Why Programming Still Stinks

Andrew Leonard writes "Scott Rosenberg has a column on Salon today about a conference held in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the publishing of 'Programmers at Work.' Among the panelists saying interesting things about the state of programing today are Andy Hertzfeld, Charles Simonyi, Jaron Lanier, and Jef Raskin."

Want to read the whole article?

[stephanruby]

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No thanks. The first two paragraphs didn't make me want to read anymore. I'll wait for the comments of the slashdoters to appear.

Why registration sucks.

[GoofyBoy]

In response to a Salon article on the state of programming today, GoofyBoy posted a witty and insightful comment. Its sparked a large thread of apologists and public outrage from a wide range of slashdot readers and trolls.

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Hmmm, there's an interesting duo...

[The Spie]

If they did this as a round table, I would have been sad to have missed it. You just know that at some point in the discussion, Raskin and Hertzfeld would have gotten into a fistfight over who the real father of the Mac was. "Two geeks enter, one geek leaves..."

Re:This is why I hate slashdot

[anthonyrcalgary]

Are you seriously suggesting that anyone would read the article anyway? No, this is the time to broadcast one's opinions in a fashion loosely connected with what we think the article might be about.

my threads keep dying, y0!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm writting a Perl program in windoze. Using Perl cause that at least makes the job bearable (fuck Java and the assholes who invented it). But since this is 'doze, i gotta use mofukin threads instead of fork! What a fuckin sham. Anyway, I'm asking alll u Perl elite muthafuckaz out there how can a brotha tell if his damn modules are thread-safe or not? And don't tell me to read the muthafukin manual, cause it only sez that if the module doesn't say "y0 i do threads" then it's not safe. WTF? That tells me jack shit is what. It doesn't tell me how to really find out WTF is going on behind the scenes. Someone's gotta know the dealie, y0!

Re:why does programming stinks today, an opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

"They were the most filthy, disgusting bunch I have ever seen and were dressed more like gas station attendants than professionals."

You say that now but wait until they crawl out of their underground tunnels at nightfall and eat you.

Re:This is why I hate slashdot

[the_mad_poster]

Or, to summarize your summary:

Same ol', same ol'.

Re:This is why I hate slashdot

[starm_]

lol good sig!... or is it bad sig?

Re: Hmmm, there's an interesting duo...

[Black Parrot]

> If they did this as a round table, I would have been sad to have missed it.

Yeah, I wanted to see them work out who got which fork.

Re:The silver bullet already exists

[eclectro]

The silver bullet of programming already exists. Link. [python.org]

For a minute there I thought you meant this silver bullet [alabev.com]

I know that I am a much better programmer after a couple of "silver bullets".

Programming = Art

[HarveyBirdman]

Oh it *is* an art.

Sadly it's the type of art where they paint with feces.

Re:This is why I hate slashdot ---- FCC FINE

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you please refrain from using Foul Language on this site.

If you continue I will file a complaint with the FCC and have you fined.

Free speech in a public forum should be free of anything that may be offensive. Since /. has no age verification your comment post has surely caused damage to many young children who's lives will be forever ruined.

Re:This is why I hate slashdot

[pizza_milkshake]

As a anarcho-capitalist,

I told you, we're an anarcho-syndicist commune, taking turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.

Re:This is why I hate slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because there are in fact several persons posting around here, with differing opinions. Didn't you know?

Re:Hungarian Notation

[fforw]

The linked page didn't mention that Charles Simonyi is the Hungarian for whom the term, Hungarian Notation is named.

my first thought was :
why should I listen to what m_plzstrSimonyi has to say about programming?

Why programmers still stink?

[varj]

Lack of soap!

Why Programming Still Stinks?

[Pan T. Hose]

Because Programmers Don't Shower?

Re:This is why I hate slashdot

[gorre]

This is some serious copyright infringement, man. Ripping an article verbatim and posting it on another site.

Don't worry this is /. nobody is actually going to read it.

Re:Hungarian Notation

[humblecoder]

This has got to be the perfect troll!!

This post immediately leads to an (off-topic) flame war about the relative merits (and lack thereof) of said notation, AND at the same time it gets modded up to 5!

I bow down before your superior posting skills...

You forgot Gates dumster diving for source code!

[BroncoInCalifornia]

Gates went on to say that young programmers don't need computer science degrees: "The best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems."

This image of Gates liberating source code print outs from dumpsters made the whole artlicle worth reading.