Groups > alt.folklore.computers > #211981

The shambolic self-taught programmer?

From	Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups	alt.folklore.computers
Subject	The shambolic self-taught programmer?
Date	2020-06-17 11:34 +0100
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<rccrl2$5ct$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)

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Many times have I been called in when the local
"expert" is leaving a company, only to find a
complete unstructured mess created by a
self-taught programmer who had grasped the
lowest level notion of instructions executing
one after another, but had no concept of
structures, nor that the main cost of software
is not the original creation but the subsequent
maintenance phase.

Be cautious when interviewing because someone
who claims 3 years' experience may ony have
a single day's experience which they have
then repeated a further 1094 times.
(3 * 365 - 1  !!!!!)

I particularly have in mind a CORAL system
on a Perkin Elmer 8/32 where there were 94
procedures in a single file with no comments,
and no indentation and where there was a mixture
of block structures and GOTOs. This was in 1984

... and the manager complained that the
departed supremo could nail down a problem
in only a  few minutes, so why can't you?

Another case in 1988, when it was held by the
non-professional world that only schoolchildren
were programming geniuses and the son of the
owner had been tasked with producing the
company's first computerised product and had
done it all in hex machine code to be entered
manually and laboriously into the SOFTY
proprietary PROM programmer!

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The shambolic self-taught programmer? Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> - 2020-06-17 11:34 +0100
  Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> - 2020-06-17 06:48 -0500
    Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2020-06-17 21:18 +0000
      Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2020-06-17 19:32 -0400
        Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2020-06-18 14:45 +0000
          Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2020-06-18 18:01 -0400
            Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> - 2020-06-18 17:21 -0500
              Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2020-06-19 10:03 -0700
                Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2020-06-19 17:22 -0400
        Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2020-06-18 11:18 -0700
          Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2020-06-18 20:30 +0000
            Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2020-06-18 22:56 +0100
              Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Andreas Eder <a_eder_muc@web.de> - 2020-06-20 13:00 +0200
                Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2020-06-20 15:01 -0400
                Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2020-06-20 20:02 +0000
                Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2020-06-20 20:32 +0000
                Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2020-06-20 21:34 +0100
            Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2020-06-18 22:23 +0000
  Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? mentificium@gmail.com - 2020-06-17 07:21 -0700
    Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> - 2020-06-17 12:39 -0500
  Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2020-06-18 11:17 -0700
    Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> - 2020-06-18 13:39 -0500
      Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer? "Kerr-Mudd,John" <notsaying@invalid.org> - 2020-06-19 07:48 +0000

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