Today I was watching a You Tube Video about Ubuntu/Linux VS Windows and My Sound went out, without me doing a thing! If you can contact me and help I would So Much Appreciate it!

Peace Be unto You All and GOD Bless! Jane.

]]> http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2013/07/tools-are-not-skills/#comment-251875 Fri, 08 Nov 2013 16:15:59 +0000 http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/?p=1005#comment-251875 I believe in this concept from my heart and that is the reason I use notepad/notepad++ for coding. It solves 2 purpose, one it helps me code perfectly and analyse it using my brain, rather than being dependent on IDEs :). Secondly, it is improving my coding skills by not showing compile time error using red lines 😉

]]> http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2013/07/tools-are-not-skills/#comment-144983 Fri, 13 Sep 2013 07:22:46 +0000 http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/?p=1005#comment-144983 I read your whole article, (I’m not a programmer) that’s how good it is! I’m a small business owner in desperate need of guidance from a programmer. I need to know if I wanted to add a page to a Wix HTML 5 platform which would allow visitors to create a personal account, with a profile if possible, a program which would allow lets say, sports fans to pick winners of foot-ball games, calculate wins and losses, automatically update records of players, charge visitors every time they wanted to bet final scores and program would identify and calculate the difference in guessed scores and actual scores, or where visitors could pick the winners of all football teams in a weekly contest of who picks the best, and could calculate buy-ins and payouts. Is this possible and would it take lots of time and money? … Also if there are any programmers who feel they can create something like this, please email me, to infomaceli@gmail.comn

]]> http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2013/07/tools-are-not-skills/#comment-112512 Thu, 15 Aug 2013 18:32:45 +0000 http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/?p=1005#comment-112512 Ha, that’s a good question! I think a good trait to have as a developer is the level of introspection required to look at the code I wrote a year ago and think “oh dear, I really didn’t know what I was doing back then!”. I guess that, over time, when you’re working with your own legacy code there are the odd moments when you really do realise how much you have improved!

The lack of broad knowledge really is where you end up with those “developer productivity suite”s, which generally just cause all the good developers to become much less productive, but can help out the ones who struggle. Unfortunately, as long as we have the huge divide in skill between our developer gods and our PaulaBeans of the world, there will continue to be a market for such things, as well as managers that buy into them! 🙂

Overall, I’d really like to see internal training in organisations taken much more seriously, with the professional progress of developers no longer generally dependent on time-served, but on ability. Of course, then we’d have to figure out a way to accurately measure developer ability, and that is unlikely to happen anytime soon! Having read “No Silver Bullet” might be a good starting point, anyway 🙂

]]> http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2013/07/tools-are-not-skills/#comment-112506 Thu, 15 Aug 2013 18:22:29 +0000 http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/?p=1005#comment-112506 Great to hear, that’s a really good lesson to teach 🙂

]]> http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2013/07/tools-are-not-skills/#comment-112505 Thu, 15 Aug 2013 18:21:37 +0000 http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/?p=1005#comment-112505 It’s hard to effectively make such a distinction, as you’re right, the two tend to be intrinsically tied together in our minds (which is part of my motivation for writing the article in the first place!). I don’t believe they should be; knowing how to use ASP.net MVC (a tool) is not as useful as understanding the MVC pattern and being able to apply it properly, regardless of framework or language!

I do think that programmers who do push their boundaries constantly, even if only to new tools, are going to be very effective programmers. I do believe that your final point mirrors mine closely: there’s no point learning ASP.net in C#, then spending your time learning VB.net, that’s not going to be enough of a difference to improve your skills. However, starting with C#.net then moving to Haskell is likely to make a much bigger difference!

One year the decision was taken to move to teaching the first-year students Python, for the gentler learning curve. These first years progressed to second year, and were met with C++, which is a long jump from Python. Many of them struggled immensely, as the familiarity they had gained with such a high-level language was in no way good preparation for things like pointers and memory management.

The department changed back to teaching Java the following year.

Unfortunately, it’s very easy to slip into that approach, even after someone is pushing you to learn new things. I would bet than many developers who are becoming increasingly comfortable with garbage-collected languages would struggle with going back to using malloc and free 🙂 (I certainly would!)

I guess the point I was trying to make was a bit of a parallel: there are tools and there are techniques, and they are not interchangeable, so let’s make a distinction and stop obsessing about the tools so much to the detriment of the underlying skills!

I also agree that a starting point for learning a technique definitely tends to be a framework or tool, as that’s a good introduction to the underlying approach. With the example of a DI container, a good approach would be to learn a single choice, and learn it well. Then, move to another choice, and identify the differences, and you’ll start to see the underlying patterns, not just the tools themselves: implementing your own should be left to practice time in order to improve your own skills, or for when you really need an edge-case feature that isn’t provided by another tool 🙂