Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!wugate!uunet!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Non-professional programmers (was: Which language to teach first?)
Message-ID: <5942@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 31 Aug 89 19:39:20 GMT
References: <13573@megaron.arizona.edu>
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 44

The following is a straw man. I'll get back to that later.

In article <13573@megaron.arizona.edu>, gudeman@arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
> As far as formal education, I hate to sound "arrogant", but I've seen
> the work of some people who had lots of experience in programming with
> little formal education.  It wasn't pretty.

Turnabout is fair play. I've had the project I was working on killed because
it was put at the mercy of a "software engineer" with more degrees than
a circle. This gentleman was so sure he was better equipped to do the job
that he dumped two months of my work and spent the next six months trying
to reproduce it using his formal tools. We ended up missing a real deadline.
The project dropped dead.

> But to be honest -- I've not always been impressed with the
> quality of work done by "trained professionals".

Precisely.

Back to my first comment. This is a straw man because I'm not suggesting
that we abandon formal training. I'm making the claim that it is appropriate
for a non-CS major to take CS courses. Real CS courses, not just 4GLs and
Hypercard.

> Just as engineers are not required to learn (much)
> meta-mathematics, they should not be required to learn about memory
> organization, registers, and machine instructions.

I disagree with both sides of this statement. Software engineers should
have some good fundamental mathematics, and anyone who writes any kind of
software should spend some time working close to the silicon.

> If a program is so
> time critical that it has to be written in a low-level language like
> FORTRAN, C, or Ada, then it should probably be written by a
> professional.

There are other reasons for coding in a low level language. Sometimes
that's all you've got.
-- 
Peter da Silva, *NIX support guy @ Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Biz: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Fun: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-'
                                                                           'U`
"How many humans does it take to change a light bulb?"