Ad Exec: Learn To Code Or You're Dead To Me 339
theodp writes "In a widely-read WSJ Op-Ed, English major Kirk McDonald, president of online ad optimization service PubMatic, informed college grads that he considers them unemployable unless they can claim familiarity with at least two programming languages. 'Teach yourself just enough of the grammar and the logic of computer languages to be able to see the big picture,' McDonald advises. 'Get acquainted with APIs. Dabble in a bit of Python. For most employers, that would be more than enough.' Over at Typical Programmer, Greg Jorgensen is not impressed. 'I have some complaints about this "everyone must code" movement,' Jorgensen writes, 'and Mr. McDonald's article gives me a starting point because he touched on so many of them.'"
O'rly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Guy who owns a technical company tells people they're no good to him if they can't be technical.
News at 11.
Re:O'rly? (Score:5, Informative)
Who in the hell wants to listen to an "English major" who runs an online ad service? This guy should be drawn and quartered, not quoted.
Re:O'rly? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:O'rly? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:O'rly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Job creep. This is the kind of who wants people to be able to do much more than their normal job descriptions.
You want to be a graphic artist and create artwork for our ads? That's great! If you can't mark them up in HTML & Javascript, and code the PHP/PERL/Python backend, then GTFO!
You get what you pay for, asshat. If you hire "amateur" or non-programmers to do your programming then enjoy the fruits of your laborers.
Re:O'rly? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want only graphics artists who can program, prepare to have some really shitty artwork.
If you only hire graphic artists that don't have a clue about programming then they will waste a lot of time manually performing tasks that could be easily automated. I once had a GA spend two weeks resizing and changing the background color of several hundred images. I could have written a script to do that in a few minutes, and it could have run in a few seconds. Even if he couldn't write the code himself, if he had a few clues about programming, he would have at least have had the sense to ask for help rather than wasting two weeks.
That was just once incident, but I have seen many like it. In the modern world, nearly everyone should have a basic mental model of how computers work and what they are capable of. They don't need to be coders, but they should have a basic understanding of what coders do.
Re:O'rly? (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you think you can just write a custom program in 10 minutes that will do that for Photoshop files with dozens of layers and effects, you're the deluded one.
Re:O'rly? (Score:5, Informative)
You know that Photoshop has an API for javascript, VB, and Applescript?
I used to do exactly that sort of thing for a product photographer. And it didn't usually take 10 minutes, unless you include the time to execute.
I currently do the same for Indesign documents with linked Photoshop artwork. The Indesign part is worse, actually. Makes dealing with effects and layers seem simple.
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"Go away, or I will replace you with a tiny shell script."
Much of the "nonprogrammer" work in business is a massive waste of time, transferring information from document A to document B, which *if you think like a programmer*, you'll be looking for a tool to replace. If you don't program, grinding it out by hand seems the natural thing to do.
Re:O'rly? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:O'rly? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want only graphics artists who can program, prepare to have some really shitty artwork. Any artist worth shit is not going to be a programmer because they'll have spent that time honing their artistic skills instead of wasting it on learning how to code.
There is a middle ground, you know.
Nobody would expect an expert chemist to be an expert statistician. They are different jobs requiring different skill sets. But would you hire a chemist who had no understanding of statistics whatsoever?
We are already at the point where pretty much every professional job requires at least some number literacy, and some knowledge of project management, and any number of other things to a not-especially-onerous level of competence. Any artist "worth shit" knows how to create art, but they also know how to manage their time, and how to manage colleagues and clients (and possibly underlings), and how to manage a budget (even if it's only a modest budget). An artist without these ancillary skills, or a lack of willingness to acquire them, is useless.
We are getting to the point where for some professions, code literacy is another one of these required ancillary skills.
Re:O'rly? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:O'rly? (Score:4, Interesting)
Moronic (Score:5, Insightful)
There are thousands of occupations with no need for programming skills. Ah, how about nursing, for instance. This is just an ad salesman trying to give off the impression of being relevant in this day and age. He's an ad salesman. An idiot.
Re:Moronic (Score:5, Funny)
There are thousands of occupations with no need for programming skills. Ah, how about nursing, for instance. This is just an ad salesman trying to give off the impression of being relevant in this day and age. He's an ad salesman. An idiot.
I agree!
I'm a technical recruiter and I can tell you that we need people who can program in askee! Really! Why the other day, I demanded an askee file from a candidate and he sent me a file with a ".txt" extension!
Really?
Are people that stupid?
I asked again, and he sent me a file with an extension of ".asc"!
Come on!
We just can't find qualified technology people!
Finally, this brilliant kid from Deli sent me a ".askee" file.
Finally!
We hired him to program SeeKwell in C+#.
