When coding was a skill

[leeperry]

Remember? Compilng, linking, checking for memory leaks? Good mans coding. Those with this background can code, and appreciate how much things have been dumbed down. These are the chaps that would know to use a short instead of an int. Now any dimbo can churn out script and class themselves a programmer. Only today someone at work said that IT jobs were becoming more akin to being a hairdresser or mechanic.

It's not the tools though, You can write good script and bad C (and I've seen some bad C )

I'll quite happily use VBA or whatever tool fits the job.

[suityou01]

i think dp is trying to obfuscate the thread.

I wonder how short he actually is.

[swamp]

Java programs written by old C and C++ developers is always a pile of mince, they are always setting objects to null thinking they can somehow control the memory management.

I've seen this too.

There is a lot of myth and misunderstanding around the Java Virtual Machine (and many other VMs). I got asked in an interview recently to explain the danger of circular references in Java. I explained there was no danger because the VM would easily detect them. The interviewer went a bit quiet after that.

[BrilloPad]

It was far better when you had to use punch cards for everything.....

[minestrone]

I've seen this too.

There is a lot of myth and misunderstanding around the Java Virtual Machine (and many other VMs). I got asked in an interview recently to explain the danger of circular references in Java. I explained there was no danger because the VM would easily detect them. The interviewer went a bit quiet after that.

Worked on a totally crap trading system for a while where at the end of every method they would set every object to null and the comment was // hint to GC, at various places they would try and call the GC. I could have shot the fecker who wrote it, I was tempted to write a critique of his crappy code and send it to him but he had been made a VP so I would have been walked out the office. Too many people still think the VM works like it did in version 1.1, totally ignorant of hotspot.

[worzelGummidge]

I remember writing programs which had a week, yes one week turn around for the results. You made sure that you error checked then!

[lukemg]

Happening in all areas, there is a financial incentive for code to be generated quicker and cheaper. This creates demand and the supply follows. You only have to look at support to see how this has had every possible complication removed to turn it into a basic box-shifting job.
Coding can be outsourced, hardware is cheap and can be chucked at the problem and automation is biting chunks out of the skills required.
Plan B needed I fear...

[NotAllThere]

A good developer is still 10X more productive than a poor one.

50x

I used to write Clipper code does that count?

I wrote some libraries in Modula-2 to interface with dBase, so that I could rewrite the clipper code from something that took a few hours, to something that produced the same results in a few minutes.

A recent comment on a forum that I moderate, with many contributers from the outsourcing community. "Just cut and paste the code you need, changing that one line to have the new value. Putting it into a subroutine is just cosmetic."