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Learning to program is getting harder

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Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#401

Post by kbob »

skookumchuck wrote: post #184
sevensor wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why 8.3 filenames Why is that, exactly? I grew up in that era, I remember when floppies were actually floppy, and I've been well into computers ever since, but I don't believe I could tell you why. If I had to guess, I'd guess that FAT used a fixed number of bytes for each filename.

It was 6.3 before that. The PDP-10 system :-)

I don't know about PDP-10s. DEC's PDP-11 operating systems used a character set called RAD-50, short for radix (octal) 50, for filenames and various other purposes.

The (decimal) 40 characters were A-Z, 0-9, and four punctuation characters -- I don't remember which. Three characters could be stored in a 16 bit word, so a 6.3 filename required 3 words or 6 bytes. The '.' separator was not stored, of course.

The implementers of CP/M or one of those early PC OSes copied the idea but not the encoding and picked 8.3 as a slightly more usable size. Floppy drives were relatively capacious (!) so bigger filenames were reasonable.

The only reason I know this PDP-11 trivia is that end users could recompile the RT-11 kernel to save space, and DEC distributed the OS sources to enable that. The distributed version was written in assembler and had had comments stripped, so it wasn't quite like reading the Lions book, but you could read it if you really wanted to.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#402

Post by mrexroad »

Hextinium wrote: post #285
mrexroad wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ask this out of genuine interest... why does it matter? Why’d it piss you off?

Not OP but, it's the classic Dunning-Kruger effect, they know so little about how to use a computer that they think that using a iPhone is a skill that is equivalent. This usually isn't a problem for most people but this person is in CS, where you would expect them to have at least passing knowledge in computers to join the major.

Again, why? FWIW I have a fancy degree in computer science and spent my childhood rebuilding and scraping together old 2/3/486 boxes. Yet I think it’s terrific that someone would be interested enough to enroll in a CS program without having wintel/Linux boxbuilding trivia knowledge.

The perception of what makes a viable CS major needs to evolve past what those born during the “Personal Computer” era think it should be.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#403

Post by _betty_ »

wyclif wrote: post #280
Buttons840 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you weren't too smug about knowing to turn on the monitor. I can't remember the last time I've had to do so. Remember, there are no intuitive interfaces, only familiar ones.

A lot of these kids probably learned to program on a laptop, so they've never used anything that didn't wake from sleep upon opening.

A lot don't have a clue about programming before uni they just like playing games and saw the word computer in the degree

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#404

Post by Houshalter »

cheschire wrote: post #296
Houshalter wrote: post #283

I think it's just a matter that most people use Windows, and programming software is optimized for linux. I once wrote up all the steps required to get youtube-dl working on windows. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11453506 Which is quite similar to what you need to do to install a programming language. Nontechnical people will get stuck on things like changing path variables, because they have no idea what that…

Programming certain software is optimized for Linux, but with VS Code and VS Community Edition, and the robust project templates that come out of the box, users can easily get basic C# programs working for free in console apps or even windows store apps with powerful debugging and intellisense tools. When someone is learning to code, C# can get them there quickly and easily once they discover the correct docs. If you…

C# was made by microsoft for windows specifically. The majority of programming languages were not. When I started programming I got very frustrated getting stuff to work right. I remember it used to be near impossible to get pip on windows and eventually found some weird unofficial installer.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#405

Post by meuk »

"For beginners, and especially for people working on their own, I recommend delaying the pain."

No, no, no, no, no! This is exactly what caused the problem in the first place.

