Hmm, when I was in college, almost no one knew about programming as computers at home or in school were rare. Those who actually did know programming ultimately had to be retrained because they had bad habits from BASIC or being self taught.
I understand that college is more difficult to afford these days. But if someone can do well by being self taught and having self discipline, they can always do better by adding college to it. If someone has no self discipline, then maybe college can teach that or at the very least college gives them a leg up out of the food service industry. So if someone can afford to go to college these days, then it's in their best interests to do so.
Yes, implementation details, because the profs are teaching a different subject from implementation details. That's an exercise for the students. One does learn a lot more if they have to think about what they're doing rather than copy snippets of code together. Which today is a problem because snippets of code are everywhere and so easy to find.
As for Stroustrup, I can see that. He started back when caching was rare except on the highest end computers. However paging was a big deal, and the earliest C++ programs did have poor paging performance because related code or data would be spread around, whereas higher level languages would sometimes do better because of mark-and-copy garbage collection.
Oh ya, when I was in CS, we did not have classes devoted to programming, except for an intro Pascal class and later an assembler class. After that point you didn't get more than maybe a first week of learning the new language and maybe some TA sections to help out more. The class would be teaching fundamentals of algorithms for example, but the homework would involve programming so you'd better pick it up quick. The professors were also not programming experts so you had to rely on proctors or TAs or friends.
Right, but if the entry level person only knows how to hammer nails then that person will never get their own project. However the person who knows how to build a house may start off just hammering nails to get the first job but over time will get promoted. That means the person will have both the skills as well as experience.
Architect is overblown here. Lead developer is better, but that lead developer cannot be the person who has no skills. Just like the construction foreman needs to know more than just how to hammer.
But people will not get those skillsets if they decided to take the shortcuts to get a programming job. People taking the quick path will find their jobs going to the cheapest outsourced workers, whereas people who know what they're doing will become the senior programmers and designers.
Also, when the project gets complex, you will NOT be allowed to start over from scratch. Because it's complex, chances are you can't even disassemble it into workable components that you can reuse. Too many projects like that which eventually get to the stage that the entire team does nothing but keep it limping along until there's a competing product that takes over.
Architects may sometimes start out in entry level jobs, but they don't stay there. Why then should a programmer necessarily want to stick around forever fixing bugs and testing other people's code? To move up the ladder you need to have the skills necessary to do that, and for higher tier software designers that means getting the skills you learn in CS.
Yes, some people learn this themselves without a degree - after all we didn't always have a CS degree so people learned how to write operating systems from experience and without a textbook for it. However the snag with self learning is that it takes discipline to learn about the stuff you don't like and which you don't think is important.
Reminds me of a student in a compiler class who complained that it was pointless to learn how to write a compiler since we already have compilers. In 1984...
We have a lot of EE people as programmers in firmware and other low level code. It often works out very badly because they don't have quality coding skills. Sometimes I think they're still doing 1970's style of K&R C. Outside of CS, programming is often taught as a side skill that doesn't need to be honed or improved, similar to that of using a calculator. So the code is good enough to get the job done, which is the goal for most scientists, but ends up being very difficult to maintain.
It is good to be skilled in both domain knowledge as well as programming, but when the programming gets treated as a lesser skill then things don't work out well.
Also I see too many people who think that the goal of programming is to get an entry level job and stay at entry level forever. This advice also seems to play on parental fears that their children might not get a good job. But what do you do after that first job? Is being an IT help desk flunky the end goal? Giving advice about the shortcuts to take to get a "programming" job doesn't help anyone.
And CS is more than just applied mathematics, it's multi-disciplinary with lots of related fields glommed together. You have to add in electrical engineering at the very least, which is why in the past before there was a distinct CS major there were competing pulls to have computer types be in the math department versus the EE department. There's linguistics too, we had a solid computing core in our linguistics department when I was an undergrad. Neural networks which has professors in many departments, from math to the medical school.
