I'm starting to despair of this years crop of developers.

OriginalGriff

Already today: a web developer who says he has no idea how to use cookies or the session but is developing a "five pages of user input web app"; and an intern who wants a video to show him how to put checkboxes on a panel ... all eleven of them. :sigh: Is it my imagination or are they getting dumber and dumber?

Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

Johnny J

That's what happens when you get impatient and harvest them too soon! :doh:

Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
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Slacker007

This is what happens when we include the world into what we do here. These "web developers" you speak of, will not be here next year. You either have it, or you don't. You can't fake the funk.

megaadam

I'd say you have have a recruitment problem. In my recent jobs it has happened often like we get a new guy and after a week I notice: wow this is a really smart guy.

"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"

Johnny J

megaadam wrote:

...after a week I notice: wow this is a really smart guy.

He somehow managed to get a cool job at really high wages without being remotely competent??? :rolleyes:

Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-----
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain

GKP1992

Today, the minimum required IQ to be a developer has dropped quite a bit. Companies are not usually looking for special talent. They can train a person in 2 months and have them do the same stuff a person with 2-3 years of experience can (with some scheduling and quality issue but nothing they can't handle). In short, the work does not demand the same level of expertise it once did.

Wastedtalent

Sounds like they skipped the first day of training: How to Google stuff.

Lost User

is it any wonder they're trying to develop AI to do that job

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Nelek

I would not say dumb... I think it is just plain laziness. Why do I have to search for something and learn it by myself, if someone can tell me what to do every time?

M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.

Mark_Wallace

OriginalGriff wrote:

a web developer who says he has no idea how to use cookies or the session but is developing a "five pages of user input web app"; and an intern who wants a video to show him how to put checkboxes on a panel

Lemme guess: the intern is studying for a degree, and the first guy already has one.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

PeejayAdams

SAY,I SAY, I SAY HEY BOY!!! LOOK! YOU'RE DOING IT ALL WRONG!!!! Those who came before us were digging it round when it ought to have been square. Those who came after us are just plain dumb. I think those of us that belong to the middle-aged spread did have a big advantage over the young squabs, though, through knowing actual languages rather than frameworks-du-jour.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain

MadMyche

And I thought it was just me. ... Telling the same people time and time again the same errors in their ways. ... And the people who just don't know how to use the editor to post in code. I don't think I'm getting that much crankier in my old age

Director of Transmogrification Services Shinobi of Query Language Master of Yoda Conditional

MarkTJohnson

GKP1992 wrote:

In short, the work does not demand the same level of expertise it once did.

Never say that out loud! HR and or management will hear then ALL our salaries will be in jeopardy!

Rick York

You can't possibly mean to imply that letting everyone be a developer is a bad thing can you?

"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"

Gary Wheeler

Slacker007 wrote:

You can't fake the funk

Nice :-D.

Software Zen: delete this;

Mike Winiberg

It's a generic problem. God knows I'm not a brilliant developer - there are many many better than me out there, and I encounter them all the time 8( Yet I see the same kind of mistakes I made when writing my very first pieces of code or web sites still cropping up on pages released into production by teams who claim to be agile, to be doing both TDD and extensive user testing etc. All of which tells me that, as is so common, the process has become more important than either it's correct application or its output. (Are you listening GOV.UK?!)

DJ van Wyk

Sadly it happens more often than you think.

My plan is to live forever ... so far so good

maze3

Can't help myself but I need to know more about the interns request. Checkboxs on a panel? html? is panel some framework component which is likly some div hell?

OriginalGriff

Nope, just a WinForms panel: Drop one on your form, drop checkboxes on it from the toolbox ... :sigh:

Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

BryanFazekas

OriginalGriff wrote:

Is it my imagination or are they getting dumber and dumber?

It's mostly your imagination. People who shouldn't be in IT have been around since before I joined the club. In the 90's a lot of folks jumped on the IT bandwagon for the salary. The ones that "got it" stayed, the ones that didn't found other careers. The oddities I've experienced include:

Taught one guy how to write COBOL. He had 5 years experience but didn't know how to do a loop -- not just in COBOL, but in general. [I've never compiled a single line of COBOL so me teaching COBOL is an oxymoron.]
A guy who pasted snippets of C++ together and couldn't understand why his program wouldn't compile.
A friend tech interviewed a programming instructor at the local technical school -- she failed the interview, had no idea how to write a functional program.

This problem has been around since the beginning of mankind. However, it may be that the current crop of IT incompetents is less successful in hiding it than previous generations. ;P