In this company, there are two kinds of developers
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While I do recognize that there are terrible tutorials out there, there are also some terrible books out there. Also tutorials are not the only form of information available. I learned JS/TS almost exclusively through MDN[^] and TypeScriptLang[^]. Don't get me wrong - books are great. But with how rapidly technology is changing, I'd rather read up-to-date online documentation than a probably out-of-date book that isn't due a new version til next year or later. As an aside, being able to filter through web searches, compare sources, and form actual knowledge from the aggregate is an underappreciated skill. Some topics force you to use this method either due to fragmented information or such rapidly changing technology that books as a medium are insufficient. The example that pops into my head immediately is IRC. There are books but if you base an IRC client implementation on that information you'll be missing tons of modern features such as ISUPPORT, SASL, and capability negotiation while including obsolete features such as RPL_BOUNCE and RPL_SUMMONING. TL;DR: Books are great for topics that don't change often. Online documentation is better for rapidly changing, fragmented, or niche topics. Both have their fair share of terrible advice.
Jon McKee wrote:
I learned JS/TS almost exclusively through MDN[^] and TypeScriptLang[^].
The syntax, yes :thumbsup:
Jon McKee wrote:
But with how rapidly technology is changing, I'd rather read up-to-date online documentation than a probably out-of-date book that isn't due a new version til next year or later.
Technology is changing? Where? Win10 is largely still working according to the same principles as Win95.
Jon McKee wrote:
There are books but if you base an IRC client implementation on that information you'll be missing tons of modern features such as ISUPPORT, SASL, and capability negotiation while including obsolete features such as RPL_BOUNCE and RPL_SUMMONING.
I'm not saying that some reference-documentation needs to be in book-format; only pointing out that authors spend a lot of time gathering knowledge and putting it in an accesible format. Not just as paper-books (which I prefer, because it squats bugs better than an tablet), but also as ebooks :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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OriginalGriff wrote:
Video tutorials on YouTube are the worst.
I can't agree more. Video in general is a bad medium for learning programming in my opinion. Re-reading a chapter or paragraph for better comprehension feels natural. Skipping back multiple times to find the exact time someone started talking about a topic is irritating at best. Not to even mention the content quality.
OriginalGriff wrote:
And sausages are the wurst.
Now I'm hungry :|
I'm not really a fan of writing in books, but occasionally a scribbled note has reduced the amount of kicking-myself over the years, particularly for technologies I don't use every year -- such as Perl and XSLT.
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Jon McKee wrote:
I learned JS/TS almost exclusively through MDN[^] and TypeScriptLang[^].
The syntax, yes :thumbsup:
Jon McKee wrote:
But with how rapidly technology is changing, I'd rather read up-to-date online documentation than a probably out-of-date book that isn't due a new version til next year or later.
Technology is changing? Where? Win10 is largely still working according to the same principles as Win95.
Jon McKee wrote:
There are books but if you base an IRC client implementation on that information you'll be missing tons of modern features such as ISUPPORT, SASL, and capability negotiation while including obsolete features such as RPL_BOUNCE and RPL_SUMMONING.
I'm not saying that some reference-documentation needs to be in book-format; only pointing out that authors spend a lot of time gathering knowledge and putting it in an accesible format. Not just as paper-books (which I prefer, because it squats bugs better than an tablet), but also as ebooks :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
Win10 is largely still working according to the same principles as Win95.
Absolutely! I hate it when someone writes a new program and calls it new technology.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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The move is completed and we have learned.... In this company, there are two kinds of developers. Those that came to work here after we still needed to collect technical books (AG After Google) Those that worked here when we still needed to collect technical books. (BG Before Google) ..They are the ones with the 55 gallon disposal bins next to their cubes.
Oh, And I thought those were where you were supposed to take a dump, to save time going to and from the restroom
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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I'm not really a fan of writing in books, but occasionally a scribbled note has reduced the amount of kicking-myself over the years, particularly for technologies I don't use every year -- such as Perl and XSLT.
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Jon McKee wrote:
I learned JS/TS almost exclusively through MDN[^] and TypeScriptLang[^].
