the coder generation

Hey, if less programmers show up, the ones that do will be more honestly interested, and we''ll all get payed higher wages .

"Finger to spiritual emptiness underlying everything." -- How a C manual referred to a "pointer to void." --Things People Said

http://druidgames.cjb.net/

I have thought the same thing! Are they going to just start teaching windows programming right away? I think that would be too much to absorb IMHO. That is why I am glad that I got into programming when I did... I still wish I got into it earlier, but I know that I won''t have the steep learning curve that comp-sci students are going to face 10 years from now! In the 10 or so year I have been playing with computers I have gone from the 8086 to my PIII, with plenty of better options available now! What is going to happen in the next 10 years? At least I got to stay with one architecture ( for the most part )

I blows me away when I tell 15 year olds about DOS! They just looked confused and say "What''s that?" I am sure all the younger guys on this board have all used DOS but they are probably a minority.


"You won''t get wise with the sleep still in your eyes." - Neil Peart

Heh - I''m one of those 17 year old "old gits". Let''s face it, the more that OOP takes over, the less and less that new programmers are going to need to know.
My Comp Sci. degree at uni is a piece of s**t. The Comp Sci. subject just teaches Java. So that your code is already platform independent and *gasp* (if anyone cares about this anymore) machine independent!
Not only that, but it is aimed at 6 y.o. people I swear...
"Now, young computer scientists, this is what we call ''encapsulation'', this idea forces or ''encourages'' ''abstraction''" (cue writing both words on board and pronouncing each syllable at a time). Okay, I admit he didn''t write the words on the board, but this is exactly the kind of thing that this moron says.
If you think programmers are going to have a steep learning curve in ten years time. Think again - I think we are breeding a new generation of shitwits who''ll have no idea what a pointer is, let alone memory or something like that. The industry is already full of morons as it is - and it''ll only get worse. In fact, in our Uni course, they haven''t taught us anything about the machine itself...we vaguely went over the Jon Von Neumann model of a computer during a lecture (totally irrelevant to teaching computer science if you ask me).
I want to go to some place in Europe where the education system takes itself more seriously.

I think the whole reason people are so worried about this subject is because it seems so easy to do, no wonder it''s #1. ANyway, It isn''t easy to do, it''s actually really hard...or at least it creates a damn good illusion. Programming is an art and AI can never replace creativity...at least I hope it will never...

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Resist {noun}

17yo git! Hell I am a 21 year old fogey! I actually find uni a good "additional" source to learn stuff. If someone only knows what they are taught at school then I think they would be useless. We are also being taught in JAVA, and most of the students embrace it because it is easier. I don''t mind using JAVA to learning programming concepts because I teach myself the C++ equivalent at home. I have admired all my professors for not dumbing things down... in fact they have made things more advanced because of our saturated comp-sci program. Also I enjoyed the lecture on the Neumann model of a compter , I sort of wish we had a computer history course!

Is this relate to what is called the Ingenuity Gap? Where the complexity of problems are getting so large that people can''t keep up with the knowledge required to solve them. I haven''t read much about it so this is a word of mouth explanation more or less.


"You won''t get wise with the sleep still in your eyes." - Neil Peart

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Original post by Maitrek

Think again - I think we are breeding a new generation of shitwits who''ll have no idea what a pointer is, let alone memory or something like that.

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I think that might be a more accurate guess than just having people being uninterested in programming. There is a lot of that already, actually... people who know how to use a high-level API but don''t know anything about what''s happening behind the scenes. The people who know the details will always, always be able to utilize the high-level stuff more efficiently.

