I agree with you. For friends and family members going to college, I had to tutor them in programming and even debug their programs as their Computer Science professors didn't know how to teach it, and had no clue how to debug a program.
I even once considered being a college professor for computer science, but like you said flunking 80% of your students because they cannot grasp the concepts I talked about would look bad. I'd have to make some sort of "extra credit" projects in that students will write essays on what programming and computer science means to them to add 10 or 20 points to their grade if they do a good enough job, don't plagiarize someone else's works, and cite their sources. But some English professors I talked to said that today's student cannot even do that properly.
#1 No programming jobs being available in a geographic area using a given language. St. Louis, MO, USA is mostly a Microsoft shop, I knew Pascal, C/C++, Ada, 8086 Assembly Language, COBOL, FORTRAN, etc but my BASIC skills from the 1970's and 1980's got me learning Visual BASIC about 17 years ago. At one point I was able to use my C/C++ skills with one job, but most of my jobs were Visual BASIC because I couldn't find a job in my geographic area for my other skills. When I studied in college I tried to learn as many languages as possible to make it a better chance to land a programming job. My Non-VB programming friends ended up working as clerks or in retail stores as they couldn't find programming jobs for their languages they knew. Some other friends I had moved out of state to get the job with their language, but I never heard from them again.
#2 Area of expertise, instead of being a programmer some of my friends opted for help desk, technician, and network administrator or database administrator instead. Like me they wear many hats and did more than just programming on the job. One job my OS/2 and Netware skills landed me the job, another my Unix and Linux and C/C++ skills as I noted above. I once worked as a PC Specialist, and another time I worked in a Help Desk for DSL support. This is due to no programming jobs being in a geographic area and having to settle for some other type of job.
Actually they both not that practical because when you try to get a job with your default skill set you have more experience with, recruiters and potential employers will state that you did X type of Job and they are only hiring for Y type of job. You can answer back yes but I did Y five years ago, and settled for X when Y wasn't available. Then they might misjudge you and claim if you didn't get a Y type job, then you must not be that good at it. I've been there, done that, etc.
Move or start a business, starting a business is easy, earning a profit is hard, earning enough of a profit to pay yourself a salary that can pay for a mortgage payment is even harder, harder still is earning enough profits to pay employees and branch the small business out. I've done that too, two small businesses I've formed in 1995-1997 and 1999-2000, they weren't profitable because my costumers weren't paying, and I found out that some people and corporations prey on small businesses because they haven't perfected their collections process yet and so the purchase order goes through with 90 days to pay, but 90, 180, 360, etc days go by with no payment and their A/P department refuses to give us even a penny in payments. Next time I'll pay for a credit card machine and not give 90 days to pay, but cash or credit up front. That is only because my old businesses got ripped off. Something to consider when starting up a business is method of payment and how you will collect for customers who either refuse to pay or don't pay and won't return phone calls, email, etc.
Wrong again, ILJOT, you might want to change your handle to something more appropriate.
I'd continue on, but my Lawyer Gonzo says we have enough material for a civil suit against you and will file a subpoena for Slashdot to release your account information and IP address.
Then you should like this cartoon. I strongly suggest that it become a Slashdot Classic Cartoon reference that gets linked to every time one references the input of management or ideas or designs of management.
The reason why programming became easier is that it was really hard to teach college graduates and other people how to manage their own code, do software maintenance, garbage collection, memory management, error trapping, management of pointers, etc. So the programming languages evolved to support the lowest common denominator programmers that the colleges kept producing.
In the 1980's when I first went to college for Computer Science, we got taught a whole lot of techniques and methods, that they don't teach in modern Computer Science classes. Back then RAM was expensive, so you tried to stay within a 64K limit and not reach beyond a megabyte with bank switching and other segmented memory systems. These days with 4G RAM systems, memory management is not even an issue and bloated code can run fast even on dual core processors. Back in the old days people would get fired, for what modern developers do in writing sloppy code, bloated code, and stuff that barely even passes QA testing.
Part of the reason was that they offshored the work to third world nations, and took non-programmers and taught them programming so that they would work for the lowest labor costs. People that used to work in manufacturing plants and wanted a better paying job for their local economy, so $100 a month for factory work, and $200 to $300 a month for programming work. No way can the EU, USA, Canadian, etc programmer compete with that low a labor cost.
