pre-internet days
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sorry if this dates me too much, but I kind of miss the pre-internet days working as a dev. Technology didn't move that fast, a new compiler would be available every great once in awhile. You could keep most libraries in your head because they rarely ever changed. Most of the time you were only limited by imagination and memory (ram). So you would subscribe to any tech magazine to get the latest info. there would be code samples of something clever, articles on the pitfalls of a language feature, or work progress of getting a new complier up and running. My shelves were packed with any books I could get ahold of and every magazine that had something interesting. The internet is the first tool I have to reach for now. there is just soo much to know and it's almost impossible to keep it all in your head. For me to remain a dev until retirement is going to be a stretch, so I'm thinking of going into education to tech software development. I've notice that many of the younger devs out there can slap something together that works, but don't any have the fundamentals on how any of it works underneath: they can put gas in the car, but have no idea what's under the hood that makes it go, and that bothers me. any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
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sorry if this dates me too much, but I kind of miss the pre-internet days working as a dev. Technology didn't move that fast, a new compiler would be available every great once in awhile. You could keep most libraries in your head because they rarely ever changed. Most of the time you were only limited by imagination and memory (ram). So you would subscribe to any tech magazine to get the latest info. there would be code samples of something clever, articles on the pitfalls of a language feature, or work progress of getting a new complier up and running. My shelves were packed with any books I could get ahold of and every magazine that had something interesting. The internet is the first tool I have to reach for now. there is just soo much to know and it's almost impossible to keep it all in your head. For me to remain a dev until retirement is going to be a stretch, so I'm thinking of going into education to tech software development. I've notice that many of the younger devs out there can slap something together that works, but don't any have the fundamentals on how any of it works underneath: they can put gas in the car, but have no idea what's under the hood that makes it go, and that bothers me. any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
I definitely see this going on, but I think a lot of new devs know they are missing out on things too. I have here Jeff Prosise's great book, Programming Windows with MFC and it weighs in at over 1200 pages. I also have the Petzold Programming Windows 95 and it is around that length also. But, the Internet has ruined strong focus. Read the book, The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains[^]. Petzold went into specifc details and you had to learn how things were really built up. But a lot of people didn't like that. It is somewhat of the Engineering Mindset. Some people just want to get a thing working and forget about it. They want the end result. Others (with Engineering Mindset) want to know exactly how things work. I find that when I want a PRODUCT I want to get the thing working. But most of the time I want to know exactly how the thing works. It's two different mindsets really.
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sorry if this dates me too much, but I kind of miss the pre-internet days working as a dev. Technology didn't move that fast, a new compiler would be available every great once in awhile. You could keep most libraries in your head because they rarely ever changed. Most of the time you were only limited by imagination and memory (ram). So you would subscribe to any tech magazine to get the latest info. there would be code samples of something clever, articles on the pitfalls of a language feature, or work progress of getting a new complier up and running. My shelves were packed with any books I could get ahold of and every magazine that had something interesting. The internet is the first tool I have to reach for now. there is just soo much to know and it's almost impossible to keep it all in your head. For me to remain a dev until retirement is going to be a stretch, so I'm thinking of going into education to tech software development. I've notice that many of the younger devs out there can slap something together that works, but don't any have the fundamentals on how any of it works underneath: they can put gas in the car, but have no idea what's under the hood that makes it go, and that bothers me. any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
I'm with you on that. One of the things that I find frustrating with some so-called devs, is not that the lack the fundamentals, but they seem not to have any idea what to do if things go wrong. If their code does not run or throws an error they are incapable of doing some basic diagnosis. There have also been three questions posted here in the last few days from people who are trying to use third-party products. They don't know the product, or some part does not do what they want, so rather than going back where they got it from and asking people who would know, they post a question here. Similarly with homework questions under "what have I done", we see things like, "nothing because I don't know how to start". I just hope that all the developers who never post a question here are of a much higher calibre.