-Ironblayde
 Aeon Software

Down with Tiberia!
"All your women are belong to me." - Nekrophidius

Dont kid yourself, there are good schools, teaching good stuff. I''m in a great CS program, and having a blast right now learning a ton of great things. There will always be shitwits, but, there will also be smart individuals as well. As far as i know, the good cs programs still teach computer architecture, assembly languages and use a good language for teaching data structures. My first 3 CompSci courses were taught in C++, but object oriented programming was taught in java, this was obviously to force you to use oo techniques and thus absorb the basic idea of the course. Not only that, these programs usually are math intensive, i''m only 6 credits from a math minor..Anyhow, dont judge professionals on what you read here on this kiddie board, the industry is not full of morons. I''ve worked for several engineering firms around my area as an intern. When I started doing real work, coding, design, I didnt deal with "train to hire" folks that much, but wrather a lot of young and old, competent compsci''s, ee''s, and the occasional lone maverick genius type. I have run into a lot of VB, networking, sys admin types at times that dont know shit about software engineering, but they know the intricacies of Win2000, unix, firewalls, and all the other crap i dont really care about. Until i actually need to engineer a program to communicate through W2000, across a firewall, etc. I''m not going to learn the details of that system unless i need to. The point is, at least i can learn that stuff on my own, and have already learned the difficult engineering stuff in school.

You might as well add me to the 17 year old git list. I have programmed in basic and apple IIe visual pascal, visual basic, and finally C++.

As long as there are computer games there will be kids wanting to make them Regardless of how "simple" the OS is...

Programming is definately an Art...in order to be good at it you must be logical and creative. There will always be people (kids esp.) that will use the computer to fill this logical/creative need.

Epolevne

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Original post by Maitrek
"Now, young computer scientists, this is what we call ''encapsulation'', this idea forces or ''encourages'' ''abstraction''"

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School shouldn''t assume every kid started programming at the age of three and instantly knows what "abstraction" and "encapsulation" means (I don''t suppose the class had a requirement of any previous programming experience from HS or whatever, or unless they had already tought you about these things). What may seem simple and clear to you may indeed be very confusing for someone new to the concepts of programming, nonetheless OOP. I usually assist the teacher in asking questions in a class we have and I know some people easily get confused with new things so you gotta keep the level down so everyone can understand it - you can''t say, you''re not smart enough so you don''t get the same chance, bye!


Oh, and I''m one of those 17 y/o''s too, 18 soon though.
But the fact is that I wasn''t grown up copying game code from some magazine or programming basic for my first computer. Ok, so we had a our first computer when I was 6 perhaps, but the only thing I''d do on it was to play games. Then we got ourself a 286 with windows (!) on it and all I would do with it was do draw in paintbrush. Then the 386 came and I played some games on it, all the dos commands I knew where dir and cd and some more. Then we got a pentium which I''d play games on too. No code, nothing advanced. It first started when we got internet, I wanted to do a homepage and learnt some html, then I wanted to be cool and learnt some CGI, and then some java-script...and from there it went pretty quick, VB (high level yucky stuff ), C, C++, asm, started to use Linux...phew, looks like I ended up using those pesky consoles and low level commands even though I didn''t eat basic for breakfast between the age of 3 and 12.

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"This album was written, recorded and edited at Gröndal, Stockholm in the year of 2000. At this point in time money still ruled the world. Capitalistic thoughts were wide spread. From the sky filled with the fumes of a billionarie''s cigar to the deepest abyss drenched in nuclear waste. A rich kid was a happy kid, oh..dirty, filthy times. Let this be a reminder."
- Fireside, taken from back of the Elite album

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I wanted to do a homepage and learnt some html, then I wanted to be cool and learnt some CGI, and then some java-script...

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ah but you did have a "coder" introduction. You wanted to make a web page so you learnt html.

What do they do these days? They'll just use front page or some other wisiwig program. The html's gone. Alot of them (the programs) do enough java-script to make wibbly buttons etc. Where are they going to go from there?

I missed out the 80s basic stuff too. I first got into programming at about 12 with qbasic after spending several years in paintbrush.


Edited by - frankd on April 22, 2001 6:16:00 AM

Ah.... The days of Q-Basic... followed by Pascal (gotta love creating IGMs for BBS games) and finally C++ and your own Graphics Engine... DOS will always live on in my heart... *sigh*

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche

Boy you guys are making me feel _very_ old, yes I was there in 80''s typing in those programs from magazines, trying to load the games that came free on the little plastic record on the front of the mags - but it was all worth while, I seem to have a very good knack for debugging other peoples code - some thing which almost everybody else I''ve worked with can''t do.

