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Exactly. To me its the following equation;
skill = knowledge + ability;
Which is why I consider the poll apples and oranges. Ability, IMO, has remained reasonably constant over the years. Its knowledge that has changed. My knowledge of COBOL has decreased through disuse, but my knowledge of C++ has increased through use.
Or something like that. 
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I think we are seeing a greater proportion of amateur and beginning developers now, especially with the rise of technologies such as Visual Basic, which makes the profession more accessible.
However, I still think there are groups of good programmers and groups of bad programmers, just like in any other career - six of one, half a dozen of the other in other words.
--
Andrew.
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Andrew Peace wrote:
I think we are seeing a greater proportion of amateur and beginning developers now, especially with the rise of technologies such as Visual Basic, which makes the profession more accessible.
Somewhere you must draw the line and say Dev's this side Users that side.
Using Wizards and Intellisense makes coding fast, but it hardly shows a knowledge of the underlying stuff involved.
Maybe some users can be called 4thGen Devs.
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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I just re-read "The Mythical Man Month" which was written in the early 70's. To give you an idea of what times were like the author discusses the fact that memory RENTAL costs $12 / kilobyte / month - $1250 / month for 1 MEG
But the problems he describes in the book are the same problems we still see today. Individual developers and their abilities aren't really a problem. It is team development and communications, development time estimation, inadequate architecture, etc etc that are still the problems with medium and large scale software development.
It is scary (and depressing) that a 30 year old book written in basically the stone age of computing (alright maybe the bronze age) is still so relevant.
Dave Huff
There are no small projects - only young ones.
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Dave Huff wrote:
There are no small projects - only young ones.
True, true.
(2b || !2b)
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Years ago you didn´t need to worry about UI and this kinda stuff... today you probably need it. And the most important thing... the possibilities we have with technology today are not the same that we had in the past.
Mauricio Ritter - Brazil
Sonorking now: 100.13560 Trank
My latest article:
Pentominos - A C# implementation of the famous Puzzle Game
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Bingo.
Just wait - some day your grandchildren will ask you
"Grampa - tell us again how you used to use a keyboard!!!"
Dave Huff
There are no small projects - only young ones.
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Reminds me of that scene in Back to the Future (1 or 2) when Michael J Fox shows his prowess using a arcade shooting game. A couple of kids watching make the comment. "He has to use his hands, thats a babies game."
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Whoa! Hold on a second there! Speaking from personal experience, the worst aspect of programming years and years ago is that you *did* in fact have to worry about the user interface.
In fact you had to *write* the user interface and it often took up 90% of your code.
Anyone recall making an interface using ANSI graphics? That was state of the art when it became prevalent. The good old Borland C++ compiler I learned on made heavy use of it and was the model I used for many projects until I actually bought a class library (or it's equivalent) that took care of it for the most part.
Ground Zero Tech-Works
http://www.ayanova.com
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Spell-O-Matic has spoken!
"kernal" -> "kernel"
/ravi
"There is always one more bug..."
http://www.ravib.com
ravib@ravib.com
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Spell-O-Matic needs to update its wordlist - AFAICT kernal is an acceptable alternate for kernel, at least in OS parlance.
I think the update is available from www.merkinwordmunchers.com
Lord help me if I've spilled something wrung here...
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Although Webopedia equates "kernal" with "kernel", Spell-O-Matic refuses to honor this version of the word for the following reasons:
- Everyone knows Webopedia is for wimps
- "kernel" is a real word, which means the same thing in regular English as it does in OS parlance
- No jargon entry refers to "kernal", while several refer to "kernel"
So there. 
/ravi
"There is always one more bug..."
http://www.ravib.com
ravib@ravib.com
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
Spell-O-Matic has spoken!
"kernal" -> "kernel"
I really think "kernal" is an acceptable misspelling,
as Biologically a kernal and a kernel are the same, so it should follow through to other meanings, especially since the pronunciations are intermingled.
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:
acceptable misspelling
Acceptable misspellings are precisely what Spell-O-Matic is tying to rid the world of! 
/ravi
"There is always one more bug..."
http://www.ravib.com
ravib@ravib.com
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
Acceptable misspellings are precisely what Spell-O-Matic is tying to rid the world of!
I disagree with Spell-O-Matic's principals.
English is a living language which makes it subject to change, however a standardization of english and a move towards making the language more phonetic would be a great achievment.
We have now developed a metality that there is good English, and bad English, I believe this is incorrect and betrays the roots of the language.
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 disagree with Spell-O-Matic's principals.
Just as long as you don't disagree with his principles.
Colin Davies wrote:
English is a living language
You're absolutely correct. Most languages evolve over time, and English is certainly no exception. It just bothers me when people misspell or misuse words. I admit this is more my failing than anyone else's!
/ravi
"There is always one more bug..."
http://www.ravib.com
ravib@ravib.com
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
Just as long as you don't disagree with his principles.
Yes, you got me there Ravi
Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
I admit this is more my failing than anyone else's!
Nice to see Ravi aka Spell-O-Matic also has failings.
But as English is evolving we need to fix the language to be more suitable for mass usage. Even Latin had its variants over the Roman Empire it appears. And English is similar with its discrepancies.
If we fix and stone the spelling for the word "kernal" as "kernel" how will we evolve the word.
Note: how the word Okay and others have entered the English domain recently, when I went to school the word was banned from usage.
The language will change, but a uniform change will be best for all.
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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I wonder if it has anything to do with the differences in spelling for locality for instance, in the United States "color" is spelled ha, "color", but in England it is spelled "colour".
hmmm... very interesting.
Checkout my Guide to Win32 Paint for Intermediates
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kilowatt wrote:
I wonder if it has anything to do with the differences in spelling for locality
I don't think so!! "kernel" is spelled "kernel" and not "kernal".
/ravi
"There is always one more bug..."
http://www.ravib.com
ravib@ravib.com
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If kernal is an acceptable mis-spelling, does this mean I can interchangeably use kernul, kernil or kernol?
  
Simon
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No, no, no! "kernal" is completely, wholly and totally unacceptable. I am making it my life's goal to eradicate this unholy notion from the face of CodeProject. That is, until I get beaten around the head with semicolons and assorted debug debris, thrust upon me by my peers who really don't care one way or the other.
/ravi
"There is always one more bug..."
http://www.ravib.com
ravib@ravib.com
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OK, Spell-O, you have one less person to worry about converting.
Simon
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I dont know if the skill level has changed, I only moved into this office full of nutters a while ago, they seem like a knowlegeble bunch
Wudan Master
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I suspect you're correct. Another interesting axis of correlation might be with educational background. For example, CS/IT, engineering, hard science, soft science, nontechnical, and no degree. I have engineering degrees and probably am toward the upper end of the age spectrum and voted that skills have dropped a lot. I think a lot of the problem is attributable to the PC explosion with the supply of trained developers never catching up with demand. Any warm body who could code at all was suddenly a "software engineer". Much the same thing happened more recently with the internet explosion where people were web developers if they could string together enough HTML to get a web page up.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
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I'm 17.5 years old and I voted answer 4.
However, your theory is right
It's just that my father studied computers many years ago and he knew assembler and all that crap
- Dan
"Intel inside - Idiot outside"
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