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sorry if this dates me too much, but I kind of miss the pre-internet days working as a dev. Technology didn't move that fast, a new compiler would be available every great once in awhile. You could keep most libraries in your head because they rarely ever changed. Most of the time you were only limited by imagination and memory (ram). So you would subscribe to any tech magazine to get the latest info. there would be code samples of something clever, articles on the pitfalls of a language feature, or work progress of getting a new complier up and running. My shelves were packed with any books I could get ahold of and every magazine that had something interesting. The internet is the first tool I have to reach for now. there is just soo much to know and it's almost impossible to keep it all in your head. For me to remain a dev until retirement is going to be a stretch, so I'm thinking of going into education to tech software development. I've notice that many of the younger devs out there can slap something together that works, but don't any have the fundamentals on how any of it works underneath: they can put gas in the car, but have no idea what's under the hood that makes it go, and that bothers me. any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
I certainly don't want to go back to finding the appropriate MSDN documentation CD out of the folder of 12 that will have the documentation for Substring as I don't know if it is SubString or Substring as IntelliSense hasn't been invented either. The internet has certainly made it easier to plagiarise though and has defo made it easier to find examples of larger sections of code, as well as (obviously) places people can just post their homework expecting someone else to do it for them. I'd hate to be a lecturer these days, half the job must be trying to work out if people have got others to do their work.
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I definitely see this going on, but I think a lot of new devs know they are missing out on things too. I have here Jeff Prosise's great book, Programming Windows with MFC and it weighs in at over 1200 pages. I also have the Petzold Programming Windows 95 and it is around that length also. But, the Internet has ruined strong focus. Read the book, The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains[^]. Petzold went into specifc details and you had to learn how things were really built up. But a lot of people didn't like that. It is somewhat of the Engineering Mindset. Some people just want to get a thing working and forget about it. They want the end result. Others (with Engineering Mindset) want to know exactly how things work. I find that when I want a PRODUCT I want to get the thing working. But most of the time I want to know exactly how the thing works. It's two different mindsets really.
thanks for the book recommendation, I just put that in my cart.
raddevus wrote:
But most of the time I want to know exactly how the thing works. It's two different mindsets really.
I think you summed that up perfectly. I worked for someone once that was the quickest person I've ever seen to refactor code, 1000's of lines of code in a day. It was garbage of course, he didn't know how to debug so everything was in a try/catch/fail -> send to log file. this code went in to production without ever testing locally, and he would wait for logs to appear, then change something upload to customer and watch the logs again. and again, and again. Another had no idea what bit wise operations were and was confused on exactly what an integer was, let alone the size of integer and how much it could hold. But he was still putting Apps together. [head shake]
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I certainly don't want to go back to finding the appropriate MSDN documentation CD out of the folder of 12 that will have the documentation for Substring as I don't know if it is SubString or Substring as IntelliSense hasn't been invented either. The internet has certainly made it easier to plagiarise though and has defo made it easier to find examples of larger sections of code, as well as (obviously) places people can just post their homework expecting someone else to do it for them. I'd hate to be a lecturer these days, half the job must be trying to work out if people have got others to do their work.
the CDs were horrible, ended up getting a second hard drive just to load up the MSDN library, but the information did tend to be more technically accurate with actual examples (for the most part) I can't tell you how many times working with a new API lately and I look up the docs and it only has the name and the signature like:
void ThisIsSomeSortOfAPI(int count)
param int count - count to pass to API
defination: This is Some Sort Of APII'm like thanks that is so helpful
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sorry if this dates me too much, but I kind of miss the pre-internet days working as a dev. Technology didn't move that fast, a new compiler would be available every great once in awhile. You could keep most libraries in your head because they rarely ever changed. Most of the time you were only limited by imagination and memory (ram). So you would subscribe to any tech magazine to get the latest info. there would be code samples of something clever, articles on the pitfalls of a language feature, or work progress of getting a new complier up and running. My shelves were packed with any books I could get ahold of and every magazine that had something interesting. The internet is the first tool I have to reach for now. there is just soo much to know and it's almost impossible to keep it all in your head. For me to remain a dev until retirement is going to be a stretch, so I'm thinking of going into education to tech software development. I've notice that many of the younger devs out there can slap something together that works, but don't any have the fundamentals on how any of it works underneath: they can put gas in the car, but have no idea what's under the hood that makes it go, and that bothers me. any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
I only miss the pre-internet days and early internet days for nostalgic reasons. I am 1000% more effective and productive now as a software engineer/developer than I was back then, and that is not just experience over time. Also, knowing how to debug is key to being a successful developer, just as Richard mentioned in earlier post reply. "...but they seem not to have any idea what to do if things go wrong."
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thanks for the book recommendation, I just put that in my cart.
raddevus wrote:
But most of the time I want to know exactly how the thing works. It's two different mindsets really.
