A great time to be a developer
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Spot on! We spend more time having to fill forms in, document, wait for the steering group to relay to the focus group which relays to the product group who rel....................oops someone dropped the baton of understanding along the way, but it'll be ok we'll just blame the developer for getting it wrong. When I started, the IT staff and the person who wanted the app actually talked face to face, and then went away and did the deed. Coders understood what was needed due to their intimate knowledge of the data and systems. As soon as "higher" levels of interference arrive then it all goes pear shaped. The number of people promoted way beyond their own levels of competence is staggering and they end up in a small clique of self congratulatory blinkered management who can't relay or relate to the coders. All I can say to finish off with is..... see my sig! I still remember having to write your own code in FORTRAN rather than be a cut and paste merchant being pampered by colour coded Intellisense - ahh proper programming - those were the days :)
SIGH - yes... I never programed in FORTRAN but I did a lot of Assembly and Pascal (Yes I know it's not great but it was still fun.) I think I started programmnig right at the end of those days so I sorta just got a whiff of them. I think I'm going to start looking for a different career and keep programming as a hobby so I don't have to worry about bureaucracy and politics.
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on. If you tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe, he'll believe you. But if you tell him a bench has just been painted, he'll have to touch it to be sure.
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I'm amazed at the number and power of the tools currently at our fingertips. Is this the best time to be a developer or what? Tom Ollar
I prefered the 70s, i.e. the early years. It was all new and generally eveyone helped each other out as no one really knew what they were doing! To me is was great doing stuff that very few people had ever done before, these days development is 'faster' but IMHO a lot of folk don't fully understand what the code they have cut/pasted actually does. No I don't criticise people for cut/pasting code, but I would hope they would learn from and to improve their skills. why 'faster'(in quotes) in the 70s/80s if you produced software with bugs you could not tell customers to download a 'bug' fix from the net, 'free' of charge, evey few weeks!
"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't." - Anatole France
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ok, ppl are becoming developers for past maybe 40 years irrespective or good time or bad time or good tools or bad tools, So, when he says that it is a good time to learn development, does that not imply that he wants to do that?
-prakash
The original post makes no mention of learning development. Just that now is a good time to be a developer. I've been a developer for a few years, and I consider the tools we have these days to be much better than when I started - but that doesn't imply that I want to learn development... coz I already know it.
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I'm amazed at the number and power of the tools currently at our fingertips. Is this the best time to be a developer or what? Tom Ollar
Tom Ollar wrote: Is this the best time to be a developer or what? As you notice, this is not as black and white of an issue as you might think. I do agree it is a great time, but I am in 3D graphics, something fairly recent computer wise. I've helped it go from line drawings and dots to true 3D perspective. But then in newer fields like 3D graphics and massively parallel computing, your tools dwindle to a few that dream of being as stable as a Microsoft Beta release. But no matter which field you are in, there is always someone to enter thinking they know everything. A little bit of knowledge is a terrible thing, and all areas of computing has people who think they know more than they do. When you end up carrying the extra burdon of fixing their stuff, or worse finding the bugs, things get really bad. Because I live in the birth of 3D graphics I would never want to go back to the 80's or earlier. But tied down in endless meetings, arguments on indentation levels holding back style guides, and anyone who knows how to draw a triangle thinks they can do 3D graphics. It isn't all a bed of roses. Or perhaps it is, roses grow best in quality manure. It always looks better at a distance than when you are standing in it. ;) _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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I'm amazed at the number and power of the tools currently at our fingertips. Is this the best time to be a developer or what? Tom Ollar
Tom Ollar wrote: I'm amazed at the number and power of the tools currently at our fingertips. And I'm also amazed at how lacking good tools are. It's like science. It's amazing what we know, it's staggering what we don't know. Marc My website Traceract Understanding Simple Data Binding Diary Of A CEO - Preface
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If you are a web-developer then it is a great time to be developing. I don't know about the desktop boys though as I haven't seen much progress in the past few years. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
Paul Watson wrote: If you are a web-developer then it is a great time to be developing. I don't know about the desktop boys though as I haven't seen much progress in the past few years. We've been waiting for you web-boys to catch up. We got bored of our sophisticated, easy to use and code user interfaces making web-apps look like something from the stone-age. But now we've got XAML we are going to kick your ass on your own playing field. :-D Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Tom Ollar wrote: Is this the best time to be a developer or what? Nope. Now anyone with a bootleg copy of Visual Basic .Net is a developer - just ask Microsoft. Well, maybe they'd balk at the bootleg part; no one who doesn't pay a year's salary for their tools can be a real developer. Back when computers were air-conditioned, self-contained cities, and pitiful, ignorant users had to crawl begging for help, often resorting to leaving valuable gifts on our doorsteps and flowers on our desks in the vain hope of being granted an audience with the guru of bits and bytes, now that was the heyday for developers. We were Gods, I tell you!!!! Muwahahaaaa... We who could read und understand the mysterious blinking lights on front panels, who knew which holes absolutely must be punched in the holy Hollerith cards (and which had better be left alone), who could mount and dismount hard discs all day and night without involving barnyard animals, we were the unchallenged Masters of our own, and all the nameless unwashed masses' destinies! You spoiled youngsters would be lost up a filestream without a HANDLE if we took away your fancy childrens' toys. You'd be POPping things when they should be PUSHed, leaving INT handlers with indeterminate SP register contents, and stewing in your own pragmas. ;) "...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9
Roger Wright wrote: ...and pitiful, ignorant users had to crawl begging for help, often resorting to leaving valuable gifts on our doorsteps and flowers on our desks in the vain hope of being granted an audience with the guru of bits and bytes... You mean your relatives/friends don't still do this? Lucky man.