I've worked with these scientists that need a little programming. It makes no one happy, the programming is lousy and the scientist is dismayed at not doing more science. I've got one guy who says "I wrote all the code, I just need you guys to clean it up and integrate it into your stuff", or "why are you designing that piece, I already wrote it!"
Let me tell you, some of the worst programmers out there are physicists. It sometimes seems like they even forget their math as they complain that their exponential time algorithm takes too long to run.
I have made use of almost every single class I ever took in college in my career, including grade level. Software engineering seemed like the least useful to me. I have used theory, algorithms, lab courses, numerical analysis, odd languages, AI, etc. Ie remember the dining philosophers and such, you need that in real time operating systems, even in threaded applications.
Also don't forget that computer science is a multi-disciplinary subject. It's not about programming.
There's also domain knowledge, so that those minors and general requirements classes are useful. I do wish more pure programmers could manage to write a set of decent documentation too, so don't skimp on writing classes.
Anyone who thinks that education is useless needs a refresher.
We also knew more than one programming language in the past and used them regularly. Ie, the program is in C, the data is preprocessed in Perl, the mockup is in Lisp, and the build system is a web of shell scripts.
So my company has manufacturing, hardware, firmware, and software. Software is split into the parts that are important and must work from the parts that are fluffier. I do see a distinct type of skill sets in each of those areas, even though all of them involve some form of software.
I think it's when you get to web based applications that the distinctions between areas of the product become fuzzier and then there's a desire for "full stack" programmers because they're more fungible and you can shift them around as needed (using the school of Agile programming which discourages specialists).
You've got to factor in product and project managers too. As in "guys, we've got a big potential customer who suggested that sweaters might be toasted, so can you get this done by next week? I already told them we'll have a demo, so don't let me down." and "it would set us apart and be disruptive to the toaster industry if this could wash dishes too."
It's already dumbed down. "Rockstars" such a ridiculous ego driven word, usually program only by gluing together preexisting components. So their primary skill is memorizing the every changing APIs which seems to impress some people, rather than knowing how to program something from scratch. These rockstars more often than not don't have a solid foundation in data structures or algorithms and they don't care as those things don't matter for what they're doing.
That's trickier. They're all cowards if they're running for reelection. They act as if this is their only career possibility, probably they lack real world skills, so they'll kiss whatever is necessary to keep the job. Most think that it's more important to show party unity than to stand by their ideals or use their brain. This applies to most parties not just the one.
But it's ok for the next conservative "rule by fiat" president? The problem with this sort of politics is that the tools you use to hold back the opposition party will inevitably be used to hold your party back in the future. The parties need to stop acting like they're in a war against each other and start working together for the people instead.
It was trivial because you rarely need to look at the text. Ie, internationalization of constant text that doens't need parsing, only displaying. That is zero text processing. I have seen programs that used wide character support just to handle that case, and they'd convert the multibyte format to wide characters as the first thing to do.
Now if you're doing something like parsing that string, then yes, that's harder. But not necessarily that much harder. If you need specific dellimiters, then strchr will often work. If you're parsing a programming language then lex or strtok will handle this even if you have Asian characters in your comments or strings. That's because no byte within a multi-byte character can be confused with a single byte character (in UTF-8 or most other multibyte formats).
Where it is even harder is if you need to pull apart each character. But there are standard ISO C functions for this that are easy to use.
It usually never gets more difficult than this unless you're doing some types of GUI work.
Generally, when someone complains about lack of Unicode support in C, they usually are talking about wide character support. I'm just pointing out that wide characters are not needed as often as they are actually used.
Also the blockchain makes this too cumbersome if it becomes popular. A few cryptohipsters here or there is fine, but a million of them trying to get through that pipeline to get a cup of coffee each morning would suffocate the system.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, when I was in college, almost no one knew about programming as computers at home or in school were rare. Those who actually did know programming ultimately had to be retrained because they had bad habits from BASIC or being self taught.
