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Quote: I started programming with Visual Basic 6.0 when I was 13 years old.
I see the problem now 
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Upvote for "he's also a doughnut"
Also because I agree with you.
I will say this though. I took a time out - decades after being in the field - and taught myself a ton of advanced CS concepts (you may have seen my parser development here) to round out my skillset. I already knew basics, like linked lists, binary trees, and big O notation, if nothing else just so I could survive whiteboarding interviews.
I think I'm a better developer for it. Maybe the article would have been better if he had dropped the "first" bit.
Personally I think learning CS concepts first will just bore creative developers out of becoming developers.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: Personally I think learning CS concepts first will just bore creative developers out of becoming developers
This!
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The debate is as old as the hills. There are arguments on both sides.
Mircea
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All developers need to understand what's going on at the machine level so they understand concepts like pointers, heaps and memory allocation/deallocation. Too many younger developers don't understand these basic concepts and the resulting bloated execution environments show this.
A good computer science degree that drills these concepts into its graduates is well worth the time. Unfortunately too many computer science programs gloss over fundamental machine operating concepts.
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I kind-of understand the concepts and it's mostly useless in languages such as C# and JavaScript 
Maybe an HTML/CSS designer would benefit from such arcane knowledge
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No - those concepts help you understand code bottlenecks and bugs when it comes to memory allocation.
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Yes, which in C# only happens when you're using poorly written libraries.
You should know to call Dispose (and sometimes Close too (except on HttpClients, which you should create using the IHttpClientFactory, which returns them to the pool) (except when the object is still being used by some middle ware, like a file handle when returning a file in ASP.NET) (or when an object's lifetime is handled by another object, such as some use cases of DbCommand, DbDataAdapter, etc. or generated such as controls in WinForms designers) (oh yeah, and also don't call Dispose on most iterators, which you generally shouldn't use directly anyway, but which are only disposable for COM support, which is hardly ever applicable) (also don't call Close or Dispose when they throw a NotImplementedException, which I've seen a couple of times because some interface inherited IDisposable, but the implementation didn't need it)) and that's about it, simple
Even forgetting to explicitly Dispose and/or Close (which are usually synonymous, but not always) will usually result in the resources being released by the garbage collector.
I recently had a leak in Crystal Reports.
Not closing and disposing a report object, even when it's handled by a report viewer, results in too many temp objects, which will ultimately, sometimes, results in an out of memory exception or some such.
(Had a nice debugging session using the WeakReference<T> class to figure out that one )
But that's Crystal Reports and I've had unidentifiable substances under my shoe which were better thought through than Crystal Reports.
Anyway, even knowing all this, all you can really do, and should do, in C#, is call Dispose, which is kind of my point.
You don't even have to know why, just know that you should.
Even when you're a C or C++ pro, you shouldn't use unsafe in C# unless you really have no other choice, and I've always had.
Your options are even more limited in a language such as JavaScript, making this knowledge even more useless in your day-to-day programming.
However, when you know what you're doing, you can write articles such as this one, which is nice I suppose: The Dispose(bool disposing) Pattern is Broken[^]
For everyone else, and even for this author, just call Dispose and be done with it.
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"Earlier rather than later" certainly, but definitely not "first".
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A class in "software security" would help ... based on the evidence.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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I read the article this morning and I completely agree with you.
Knowing some CS can give you an edge, but is in no way required.
When my customer calls that their application, written in the 90's, isn't behaving as expected, don't expect to find nice design patterns, data structures or algorithms.
Most of those are already implemented in modern environments anyway.
Also, (premature) optimization, one of the main points of this author, is considered bad practice, I'd rather have fast code that's readable than super fast code (we're talking milliseconds difference here) that's cryptic.
Of course this depends on the context and goal of the application.
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." - Albert Einstein
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5teveH wrote: And one thing I know for sure... is that a Computer Science degree, (or in fact any degree), is not what counts! More often than not, what I've found makes a good developer is
Then hire one of those instead of someone like me who learnedt the trade.
Yada-yada list, don't care.
5teveH wrote: Did any of The Beatles have a degree?
Do you want the Beatles algorithm when saving your password? Or would you prefer a degree?
When in a hospital, I'm always glad to see non VB6 software. I think I should be equally gratefull for not having Beatles-software there either 
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Do you want the Beatles algorithm when saving your password? Or would you prefer a degree?
My point was: there are many talented people out there who don't have a degree. Sadly, there are also many people with a degree, who mistakenly believe they have ability and talent - and who think they are 'better' than those didn't go through higher education.
Eddy Vluggen wrote: When in a hospital, I'm always glad to see non VB6 software.
All I'm hoping to see, is someone who is great at doing their job. The certificates they have up on the wall won't cure me!
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5teveH wrote: All I'm hoping to see, is someone who is great at doing their job. The certificates they have up on the wall won't cure me!
No, they just guarantee that you're not in the office of a shaman healer. It's not the degree, but the education or experience that counts. The degree should be proof of that education or experience.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Drool
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Bug soup - nothing more.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Stop bugging me!
You , insufferable boor!
Maybe one day I should try Tarantula soup! 
modified 2-Jun-21 8:15am.
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And....
Drumroll......
...I got the job! 
I am now an EA Game employee, in the Frostbite team!
To celebrate I am going to cook some "bisque de homard" (tomato, cream, wine and lobster french soup )
BTW, while making a code sample for my job application, I used some async enumerable on observable event, and while that might sounds complicated it was, in fact, the sweetest, easiest to read event handling code ever written in the long history of the whole universe! 
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congratulations. i have... feelings about EA but game development is cool regardless. 
Real programmers use butterflies
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Yea, I know, micro transactions, right?
But game dev is always great!
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EA is in the business to make money. You don't want to work for a company that does not want to make money.
Some people on this site have an aversion to money and corporate wealth.
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Or they just have an aversion to *how* some people do business.
Real programmers use butterflies
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