"Geeks" and licensing

From: Christopher Smith <csmith_at_amdocs.com>
Date: Mon Dec 17 11:56:26 2001

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Glen Goodwin [mailto:acme_ent_at_bellsouth.net]

> even familiar with. The problem with the fellow you refer to is

> 1 -- The person who hired him. That person should be
> disposed of in the
> most painful way possible.

Yep. Stupid (and/or ignorant) people in positions of power. Common, but
regrettable.

> 2 -- The institution which granted him a degree (if any).

See my comment regarding #1. It applies here too. :)

> I've also had to work alongside people who managed to scrape
> their way into
> a "programming" job without having "what it takes" to really
> write code
> *and* solve problems. Don't get me wrong -- I have no degree
> and don't
> think one's required to be a competent analyst/programmer/whatever.

My opinion too. In fact, I haven't got a degree yet, myself. I do plan on
eventually getting one, but it seems to me that most of the first three
years of any degree program (even some two-year degrees ;) are filler, and
there's only about a year (or less) of actual learning in there. I expect
the amount of actual learning you'd have to do will also decrease with
field-experience, so I'm not in a big hurry to acquire a sheet of paper.

I do believe that at least some parts of any degree program could teach me
something, though. The only question is whether it's something I wouldn't
learn on my own. I do happen to be more pro-active about learning than most
people.

> But . . .

> Should programmers be licensed? Sure makes me wonder . . .

Depending on the license it may not be a bad idea ;)

Really, though, I think that programmers shouldn't need to be licensed.
Maybe managers should be licensed instead?

Back to the problem with the programmer, though, I see this particular thing
too much. There's an intense lack of fundamental understanding in most
people who work with computers, and it really disgusts me. To use this as a
specific example, this guy knew how to write some (really convoluted) stuff
that the c++ compiler would accept, but had no real understanding of how or
why any of it worked (or not.. ;)

I'm not saying that to get an entry level job in the field you should need
to know the machine architecture like the back of your hand, but you should
at least know the basics and be willing to learn the rest.

Regards,

Chris


Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL

/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
 
Received on Mon Dec 17 2001 - 11:56:26 GMT