I think you summed that up perfectly. I worked for someone once that was the quickest person I've ever seen to refactor code, 1000's of lines of code in a day. It was garbage of course, he didn't know how to debug so everything was in a try/catch/fail -> send to log file. this code went in to production without ever testing locally, and he would wait for logs to appear, then change something upload to customer and watch the logs again. and again, and again. Another had no idea what bit wise operations were and was confused on exactly what an integer was, let alone the size of integer and how much it could hold. But he was still putting Apps together. [head shake]
:thumbsup: :laugh:
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
I'm with you on that. One of the things that I find frustrating with some so-called devs, is not that the lack the fundamentals, but they seem not to have any idea what to do if things go wrong. If their code does not run or throws an error they are incapable of doing some basic diagnosis. There have also been three questions posted here in the last few days from people who are trying to use third-party products. They don't know the product, or some part does not do what they want, so rather than going back where they got it from and asking people who would know, they post a question here. Similarly with homework questions under "what have I done", we see things like, "nothing because I don't know how to start". I just hope that all the developers who never post a question here are of a much higher calibre.
Yes, a sea change from the days when I used to debug in hex, over the phone. Eliminating possible causes of a bug until, to steal a phrase, what remains must be the truth, requires the ability to think deductively, which is rooted in logic. In an age where emotions are treated like facts, the ability to debug this way is severely compromised.
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
thanks for the book recommendation, I just put that in my cart.
raddevus wrote:
But most of the time I want to know exactly how the thing works. It's two different mindsets really.
I think you summed that up perfectly. I worked for someone once that was the quickest person I've ever seen to refactor code, 1000's of lines of code in a day. It was garbage of course, he didn't know how to debug so everything was in a try/catch/fail -> send to log file. this code went in to production without ever testing locally, and he would wait for logs to appear, then change something upload to customer and watch the logs again. and again, and again. Another had no idea what bit wise operations were and was confused on exactly what an integer was, let alone the size of integer and how much it could hold. But he was still putting Apps together. [head shake]
Matt McGuire wrote:
Another had no idea what bit wise operations were and was confused on exactly what an integer was, let alone the size of integer and how much it could hold. But he was still putting Apps together.
Yep, I've worked with the same kind of people. We had a guy who didn't seem to know what a function was used for. He had a bug in a for loop that was copy pasted into his code dozens of times. It failed in production when he was out of town and unavailable so we had to fix it. Had to search thru for dozens of instances of the bug and replace them. If it were wrapped in one function call... Oy!
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sorry if this dates me too much, but I kind of miss the pre-internet days working as a dev. Technology didn't move that fast, a new compiler would be available every great once in awhile. You could keep most libraries in your head because they rarely ever changed. Most of the time you were only limited by imagination and memory (ram). So you would subscribe to any tech magazine to get the latest info. there would be code samples of something clever, articles on the pitfalls of a language feature, or work progress of getting a new complier up and running. My shelves were packed with any books I could get ahold of and every magazine that had something interesting. The internet is the first tool I have to reach for now. there is just soo much to know and it's almost impossible to keep it all in your head. For me to remain a dev until retirement is going to be a stretch, so I'm thinking of going into education to tech software development. I've notice that many of the younger devs out there can slap something together that works, but don't any have the fundamentals on how any of it works underneath: they can put gas in the car, but have no idea what's under the hood that makes it go, and that bothers me. any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
Feel like I was smarter way back then because everything was just C code, you started at main() and worked from there. Today with the friggin' frameworks, build scripts, endpoints and so on, there's WAY to much VooDoo code floating around what I'm trying to do. VooDoo code : Crap you're told to use but no one really understands what it does or how it does it. (Looking at you Gradle, Maven, Ant and Groovy. Oh yeah SpringBoot too.).
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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I'm with you on that. One of the things that I find frustrating with some so-called devs, is not that the lack the fundamentals, but they seem not to have any idea what to do if things go wrong. If their code does not run or throws an error they are incapable of doing some basic diagnosis. There have also been three questions posted here in the last few days from people who are trying to use third-party products. They don't know the product, or some part does not do what they want, so rather than going back where they got it from and asking people who would know, they post a question here. Similarly with homework questions under "what have I done", we see things like, "nothing because I don't know how to start". I just hope that all the developers who never post a question here are of a much higher calibre.
Richard MacCutchan wrote:
what have I done", we see things like, "nothing because I don't know how to start".
You are correct about many devs not being able to debug. It is probably why the ability to debug, or just get something going again when it is stuck, is probably the number one ability to look for in a dev.
