by their e-mail address, not by their name. (Yes, I call people by their handle, and they call me by mine. We get along just fine)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> 2 large monitors? _really_? How very 2004, I thought all the rockstar programmers these days did everything from starbucks on an 11" Macbook air or through an SSH session from their iPad!

<comment><USER64> Except at Github, apparently: <http://instagr.am/p/Kt05fpp2OL/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> We have an unlimited budget for hardware. You want three monitors? You got it. A desktop and a laptop? Sold.

The caveat of course, is be a reasonable adult and don't ask for a $50,000 gold-plated MacBook or something. As long as you can get more incremental value out of the hardware than it costs for us to get it for you, it's yours.

I think it all comes down to trust - as the article states, it's not about bigger monitors but the company trusting you to do the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER66> As somebody squeezing my eyes into a 19 inch with shitty resolution, I see where you are coming from.

Also, I don't have admin access to my computer. I'm forcibly handicapped.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm not personally invested in my work email address, but my last employer insisted I use their format for my IRC nick. That was unpleasant.

</comment><comment><USER68> At my place, you get email@example.com and can have as many aliases as you want, I don't care - I'll always send you mail to firstname.lastname@example.com.

How is it NOT geeky to have local mail parts in friggin' order?

Also, even if I had money to provide some hardware to people working for me, I'd call them whining b....s they are. We'll organically upgrade on neccesity and keep it lean at all times.

<comment> mh- congrats, you found the most effective way to ensure that you only hire candidates who couldn't get on at more enjoyable places to work.

<comment><USER68> No, I attract hard working, no nonsense people who take joy in getting things done with least amount of friction, and who don't need masseuse to write code.

<comment><USER69> Smart working people can just go elsewhere. The hardworking people can make use of recycled computers scavenged off the street. If you can't wait 10 minutes for the test suite to run, things to compile or files to finish transferring - then you're just a wining bitch. Using old hard drives is fine, an SSD will just make the work easier. Work should be hard, and painful - otherwise it's just play. Why would you want to see multiple views of your data, when you can just flip between windows all the time and scroll a lot?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Choose your own email address? It can take weeks of hassling here to get _any_ email address set up here. I consider it a luxury to be able to receive email, clone our git repositories or connect to webservices I'm coding for. On the plus side I've got quite good at setting up ssh tunnels.

</comment><comment><USER71> Pah, monitors, blah, blah. What about a comfy chair? I'd go anywhere for a nice chair. ;)

<comment><USER72> pfft, chairs. what, do you sit down all day long, you slob?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> As with most things in life, the _little things count_ because the little things show that people care (or, at least, are putting in enough effort to look like they do) and don't think you're just a cog in a machine.

</comment><comment><USER29> This post confuses masterful flourishes with substance. And by the way, I don't like big monitors - I get too many degrees of freedom and find it too hard to focus. I have a 27" cinema that I never use with my 13" MBP.

<comment><USER50> How can you fit a line of Java code on a 13" screen?

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I am productive using my 15 inch Macbook Pro. They offered me a Samsung 23 inch monitor but the quality was poorer than my MBP's screen, and it looked cheap and not very elegant to share the same deskspace.

</comment><comment><USER75> it's hard for me to imagine that the first apple computer would be have been created if woz insisted on using a large cinema projector, much less two projectors

he hacked a regular tv instead, and that's how apple was born

<comment><USER36> Back in those days, printers were macho 160-column beasts that could spew out 10,000+ lines of code in one continuous folded scroll.

I then debugged by taking that enormous scroll of paper to the beach, the park, or somewhere else pleasant and scribbled all over it.

While I love 30" monitors, something has been lost in abandoning that method of reviewing code. Just sayin'...

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Want to know if a company has good engineering culture? Look up the company's engineers' facebook and twitter feeds and see what they're saying. Engineers who are happy tell everyone about it. Big monitors and choosing your email addresses are great; for a couple of weeks. Then after the big monitor honeymoon phase is over and the daily slog begins, the engineers realize that they have a big monitor that buries them in the horrible culture of the company that attracts people based on looks and surface happiness. Two big monitors and nice chairs are byproducts of a culture that is good, not reasons that a culture is good.

Find a company where the engineers are happy, where the engineers don't leave, and where the management understands that happiness doesn't mean a couple of monitors or a nice chair. Happiness is having your opinions valued, getting fulfillment out of your work and being able to effect change within the company.

<comment><USER77> Absolutely true. There is a company here in Charlotte, NC (any dev in Charlotte will know who this is) who puts all the toys on display to attract employees: flat screens on the wall, all the monitors on your desk you can handle, etc. etc. The actual company, though, is a soul-crushing hell hole with more churn than an amish dairy farm. That place is pure evil.

<comment><USER78> Interesting... I worked in Charlotte for a few years and can't think of anywhere like this. I wonder who you could be referring to?

<comment><USER77> Let's just say the first word in the name is "Red" and the second is "Ventures". And there is no third word. They're consistently on the Inc. 500's "best places to work" list because they strong-arm employees into rating them well and most likely pay for the recognition.

<comment><USER79> Interesting. A senior manager from Red Ventures came to my school last year to talk about his company and recruit at my school. He made it sound pretty cool but looks can definitely be deceiving.

<comment><USER77> There's a reason they are always hiring. Churn is accepted and regular practice. The CEO is quoted as saying, "The graveyard is littered with 'indispensable employees'". They chronically under-pay and overwork. I could go on forever, but in summary, they charm perspective employees into a truly toxic and demeaning environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80>
      [detached]
      melissa@tellus$ whoami
      melissa

      Last login: Fri May 18 09:29:53 on ttys002
      MelBook:~ melissa$ whoami
      melissa

_phew!_

</comment><comment><USER81> Amen to Dual Monitors

</comment><comment><USER82> _Some projets_

Projects.</comment>


Daimlers MyTaxi to merge with Hailo - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/artic <comment><AUTHOR> Cant edit the link: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-mytaxi-hailo- idUSK...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-mytaxi-hailo- idUSKCN1060FK?utm_source=applenews)

</comment><comment><USER2> With heavy regulation in Germany preventing a true Uber like model, MyTaxi has become nothing but a more convenient cab hotline that is powered by an app. Not much going on in terms of innovation or user acquisition.

