My first attempt to talk in front of people after Covid went well. Here is a video of my session where I explore the missing #fun at work as #programmers.
When I was a wee lad entering #software development (in the 1980s), most of us came from #EE and #CS backgrounds. And it was a common practice that each of us had small, pet projects—signal processing, image processing, hardware simulators, computer graphics, graph algorithms, networking protocols, programming languages, operating systems, chess engines, approximate polynomial algorithms for NP-complete problems, etc.—that we used to hone our theoretical and practical skills. These were toy problems, for sure; but they had heft, nonetheless. And we didn't just hack up the code; we studied the underlying theories, before we implemented these toy projects. And we didn't clone existing ones.
This was what I was referring to, when I posted earlier about "daily practice routine" for #programmers. I've tried to inculcate this good, life-long habit in my younger colleagues, without success.
These days, most software practitioners see themselves as mere coders, not programmers, and they feel no need to improve themselves, since they've already mastered JavaScript or Python syntax. This attitude is detrimental to the longevity of their careers.
These kids are swamped with having to maintain millions of lines of buggy code that their predecessors had cobbled together off StackOverview. There is no requirements, no specifications, no design, and no one person who understands the entire system.
Furthermore, their non-technical managers are always pounding them to keep raising their "commits", which is now the key metric used in promotion and pay rise.
As such, in just a couple of months of starting employment, eager youngsters turn into jaded code-pasters who experience no fulfilment in programming.
Every #musician has a personalised #practice daily routine. The experienced ones create their own, and novices follow the routines prescribed by their instructors. Naturally, the routines evolve with experience and skill. But even the retired professional musicians continue to practise their daily routines.
But we #programmers do not have a daily practice routine.
I'm talking about programming as a mathematical activity, not a mere mechanical coding task, like katas and koans that someone else published. I'm certainly not talking about learning to use database API, AI framework API, UI framework API, GPU API, and other mundane, job-related stuff, for there exists no opportunities to improve one's intellect in blindly following the dicta of an API. And not every aspect of life needs be seduced and induced by pecuniary interests.
By "daily practice routine", I mean a self-created, personalised routine that one performs daily for the rest of one's life, like a ritual, for at least an hour a day. This routine continuously evolves to target one's currently weakest skills, be they proof techniques, recursion, data structures, algorithms, computability theory, category theory, complexity theory, whatever.
I like the idea of #FOSS but I'm not sure I could ever release anything as open source, because I wouldn't like to give any impressionable young/new #programmers the idea that it's how code is supposed to be written...
Before I say what it is, I am NOT posting this as clickbait (which is how it's often used)! 😂 I'm posting this as a Maths teacher who knows this topic inside-out and wants to help people to understand it better. There are MANY mistakes that people make and get the wrong answer, and I'm going to cover them in bite-size chunks each week for a few weeks
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This week for #MathsMonday I'm going to talk about #calculators, in particular the current topic of #Mathematics order of operations (which I am nearly finished with now), and e-calculators (I'm looking at you #Developers#Programmers).
It's important to know where brackets go in #Maths expressions, and after last week's topic I ran a follow-up poll https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/111145907574869556 to see how many people could remember the #Math FOIL acronym from High School, because I sensed a deeper issue...
A complete novice in computing can be shown how to use some #programming language in just a few weeks. In a few months, he will have amassed adequate skills to not embarrass himself in polite company. But he will need about a decade more of focused learning and working to become a #programmer.
Similarly, an experienced programmer can pick up a new language in a few hours. But he will need at least a couple of years of persistent use to become proficient in it.
The trouble, though, is us—the #programmers. We fall into two camps: one-language homesteaders and all-language nomads. Even when we are obliged to use one language on one project, year after year, the first type is constantly looking for ways to return to their one true language and the second type is perpetually seeking ways to subvert the project so they can bring in the latest unproven languages.
I love interacting with #programmers who are just not interested in anything new. A friend I worked with a few jobs ago learned C in school and that’s the only language he’s ever worked in.
He learned how to deploy applications with RPM packages and that’s it. I was talking about containers and he just couldn’t imagine using one. He runs a pretty successful team on C11 and I can’t argue with the results. It’s a nice reminder that all these tech trends are entirely optional.
Question for #Python#Programmers:
Getting tired of my #Spyder version that relies on different versions of Python modules than the ones I need for coding…
What is your favourite #IDE for Python (and why?)?
Whenever I assign junior #programmers a substantive task, they inevitably return with a #complex solution. I would then analyse their solution, simplify it, and show the simpler version to them, they respond every time, "OK, what's so great about that? It's so stupidly #simple."🤷
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It's hard for a guy, like me, who grew up on electronics and assembly language to understand the reticence of today's embedded #programmers to use the C #programming language.
It would, of course, be foolhardy to use C to implement modern web-based enterprise applications. But embedded systems is emphatically the province and domain of the C programming language.
#Embedded systems are well defined, well designed, logical (reasonable), and small—nature demands so. You know, like the original AT&T #UNIX, for which, and on which, C was created. No other language is better suited for modern embedded programming than this five-decade-old, simple language.
Come to think of it, #Perl has been roundly rejected by modern #programmers for similar reasons -- too many moving parts under the hood made available to the coder to muck with things, resulting in the ability to have rampant obfuscation.
Yet I just learned that you can define a property in Python where deleting an attribute can have the effect of not deleting it, and maybe even doing something completely different.
So what was the problem? Name wasn't wistful enough?
I like cheap keyboards. I have an Insignia keyboard and it’s great for me.
It’s shallow enough that there’s no need for a wrist rest. The keys don’t have a lot of travel and it’s reasonably quiet (when I don’t slam the Return key with a flourish as I finish a line).
I tried two TKL keyboards after seeing the Nth post about how they save space and it makes sense to spend money on the primary input for my job and hobbies. #keyboards#programmers