26 Nov
2007
26 Nov
'07
5:41 p.m.
On Friday 23 November 2007 22:40, M H Stein wrote:
--------------Original Messages:
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 12:58:17 -0500
From: "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: Teaching kids about computers...
On Thursday 22 November 2007 18:48, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I would tend to assume that having those libraries on hand ahead of time would
be a prerequisite to trying to do that sort of an application. I know that
when I worked on some of that stuff I spent an awful lot of time trying to
get that part right.
Good point. There is the concept of
"depth" of understanding. Many
people who regard themselves as programming professionals would be
lost without an operating system. Some would be lost without an
assembler. And, sad to say, some would be lost without some sort of
Java facility.
This reminds me of folks I used to run into back in the day that considered
themselves "programmers" -- in dbase!
For some, that's not sufficient.
Understanding how a disk drive
works or what goes on over a TCP/IP connection is essential to them.
Some of us actually enjoy that sort of thing and some just want to be able
to use the end result, or maybe tweak it a bit.
------------Reply:
Well, you've just insulted several thousand professional dBase programmers,
myself included, with your elitist snobbery. I would guess that a competent
dBase programmer would probably have the average small database program
completed and delivered in the time it would take just to lay out, code and
debug the necessary file- and screen-handling routines in most of the other
comparable languages of the day, at least until you'd built up a decent and
relevant library. Tools are developed to make a job easier and do it
better; in my opinion
taking advantage of those tools and doing things "the easy way" makes you
more professional, not less.
No argument there. My comment wasn't directed at the "professionals" you
refer to above, but to some of the folks that tended to use
the "conversational" aspects of that software to get things done. A fair
amount of it that I encountered was truly awful.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin