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DerekT-P wrote: we learned how to dismantle things!
I did much the same at home. Like you I did not always understand how the things worked but I did learn how to try and find out.
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Funny. My uncle and some of his other retired buddies took over the science department at a private school. Labs include multi week disassembly of small 4 cycle engines, using long cables like jump ropes to detect Earth's magnetic field, etc. Sounds like a similar mindset.
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My elder brother loved to dismantle things to see how they worked. 
I had to figure out how they worked so I could out them back together again - a skill my brother never quite got the hang of. 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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My elder brother was too busy chasing skirt to care about the internal workings of any machine.
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I dismantled a lot of things before I learned how to put them back together. 
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I certainly don't want to go back to finding the appropriate MSDN documentation CD out of the folder of 12 that will have the documentation for Substring as I don't know if it is SubString or Substring as IntelliSense hasn't been invented either.
The internet has certainly made it easier to plagiarise though and has defo made it easier to find examples of larger sections of code, as well as (obviously) places people can just post their homework expecting someone else to do it for them. I'd hate to be a lecturer these days, half the job must be trying to work out if people have got others to do their work.
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the CDs were horrible, ended up getting a second hard drive just to load up the MSDN library, but the information did tend to be more technically accurate with actual examples (for the most part)
I can't tell you how many times working with a new API lately and I look up the docs and it only has the name and the signature like:
void ThisIsSomeSortOfAPI(int count)
param int count - count to pass to API
defination: This is Some Sort Of API
I'm like thanks that is so helpful
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F-ES Sitecore wrote: I'd hate to be a lecturer these days, half the job must be trying to work out if people have got others to do their work.
True, but you could probably weed most of them out just by asking a specific question about "their" code. They'll end up convicting themselves.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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My daughter is a TA/grader for one of those classes. First thing each week, find answers to home work online. Then she can tell if someone just copied and pasted them for their own answer.
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Quote: I'd hate to be a lecturer these days
For three years, way back in the dusty past, I was a professor of Computer Science at a Polytechnic. The syllabus hardly changed from one year to the next. Forty percent of it was "History of Computing", in the third year that was reduced to twenty-five percent but a lot of it was the same. Computers were nearly all mainframes with mini-computers becoming popular (not micros - minis, PCs had not been invented yet). I left to get a proper job. 
Back then I thought I knew most of what there was to know; these days, well...! 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I only miss the pre-internet days and early internet days for nostalgic reasons. I am 1000% more effective and productive now as a software engineer/developer than I was back then, and that is not just experience over time.
Also, knowing how to debug is key to being a successful developer, just as Richard mentioned in earlier post reply.
"...but they seem not to have any idea what to do if things go wrong."
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Feel like I was smarter way back then because everything was just C code, you started at main() and worked from there.
Today with the friggin' frameworks, build scripts, endpoints and so on, there's WAY to much VooDoo code floating around what I'm trying to do.
VooDoo code : Crap you're told to use but no one really understands what it does or how it does it. (Looking at you Gradle, Maven, Ant and Groovy. Oh yeah SpringBoot too.).
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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gotta love the names they give this stuff now
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Matt McGuire wrote:
any other gray beards out there seeing the same thing?
Yep. Pre-internet, we had to know how to research. Back in grades K-10, when the teacher would give us spelling words to memorize, I would write them down dozens of times, whether it was required or not. As a result, I won spelling trophies in school, and am still the go-to person today when someone wants to know how to spell words (not the ones used in spelling bees). Most kids these days can't do that if their life depended on it, probably because it takes too much time and does not produce instant results. Smartphones and video games do not help in this endeavor.
It's the difference between living in a crock-pot society vs. living in a microwave society. What's being taught in school/college these days is how to use a programming language, not how to solve problems. If they have to solve a problem and their favorite programming language is not available, they're lost.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
modified 7-Oct-20 22:29pm.
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Having made it to retirement I :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: I dodged the whole web programming debacle.
However I do not regret the coming of the internet, productivity for an experienced developer went through the roof, having the resources at your fingertip made life much simpler.
What did horrify me was when the young whippersnappers moved to python and spent their entire time grabbing bits and pieces from the internet to build an application.
Ah sunny Cairns I love it, I'll just wander off and take the dogs for a swim.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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I wasn't around back in the day, but I can't believe people were more productive back then, having to go through magazines and books and scan pages and pages to find the solution...
Also, things go fast now, but I'm always amazed at how many languages there were back in the day.
Not to mention types of hardware.
And those went fast too.
Things probably moved just as fast, it's just that you didn't hear about it.
I mean, COBOL, released in 1960, had multiple versions and compilers by 1963.
From Wikipedia: "The COBOL specification was revised three times in the five years after its publication. COBOL-60 was replaced in 1961 by COBOL-61. This was then replaced by the COBOL-61 Extended specifications in 1963, which introduced the sort and report writer facilities."
Another popular language from that time, ALGOL, got three additional implementations in 1960 and four in 1961, and that continues until 1967.
The 70's and 80's saw at least eight new popular languages (for a total of 16) and the 90's (which I consider pre-internet even though it was around) saw at least ten new popular languages.