The syntax, yes :thumbsup:
Jon McKee wrote:
But with how rapidly technology is changing, I'd rather read up-to-date online documentation than a probably out-of-date book that isn't due a new version til next year or later.
Technology is changing? Where? Win10 is largely still working according to the same principles as Win95.
Jon McKee wrote:
There are books but if you base an IRC client implementation on that information you'll be missing tons of modern features such as ISUPPORT, SASL, and capability negotiation while including obsolete features such as RPL_BOUNCE and RPL_SUMMONING.
I'm not saying that some reference-documentation needs to be in book-format; only pointing out that authors spend a lot of time gathering knowledge and putting it in an accesible format. Not just as paper-books (which I prefer, because it squats bugs better than an tablet), but also as ebooks :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
I'm not saying that some reference-documentation needs to be in book-format; only pointing out that authors spend a lot of time gathering knowledge and putting it in an accesible format. Not just as paper-books (which I prefer, because it squats bugs better than an tablet), but also as ebooks :)
Very true. And I do agree to an extent that paper books (and some ebooks) are scrutinized before publishing depending on the publisher. However, as you alluded to, the majority of the quality is placed upon the author regardless of the type of media. It may be easier to spread misinformation online but at the end of the day the onus is still upon the reader to determine validity. That's why I generally hold no bias towards different media types. I have no idea how these things are handled elsewhere though. In the US you can publish pretty much whatever you want as long as there's profit to be made. Truth and accuracy be damned. Looking at you revisionist history books X|
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
The syntax, yes :thumbsup:
Those links are more than syntax. They list built-in objects and available functionality, cover
thisand prototype-based inheritance, show available WebAPIs and their compatabilities, explain how HTML/CSS/JS interact, discuss the DOM, and more.Eddy Vluggen wrote:
Technology is changing? Where? Win10 is largely still working according to the same principles as Win95.
Oh Windows :laugh: I should have been more specific. Technology was too broad a term. All hail logic gates! The one, true computing technology, haha.
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Because in my current job, starting in 2013, I've been gradually downgraded from a cube with 5'6" walls, drawers, and lockable shelves, to a triangular desk area with 8" dividers, to a rolling table 5'6" by 3'. My books are currently stacked almost 3' high on one corner of the table to create some semblance of a visual blind. Big over the ear head phones help with the auditory distractions. It's "collaborative" space. I bet the idiots who designed this format don't have to use it.
I managed to get moved to the hardware lab. It took an extensive testing of a very noisy electrical motor (it had to be controlled by the software and I'm the hardware communication man in the company since apparently I'm the only one who does it reliably) which had seemingly random errors after thousands of runs. *GROOOOOAN* *CHUNK!* *GROOOAAAN* *CLANG!* for weeks 8 hours/day and suddenly my request to be moved got approved. After 5 years I was asking.
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I managed to get moved to the hardware lab. It took an extensive testing of a very noisy electrical motor (it had to be controlled by the software and I'm the hardware communication man in the company since apparently I'm the only one who does it reliably) which had seemingly random errors after thousands of runs. *GROOOOOAN* *CHUNK!* *GROOOAAAN* *CLANG!* for weeks 8 hours/day and suddenly my request to be moved got approved. After 5 years I was asking.
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
Was it Stuxnet? :)
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Was it Stuxnet? :)
It had programmable firmware (via logical blocks on the programming interface) running in parallel with commands from the outside. The OS that run the firmware had race conditions with the commands received and the input so after thousands of tests the only solution was to scrap the firmware entirely and controlling the unit completely from RS232 (9600 baud, eternal) including safety stops and level photocells. [Note: safety not towards humans but towards other components of the machine, safety towards humans was managed the hard electrical way] Also it had an encoder... on paper. Actually it counted the clock cycles the enable was "1" so if the STOP_PHOTOCELL was ignored (it happened because of the aforementioned race conditions and the fact that the photocell emitted a pulse when active and then returned to idle state) and the engine arrived to the hard stop, that is a 10kg steel block) the so called "encoder" kept counting in the direction of the movement forever and kept pushing or pulling the load against the physical block.
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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The move is completed and we have learned.... In this company, there are two kinds of developers. Those that came to work here after we still needed to collect technical books (AG After Google) Those that worked here when we still needed to collect technical books. (BG Before Google) ..They are the ones with the 55 gallon disposal bins next to their cubes.
