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I'm missing something here...someone should elaborate and explain this poll a little better...
How could devlopers be less ummm...tech savvy today then 10 years ago...?
Sure VB makes it easy enough for a primate to program, but that doesn't stop VB programmers from learning C++ and mastering many others in the process.
So how does this poll make sense...?
Cheers! 
"An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes in his or her field" - Niels Bohr
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I think your question is the explanation in a nut shell.
Sorry. 
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
I think it's interesting that we often qu-ote each other in our sigs and attribute the qu-otes to "The Lounge". --- Daniel Fergusson, "The Lounge"
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HockeyDude wrote:
Sure VB makes it easy enough for a primate to program, but that doesn't stop VB programmers from learning C++ and mastering many others in the process.
No, but it doesn't force them to either. The theory is, people who would otherwise not bother to learn any language would now begin programming using something like VB. They may never advance to the point where they could do anything useful in a real language (  ) such as C++, but would still be considered developers.
There is nothing keeping a VB person from being a skilled developer, nor a skilled developer from learning VB. Most of the top programmers i know personally have used or do use VB or something similar. VB merely "lowers the bar" so to speak. 
Developers that like shiny objects also dig case mods and scratch-and-sniff stickers. Klaus Probst, The Lounge
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The number of programmers in existence has increased considerably over the years. This has created a higher percentage of 'less skilled' programmers.
Therefore programmers have not become less skilled, rather there are many more unskilled programmers.
(2b || !2b)
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Very true.
Tim Smith
I know what you're thinking punk, you're thinking did he spell check this document? Well, to tell you the truth I kinda forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this here's CodeProject, the most powerful forums in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?
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James Pullicino wrote:
The number of programmers in existence has increased considerably over the years. This has created a higher percentage of 'less skilled' programmers.
Why does one follow from the other? Isn't it possible that the number of developers has increased dramatically because there are more University courses than ever, meaning there could be more skilled developers than ever.
(mind you I'm certainly not saying this is the case - just saying it's a possibility).
(Next question should be 'do all those who consider themselves skilled developers think that the devs coming out of University don't know nothin'. I'd call this the 'the old and bitter' poll )
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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To be honest, I'm afraid I'm young and bitter . I mean, out of our sixth form college computing class, only two people, myself included, know how to program; by that I mean program properly. I once helped somebody who, through improper teaching (our teacher can't program too well...), had managed to write a program to catalogue stock items that saved the data into 60 separate files, each file containing just a single number that indicated the stock level of the item that was named in the filename. This, needless to say, was a Visual Basic project (whose specification was that users had to be able to check items back in when they've been finished with, though this implementation didn't even know how many items there were to start with).
When I've been going round visiting at unis myself, I've seen a lot of them who are sticking to just a single (or maybe two) languages and learning the language rather than the idiom, which IMHO is bad 'cause your skills don't become adaptable.
Of course, at the other end of the scale, I've seen some absolutely fantastic work in some unis that really impressed me, so I'm by no means saying that everyone coming out of uni doesn't know what they're doing, just that there are quite a few who fall into that category, even thought it's not always their own fault.
Chris Maunder wrote:
(Next question should be 'do all those who consider themselves skilled developers think that the devs coming out of University don't know nothin'. I'd call this the 'the old and bitter' poll )
Does anybody consider themselves to be an unskilled developer unless they are an absolute beginner?
--
Andrew.
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Isn't it possible that the number of developers has increased dramatically because there are more University courses than ever, meaning there could be more skilled developers than ever.
Lets be realistic here. There are little (if any) university courses which produce skilled developers.
One reason for more developers is simply because technology has improved in many sections which has created a bigger need for developers (take the Internet advancements for example).
This has created many more programmers. It does not explain or describe their skill level however. That is another story.
Old and bitter poll? why not Old and BETTER instead
(2b || !2b)
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According to my observations skills have gone down.
There is a tendency to train people in programming using products. This is not bad in general, they could be quite productive afterwards in using the product they are trained on. But I have seen too many guys who called themself a "Visual Basic/Visual C++ programer" but failed completly to do anything without a VStudio wizard. They are often missing basic skills and fundamental knowledge of the principles of computer programming and languages. Most of them are not able to pour an algorithm that is discussed in detail (including Pascal or Pseudo example code) in my Sedgewick into their programming language.
But even worse is, that they are completly lost if products and approaches evolve and we use use another IDE, another language, another paradigm tomorrow. Their product-centric knowledge has a very low half-live and gets old very fast.
Guys with a high knowledge of fundamentals and principles need some more time to get productive with a concrete tool like VStudio - and industry does not like this. But there knowledge enables them to learn any tool and any language and this is a kind of knowledge that ages much slower.
