I wonder if the people being taught "programming" today know how to make a linked list. Do they know how to use semaphores, or even what semaphores are? Have they ever seen what their written program code looks like when translated by a compiler to machine code?
Speaking for the people I work with the answers are yes, yes, and maybe. Modern processors are too advanced for anyone to effectively hand-write assembly code.
I've written embedded C code for microprocessors, and now I'm writing server-side code for one of the big five. What I'm doing now is much harder. First, there's just so much to know. When I was writing C code, there was just the application and OS services. Building a modern massively scaled internet application is vastly more complicated.
The Indians and Chinese aren't stupid, the managers that expect offshore consulting companies to deliver novel software projects with minimally trained people are stupid. The offshore workers are doing their best to have a life.
I've been a developer for almost 40 years and this is a great time to be a software developer. Wages for strong developers relative to other professionals are the highest they have ever been. College interns in Seattle are getting above $5K/month with housing included. We can't find them fast enough. Male, female, old, young, green, purple, they are thin on the ground.
It seems this will clash with other laws that basically say that anyone who says they are a woman is presumed to be a woman. Could it happen that a California company states that board members Chris and Pat are women, Chris and Pat say they are women, but the state disagrees and says they are men?
That's not unusual, it's the natural result of a lot of practice. I often see people thumb-typing on their phone at about that rate. Never hire a programmer that can't type.
Javascript is a complete programming language and is a good place to start since the execution platform (a web browser) comes free with every personal computing device. So yes, one can learn CS using Javascript.
I've been a developer for almost forty years, mostly in startups, now with one one of the big five tech companies, and rarely have I seen a separation between 'design and architecture' and programming. When I've encountered it, the organizations were dysfunctional. Today strong programmers are more highly compensated than ever, and IT jobs like 'Network Security specialist' are dying as companies move to the cloud.
Programming is commonly understood as a trade-school skill, and there seems to be a belief that highly paid developers have their jobs because they got into the right school, knew the right people, or are the right color and gender. Somehow it's understood that not every child can get a 5 on the AP calculus exam, get an invitation to the all-state orchestra, or run a five-minute mile, but there's little understanding of the ability and practice needed to land a highly paid position as a software developer. So they see that ordinary-looking people that no one paid much attention to in high school are drawing six-figure salaries and think "My kid should do that". We will see a surge in popularity of programming classes for a few years until there's a general understanding that it's hard. Still there are people who could do well but are currently not getting an opportunity, and I hope that improves.
"The ability to trace bad actors on the internet...Consider license plates on cars..."
This is a terrible analogy. Cars are physical objects that directly cause property damage, serious injury, or death. "The internet" is just speech, and not even the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" sort of speech.
Differential discovery implies that there is some benevolent authority somewhere. I'm wondering who Mr. Cerf believes could be trusted with this responsibility.
If it were possible to just train the general public to program, programmers wouldn't be paid so well. After almost fifty years of trying, we still don't know how to train programmers. It's a performance profession, like sales or music or creative writing. Plenty of CS graduates, not nearly enough programmers.
Plenty of CS graduates, both American and foreign, but not nearly enough programmers to meet demand. I've been interviewing developers for about 30 years now, and it's still the case that about 80% of the candidates can't solve simple programming problems in an interview, or answer basic questions about the fundamentals of CS.
Why Can't Programmers Program? (https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/) is just as true today as it was in 2007, in 1997, in 1987.
Sure, do it yourself. If you can recruit, hire, and compensate the people (>=2) needed to design, install, and manage a server architecture with no single points of failure, and you are able to maintain geographically separated server rooms (>=3) so you aren't vulnerable to natural or man-made disasters (like a fiber cut).
While you are at it, you probably should build your own electrical generating capacity and emergency water supply.
Offensive content of the type you describe doesn't live ten minutes on StackOverflow. It is immediately deleted by the first person who sees it and has enough reputation to edit it or remove it.
"Too many people *experience* Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place..."
That's not the same as "Stack Overflow is not welcoming to women and people of color". Yes, often it's obvious that the poster is not a native English speaker. Beyond that it's impossible to tell the gender or complexion of a contributor. It's true that Stack Overflow is not particularly welcoming to newcomers who can't be bothered to read the FAQ. Pointing this out and closing yet another verbatim homework problem is not evidence of hostility.