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Roger Wright wrote: ...and pitiful, ignorant users had to crawl begging for help, often resorting to leaving valuable gifts on our doorsteps and flowers on our desks in the vain hope of being granted an audience with the guru of bits and bytes... You mean your relatives/friends don't still do this? Lucky man.
Today, a developer's relatives expect him to help with everything, because "hey, it's just a few clicks for you". Flowers? Gifts?! Forget it. Developer's friends of our times want gifts and excuses from you, if you were not able to solve one of their problems. _________________________________ Please inform me about my English mistakes, as I'm still trying to learn your language!
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Today, a developer's relatives expect him to help with everything, because "hey, it's just a few clicks for you". Flowers? Gifts?! Forget it. Developer's friends of our times want gifts and excuses from you, if you were not able to solve one of their problems. _________________________________ Please inform me about my English mistakes, as I'm still trying to learn your language!
I will only fix other people's PCs in return for a meal - I won't do it for free, and I don't want cash. Asynes yw brassa ages kwilkynyow.
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ok, ppl are becoming developers for past maybe 40 years irrespective or good time or bad time or good tools or bad tools, So, when he says that it is a good time to learn development, does that not imply that he wants to do that?
-prakash
Mr.Prakash wrote: So, when he says that it is a good time to learn development Where? Cheers, Vikram.
Google talk: binarybandit
upsdude: when I looked at laurens profile, a couple of gears got stripped in my brain. Michael Martin: Too bad she bats for the other team.
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So what are you all going to do once you hit 30, all going to become project managers etc? Or you are going to go into business management, cos you have experience irrelevant to the guys that studied business management as a start? Seems more and more that software is not career anymore, it's a short term hobby.... :(( No on won't do this...
GearX wrote: So what are you all going to do once you hit 30, all going to become project managers etc? I'm quite new to the corporate world, but from what I've seen so far, that is the case in most companies. Of course, I know companies where people have 10-15 years of experience (which makes them 30-40 years old) and still write code, but they are exceptions rather than the rule. People spend 5-10 years in development, then go on to managing projects/products mostly. PS: I'm an Indian, so I thought this would be relevant to your question. :) Cheers, Vikram.
Google talk: binarybandit
upsdude: when I looked at laurens profile, a couple of gears got stripped in my brain. Michael Martin: Too bad she bats for the other team.
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Paul Watson wrote: If you are a web-developer then it is a great time to be developing. I don't know about the desktop boys though as I haven't seen much progress in the past few years. We've been waiting for you web-boys to catch up. We got bored of our sophisticated, easy to use and code user interfaces making web-apps look like something from the stone-age. But now we've got XAML we are going to kick your ass on your own playing field. :-D Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
Michael P Butler wrote: But now we've got XAML we are going to kick your ass on your own playing field. Hmmm, and they have AJAX. Have you seen the future version of Hotmail[^] yet?
My programming blahblahblah blog. If you ever find anything useful here, please let me know to remove it.