I understand that college is more difficult to afford these days. But if someone can do well by being self taught and having self discipline, they can always do better by adding college to it. If someone has no self discipline, then maybe college can teach that or at the very least college gives them a leg up out of the food service industry. So if someone can afford to go to college these days, then it's in their best interests to do so.
Yes, implementation details, because the profs are teaching a different subject from implementation details. That's an exercise for the students. One does learn a lot more if they have to think about what they're doing rather than copy snippets of code together. Which today is a problem because snippets of code are everywhere and so easy to find.
As for Stroustrup, I can see that. He started back when caching was rare except on the highest end computers. However paging was a big deal, and the earliest C++ programs did have poor paging performance because related code or data would be spread around, whereas higher level languages would sometimes do better because of mark-and-copy garbage collection.
You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid? Well, mine are even worse!
Oh ya, when I was in CS, we did not have classes devoted to programming, except for an intro Pascal class and later an assembler class. After that point you didn't get more than maybe a first week of learning the new language and maybe some TA sections to help out more. The class would be teaching fundamentals of algorithms for example, but the homework would involve programming so you'd better pick it up quick. The professors were also not programming experts so you had to rely on proctors or TAs or friends.
Right, but if the entry level person only knows how to hammer nails then that person will never get their own project. However the person who knows how to build a house may start off just hammering nails to get the first job but over time will get promoted. That means the person will have both the skills as well as experience.
Architect is overblown here. Lead developer is better, but that lead developer cannot be the person who has no skills. Just like the construction foreman needs to know more than just how to hammer.
But people will not get those skillsets if they decided to take the shortcuts to get a programming job. People taking the quick path will find their jobs going to the cheapest outsourced workers, whereas people who know what they're doing will become the senior programmers and designers.
Also, when the project gets complex, you will NOT be allowed to start over from scratch. Because it's complex, chances are you can't even disassemble it into workable components that you can reuse. Too many projects like that which eventually get to the stage that the entire team does nothing but keep it limping along until there's a competing product that takes over.
Architects may sometimes start out in entry level jobs, but they don't stay there. Why then should a programmer necessarily want to stick around forever fixing bugs and testing other people's code? To move up the ladder you need to have the skills necessary to do that, and for higher tier software designers that means getting the skills you learn in CS.
Yes, some people learn this themselves without a degree - after all we didn't always have a CS degree so people learned how to write operating systems from experience and without a textbook for it. However the snag with self learning is that it takes discipline to learn about the stuff you don't like and which you don't think is important.
Reminds me of a student in a compiler class who complained that it was pointless to learn how to write a compiler since we already have compilers. In 1984...
We have a lot of EE people as programmers in firmware and other low level code. It often works out very badly because they don't have quality coding skills. Sometimes I think they're still doing 1970's style of K&R C. Outside of CS, programming is often taught as a side skill that doesn't need to be honed or improved, similar to that of using a calculator. So the code is good enough to get the job done, which is the goal for most scientists, but ends up being very difficult to maintain.
It is good to be skilled in both domain knowledge as well as programming, but when the programming gets treated as a lesser skill then things don't work out well.
Also I see too many people who think that the goal of programming is to get an entry level job and stay at entry level forever. This advice also seems to play on parental fears that their children might not get a good job. But what do you do after that first job? Is being an IT help desk flunky the end goal? Giving advice about the shortcuts to take to get a "programming" job doesn't help anyone.
And CS is more than just applied mathematics, it's multi-disciplinary with lots of related fields glommed together. You have to add in electrical engineering at the very least, which is why in the past before there was a distinct CS major there were competing pulls to have computer types be in the math department versus the EE department. There's linguistics too, we had a solid computing core in our linguistics department when I was an undergrad. Neural networks which has professors in many departments, from math to the medical school.
