This seems like a reasonable observation
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
True enough, but cowboys and astronauts are what launched this biz
Christopher Duncan wrote:
It gets equally silly in the opposite direction, with people valuing academia above all else.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
While the cowboy programming mentality that lacks discipline certainly causes its own problems, those who indulge in intellectual arrogance fail to realize that the real world bears little resemblance to writing a term paper.
That article is not about valuing academia above all else nor is it an indulgence in intellectual arrogance. Furthermore if you believe that the people who launched this industry didn't understand how hashtables and stacks worked I believe you are sadly mistaken. Comparing those pioneers to the lame lazy new comers of today, that don't understand how anything works and couldn't find their ass with two hands and a flashlight, by labeling them both with the term "Cowboy" borders on the absurd.
led mike
If we are talking about the generality of commercial developers working in 'ordinary' businesses (i.e. not Google, et al), my experience (1963 - 2003) has been that once they had learned how to code in a language, they had no interest in the impact on performance of their coding choices, and no wish to learn new techniques. The 'Lame and Lazy' have always predominated, unfortunately.
Bob Emmett
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True enough, but cowboys and astronauts are what launched this biz, so there's gotta be something to it. It gets equally silly in the opposite direction, with people valuing academia above all else. I love it when people look at a resume with 20 years of diverse and mission critical experience, and then ask you for the definition of polymorphism (something to do with shape shifting parrots, as best I recall). While the cowboy programming mentality that lacks discipline certainly causes its own problems, those who indulge in intellectual arrogance fail to realize that the real world bears little resemblance to writing a term paper. Shockingly, the only thing businesses care about is getting the job done. That said, I love the freedom of our profession, where cowboys, geeks, eggheads and other assorted freaks are all free to sit at the table, as long as they can deliver the goods. You don't find that in the accounting profession. And I believe that this open invitation to all comers is a tremendous boost to innovation. I wouldn't want to live in a world where everyone had to think alike.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
wouldn't want to live in a world where everyone had to think alike.
Me neither, but it would be nice to work in an office where everyone was competent. (Or capable of logical thought, at least.)
Grim MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL (0 row(s) affected)
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Well, don't forget to include yourself in judgements like this...nobody's a perfect coder...
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Scott Dorman wrote:
"How do I create an array?"
An array creates you! :mad:
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
wouldn't want to live in a world where everyone had to think alike.
Me neither, but it would be nice to work in an office where everyone was competent. (Or capable of logical thought, at least.)
Grim MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL (0 row(s) affected)
I think the article was a great read and something that I've struggled with over my 10 years in IT. Growing up I hated math but loved my computer. From my days of writing play programs in BASIC on my PCjr to writing enterprise systems in C# I've wondered how I measured up to the "best" developers out there because I never took an engineering or advanced mathematics class. If I might lean on the article's point a bit I'd say that yes I do. Not because I can give a dissertation on every possible design pattern or algorithm out there (I can't for sure). But I know they exist and I want to learn more about them. I'll have a better Friday for having read this and the comments here on CP. Viva le quest for knowledge!
Mike Devenney
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And it speaks to the issue raised here numerous times about the quality of questions/developers on CP http://www.codethinked.com/post/2008/07/Being-Smart-Does-Not-a-Good-Developer-Make.aspx[^] Standard "Hope it's not a repost" disclaimer.
led mike
Amazes me that developers refuse to learn new skills. A few here would rather surf the net than pick up a SQL book. Even more amazing is that once we replace a legacy system, they're skills are basically obsolete. This means that they could possibly be at the top of the list when layoffs are considered. They seem unable to connect the two - or just don't care. But they seem to just want to collect a paycheck for the least amount of effort. I detect no guilt whatsoever from them for absolutely not 'turning a tap' all day. Admittedly, management is the guilty party here as no accountability is enforced. Grrrrrr!:mad:
What does an agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac do? He lies awake at night wondering if there's a dog.
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If we are talking about the generality of commercial developers working in 'ordinary' businesses (i.e. not Google, et al), my experience (1963 - 2003) has been that once they had learned how to code in a language, they had no interest in the impact on performance of their coding choices, and no wish to learn new techniques. The 'Lame and Lazy' have always predominated, unfortunately.
Bob Emmett
While I have seen plenty of this in my much less considerable experience (and am currently listening to a conversation attempting to justify not learning something "new" even as I type...), I've also found that 'ordinary' businesses (as the article and a couple of other posts suggest) tend not to give two hoots about their developers' coding choices and learning. They (company upper management) want people who will churn out the results they're asked for and if you already know one way to do that, you won't be getting a chance to learn a new way anytime soon without getting together with lower/middle management and instigating some subterfuge. Not to refute that there are many many 'lame and lazy' running around, just a follow-on observation as to how so many once-promising developers can end up being bored into that bin along side folks who started there.
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If we are talking about the generality of commercial developers working in 'ordinary' businesses (i.e. not Google, et al), my experience (1963 - 2003) has been that once they had learned how to code in a language, they had no interest in the impact on performance of their coding choices, and no wish to learn new techniques. The 'Lame and Lazy' have always predominated, unfortunately.
Bob Emmett
Bob Emmett wrote:
If we are talking about the generality of commercial developers working in 'ordinary' businesses (i.e. not Google, et al), my experience (1963 - 2003) has been that once they had learned how to code in a language, they had no interest in the impact on performance of their coding choices, and no wish to learn new techniques. The 'Lame and Lazy' have always predominated, unfortunately.