After development of Windows, Macintosh, and basically the GUI became standard, easy to use became so wide spread that it developed to programming languages as well. BASIC was so easy for the non-programmer to learn that Visual BASIC caught on more than C++ and Pascal for Windows, and even managers can learn it, write code in it, and read what their employees wrote. The managers are but one set of non-programmers that the easier to use programming languages are made for. Yeah yeah I know Python, Smalltalk, and others are easy to use and easy to learn as well.
Funny I got attacked by the person who posted the parent post and a few others here using Anonymous Coward that I am not making any sense at all, and not being clear.
It is good to meet yet another person who uses critical thinking, common sense, and logic and understands the issues at hand here. Thank you for that.
By the way I was joking all the long, this entire thread, in order to win "The Comedian" tag on Slashdot, but it got out of hand. I went to Slashdot, countered humor with humor, and a legal defense and well reasoned debate broke out?:)
I didn't say people shouldn't be able to express their opinions regarding religions. I only said when such opinions are bigoted they violate civil rights and human rights and become personal attacks, thus logical fallacies.
While I don't agree with your statements I defend your right to say them. But I do hold you accountable for them legally as I would anyone else. You don't yet seem to grasp the concept of responsibly, tolerance, restraint, forgiveness, etc and appeal from some sense of ignorance within your own mind.
Which Jesus are you talking about? I was talking about Jesus the civil rights activist, a friend of mine.:)
I used to work for lawyers, until one of them bit me. Whomever is bitten by a lawyer eventually becomes one. All I need left to do is study in law school and then graduate and pass the bar exam.:)
as they are not the same thing. One is a natural science and the other is a social science.
It also does not take into account that since 1999 temperatures are dropping instead of rising. While global warming skeptics claim it proves it is a hoax, it could also be that due to people taking corrective actions to reduce their carbon footprint since 1999, it caused a reversal in global warming, but we are still in danger unless we convert at least 90% of our energy sources to green energy and green technology.
I reject the notion that greenhouse gasses are evil, and must be removed. I do agree that too much of them lead to higher temps and too little of it leads to lower temps. What we need to do is find the right balances of greenhouse gases in our environment, not seek to remove them all, least it lead to an ice age. The people claiming a removal of all greenhouse gases are being stupid, as it would lead to an ice age, and then be the opposite of global warming, global cooling.
Yes I agree it wasn't written that well. I had forgotten about Visual C++ can write code without Dotnet when I wrote it. I did later write that I didn't even use Visual C++.Net because I use other C++ compilers. I wrote a correction later, which was ignored by the poster.
Actually I am standing up for equal rights, and asserting myself to confront bigotry in any way, shape, or form. The same way that Jesus does. That takes courage, not cowardliness. Cowardliness is making bigoted statements on an anonymous form and not taking responsibility for them, or refusing to stand up to a bully who is doing emotional and mental abuse on a group of people via personal attacks.
Sure because Christians don't make any sense, right?
Stephen King is a Christian and he makes his living writing books that don't make any sense and are hard to follow, and thus since they are so badly written (as you point out Christians are poor writers who write badly written statements) they don't even make the New York Times bestsellers lists.
But in this case, Stephen King does in fact write good books and statements that make sense and are easy enough to understand that almost all of his books are best sellers.
I support civil and human rights of everyone and every protected group. I added in the line "even Atheists" to show that unlike what you accuse religious people of doing, I support every religion and even Atheist and non-religious people and treat them the same via equal rights. Thus I am not a bigot who treats one group differently from another.
Not all Atheists and non-Religious people agree with you either in your statements. I am glad to have met them who oppose your statements.
When BASIC was bundled with almost every 8-Bit computer sold in the 1970's and 1980's? It was the default language on most of the systems sold and other languages like FORTRAN, C/C++, Pascal, COBOL, etc had to be bought separately. So the el cheapo way to program was via BASIC. Many computer magazines issued BASIC programs in them and cross platform modifications for Apple//, Commodore 64, IBM PC MS-DOS, Atari 800/400, TRS-80 and TRS-80 COCO, TI 99/4a, etc that had BASIC default.