--
Daniel Lohmann
http://www.losoft.de
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Totally agree with you there. Recently my gf wanted to go take a college accreditation for programmer/analyst (like I did when I wanted a piece of paper to get me started years ago) she brought home all the "course descriptions" and I was outraged.
Things like:
Block 1:
How to use Windows
How to use Access
How to use Visual Basic
Block 2:
How to use Frontpage for e-commerce programming
Introduction to Visual Studio
Advanced Visual Basic
And so on. No fundamentals anywhere. No theory, no OOP, nothing.
She asked about C++ because she knows its my personal favorite and was told "C++ is dead, we don't teach it because its not used anymore...its too hard to program with it".
So much for THAT school.
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"C++ is dead, we don't teach it because its not used anymore...its too hard to program with it".
F*CK!!!!!!
Why didn't I get a copy of that memo.
DAMN IT!!!!!
I am always the last to hear about this stuff.
Tim Smith
I know what you're thinking punk, you're thinking did he spell check this document? Well, to tell you the truth I kinda forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this here's CodeProject, the most powerful forums in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?
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A lot of the introductory computer courses are crud, whether programming or general.
TCaptain wrote:
And so on. No fundamentals anywhere. No theory, no OOP, nothing.
Yes that is what should be taught, and all the IDE stuff through play.
I still find the best way to learn a "package" is to work my way through the menus and discover what everything does.
The "C++ is dead" remark just showed the instuctor was ignorant.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
I think it's interesting that we often qu-ote each other in our sigs and attribute the qu-otes to "The Lounge". --- Daniel Fergusson, "The Lounge"
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TCaptain wrote:
too hard to program with it
Which tranlates into: "I'm too stupid to teach you how to program. I'll teach you VB instead so you can create a form and pretend you know how to program."
"There's a slew of slip 'twixt cup and lip"
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What school is this if you don't mind me asking?
-Jack
To an optimist the glass is half full.
To a pessimist the glass is half empty.
To a programmer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
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I don't mind. The class curriculum was just me glopping all the stuff we'd seen from every school offering a "programmer/analyst" degree around here (montreal)...so its not accurate to any one school, but if you saw all the course lists, you'd see it was pretty close.
as for the comment, it was made by a student advisor at Delta College.
Ironically, its where *I* got my degree years ago...and back then they gave you solid fundamentals and let you go fool around with the tools yourself. They taught, C, C++, Object oriented programming theory, database theory and then let you choose where and how to apply it. It was good (well as good as you can get without going to University in my opinion). Sadly they seem to have fallen very low.
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I think developers these days have a broader range of skills, but less of a concentration in any one particular skill. I think we have less experts in any given particular field now. There are definately different technologies and needs now than in the past. And technology changes so fast, that new developers are trying to adapt to these changes and learn the new technology rather than refine their already existing skills. But we also do have more less experienced developers nowadays too (like with VB, and LincohnTech DeVry type schools etc.) Thats the way I feel, but I've only been out there less than 4 years.
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I think it's individual specific.
I can use HLL RAD tools like VB just as good as I can sit down and think up assembly instructions.
"An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes in his or her field" - Niels Bohr
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Although I think I can figure things out, I have not done any project in VB, Delphi and other RAD tools. VC++ is the only GUI tool that I have worked on (I am not calling VC++ a GUI creation tool - I mean it can create GUIs also) - the primary strengths being C++ programming. Before switching to C++, my strngths were C and Assembly programming. I tend to get bored doing the minor tweaking of the UI to make it look good.
Thomas
modified 29-Aug-18 21:01pm.
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I dont think developers skill levels have changed much over the years at all. Balancing a checkbook in hex, and writing a C++ program to do it, or even writing a VB program to do it, are different skill sets. It is comparing apples to oranges.
Even web design is a skill set. Is a high skill level in programming C++ greater than a high skill level in web page design. If I am a highly skilled C++ guru (I'm not btw) am I guaranteed to be able to design a web page of the same quality that a highly skilled html guru can?
By the same token. Could a highly skilled hex programmer of 20 years ago design and write a checkbook balancing program in OO C++ with the same quality of code and speed of implementation that even an average OO C++ programmer could today?
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John Judd wrote:
The skills are different.
I agree with that the skills needed have changed.
It once was near impossible to code if you were bad at Math,
then pocket calculators appeared. !
Ouch!
I agree using HTML is a skill set that can be highly advanced, but is it really programming/coding or simply being another user.
John Judd wrote:
By the same token. Could a highly skilled hex programmer of 20 years ago design and write a checkbook balancing program in OO C++ with the same quality of code and speed of implementation that even an average OO C++ programmer could today?