In my experience (1976-Present) there is another problem, too. Sometimes these new "hot shots" are so into what's "cool" that they never learn how to be conservative with resources AT ANY LEVEL. Being "stuck" in one-way of doing things is not smart, but neither is changing from something that works just because of some "cool" factor. The smart developer (IMHO) knows the difference. -CB :)
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This thread isn't about perfection, it's about competence.
Grim MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL (0 row(s) affected)
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While I have seen plenty of this in my much less considerable experience (and am currently listening to a conversation attempting to justify not learning something "new" even as I type...), I've also found that 'ordinary' businesses (as the article and a couple of other posts suggest) tend not to give two hoots about their developers' coding choices and learning. They (company upper management) want people who will churn out the results they're asked for and if you already know one way to do that, you won't be getting a chance to learn a new way anytime soon without getting together with lower/middle management and instigating some subterfuge. Not to refute that there are many many 'lame and lazy' running around, just a follow-on observation as to how so many once-promising developers can end up being bored into that bin along side folks who started there.
I agree with what you say, if your immediate management are supportive, you are in with a chance, otherwise ... . I actually left IT 4 years before retirement because I just 'lost the will to live'. So I demanded to be moved to another department.
Bob Emmett
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Bob Emmett wrote:
If we are talking about the generality of commercial developers working in 'ordinary' businesses (i.e. not Google, et al), my experience (1963 - 2003) has been that once they had learned how to code in a language, they had no interest in the impact on performance of their coding choices, and no wish to learn new techniques. The 'Lame and Lazy' have always predominated, unfortunately.
In my experience (1976-Present) there is another problem, too. Sometimes these new "hot shots" are so into what's "cool" that they never learn how to be conservative with resources AT ANY LEVEL. Being "stuck" in one-way of doing things is not smart, but neither is changing from something that works just because of some "cool" factor. The smart developer (IMHO) knows the difference. -CB :)
Yep One place I was at there were 13 CASE tool manuals, each in its day the 'Silver Bullet', each in turn discarded after a few month's disruption of development work. I was using LSDM (Long Slow Development Method), well on its way to the dusty manual shelf. The silly thing was that there were development teams creating sound work-a-day systems, nobody looked at what they were doing right and adopted it.
Bob Emmett
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And it speaks to the issue raised here numerous times about the quality of questions/developers on CP http://www.codethinked.com/post/2008/07/Being-Smart-Does-Not-a-Good-Developer-Make.aspx[^] Standard "Hope it's not a repost" disclaimer.
led mike
I agree with most, but we can't expect excellence in every subject from every coder (including me) all the time. I know person who worked as analyst and designer and was MCP and still wrote bad code. Part of blame must be reserved for employers; my last employer had no problem with me taking my work home, but when I asked for more time to learn something prior the actual coding, answer was almost exclusively NO. Coding and learning in the same time isn't best practice all the time. I studied at polytechnic school (electric engineering) and it some time later when I have decided to become programmer, so my theoretical background in CS isn't great (some Fortran, C/C++ class, OOP - with Turbo Pascal and some basic algorithms), but I try hard to narrow that gap. I doubt I'll ever be algorithm wizard nor great system programmer, but I will always try to write good code and eventually good design. Why I write so defensively? I'm having trouble with academic hypocrisy. And finally, I believe that good code revision and knowledge transfer can make wonders. Excuse me for any bad grammar.
Deka
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Yep One place I was at there were 13 CASE tool manuals, each in its day the 'Silver Bullet', each in turn discarded after a few month's disruption of development work. I was using LSDM (Long Slow Development Method), well on its way to the dusty manual shelf. The silly thing was that there were development teams creating sound work-a-day systems, nobody looked at what they were doing right and adopted it.
Bob Emmett
Bob Emmett wrote:
The silly thing was that there were development teams creating sound work-a-day systems, nobody looked at what they were doing right and adopted it.
[RANT] I've worked at probably half-a-dozen different companies in my 32-years of software development (nearly 10 years at this current gig) and out of all of them I can't remember ONE that had consistent development methodology. The one I'm at now seems to be making attempts at standardizizing things but it's a long and slow process. As I mentioned earlier the "kids" working in these outfits often adopt a new technology into the mess without much regard for the impact it will have. Our product is now a mish-mosh of several technologies and you can break the thing by looking at it cross-eyed! I'm one of the "old school" developers and still do things as simply as I can. I'm not against the new technologies that come around from time-to-time (OK, every five minutes) but I'm not inclined to just adopt one because it's "cool". If said technology looks like it will solve a problem without creating too many others then fine. Sometimes, though, it just takes WORK (Yeah, I know ... awfully dirty word) to produce something reliable and stable. From what I've seen of some of these younger developers the word WORK hasn't graced their vocabularies yet. Oh well... [/RANT] -CB
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And it speaks to the issue raised here numerous times about the quality of questions/developers on CP http://www.codethinked.com/post/2008/07/Being-Smart-Does-Not-a-Good-Developer-Make.aspx[^] Standard "Hope it's not a repost" disclaimer.
led mike
Nope, it isn't a repost. I wrote it. :) Justin Etheredge http://www.codethinked.com
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Nope, it isn't a repost. I wrote it. :) Justin Etheredge http://www.codethinked.com
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Justin! What up dude? :beer: I never even thought to check if you were a member. :-D Can you fix that font on your blog? :laugh:
led mike
Hey, yep, I've been a member here for a little bit. I've never been in the forums though, I just saw traffic coming to my blog from codeproject and thought someone had posted one of my blog posts here or something. :) And as for the font, well, I know it sucks. I'm having my site redesigned currently. I tried to go in real quick and just change the font stuff (a few months ago, I've had other complaints), but it screwed too many other things up. So, hopefully the new site redesign will be up the next month or so. It'll have better (and resizeable) fonts!