That you need an IDE is one of the biggest lies in programming. From the terminal on most Linux systems, you can download and install everything in a single line. Then compiling is another line.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#406

Post by racl101 »

edmundhuber wrote: post #114
racl101 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As relatively young person I agree. Many people my age and/or younger expect quick results and don't really have the patience to see something through. But like with any other facet in life, if people take shortcuts they totally deprive themselves of vital experiences that are necessary for them in the long run if they want to experience any decent amount of success. Especially if they are wishing to learn something…

I'm not that old, 33, but I think I recognize that I wasted a lot of my youth being paralyzed by the thought of failing, when really it is the most successful people who start out by failing. A lot. It is important to get comfortable with failing, and to separate one's failure in trying something from the thought of personal failure. That is "I failed because I need to learn more," versus "I failed because I'm not go…

> I'm not that old, 33, but I think I recognize that I wasted a lot of my youth being paralyzed by the thought of failing, when really it is the most successful people who start out by failing

Well said. Describes me as well.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#407

Post by jpindar »

mjlee wrote: post #347
zo1 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never thought about it, but a circle of the correct size has no less reason to not fall in than say a square or triangle of the appropriate size. I.e. if it's smaller than the hole, it'll most likely fall in. My theory: They're heavy, so making it a circle at least eliminates the need to "align" it when putting it back. You can basically just drag it using a hook and it'll slot itself into place.

But manhole covers are always bigger than the hole. Otherwise, they'd fall in at installation and the problem would be immediately obvious. The point here is more that a circle has the same diameter regardless of orientation. There's no way to rotate it to make it fit through a hole it couldn't before, like you can do with a rectangle.

This is also true of a triangle, and indeed there are triangular manholes.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#408

Post by conradk »

figgis wrote: post #399
conradk wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For testing there are quite a few good remote solutions. Here are a couple I'm familiar with. https://developer.github.com/v3/guides/building-a-ci-server/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/examples/README.html My simplified workflow is: do work locally using whatever IDE I desire -> create a pull request -> server runs the tests and puts the results in the pull request. Much faster than running the same tests on my local…

> Much faster than running the same tests on my local machine as well.

That sounds odd. Usually, while developing, running the whole test suite is unnecessary. So running tests is very fast, as long as you only run the tests that may fail after recent changes. At least that's my experience.

> not need to commit such large amounts of data that it becomes a problem

Not sure what you mean here. Mind clarifying ?

> if you are working remote it's expected that you have a stable, decent, connection

Definitely ! And 90% of the time I do have a stable connection. But that 10% where I don't (because the wifi breaks down, or I'm on a train to a nearby town), having a remote environment would not work. That's my use case for having a local environment.

> For documentation I actually keep that local using https://devdocs.io/.

Wow, that's cool ! I wasn't aware it worked offline ! Will definitely have a look at this. Thanks :)

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#409

Post by Hextinium »

mrexroad wrote: post #402
Hextinium wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but, it's the classic Dunning-Kruger effect, they know so little about how to use a computer that they think that using a iPhone is a skill that is equivalent. This usually isn't a problem for most people but this person is in CS, where you would expect them to have at least passing knowledge in computers to join the major.

Again, why? FWIW I have a fancy degree in computer science and spent my childhood rebuilding and scraping together old 2/3/486 boxes. Yet I think it’s terrific that someone would be interested enough to enroll in a CS program without having wintel/Linux boxbuilding trivia knowledge. The perception of what makes a viable CS major needs to evolve past what those born during the “Personal Computer” era think it should b…

I do agree with that and I have seen quite a few brilliant programmers be born in classes but there is a point where you start to expect them know some basic stuff like what a router, IDE and script are so that I don't have to explain them in full just to say how to make something work.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#410

Post by Hextinium »

zo1 wrote: post #342
userbinator wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely --- being one of the "older programmers" --- and think it could be phrased thus: a new generation of "coders" is being forced to learn how to write instructions for the machine, when they are barely computer-literate. 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 cons…

We recently got a junior-dev straight out of finishing his CS degree . And he didn't know you could "extend" your desktop and show different things on each side by plugging in a monitor. When quizzed, he told me he's "always just had a laptop", and never a monitor next to it I assume. He was then equally perplexed by the resolution and corresponding font-size change that occurred on the monitor because it could now r…

I think there is something to be said for what classes don't teach you. You can ace a test but have very little practically knowledge if you don't work with stuff outside of class. I honestly think that you learn 10-50x more in practical knowledge from the organizations that you can join in college than the classes themselves.
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