Seems reasonable to reduce mgmt complexity by putting two similar things into one, now that the growth dynamics have petered out...

<comment><USER3> honest question, for the end user, what does Uber offer that MyTaxi doesn't have?

<comment><USER4> in my experience, nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> never seen 2.5mil reads on anything in my life

<comment><USER6> Are you using feedly? I saw that too. I never understood what that number is. Obviously some popularity score. I assumed it was some measure of "shares" for a specified link.</comment></comment>


Security researchers 'destroy' Microsoft ASP.NET security - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1732956/security-researchers-destroy-microsoft-aspnet-security

<comment><USER2> Can anyone provide any more solid details? This article seems to be a lot of hyperbole ("totally destroys") with little fact.

 _The error message provides a small tidbit of information about how ASP.NET decrypts messages. With enough of these error messages it is possible to decrypt the message in its entirety._

What message? The cookie itself?

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell, this seems to allow you to decrypt the data within cookies. However, what would be stored within these cookies aside from a session ID? Some insight into what's actually stored in the cookie would be good, as this seems very overblown.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, if you're storing sensitive user information, or site access information in your cookies, then you deserve the resulting exploits.

I agree, unless this attack completely crashes the .Net stack to allow privilege escalation or similar, it's complete hyperbole.

<comment><USER5> I'm inclined to disagree. Encrypted cookies should be secure, provided the underlying encryption techniques are solid.

There are cases where having sensitive information in a cookie makes sense. In a web farm, for example. A session store that serves a farm of web servers is harder to set up and maintain than having clients send information back in a cookie. If it's properly encrypted, then this shouldn't be a problem. (Signed cookies are also good for this scenario, if it's okay for the data to be seen by others)

Am I wrong?

EDIT: Here's a good thread on how to ensure data on client cookies hasn't been tampered with: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1687826>

<comment><USER6> Storing something like a username in client-side data and then trusting its accuracy is effectively delegating your authentication outside you circle of control. Saying that encryption will make this magically secure is like saying encryption makes for effective DRM - eventually it will be compromised and you will have a systemic problem.

Storing, say, a username and a password hash in your encrypted cookie is at least as secure as direct authentication at each page load; even if they break your encryption they still have to know the admin's password.

Start with the assumption that the locks you use for security will fail, and ask "how will this break?" If we take the encryption out of the picture, do we trust the client to log in as root (or similar) with just a username and no password? The lock in question (as I understand it) is failing for an unrelated (information disclosure) reason. The design decision to lean so hard on the lock is what makes this such an issue.

<comment><USER7> It's not like DRM. Effective DRM is impossible because the client has to have the decryption key. All you can do is try to obscure it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Alex Payne (One of Twitter's earlier employees..) had written a nice article on why he does not work in Infomartion Security, quite a while ago.

<http://al3x.net/2008/12/31/why-not-infosec.html>

..the core point being,about how little attention genuine, path-breaking work gets, if security researchers DO NOT make an attempt to publicise it,quite radically.

These sure are not some random guys making a bold claim.. that work has been published in Usenix!

</comment><comment><USER9> The video is out <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yghiC_U2RaM>

</comment><comment><USER10> Totally irresponsible journalism. This is not all or .NET or even a tiny fraction. It is one control that will be rapidly patched.

This allows the end user to decrypt their own "encrypted" cookie, not an attacker. At best, if the web app writers were stupid and put truly exploitable data in the cookie, they'd be effected.

It is horrible that MS missed this, but calling .NET broken is probably actionable libel.

<comment><USER11> Plus, the researchers didn't destroy the security. It was never there in the first place. And I doubt they were the first to exploit it, either.

<comment><USER12> Exactly what evidence have you observed to make you believe that other researchers have used CBC padding oracles to break the security of ASP.NET?

<comment><USER13> Brian Holyfield claims to have been doing it for a bit ([http://www.gdssecurity.com/l/b/2010/09/14/automated- padding-...](http://www.gdssecurity.com/l/b/2010/09/14/automated-padding- oracle-attacks-with-padbuster/#comment-416)), although his approach seems to have relied upon default error emissions and is defeated by the common customErrors=on configuration. It doesn't sound like today's attacks have such limitations. And it isn't clear what actual effective workarounds exist, if any.

Even in cases where app logic will trip this approach up early (making hard assumptions about session vals having been initialized post-login and consequently failing fast, etc), the secrets are still captured.

<comment><USER14> Brian does not claim to have been doing it before Juliano or Thai. He wrote the blog post to explain in layman's terms what the attack was and released his own version of the original POET tool written in Perl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At least now the next time a client wants me to do something in .NET I have a good excuse to gently persuade them to something else (until this gets patched, at least).

<comment><USER16> This exploit has remarkably little applicability to the vast majority of ASP.NET applications. These guys are grossly overblowing this to try to get attention.

<comment><USER12> Exactly how do you know that? Juliano used his pre-existing tool (POET) to get admin privileges on DotNetNuke, without ever having used DNN --- or, presumably, modifying his tool. DNN is not an obscure .NET app.

What makes you make a comment like this? What evidence are you basing it on?

<comment><USER16> >Exactly how do you know that?

I have never worked on an ASP.NET-based site that relied upon cookies, encrypted or not, for anything. Even where the built-in forms authentication was used the username always had correlating server-side state that was triumphant.

