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Learning to program is getting harder

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Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#71

Post by Clubber »

xbryanx wrote: post #40
socialist_coder wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, what I've seen is that older programmers, in addition to being programmers, also have the skills of a computer helpdesk technician. They can debug Windows problems, hardware problems, know how to mess with the BIOS, and have no problem installing or configuring any piece of software. This helps immensely when setting up your IDE or debugging weird problems with compiling. Younger programmers seem to comm…

I think another big culprit in this situation is the IT department. I visited a research university recently in a computer science related field. The IT department wouldn't allow even graduate students and researchers to have admin access on their machines. Even if the programmers could debug basic issues, they often had to go track down and IT staff member to install some library or program for them. If this is happ…

Ya, I had an intern position at my school that did computer lab build support (the hardware and network, not as a teacher). We installed Windows NT 4 Workstation everywhere and it wasn't overly secure. At least 4 times, someone changed the default background to a porn still. Blame that guy.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#72

Post by alex_young »

The point about cloud IDEs being the future is excellent I think. I worked for a bit over a year on a chromebook with no local storage - only a cloud IDE.

It was a lot to get used to at first, but once you have made the context switch, it's great to have everything in one consistent place with tools you can use from literally anywhere.

Similarly, working on a small display pays the same kind of dividend. When you can't put windows of code all over the place you enforce a kind of mental order that's hard to achieve otherwise.

I guess I just want a portable WYSE terminal :)

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#73

Post by fenwick67 »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #62
socialist_coder wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, what I've seen is that older programmers, in addition to being programmers, also have the skills of a computer helpdesk technician. They can debug Windows problems, hardware problems, know how to mess with the BIOS, and have no problem installing or configuring any piece of software. This helps immensely when setting up your IDE or debugging weird problems with compiling. Younger programmers seem to comm…

I too am obsessed with computers, and will push through "helpdesk" type issues to get my work done. However, I don't consider that to be a remarkable skill. Such issues can almost always be resolved with a bit of googling. Perhaps I'm too close to see the foundational knowledge I'm depending on, though.

Here's the thing: You need to know what to look for.

You can't just google "The internet won't work" or "blue screen help" or "I can't see files".

Web search is a super powerful tool but it requires some fundamental knowledge before it can help.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#74

Post by Griffinsauce »

Retric wrote: post #27
mirashii wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teaching these skills in CS curriculum would probably be a good idea. This is the one thing I don't agree with. A better placement for these skills is a generic course required for any degree, or an optional course that anyone could take to shore up these skills (and you could recommend it for your CS major). Importantly though, this isn't part of the field of computer science, and so it doesn't really belong in th…

There are a lot of useful skills. Teaching people how to fix a flat tire would also be rather useful. Basic computer administration falls into that huge category of useful skills that are not worth teaching to a general population who have completely viable alternatives. Specialization is extremely valuable for society and having more competent doctors etc is worth doctors having a more narrow focus.

I disagree. Having a broader skill set means you can be more creative with problems. The separation between doctors and computer science is holding both fields back. Think of machine learning and big data, we are _just now_ starting to apply those ideas to medical problems, while those problems are fundamental to our existence as a species.

Computers in hospitals are a chore and a drain on doctors. They should be empowering, instead doctors spend the majority of their time typing reports. Reports of things that are already registered in other parts of the system. (You're already thinking of a solution right? That proves my point)

Hearing about how hospitals handle technology from my SO (neurologist) makes me want to rip my hair out. Specialization is a great thing but we need generalists to bridge the gap to help specialists empower each other.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#75

Post by Joeboy »

yesenadam wrote: post #63
bitwize wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just some book, usually lots of books, from the fundamentals of BASIC to technical references with complete schematics for the entire machine. I had a Commodore VIC-20 and it certainly came with all these. And even then, experts and resources were available online, for suitably primitive values of "online". Think CompuServe. Another thing we had back then but less so today was magazines, full of programming and t…