Borland turned Turbo Pascal into Borland Delphi, but Microsoft turned GWBASIC and Quick BASIC into Visual BASIC. Then when Windows dominated the Visual BASIC took over C++ and Delphi, as it was easier to program in for managers to understand. I didn't program in Visual BASIC because I liked it, I programmed in it because the job required me to do so. My managers didn't understand Java, C/C++, Python, Perl, PHP, etc, only BASIC and Visual BASIC, so they didn't trust programmers to write with anything else. Most of the Microsoft Windows IT/IS departments are run almost the same way and most of them use Visual BASIC (or in some cases Visual C# as it is easier than C++) because it is easier for management to understand what their programmers are doing and review code.
You don't earn money programming with your choice of a programming language, you earn money with a programming language that your employers choose for the jobs that are available in your area. Unless you want to migrate to a Linux or Macintosh IT/IS department, but sometimes you have to settle for a Visual BASIC development job and have no choice in the matter.
Just that now Microsoft Programmers are catching on that Dotnet is rotten, and if corrupt any program written to use it won't work.
Actually the stress was from management and coworkers, which the stress from Dotnet language was nothing compared towards. Everything was fine at my job, until I got mentally and physically sick, and then I was discriminated against until I kept getting sicker and sicker and eventually fired for being too sick.
I remember these words: "Programmers are a dime a dozen. We get 500+ resumes a week for your position alone. We can easily hire a programmer who won't get sick on the job for a fraction of what we pay you." after that I was fired and escorted out by a security guard and my programming books and other property got mailed to my old address and I had to hunt it down to get it back. You'd think they'd use my new address instead of the old one, as my paychecks were mailed to my new address not the old one.
But it wasn't VB.net alone that made me sick, I want to clarify.
Actually BASIC and Visual BASIC are beginner languages. The B in BASIC stands for beginners. Not a "baby" language. You can still get things done in Visual BASIC but you don't have the control or memory management of C++ or C#.
I never used the Visual C++.Net languages, so I didn't know that. I usually use Turbo C++ for MS-DOS, or Borland C++, or even GNU C++ or MINGW C++ or C++ with Cygwin instead. I don't really see a need for a MS-C++ anymore when there are FOSS alternatives or cheap alternatives as in Turbo C++ and Borland C++ etc.
because the modern Microsoft development tools need that infernal Dotnet library to be loaded and then when it gets messes up any software that depends on it does not work.
So instead of Visual C++ use GNU C++ or Borland C++ to write the Windows code to do what you want because it does not depend on the Dotnet libraries.
Also when you use the alternative development tools, you can write code for older versions of Windows like Windows 95 and Windows 98. Yeah I know Microsoft doesn't want to support them, but people still use them in mass numbers because they cannot afford to upgrade.
I still get job offers for Visual BASIC 6.0 and under, due to "Legacy Software" on "Legacy Windows Systems" because the Dotnet versions of Visual BASIC don't work to well on older systems. I could even write books on the subject.
When I researched the Visual BASIC.Net 2002 development tools in beta I noticed those problems and my employer thought I was crazy. They moved on to Dotnet without me, having fired me for getting sick on the job and I eventually ended up so sick from the stress that I ended up disabled. I went on short-term disability for a while, tried a few more jobs, but ended up on disability. But the Visual BASIC.Net 2002 was full of bugs and I saw the dependence on Dotnet to be a liability. I knew this from when we used the WANG ImageBASIC controls and with IE 5.0 they stopped working and with MS-Office upgrades they broke the ImageBASIC Controls. We replaced them with Leadtools later. But Dotnet is huge and bloated and full of stuff most developers don't need but is loaded anyway. In creating Dotnet, Microsoft put many of the OCX and library control people and companies out of business as Dotnet replaced their controls.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you. For friends and family members going to college, I had to tutor them in programming and even debug their programs as their Computer Science professors didn't know how to teach it, and had no clue how to debug a program.
I even once considered being a college professor for computer science, but like you said flunking 80% of your students because they cannot grasp the concepts I talked about would look bad. I'd have to make some sort of "extra credit" projects in that students will write essays on what programming and computer science means to them to add 10 or 20 points to their grade if they do a good enough job, don't plagiarize someone else's works, and cite their sources. But some English professors I talked to said that today's student cannot even do that properly.