So saying that you can modify cookies == a complete and utter non-issue for any site that followed any reasonable security practices.

<comment><USER12> The easy answer here is to say, "you mean besides DotNetNuke".

The deeper answer would be to point out that my day job is security evaluation for apps, roughly 50% of which are Fortune-100 web applications, roughly 60% of which are .NET applications, and you're flat-out wrong. There's a reason why cookie/session security is #3 on the OWASP top 10.

You're also presuming that the issue being discussed is, specifically, a cookie.

I understand why you're as defensive as you are; you're a professional .NET developer and Hacker News is hostile to Microsoft and, especially, .NET. Listen to me: I am not hostile to Microsoft _or_ .NET. Microsoft is a client of ours. They do software security better than any company in the industry. Take my word for it: it appears that they screwed this one up just like everyone else that tries to encrypt with AES.

<comment><USER16> >The easy answer here is to say, "you mean besides DotNetNuke".

Yes, I see you've already mentioned DNN. It's good that you have that example. It would be interesting if I somehow claimed that every app is immune to it.

Countless apps have countless vulnerabilities.

>You're also presuming that the issue being discussed is, specifically, a cookie.

I _know_ that the issue being discussed is specifically a cookie. It's specifically an AES-encrypted cookie.

To your edit: Defensive? Hardly. I'm just bitter after an endless stream of B.S. security claims by the security industry. It always follows the same pattern of arm waving and press releases, with a promised demonstration, and then the day of reckoning comes and...quiet. Maybe this will be the exception but, we'll see.

This has nothing to do with any sort of loyalty to .NET, though I hardly find HN to be anti-.NET, or anti-Microsoft for that matter. Whatever, in any case. It isn't my fight to wage.

<comment><USER17> "It always follows the same pattern of arm waving and press releases, with a promised demonstration, and then the day of reckoning comes and...quiet."

A few minutes ago, live on stage at a security conference in Buenos Aires (#ekoparty) they popped local SYSTEM privileges remotely on both DotNetNuke and SharePoint installed in a typical production configuration.

In case you think they stacked the deck, those applications were chosen only a couple of days ago after Juliano asked on Twitter for suggestions for the presentation.

<comment><USER16> What do you mean by "local SYSTEM"?

I eagerly look forward to details on it. Where might I find them?

<comment><USER17> > What do you mean by "local SYSTEM"?

The highest system privilege level on Windows. They were able to interactively run CMD.EXE as the LocalSystem account on the remote web server.

> I eagerly look forward to details on it. Where might I find them?

The details were not disclosed until today when the attack was presented at a security conference. As far as I know there isn't anything available online yet, but that should change very soon.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Did San Francisco Schools Stop Teaching Algebra in Middle School? (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/why-did-san-francisco-schools-stop-teaching/ <comment><USER2> This seems so strange to me, this sharp distinction between algebra and non- algebra. I might have gone to school in the Soviet system so everything was backwards and such but we were introduced to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_algebra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_algebra) very early and just did simple expression transformations, variable substitutions. That was a lot early than 8th grade. I even taught my 2nd grader a few of those.

I have observed the curriculum so far in US, at least up until the 2nd grade and it's a hot mess. Even for double digit addition problems they jump right into "cool tricks" and "mathematical thinking" while there are just really a few steps to memorize and, guess what, kids are great at memorizing stuff. Later on it's time to show a few short-cuts and kids even discover those themselves.

Now going back to algebra, I am firm believer that a simplified version of this has to be introduced much earlier. It's a bit like a spiral, do basic arithmetic, geometry, number line manipulation, simple word problems, next year do the same but more complicated, add some algebra in there and so on.

But I guess that's just too boring and teachers, and probably higher level authorities, decide that they need to do "something" so they start making changes just to they can slap something on their resume. Developers do that too some extent, "here let me rewrite all this..." we can certainly understand that, but doesn't mean it's a good thing.

<comment><USER3> Why are you advocating memorization? That just gets people to treat mathematics as a set of magical spells you have to receive from the holy scriptures and priests, and that problems just can't be solved without having received the appropriate spell from the masters. (It also encourages strange beliefs like that mathematics is a subjective human construction, like art and music.)

Conveying that there's a deeper conceptual "mathematical thinking" seems much more important than memorizing the algorithm for "completing the square" or whatever.

<comment><USER2> > Why are you advocating memorization?

Because it's something kids do really well and it's something to take advantage of when learning at that age. In other words, it's better to memorize the multiplication table then find insights into how it work later, and do proofs and make connections with calculating an area of a rectangle etc. A lot of the tricks and insights don't mean anything to the children if they didn't already do many examples the rote, repetitive way and in a lot of cases the "insights" are often a distraction as well. Those should come later. Even more interesting is when children see or discover these tricks or rules on their own, then they become really memorable to them.

I don't have many samples work with, but I have observed this over the years based on my own experience, my kids and my extended family members and I have noticed the same patterns.

<comment><USER4> Memorizing the multiplication table is a useless waste of time and I recognized as much when they tried to make me do it and I refused. Nobody needs to know 8x7 off the top of their head. What's really important is estimation techniques to tell if something passes a sanity check, like reducing things to powers of 10/etc and seeing if they're close to the result you got on a calculator, like how 123x456 should be close to 50000 (100x500)

<comment><USER5> > Memorizing the multiplication table is a useless waste of time and I > recognized as much when they tried to make me do it and I refused. Nobody > needs to know 8x7 off the top of their head. )

Me too! I thought I was so smart as a kid, realizing that stuff I didn't want to do was useless.

However, _I was wrong_. An over-dependence on calculators due to a lack of arithmetic fluency has sabotaged all my encounters with mathematics ever since. I had a hard time understanding and developing any kind of fluency because I was forced to push everything through a black box that also distracted me.

