Just lazy or no time?
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It's called evolution. Give it time. They'll be dead soon (from the career perspective) and then things will get better. Yes, as the global economy emerges we are seeing a lot of this. Outsourcing is the biggest problem and India is the epicenter of it. India has some fantastic talent and the huge emergence of outsourcing there has allowed a lot of lousy developers to find work just to meet the demand. But in conversations I have had with Indians and even Chinese they are starting to get a better grip on those types of developers and they are starting to refine the quality/quantity of work coming out of India/China. We are in a state of flux right now where some very high end outsourcing companies in India are trimming the fat which is allowing those under qualified workers a shot at trying to grab smaller projects on their own. I get calls from them weekly. In time this will flatten out and things should get better here. In general quality developers are going to be in short supply around the world soon and that will make life easier on all of us.
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I only visit Code Project from time to time nowadays but a couple of years ago when I did more (C++) programming, I got plenty of useful information from the articles hosted here. However, I only asked a question once or twice in the forums when I was stuck and couldn't get the info from Google or MSDN. I noticed in the VC++ forum (might be the same in other forums) that people are asking *very* basic questions frequently, stuff that one could easily find in books, MSDN or Google. Also, some guys seem to think that they should be able to write advanced code without even having basic knowledge of the language they are using. I'm curious, is this just just lazyness or are these guys under so much pressure that they don't have time to research properly or learn the basics first? Michael
Michael H. Schubert wrote:
I'm curious, is this just just lazyness or are these guys under so much pressure that they don't have time to research properly or learn the basics first?
I can't say exactly what it is. But the problem is widespread. I've been interviewing people for the past two months and the number of people that can't answer basic questions is amazing. A SQL Expert wasn't able to write a SELECT statement joining two tables together. Another guy who had supposedly done a lot of OO couldn't comprehend a simple three class UML diagram. And don't get me started on the technical test we put to people. We sit them down in front of Visual Studio so they are in as natural an environment as possible. We then ask them to write a simple program that gets data and puts it on the screen. The form the data takes is up to them, text file, XML file, or a couple of tables in a database. We want to see how they structure an application. They can use C# or VB.NET (although they are told they will be expected to cross to C# if they don't already use it) The specification is sufficiently loose that they can play to their strengths - and that is what we want to see. However, I think at least a couple have shot themselves in the foot by trying to second guess what we'd like to see and going with that.
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: db4o: An Embeddable Database Engine for Object-Oriented Environments, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services ... My website
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I can't remember the last time I posted a technical a question to a forum - I might have done it once or twice, but generally will just google the answer... I think it's inherant laziness on the part of the people who post the questions. They are so slack they won't even do a cursory search of the web before asking someone to complete their homework for them!!
------------------------------------------- Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow; Don't walk behind me, I may not lead; Just bugger off and leave me alone!!
_Damian S_ wrote:
I can't remember the last time I posted a technical a question to a forum - I might have done it once or twice, but generally will just google the answer...
Absolutely. These days I can get most stuff from searching the internet. It is probably once in a blue moon that I post a technical question on a forum.
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: db4o: An Embeddable Database Engine for Object-Oriented Environments, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services ... My website
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I only visit Code Project from time to time nowadays but a couple of years ago when I did more (C++) programming, I got plenty of useful information from the articles hosted here. However, I only asked a question once or twice in the forums when I was stuck and couldn't get the info from Google or MSDN. I noticed in the VC++ forum (might be the same in other forums) that people are asking *very* basic questions frequently, stuff that one could easily find in books, MSDN or Google. Also, some guys seem to think that they should be able to write advanced code without even having basic knowledge of the language they are using. I'm curious, is this just just lazyness or are these guys under so much pressure that they don't have time to research properly or learn the basics first? Michael
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I only visit Code Project from time to time nowadays but a couple of years ago when I did more (C++) programming, I got plenty of useful information from the articles hosted here. However, I only asked a question once or twice in the forums when I was stuck and couldn't get the info from Google or MSDN. I noticed in the VC++ forum (might be the same in other forums) that people are asking *very* basic questions frequently, stuff that one could easily find in books, MSDN or Google. Also, some guys seem to think that they should be able to write advanced code without even having basic knowledge of the language they are using. I'm curious, is this just just lazyness or are these guys under so much pressure that they don't have time to research properly or learn the basics first? Michael
Michael H. Schubert wrote:
I'm curious, is this just just lazyness or are these guys under so much pressure that they don't have time to research properly or learn the basics first?
