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Sander Rossel wrote: My new cat, Pink, ran away last week.
If my owner called me Pink, I probably would, too... 
Sander Rossel wrote: I wouldn't be surprised if the manufacturer is now following my every move.
On the bright side, you now have many more people looking for your cat...
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dandy72 wrote: If my owner called me Pink, I probably would, too...
I guess that if both you and your owner called you Pink, that could be considered your name, or at least nickname 
In the old days of silver photography and photolabs making color prints for us, there was a well known story from Norways biggest lab about the strangely distorted colors in the photo of this cat: It looked more or less green no matter how they set the color adjustment when making the print. By going to the very end of the adjustment scale, they managed to make the cat "sort of" brownish.
But the customer complained. The very reason why they had taken this closeup photo of the cat, before cleaning him, was that he had jumped into this tray of green paint.
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@petepjksolutionscom
Where's the CCC?
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Sorry all, work got in the way - shall I do one tomorrow ?
"We can't stop here - this is bat country" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Might as well! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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What do you see as the main difference(s) between the older (let say 30+ years in the filed) and younger (less then 10) 'generation' of developers?
What are the main reasons?
(The reason I'm asking - beside pure curiosity - is that I was asked about building a course for future developers...)
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Education.
Back in the day, computing was a specialist job, and was taught by people who understood it, who knew what they were doing. And that rubbed off in how they taught, what they taught. And mostly, what they taught was "language basics" and "how to think like a developer".
Now, governments are pushing "developing" as a school course. So it's taught by teachers who don't know the subject outside the curriculum, who don't genuinely care about development, who haven't written much more than "hello world" for themselves; and taught to kids who don't care either - they just have to pass the course.
Worse, they course it taught like any other: "Read this and remember it" works fine for History, English Lit., and so forth - but development needs you to think, not remember: that's a very different mindset and that isn't taught.
And if the teachers don;t even know the debugger exists - and most don't - how teh heck are the students supposed to know?
Software is seen as a simple way to make a load of money - it's well paid, with no heavy lifting - so it's a route a lot of people want to take, even if they have no interest, skill, or abilities in that direction.
And of course, everyone who can run an app on an iPhone assumes they are computer geniuses.
This is just the impression I get - mostly from QA - and is probably well and truly wide of the mark in a lot of cases: but we don't get those case except rarely ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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It is interesting - as all my teachers were... teachers. Not developers who take on teaching as a second job... However, all of them were writing some more serious software to teach and help teaching - so not only 'hello world' there...
I think the problem with today teacher, that they can get anything ready-made from the internet. So they have no experience at all (which means they can not even pick the right sample from the internet). Lack of experience leads to lack of confidence when standing in front of the students and to avoid any 'scary' questions teachers going on the boring-but-well-walked path...
The other part IMHO is the connection with the tools... Back then we had a no 'middle-men', no OS or IDE or such... We new our hardware and the means to communicate with... We were tool and language agnostic as we done our job on the lowest possible level (without soldering iron). Today you do not move without a few GB of installation before you try to write a single command...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: Today you do not move without a few GB of installation before you try to write a single command..
That's true: You could figure that a C# "Hello world" is a minimum of 4.5Gb: .NET Framework system requirements | Microsoft Docs[^] whereas you could fit it easily into well under 100 bytes in my early assembler days ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: well under 100 bytes
On my 6502 it is 28 bytes, of which 12 is the text to print...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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There was hardware setup code on my Z80 based VDT's: without that in there it wouldn't be readable on screen. Telling the hardware where the video memory was, that kind of thing.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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On the other hand... Sometimes, I want to yell at youngsters who spend hours and days on proving how super clever they are to save half a microsecond on writing obfuscated code: "We are not living in the 1980s!". Some of the tuning tricks we learned in my education were obsolete before we got our degree, e.g. we evaluated at least three or four disk scheduling algorithms, assuming queues of dozens of entries, only to learn that any disk subsystem with 3+ queue length more than 5% of the time is severly overloaded. Optimizing the ordering of one or two queued entries is a waste of resources (and fortunately, disk scheduling is out of the curriculum many years ago).
There is no discussion that the "Oh, we'll just throw in more hardware" approach has gone way too far. I guess the saving of half a microsecond is a counter-reaction to that. We really should be more resources-aware, but with a thorough understanding of where the resource hogs are, and the cost of optimizing it. (E.g. obfuscation of code to save a few percent in initialization code, or optimizing a 2-element disk queue, is crazy.)