I now realize that memorized facts are the foundation for knowledge and advanced thinking. Dismissing memorization, especially of fundamental facts, is like choosing not to use RAM because you can always swap to disk.

<comment><USER4> Except memorizing multiplied numbers is not foundational knowledge for any higher math, knowing what the concept means is. Learning this involves working through some examples but it doesn't mean you need to know an entire table. Not knowing 7x8 never held me back in higher math/math-relevant classes like Calculus I-III, Discrete Math, Linear Algebra, Physics I-II, Chemistry, Macroeconomics, Computer Science (anything from basic programming to language processing or algorithm proof), Music Theory. Had a fun and mostly easy time in all those. Once in a blue moon on a test I'd have to do a multiplication and count it out (8x5, add 5 8 times) because it was a product in a derivative or something and that class had an (unrealistic for the real world) no- calculator policy. In fact I'm pretty sure mathematicians are notorious for poor arithmetic.

Additionally to your point, I think forcing arithmetic memorization on students is harmful because it makes math seem boring and hard.

<comment><USER2> > Except memorizing multiplied numbers is not foundational knowledge for any > higher math

But my point wasn't that it's foundation in general, category theory, set theory, etc are foundational, but that it's important to start from it. Just because something is foundational doesn't mean it's a good starting point.

> it doesn't mean you need to know an entire table.

Kids at an young age are usually very good at memorizing things and once they have memorized then they can build on that and learn new tricks, relationships, abstract and foundational principles.

> Not knowing 7x8 never held me back in higher math/math-relevant classes like > Calculus I-III,

Neither did me either. Embarrassed to say, I had forgotten a lot of it. But I would have been struggling early on in the 4-9th grades if I didn't know how to add or multiply numbers then. I would have been wasting time on tests doing it the slow way, instead of thinking of more interesting problems.

So to summarized, yes, it is not foundational but it all depends on age, it's better to take advantage of what the brain already knows how to do well at that particular state in time.

> In fact I'm pretty sure mathematicians are notorious for poor arithmetic.

Could be but if they are poor they would be left behind in early grades and might never becomes the mathematicians they are. There is also a bit survivorship bias in the sense that if there mathematicians who are poor ar arithmetic, they'd stand out and become memorable, but those that are good are not noticeable because they are expected to be good with numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something feels off about this whole debate. I took algebra in 7th grade, so I naturally lean towards the "push it earlier, not later" camp. But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the way we group mathematical concepts together in grade school is fundamentally boring for students. It seems like nit-picking to fall hard on one side of this "8th vs 9th" dichotomy when I actually suspect the whole math cirriculum could use a revamp from the ground up. Maybe we should consider basic discrete math in elementary school. Maybe basic calc in 6th grade. How can we get substantive, critical thinking skills earlier into the curriculum so we don't have to just assure students: "trust us, math will get interesting if you can just stick with it through calculus and linear algebra".

<comment><USER7> When you try to understand math education, remember that it's basically what would happen if foreign language classes were designed and taught by people who only spoke English and had no training in formal language theory.

Of course it's largely a disaster: it's taught by people who brag about hating the subject!

Algebra education can (and does) safely begin in first grade, with the introduction of workbooks: "4 + [ ] = 7" is a common exercise, and involves the implicit solving of a basic linear equation, where you solve for the value which goes in the box.

That you can teach algebra to first graders, but math education is so abysmal, only speaks to the complete disregard mathematics is given in education.

But what else would you expect when you leave it up to people who hate math?

<comment><USER8> I remember that, and hated it. Why? Because I had real trouble memorizing sums and products. I still have to stop and think to do simple sums in my head. I sometimes still count on my fingers when I add two numbers. And these types of problems were taught as memorization. Four plus _what_ equals seven? You either knew it or you didn't.

If they had taught us how to _solve_ these problems, I think I would have enjoyed it more. "You can take away the four from both sides, and there's the answer" somehow that would have been easier for me to work with.

<comment><USER9> I was frustrated in this way during my math education, but lately my opinion about memorization has softened a bit.

The trick is that it has to be approached in the same way as in sports: Demonstrate a technique, explain the principles, attempt in live play, then return to drill muscle memory(now that the student has discovered how bad they are at it). Music is very similar - you can play a song badly, then drill scales and arpeggios a while, come back and suddenly you play the song better.

The point of memorizing is, in the end, to make the knowledge closer and more available to you. But there are several ways in which this cycle drops the ball during education and succumbs to rote learning as the sole factor:

* The teacher themselves doesn't understand the principle, and thus is poor both at explaining concepts and grading results. "You get a zero," they will shrug, when the student has misunderstood something and turns in a problem set with wrong answers.

* The principle isn't connected to "live play", making the technique unrelated to existing knowledge. It's the way in which education systemically fails most frequently, and it starts with having classes specialized per subject and limiting the crossover between them. All too often, all that happens is that you do some problem sets, get tested a little later, and that's it - and so all your focus as a student is on passing, not on learning.

* The drill focuses overly much on tricks and "gotchas" and not on developing confidence and long-term retention, making the student uncertain about how to generalize the technique to the tricks. In comparison, when I took judo, we drilled all techniques on one side only, for the entire semester. Is it useful to be able to mirror the techniques? Yes, but that doesn't mean that any study time needs to be allocated to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who graduated a couple years ago this policy change feels ridiculous to me. The difference between someone entering college with either one or two years of calculus and someone entering with precalc completed is huge, and any policy that moves away from that is a bad idea.

The benefits imo are mostly around allowing more flexibility in scheduling for taking classes that require prereqs of calculus, which you're blocked from the first year otherwise. This can be compounded if you come in with many of your school's general requirements met, as this can make it hard to find classes to take that will be helpful towards your desired major. Additionally, some programs have (poorly designed) hard pipeline dependencies that mean you're set back from a couple quarters to a year if you enter without calculus completed.

