Programming in the 60s vs today...
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Not that I was alive in the 60s, but when it came to learning technology in the olden days it was more like this... you learn X, Y, and Z. Master them. You're a programmer. These days it's more like learn A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, and Y. You have to know them all. You're *supposed* to master them all. And you can use all of them for decades, but as soon as you don't know Z... you're a n00b! How dare you not know something. We want someone who's used Z forget A through Y... Z baby all the way! What... you want to spend time with family these days? Freak! Go home and study until you die... get that Z too. Although as soon as you do we're switching to AA. Experienced people know that to master everything these days is impossible. But gee golly that Z is so shiny. Who cares if it's a 90% copy of Y... Z is so shiny. Welcome to the future. :~
Jeremy Falcon
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Not that I was alive in the 60s, but when it came to learning technology in the olden days it was more like this... you learn X, Y, and Z. Master them. You're a programmer. These days it's more like learn A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, and Y. You have to know them all. You're *supposed* to master them all. And you can use all of them for decades, but as soon as you don't know Z... you're a n00b! How dare you not know something. We want someone who's used Z forget A through Y... Z baby all the way! What... you want to spend time with family these days? Freak! Go home and study until you die... get that Z too. Although as soon as you do we're switching to AA. Experienced people know that to master everything these days is impossible. But gee golly that Z is so shiny. Who cares if it's a 90% copy of Y... Z is so shiny. Welcome to the future. :~
Jeremy Falcon
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Jack of all trades and master of none. Pick something you like and is marketable, MASTER IT, and fuck the rest.
You had to, didn't you, he's gonna choose javascript.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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You had to, didn't you, he's gonna choose javascript.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
:-O No comment.
Jeremy Falcon
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Part of that is because decisions are often made by the buzzword cowboys these days. What ever the fad du jour is is what they want to go with.
True. Just to play devil's advocate though, I've seen programmers be guilty of this too. I mean yeah, also execs. It doesn't help when the programmers give the execs the buzzword jockey stuff either. I think it's just a people thing, the less they know anything about tech the more they have to rely on buzzwords as a crutch, regardless of their role in it.
Jeremy Falcon
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Just come to the world of industrial machines and robots... We are always years away from what is being used nowadays... OOP is the new thing in PLC programming... :rolleyes:
Joan M wrote:
OOP
Ooooooooh... shiny! Can I use code wider than 80 chars? Huh? Huh? Can I? Can I?
Jeremy Falcon
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Not that I was alive in the 60s, but when it came to learning technology in the olden days it was more like this... you learn X, Y, and Z. Master them. You're a programmer. These days it's more like learn A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, and Y. You have to know them all. You're *supposed* to master them all. And you can use all of them for decades, but as soon as you don't know Z... you're a n00b! How dare you not know something. We want someone who's used Z forget A through Y... Z baby all the way! What... you want to spend time with family these days? Freak! Go home and study until you die... get that Z too. Although as soon as you do we're switching to AA. Experienced people know that to master everything these days is impossible. But gee golly that Z is so shiny. Who cares if it's a 90% copy of Y... Z is so shiny. Welcome to the future. :~
Jeremy Falcon
Way back when, I was a Professor of Computer Science (mid-eighties) and I thought I might know as much as 85% of what there was to know about computers and software - and I was upset about not knowing the other 15%. Nowadays I think I know about 0.0085% of what there is and falling behind about 0.001% per week - and am happy not knowing all the rest!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Not that I was alive in the 60s, but when it came to learning technology in the olden days it was more like this... you learn X, Y, and Z. Master them. You're a programmer. These days it's more like learn A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, and Y. You have to know them all. You're *supposed* to master them all. And you can use all of them for decades, but as soon as you don't know Z... you're a n00b! How dare you not know something. We want someone who's used Z forget A through Y... Z baby all the way! What... you want to spend time with family these days? Freak! Go home and study until you die... get that Z too. Although as soon as you do we're switching to AA. Experienced people know that to master everything these days is impossible. But gee golly that Z is so shiny. Who cares if it's a 90% copy of Y... Z is so shiny. Welcome to the future. :~
Jeremy Falcon
Just stay with: _start: mov edx,len mov ecx,msg mov ebx,1 mov eax,4 int 0x80 Works for me! :)
User: Technical term used by developers. See Idiot.