For me personally, the breakpoint was less Google and more Stackoverflow. So it'll be ASO and BSO.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote:
I'm not saying that some reference-documentation needs to be in book-format; only pointing out that authors spend a lot of time gathering knowledge and putting it in an accesible format. Not just as paper-books (which I prefer, because it squats bugs better than an tablet), but also as ebooks :)
Very true. And I do agree to an extent that paper books (and some ebooks) are scrutinized before publishing depending on the publisher. However, as you alluded to, the majority of the quality is placed upon the author regardless of the type of media. It may be easier to spread misinformation online but at the end of the day the onus is still upon the reader to determine validity. That's why I generally hold no bias towards different media types. I have no idea how these things are handled elsewhere though. In the US you can publish pretty much whatever you want as long as there's profit to be made. Truth and accuracy be damned. Looking at you revisionist history books X|
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
The syntax, yes :thumbsup:
Those links are more than syntax. They list built-in objects and available functionality, cover
thisand prototype-based inheritance, show available WebAPIs and their compatabilities, explain how HTML/CSS/JS interact, discuss the DOM, and more.Eddy Vluggen wrote:
Technology is changing? Where? Win10 is largely still working according to the same principles as Win95.
Oh Windows :laugh: I should have been more specific. Technology was too broad a term. All hail logic gates! The one, true computing technology, haha.
Jon McKee wrote:
It may be easier to spread misinformation online but at the end of the day the onus is still upon the reader to determine validity.
I have reviewed a manuscript or two for Manning; every bit of text and code is verified. But yes, MSDN is underappreciated :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote:
Win10 is largely still working according to the same principles as Win95.
Absolutely! I hate it when someone writes a new program and calls it new technology.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
No, I wouldn't say so. It is like saying that C# and assembler coding on the 8086 works along the same principles. The event driven model pushed by early Windows was never embraced by application developers: Some tiny little event triggers an (ideally) atomic state transition. Win16 didn't have preemptive scheduling - there was no need for it. Or wouldn't have been, if developers had adopted the event driven philosophy. Software developers - with the exception of those who come from the digital telephone exchange world - are trained in sequential top-to-bottom programming. Even managing a handful of (more or less persistent) threads is "advanced matter" in the training, and protection of data structures and synchronization are, for the most part, poorly mastered. But that is the only way programmers can handle e.g. peripherals: By setting up a thread that, like a 1970 style Fortran program, runs from top to bottom (although with some loops and conditional statements). Event oriented programming is reduced to exceptional cases, where you set up a callback and attach it to some OnSomethingHappened case. The main body of the application code does not reflect the fundamental event driven paradigm of Windows16, where you might say that everything, the entire application logic, was written as a large number of OnSomethingHappened handlers, all of them tiny and near-atomic. With Windows95 came a collection of "helper" functions for supporting event handling in a more sequential-code-looking way. I saw it as (and believe it was intended as) an outstretched hand to old sequential programmers to ease the transition to "real" event driven programming. It rather started the snowball running down the hill, back to the Fortran style coding. Even in the 1970s, interrupt handlers were required to handle external events (and on most machines you could trigger an interrupt from software as well) - they were called interrupt handlers, not event handlers, but the difference between the two is minimal. After Windows9x, I haven't seen any application code following the event driven paradigm; we are back to the sequential way of doing things. The core of Win10 is still event driven, as OSes always were with peripherals and timing, maybe more so than some other OSes thanks to its historical background. But no application is programmed by the even driven paradigm.
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The move is completed and we have learned.... In this company, there are two kinds of developers. Those that came to work here after we still needed to collect technical books (AG After Google) Those that worked here when we still needed to collect technical books. (BG Before Google) ..They are the ones with the 55 gallon disposal bins next to their cubes.