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Not even close. The best time was the mid-to-late-90's. The jump in productivity in going from C to C++/MFC was much greater than anything we'll probably see again. Not to mention that salaries were more than double what they are now. We worked on the hottest projects and made more than the VPs and were basically rock stars. Windows Vista Program Manager MSDN Online MICROSOFT Windows Vista Developer Center My Microsoft Blog
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Tom Ollar wrote: I'm amazed at the number and power of the tools currently at our fingertips. And I'm also amazed at how lacking good tools are. It's like science. It's amazing what we know, it's staggering what we don't know. Marc My website Traceract Understanding Simple Data Binding Diary Of A CEO - Preface
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I'm amazed at the number and power of the tools currently at our fingertips. Is this the best time to be a developer or what? Tom Ollar
Tom Ollar wrote: Is this the best time to be a developer or what? I don't know; 1988 was a very good time to be a developer. Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Not even close. The best time was the mid-to-late-90's. The jump in productivity in going from C to C++/MFC was much greater than anything we'll probably see again. Not to mention that salaries were more than double what they are now. We worked on the hottest projects and made more than the VPs and were basically rock stars. Windows Vista Program Manager MSDN Online MICROSOFT Windows Vista Developer Center My Microsoft Blog
I can remember using Make for the first time and thinking :cool: The tigress is here :-D
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GearX wrote: So what are you all going to do once you hit 30, all going to become project managers etc? I'm quite new to the corporate world, but from what I've seen so far, that is the case in most companies. Of course, I know companies where people have 10-15 years of experience (which makes them 30-40 years old) and still write code, but they are exceptions rather than the rule. People spend 5-10 years in development, then go on to managing projects/products mostly. PS: I'm an Indian, so I thought this would be relevant to your question. :) Cheers, Vikram.
Google talk: binarybandit
upsdude: when I looked at laurens profile, a couple of gears got stripped in my brain. Michael Martin: Too bad she bats for the other team.
Well I would say at some point a programmers skills get developed enough so that he can be of more use overseeing the work rather than doing it. In the process of managing ourselves, I think we attain some measure of management skills. However, that does not mean he can't program himself, if needed, and there is still the human factor in management - dealing with prima donnas, morons, bad programmers, infighting etc etc, which disourages some older programmers - I am 36 y.o. Can you expand on why Indian nationality is relavent?
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So you're saying that tools are lacking. How? It seems like they do so much already. Also, some are saying that better tools are making job conditions worse for the developer. Isn't better for us the more difficult development is?
Tom Ollar wrote: How? It seems like they do so much already. Let's see. Testing, documentation, architecture, automatic synchronization of said, workflows (we're just now getting MWF???), better UI development tools, tools that let you build n-tier applications, etc. Most of these tools exist already but are very incomplete. Tom Ollar wrote: some are saying that better tools are making job conditions worse for the developer. For the most part, I've noticed that tools make for worse designs and dumber developers. Designs are worse, for example, if you use the IDE to develop a database app, because the persistence code is embedded in the presentation layer! Developers are dumber because they are completely reliant on the tool to do the work and are totally lost when they have to do something that the tool doesn't handle. Tom Ollar wrote: Isn't better for us the more difficult development is? As with other things, people confuse the tool with the knowledge to use the tool. Having a hammer a box of nails, and some wood does me no good if I don't know how to build a shed. Similarly, tools are useless if the programmer doesn't know how to program to begin with. Development is difficult primarily because programmers don't know how to write applications. If they did, the tools would be a lot better as well! Marc My website Traceract Understanding Simple Data Binding Diary Of A CEO - Preface
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Tom Ollar wrote: How? It seems like they do so much already. Let's see. Testing, documentation, architecture, automatic synchronization of said, workflows (we're just now getting MWF???), better UI development tools, tools that let you build n-tier applications, etc. Most of these tools exist already but are very incomplete. Tom Ollar wrote: some are saying that better tools are making job conditions worse for the developer. For the most part, I've noticed that tools make for worse designs and dumber developers. Designs are worse, for example, if you use the IDE to develop a database app, because the persistence code is embedded in the presentation layer! Developers are dumber because they are completely reliant on the tool to do the work and are totally lost when they have to do something that the tool doesn't handle. Tom Ollar wrote: Isn't better for us the more difficult development is? As with other things, people confuse the tool with the knowledge to use the tool. Having a hammer a box of nails, and some wood does me no good if I don't know how to build a shed. Similarly, tools are useless if the programmer doesn't know how to program to begin with. Development is difficult primarily because programmers don't know how to write applications. If they did, the tools would be a lot better as well! Marc My website Traceract Understanding Simple Data Binding Diary Of A CEO - Preface
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The original post makes no mention of learning development. Just that now is a good time to be a developer. I've been a developer for a few years, and I consider the tools we have these days to be much better than when I started - but that doesn't imply that I want to learn development... coz I already know it.
Peace Y :rolleyes:
-prakash