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| The programmers before us were better |
| By Thom Holwerda, submitted by MOS6510 on 2012-09-28 21:51:55 |
| "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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| I am 100% with the author |
| By moondevil on 2012-09-29 06:49:37 |
|
It is incredible the amount of lousy so called developers we get assigned in our projects. The world of Fortune 500 consulting companies is full with copy-paste developers, coding methods/functions with more 1000 lines, no tests, and code quality to make you cry for every written code line. They don't have any idea how things work, sometimes I even wonder how they managed to get through university. But this trend is unstoppable, because for the managers that have the top two qualities, they are cheap and replaceable. It might show my age, but I miss those days like the article's author. |
 - Score: 8 |
| It takes two to tango |
| By wigry on 2012-09-29 07:25:30 |
| Nowadays I've discovered that knowing the language inside-out is not enough. You may know Java but you could not be able to deal with web development other than basic servlets. It is all about framework specialisation and it takes lots of real-world practice to become familiar with framework. So in enterprise Java world for example we can say that we have Spring programmers and Tapestry programmers and Wicket programmers etc. They all use Java but the rules of framework are so unimaginably different that you need to be expert on that particular framework to be able to do anything more than simple hello world. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[2]: The use of tools is what matters |
| By Soulbender on 2012-09-29 07:37:26 |
|
> It is actually far harder to draw high quality abstract art. Harder != better. > The cave painters at Lascaux were far more talented artists than some guy mdern guy drawing with a ballpoint. For all we know they could be equivalent. |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE[2]: Just statistics |
| By Soulbender on 2012-09-29 07:40:34 |
|
> before expansion of computers to developing countries with no computer or logical thinking background. Because, you know, the west had computer background built-in from the start even before we had computers... I'm not even going to start on the "logical thinking" thing, it's just too moronic. Seriously, wtf? |
| - Score: 6 |
| Comment by some1 |
| By some1 on 2012-09-29 07:56:02 |
| Yeah, well, the grass was greener too. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[3]: Just statistics |
| By bitwelder on 2012-09-29 07:58:48 |
| So, if you'd be in the business and looking for some developer, you'd prefer to find one easily, but with 99% probability that s/he'll make a buggy product, than working a little harder to find one, but with 50% confidence s/he will do the job right? |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[4]: Just statistics |
| By dorin.lazar on 2012-09-29 08:08:52 |
|
> So, if you'd be in the business and looking for some developer, you'd prefer to find one easily, but with 99% probability that s/he'll make a buggy product, than working a little harder to find one, but with 50% confidence s/he will do the job right? No, if I were in the business I'd settle for 3 mediocre programmers which I would call elite for learning basic design patterns and applaud them for understanding 'pass by value' vs. 'pass by reference'. Which is what businesses actually do nowadays. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[3]: Just statistics |
| By dorin.lazar on 2012-09-29 08:11:36 |
|
> > before expansion of computers to developing countries with no computer or logical thinking background. Because, you know, the west had computer background built-in from the start even before we had computers... I'm not even going to start on the "logical thinking" thing, it's just too moronic. Seriously, wtf? I think he means that thinking jobs moved to developing countries and the know-how got severely diluted in the developed countries. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[5]: Just statistics |
| By moondevil on 2012-09-29 10:31:54 |
| Sadly, I can only confirm. |
| - Score: 3 |
| bugs? |
| By wigry on 2012-09-29 10:40:42 |
| Another point of view is tjhat in older days people wrote their own bugs Nowadays they spend massive amount of time understanding the frameworks and working around the features/bugs of them. |
| - Score: 1 |
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