I certainly grew up BG. Furthermore, friends label me as a squirrel, stuffing away nuts everywhere. Then: I am surprised myself how often I go down in the bookshelves in the basement to dig up some information - quite often because I have mentioned some mechanism or algorithm or architecture or tool to a younger colleague, one that was developed and used long BG, and little information is available on the Internet. Today, I am using Google heavily, but it certainly is best suited for reference information, stuff that you more or less know in advance but need the API details etc. You don't learn the philosophy of a paradigm by googling, not even architectural concepts. You find no wisdom in Google, only facts. So I still buy books, to more easily "see the big picture". But, just like others are dissatisfied with online tutorials, the art of writing good textbooks is also deteriorating. I frequently wish I had an electronic, editable version of the book I am reading so I could remove all that chitchat that expands 200 pages of useful info into an 700 page monster. Remove all the references to how it is done in this and that old system (which I never used), comparing it to how it is in this system. Adding a few explanations about why you would use this and that mechanism, and for what. I am really dissatisfied with most modern textbooks: They are extremely wordy, poorly organized and not very good at giving you "the big picture". Yet, for subject I do not know at all, but need to learn thoroughly, they are still a lot better than a google hit count of 2.3 million, where you still miss out a lot of good references because you are so new to the subject that you do not know which are good search terms.
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The move is completed and we have learned.... In this company, there are two kinds of developers. Those that came to work here after we still needed to collect technical books (AG After Google) Those that worked here when we still needed to collect technical books. (BG Before Google) ..They are the ones with the 55 gallon disposal bins next to their cubes.
Hmm. I may be a crotchety old fart here, but I still keep my books. My active library here at work includes the following titles: The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie The C++ Programming Language 3rd edition by Stroustrup Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform by Troelsen Pro WPF in C# 2008 by MacDonald Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats by Murray and VanRyper Internetworking with TCP/IP, volumes I, II, and III by Comer and Stevens The Bar Code Book 3rd edition by Palmer plus a collection of the O'Reilly pocket guides/references. I keep these books because some of the them are out of print or current editions have omitted information I still need. In all cases I still use them. For example, I recently spent a couple of months with Internetworking with TCP/IP volume I open on my desk while I was debugging the TCP/IP 'stack' in a piece of embedded software. Besides, the monasteries will need paper books after the Singularity and the
**monoAI**has taken all programming information into itself.Software Zen:
delete this; -
I certainly grew up BG. Furthermore, friends label me as a squirrel, stuffing away nuts everywhere. Then: I am surprised myself how often I go down in the bookshelves in the basement to dig up some information - quite often because I have mentioned some mechanism or algorithm or architecture or tool to a younger colleague, one that was developed and used long BG, and little information is available on the Internet. Today, I am using Google heavily, but it certainly is best suited for reference information, stuff that you more or less know in advance but need the API details etc. You don't learn the philosophy of a paradigm by googling, not even architectural concepts. You find no wisdom in Google, only facts. So I still buy books, to more easily "see the big picture". But, just like others are dissatisfied with online tutorials, the art of writing good textbooks is also deteriorating. I frequently wish I had an electronic, editable version of the book I am reading so I could remove all that chitchat that expands 200 pages of useful info into an 700 page monster. Remove all the references to how it is done in this and that old system (which I never used), comparing it to how it is in this system. Adding a few explanations about why you would use this and that mechanism, and for what. I am really dissatisfied with most modern textbooks: They are extremely wordy, poorly organized and not very good at giving you "the big picture". Yet, for subject I do not know at all, but need to learn thoroughly, they are still a lot better than a google hit count of 2.3 million, where you still miss out a lot of good references because you are so new to the subject that you do not know which are good search terms.
Member 7989122 wrote:
I am really dissatisfied with most modern textbooks: They are extremely wordy, poorly organized and not very good at giving you "the big picture"
Take a look at the O'Reilly pocket guides and references. They're actually quite good at showing you the basics that you need to get started with a technology.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I certainly grew up BG. Furthermore, friends label me as a squirrel, stuffing away nuts everywhere. Then: I am surprised myself how often I go down in the bookshelves in the basement to dig up some information - quite often because I have mentioned some mechanism or algorithm or architecture or tool to a younger colleague, one that was developed and used long BG, and little information is available on the Internet. Today, I am using Google heavily, but it certainly is best suited for reference information, stuff that you more or less know in advance but need the API details etc. You don't learn the philosophy of a paradigm by googling, not even architectural concepts. You find no wisdom in Google, only facts. So I still buy books, to more easily "see the big picture". But, just like others are dissatisfied with online tutorials, the art of writing good textbooks is also deteriorating. I frequently wish I had an electronic, editable version of the book I am reading so I could remove all that chitchat that expands 200 pages of useful info into an 700 page monster. Remove all the references to how it is done in this and that old system (which I never used), comparing it to how it is in this system. Adding a few explanations about why you would use this and that mechanism, and for what. I am really dissatisfied with most modern textbooks: They are extremely wordy, poorly organized and not very good at giving you "the big picture". Yet, for subject I do not know at all, but need to learn thoroughly, they are still a lot better than a google hit count of 2.3 million, where you still miss out a lot of good references because you are so new to the subject that you do not know which are good search terms.