Surprisingly many youngsters have "strange" ideas about what slows down the code, usually due to lack of understanding of the underlaying mechanisms. E.g. you have an executable (with umpteen dlls) where you never use 95% of the code: The huge size of the code does not put a heavy load on RAM: The unused disk pages are never brough into memory. It does not lead to slow startup: Setting up a hundred extra page table entries is done in microseconds. ... This is trivial, but I have explained it several times to developers who know nothing about memory mapped files. Similarly, they "know" that if the disk is 99% full, it will slow down the machine. Sure: For an extremely file create/delete heavy application, it might be possible to measure, but these guys consider it a law of nature that any application will run significantly slower.
In my studies, we read a hardcover textbook on software performance and optimization, studying what is worth it. What has the most effect. Various criteria: Space or time, average or worstcase, ... This required an understanding of underlaying mechanisms (which we had obtained in earlier classes). Today, the problem is often that it is no use trying to talk with the youngsters about tuning, because they have no idea about what is going on behind the curtains.
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OriginalGriff wrote: Back in the day, computing was a specialist job, and was taught by people who understood it, who knew what they were doing. And that rubbed off in how they taught, what they taught. And mostly, what they taught was "language basics" and "how to think like a developer".
20 years ago, from the 4 teachers I had related somehow to programming... 2 were damned good and one could learn a lot from then, the other 2 were just so bad I spent the time of their lectures learning myself in a table in the corridor. Luckily there were other good teachers in their department too and even more luckily they were not morons and they allowed me to go to their open door sessions to ask my questions although I was not in their lists.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Well, I am self-taught and when I started, for sure I didn't know a bit of what I was doing.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOPS, this possibly explains some 'interesting' behaviours of my programs.
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Agreed. Some of it is need. In the old days, we had to know transistor theory (I even worked on vacuum tube machines) and such to fix hardware. We had to write assembler programs to help isolate the hardware problems. Now we don't need all that, we can just swap out the processor or motherboard and such. Maybe even the whole computer (or phone). We don't need assembler language (or C) skills, we can just download the latest framework. I can use bootstrap to create a gee whiz web site. No need for other stuff. QA is for the students.
After watching some of this years Build, I come away with the impression that the big questions are:
What Azure or AWS or whatever tools and instances should I use?
Which shiny new framework(s) should I use?
Wow, .Net will take me to the promised land!
Microsoft (and others) will help me escape from the evils of Javascript with more frameworks and abstraction and "tools".
Remember when we said that using scripting languages wasn't really programming? Real programmers used assembler? Now real programmers use Blazor or Vue or maybe even Oqtane.....
I am not sure all this is bad, the same things happen in almost all walks of life. Ask Siri.
/rant
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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OriginalGriff wrote: everyone who can run an app on an iPhone assumes they are computer geniuses.
I read this and immediately thought of a previous classmate. He was a React "pro" who was going to make a ton of money as a Programmer. He wasn't a CS student, in that he didn't take either of the Assembly courses, Data Structures, or Algorithms, because they were, "Too hard." He, "Didn't need all that to Code" so he went the IT route. After two Software Engineering classes full of, "React is amazin'" I decided to never touch it. 
I had 4 CS professors who were from Industry, and for me, those experiences were the most beneficial. There were some cool stories, for sure.
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Recently, a friend of mine was complaining about one photographer insisting that you can't call yourself a serious photographer without knowing the chemistry of the development and printing process. This photographer rejected digital photography because it won't allow detail control over all the processes leading up to the final result. When you loose control, it limits you opportunity to create the best photographs.
My friend asked if we are like that in the programming business as well: Do you have to know how the transistors work to make a good program?
I answered "no". Knowing what an instruction set looks like, the architecture of the memory management system and interrupt system may be useful (or even required) when you are working with software at a low level, but that is way above transistor technology! If you make user applications in C# or Java, you should know the basics of a virtual machine an intermediate code / bytecode, but that is way above MMS architecture. And so on.
A photographer should understand shutter speeds, f-stops and ISO-value. If he is really advanced, he will be able to explain why the picture made by a mobile camera (with a focal lenght of a handful millimeters) have greater focus depth than a full format SLR, even though the aperture setting, camera position and field of view are identical for the two. (That certainly has an effect on the final result, but even among the most advanced amateurs, very few can explain it, even though they know it is a fact.)
Anyone needs to know their tools, how they operate. But low level photo chemistry, transistor technology or how to mine iron for making the wrench you are using, is not required to become a good photographer, programmer or car mechanic.