But most of those people when to college/uni - so maybe there''s the problem, spoon feeding people information on how to program is probably the wrong approach - programming is about being creative and not looking at things from a normal perspective.

The current product I''m working on uses a 16-bit processor at around 20MHz and an gray scale LCD 160x160. And I''m having to write a complete OS for it (everything from bitmap copy to programming the sound hardware directly) - How many of you college puke''s would even know where to start?

I also find that I can debug peoples code better than everyone I know. I just realised how often people say ''Chrispy? What the hell''s wrong with this'' and I have had a 10 second look and said ''You didn''t malloc your char* variable before trying to put something in it'' or something like that...

Ah... People start to think you are a coding god when you can do something more quickly and efficiently than them

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche

Hey I''m another 21 year old fogey! I''ve been programming for 12 years now, I started on an Acorn electron, my dad taught me how to make an ascii plane fly across the screen. I then learnt 68000 Assembler on the Atari ST, then Blitz Basic on an Amiga 600 (what a Wicked machine).

I''m currently in my third year of computer science, where to teach everyone how to programme they used a language called SML (hands up all those who have heard of SML (no didn''t think so)). We then went onto C, so that we had a useful programming language, then Java as a good OO language, then back to C++ as a bad OO language. I''m having a lauf doing it, we had a computer graphics module where we learned OpenGL.

There will be interest for people to get into programming games, cos sony are making a version of Basic for PS2. I think that microsoft are planning something similar too for the XBox.

But hey we are the programming generation. I''d like to see some of the programmers now hacking the copper chip to create 3D rotation effects!



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Fleejay

Hey, I''m a 14 year-old, uhm... person.

I never really grew up with C64''s or any of the like... the first computer I remember was an old Apple, and by the time I got a PC, Windows 95 existed.

I had several influences to get interested in programming, however. I had a friend who had been raised in a dark room with a C64 who knew GWBASIC, and Quake. Quake brought me to Quake Maps brought me to QuakeC.

God, Quake was such a cool game, even without having known how truly remarkable it''s source-code was.

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The Goblin (madgob@aol.com)
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"Before critisizing somebody, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do critisize them, not only will you be a mile away, but you''ll also have their shoes!"

So what does that make someone who''s >25 like me?

Was there a specific name for the BASIC that the old Apple IIE''s or C64''s used? I remember thinking back then how disapointing they were, but I never understood how assembler worked for another 10 years or so.

Oh yeah, Beelzebub...
I''m one of those college pukes that was spoon fed code for a year (no offense taken, though might sound that way). Don''t you do something like point the instruction pointer to 0xC000 where the first instruction is 0x10 which pulls ~reset low putting +/-24V accross your LCD?

Micro design rules! There''ll always be someone out there who wants to build something from the ground up. Funny thing is that these are the people that do up the hardware and software for VCR clocks and they''ll be the ones with the best programming skills.

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I''m one of those college pukes that was spoon fed code for a year (no offense taken, though might sound that way).

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Sorry about that, had been watching Michael J Fox in the "Secret Of My Success" the night before, and the line just suck in my head.

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Don''t you do something like point the instruction pointer to 0xC000 where the first instruction is 0x10 which pulls ~reset low putting +/-24V accross your LCD?

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If only it was that easy. I have to setup half a dozen LCD hardware registers based on the CPU clock speed, and the values have to be calculated using some Jinglish documentation.

And no it''s no a VCR I''m working on - it''s something far, far cooler than that. But I can''t say what - don''t you just love NDA''s.

I didn''t use the words ''encapsulation'' or ''abstraction'' or any of that intentionally, the point is, the guy damn well talks like that cause he''s a moron. The course is amazingly dumbed down. We didn''t even get to do the game of life, we just had some dodgy particle movement program where we had to fill out an interface, and this is after about 6 weeks of the course. I''m saying, that these tools like encapsulation, and abstraction, combined with the massive demand in the industry, means they are stupidifying the courses in Australia simply because they need to get more dumbasses out the into the industry immediately. The entry for the course dropped to 70 this year. A measly 6 points higher than an arts degree. Although there may be many really good IT courses in parts of the world where the IT industry has more money and more research and more brains required than people, there certainly isn''t in Australia.