[nfbcs] [Fwd: Article on COBOL - Computerworld]

[Bill]

I agree with Aaron. My school did not believe in teaching us
languages. The classes we took were classes that taught us different
techniques to programming, datastructures, and algorithms. In all the
time I spent in school I only saw C and Java. When I graduated I took
a job at Los Alamos National Laboratory programming in python. I had
seen python for about 2 minutes in one of the classes I took but had
never done any programming in it. I believe myself to be a good
programmer and as Aaron said, learning the new language just takes a
few days. I have now been working with the lab for almost a year and
the rest of the team is very happy with the work I have done for them.
That being said, I have never worked with a functional language like
Scheme and if I ever come across it in life, it will probably be much
harder to learn since it has a different philosophy then the other
languages I have mentioned.
Bill

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 6:05 PM, Aaron Cannon
<cannona at fireantproductions.com> wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> First off, this response doesn't answer the question, but it does
> comment on a closely related point.
>
> I believe that far too much emphasis is placed on what programming
> language is learned by students.  While it makes sense to learn a
> language that will be useful in a career, it's much more important to
> learn how to program.  I believe that a person can have memorized the
> entire syntax of a language and even write a lot of code in that
> language but still not know how to program, or at least not know how
> to program well.
>
> Likewise, I would also submit that it is not as important what
> programming languages a person knows as long as they know how to
> program.  Once you understand the different styles of programming,
> picking up a new language is usually the work of a few long weekends
> with some fat books and writing a bunch of code.  Now, that's not to
> say that experience with a particular programming language is
> meaningless.  Quite the contrary.  However, I do think it tends to be
> quite over rated, in comparison to the skill of the programmer.
>
> Were I creating a resume, I would likely claim experience with c, PHP,
> Python, and JavaScript, with some familiarity with C++, c#,
> ActionScript, Objective C, Java, Visual Basic, and Perl.  Why?
> Because it is a nice long list that seems impressive, and because it's
> the truth.  However, It's also mostly meaningless.  If I were to hire
> a programmer, I would want to know less about what they program in and
> more about how they program.  Is there code clean and readable?  Does
> it follow best practices?  Are they using the features of the language
> properly and consistently?  Of course, it's easiest to hire someone
> who already knows the language you want to use, but a good programmer
> is a good programmer, and learning good programming is hard, while
> learning more languages is comparatively easy.
>
> My advice to students would be to pick your program of study
> carefully.  Also, don't depend on your school to make you a good
> programmer, no matter how highly rated the school is.  They should
> hopefully give you some good direction on such matters, but if you
> want to really learn to be a programmer, you'll need to do most of it
> on your own by first and foremost programming, but also by reading and
> understanding other people's code.  Getting involved in an open source
> project and fixing some bugs is a great way to do this.
>
> Avoid classes with titles like "introduction to Programming in X" in
> favor of classes like "Computer Algorithms" "Exploring Data
> Structures", "Functional Programming", "Object Oriented Programming"
> or any classes that teach you how to program in teams.  Also, classes
> on probability and statistics and databases have proven very useful in
> my career.
>
> These are just some things I have been thinking about for a while.
>
> I'll be interested to hear other people's thoughts on this.
>
> Aaron
>
> On 4/20/12, Leslie Fairall <fairall at shellworld.net> wrote:
>> Hi Tracy:
>>
>> From a rehab counselor's perspective, I didn't realize that COBOL was
>> still in demand. What training institutions still offer it?
>>
>> --
>> New Gingrich for paychecks--Barack Obama for food stamps. It's your
>> decision!
>>
>>
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-- 
Bill Casson
University of New Mexico
M.S. Computer Science
Lewis & Clark Alumnus '11
B.A. Physics and Math/Comp Sci.
(505) 695-1374
cassonw at gmail.com