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They live in the world of the Fortune 500
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Marc Clifton wrote: I feel so disconnected from Redmond.
The real question is, why do you think this is A Bad Thing?
I've felt disconnected from Redmond for as long as I can remember. I've always "surfed the ebb of the wave" as far as they were concerned. Hell, we still use Visual Studio 2008 as our primary development environment, mainly to avoid the inevitable breakage that comes with upgrading.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary Wheeler wrote: The real question is, why do you think this is A Bad Thing?
It's not that I feel disconnected from Redmond that's bad. It's that Redmond is disconnected from me that's bad. Subtle difference. 
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Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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The story I heard is that when Steve Jobs passed away, his personal reality distortion field detached from his body, drifted northward to Redmond, and dissipated into the local water table.
This may help explain their dissociative attitude toward developer reality.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary Wheeler wrote: Hell, we still use Visual Studio 2008 as our primary development environment
And here I thought I was the only one still using VS 2008. Not because of the upgrade headaches, but because the new, flat, and colorless UIs of every version since is extremely hard on these old eyes.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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TNCaver wrote: new, flat, and colorless UIs of every version since is extremely hard on these old eyes
I hear you, brother/sister! I despise the age-ist pricks at Microsoft. It seemed to get started in the group responsible for the Expression UI design toolset. Everything was done in a shade of gray, which rendered the entire app unusable.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Brother is the correct term in my case.
Now, I don't know any of the folks responsible for the design, so I won't assume it's ageism or call them pricks. It may be that they are simply too young to know that people's vision changes as they age, or think that reading glasses solve those problems, and therefore don't think small icons are an issue.
But I'm pretty certain that they are either deaf to our complaints, or callous to the issue that has been raised since VS 2010, as they haven't changed it much, and won't even offer a way to customize the UI or a theme with different icons.
Or maybe you're right, and they are just ageist pricks. 
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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TNCaver wrote: It may be that they are simply too young to know that people's vision changes
Usability testing by Microsoft and most other companies is notoriously lacking when it comes to age-related issues:
Visual cues that are obvious to a 20-something can be imperceptible to someone in their 40's due to presbyopia and other age-related visual impairments. Monochrome icons, gray text, and fonts that are too small are the worst offenders here for me.
Auditory signals that can't be heard due to normal loss of frequency range in our hearing as we age. The famous example of this are the phone ringtones that sound in 12-15KHz range that students can hear, but teachers cannot.
Touch screen applications with overly-small targets and sensitivity to small motions make them unusable for older users with arthritis.
The end result is to discourage older users from participating in our evermore-connected society. If you get the feeling this is something that pisses me off, you got it in one.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Marc Clifton wrote: What world do they live in?
Oh, that's simple:
AzureAzureAzureAzureAzureAzureAzure
I really wonder if they'd still push it if they got the bill for the cloud time on their demos.
TTFN - Kent
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Microsoft is all about Azure these days. Even as a Gold Partner, they still won't talk to you if you don't have some development plan to integrate something into Azure.
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They do have more, covering UWP & other things. May be that should interest you?
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy Falcon.
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Marc Clifton wrote: What world do they live in?
A world where stockholders and financial analysts are the only non-aliens ?
«Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?» T. S. Elliot
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a new batch of Freshman enter college and post their homework questions on CP for us to answer.
Two things I find interesting / surprising:
That C++ seems abundantly in use at the college level.  I haven't had to touch that professionally since 2008. 
And, that in my whole career (and I'm an old dude), I've never had to figure out the prime numbers between 1 and a google. Why do colleges choose to have young developers solve such abstract problems? Would it not serve the [business] world better to have them work on practical issues?
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yeah, let's teach kids how to find the area of a triangle, coz that's useful in ... ?
(heck even where is may be useful in planning the cad software does it for you anywhere).
you've exposed the biggest problem with education:
95% useless, except (1) to keep kids occupied, and (2) pick out the good ones.
and don't bring up that crap about 'learning how to solve / dissect / approach problems, answer to anything you need to know/figure out is on goggle. only thing kids really need to learn is how to use a search engine [instead of posting the same bloody questions on cp as the last idiot]
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Things haven't changed that much. When I started on my law degree I thought knowing all the laws was key. I was soon taught that knowing where to find the appropriate law was all that really mattered!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Lopatir wrote: the same bloody questions on cp as the last idiot
Oh no, he will definitely not be the last. 
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littleGreenDude wrote: That C++ seems abundantly in use at the college level. I haven't had to touch that professionally since 2008.
Well I use it professionally, and have since the early '90s. I don't think that either of our experiences prove anything.
littleGreenDude wrote: And, that in my whole career (and I'm an old dude), I've never had to figure out the prime numbers between 1 and a google.
- It's a simple way to introduce loops, conditional branching, etc.
- The instructors know the expected results
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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It has been a long time since college. I seem to recall some guys in togas teaching... Most of the people teaching computer science when I was in college had never held a real job. Their whole world consisted of their academic experience so it is not surprising that they do not give out practical assignments. They would not know a real business problem if it bit them in the.. landed on their desks. It has been my misfortune to have had one or two ex profs on teams I have been a part of. The project manager usually got rid of them quick. Unproductive.
Programming is an art form that fights back.
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Hollerith wrote: I seem to recall some guys in togas
Obligatory movie reference: Animal House[^]
Software Zen: delete this;
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Your experience matches mine.
Ahem.
Given thine username Oh wise sage, art thou a former puncher of cards?
(my first two years of programming classes were on punched cards on an IBM mainframe)
Software Zen: delete this;
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I tip my hat to you sir. Your wisdom exceeds mine. Best I can claim is saving Wat IV (Fortran derivative) code to an 8 inch floppy drive Floppy disk - Wikipedia[^] .
modified 25-Sep-18 12:49pm.
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8 inch when meant floooopy...
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My first programming class in fall of 1979, CS141: Introduction to Programming, used WATFIV[^] on the aforementioned mainframe. As I recall, WATFIV was a superset of FORTRAN 66, adding several constructs useful for structured programming.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I went to school so long ago... that I got to learn programming using Turbo Pascal. And the beginnings of OOP
Director of Transmogrification Services
Shinobi of Query Language
Master of Yoda Conditional
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