#1 No programming jobs being available in a geographic area using a given language. St. Louis, MO, USA is mostly a Microsoft shop, I knew Pascal, C/C++, Ada, 8086 Assembly Language, COBOL, FORTRAN, etc but my BASIC skills from the 1970's and 1980's got me learning Visual BASIC about 17 years ago. At one point I was able to use my C/C++ skills with one job, but most of my jobs were Visual BASIC because I couldn't find a job in my geographic area for my other skills. When I studied in college I tried to learn as many languages as possible to make it a better chance to land a programming job. My Non-VB programming friends ended up working as clerks or in retail stores as they couldn't find programming jobs for their languages they knew. Some other friends I had moved out of state to get the job with their language, but I never heard from them again.
#2 Area of expertise, instead of being a programmer some of my friends opted for help desk, technician, and network administrator or database administrator instead. Like me they wear many hats and did more than just programming on the job. One job my OS/2 and Netware skills landed me the job, another my Unix and Linux and C/C++ skills as I noted above. I once worked as a PC Specialist, and another time I worked in a Help Desk for DSL support. This is due to no programming jobs being in a geographic area and having to settle for some other type of job.
Actually they both not that practical because when you try to get a job with your default skill set you have more experience with, recruiters and potential employers will state that you did X type of Job and they are only hiring for Y type of job. You can answer back yes but I did Y five years ago, and settled for X when Y wasn't available. Then they might misjudge you and claim if you didn't get a Y type job, then you must not be that good at it. I've been there, done that, etc.
Move or start a business, starting a business is easy, earning a profit is hard, earning enough of a profit to pay yourself a salary that can pay for a mortgage payment is even harder, harder still is earning enough profits to pay employees and branch the small business out. I've done that too, two small businesses I've formed in 1995-1997 and 1999-2000, they weren't profitable because my costumers weren't paying, and I found out that some people and corporations prey on small businesses because they haven't perfected their collections process yet and so the purchase order goes through with 90 days to pay, but 90, 180, 360, etc days go by with no payment and their A/P department refuses to give us even a penny in payments. Next time I'll pay for a credit card machine and not give 90 days to pay, but cash or credit up front. That is only because my old businesses got ripped off. Something to consider when starting up a business is method of payment and how you will collect for customers who either refuse to pay or don't pay and won't return phone calls, email, etc.
The Christian Jesus:
Love for People Vs Self-righteousness worked through Wesley D. King to write that article, and thus confront bigotry, etc.
Wrong again, ILJOT, you might want to change your handle to something more appropriate.
I'd continue on, but my Lawyer Gonzo says we have enough material for a civil suit against you and will file a subpoena for Slashdot to release your account information and IP address.
Have a nice day.
Then you should like this cartoon. I strongly suggest that it become a Slashdot Classic Cartoon reference that gets linked to every time one references the input of management or ideas or designs of management.
Both actually.
It is a bigoted comment because it uses the stereotype that Christians aren't clear.
Your second point was invalid, false analogy, a logical fallacy.
Yeah you'd like to think so, but you are wrong.
Yeah you'd like to think so, but you are wrong.
Yeah you'd like to think so, but you are wrong.
"It isn't a bigoted comment. It isn't directed at a specific person."
It is a bigoted comment. It is directed at a specific group.
Not what the discrimination lawsuit that I won said.
The reason why programming became easier is that it was really hard to teach college graduates and other people how to manage their own code, do software maintenance, garbage collection, memory management, error trapping, management of pointers, etc. So the programming languages evolved to support the lowest common denominator programmers that the colleges kept producing.
In the 1980's when I first went to college for Computer Science, we got taught a whole lot of techniques and methods, that they don't teach in modern Computer Science classes. Back then RAM was expensive, so you tried to stay within a 64K limit and not reach beyond a megabyte with bank switching and other segmented memory systems. These days with 4G RAM systems, memory management is not even an issue and bloated code can run fast even on dual core processors. Back in the old days people would get fired, for what modern developers do in writing sloppy code, bloated code, and stuff that barely even passes QA testing.