<comment><USER11> This is just another nail in the coffin of public schooling. We've watered down the high school diploma so much that 20% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Based on the increasing requirements for bachelor's degrees where it doesn't seem to make sense on the surface, it seems employers have caught on to how meaningless it is.

<comment><USER12> Who is "we"? Public schools at the local level in the US are very diverse. If you have the money you can find public school systems as good as Ivy League colleges, with a self-selected peer population of students with highly engaged parents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The only sensible reason to not teach algebra in middle school is because you've taught it in primary school.

Moving it to high school sounds crazy to me. What do you do between doing your times tables and fractions in maybe 3rd or 4th grade and 9th grade? Geometry?

I'm any case it's quite fortunate there's online resources like Khan Academy where kids can learn on their own.

<comment><USER14> > What do you do between doing your times tables and fractions in maybe 3rd or > 4th grade and 9th grade? Geometry?

Other countries do a sort of "pre-algebra", mostly focusing on non-trivial word problems which are then solved by setting up the equivalent to an algebraic equation, but in natural language arguments as opposed to symbols. AIUI, this sort of onboarding towards algebra is lacking in the U.S. system, and much of the difficulty that folks seem to experience w/ algebra and higher-level math might have something to do with that. (Of course, Geometry could also play a role in filling that gap. Euclidean geometry has traditionally been studied quite early, as a general introduction to mathematical rigor.)

Edit: Discussed in Andrei Toom, _Word Problems in Russia and America_ [pdf] [http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN- NEW.pd...](http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf) The reference to Russia is a bit misleading - of course Russian math education is traditionally among the strongest and most effective, but the same approach to using word problems as an introduction to algebra is found in plenty of other places.

<comment><USER15> In Estonia basic algebraic equations are part of the mandatory mathematics course at age 12-13 (grade 6 here).

<comment><USER16> Isn't 12-13 grade 7 if schooling begins at 5?

<comment><USER15> Schooling begins at age 7 here.

<comment><USER16> What you meant by here was ambiguous to me before, but now I understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems that an excellent predictor of policy in SF is: will it increase inequality and the advantage of the very rich while being presented with liberal rhetoric? Then do it. This is a great way to keep smart but poor kids from competing with private school kids.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is also across the board in most California districts. Not just SF. (This article is dated 2016)

I posted this because in our Bay Area school district, algebra and geometry was an accelerated course with just 35 students. (In just one school of the district) Selected by lottery.

It costs 7500/year but they want to get rid of it. Teachers are also planning to strike. To me, it looks like funding in CA public schools is no longer about education but about the care and feeding of public sector unionized employees.

Parents are horrified but in the same neighborhood thread, teachers are using it to ask the parents to support them. Students are given extra credit if they show their support for work the rule(only school work hours and no more clubs and extra classes like this) and strikes and walk outs.

It's all mind blowing to me(I don't have kids in the public school system) and I can't wrap my mind around this. I have been approached by friends who are parents and don't want to be vocal about their kids children in the community forums as I don't have the vulnerabilities of parents whose kids are already in the system.

Certain Asian/Indian parents send their kids to tutoring classes which is seen as elitist and reactions have been borderline racist.

I just tell my friends to pull their kids from public school if they can afford it or homeschool them. I am very impressed with khan academy. I looked into it and I find myself learning from their classes.

I have to ask ...what is the point of public education in CA anymore? Should educational methods change and the way we teach subjects change? Conformity is tyranny at this point.

Teachers overload kids with useless assignments and the real learning happens after school in tutoring centers. And then the kids have to learn extra curricular subjects especially as they get closer to applying for universities. This is supposed to make them 'well rounded' but it only makes them depressed, stressed and uninterested in education. They become cynical and jaded and entirely unprepared when they go to college. It's worse for the smart kids as they are bored but still have to go through the motions.

Maybe it's time to revamp public education.

<comment><USER18> California has made home schooling more difficult than most states. The cynic in me says that it's done that way on purpose to protect the position of the public school employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> (I sit on an SFUSD community board.)

There are many strong opinions (ITT and elsewhere) about how algebra should obviously be taught in middle school.

The data I've seen does not support those conclusions. Eg [1][2].

This is kind of an interesting article, but it really does not convey the essential facts at hand. Middle school alg harms student achievement. Many/most students end up retaking it anyway (!!!) and there is a simple and effective fix. SFUSD should be lauded for braving the political heat.

Maybe there is a kind of educational system where middle school alg is a good idea. But our system is not that kind of system. If you live/vote in SF please support evidence-based practices and common sense. <3

[1] [https://www.edweek.org/media/2018/06/11/v37-35-algebra- chart...](https://www.edweek.org/media/2018/06/11/v37-35-algebra-chart600.jpg) [2] "But in a 2015 study, the University of North Carolina's Thurston Domina and colleagues tracked how California's uneven 8th grade algebra-for-all rollout played out across districts. In a surprise finding, they discovered that higher enrollments in early algebra were linked to a decline in students' scores on a state math test."

[https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/06/13/a-bold- effort-...](https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/06/13/a-bold-effort-to-de- track-algebra-shows.html)

<comment><USER20> _Maybe there is a kind of educational system where middle school alg is a good idea. But our system is not that kind of system. If you live /vote in SF please support evidence-based practices and common sense. <3_

Indeed, your system is not that kind of system. On the other side of the Pacific, Asian kids are routinely prepared for algebra by 7th grade, and their scores on international math tests in later years lead the world. That's Asian "common sense".

One can't help wondering why it is that their cousins, the Asian kids in the SFUSD, are so poorly prepared for algebra even by the 8th grade. The fact that San Francisco-style "common sense" decides that the solution is to declare that even those who _are_ prepared will no longer be allowed to take algebra until high school says a lot about the fraught relationship between San Francisco and common sense.

