[SiBurning]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister Chicken and Egg

My previous job required a lot of VB. It drove me batty. It was okay for some things. Did a little craplet to cut up an image file: you open a multi-image TIF, move the images down into a separate pane, sort them, save that pane as a new TIF, and start a new pane to save some more images. All the real work was done by a commercial library. For other things it just doesn't cut it. I hear VB.net is a different beast altogether, and that you can use a proper debugger with it instead of just hanging the runtime environment just when you need the debugger. :: Let someone else try it.

There's a lot more I want to say. It took me three hours and 20 rewrites last night to realize it's best left unsaid. Not one to be particularly wise, I'll make three points. (1) In general, most people don't want to put in the time to learn anything thoroughly, and that's a big problem in engineering and science, not to mention civics and a lot of other things. (2) This is a problem that ultimately needs to be solved by the profession. There was a movement a dozen or so years ago to extend the Professional Engineer's license to software. I think that's appropriate for certain types of software. (3) I'm into DIY electronics, and think everyone should do some programming. I only get a little hot under the collar when it comes to professionals that think the half assed job they do is perfectly normal--doesn't all software crash all the time? Off the soapbox.

 

[wallstreet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jbucla2005 I'm starting to learn visual basic.net for the first time. I've had experience with basic back in the old Apple ][ days, but thats it. Anybody here who programs?

VB, eek. I had to write some stuff in vbscript for work a couple weeks and it wasn't pretty.

Don't pay much attention to me though, I'm a computer science geek. VB isn't .... that bad

.

 

[ADS]

Professional developer, use C/C++ at work, Python at home. Working on Motorola's embedded Linux project.

 

[wallstreet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADS Professional developer, use C/C++ at work, Python at home. Working on Motorola's embedded Linux project.

Sweet job.

 

[MacTheCat]

Well I know TI calculator basic.... yup. That's it. I like messing with electronics more.

 

[The_Duke_Of_Eli]

All these new-fangled languages confuse me. The only language you need is assembler. That's what I use alongside C++.

 

[vasilli]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjg i work in PHP v4. I really don't like it. I miss using a well typed real programming language with real sdk's, debugging tools, and an API. Most of the stuff i do is backend web stuff, interfacing with a postgres database server, etc.

haha.. I'm in the same boat as you are. Used to be a C/C++ developer. Now doing PHP w/ MySQL and totally hating it. Booooring. Hoping to get back to low level C or drivers some day.

Hence my frequent visits to head-fi. Too much free time

 

[j24]

Professional developer and prod support. Use VB daily.

 

[analog'd]

I don't believe what a big deal most people try to make this stuff into. I mean, it's no big thang!

anyone with patience and enough god given logic to know to put their socks on before their shoes can become a programmer/developer/se etc. And a good one.

any platform, any language.

I'll grant y'all that it's a nitpicking pain in the a@#$ to do it properly. so what? bfd. get a life.

ps

i code for food. have for 30 years. any platform, any language. bfd.

 

[mulveling]

Quote:

Originally Posted by analog'd I don't believe what a big deal most people try to make this stuff into. I mean, it's no big thang! anyone with patience and enough god given logic to know to put their socks on before their shoes can become a programmer/developer/se etc. And a good one. any platform, any language. I'll grant y'all that it's a nitpicking pain in the a@#$ to do it properly. so what? bfd. get a life. ps i code for food. have for 30 years. any platform, any language. bfd.

Programming is applied to such a diverse set of problems these days; I don't see the point of attempting to trivialize it in such a manner. The complexity and skill required for a program is dependant on the parameters of the problem being solved. Difficult problems will always require top talent in design and problem solving skills - ie: creativity, natural talent. Not anybody can master programming to the extent of composing good solutions to tough problems. Not trying to be elitist, but some people are just not cut out for that kind of stuff.

If you are just talking about mastering syntax, then we are in agreement: almost anyone can do that! Then again, so can a computer, so that's not terribly useful.

Many of us have run into terrible solutions written by so called "professionals"; that's why we have the tendency to stress the importance of good education, training, design, experience, and coding style. Especially design - it is not trivial! I struggle with it myself (personally I would love to see more focus on educating future developers about OO Design Patterns).

Let's face it; it's difficult to be a real pro at anything, not just programming.

 

[plainsong]

I just had a homework problem that cut my butt! Not using any kind of error exception handling, not using any regular expressions (which I could find easily in many a forum, just we haven't done it in class yet), and only using the Integer class, we had to create a method that asks for hours and minutes in the form of 0:00 (or 00:00) and then spit that out in seconds.

That's the easy part. The hard part was checking for errors. Instead of the user getting an exception and a stern "don't do that again" from java, we needed to put in the error checking, to check that there was a colon there, to check that the numbers were in fact numbers (and not to throw an exception there), that they weren't negative, and that the minutes were between 0-59. I added the 0-23 hours myself, and printed a line informing the user that this only counts the hours of 1 day. Why? Because I wanted to.

Obviously I did the error checking in a sub method, but jeez, that was a lot of code for something small. I'm sure there's an easier to do it, especially with regex, but just using what we have from class, jeez! And it's easy to get it wrong... if you're an idiot like me. Finally, after 2 days, I got it right.

I think I need to go to the java class for special students.

I've had bigger more difficult programs to do, but this one was a thorn in my side...moreso because it made me feel a bit like Forrest Gump does programming.

 

[jpburton5150]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mulveling it's amazing what 5 years of webapp development can do

Oh the neverending abyss of webapp development *tear*...

 

[Grahame]

Programmer, or Developer?

Glass half-full, or half-empty? a (Software) Engineer would tell you its twice a big as it needs to be

 

[episiarch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grahame Glass half-full, or half-empty? a (Software) Engineer would tell you its twice a big as it needs to be

Wasn't long ago, though, that quite a few might tell you, "no, it's just right; I made it twice the size it needs to be, so I know it'll never overflow."

 

[Zanth]

I do some development/engineering to feed my family.