Part of the reason was that they offshored the work to third world nations, and took non-programmers and taught them programming so that they would work for the lowest labor costs. People that used to work in manufacturing plants and wanted a better paying job for their local economy, so $100 a month for factory work, and $200 to $300 a month for programming work. No way can the EU, USA, Canadian, etc programmer compete with that low a labor cost.
After development of Windows, Macintosh, and basically the GUI became standard, easy to use became so wide spread that it developed to programming languages as well. BASIC was so easy for the non-programmer to learn that Visual BASIC caught on more than C++ and Pascal for Windows, and even managers can learn it, write code in it, and read what their employees wrote. The managers are but one set of non-programmers that the easier to use programming languages are made for. Yeah yeah I know Python, Smalltalk, and others are easy to use and easy to learn as well.
Funny I got attacked by the person who posted the parent post and a few others here using Anonymous Coward that I am not making any sense at all, and not being clear.
It is good to meet yet another person who uses critical thinking, common sense, and logic and understands the issues at hand here. Thank you for that.
By the way I was joking all the long, this entire thread, in order to win "The Comedian" tag on Slashdot, but it got out of hand. I went to Slashdot, countered humor with humor, and a legal defense and well reasoned debate broke out? :)
Thank you, that was my original point.
I didn't say people shouldn't be able to express their opinions regarding religions. I only said when such opinions are bigoted they violate civil rights and human rights and become personal attacks, thus logical fallacies.
While I don't agree with your statements I defend your right to say them. But I do hold you accountable for them legally as I would anyone else. You don't yet seem to grasp the concept of responsibly, tolerance, restraint, forgiveness, etc and appeal from some sense of ignorance within your own mind.
Which Jesus are you talking about? I was talking about Jesus the civil rights activist, a friend of mine. :)
Clearly I am the next Johnny Cochran. :)
I used to work for lawyers, until one of them bit me. Whomever is bitten by a lawyer eventually becomes one. All I need left to do is study in law school and then graduate and pass the bar exam. :)
as they are not the same thing. One is a natural science and the other is a social science.
It also does not take into account that since 1999 temperatures are dropping instead of rising. While global warming skeptics claim it proves it is a hoax, it could also be that due to people taking corrective actions to reduce their carbon footprint since 1999, it caused a reversal in global warming, but we are still in danger unless we convert at least 90% of our energy sources to green energy and green technology.
I reject the notion that greenhouse gasses are evil, and must be removed. I do agree that too much of them lead to higher temps and too little of it leads to lower temps. What we need to do is find the right balances of greenhouse gases in our environment, not seek to remove them all, least it lead to an ice age. The people claiming a removal of all greenhouse gases are being stupid, as it would lead to an ice age, and then be the opposite of global warming, global cooling.
I am more concerned about the eventual "heat death" of the universe.
Yes I agree it wasn't written that well. I had forgotten about Visual C++ can write code without Dotnet when I wrote it. I did later write that I didn't even use Visual C++.Net because I use other C++ compilers. I wrote a correction later, which was ignored by the poster.
As I said I don't use Visual C++, only Visual BASIC. I use a different C++ compiler than Visual C++ so there is no need to buy Visual C++.
I never said I knew everything about Visual Studio, quit putting words in my mouth.
Actually I am standing up for equal rights, and asserting myself to confront bigotry in any way, shape, or form. The same way that Jesus does. That takes courage, not cowardliness. Cowardliness is making bigoted statements on an anonymous form and not taking responsibility for them, or refusing to stand up to a bully who is doing emotional and mental abuse on a group of people via personal attacks.
Sure because Christians don't make any sense, right?
Stephen King is a Christian and he makes his living writing books that don't make any sense and are hard to follow, and thus since they are so badly written (as you point out Christians are poor writers who write badly written statements) they don't even make the New York Times bestsellers lists.
But in this case, Stephen King does in fact write good books and statements that make sense and are easy enough to understand that almost all of his books are best sellers.
I support civil and human rights of everyone and every protected group. I added in the line "even Atheists" to show that unlike what you accuse religious people of doing, I support every religion and even Atheist and non-religious people and treat them the same via equal rights. Thus I am not a bigot who treats one group differently from another.
Not all Atheists and non-Religious people agree with you either in your statements. I am glad to have met them who oppose your statements.
