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Re: The shambolic self-taught programmer?

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On 6/17/2020 5:34 AM, Gareth Evans wrote:
> 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!
> 

That brought two memories to my mind from my first years
of professional programming just after university (1973)

#1 a programmer who had a reputation of slinging out code
     quickly that actually worked, but whose code had to then
     be taken by other programmers and made suitable for
     incorporation into the product for reasons of maintainability.

#2 a boss of mine who programmed in hex machine code because
      he thought that gave him job security

Notes on each:

#1 - this was actually a workable arrangement

#2 - one of the best days of my life was when I was able to eventually tell
        that boss I had  found another job within that company in another city

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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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