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Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]

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Re: Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]

#31

Post by ontouchstart »

ontouchstart wrote: post #30
tempodox wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this repo link! OT, a passage I found remarkable, at the end of bwk's mail: I wish I understood git better, but in spite of your help, I still don't have a proper understanding… Misery loves company, I'm relieved to see I'm not the only one afflicted. If Brian Kernighan has the same problem, I can't be a complete idiot.

BWK’s commit and test files (mentioned in the video) https://github.com/onetrueawk/awk/commit/d3a19e6f2533d479841...

Amazing quality but might fail a job interview for not using a PR template (and no TDD). Too many fixes in one commit.

Re: Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]

#33

Post by lallysingh »

enw wrote: post #2

I hate that I even feel like this, but I'm always in awe when old people (in this case 80+ years old) talk in depth about software with such fluency. I know it's self-evident, but I'm so used to being around younger folks in tech that it's really cool to see gray hairs.

I see it similarly to talking to a martial arts master. Someone who's trained themselves for 2x longer than I've been alive to perfect their skill.

Re: Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]

#34

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

avg_dev wrote: post #4
enw wrote: post #2

I hate that I even feel like this, but I'm always in awe when old people (in this case 80+ years old) talk in depth about software with such fluency. I know it's self-evident, but I'm so used to being around younger folks in tech that it's really cool to see gray hairs.

As someone approaching middle age, who has been coding professionally for a long time, I can tell you without a shred of doubt that I am a far stronger software developer than I was five years ago. I was far stronger then than I was ten years ago. The list could go on, but then you’d realize I’m really old :)

>As someone approaching middle age, who has been coding professionally for a long time

"Hi avg_dev, I am impressed by your experience and think you would be a perfect fit for our new opening in our exciting company. Please send me your resume, and here's the link to your unpaid take home assignment that should be easily done in a weekend or so. If your submission is satisfactory, we'll invite you to an on-site interview then discuss your compensation with the management. Looking forward to your submission" /s

Re: Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]

#35

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

lallysingh wrote: post #33
enw wrote: post #2

I hate that I even feel like this, but I'm always in awe when old people (in this case 80+ years old) talk in depth about software with such fluency. I know it's self-evident, but I'm so used to being around younger folks in tech that it's really cool to see gray hairs.

I see it similarly to talking to a martial arts master. Someone who's trained themselves for 2x longer than I've been alive to perfect their skill.

"Be wary of old men in professions where men die young"

- old Norse proverb

However, I've seen this rarely applies in tech. It works in fields where old knowledge and experience is highly valued and not go obsolete very fast like medicine, law, accounting, military, construction, sports or martial arts, but modern web and app driven tech moved fast and made a lot of old knowledge experience obsolete.

If a company is hiring a JS dev, your cobol and fortran experience from 30 years ago is pretty useless to them and won't give you extra money for it than a new grad with only JS experience under his belt. But as a dentist, the experience you gained 30 years ago is still a benefit to you now.

I've had to struggle a lot to get hired as a backend dev with 10 years of experience in coding C for real time systems because no employer valued my previous knowledge for their business.

Re: Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]

#36

Post by mianos »

randmeerkat wrote: post #26
jes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 62, almost 63, year old programmer. Thanks for being open-minded. It's been a great career for me. My first computer was a PDP-8/E and an ASR-33 teletype. I've had the good fortune to see a lot of computer history over the years. I still do embedded systems programming for work and hope to continue to do so for another five years. I've used UNIX most of my career.

> I still do embedded systems programming for work… What are your favorite resources for learning / reference in regards to embedded systems?

Buy a few ESP32 boards and make an LED blink. Once you get past that, the sky is the limit.

Re: Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]

#37

Post by jes »

randmeerkat wrote: post #26
jes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 62, almost 63, year old programmer. Thanks for being open-minded. It's been a great career for me. My first computer was a PDP-8/E and an ASR-33 teletype. I've had the good fortune to see a lot of computer history over the years. I still do embedded systems programming for work and hope to continue to do so for another five years. I've used UNIX most of my career.

> I still do embedded systems programming for work… What are your favorite resources for learning / reference in regards to embedded systems?

I don't know if I have favorite resources to recommend. I know there are a ton of YouTube videos and podcasts that offer a lot of good ideas. I like reading the Linux Kernel Mailing List and tech notes.

Simply buying any one of the cheap boards you can find online (if they have supply) and trying to get something like a JTAG debugger working will be beneficial to you. Just try to get something simple going on bare metal. It's been a while since I worked with PIC microcontrollers, yet as I remember there is a lot you can do with some of the cheap PIC devices, a breadboard, and an investment of $100 - $200 in electronic parts. It was important for me to build up a modest lab of electronic test equipment, power supplies, breadboards, etc.

Wishing you success, whatever route you go.

Re: Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]

#38

Post by selfhoster11 »

PostOnce wrote: post #13
enw wrote: post #2

I hate that I even feel like this, but I'm always in awe when old people (in this case 80+ years old) talk in depth about software with such fluency. I know it's self-evident, but I'm so used to being around younger folks in tech that it's really cool to see gray hairs.

Haha, this reminds me, I used to work at a startup social network and I kept hearing from various people there that "people over 30 don't understand tech"; buddy, who do you think built the computer you're using and all of your software tools? :p

If anything, it’s people below 20 that don’t understand tech. Smart devices have made interaction with tech literally too easy, to the extent that uni curricula have to teach people how to use files because they didn’t learn how on their own.

This is of course a generalisation. There are plenty of 20yo and younger who are curious about tech and do understand the basics. But earlier iterations of tech depended on you knowing these concepts. You had to know what a file was to make use of a computer.

Re: Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]

#39

Post by Technetium »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #34
avg_dev wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone approaching middle age, who has been coding professionally for a long time, I can tell you without a shred of doubt that I am a far stronger software developer than I was five years ago. I was far stronger then than I was ten years ago. The list could go on, but then you’d realize I’m really old :)

>As someone approaching middle age, who has been coding professionally for a long time "Hi avg_dev, I am impressed by your experience and think you would be a perfect fit for our new opening in our exciting company. Please send me your resume, and here's the link to your unpaid take home assignment that should be easily done in a weekend or so. If your submission is satisfactory, we'll invite you to an on-site interv…

I can't tell if this is intended to come off so inflammatory, please do better.

Re: Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]

#40

Post by jecel »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #17
avg_dev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting how stuff that was relevant for PCs in the 80s became relevant for early smartphones. I believe computing history often is cyclic in nature, so there is value in the old ways.

"The Wheel Of Reincarnation". Seriously, it's called that. Ideas from mainframes show up as "new, innovative ideas" on minicomputers, and then on micros/PS, and now on phones.

I am familiar with that as "The Law of Recapitulation" based on a discarded idea from Biology. I can't find any references now, but the idea was that the evolution of mainframe computers (memory sizes, features such as caches, and so on) was repeated years later by minicomputers and even later by microcomputers. Knowing this I was able to design very advanced micros in the early 1980s since I knew what the future would be like.

"The Wheel Of Reincarnation" described by Ivan Sutherland is closely related, but is based on the idea that computing history is more like a spiral than a straight line, so the future is more similar to the past than to the present.

http://www.cap-lore.com/Hardware/Wheel.html

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