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March 13, 2017 04:00 pm

Commentary On How To Make Novice Programmers More Professional

Over the weekend, my colleague David ran a story that sought people's suggestion on how to make (force, encourage, advice) a novice programmer to be more professional. Several people have shared their insightful comment on the topic. One such comment, which has received an unusual support on not just Slashdot but elsewhere, is from William Woody, owner of Glenview Software (and who has previously worked as CTO at Cartifact, architect at AT&T Interactive). He writes: The problem is that our industry, unlike every other single industry except acting and modeling (and note neither are known for "intelligence") worship at the altar of youth. I don't know the number of people I've encountered who tell me that by being older, my experience is worthless since all the stuff I've learned has become obsolete. This, despite the fact that the dominant operating systems used in most systems is based on an operating system that is nearly 50 years old, the "new" features being added to many "modern" languages are really concepts from languages that are between 50 and 60 years old or older, and most of the concepts we bandy about as cutting edge were developed from 20 to 50 years ago. It also doesn't help that the youth whose accomplishments we worship usually get concepts wrong. I don't know the number of times I've seen someone claim code was refactored along some new-fangled "improvement" over an "outdated" design pattern who wrote objects that bare no resemblance to the pattern they claim to be following. And when I indicate that the "massive view controller" problem often represents a misunderstanding as to what constitutes a model and what constitutes a view, I'm told that I have no idea what I'm talking aboutâ"despite having more experience than the critic has been alive, and despite graduating from Caltechâ"meaning I'm probably not a complete idiot.) Our industry is rife with arrogance, and often the arrogance of the young and inexperienced. Our industry seems to value "cowboys" despite doing everything it can (with the management technique "flavor of the month") to stop "cowboys." Our industry is agist, sexist, one where the blind leads the blind, and seminal works attempting to understand the problem of development go ignored. You can read the full comment here or here.

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Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

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