But could a coder of "today" write a 45000 line procedual COBOL program on a budget of two compiles per month with limited Library support and crappy hardware.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
I think it's interesting that we often qu-ote each other in our sigs and attribute the qu-otes to "The Lounge". --- Daniel Fergusson, "The Lounge"
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Colin Davies wrote:
I agree using HTML is a skill set that can be highly advanced, but is it really programming/coding or simply being another user.
If that argument is true it would also apply to programmers using high level languages or IDEs, as opposed to coding directly to the metal. I have a friend who is a CNC programmer. He uses a PC to write a program for a computer controlled lathe. It's very specialised, but it is still programming a device. Is he a programmer or a user?
Colin Davies wrote:
But could a coder of "today" write a 45000 line procedual COBOL program on a budget of two compiles per month with limited Library support and crappy hardware.
My first 'official' program was a college assignment to write a COBOL program (I cant remember what it did). It ended up being around 2000 lines, represented on punchcards. I then got a job with a company that did COBOL software, around 60K to 65K lines of code. I worked with no debug support using a line editor. I graduated to C using QEDIT and MS C6, but still no debugger support until I went to VC1.5 and Borland C++ 4.
I consider myself a vastly better programmer today that I was 18 years ago. I've also met a number of programmers who are fairly new to the craft, but who would have whipped me at programming 15 years ago. I've also met programmers who are less than average, both then and now.
Coding a 45K COBOL program back then required a much greater amount of *discipline* back then, but didnt require greater *skill*. Two very different things are discipline and knowledge/ability.
Discipline == Apples
Skill == Oranges
That's why I dont really consider the poll to be truely valid. Sorry.
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John Judd wrote:
That's why I dont really consider the poll to be truely valid. Sorry.
Don't be sorry you make some valid points, especially about the Skill and Discipline.
Your background appears similar to my own. [ especially the punchcards ]
And yes COBOL was probably more of discipline, but it paid the bills, the skill was more in handling all the from feed line printouts.
The programming skills were probably more in FORTRAN or APL etc as a language. I remember making my own form of pointers which FORTRAN didn't support. Also trying to use my own version of OOP.
-
I don't think I'm a better programmer than 20 years ago, what ground I have made with experience I have lost with my brain not being as fast as in my youth.
John Judd wrote:
but still no debugger support until I went to VC1.5 and Borland C++ 4.
3.5 yrs with VC6.0 and I still have not learned how to use the debugger
Programming to me by definition is organizing a series of instructions.
Creating HTML documents, is formatting a document.
Using Wizards, is using programs to program.
Its quite hard to draw a clean line between users and developers/coders.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
I think it's interesting that we often qu-ote each other in our sigs and attribute the qu-otes to "The Lounge". --- Daniel Fergusson, "The Lounge"
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Colin Davies wrote:
I don't think I'm a better programmer than 20 years ago, what ground I have made with experience I have lost with my brain not being as fast as in my youth.
Ahh but surely your brain while not processing as many instructions per second, is processing more complex ones.
That experience is exactly what makes you a better programmer. You have more knowledge, and greater intuition than when you first started. Don't you notice that you solve problem faster now?
Colin Davies wrote:
Programming to me by definition is organizing a series of instructions.
Creating HTML documents, is formatting a document.
Using Wizards, is using programs to program.
Its quite hard to draw a clean line between users and developers/coders.
I wonder what programming will be like in thirty years time. I suspect it will be as different as coding on punchcards is to programming C++ today.
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John Judd (home) wrote:
Ahh but surely your brain while not processing as many instructions per second, is processing more complex ones.
Yeah, I'm 32 bit processing now
John Judd (home) wrote:
I wonder what programming will be like in thirty years time. I suspect it will be as different as coding on punchcards is to programming C++ today.
Will keyboards and mice exist ?
Will we have 3D type monitors ?
I really thought the whole COM type idea would have taken of better. I don't think it was so easy to implement for a lot of folk. Coding will become more wizard type orientated in the near future, I'm sure, but 30 years is a long call.
I've heard a couple of times that "soon all the code needed will be written", I say baloney to that.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
I think it's interesting that we often qu-ote each other in our sigs and attribute the qu-otes to "The Lounge". --- Daniel Fergusson, "The Lounge"
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John Judd wrote:
It is comparing apples to oranges
Sure, because you try to compare the knowledges. For me, skill is not knowledge, it is the ability to get and apply the knowledge.
On the certain level of abstraction the design of COM interface and manipulation with DSECT (Assembler) so that the program will survive the developer - both need the similar skill. But different knowledge.
Regards,
Gennady
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