Re: How competent are we?

On Jul 14, 10:02 pm, Richard <rip...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

As for "Maintains a blog in which personal insights and thoughts on
programming are shared". Yeah, I bet he does, he listens with his
mouth.

Pete D: It isn't about bragging rights.


Excuse me, but the whole point of a blog is 'bragging'.

Richard's observations, though stinging, seem to me to be right on
target.

The "uncharitable" part of me (yes, the part I am trying to subdue, in
deference to the more "charitable" part of me), would rejoin with the
following...

1. Notice the duplicated entire _row_ entries under "languages with
professional experience" and "languages exposed to." Would you trust a
professional who is unable to "normalize" a spread*** to normalize
your database model?

2. I printed it out from the IE 6 browser, in Landscape. Yep, it
truncated off the last column. Won't even print on a printer. Yeah,
I've heard it before from the young'uns, there's always _reason_ why
it won't print. It's screen resolution, or it's the browser, or it's
this thing or that thing, and OK, I know they have a reason, but all
of the reasons sound like bullsh*t to me. I know that _some_ web
pages can print on an 8 x 11 1/2 piece of paper because some _do_.
Maybe even half, or _most_. So why can't the rest of them do it?
What good is his high-falutin' "levels" if he can't execute a simple
Print?

3. Confuses product specifics with abstract concepts, as in his
references to VSS and CVS. So if you're using another version control
product you're not Level 1 or 2 or 3? And doesn't include c-shell or
korn-shell in his scripting languages.

4. And, -finally-, agreeing with Richard, raises blogging (gasp!) as
the 3rd-nth-degree of professionalism, and places it under the
"Knowledge" :-) category.

Now from the more "charitable" side of Ken :-)...

It's just that I'm _uncomfortable_ with this "competency matrix", for
some reasons I can identify, and for others I cannot (no matter, CLC
will help me figure it out.) Certainly raising "blogging" to such
stellar heights bothers me. If I may paraphrase the 'Doc (do I have
your permission ;-) ), it does strike me as "Look Ma! I'm a Blogger!"

The presence of that alone probably does not rise to the occasion of
offense. It is what is _missing_. No mention of ACM. Of IEEE. Of any
participation in _any_ professional "society", and contributing
therein. And I think that is some of what Richard illuminated for us.
The "new way" to establish "culture" is to Blog, and have "links" to
all the other Bloggers that you agree with, or who you admire. (Yes,
there are similarities to what we do ourselves on CLC, but
differences, which I don't want to take the time to get into right
now.)

This is part of a broader "movement" that is altogether unsettling to
me: the substituion of "virtual" communities for "real" communities.
Yes the web is a wonderful, democratizing thing. And yet, I am left,
well, a little "cold" when I reflect on that. The same thing is
happening in the erosion of membership in Elks, in Rotary, in the
Masonic Lodges, in the VFW and the American Legion halls. Hey, the
young people just don't have the time, can't pry ourselves away from
the notebook/Wi-Fi and web. Time was, "paying your dues" and "rites of
passage" used to count for more. (I think those concepts will still
apply in the future, but increasingly as "esoterica", in a mysical, or
even, heretical, "undergound".)

For a well-considered, and I think related, treatise on this, take a
look at _Voyage in the Agile Memeplex_, by Philippe Kruchten,
published in ACM _Queue_:

http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=501&page=1

You will not be disappointed.

Ken
.