Non-SF common sense might conclude instead that the fix should involve making elementary school better rather than making middle school slow down to match the failing elementary schools. Maybe expand your "evidence-based" thinking beyond your own failing districts and look at statistics and practices from the rest of the world. What is it that Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, ML China, Korea, and Japan do with primary-age Asian kids that your SFUSD doesn't do with its Asian kids? Why not start with that?

<comment><USER21> "What is it that ... do with primary-age Asian kids that your SFUSD doesn't do with its Asian kids? Why not start with that?"

Because that's culture. That's respect and reverence for education and teachers. And then there's the after-school and weekend tutoring.

There's always this discussion in comparison with Finland, as well, which takes a very different approach to education than China. Yep, again culture. A commitment to children. In Finland, a commitment to funding schools and social services as a society.

It's way easier to mandate a change in the curriculum. As a mathematics educator in the US, I'll make this claim: the curriculum is almost irrelevant. It's the teachers and the attitude of society toward education that matters the most. If teachers are good & have the freedom and training to teach, they'll adjust the curriculum, whatever it may be.

<comment><USER22> The average salary for primary education teachers with 15 years experience in Finland is about $37,500, compared to $45,225 in the United States.

SFUSD starting salary for a teacher with no experience is $52,657, average salary is $69,572, $90,000+ compensation is not uncommon. That salary does not exist for teachers in Finland.

Finland does require all teachers to have Masters degrees though. Teachers are also allowed a great deal of autonomy and trust in designing their curriculum and teaching approaches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I went to a parochial grade school and _hated_ it. I begged my parents to take me out, and by the time 7th grade came around, they gave in. Unlike my siblings, I went to public school for 7th and 8th grade. In retrospect, if I ever have children, I would make every sacrifice imaginable to ensure they go to private schools. No amount of complaining from them would ever make me reconsider.

I believe that actively working to prevent top students from making too much progress over the median student is the norm in all public schools.

It is wrong that we primarily divide the thousands of students in a given school district by the year they were born.

<comment><USER24> I agree with your last point whole-heartedly. We need to start adjusting for ability and proficiency as early as 2nd grade.

The big challenge with all teaching is that you must teach to the "middle" ability child. Instead of splitting by age we should be splitting into groups like the top 45% in one class, the next 35% in the next and the bottom 20% in the last. This lets each child have more or less time based on the aptitude and creates smaller deviance between the "middle" and top/bottom of each group.

<comment><USER25> The stigma of being in the bottom 20% is hard to get rid of, though.

<comment><USER24> Absolutely true. However, _everyone_ knows who the kids are that got an F on the test anyway. In this structure, they get more help and may be more able to get a C- instead. It is even more so with math since everything builds on previous knowledge unlike something like history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I read this article with a lot of interest a while ago, since I have a kid in middle school in SFUSD.

Having been through the system, I think the whole thing is pretty stupid. People, seriously, the problem with math achievement in SFUSD is _not_ a function of whether we favor concept development or technical approaches. The problems are far deeper. We can only dream of being at the the point where this sort of debate is actually what matters.

I think what happened is that US educators looked at Finland (among other places that have high math scores) and saw that there is more development of concept and less emphasis on technical drill. So they went back and made a curriculum that does, like, the _concept_ thing.

Interestingly, they just don't seem to want to copy that part where math teachers (well, all teachers) are a highly talented and respected group of professionals, drawn from the upper tier of graduates.

I think that the US failed to understand that Finland does things this way because it's how talented teachers who are good at math teach math. You can't put this in a curriculum, hand it off, and get the same results without that talent base. And if you have that talent base with autonomy to do the job properly, well, they'll probably do it regardless of the curriculum.

Until we address this (it's not the only thing we need to address), this whole debate is worthless.

</comment><comment><USER27> The article restates a presumption that by offering advanced students harder coursework, they are "leaving behind" the rest of the students. However, by the very same logic, if 20% of the kids get ahead by one year, aren't we just leaving behind 80% there, vs 100% in the no-algebra-offering scenario?

In most analyses of STEM, the top echelon of US students is NOT behind the rest of the world's top echelon: it's only in the medians/means, accounting for the vast number of poorly performing Americans, do we see the international STEM education gap.

Therefore, I'd argue this policy is actually detrimental to the one and only group of students we are doing well with in the USA, namely the top tier of students.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder what level the public school 8th grade teachers are at with their Algebra at this point and what that has to do with this. I get the impression there are very few 8th grade math teachers who studied math in college as their first choice and then transitioned to education. There are too many more attractive STEM careers if you are inclined towards math, and the best math teachers in a school district are likely to be teaching the advanced 11th and 12th graders.

I took Algebra in public school in 8th grade in 1990. The public school was pretty bad, I remember how frequently we (the 8th graders) were correcting the teacher, he was that bad he was screwing up the examples on the board almost every class.

I got sent to Catholic School for high school. Everyone in the math department had an advanced math degrees. Calculus was taught by a PhD. The curriculum blended Algebra/Geometry/Trig/Calculus across all 4 years instead of the "one thing at a time approach." I remember being very cognizant of thinking I was probably better at algebra by the end of 9th grade than my public school 8th grade teacher had been. The quality difference in the teachers for math was mind blowing between the two schools.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm conflicted on this. Having moved 18-20 times across 7 states before high school, I'm intimately familiar with the inconsistencies between curriculums that existed before common core. I was taught some things 3-4 times while others I missed entirely. I also, through a series of (in hindsight) unfortunate events, ended up at the point of taking calculus my freshman year of high school and had three years of no math before college. While it was convenient as a high schooler, it really bit me when I started college and dropped straight into advanced calculus after a three year hiatus of all things math.

