Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming (was My First Computer)

[anoneds@netscape.net (Ben Yates)]

"vector" <root@localhost> wrote in message news:<I6qdnV2UlM9gKnGjXTWcoA@comcast.com>...
> "White Flame (aka David Holz)" <whiteflame52@y.a.h.o.o.com> wrote in message
> news:b3qo6h$5ar$1@barad-dur.nas.com...
> > "Really" <barryem@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > 1c7cf088462765c2a0e63c17ceaa1ece@news.teranews.com">news:1c7cf088462765c2a0e63c17ceaa1ece@news.teranews.com...
> > > Through a 35 year programming career (I'm retired now) there was
> > > never a month where something didn't make me very glad to have that
> > > assembly experience, even though I never actually used assembly
> > > during some years.
> >
> > Though I've only had a 10 year programming career (20 years of programming
> > experience) doing very high-level code, I can fully agree.  You don't
> > technically *need* to know low-level concepts in order to create working
> > code, but it certainly helps you do it *well*, as well as helps in
>  debugging
> > and optimization.  When doing wavelet graphics on a 68k Palm for a web
> > browser, I did it all in C++, but continually looked at the generated
> > assembly code and massaged the code to produce the optimum asm code from
>  the
> > compiler, knowing how it works.
> 
> Here's a fun quote from a Microsoft employee speaking of Visual Studio .NET
> at a seminar I attended: "The more we can lower the bar, the better we can
> enforce good coding practices."
> 
> I was both sickened and awed by the very idea that MS, by way of this guy's
> statement, had essentially told me I am too stupid to be trusted to be a
> programmer.
> 
> Worse, were I to replace "I am" with "the IT industry is" in the above
> sentence, I'd actually agree with that statement right now.  I think that's
> directly from where IT's current slump comes: normal people (i.e.,
> non-nerds) who were attracted to programming as a career because they didn't
> want to be doctors or lawyers anymore, but just didn't have the mindset for
> it.  At the core of all the layoffs, downsizing, shakedowns, whatever, I
> think we're witnessing the computer industry shake off the burden of having
> hired these people that thought computer programming meant f��ball-tables,
> Sprite, and snowboarding all day.


No, they actually laid-off those of us who have been "programming" for
20 years, those of us who know what an algorithm is, who can actually
design, program, and implement. Instead, they have hired those from
the "programmer mills" who have just been taught how to use Wizards to
create programs, who know how to cut-n-paste an object on the screen,
but who don't know shit about writing the program behind the scenes to
actually perform anything more complicated than a simple report (which
is all handled for them too.)
Funny thing is, these people are being replaced too - their jobs have
been exported to South America or India...