- Brian W. Kernighan
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
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Feel like I was smarter way back then because everything was just C code, you started at main() and worked from there. Today with the friggin' frameworks, build scripts, endpoints and so on, there's WAY to much VooDoo code floating around what I'm trying to do. VooDoo code : Crap you're told to use but no one really understands what it does or how it does it. (Looking at you Gradle, Maven, Ant and Groovy. Oh yeah SpringBoot too.).
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
gotta love the names they give this stuff now :laugh:
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sorry if this dates me too much, but I kind of miss the pre-internet days working as a dev. Technology didn't move that fast, a new compiler would be available every great once in awhile. You could keep most libraries in your head because they rarely ever changed. Most of the time you were only limited by imagination and memory (ram). So you would subscribe to any tech magazine to get the latest info. there would be code samples of something clever, articles on the pitfalls of a language feature, or work progress of getting a new complier up and running. My shelves were packed with any books I could get ahold of and every magazine that had something interesting. The internet is the first tool I have to reach for now. there is just soo much to know and it's almost impossible to keep it all in your head. For me to remain a dev until retirement is going to be a stretch, so I'm thinking of going into education to tech software development. I've notice that many of the younger devs out there can slap something together that works, but don't any have the fundamentals on how any of it works underneath: they can put gas in the car, but have no idea what's under the hood that makes it go, and that bothers me. any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
Matt McGuire wrote:
any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
Yep. Pre-internet, we had to know how to research. Back in grades K-10, when the teacher would give us spelling words to memorize, I would write them down dozens of times, whether it was required or not. As a result, I won spelling trophies in school, and am still the go-to person today when someone wants to know how to spell words (not the ones used in spelling bees). Most kids these days can't do that if their life depended on it, probably because it takes too much time and does not produce instant results. Smartphones and video games do not help in this endeavor. It's the difference between living in a crock-pot society vs. living in a microwave society. What's being taught in school/college these days is how to use a programming language, not how to solve problems. If they have to solve a problem and their favorite programming language is not available, they're lost.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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I certainly don't want to go back to finding the appropriate MSDN documentation CD out of the folder of 12 that will have the documentation for Substring as I don't know if it is SubString or Substring as IntelliSense hasn't been invented either. The internet has certainly made it easier to plagiarise though and has defo made it easier to find examples of larger sections of code, as well as (obviously) places people can just post their homework expecting someone else to do it for them. I'd hate to be a lecturer these days, half the job must be trying to work out if people have got others to do their work.
F-ES Sitecore wrote:
I'd hate to be a lecturer these days, half the job must be trying to work out if people have got others to do their work.
True, but you could probably weed most of them out just by asking a specific question about "their" code. They'll end up convicting themselves.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Matt McGuire wrote:
any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
Yep. Pre-internet, we had to know how to research. Back in grades K-10, when the teacher would give us spelling words to memorize, I would write them down dozens of times, whether it was required or not. As a result, I won spelling trophies in school, and am still the go-to person today when someone wants to know how to spell words (not the ones used in spelling bees). Most kids these days can't do that if their life depended on it, probably because it takes too much time and does not produce instant results. Smartphones and video games do not help in this endeavor. It's the difference between living in a crock-pot society vs. living in a microwave society. What's being taught in school/college these days is how to use a programming language, not how to solve problems. If they have to solve a problem and their favorite programming language is not available, they're lost.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
Having made it to retirement I :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: I dodged the whole web programming debacle. However I do not regret the coming of the internet, productivity for an experienced developer went through the roof, having the resources at your fingertip made life much simpler. What did horrify me was when the young whippersnappers moved to python and spent their entire time grabbing bits and pieces from the internet to build an application. Ah sunny Cairns I love it, I'll just wander off and take the dogs for a swim.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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sorry if this dates me too much, but I kind of miss the pre-internet days working as a dev. Technology didn't move that fast, a new compiler would be available every great once in awhile. You could keep most libraries in your head because they rarely ever changed. Most of the time you were only limited by imagination and memory (ram). So you would subscribe to any tech magazine to get the latest info. there would be code samples of something clever, articles on the pitfalls of a language feature, or work progress of getting a new complier up and running. My shelves were packed with any books I could get ahold of and every magazine that had something interesting. The internet is the first tool I have to reach for now. there is just soo much to know and it's almost impossible to keep it all in your head. For me to remain a dev until retirement is going to be a stretch, so I'm thinking of going into education to tech software development. I've notice that many of the younger devs out there can slap something together that works, but don't any have the fundamentals on how any of it works underneath: they can put gas in the car, but have no idea what's under the hood that makes it go, and that bothers me. any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
Having made it to retirement I :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: I dodged the whole web programming debacle.