Harmonizing with the common core is fantastic. But school districts should also strive to harmonize with surrounding districts when it comes to "extras" like this, as well.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lowering educational standards to meet the needs of the 20th percentile student is preternaturally stupid and is why we'll be moving out of San Francisco before our kids are in school.

</comment><comment><USER30> The article really buries the relevant info:

>the CCSS Math 8 course that eighth graders are now expected to take includes 60% of the material from the old Algebra I course. This includes linear equations, roots, exponents, and an introduction to functions. The new course also offers students a taste of geometry and statistics—hardly your typical middle school fare.

So it isn't really that big of a deal...

</comment><comment><USER31> This feels like a joke. As a San Francisco parent, this almost certainly drives us towards private school, a luxury that not everyone has.

I took algebra in sixth grade, and I'd learned the material in fourth from mother. Holding until 9th grade is baffling.

<comment><USER19> If you're worried about social justice/equity, I have great news for you: the SFUSD "joke" created dramatic and positive improvements across student demographics, including (and especially) black and Latino students.

In most districts, private school is often better than public school. This is especially true in California for a variety of reasons (first and foremost Prop 13). You may wish to send your kids to private school (makes sense to me) but from the data I've seen, these changes significantly improved SFUSD's math offerings.

Source: I am on an SFUSD community board and have read up on this a bit (eg [https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/06/13/a-bold- effort-...](https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/06/13/a-bold-effort-to-de- track-algebra-shows.html)) but I'm always interested in learning more!

<comment><USER26> Thanks for your reply, and for the links. I followed them and read through them, but I did it quickly, I'll take another look later.

I don't think the data supports the change as an unqualified success. The article you posted (again, I quick read it) doesn't compare calculus enrollment before and after the change. This article from the chronicle provides that data:

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/SF-schools- mov...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/SF-schools-move-to- delay-algebra-shows-13518860.php)

"While more students are taking precalculus now, the enrollment in Advanced Placement calculus courses has declined by nearly 13 percent over the past two years. Enrollment in AP Statistics, which requires only Algebra II as a prerequisite, has surged nearly 50 percent."

My understanding is that all courses other than calc that require algebra have seen higher retention and enrollment. So we could view this as a qualified success, a trade-off: better results pre-calc, at the cost of fewer students taking calc. Keep in mind, we don't know how many of the students who are now succeeding in Stats would have been succeeding in Calc, were it not for the change. We are also only given percentage increases/decreases. Without starting populations, we actually don't know if the increase in Stats offsets the decrease in Calc.

Unfortunately, this is precisely the trade-off people were worried about. Fewer of the top students are taking calc. Any claim of success must address this.

FWIW, I do agree with that last bit from the article, about calc in high school not being quite as essential as (some) people think. If an entering college student has very strong algebra, trig, and pre-calc (let's say the ability to solve elaborate algebraic equations involving trig functions, logs, various exponentials, tricky multivariable quotients... and really _gets_ it), then I don't think the lack of formal calc would be all that big a problem.

Then again, calc is a good way to get into those kinds of equations.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't call this change an unqualified success either. There are probably ways to improve from this new status quo. Maybe a 13 percent decline in calc enrollment is a sign of overcorrection.

I would call it an improvement, though. That's all I'm on about. Basically what you said about "calc in high school not being quite as essential as (some) people think", together with a dash of "everyone thinks their kid is a genius who's being held back by this change but most of them are wrong _" and a heavy dash of "stats is obv better than calc anyway".

_ calc enrollment goes down by 13%; alg re-dos go down by 30%; seems like most people are winning or breaking even right?

<comment><USER26> I disagree that "a heavy dash of stats is obv better than calc". Not saying there's no case for it, but it isn't obvious at all.

I also don't think the line about everyone thinking their kid is a genius is productive for this discussion. I think there's a reasonable point in there, but I think it's needlessly caustic and fails to recognize legitimate concerns about the effect this will have on aspiring STEM students in college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What do they mean when they talk about _algebra_ here? Is it simply equations with variables or something more?

<comment> barry-cotter The aim is to get the standards low enough for everyone to pass. It's equations with variables.

<comment><USER15> I see. I find that odd, because kids already do basic algebra in primary school. The exercises are simply written a different way.

4 + x = 9

is considered algebra, but

4 + ___ = 9

(fill in the blank) isn't.

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to teach this same thing with symbols to kids in grade 8.

<comment> barry-cotter Abstraction is really hard. An economics professor of my acquaintance said he started requiring calculus for his game theory class so he could be sure everyone was competent with algebra. Every time you increase the level of abstraction you lose some people. Some of them can be taught it but some can't, no matter how hard they or their teachers try.

<comment><USER32> Interesting. That's probably the best reason I've heard for why calculus and computer science prerequisites should be similar, even when the latter doesn't use the former: if you don't have the abstraction capacity for calculus, you probably won't have it for programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What an interesting article. I ready it for a bit of morning outrage and now find the issue far more complex and subtle than I had thought.

My own child entered the US system in grade 8 as it happens and due to language issues was tracked into algebra, which was mostly stuff he'd had a couple of years before (not because he was an advanced student, simply how his German system had worked). He wasn't able to get back on track until the end of the year.

So I of course assumed this change would be a disastrous concession. Now I'm not yet sure what to think.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am curious if you are in CA and if your child was picked because english wasn't 'spoken at home'.

CA has a funding formula that takes money from all districts and put it in a common pot. Better well funded schools are no longer assigned according to affluence of neighbourhood.

Funding for schools is then redistributed act to principles of no child left behind..which means that if there are more kids in a school that avail free lunch/meals or if they don't speak English at home(English not native language), then the school can ask for more $$ from Sacramento.

In my school district, kids fluent in English are often tracked to non English speaking/English as second language streams to tap into these funds.

