NYCPHP Meetup

[charles at softwareprototypes.com]

Yeah, 

the job market eventually won't be too bad if you are a GenX-er
(weren't born before 1970.) If you were alive when Woodstock happened
you're are [expletive deleted].

I'm a late Boomer (1953,) and it sems that I truly am [expletive
deleted].

Now all these jobs require a bachelors or a masters and there were
none of these, certainly not in Montreal, when I was going to school
in the late sixties and early seventies. They didn't exist. <sigh>

All you had to know then was your "Math 'N Fizzicks." Amusing because
I NEVER got to use any damn math and certainly no physics through out
my entire career. But I did find my philosophy and architecture
studies very useful. Sadly, I never got a degree.

I have over twenty-five years of experience in AI, object-oriented
software development, have been doing HTML since 1995, did VRML in
1998, have most of my carrer in the financial sector but my resume
won't get past the little eighteen year old who is reading my two
pager and if s/he doesn't find the words "Masters Degree", just
tosses my resume into the "circular file." 

I've been unemployed since September. Had to move from Battery Park
City to Jersey City where my savings aren't disappearing on rent as
fast as in Manhattan. Personally, I'm screwed and I know it. I may
NEVER find a job again. 'Xcept maybe at McDonald's. I am not deluding
myself about my job prospects. Being bright has nothing to do with
getting and holding a job and has nothing to do with survival.

Between you and me. The entire profession is utter bullshit. These
people are blind to something so fundamental that they really should
NOT be blind to but it doesn't seem to be on any curriculum that I've
seen. I have rants about this on my old wiki. 

I wouldn't trust an outdoor toilet built according to MIS stangards
not to collapse on me as I try to take a crap or that anyone had
though of digging a hole under it. (That's doesn't show up on any
"use case".)

I'm glad to have found the NY PupUG because that led me to the
"OpenBiblio" open source php project and I started in public library
systems in 1975, before I actually got my first job in Data
Processing (DP) which is what it was called then, before it got
high-falutin' and called itself "Informatics" and then called itself
Management Information Systems (MIS) and lately it calls itself
Information Technology (IT.)

I'm starting a "Community Wiki Project" (at http://wage.packet.org )
in Jersey City drumming up interest collaborative writing with some
creative people here (at "AlliterationAlley" and "Ground Coffee
House",) and making an end-run around the MIS world. Screw 'em all.
I'll just put 'em all out of business before I'm done. :-)

Actually, I'm seeing possibilities in php that dwarf Smalltalk's.
Deployment of Smalltalk is anecdotal. Only several thousand machines.
While deployment of php is total over Linux platforms and over most
Unix platforms as well. It's even available on IIS though I look for
M$ to try to stop it out for .NET ASAP. That means that if you do
something in php it can be deployed over the entire web or on
intranets.

With a properly constructed Object model (objects, methods and
relationships, not ignoring that objects exist in time as well and
need state information and relationships to state machines to transit
object instances from state to state.) described in XML and
inter-piled (interpreted with the resulting objects cached on the
server and using standard cache invalidation techniques for refresh
only when required,) for use within a wiki.

But for the most part I should be able to implement a trio of phpwiki
plugins.

1) to scan & validate/load the object model, 
2) to load objects as XML from the wiki database and  and 
3) to provide almost all of the functionality I have ever been
required to implement in DP/MIS/IT. Present instances and
relationships for instantiation/observation, modification and
storage. Present functionality for execution.

and which would use the wiki for security, for invocation of
function, for presentation of objects and/or navigation of
relationships, for capture, validation and connection of objects and
relationships and for storage of objects and relationship
connections, in the wiki database in XML. 

The access model can be as permissive (assume yes) or as restrictive
(assume no) as it needs to be. I want the plugin to let
visitors/users:
access meta information:
 N) Navigate the model
access information:
 C) Create/connect objects/relationship connections (contexts)
 R) Read/navigate objects/relationship connections
 U) Update object instances/relationship connections (validation)
 D) Delete object instances & dependent objects)/disconnect (contexts)
 E) Execute functionality

Thereby rendering everything I've ever done and everybody I'd ever
worked with entirely redundant. Now, THAT's a "puissant" idea. That's
also called "gettin' even." 

I'm going to put the code out there in open source as part of
OpenBiblio and it will outlive me as I starve to death in my
cardboard box over a heating grate. (Melodramatic. I hope, so but a
very real prospect nonetheless.)

-Charles-A.