However I do not regret the coming of the internet, productivity for an experienced developer went through the roof, having the resources at your fingertip made life much simpler.
What did horrify me was when the young whippersnappers moved to python and spent their entire time grabbing bits and pieces from the internet to build an application.
Ah sunny Cairns I love it, I'll just wander off and take the dogs for a swim.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Matt McGuire wrote:
Another had no idea what bit wise operations were and was confused on exactly what an integer was, let alone the size of integer and how much it could hold. But he was still putting Apps together.
Yep, I've worked with the same kind of people. We had a guy who didn't seem to know what a function was used for. He had a bug in a for loop that was copy pasted into his code dozens of times. It failed in production when he was out of town and unavailable so we had to fix it. Had to search thru for dozens of instances of the bug and replace them. If it were wrapped in one function call... Oy!
raddevus wrote:
He had a bug in a for loop that was copy pasted into his code dozens of times. It failed in production when he was out of town and unavailable
I would hope that his boss contacted him, and told him not to bother coming back...
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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sorry if this dates me too much, but I kind of miss the pre-internet days working as a dev. Technology didn't move that fast, a new compiler would be available every great once in awhile. You could keep most libraries in your head because they rarely ever changed. Most of the time you were only limited by imagination and memory (ram). So you would subscribe to any tech magazine to get the latest info. there would be code samples of something clever, articles on the pitfalls of a language feature, or work progress of getting a new complier up and running. My shelves were packed with any books I could get ahold of and every magazine that had something interesting. The internet is the first tool I have to reach for now. there is just soo much to know and it's almost impossible to keep it all in your head. For me to remain a dev until retirement is going to be a stretch, so I'm thinking of going into education to tech software development. I've notice that many of the younger devs out there can slap something together that works, but don't any have the fundamentals on how any of it works underneath: they can put gas in the car, but have no idea what's under the hood that makes it go, and that bothers me. any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
I wasn't around back in the day, but I can't believe people were more productive back then, having to go through magazines and books and scan pages and pages to find the solution... Also, things go fast now, but I'm always amazed at how many languages there were back in the day. Not to mention types of hardware. And those went fast too. Things probably moved just as fast, it's just that you didn't hear about it. I mean, COBOL, released in 1960, had multiple versions and compilers by 1963. From Wikipedia: "The COBOL specification was revised three times in the five years after its publication. COBOL-60 was replaced in 1961 by COBOL-61. This was then replaced by the COBOL-61 Extended specifications in 1963, which introduced the sort and report writer facilities." Another popular language from that time, ALGOL, got three additional implementations in 1960 and four in 1961, and that continues until 1967. The 70's and 80's saw at least eight new popular languages (for a total of 16) and the 90's (which I consider pre-internet even though it was around) saw at least ten new popular languages. I think we're as stable as we've ever been :laugh:
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I'm with you on that. One of the things that I find frustrating with some so-called devs, is not that the lack the fundamentals, but they seem not to have any idea what to do if things go wrong. If their code does not run or throws an error they are incapable of doing some basic diagnosis. There have also been three questions posted here in the last few days from people who are trying to use third-party products. They don't know the product, or some part does not do what they want, so rather than going back where they got it from and asking people who would know, they post a question here. Similarly with homework questions under "what have I done", we see things like, "nothing because I don't know how to start". I just hope that all the developers who never post a question here are of a much higher calibre.
Richard MacCutchan wrote:
they seem not to have any idea what to do if things go wrong
It's not just in software, though. We live in a "disposable" society where no-one mends anything, ever. There was a classic posting in a local community facebook group earlier this year. I can't remember it word for word, but the gist of it was this:
FREE: New electric lawnmower. Used once, I ran over the power lead. Might be of some use to anyone who knows how to repair the cable.
:sigh: :( :doh: When I was in Junior school (age 8 - 11) our teacher brought in a television, and on wet playtimes we were allowed to dismantle it - she provided a range of screwdrivers and pliers. No H+S, no risk assessment, no PPE, of course. We didn't learn much about how TVs worked but at least we learned how to dismantle things!
