151–160 of 422 posts
I got my CS degree in 2012. It was kinda scary how many students were on the verge of graduation, and were unable to use a terminal, use SSH, or tell you what git is (not that I know exactly o_o). Those aren't particularly complex concepts. It is definitely partially the schools fault, but CS is also a field where you have to have some interest in what you do. You can't just go through the motions.
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Why didn't you just buy the Commodore Programmers Reference Guide[0]? It had an entire guide to C64 machine language, and circuit schematics . The book even tells you to buy the 64MON cartridge if you're serious about programming in assembly. This book wasn't rare. A friend of mine had it, we lived in the middle of nowhere. These programs and cartridges were not rare. I had multiple catalogs for buying these things a…
Funny... I didn't even know that book existed until I was a few years into learning how to program my C64. I honestly thought you were supposed to figure things out by randomly PEEKing and POKEing addresses to see what they did. I had complete tech illiterate parents and no mentors existed to point me in the right direction. I remember visiting some other kid who had a C64, and his dad had given him the Programmer's…
> I cracked that book open and my mind was blown!
I really wish I had had the opportunity to read through one when I was younger.
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…
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 absolutely agree with your first few paragraphs. As a hobbyist before I was a professional (Linux desktop since '95), I'm surprised when I meet people who have a technical skill but not a hobbyist background. I first encountered it with Oracle DBAs who sometimes were amazing at Oracle but had rudimentary Unix skills, and that's becoming more commonplace as people do things like phone app development but without the…
We are specializing.
Enterprise shops have always wanted stability, and so they develop ever more elaborate build processes to control exactly what versions go into production. Embedded systems have always wanted to run only what needed to run, and so we have developed ever-improving systems to pick out only exactly what needed to be run. Developers, in the meantime, have always wanted the newest and shiniest, and so have gotten 10,000 ways to install newer and shinier toys.
Edit: typo
As a remote developer, I like working in different places. These places don't always have nice internet. Working with a local environment and 4g connection is fine, because 4g is more than enough to look up docs. But working with a distant environment and 4g connection is very slow and unreliable.
Nowadays, a lot of people praise the "cloud" or everything. Use APIs for everything, Use public CDNs to load up bootstrap and jquery. Use an online IDE. Make a hosted Git service an essential part of your workflow. The thing is, not only do these services occassionally break, but some might get compromised (https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/browsealoud-coinhive-moner...) and some even ask you to install closed source binaries to your system without any idea of what's in it (keylogger, ransomware, anything is possible).
Given all that, when I read that using a local environment is "anachronistic", I can't help but cringe.
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…
Having taught some introductory CS courses a few years ago, the amount of struggling with basic things like file naming, directory hierarchies, and even simple hardware use was a constant distraction.
On one memorable occasion, I had to help a student by turning on the monitor: he would sit down at a workstation, move the mouse and tap the keyboard, and seeing nothing show up on the monitor after a moment, go to another unoccupied one. I watched, without intervention, him try this with all the unoccupied workstations in the lab until he finally came to me and said, in an exasperated tone, "all the computers left are broken!" I lead him over to one, and upon pressing the power button on the monitor, the expression he made was quite unforgettable...
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Visual Studio, Jetbrains, if you happen not to have a fast internet connection and SSD can take a long time.
Having to wait an hour for a download/install to complete is completely different from requiring an hour of browsing stackoverflow to figure out why the CLI install instructions given aren't working on your device.
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 do agree though, I find when I'm teaching my juniors I sometimes have to give a little history lesson as part of it (things like why 8.3 filenames).
Recently, I've experienced working on a remote server. It was a real pain. You need a crazy fast connection to be productive. Otherwise, you're stuck waiting for changes to save, for pages to load, etc. Of course, you can only hope the network doesn't break down or the cloud IDE company makes a buggy deploy. As a remote developer, I like working in different places. These places don't always have nice internet. Worki…
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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.