I started with autohotkey. Still think it's the best gateway from user to programmer. keyboard and mouse macros. It's the first thing you learn on emacs and vim also.
I'd say Excel, but potato, potato.
Learning to program is getting harder
171–180 of 422 posts
Re: Learning to program is getting harder
#172Recently, 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…
This really just sounds like issues with whatever web IDE you are using. Remote development does not need to be a huge pain like that.
I wasn't using a web IDE, but the dev server was remote. While I suppose remote environments do not have to be a huge pain, I'd be interested to know how to mitigate all of the issues I mentioned in my previous comment. The only solution I've been able to setup is a local environment with minimal set of dependencies calling the network.
Re: Learning to program is getting harder
#173I personally know otherwise competent Java backend devs that have no idea how http works at all. Pipelining, gzip/deflate, Cache-control headers, XSS, uri concepts, bandwidth consumption, proxies, etc...not even the foggiest clue. There's just so much breadth, abstraction, inversion-of-control, and pressure to deliver in corporate environments. There's little incentive to be a big picture person when you're rewarded solely for closing out stories and pushing out change requests. The resulting hit in quality is atrocious.
Re: Learning to program is getting harder
#174Anecdotally, 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've never met a good programmer that wasn't (at least initially) self taught. Presumably they exist, but I've never met one. 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).
Hi, I'm a good programmer (according to my bosses and peers) and I wasn't initially self taught, CS 101 was the first time I programmed ever. Nice to meet you.
Re: Learning to program is getting harder
#175Personally, I feel it's vastly easier these days. The sheer volume of learning material at your fingertips is staggering. I mean, you can just turn on youtube tutorials and soak it in with barely any effort. Most of the time, you can copy/paste whatever error you're getting into a search engine and get instant answers. It's a walk in the park!
Re: Learning to program is getting harder
#176Anecdotally, 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…
Yeah, I'm always amazed when someone my company hired as a developer doesn't understand what "open a terminal" means on Windows or I have to coach them through digging up the environment variables screen in control panel.
I assume it's because I was a power user before I became a developer and so had that foundational knowledge and interacted with OS APIs to build on it... now people just go right into mashing JS code at web browsers which seem to be hacked into everything.
Re: Learning to program is getting harder
#177Anecdotally, 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…
One other factor I've wondered about over the years is how quickly they give up when they hit a problem. In the 90s and early 2000s people had to develop local diagnostic skills, read documentation, etc. more before things like Stack Overflow were so pervasive.
I wouldn't say it's a scientific observation but I've definitely gotten the impression that it's taking people longer to outgrow the cycle of immediately searching for a copy-paste answer and moving on without developing a better understanding of the issue for the next time something similar shows up.
Re: Learning to program is getting harder
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
But those skills have nothing to do with computer science as a field of study - wouldn't they be more useful to teach in general education like K-12? Like I remember in middle school, we had an elective option between woodshop and CAD. The 'CAD' class was really more about performing simple automation in programs like MS Word/Excel, but that sort of thing is still useful in just about any job these days - not just pr…
I think you are trying to make some good points, but your language could have been clearer. If I'm understanding correctly you mean: 1. Treat Computer Science (CS) as a specific field, and don't dilute the curriculum with related items. 2. Introduce a course that covers these broader, non-CS items, and actually push it out beyond the audience of CS? Did I get that right? I think you might have meant the term "informa…
Better to stop trying to create programmers by teaching them a theoretical discipline like CS and to teach them software engineering instead?
Re: Learning to program is getting harder
#179I work at JetBrains on https://datalore.io/ It's an interactive computational notebook for data science, which automatically recalculates code as you change it. We believe that such an interface lowers the barrier for entry into data science (and programming).
How is it different from Google's Colab Notebook or Microsoft's Azure Notebook ?
Re: Learning to program is getting harder
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reminds me of a recent interview where they asked me, "How does the client to a server?" I replied "over the socket" To which they replied, "Using REST over HTTP" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I would have murdered them on the spot for that response
Probably both are correct. But which one is more useful in this context?