I've worked with these scientists that need a little programming. It makes no one happy, the programming is lousy and the scientist is dismayed at not doing more science. I've got one guy who says "I wrote all the code, I just need you guys to clean it up and integrate it into your stuff", or "why are you designing that piece, I already wrote it!"
Let me tell you, some of the worst programmers out there are physicists. It sometimes seems like they even forget their math as they complain that their exponential time algorithm takes too long to run.
I have made use of almost every single class I ever took in college in my career, including grade level. Software engineering seemed like the least useful to me. I have used theory, algorithms, lab courses, numerical analysis, odd languages, AI, etc. Ie remember the dining philosophers and such, you need that in real time operating systems, even in threaded applications.
Also don't forget that computer science is a multi-disciplinary subject. It's not about programming.
There's also domain knowledge, so that those minors and general requirements classes are useful. I do wish more pure programmers could manage to write a set of decent documentation too, so don't skimp on writing classes.
Anyone who thinks that education is useless needs a refresher.
Buy a luxury vehicle today, you will need it to live in during your retirement!
We also knew more than one programming language in the past and used them regularly. Ie, the program is in C, the data is preprocessed in Perl, the mockup is in Lisp, and the build system is a web of shell scripts.
So my company has manufacturing, hardware, firmware, and software. Software is split into the parts that are important and must work from the parts that are fluffier. I do see a distinct type of skill sets in each of those areas, even though all of them involve some form of software.
I think it's when you get to web based applications that the distinctions between areas of the product become fuzzier and then there's a desire for "full stack" programmers because they're more fungible and you can shift them around as needed (using the school of Agile programming which discourages specialists).
You've got to factor in product and project managers too. As in "guys, we've got a big potential customer who suggested that sweaters might be toasted, so can you get this done by next week? I already told them we'll have a demo, so don't let me down." and "it would set us apart and be disruptive to the toaster industry if this could wash dishes too."
It's already dumbed down. "Rockstars" such a ridiculous ego driven word, usually program only by gluing together preexisting components. So their primary skill is memorizing the every changing APIs which seems to impress some people, rather than knowing how to program something from scratch. These rockstars more often than not don't have a solid foundation in data structures or algorithms and they don't care as those things don't matter for what they're doing.
That's trickier. They're all cowards if they're running for reelection. They act as if this is their only career possibility, probably they lack real world skills, so they'll kiss whatever is necessary to keep the job. Most think that it's more important to show party unity than to stand by their ideals or use their brain. This applies to most parties not just the one.
I'd like to see it zoom out to a hollow earth.
Jeff Flake, John McCain, Ben Sasse, the two Koch brothers, none of whom seem mythical.
But it's ok for the next conservative "rule by fiat" president? The problem with this sort of politics is that the tools you use to hold back the opposition party will inevitably be used to hold your party back in the future. The parties need to stop acting like they're in a war against each other and start working together for the people instead.
It was trivial because you rarely need to look at the text. Ie, internationalization of constant text that doens't need parsing, only displaying. That is zero text processing. I have seen programs that used wide character support just to handle that case, and they'd convert the multibyte format to wide characters as the first thing to do.
Now if you're doing something like parsing that string, then yes, that's harder. But not necessarily that much harder. If you need specific dellimiters, then strchr will often work. If you're parsing a programming language then lex or strtok will handle this even if you have Asian characters in your comments or strings. That's because no byte within a multi-byte character can be confused with a single byte character (in UTF-8 or most other multibyte formats).
Where it is even harder is if you need to pull apart each character. But there are standard ISO C functions for this that are easy to use.
It usually never gets more difficult than this unless you're doing some types of GUI work.
Generally, when someone complains about lack of Unicode support in C, they usually are talking about wide character support. I'm just pointing out that wide characters are not needed as often as they are actually used.
Also the blockchain makes this too cumbersome if it becomes popular. A few cryptohipsters here or there is fine, but a million of them trying to get through that pipeline to get a cup of coffee each morning would suffocate the system.