When BASIC was bundled with almost every 8-Bit computer sold in the 1970's and 1980's? It was the default language on most of the systems sold and other languages like FORTRAN, C/C++, Pascal, COBOL, etc had to be bought separately. So the el cheapo way to program was via BASIC. Many computer magazines issued BASIC programs in them and cross platform modifications for Apple //, Commodore 64, IBM PC MS-DOS, Atari 800/400, TRS-80 and TRS-80 COCO, TI 99/4a, etc that had BASIC default.
Borland turned Turbo Pascal into Borland Delphi, but Microsoft turned GWBASIC and Quick BASIC into Visual BASIC. Then when Windows dominated the Visual BASIC took over C++ and Delphi, as it was easier to program in for managers to understand. I didn't program in Visual BASIC because I liked it, I programmed in it because the job required me to do so. My managers didn't understand Java, C/C++, Python, Perl, PHP, etc, only BASIC and Visual BASIC, so they didn't trust programmers to write with anything else. Most of the Microsoft Windows IT/IS departments are run almost the same way and most of them use Visual BASIC (or in some cases Visual C# as it is easier than C++) because it is easier for management to understand what their programmers are doing and review code.
You don't earn money programming with your choice of a programming language, you earn money with a programming language that your employers choose for the jobs that are available in your area. Unless you want to migrate to a Linux or Macintosh IT/IS department, but sometimes you have to settle for a Visual BASIC development job and have no choice in the matter.
Just that now Microsoft Programmers are catching on that Dotnet is rotten, and if corrupt any program written to use it won't work.
Actually the stress was from management and coworkers, which the stress from Dotnet language was nothing compared towards. Everything was fine at my job, until I got mentally and physically sick, and then I was discriminated against until I kept getting sicker and sicker and eventually fired for being too sick.
I remember these words:
"Programmers are a dime a dozen. We get 500+ resumes a week for your position alone. We can easily hire a programmer who won't get sick on the job for a fraction of what we pay you." after that I was fired and escorted out by a security guard and my programming books and other property got mailed to my old address and I had to hunt it down to get it back. You'd think they'd use my new address instead of the old one, as my paychecks were mailed to my new address not the old one.
But it wasn't VB.net alone that made me sick, I want to clarify.
Actually BASIC and Visual BASIC are beginner languages. The B in BASIC stands for beginners. Not a "baby" language. You can still get things done in Visual BASIC but you don't have the control or memory management of C++ or C#.
I never used the Visual C++.Net languages, so I didn't know that. I usually use Turbo C++ for MS-DOS, or Borland C++, or even GNU C++ or MINGW C++ or C++ with Cygwin instead. I don't really see a need for a MS-C++ anymore when there are FOSS alternatives or cheap alternatives as in Turbo C++ and Borland C++ etc.
because the modern Microsoft development tools need that infernal Dotnet library to be loaded and then when it gets messes up any software that depends on it does not work.
So instead of Visual C++ use GNU C++ or Borland C++ to write the Windows code to do what you want because it does not depend on the Dotnet libraries.
Also when you use the alternative development tools, you can write code for older versions of Windows like Windows 95 and Windows 98. Yeah I know Microsoft doesn't want to support them, but people still use them in mass numbers because they cannot afford to upgrade.
I still get job offers for Visual BASIC 6.0 and under, due to "Legacy Software" on "Legacy Windows Systems" because the Dotnet versions of Visual BASIC don't work to well on older systems. I could even write books on the subject.
When I researched the Visual BASIC.Net 2002 development tools in beta I noticed those problems and my employer thought I was crazy. They moved on to Dotnet without me, having fired me for getting sick on the job and I eventually ended up so sick from the stress that I ended up disabled. I went on short-term disability for a while, tried a few more jobs, but ended up on disability. But the Visual BASIC.Net 2002 was full of bugs and I saw the dependence on Dotnet to be a liability. I knew this from when we used the WANG ImageBASIC controls and with IE 5.0 they stopped working and with MS-Office upgrades they broke the ImageBASIC Controls. We replaced them with Leadtools later. But Dotnet is huge and bloated and full of stuff most developers don't need but is loaded anyway. In creating Dotnet, Microsoft put many of the OCX and library control people and companies out of business as Dotnet replaced their controls.