Neither. It's stupidity, the continuing result of programming becoming more and more accessible to the masses, especially those in countries that are the destination of oursourcing. Does that remark seem prejudiced to you, or does it touch on the truth? Marc
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INITCOMMONCONTROLSEX wrote:
conjuring up demons
Oh thats sweet, did you have fun.
God Bless, Jason
I am not perfect but I try to be better than those before me. So those who come after me will be better than I am.jason_lakewhitney wrote:
Oh thats sweet, did you have fun.
I haven't heard of that euphimism for masturbation before. Conjuring up demons just doesn't sound right.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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jason_lakewhitney wrote:
Oh thats sweet, did you have fun.
I haven't heard of that euphimism for masturbation before. Conjuring up demons just doesn't sound right.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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jason_lakewhitney wrote:
Oh thats sweet, did you have fun.
I haven't heard of that euphimism for masturbation before. Conjuring up demons just doesn't sound right.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
:laugh:
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero .·´¯`·->ßRÅhmmÃ<-·´¯`·.
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
The 'quality' of the questions in the C++ forum has steadily gone downhill.
I agree, and it is happening in other forums here.
Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
The number of homework questions
Must be the beginning of a new semester or quarter...
Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
it appears there are a lot of very junior or poorly trained programmers being dumped into projects with significant technical challenges.
Or some HR idiot that doesn't know what kind of candidate really needs to be hired for the job...
"Try asking what you want to know, rather than asking a question whose answer you know." - Christian Graus
Paul Conrad wrote:
Or some HR idiot that doesn't know what kind of candidate really needs to be hired for the job...
So many of them work from outdated descriptions for certain roles it's not funny. If I see C++ listed against a Windows O/S I know somethign is very wrong with that organisation. Don't get me wrong I still code in C++ - but when you have the .Net Framework for Windows why would you use C++?
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You replied to my troll post. You told him to stop replying to my troll post.
just call me Dutch Oven - Shog9, baffled by the term "Dunning Kruger"
Then that would be hypocrisy, not irony
"More functions should disregard input values and just return 12. It would make life easier." - comment posted on WTF
"This time yesterday, I still had 24 hours to meet the deadline I've just missed today."
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_Damian S_ wrote:
You could substitute the words "easier on" with "busier for"
That might be so. I can only imagine people having to go in and clean up sloppy code from not-so-talented developers.
"Any sort of work in VB6 is bound to provide several WTF moments." - Christian Graus
*GROAN* Not again! I promise to be a good boy mama, just don't let me fix crappy code! :((
______________________ There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't... ______________________ "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook ______________________ "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance." Ali ibn Abi Talib
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Michael H. Schubert wrote:
I'm curious, is this just just lazyness or are these guys under so much pressure that they don't have time to research properly or learn the basics first?
Neither. It's stupidity, the continuing result of programming becoming more and more accessible to the masses, especially those in countries that are the destination of oursourcing. Does that remark seem prejudiced to you, or does it touch on the truth? Marc
Marc, we have that same problem in the Middle East too. I'm not calling myself a crack shot programmer, I'm just hoping that one day I'll have the skills. Meanwhile, where I work, we pride ourselves on being the creme de la creme of the local coders. Currently, the "passing" rate is something like 3/1000. Bad coders are rampant everywhere and its making it SO much harder for the decent folks. You tell me, isn't finding good talent a problem anywhere?
______________________ There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't... ______________________ "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook ______________________ "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance." Ali ibn Abi Talib
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Paul Conrad wrote:
Or some HR idiot that doesn't know what kind of candidate really needs to be hired for the job...
So many of them work from outdated descriptions for certain roles it's not funny. If I see C++ listed against a Windows O/S I know somethign is very wrong with that organisation. Don't get me wrong I still code in C++ - but when you have the .Net Framework for Windows why would you use C++?
Not necessarily. It depends what the organisation are doing, and what constraints the technology or domain they work within imposes. For example, we don't use .Net in our production code, simply because of inproc versioning issues and the fact that we already have a large library of WTL code to support our products. Even if the versioning issues were addressed in a future .NET release,moving everything over would be a huge risk and just not something we could justify.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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There's a simple solution of course: break the busiest forums into beginner and advanced.
Modo vincis, modo vinceris.
Good in theory - bad in practise... then you just get the beginners posting with an introduction of "I posted this in beginners, but I thought you guys might be able to answer better". I think the thing that bugged me the most is when you post replies in articles to reply to other peoples problems and help them out - then you get private messages from people with dumb questions saying "you seem to know what you're talking about, can you help me with...".