It's a bit of a mess because affluent areas don't get enough funding but teachers need salaries for standard of living costs in said affluent areas...so most of the funding goes to salaries and then to cover unfunded pension liabilities of staff.

Eventually students perform due to parent involvement and extra tutoring classes after school hours. They do end up over worked and stressed out.

<comment><USER33> I'm a fan of "common pot" but it doesn't work as well as one might like: in the public schools here in Palo Alto the parents routinely hold auctions that raise multiple millions of dollars which goes into paying for things that I think every kid should be getting (art, PE, music, an aide in the classroom etc).

PTA donations got so extreme that the school district had to implement the same "one pot" approach just to spread the money around the schools _in the Palo Alto school district_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Palo Alto district is a basic aid district. This means that they get no money from the state...they have parcel tax to fund their schools. Palo Alto is a wealthy enclave in CA. They don't have to deal with the restrictions of other counties and school districts.

[..]Some districts, known as "basic aid" or "excess tax" districts, fund their revenue limit entirely through property taxes and receive no general purpose state aid. They also retain any excess property taxes within their district. ... Basic aid districts are generally more advantaged than other districts.[..]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> FWIW, students in SFUSD who want to get calculus as a senior are required to "double up" on math one year - for example, taking algebra and geometry simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER35> """ ...unequal access to high quality education is a comparable injustice to unequal access to the ballot box and is "the clearest manifestation of the nation's caste system." """ The _real_ caste system in education is those who can afford to send their kids to a high-performing private school vs. those who cannot. This solution only exacerbates that problem.

<comment><USER22> > the real caste system in education is those who can afford to send their > kids to a high-performing private school

Is the problem here is not with the public school system, but rather with the existence of high performing private schools? Should these schools be banned? Perhaps along with private tutoring? Such policies might well lead to increases in equality of outcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This mentality is just regressive. I find funny such evil and stupidity can be carried out in the name of fairness and equality. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER37> I would not advocate for removal of algebra from middle school. But I would consider advocating removal of add/subtract/multiply/divide facts from grades 1-5, and replace the time with learning of how to reason.

I feel like learning you math facts, rules for multiplication, etc challenge children early on, but could be taught to a naive middle school child within a couple of weeks or less. Thus teaching this to young children seems like waited effort with little transfer benefit. On the other hand, getting children interested in learning, learning how to organize thoughts into an argument, etc...there is clear benefit for that, I wonder.

</comment><comment> BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 I hear so much moaning about students with "poor math skills" when it's really poor arithmetic skills. The moaners typically wouldn't recognise a differential equation if it hit them in the face.

</comment><comment><USER38> It'd be good to hear from some Middle School teachers. Any here?

</comment><comment><USER39> What is so abstract about Algebra I? Isn't it pure rote? I mean, it's so rote that I am confident everything in Algebra I can be solved by Mathematica (or Maple) automatically.

<comment><USER40> The roteness is different than arithmetic. It's rote constraint solving and they don't teach you the algorithm in full generality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945033).

</comment><comment><USER42> They started teaching us algebra in grade 5. It took me until my first year university to really fully understand it. A lot of this was due to my own lack of efforts but also due to lousy teachers. The math teacher I had university was probably one of the best teachers i've ever had for any subject. I pretty much owe my ability to understand math to that teacher.

<comment><USER43> It's an unfortunate fact that teachers that really enjoy and understand their subjects is a rare treat and most people won't have the chance to encounter one in all subjects till college.

I think there would be a lot of use for teachers to get additional training in whatever field they're teaching so they have a deeper understanding than just what they remember and what's taught by the book. I don't even really blame the teachers so much because they got into the work to teach generally not to teach a specific subject they may get stuck with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> People were only learning algebra at 8th grade?! That is garbage! My school introduced algebra in 5th grade, legit algebra I was in 6th grade.

</comment><comment><USER45> So because not all kids are able to grasp these concepts in middle school, nobody can learn it in middle school.

</comment><comment><USER46> It has more to do with the left-wing ideology of the San Francisco school district, and its loathing for anything that might resemble elitism. There's a reason why private schools are so expensive in SF. Parents are abandoning public schools faster than new private schools can expand to meet demand.

</comment><comment><USER47> Why should some pen pushing bureaucrats get to decide what is good for American kids ? Shouldn't that be left to parents ?</comment>


Is cryptography engineering or science? - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/is_cryptography.html

<comment><USER2> Talking about the implementation as if the mathematics of it were the only consideration is silly at best, and mostly dangerous. Tptacek is completely right: "proven safe" components are not a magic bullet. Until the actual software, in the field, is proven reliable, its not.

<comment><USER3> Proving an implementation reliable, IMO, is impossible. We can only check them against known attacks, and surprising new attacks pop up every now and then. In the extreme, we cannot know about new physics before it is discovered (a dark matter reciever might be able to peek at encryption keys from miles away. If it did, our idea about how the universe works would change enormously, but it is not something we can rule out)

So, I think one can only prove the mathematics safe and there, AFAIK, we are far from any solid result. This article mentions "AES is known to be immune to differential cryptanalysis", but again, that is a proof for a known attack. In a related field, we don't even know whether one-way functions exist. In the end, there might be a result that shows that cryptanalysis can't be exponentially harder than encryption (unlikely, but AFAIK, not disproved)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Theory; science. Implementation; engineering.

That's how I think about it...</comment>


Not All APIs Are Bad - <AUTHOR> http://www.apievangelist.com/2012/07/01/not-all-apis-are-bad/#.T_E42xPQd4U.hackernews <comment><USER2> as far as API's being good or bad, it depends on the requirements that APIs will fullfil. but i have to say, a company should not depend on the outside APIs which we cannot extend as per the future requirements.</comment>