Arghh, I learnt Z80 assembler and Turbo Pascal in the mid 80s without ever seeing any books about either. Not sure how, picked up bits and pieces from computer magazines in libraries. A few years ago in a 2nd hand bookstore I finally laid eyes on Programming the Z80 , which I'd heard about but never seen, and I was like "OMG, I would've given a leg to have had that in 1985!" Life with LibGen (and StackExchange) is so…

Yeah, I'm also not exactly sure how I picked up Z80 asm. I remember leaning heavily on the list of opcodes in the back of my ZX Spectrum manual, but it was literally just a table of opcodes and corresponding numbers so presumably I learned roughly how to use them from some other source. Owning Programming the Z80 was also one of my unattainable teenage goals, along with owning a disk drive.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#76

Post by rconti »

sametmax wrote: post #39

I disagree. Creating a program that meets todays' users expectations is what's harder. But learning programming by itself, is way easier. We have Python, Ruby, Javascript... We have the Web as a platform and as documentation. We have communities and cheap, fast computers. The hello world has never been easier to do. What's hard is to make a real time offline first SPA with a beautiful responsive design that uses the…

But the learning curve of getting an environment setup to do that is steeper.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#77

Post by icebraining »

dabockster wrote: post #52
TimJYoung wrote: post #6

It's getting harder because it's become fashionable to shun IDEs that make most of these issues obsolete, and have done so since at least the 90's. It's ridiculous to expect newcomers to a language and/or programming in general to slog through a 20 or 30-step environment setup process. This idea that using an IDE will discourage someone from finding out the more detailed workings of the language, compiler, etc. is no…

> It's ridiculous to expect newcomers to a language and/or programming in general to slog through a 20 or 30-step environment setup process. It's ridiculous for anyone really. If you're not using something outside of the standard libraries, it's ludicrous to expect someone to slog through the manual setup process when they can double click an IDE icon and be ready to program in under a minute. Not to mention the fact…

IDEs are not magic, they don't make OS-specific libraries just work on other OSs. And they're not required to automate stuff either.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#78

Post by Clubber »

TimJYoung wrote: post #6

It's getting harder because it's become fashionable to shun IDEs that make most of these issues obsolete, and have done so since at least the 90's. It's ridiculous to expect newcomers to a language and/or programming in general to slog through a 20 or 30-step environment setup process. This idea that using an IDE will discourage someone from finding out the more detailed workings of the language, compiler, etc. is no…

Delphi was WAY ahead of it's time. I agree with your point. Installing the IDE also installs just about any library you would want, even TCP/IP socket libraries in 1996.

It's literally:

  1. Install
  2. Wait forever (CDs are slow)
  3. Run it
  4. Code, compile and run.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#79

Post by gameswithgo »

sametmax wrote: post #39

I disagree. Creating a program that meets todays' users expectations is what's harder. But learning programming by itself, is way easier. We have Python, Ruby, Javascript... We have the Web as a platform and as documentation. We have communities and cheap, fast computers. The hello world has never been easier to do. What's hard is to make a real time offline first SPA with a beautiful responsive design that uses the…

>We have Python, Ruby, Javascript... We have the Web as a platform

Can you explain how any of those things makes learning programming easier?

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#80

Post by gameswithgo »

watwut wrote: post #65
gameswithgo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's ridiculous to expect newcomers to a language and/or programming in general to slog through a 20 or 30-step environment setup process Modern IDEs often require an hour long install, and then you turn them on and are faced with 10,000 buttons and 50 windows, they aren't simple either. I have had good success with making beginners people sit through a 30 minute dev environment set up process, in video form. No co…

VS Code is modern ide. And I would really like to know which IDE takes an hour long install. Because I tried multiple on windows and they all required download, double click and that was it.

Visual Studio, Jetbrains, if you happen not to have a fast internet connection and SSD can take a long time.
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