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OriginalGriff wrote: Now, governments are pushing "developing" as a school course. So it's taught by teachers who don't know the subject outside the curriculum, who don't genuinely care about development, who haven't written much more than "hello world" for themselves; and taught to kids who don't care either - they just have to pass the course.
Worse, they course it taught like any other: "Read this and remember it" works fine for History, English Lit., and so forth - but development needs you to think, not remember: that's a very different mindset and that isn't taught.
As with so many things, this (rote learning versus learning to think) that gets lost between governmental good intentions and reality on the ground.
Someone in government realised that we need more technically literate and intellectually capable people and, with the best of intentions, realised that programming teaches people to think and analyse (which are of course the ultimate in transferable skills). So they created a policy of teaching programming.
But then, when it gets to the misery of the school coal face, it becomes just another commoditised check box subject, taught as a "do this, pass exam" subject rather than the original intention of all the best education: Teaching children how to think and analyse for themselves.
The solution? I don't know.
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30 years ago: All the passion, but less on tools.
Now: All the tools, but less on passion.
modified 27-May-20 3:38am.
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And that means that in 30 years from now you will find nobody to answer questions in QA... Not just because there will be no knowledgeable person, but there will be no passion to do so...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Or maybe, QA will be taken over by some AI kind of thing. Just like Alexa or Siri.
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Quote: <mechanical voice>Your question is too dumb to answer; you will be absorbed. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE! brrp, zzzzzqsl pop<creepy silence>
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I promote one fundamental principle: Make sure that you understand how your tools work, at least at the level immediately below the one you are currently working on.
You don't need to be an expert on numerical methods to use a library of trigonometric functions, but you should know how they can be calculated by series expansions. When you use malloc(), you should be familiar with internal and external fragmentation, compaction etc. When using a compiler, you should have some familiarity with machine code in general, and how it relates to high level code.
And so on. An important use of this knowledge (and a suitable test on if you have it) is to make qualified judgements of which tool alternative to select. Why is a connectionless network protocol better, in a given context, than a connection oriented? (if it is!) Should we use a thread or a process based solution? Should we store/transfer data in a binary format or formatted as text - and why?
How well you should know the layer immediately below may vary. You would expect a Master to know it a lot better than a hobby programmer. But even the hobby programmer should have some understandig of what happens behind the curtains when he makes an API call, runs an executable etc. There is a major difference between knowing how a tool works and being able to build the tool; you need the first, but do not need the second (although it never hurts...).
When I mention this principle to developers of my own generation, they always return an affirmative nod.
Developers of the younger generation usually return a shrug, "Hey, it works! I don't care to know how."
When I ask why a given solution was chosen, I far more often hear "Well, it works..." rather than a qualified rationale.
Juniors seem to accept the automagical as perfectly normal. They are perfectly comfortable with having no clue whatsoever about what that API does. It performs a task. Why should I care about how it does it? Why should I waste resources on knowing how? When I need to learn some new tool myself, asking a junior for help to understand its workings below the surface is usually futile, they can tell me the name of the API and the parameters, but it stops at that level.
With that attitude, you are a user, not a developer. Today, we see a rush to become proficient users of as many tools as possible, without minimal understanding of the tools. However, if you spend resources on understanding the operation principles of half as many tools, you have a much more solid background for learning the other half when the need comes. (I would estimate that at least 80% of the tools and technologies I have been working with the last twenty years didn't exist when I got my degree. Yet I have had no essential problems understanding how they work.)
I wish we could get back into the training of new developers that a skilled professional knows his tools, know how they operate. He does not accept anything automagical. He knows not only what to do, but why he does it, chooses that alternative. Even though this implies that you spend resources on aquiring knowledge and understanding that you theoretically could do without (in the short term), in the long term it will certainly pay back.
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Member 7989122 wrote: uniors seem to accept the automagical as perfectly normal. They are perfectly comfortable with having no clue whatsoever about what that API does. It performs a task. Why should I care about how it does it? Why should I waste resources on knowing how? When I need to learn some new tool myself, asking a junior for help to understand its workings below the surface is usually futile, they can tell me the name of the API and the parameters, but it stops at that level.
With that attitude, you are a user, not a developer. Today, we see a rush to become proficient users of as many tools as possible, without minimal understanding of the tools.
And sometimes being a proficient user is more than enough.
I remember one thing my father told me long time ago. "Better be apprentice of many things than master of none"
I don't say it is an universal truth and that is always the right approach. But neither is bad or wrong in every approach
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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