Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (
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"Stephen Howe" <sjhoweATdialDOTpipexDOTcom> wrote in message
news:41feeb31$0$301$cc9e4d1f@news.dial.pipex.com...
> >> Do you think programmers (and the quality of their work) have changed
> >> significantly since 1997? ....Newsflash: They haven't.
> >
> > Of course they have. Professional programmers are always improving their
> > skills.
> >
> > It's the amateurs that never change. That's why the quality of their
work
> > never improves.
>
> Sorry, I have been a Professional programmer since 1985, 20 years, and I
> profoundly disagree with you.
> I have been in 6 companies as a permanent programmer and about 4 companies
> as a contract programmer, possibly more.
> Only in 1 of those companies was the standard of programming higher than
> mine, all the rest were worse.
Then, either you are someone with higher standards, or they are career
amaturers, or both.
> Most of the programmers I have come across have
> - little knowledge of algorithms : they certainly could not implement
> mergesort, quicksort, heapsort
> - little knowledge of datastructures : they certainly could not
> implement red-black trees, hash functions, AVL trees, linked-lists
> - most have read very few books : They could not tell you about
> algorithm complexities, big-O notation.
> - the C programmers have little knowledge about the ISO C standard of
> 1990 and 1999, or writing ISO C standard code
> - the C++ programmers have little knowledge about the ISO C++ standard
> of 1998, or writing ISO C++ standard code
> - they would not be able to tell you about design-by-contract,
patterns.
I agree - which is why the number of true professionals outnumber the career
amateurs by about 10-to-1 (my guess).
By profession, I'm a marketing consultant with a background in software and
hardware design. One of the things I do is walk into a company and evaluate
their technical team. You'd be suprised how many times I find a managment
team that doesn't understand what the technical team is doing. Lots of time,
the carrer amateurs are very good at keeping management on the defensive
(using slow speak, using jargon when inappropriate, etc) - which keeps
management from understanding the scope of the problem.
>
> I personally find that very depressing. I take programming _VERY_
seriously.
> And I don't think I know enough or am good enough.
> And living in the London, UK; I don't think my experience is
> unrepresentative in the UK.
> About 1 week ago, I had a word with one of our directors about improving
the
> quality of our programming.
> He was in total agreement with me on the poor quality.
I totally agree. However, I've found that many UK programmers working in the
USA are better than US programmers.
>
> And you know DOOM? The original?
> Behind the scenes, it was the Watcom compiler that was used for that and
> DOS4GW Professional, the Tenberry Dos-Extender.
> And I used to do support for 8 years for Sybase as part of TeamSybase,
> supporting Watcom C/C++.
> (Try my name in Google Groups with Watcom as confirmation - that does not
> even list all the messages I answered on Sybase news server or Compuserve
> before that)
> And I must have answered over 10000 questions over those years and I can
> tell you that I found _very_ few competent programmers.
I agree with you. And yeah, your history looks very good.
Do you live in the U.S.?
>
> Where things have improved over the years is the tools and libraries. It
is
> not the programmers that have improved but their tools.
> For example, C++ took on board type-safe linking and that fixed many bugs,
> very difficult to find, in projects that were 250,000+ lines of source
code
> (see Design-and-Evolution of C++ by Stroustrup)
> without a lot of effort by the programmer.
I totally agree. HOWEVER, the improvement in tools and libraries is a
double-edged sword. Programmers think they can write sloppier code because
the libraries will make it easier for them. That's like thinking you're
safer in the snow because you're driving an SUV. It's somehat true, but also
somewhat dangerous.
>
> >> > I ran the DirectX diagnostics and it passes the first Direct3D test,
> >> > and
> >> > fails the second.
> >>
> >> Well, gee..... Do you think that might have something to do with
> >> it.....?
> >
> > Duh - YES! According to the Microsoft support database, it means my card
> > doesn't fully support Direct3D.
>
> Surely that just means the Microsoft certified drivers does not fully
> support Direct3D?
> But I have found that the latest drivers from the card munufacturers are
> usually a few steps ahead of Microsoft.
> It is ATI's own drivers for Win98 that you want, not Microsofts.
>
> >> And that's fine, as long as you understand that some things are not
going
> >> to work for you using that approach.
> >
> > EVERYTHING works for me using this approach.
>
> No. EVERYTHING you have tried so far works with this approach.
> That is NOT a guarantee that future software you wish to run will work.
That
> is not scientific conclusion.
> You may want to run some tried-and-very-well-tested, all-bugs-fixed
> non-games software.
> If it fails to run on your Win98 system because of the driver components,
> you are in a quandary.
> Of course it may never happen. But it may.
Well, the purpose of my desktop is simply utility. It's networked to my
laptop, where I do most of my real work and email. My desktop is used for
text notes, ftp, FrontPage, and Dreamweaver managenet, keeping open some
reference PDFs and MS Office files for reference while working on my
laptop. Lastly, it's so I can test some websites & online utilities from a
different browser & IP address (I've got some management websites that are
designed to prevent duplicate logins).
The chief purpose of my desktop is to increase my work efficiency. Games are
a luxury. Doom & solitaitaire are the only games I play. I say this because
years ago I wasted six months of my life playing computer games almost every
moment. I've also had client companies where employees are addicted to
computer games on company time. Oddly enough, these are usually upper
management people who's often bullying some low-level IT guy to "make this
game work". It's difficult dealing with these cases because computer
addictions is now treated by some as a disease:
http://www.computeraddiction.com/
When I write that "EVERYTHING works for me using this approach", I mean that
the computer is 100% in performing all the utility functions it needs to
perform, and I see no need to add new programs. Clearly, jDOOM would have
taken me "off the wagon". I'm trying to spend less time on the computer.
Not upgrading my desktop utility computer for games (and that even includes
drivers) is my way of keeping me safe.
>
> Wish you well Victor
>
> Cheers
>
> Stephen Howe
Thanks, Stephen!
William
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