For my fellow geeks...

[GTAVercetti 0]

I sure hope Java is a lot better than when I learned it. Of course, that was around they time they came out with Swing classes for it but it was damn slow.

I did like writing it though.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[champu 1]

I learned (in order)

basic, asm, pascal, html/javascript, c++, java, php/mysql, VB, VHDL, matlab, more asm, openGL, x-midas

not all really languages, but I think the progression is pretty interesting. (I'm not even a CS major )

[happythoughts 0]

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1984 The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a mouse. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. (John Dvorak)

Context. In 1984, most people didn't need one.

Also, most people were using computers for business functions. Clerks doing data entry could type fast and hated (still hate) taking their fingers off the keyboard. The mouse makes a fast typist slower.

[happythoughts 0]

I started out doing Assembler. It runs fast, but it is tedious to write and impossible to modify/debug.

I know FORTRAN. The big number crunchers like super-computers use it to do spy-stuff like prime number codes, atmospheric weather models, and nuclear weapons modeling. FORmula TRANslation.

COBOL is worlds easier than Assembler. However, it is part of an environment. There are zillions of report-generators and query languages to do piddly stuff like add 1+1. Remember, SQL is platform transparent.

A lot of mainframe systems use COBOL, some are starting to use JAVA for the new stuff. The main difference that I see is in online-interface development.

The mainframe online interface tool takes a year to learn, 3 years to be good, and tough to develop/deliver in a timely fashion. It is not cost-effective to develop using that tool.

A lot of systems are using stored procedures to pass data to Websphere and use JAVA as the front end. Many companies are converting to .NET products to cut system development time for the online interface. An excellent idea.

COBOL in batch still rules.

When you get to doing the actual code, line per line, functions aren't that much more verbose in any language. I know bunches of languages and operating systems that don't even exist anymore. Jacquard Super-Basic anyone? 1978 DataPro Magazine cover.

I've supported systems with 900 batch programs and 150 online programs. I hate cryptic code at 3am.

We tried C, it sucked the sweat off huge donkey balls. Projects with 300 coders went under. It was worse to debug than Assembler ever was. All the C coders were kids who thought "90% right means I get an A". Good in college and hobbies, bad in muli-billion dollar business. The memory leaks were nightmares.

C# and JAVA get past the general C language problems.

The basic reason that I select a language preference is the type of system that I am developing. I can always hire an expert to do it the best way.

(edited for readability)

[bob.dino 0]

Java's primary use is not in GUI-intensive work; it's in writing server systems for business. Servers have to stay up for months on end without crashing, and the extra cost of the hardware to support the VM model is easily worth the lack of downtime.

There's also the fact that it's far faster to develop in Java than in C/C++. Mainly 'coz you've fewer technology-related gubbins to think about and can concentrate more on the actual business logic needed. In fast-moving industries, the extra time overhead of writing C/C++ could mean the difference between making billions and closing the division.

Thirdly, there's a lot more people able to write competent Java than there is able to write competent C++. Writing large systems in C++ is hard. The people that can do it are hard to find and expensive to hire. Especially if you need them to understand your business.

The last place I worked, downtime could cost millions of euro/dollars an hour and we had to work on a three month release cycle. No-one knew what our business would look like in twelve months time, so adaptability was paramount. Java worked for lots of things, but we had plenty of C and C++ for the maths-heavy processing.

Everything in its place . Anyway, gotta go (it's Friday afternoon here!).

[CrazyIvan 0]

Yup, on my "C" days I used to get frustrated often for those exact reasons "debugging" time, I mean, sometimes it took me 1 week to write an app but a month to debug it

VB was slow as molasses (at least version 4), piece of crap (I believe still is)

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[GTAVercetti 0]

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Yup, on my "C" days I used to get frustrated often for those exact reasons "debugging" time, I mean, sometimes it took me 1 week to write an app but a month to debug it

VB was slow as molasses (at least version 4), piece of crap (I believe still is)

VB IS pretty slow. That is all I programmed in when I first got to this job. Not only is it slow, but when it is coupled with Access, the amount of database bloat is astounding. I mean a 2 MB database bloats to 15 MBs within a day of use no problem.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[CrazyIvan 0]

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VB IS pretty slow. That is all I programmed in when I first got to this job. Not only is it slow, but when it is coupled with Access, the amount of database bloat is astounding. I mean a 2 MB database bloats to 15 MBs within a day of use no problem.

Oh man!!!, that brings me memories when I used to work for an ISP, I developed an app to manage/control user's accounts (VB+Access) it was indeed SLOW and choked every 20 minutes. C++ was too damn complicated, so the code stayed in VB

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[flyingferret 0]

Good assessment. Be that as it may, I know more programmers writing .net than anything else, followed by php and c, then maybe Java. In relation to online develop, all the complaints I have heard indicated the server side java is way more intensive than php. And for anything short of large stuff, php works fine.
Your comments on c coders doing 90% are kind of funny, having been there, and have gotten no guidance from profs. Maybe we should be taught by people with experience, novel idea, I know. In reality, in any language school is a pretty trivial experience. I guess perhaps Java just makes it hard to eat up memory when you don't have experience.

--
All the flaming and trolls of wreck dot with a pretty GUI.

[AggieDave 6]

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Your comments on c coders doing 90% are kind of funny, having been there, and have gotten no guidance from profs. Maybe we should be taught by people with experience, novel idea, I know. In reality, in any language school is a pretty trivial experience.

You would have liked one of my prof's at A&M. Pete Peterson (that's his real name), he worked "in the trenches" for close to 20 years before "retiring" and teaching for fun. He taught every level of C based classes at A&M, talk about really learning from a master. If he wasn't so tall and fat and white with normal grammer and accent, I would have sworn he was C's Yoda.