What is funny is how badly a new technology tends to be covered in books when it is new. After a while, you read the books and go "this is so much better". I'm thinking of Group Policy at the moment.
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The move is completed and we have learned.... In this company, there are two kinds of developers. Those that came to work here after we still needed to collect technical books (AG After Google) Those that worked here when we still needed to collect technical books. (BG Before Google) ..They are the ones with the 55 gallon disposal bins next to their cubes.
When i was in tech support i learned from a guy who was about to retire. I used to ask him how they did the job before google, but he'd always shut me down with an angry "Hey!" like he didn't want to talk about it.
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You'd be rather limited; tutorials on the internet do not undergo the same screening as most books do. On most topics, the stuff that you Google would be unordered and fragmented, with the scope being based on your personal understanding - you might skip a few rather important things. That's how we ended up with VB6-forms that concatenate a string to form a query to check your password - people who are programming based on what tutorials they can Google :rolleyes:
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
You could of course google for an (e)book and read a digital version instead of one that was already outdated the moment it was printed. ;P
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You could of course google for an (e)book and read a digital version instead of one that was already outdated the moment it was printed. ;P
You could, but the free ebooks are the same quality as the free tutorials; you'd be reading something that is not verified and probably full of small errors and bugs. As for the idea that stuff in print is outdated before it arrives, that remark is so rediculous I'm not even going to entertain it :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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No, I wouldn't say so. It is like saying that C# and assembler coding on the 8086 works along the same principles. The event driven model pushed by early Windows was never embraced by application developers: Some tiny little event triggers an (ideally) atomic state transition. Win16 didn't have preemptive scheduling - there was no need for it. Or wouldn't have been, if developers had adopted the event driven philosophy. Software developers - with the exception of those who come from the digital telephone exchange world - are trained in sequential top-to-bottom programming. Even managing a handful of (more or less persistent) threads is "advanced matter" in the training, and protection of data structures and synchronization are, for the most part, poorly mastered. But that is the only way programmers can handle e.g. peripherals: By setting up a thread that, like a 1970 style Fortran program, runs from top to bottom (although with some loops and conditional statements). Event oriented programming is reduced to exceptional cases, where you set up a callback and attach it to some OnSomethingHappened case. The main body of the application code does not reflect the fundamental event driven paradigm of Windows16, where you might say that everything, the entire application logic, was written as a large number of OnSomethingHappened handlers, all of them tiny and near-atomic. With Windows95 came a collection of "helper" functions for supporting event handling in a more sequential-code-looking way. I saw it as (and believe it was intended as) an outstretched hand to old sequential programmers to ease the transition to "real" event driven programming. It rather started the snowball running down the hill, back to the Fortran style coding. Even in the 1970s, interrupt handlers were required to handle external events (and on most machines you could trigger an interrupt from software as well) - they were called interrupt handlers, not event handlers, but the difference between the two is minimal. After Windows9x, I haven't seen any application code following the event driven paradigm; we are back to the sequential way of doing things. The core of Win10 is still event driven, as OSes always were with peripherals and timing, maybe more so than some other OSes thanks to its historical background. But no application is programmed by the even driven paradigm.
Quote:
The event driven model pushed by early Windows was never embraced by application developers:
Really? Because in both the VB4 - VB6 world. and the subsequent C#/VB .NET world, the use of events is common. I still use them even in Xamarin.Forms apps. Thus, in terms of being embraced by application developers, I'd say event driven programming certainly is common in the Windows OS world.