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I only visit Code Project from time to time nowadays but a couple of years ago when I did more (C++) programming, I got plenty of useful information from the articles hosted here. However, I only asked a question once or twice in the forums when I was stuck and couldn't get the info from Google or MSDN. I noticed in the VC++ forum (might be the same in other forums) that people are asking *very* basic questions frequently, stuff that one could easily find in books, MSDN or Google. Also, some guys seem to think that they should be able to write advanced code without even having basic knowledge of the language they are using. I'm curious, is this just just lazyness or are these guys under so much pressure that they don't have time to research properly or learn the basics first? Michael
It is probably some of both. When I was a frequenter of Tek-Tips they had the same problem there: lots of stupid questions, lots of homework questions. They tried to block people who did that a lot, especially the ones wanting others to do their homework. You can't get rid of them entirely, no matter how hard you try. As for googling for an answer: that can be incredibly time consuming. When you enter a fairly specific search term and still come up with 95,000 hits, you know you're probably going to be spending a while wading thru the garbage to find the gem you need. One of these days someone will invent a better search technology to address that problem, but until then evn googling for an answer can take a lot of time. Sometimes it's just faster to ask someone for help. If I didn't get thrown in over my head from time to time I'd find my job incredibly boring. Learning something new or taking on a new challenge is what makes me want to come to work. Don't ask me to just keep doing the things I already know, or I'll find a more challenging job.
Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.
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I only visit Code Project from time to time nowadays but a couple of years ago when I did more (C++) programming, I got plenty of useful information from the articles hosted here. However, I only asked a question once or twice in the forums when I was stuck and couldn't get the info from Google or MSDN. I noticed in the VC++ forum (might be the same in other forums) that people are asking *very* basic questions frequently, stuff that one could easily find in books, MSDN or Google. Also, some guys seem to think that they should be able to write advanced code without even having basic knowledge of the language they are using. I'm curious, is this just just lazyness or are these guys under so much pressure that they don't have time to research properly or learn the basics first? Michael
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Marc, we have that same problem in the Middle East too. I'm not calling myself a crack shot programmer, I'm just hoping that one day I'll have the skills. Meanwhile, where I work, we pride ourselves on being the creme de la creme of the local coders. Currently, the "passing" rate is something like 3/1000. Bad coders are rampant everywhere and its making it SO much harder for the decent folks. You tell me, isn't finding good talent a problem anywhere?
______________________ There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't... ______________________ "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook ______________________ "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance." Ali ibn Abi Talib
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
You tell me, isn't finding good talent a problem anywhere?
It would appear so. But what I find strange is that many of the big US companies are happy to outsource but have policies against hiring consultants/contract programmers, having been royally burned in the past by local-sourcing. Well, what goes around comes around, I guess. 5 years from now, it'll be back to hiring local contract programmers! Marc
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Paul Conrad wrote:
Or some HR idiot that doesn't know what kind of candidate really needs to be hired for the job...
So many of them work from outdated descriptions for certain roles it's not funny. If I see C++ listed against a Windows O/S I know somethign is very wrong with that organisation. Don't get me wrong I still code in C++ - but when you have the .Net Framework for Windows why would you use C++?
"Or some HR idiot that doesn't know what kind of candidate really needs to be hired for the job..." Yeah they were looking for good people skills. I have had it up to here with HR interviews "Describe what are most proud off" And when you describe your latest system in detail their eyes glaze over. HR protects IT departments from a lot of really good programmers. Lena
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The 'quality' of the questions in the C++ forum has steadily gone downhill. The number of homework questions and 'I need the source code for Microsoft Excel' requests have risen quite a bit. As others have mentioned, it appears there are a lot of very junior or poorly trained programmers being dumped into projects with significant technical challenges. Chris's guidelines at the top of the forum are ignored :(.
Software Zen:
delete this;The gov (usa) agency I am at the moment working for has decided to hire interns to fill slots they are no longer allowed to fill because omb decides which positions are "contractible". Unfortunately a contractor’s markup is %100 or more (very expensive). Agency directive "hire only interns from south and central American universities". I took a call where some pathetic shmuck was playing with a c++ console app that did some number crunching run from a bat file. Wanted to know how to close the console window after running the app! Although I helped this in-dah-vidual cow-orker out, I will not do so in the future. Yes their are stupid questions... and stupid employment policies.
MrPlankton
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_Damian S_ wrote:
You could substitute the words "easier on" with "busier for"
That might be so. I can only imagine people having to go in and clean up sloppy code from not-so-talented developers.
"Any sort of work in VB6 is bound to provide several WTF moments." - Christian Graus
Paul Conrad wrote:
clean up sloppy code
That is currently my job description.... :mad:
Why is common sense not common? Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level where they are an expert. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to be lazy The people in the lounge said I should google for the answer to a programming question but I do not know what search engine to use