28 Feb
2023
28 Feb
'23
8:59 a.m.
As Dan said, this is nuanced.
While I'm sure there's lots of mediocre programmers writing mediocre code,
(a) there probably always has been [think COBOL on mainframes] and (b)
it is not universal. I have generally been fortunate to find interesting
and challenging work in a fairly long career; there's lots of interesting
problems out there that need solving which can't be dealt with by just
stringing together existing class libraries using an IDE on autopilot.
You have to look for it, and then hope you're qualified enough that they'll
hire you.
HTH,
Arnold
segaloco <segaloco(a)protonmail.com> wrote:
I see the wisdom in your last line there, I've
typed and deleted a
response to this email 4 times, each one more convoluted than the last.
The short of my stance though is, as a younger programmer (29),
I am certainly not a fan of these trends that are all too common in
my generation. That said, I've set foot in one single softare-related
class in my life (highschool Java class) and so I don't really know
what is being taught to folks going the traditional routes. All I
know from my one abortive semester of college is that I didn't see a
whole lot of reliance on individual exploration of concepts in classes,
just everyone working to a one-size-fits-all understanding of how to
be a good employee in a given subject area. Of course, this is also
influenced by my philosophy and biases and such, and only represents 4-5
months of observation, but if my minimal experience with college is to be
believed, I have little faith that educational programs are producing
much more than meat filters between StackOverflow and <insert code
editor here>. No offense to said meat filters, people gotta work, but
there is something lost when the constant march of production torpedoes
individual creativity. Then again, do big firms want sophisticated
engineers or are we too far gone into assembly line programming with no
personal connection to any of the products? I'm glad I'm as personally
involved in the stuff I work with, I could see myself slipping into the
same patterns of apathy if I was a nameless face in a sea of coders on
some project I don't even know the legal name of any given day.
- Matt G.
------- Original Message -------
On Monday, February 27th, 2023 at 12:22 PM, arnold(a)skeeve.com <arnold(a)skeeve.com>
wrote:
> Chet Ramey chet.ramey(a)case.edu wrote:
>
> > On 2/27/23 3:04 PM, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
> >
> > > IMHO the dependence upon IDEs is crippling; they cut & paste to the
> > > almost total exclusion of the keyboard, including when shell completion
> > > would be faster.
> >
> > Don't forget cargo-culting by pasting shell commands they got from the
web
> > and barely understand, if at all.
>
>
> Yeah, really.
>
> I do what I can, but it's a very steep uphill battle, as most
> don't even understand that they're missing something, or that
> they could learn it if they wanted to.
>
> I think I'll stop ranting before I really get going. :-)
>
> Arnold