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Way back when, I was a Professor of Computer Science (mid-eighties) and I thought I might know as much as 85% of what there was to know about computers and software - and I was upset about not knowing the other 15%. Nowadays I think I know about 0.0085% of what there is and falling behind about 0.001% per week - and am happy not knowing all the rest!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Amen to that brother. It's a good trade off too. For that trade we keep our sanity.
Jeremy Falcon
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Just stay with: _start: mov edx,len mov ecx,msg mov ebx,1 mov eax,4 int 0x80 Works for me! :)
User: Technical term used by developers. See Idiot.
Wow, you're using 32-bit registers now... high tech bro. :cool:
Jeremy Falcon
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Not that I was alive in the 60s, but when it came to learning technology in the olden days it was more like this... you learn X, Y, and Z. Master them. You're a programmer. These days it's more like learn A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, and Y. You have to know them all. You're *supposed* to master them all. And you can use all of them for decades, but as soon as you don't know Z... you're a n00b! How dare you not know something. We want someone who's used Z forget A through Y... Z baby all the way! What... you want to spend time with family these days? Freak! Go home and study until you die... get that Z too. Although as soon as you do we're switching to AA. Experienced people know that to master everything these days is impossible. But gee golly that Z is so shiny. Who cares if it's a 90% copy of Y... Z is so shiny. Welcome to the future. :~
Jeremy Falcon
Some of my coworkers are in their 60s and can debug any problem like it's nobody's business, because they learned low-level skills that have followed them throughout their entire careers. They have inner-working understanding the n00bs can only dream of. These days there's too many people in this field who'd have to resort to calling their IT support department because you disconnected their keyboard while they were away at lunch time. The framework, library, or language of the day they were experts at 3 years ago is useless today, and their skillset simply can't be adapted to new environments/situations. Those who are worth keeping around in the long term are few and far in-between--that's why there's so many job-hoppers.
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Some of my coworkers are in their 60s and can debug any problem like it's nobody's business, because they learned low-level skills that have followed them throughout their entire careers. They have inner-working understanding the n00bs can only dream of. These days there's too many people in this field who'd have to resort to calling their IT support department because you disconnected their keyboard while they were away at lunch time. The framework, library, or language of the day they were experts at 3 years ago is useless today, and their skillset simply can't be adapted to new environments/situations. Those who are worth keeping around in the long term are few and far in-between--that's why there's so many job-hoppers.
Totally agree man. Gotta know the basics and have a strong foundation with just about anything in life you want to be good at.
Jeremy Falcon
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Some of my coworkers are in their 60s and can debug any problem like it's nobody's business, because they learned low-level skills that have followed them throughout their entire careers. They have inner-working understanding the n00bs can only dream of. These days there's too many people in this field who'd have to resort to calling their IT support department because you disconnected their keyboard while they were away at lunch time. The framework, library, or language of the day they were experts at 3 years ago is useless today, and their skillset simply can't be adapted to new environments/situations. Those who are worth keeping around in the long term are few and far in-between--that's why there's so many job-hoppers.
Unfortunately a lot of that useful knowledge that's indicative of a serious programmer gets drowned out in today's application process. I applied for what was described as a senior position a couple months back with a local government bureau. An actual part of the interview I remember:
Them: "So what's an interface?"
Me: "A contract. It specifies a minimum requirement without specifying a concrete implementation. Kinda like 'I don't care what object you are, as long as you can do X, Y, and Z we're good.'"
Them: "What's a WHERE clause?"
Me: "A predicate to filter SELECT results."
Them: "Ok, any questions for us?"
Me: "No questions about design patterns, architecture, query optimization, PK/FK decisions, index clustering, version control, deployment, etc?"
Them: *Look at each other* "No."I never heard back :doh: I think I'm just terrible at interviews :laugh:
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Unfortunately a lot of that useful knowledge that's indicative of a serious programmer gets drowned out in today's application process. I applied for what was described as a senior position a couple months back with a local government bureau. An actual part of the interview I remember:
Them: "So what's an interface?"
Me: "A contract. It specifies a minimum requirement without specifying a concrete implementation. Kinda like 'I don't care what object you are, as long as you can do X, Y, and Z we're good.'"
Them: "What's a WHERE clause?"
Me: "A predicate to filter SELECT results."
Them: "Ok, any questions for us?"
Me: "No questions about design patterns, architecture, query optimization, PK/FK decisions, index clustering, version control, deployment, etc?"