"Programming in C: Its your jeep, do what you want, but remember, it WILL do what you program, including driving off a cliff, bursting into flames or not starting..."

I will remember that quote for a LONG time, he used that quote a lot.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[CrazyIvan 0]

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"Programming in C: Its your jeep, do what you want, but remember, it WILL do what you program, including driving off a cliff, bursting into flames or not starting..."

So true

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[flyingferret 0]

Ha! Very true. I had a prof like that. Named John Gurke. Great guy! Private pilot, HAM operator. Had worked for in the oil industry then TI for years. Started as a maht major, before CS existed. He ALWAYS wore khakis and cowboy boots, and his hair looked like it had been up all night coding or he flew in without a canopy cover.
He knew his shit! He used to write stuff on the board, and then half way through say "What the hell am I doing" and rewrite. He could care less about testing, or the book. He would sit and discuss for hours, and if you failed the test, he would let you retake a similar, until you learned the point of the exercise. This was the man that taught me Turbo Pascal and C.

Funny enough, it was in my two years Grayson County College on all expenses $600 scholarship. After two years, I went to a 4 year 'university' and never saw that caliber prof EVER again.

--
All the flaming and trolls of wreck dot with a pretty GUI.

[GTAVercetti 0]

Quote

You would have liked one of my prof's at A&M. Pete Peterson (that's his real name), he worked "in the trenches" for close to 20 years before "retiring" and teaching for fun. He taught every level of C based classes at A&M, talk about really learning from a master. If he wasn't so tall and fat and white with normal grammer and accent, I would have sworn he was C's Yoda.

"Programming in C: Its your jeep, do what you want, but remember, it WILL do what you program, including driving off a cliff, bursting into flames or not starting..."

I will remember that quote for a LONG time, he used that quote a lot.

My favorite prof was one of my math teacher but I digress.

The best teacher I had was not an industry guy, but was this super anal retentive bastard who taught OOP and C++. You code had to be well formatted and commented properly or else. He would take off one point for every place where there was no indentation where he wanted it.

Now, you may say, "that sucks ass" and you would be right. I hated him. But thanks to him, my code is readable and easy to understand today.

In opposition, our prof who was from the industry was a genius, but she could not teach to save her life. Funny, she is now the head of the CS department

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

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He knew his shit! He used to write stuff on the board, and then half way through say "What the hell am I doing" and rewrite. He could care less about testing, or the book. He would sit and discuss for hours, and if you failed the test, he would let you retake a similar, until you learned the point of the exercise. This was the man that taught me Turbo Pascal and C.

See, that is why I like the school I work for....our .Net instructors are both full time .Net developers with over 10 years application development experience and one of them has a Masters in Education. The same goes for our Java instructor and networking guys (we even employ a CCIE as an instructor - I start taking a CCNA class with him next week). Our Project Management class is taught by a PMP with his CISSP and soon his CISA. It's easier to teach experienced programers a newer language when you have someone that can build that bridge between the book and the real world. (A PMP cert may be in my future)

I just found out this week that some of the Colleges in the area STILL teach COBOL and other unneccessary skill sets.

It's interesting to see the jobs coming across my desk these days - pretty much split down the middle on Java/EJB and .Net. I don't see as many demands for C, but a lot of them are asking for previous work with C++ and VB (to show experience with OOP).

Those RPG programmers? Well, they wanted .Net because the common opinion in the manufacturing world is to slowly transition those AS/400s into a MS environment.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[billvon 2,434]

I just finished reading a 12 year old book about "homesteading on the virtual frontier" - the term they gave the various nets (BBS, Arpanet, USENET etc) around 1993 or so. One funny quote was from a BBSer from The Well (famous BBS) who predicted that "Albert Gore's Internet" would never amount to much because of all the government scrutiny it was under. Of course, there was likely some jealousy involved there, since the Internet was seen as competition for locally operated do-everything BBSes like The Well.

I find it funny to read books about how the Internet was brand new in 1993. I was hitting on women via email in 1983. I remember one day in 1985 we were sitting around, contemplating sending an email to INTERNIC to reserve names like "www.business.com" "www.travel.com" etc - you could do it for $100 a pop. Of course we never followed up on it - there was always hockey to play or beer to drink.

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

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Of course, there was likely some jealousy involved there, since the Internet was seen as competition for locally operated do-everything BBSes like The Well.

I remember how big of a deal it was when one of the local BBSes gave access to the web to it's paying members....HUGE uproar. Then AOL came along a couple quick years later and put most of them out of biz.

It all comes around in this industry...now AOL is trying to figure out what it's next step is since Dial Up is passe. This summer they are going to relaunch AOL.com to try to compete with Yahoo. Earthlink is entering into the wireless cell phone world (that is a venture that could be interesting - using minutes away from home and using WiFi at home without using minutes)

Quote

contemplating sending an email to INTERNIC to reserve names like "www.business.com" "www.travel.com" etc - you could do it for $100 a pop. Of course we never followed up on it - there was always hockey to play or beer to drink.

Wow, you could have retired over 15 years ago if you had done that.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[happythoughts 0]

I agree that there are enough people out there that know COBOL and learning it is not the best use of a persons time.

There used to be an industry statistic that said "80% of software budgets are spent on maintenance coding". Once implemented, software should be easy to maintain and debug if necessary. Obscurity is expensive. Languages that are cool to bit-bender geeks are not necessarily practical to do a lot of development in.

I have also seen a balance between JAVA and .NET for job openings.