I think we're as stable as we've ever been
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I'd agree that the pace of change was faster back then than we tend to assume. Those of us who lived through it are getting on a bit now and everything seems fast to us now.
However I do think we were pretty productive back then. Writing out COBOL on coding sheets in pencil was horrendously slow, but before you picked up a coding pad you knew exactly what you needed to do and had done "dry runs" on paper, and probably discussed every line of code with a colleague. Once the punch girls had done their stuff, which they were generally very accurate with, there was a very good chance that the code would run exactly as per spec. We did only a little re-working of code. Also, because everything was long-winded, the code didn't get extraneous "bells and whistles" that today's idle fingers end up stuffing every application with. (Yes, I'm guilty of that too).
Later on I was supporting overnight batch jobs. A suite might involve 15 - 20 separate programs, each (when printed) being a pile of COBOL about 3" - 4" thick. When the bleeper went, it was out with the 600-baud modem and teletype, to get the memory + register dump of the failure (90% of the time it was a S0C7 exception). Then you had to pinpoint the line(s) of code, print out as little as possible of that bit to work out a fix (no time for testing, the overnight schedule was tight enough as it was), compile it and restart pronto. No need for manuals, your only tool / language was COBOL and you knew every verb and operator of that inside out.
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I've been developing software since 1997. Actually, I already started as a kid in 1986. And I cannot agree with you. Yes, it has become impossible to keep everything you need to know in your head. But nowadays, you just have to keep in your head where to find the information you need. If you're using a wide-spread programming environment, the only skill you need is to formulate a good search phrase, and Google will give you exactly what you need in 90% of the cases.
And yes, younger devs start working without thinking first and sometimes don't seem to know what they're doing. But honestly, were you any different when you were younger? I wasn't. Today I usually say: I need a full understanding before I code the first line. But when you're still young and inexperienced, that is sometimes not possible, as due to your lack of experience you are not able to understand everything. So you have to compensate this with overconfidence and enthusiasm. At a first glance, this looks like younger developers are faster and better. But in reality, they make more mistakes and cost the company more money than experienced developers because they cause a lot more bugfixing and technical support than an experienced developer. But again, were you any different when you were younger? I think nobody was. So your view of things is probably a generational issue rather than a real change of things.
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Your mention of google. . .this is important in the discussion of "pre-internet" vs. "post-internet" because I want to bring up an important point about google. When we say or think "post-internet" it really is "post-internet + google" that we are talking about when we say how all this info is at our finger tips now.
Because, do people remember when we had the internet but when you searched for something it may take 45 minutes to find the information you were seeking?? I do. You would go through 20 pages of search results at times, navigating to several of the hits themselves in a percentage of each page before you found what really answered your question.
I think of this almost weekly and tell my kids how awesome it is (we have it) today where if you are able to think for a moment on your search terms, boom, there it is EXACTLY what you were looking to be answered, in the first 3 hits usually.
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The biggest change other than the speed is the missing "craft" of coding. The young devs who slap together something that works barely care about whether the code is readable or maintainable.
Agile and patterns are a religion that must be followed to the letter regardless of the effect. Nesting three "if"s is a crime despite the readability it renders and the fulfillment of a "one function - one purpose".
I estimate that I have roughly 500 books on IT and coding, but few are as memorable as Petzold. A young dev would not even know of the impact Petzold made and why it was important. Most of the magazines have gone under and dealt with technology and techniques no longer in favor, so they have met the dumpster on even terms.
I am afraid "grey beard" is fast becoming "white" like Gandolf.
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Rusty Bullet wrote: I am afraid "grey beard" is fast becoming "white" like Gandolf.
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I agree with your views.
Even now, I still believe that standardized, n-tier client server applications were far easier to develop and maintain for a LAN once .NET was released than the garbage that has become Internet development these days. They were also more secure and much more targeted to the users they were supposed to support.
Microsoft reached a zenith of technological ease with its ASP.NET WebForms model only to throw it away and have it supplanted by a bunch of technical know-it-alls who feel it is more important to tout their favorite technologies instead of well-developed applications. Every list of "excuses" used to promote the current technological mess of the Internet has practically nothing to do with any benefits for the organization as a whole or the users it is supposed to service.
Since the mid 2000s, development has become a pantheon to ambiguity, technical ideologies, and a pace of change that is simply insane.
No one can keep up with it anymope and nor should they try...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I'm a gray beard, 69, still working as a dev. Used to be a mainframe instructor, hardware and software. I know a guy with a masters degree in computer science. He may not have measured electron flow in a semiconductor in a physics lab as I have done, but is still very knowledgeable, picks up things quickly and is already productive. I do not worry about it. I am concerned that AI will someday supplant humans and our brains will shrink even more.
Microsoft has already resorted to offering Bing search links, instead of actual help for bugs. That concerns me a bit. I am also concerned about teachers that teach because they can't do. My sons have had professors like that, requiring me to help.
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I don't have a beard, but you are on point.
I have written assemblers, OS'es, communications processing for async, bisync, SDLC, TCP/IP, data compression, file system managers, ... to name a few things.
But, the thing I miss the most is good, concise, well-written documentation.
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I've asked lots of people what LGBTQ stands for – but no one will give me a straight answer.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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