Them: *Look at each other* "No."I never heard back :doh: I think I'm just terrible at interviews :laugh:
Were you being interviewed by HR people, or actual developers? If the latter, I suspect they immediately understood you were going to make them look bad. It's probably just as well you didn't hear back from them. In hindsight, perhaps the question you should've asked them is how *they* managed to get their jobs... :-D
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Not that I was alive in the 60s, but when it came to learning technology in the olden days it was more like this... you learn X, Y, and Z. Master them. You're a programmer. These days it's more like learn A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, and Y. You have to know them all. You're *supposed* to master them all. And you can use all of them for decades, but as soon as you don't know Z... you're a n00b! How dare you not know something. We want someone who's used Z forget A through Y... Z baby all the way! What... you want to spend time with family these days? Freak! Go home and study until you die... get that Z too. Although as soon as you do we're switching to AA. Experienced people know that to master everything these days is impossible. But gee golly that Z is so shiny. Who cares if it's a 90% copy of Y... Z is so shiny. Welcome to the future. :~
Jeremy Falcon
Jeremy Falcon wrote:
you learn X, Y, and Z.
I wasn't there either, but if I understand correctly, you didn't learn all three. You picked your career path and then learned COBOL or FORTRAN or ASSEMBLY. Or, you learned Pascal and BASIC and hoped to get a job teaching.
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Not that I was alive in the 60s, but when it came to learning technology in the olden days it was more like this... you learn X, Y, and Z. Master them. You're a programmer. These days it's more like learn A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, and Y. You have to know them all. You're *supposed* to master them all. And you can use all of them for decades, but as soon as you don't know Z... you're a n00b! How dare you not know something. We want someone who's used Z forget A through Y... Z baby all the way! What... you want to spend time with family these days? Freak! Go home and study until you die... get that Z too. Although as soon as you do we're switching to AA. Experienced people know that to master everything these days is impossible. But gee golly that Z is so shiny. Who cares if it's a 90% copy of Y... Z is so shiny. Welcome to the future. :~
Jeremy Falcon
In the end, it's all about breaking down and solving problems. I'll gladly learn a new stack/framework if it solves a problem at hand. (makes or saves $) That said, I usually don't (aside from maybe reading articles) invest in learning something new just to add a feather to my cap. On another topic, with the answers to the universe at out fingertips these days, getting by on your wits is much easier than it used to be. Either I've done it (or something like it) and can re-use the code/logic, or I can usually find something useful in less than 10 seconds using google. :laugh: This is why I haven't bought a real programming book/manual in more than 5 years. These days the only mastery required is in phrasing search terms. :)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Joan M wrote:
OOP
Ooooooooh... shiny! Can I use code wider than 80 chars? Huh? Huh? Can I? Can I?
Jeremy Falcon
64k max in a block, you can use up to 1024 blocks
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.
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Were you being interviewed by HR people, or actual developers? If the latter, I suspect they immediately understood you were going to make them look bad. It's probably just as well you didn't hear back from them. In hindsight, perhaps the question you should've asked them is how *they* managed to get their jobs... :-D
I got the impression one person was definitely HR and one probably a developer. The third person I honestly couldn't place as he didn't say much beyond the greeting. I was just kinda dumbfounded. If I was hiring a carpenter to build a house I wouldn't ask him "Do you know what a hammer is? What about wood? Alright, that's all I need." :doh:
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Not that I was alive in the 60s, but when it came to learning technology in the olden days it was more like this... you learn X, Y, and Z. Master them. You're a programmer. These days it's more like learn A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, and Y. You have to know them all. You're *supposed* to master them all. And you can use all of them for decades, but as soon as you don't know Z... you're a n00b! How dare you not know something. We want someone who's used Z forget A through Y... Z baby all the way! What... you want to spend time with family these days? Freak! Go home and study until you die... get that Z too. Although as soon as you do we're switching to AA. Experienced people know that to master everything these days is impossible. But gee golly that Z is so shiny. Who cares if it's a 90% copy of Y... Z is so shiny. Welcome to the future. :~
Jeremy Falcon
One cannot simply learn everything that the industry uses, this could apply to other fields too.Considering the remarkable impact that computer and engineering has made on other disciplines and considering the modern trends in the industry.Older systems and technology gets replaced by newer system and programming languages.....On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero...
Caveat Emptor. "Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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You had to, didn't you, he's gonna choose javascript.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Nothing at all wrong with good old JS, even better, the new ES5 and ES6, but mastering them? :~
"'Do what thou wilt...' is to bid Stars to shine, Vines to bear grapes, Water to seek its level; man is the only being in Nature that has striven to set himself at odds with himself." —Aleister Crowley
