Re: [vcf-midatlantic] OT: people don't understand computers anymore
Bill, completely agreed. The depressing result is that, without underlying knowledge of the systems they are programming, these "software engineers" have no idea how to troubleshoot an issue beyond their code, or how to code efficiently. This is not an entirely new phenomenon. I knew plenty of Cobol programmers back in the day who knew practically zero about how or why the underlying systems worked. The best programmers I have known also had a very good understanding of the hardware and communication channels. On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:03 PM, Bill Sudbrink via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Neil Cherry wrote:
I'm a bit old school, can't quite understand how those in computers can't understand the underlying principles of the computer (hardware and software). But along those same lines we're abstracting so much of this that we don't need to understand it that well.
It's a bit astonishing to me too. We get job candidates with CS degrees from reputable universities who don't know what a register is, can't explain how basic sorts work or why you would even want to know. In my opinion, the most evil phrase to come out of a software engineer's mouth is "I don't want to have to think about...". Yup, it's all abstracted away. You get a "container class" with "iterators" and "find" methods and you're all set. Not fast enough? Throw more hardware at it.
This is raising my blood pressure... gotta stop.
Bill S.
On 06/07/2016 02:08 PM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
It's a bit astonishing to me too. We get job candidates with CS degrees from reputable universities who don't know what a register is, can't explain how basic sorts work or why you would even want to know. In my opinion, the most evil phrase to come out of a software engineer's mouth is "I don't want to have to think about...". Yup, it's all abstracted away. You get a "container class" with "iterators" and "find" methods and you're all set. Not fast enough? Throw more hardware at it.
This is raising my blood pressure... gotta stop.
Bill S.
To be fair, there is a difference between some random consume sitting at home reading facebook, and a CS or Engineering student. I also don't think this is a new issue. It's just that there are a lot more computers now than there use to be, so it's more obvious.
I remember, more than 20 years ago, when I was an EE major, I was astounded at the number of people who made it to 300 and 400 level EE classes or physics classes, yet could not solve simple differential equations. How the heck did they get that far? EE and comp-sci grads should know that stuff. But my mother has never really understood computers. My wife knows just enough, but if she runs into big problems, she comes to the family computer engineer. I have plenty of family and friends I've known for decades that have no clue how computers ( or cars, in some cases ) work, and could care less and probably shouldn't have too. How many people knew the hacking that went into making Atari 2600 games actually work? And it's pretty amazing they even did work, if you look at the architecture of that thing. - Derrik
participants (2)
-
Dean Notarnicola -
Derrik Walker v2.0