I've been on SO for years and am one of the top posters to Software Engineering (https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/16929/kevin-cline). Content containing racist or sexist remarks, or that impugns the questioner's intelligence, is immediately removed by the community. Answers on Stack Overflow are provided by generous volunteers who try to provide accurate answers to technical questions. Perhaps Jay should create a new forum where novices seeking general advice can be directed before their question on Stack Overflow is closed and deleted.
Now at Amazon at 59. Enjoying it most days. There are plenty of older developers here bu..t not many as old as me. I'm hoping to work another few years, maybe join a 30-hour-a-week team after a while.
Very slow in Seattle from about 10:00 AM to noon. Back to normal now. My biggest problem with Comcast has been unannounced (but obviously scheduled) outages between midnight and 2AM. I had AT&T in Dallas for three years and never had an outage.
Dallas has a soul, you just have to know where to find it. There's great live jazz in Dallas at various venues seven nights a week, and several independent companies doing excellent work.
I'm skeptical. Amazon's vacation benefits are public information. Starting full-time salaried employees in Seattle get 6 paid holidays, ten days of vacation, six personal days, plus some paid sick time. The second year it's the same, but fifteen days of vacation. My teammates take their vacation. In my experience the company all but requires people to take their earned time off. If Amazon employees haven't used their vacation, their manager is automatically notified. My manager takes his and expects everyone on the team to take theirs.
The August 15, 2015 article was a hatchet job. The Times reporters interviewed a handful of unhappy ex-employees and gave Amazon no opportunity to respond in the article. Amazon did respond later (https://medium.com/@jaycarney/what-the-new-york-times-didn-t-tell-you-a1128aa78931) and anyone who quotes the article should also mention the Amazon's response. Around Amazon HQ the article was considered laughable to the point that someone created a "desk-crying-interest" mailing list. Seriously, I've never seen anyone crying at their desk or anywhere else for that matter.
I've been around tech a long time. After three decades as a developer I was ready for a move to the West coast and got recruited by and then got an offer from Amazon. My experience has been good, and all in all it's one of the happiest places I've worked. No one is pretending it's perfect. We know there are thousands of things we can do better. We're trying.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if the people being taught "programming" today know how to make a linked list. Do they know how to use semaphores, or even what semaphores are? Have they ever seen what their written program code looks like when translated by a compiler to machine code?
Speaking for the people I work with the answers are yes, yes, and maybe. Modern processors are too advanced for anyone to effectively hand-write assembly code.
I've written embedded C code for microprocessors, and now I'm writing server-side code for one of the big five. What I'm doing now is much harder. First, there's just so much to know. When I was writing C code, there was just the application and OS services. Building a modern massively scaled internet application is vastly more complicated.
The Indians and Chinese aren't stupid, the managers that expect offshore consulting companies to deliver novel software projects with minimally trained people are stupid. The offshore workers are doing their best to have a life.
I've been a developer for almost 40 years and this is a great time to be a software developer. Wages for strong developers relative to other professionals are the highest they have ever been. College interns in Seattle are getting above $5K/month with housing included. We can't find them fast enough. Male, female, old, young, green, purple, they are thin on the ground.
It seems this will clash with other laws that basically say that anyone who says they are a woman is presumed to be a woman. Could it happen that a California company states that board members Chris and Pat are women, Chris and Pat say they are women, but the state disagrees and says they are men?
"...you need to explain what you know about running servers that Google, Amazon, and Facebook do not know"
I'm paraphrasing someone but couldn't find the original. Maybe Paul Graham?
That's not unusual, it's the natural result of a lot of practice. I often see people thumb-typing on their phone at about that rate. Never hire a programmer that can't type.
Javascript is a complete programming language and is a good place to start since the execution platform (a web browser) comes free with every personal computing device. So yes, one can learn CS using Javascript.
The idea isn't that CS will be made easy. It won't. The idea is to give everyone an opportunity to try.
I know who runs the cloud. The programmers who built it.
I've been a developer for almost forty years, mostly in startups, now with one one of the big five tech companies, and rarely have I seen a separation between 'design and architecture' and programming. When I've encountered it, the organizations were dysfunctional. Today strong programmers are more highly compensated than ever, and IT jobs like 'Network Security specialist' are dying as companies move to the cloud.
