Re: Programmer's unpaid overtime.

From: Edward G. Nilges (spinoza1111_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 12/05/03 

Date: 5 Dec 2003 04:07:25 -0800

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FCFB058.D4B6CD05@Sonnack.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
>
> > I really wonder about this fixation with "programming ability",
>
> Similar, perhaps, to the fixation many of us have for "medical
> ability" in our doctors, "mechanical ability" in those that fix
> our cars, "legal ability" in our lawyers, and "building ability"
> in those that make our buildings and bridges.
>
> The only people--in my experience--that whine about a fixation
> with "ability" ... are those bitterly lacking in it.

You may think of yourself as somehow (and in spite of the actual
treatment of programmers) a professional on the level of a doctor or
lawyer, but as I showed in my review of After the Gold Rush and in the
subsequent discussion (despite Richard's attempts at trolling), this
recognition is not forthcoming.

Real "programming ability" consists in applied computer science, and
simply ignoring the known fact that any program represents a set of
possible solutions over time is profoundly unprofessional. Therefore,
advocating C for new development is a mark of incompetence because
even if the C program is written according to quality guidelines,
nothing keeps some bozo (or for that matter someone like me, who has
abandoned C for several years) from creating a new member of the
solution set with flaws, owing to C's "power".

The fundamental mistake is pridefully confusing knowledge of a
computer language (and ignorance of the wider context, whether social
or technical) with the level of professionalism that is needed by a
doctor or lawyer.

Knowledge of rules-of-thumb stylistics and the syntax/semantics of a
programming language is roughly equivalent to the sort of knowledge a
tradesman has.

I've just started heavy duty coding in C#. Great fat books are written
on C#, that unless they are organized as reference manuals simply fail
to do the job, for they concentrate for the most part on the most
trivial issues, that can be gleaned from a couple of hours with MSDN
and Intellisense.

There are elementary blunders you can make when transitioning, of
course, such as the difference between 0 origin and 1 origin strings.
But the key factor is knowing the .Net framework.

I find that the same sort of profoundly insecure people who support
testing in place of education and funding in their children's case
bring their anti-intellectualism to programming and for this reason
accentuate trivial details, and trivial errors, in order to get
temporary relief from the insecurity they feel.

Programmers won't have self-respect (and their conduct on this ng will
continue to evince this lack of self-respect, which emerges in your
trolling) until society as a whole acknowledges the mere existence of
the applied mathematics of computer science. But this it will not do
as presently constituted for it would lower "productivity" in that
time and resources would have to be devoted to peer review and legal
rules about entry to the field.

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