Comments on: Who did Kill the Software Engineer? http://blog.wolffmyren.com/2008/01/21/who-did-kill-the-software-engineer/ Technology, Photography, Rants & Raves Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:03:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: willwm http://blog.wolffmyren.com/2008/01/21/who-did-kill-the-software-engineer/#comment-3 willwm Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:50:46 +0000 http://willwm.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/who-did-kill-the-software-engineer/#comment-3 Good point, and thanks for commenting! I started my Computer Science program at a school which teaches its program in Java (and C, for the "basics"), and transferred to a school which teaches its program in C++. I can see advantages to both, but as a Software Engineer myself, I found many more direct employment advantages from my knowledge of Java. The company I work for creates all of its software for the .NET platform, and we use C# to code our applications. Personally, I find that working with a managed platform such as .NET (or the JRE) makes development much quicker and easier (as well as easier to maintain). I think all of the engineers on my staff can agree that we enjoy leaving the "old-school" issues such as memory management and garbage cleanup to the runtime environment so we can focus on getting better code out the door more quickly. One of our developers spent most of his career working with languages such as C++ and, to your point, did spend a lot of time initially working with the "lower-level" aspects before he got accustomed to letting the platform "do its thing" and since then has become much more productive (though, that's not to slight him at all, he's a damn good programmer, and very thorough at that -maybe too thorough, unlike us managed code babies). However, I also see the point in the article of starting out with a "harder" language, as the transfer for me from a language such as Java to one such as C++ has been *extremely* difficult for me. Especially when confronted with issues like you mentioned like oversized array fields. (What? We *can't* use String objects for our class? We have to allocate the memory in our code with a character array? Damn!) My opinion, seeing both sides of the matter, would be to teach both. But, who knows, maybe if I'd started with C++, I would have gotten too frustrated initially to keep going in the program. And, you're right, both (all) kinds of geeks are good. =) Good point, and thanks for commenting!

I started my Computer Science program at a school which teaches its program in Java (and C, for the “basics”), and transferred to a school which teaches its program in C++. I can see advantages to both, but as a Software Engineer myself, I found many more direct employment advantages from my knowledge of Java.

The company I work for creates all of its software for the .NET platform, and we use C# to code our applications. Personally, I find that working with a managed platform such as .NET (or the JRE) makes development much quicker and easier (as well as easier to maintain). I think all of the engineers on my staff can agree that we enjoy leaving the “old-school” issues such as memory management and garbage cleanup to the runtime environment so we can focus on getting better code out the door more quickly.

One of our developers spent most of his career working with languages such as C++ and, to your point, did spend a lot of time initially working with the “lower-level” aspects before he got accustomed to letting the platform “do its thing” and since then has become much more productive (though, that’s not to slight him at all, he’s a damn good programmer, and very thorough at that -maybe too thorough, unlike us managed code babies).

However, I also see the point in the article of starting out with a “harder” language, as the transfer for me from a language such as Java to one such as C++ has been *extremely* difficult for me. Especially when confronted with issues like you mentioned like oversized array fields. (What? We *can’t* use String objects for our class? We have to allocate the memory in our code with a character array? Damn!)

My opinion, seeing both sides of the matter, would be to teach both. But, who knows, maybe if I’d started with C++, I would have gotten too frustrated initially to keep going in the program.

And, you’re right, both (all) kinds of geeks are good. =)

]]> By: brian http://blog.wolffmyren.com/2008/01/21/who-did-kill-the-software-engineer/#comment-2 brian Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:34:56 +0000 http://willwm.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/who-did-kill-the-software-engineer/#comment-2 Yes, the article makes some valid points. BUT, it also misses a few important things. For one, I work in the electronics field, as a Sr Programmer/Analyst, and purposefully avoid hiring the kind of "old-school" programmers that Dr. Dewar boosts as being so great. Why? Because these kind of guys miss the forest for the trees. They get so hung up on all the low-level issues that they can be some of the most unproductive guys in a dept. For instance, they'll spend hours getting hung up on oversized array fields, that they miss the point that our program is only using up 10% of the memory that were allocated. The point I'm trying to make is this.... Both kinds of geeks are good. Yes, the article makes some valid points. BUT, it also misses a few important things. For one, I work in the electronics field, as a Sr Programmer/Analyst, and purposefully avoid hiring the kind of “old-school” programmers that Dr. Dewar boosts as being so great. Why? Because these kind of guys miss the forest for the trees. They get so hung up on all the low-level issues that they can be some of the most unproductive guys in a dept. For instance, they’ll spend hours getting hung up on oversized array fields, that they miss the point that our program is only using up 10% of the memory that were allocated.

The point I’m trying to make is this…. Both kinds of geeks are good.

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