Programming is commonly understood as a trade-school skill, and there seems to be a belief that highly paid developers have their jobs because they got into the right school, knew the right people, or are the right color and gender. Somehow it's understood that not every child can get a 5 on the AP calculus exam, get an invitation to the all-state orchestra, or run a five-minute mile, but there's little understanding of the ability and practice needed to land a highly paid position as a software developer. So they see that ordinary-looking people that no one paid much attention to in high school are drawing six-figure salaries and think "My kid should do that". We will see a surge in popularity of programming classes for a few years until there's a general understanding that it's hard. Still there are people who could do well but are currently not getting an opportunity, and I hope that improves.
"The ability to trace bad actors on the internet...Consider license plates on cars..."
This is a terrible analogy. Cars are physical objects that directly cause property damage, serious injury, or death. "The internet" is just speech, and not even the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" sort of speech.
Differential discovery implies that there is some benevolent authority somewhere. I'm wondering who Mr. Cerf believes could be trusted with this responsibility.
If it were possible to just train the general public to program, programmers wouldn't be paid so well. After almost fifty years of trying, we still don't know how to train programmers. It's a performance profession, like sales or music or creative writing. Plenty of CS graduates, not nearly enough programmers.
Plenty of CS graduates, both American and foreign, but not nearly enough programmers to meet demand. I've been interviewing developers for about 30 years now, and it's still the case that about 80% of the candidates can't solve simple programming problems in an interview, or answer basic questions about the fundamentals of CS.
Why Can't Programmers Program? (https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/) is just as true today as it was in 2007, in 1997, in 1987.
Sure, do it yourself. If you can recruit, hire, and compensate the people (>=2) needed to design, install, and manage a server architecture with no single points of failure, and you are able to maintain geographically separated server rooms (>=3) so you aren't vulnerable to natural or man-made disasters (like a fiber cut).
While you are at it, you probably should build your own electrical generating capacity and emergency water supply.
Bellevue's great if you don't mind spending your life in a car.
Offensive content of the type you describe doesn't live ten minutes on StackOverflow. It is immediately deleted by the first person who sees it and has enough reputation to edit it or remove it.
"Too many people *experience* Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place..."
That's not the same as "Stack Overflow is not welcoming to women and people of color". Yes, often it's obvious that the poster is not a native English speaker. Beyond that it's impossible to tell the gender or complexion of a contributor. It's true that Stack Overflow is not particularly welcoming to newcomers who can't be bothered to read the FAQ. Pointing this out and closing yet another verbatim homework problem is not evidence of hostility.
I've been on SO for years and am one of the top posters to Software Engineering (https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/16929/kevin-cline). Content containing racist or sexist remarks, or that impugns the questioner's intelligence, is immediately removed by the community. Answers on Stack Overflow are provided by generous volunteers who try to provide accurate answers to technical questions. Perhaps Jay should create a new forum where novices seeking general advice can be directed before their question on Stack Overflow is closed and deleted.
Now at Amazon at 59. Enjoying it most days. There are plenty of older developers here bu..t not many as old as me. I'm hoping to work another few years, maybe join a 30-hour-a-week team after a while.
Very slow in Seattle from about 10:00 AM to noon. Back to normal now. My biggest problem with Comcast has been unannounced (but obviously scheduled) outages between midnight and 2AM. I had AT&T in Dallas for three years and never had an outage.
Independent THEATER companies.
Dallas has a soul, you just have to know where to find it. There's great live jazz in Dallas at various venues seven nights a week, and several independent companies doing excellent work.
It clears every month.
I'm skeptical. Amazon's vacation benefits are public information. Starting full-time salaried employees in Seattle get 6 paid holidays, ten days of vacation, six personal days, plus some paid sick time. The second year it's the same, but fifteen days of vacation. My teammates take their vacation. In my experience the company all but requires people to take their earned time off. If Amazon employees haven't used their vacation, their manager is automatically notified. My manager takes his and expects everyone on the team to take theirs.
The August 15, 2015 article was a hatchet job. The Times reporters interviewed a handful of unhappy ex-employees and gave Amazon no opportunity to respond in the article. Amazon did respond later (https://medium.com/@jaycarney/what-the-new-york-times-didn-t-tell-you-a1128aa78931) and anyone who quotes the article should also mention the Amazon's response. Around Amazon HQ the article was considered laughable to the point that someone created a "desk-crying-interest" mailing list. Seriously, I've never seen anyone crying at their desk or anywhere else for that matter.
I've been around tech a long time. After three decades as a developer I was ready for a move to the West coast and got recruited by and then got an offer from Amazon. My experience has been good, and all in all it's one of the happiest places I've worked. No one is pretending it's perfect. We know there are thousands of things we can do better. We're trying.