Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 28th Sep 2012 21:51 UTC, submitted by MOS6510
"When I started writing programs in the late 80s it was pretty primitive and required a lot of study and skill. I was a young kid doing this stuff, the adults at that time had it even worse and some of them did start in the punch card era. This was back when programmers really had to earn their keep, and us newer generations are losing appreciation for that. A generation or two ago they may have been been better coders than us. More importantly they were better craftsmen, and we need to think about that." I'm no programmer, but I do understand that the current crop of programmers could learn a whole lot from older generations. I'm not going to burn my fingers on if they were better programmers or not, but I do believe they have a far greater understanding of the actual workings of a computer. Does the average 'app developer' have any clue whatsoever about low-level code, let alone something like assembly?
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Member since:2006-03-27
Mine is just a small selection of sentences to show the situation, but talking and working with this kind of "programmers" reveals their real knowledge or even interest in their job. I said "a large part", not "all", and I choose "web developers" because that's the category where this effect is most visible nowadays. Of course nobody can be an expert in every field, but you can't miss the fundamentals.
Most of the people I heard these sentences from were very good at other task - say web design, graphics works, management, or simple zealous workers. They also manage to make scripts that appears to be working, or they wouldn't be in this sistuation.
But probably the best way to describe them is that they _refuse_ to learn a better method, to get a larger vision of their work. They're happy because their products (apparently) works, they're happy because their boss is happy that their products (apparently) works, and they're happy because an happy boss will help in keeping thir job. I've learned that when you find yourself in this situation you should either get out as soon as possible, or work as bas as your neighbour.
RE[3]: Web "developers"
by lucas_maximus on Sun 30th Sep 2012 12:51
in reply to "RE[2]: Web "developers""
Member since:2009-08-18
Some people do programming as a day job, some do it as a vocation.
I tend to spend a bit of my own times learning new techniques, my colleague while she is a very solid programmer has her skillset is mostly VB6 and C#.NET 1.1 stuff. Which is fine, the code works and is perfectly readable what she produces ... although it is a little bit "oldschool" compared to C# 4.0.
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/13/13 14:35 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/11/13 17:07 UTC
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/10/13 23:13 UTC
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/08/13 14:57 UTC
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/07/13 11:40 UTC
This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/04/13 12:45 UTC
Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
Linked by nfeske on 05/31/13 10:12 UTC
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/29/13 16:59 UTC
At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!More Features »
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Member since:
2012-07-27
I am a web developer and I develop web services for our app developers to use. I don't agree with what you say. I've worked with guys that have said similarly funny stuff like what you quote (my favorite was “C has classes now in the newest version by Microsoft, C#!”) but those weren’t clueless or unskilled programmers. They where programmers that had settled for one language, in this case PHP. That made them good PHP programmers but rather helpless when it comes to other languages or other problem domains.
The problem I see with this article and with what you and way to many other do is to define a “good programmer” as somebody who knows X, Y and Z. Anybody who doesn't know about those things is a clueless, bad programmer.
The problem is today we need a lot of programmers, and there are a hell of a lot of kinds of programmers too. So even tough I know C/C++ and have a strong interest in operating systems I do web stuff it dynamic languages (right now in JavaScript and Ruby) for a living and I like it. The field has grown and is now so damn big that none of us have a fair chance to be competent in more then one or two problem domains and some don't even get past one programming language. That doesn't make them or rather US (me and all the other devs here) incompetent or useless. A lot of time has passed since programming meant writing batch processes for mainframes or small BASIC scripts for your home computer.
We need those legions of programmers to get all the work done that exists now (how many devices to you own now that you can classify as computer?) so the barriers to entering the job market is low but only the good and capable get all the way up to the good jobs.
Back in the days all programmers where the equivalent to engineers, now we have mechanics too.