Verily I say unto thee, that High Plains Thumper spake thusly:
> It may be old school, but one does not need a special software
> development application to program, if they learn old school
> techniques. With proper technique, it does not matter what code is
> used, assembly, C, FORTRAN, ALGOL, BASIC, COBOL, FORTH, PL1, RPG, and
> etc. Coding is technician work.
As I've said before, for most of my first year at Uni, I didn't even
/touch/ a computer, except for the end of week SML assignment, which
took all of five minutes to copy from my jotter, and test before
printing. I spent most of my lab time goofing off (i.e. hacking Kerberos
auth tickets to make it seem like my popup Zephyr massages on other
workstations were coming from the department head).
I've always found that trying to actually /learn/ by sitting in front of
a computer is just a distraction, even back in the days before WWW. I
can't imagine that /children/ learn any faster or better in front of a
PC than by listening to a teacher and doing written assignments.
Certainly all my anecdotal evidence points to that being the case.
Learning is about understanding /principles/, not application.
> Seems that schools are turning out script kiddies
I doubt that any of them even know what a script is. Their definition of
"programming" probably involves big shiny buttons and a rodent.
> programming technicians skilled in higher level languages only.
If one can bear to describe crap like Visual Basic as a "high" level
language.
> These are fine for some tasks.
RADs are fine for non-programmers, at companies too cheap to hire actual
software engineers.
> When it comes to operating system level programming, one needs
> tighter code.
Someone should tell the bozos responsible for the Vista scheduler ;)
> When tight code is executed on a fast computer, then it is just that
> much faster. When operated on a slower one, execution speed is still
> acceptable.
Although I rarely attended any, I still remember the Demo Scene parties
in the 80's (still going strong today), where coders produced the most
amazing demos in just 4k of RAM. Pity the Vole seems to hire the afore
-mentioned Visual Basic "receptionists" instead of ex-sceners, otherwise
they might not produce so much Bloatware.
> This is one of the reasons why Linux is much more efficient at tasks
> than Windows. At 2 MB, Beryl is a good example of efficient 3D
> desktop work.
It does highlight one of the more pronounced technical differences
between the Linux and Windows development methodologies, ostensibly at
least.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| 'When it comes to knowledge, "ownership" just doesn't make sense'
| ~ Cory Doctorow, The Guardian. http://tinyurl.com/22bgx8
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
02:16:17 up 169 days, 22:51, 6 users, load average: 0.03, 0.55, 0.47
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