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I laughed at the "C+#" part.
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SeekWell wouldn't be a half bad name for a language used to access databases.
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Lets say that you are a nurse. Part of your job is to move (one by one) all patients from the hospital database into dead or cured folders, depending on which flag they have on the database.
a) You don't know anything about programming, so you spend an hour every day doing this task.
b) You know a little about programming and you ask from yourself: I wonder could the computer do this task for me.
I'm a programmer and I see the world in a very different way than everyone else. When ever I see people at work, do
Re:Moronic (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and if you programmers were half as smart as you think you are, you'd notice that if all employees were to stop and model every little repeatable task on their computers, you'd have lots of employees stopping and modelling all the time. You'd have dozens of different models and no standard for how things should be done. One employee calls in sick, and there's no one to replace her because everyone does the job slightly differently and the whole place is in total chaos. How about leaving the programming to one person who's really good at it, or a small team, and just have the rest of the workforce report their problems to them.
I swear, if you programmers were a little less infatuated with your skill set, and a bit more attentive to how your products actually work, software wouldn't suck nearly as much.
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b) You know a little about programming and you ask from yourself: I wonder could the computer do this task for me.
And then you buy yourself a huge lawsuit because the person doing programming as a hobby has no idea about how to handle HIPAA regulations in coding, how to handle concurrency when talking to the database, or much about security and opens a nice security hole.
Now orders are messed up, people have died because they didn't get medication because their data was screwed up, and the hospital is facin
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I think the real answer is:
c) teach non-programmers to view the world like that so that they can recognize these situations, submit an intelligently written ticket that actually explains the problem, and have the presence of mind to mention possible exceptions (transferred to a different hospital, etc) when talking about the possible solution.
I don't think medical facilities are really willing to pay nurses to write and debug code or scripts. Even if they didn't already cost more per hour than IT, they wo
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Well, to be fair, if you're a programmer, then you should know how to program and if you're asking programmers to program something for you, then you really ought to have at least some familiarity with the process. Makes it a lot easier to negotiate the features and get work done smoothly.
For pretty much everybody else, don't waste your time and energy unless programming is of genuine interest to you.
Fair's fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
But when you come by looking to sell ads for our hospital, you need to demonstrate knowledge of least a couple of basic surgical procedures. Someone who doesn't understand surgery shouldn't be making ads for us. You don't need to be able to fix an aortic dissection on your own, but you should at least know what instruments to use, and the overall procedure.
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But when you come by looking to sell ads for our hospital, you need to demonstrate knowledge of least a couple of basic surgical procedures. Someone who doesn't understand surgery shouldn't be making ads for us.
Why on earth not? What sort of ad for a hospital is going to have any technical content whatsoever?
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Yep, adguy is a bit moronic. However, nurses do need technical skills. I have a friend who is a nurse. She is also a manager of a department of 100 nurses. They have to train the older nurses how to use email, spreadsheets, etc. because a lot of the data is automated/online.
My friend had to extract data from a database to make a presentation related to future planning. The data extraction necessary was not one of the database's standard reports, so she was doing it manually [cut-and-paste] (e.g. no scr
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Yet we require these classes for pretty much everyone who goes to college.
Computers are such an integral part of life today that
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I can't think of a single job on the planet where I can't come up with a place where coding wouldn't be useful.
I can't think of a single job on the planet where being able to keep track of the "n't"s in your sentences wouldn't be useful. Also, just because there are occasions when being able to code would be useful doesn't mean every single person needs to be able to do it.
You lack imagination and probably aren't going to be worth employing anyway
[citation needed]
I'm guessing your comment is a denfensive response to your fear of becoming obsolete.
You do realise that people can comment on matters that aren't directly relevant to them, right?
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Please explain how a garbage man needs to know how to code.
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He can develop a genetic program to solve the travelling salesman problem of his pickup route and optimize the amount of time it takes him to complete his run.
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The garbage man does the route he's told. He's not in charge of the route, the fuel expenses, etc. That's his boss' job.
Not a program per employee (Score:2)
Re:Not a program per employee (Score:5, Funny)
Each garbage collector need not write a separate program. An employee of the company employing dozens of garbage collectors can write the program, and the team for each truck can load a map into that program.
You, sir, have obviously never worked on an open source project.
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<sarcasm/>
Sorry, I figured the garbage man part made it obvious
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Construction Labourers are about the only ones who wouldn't need it at all.
I wouldn't say unemployable without conding skills, but I can see any sort of upwards momentum being severely limited by a lack of coding skills.
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I can see any sort of upwards momentum being severely limited by a lack of coding skills.
In a tablet-and-smartphone household, how is a high school student supposed to gain access to a user-programmable computer [slashdot.org] in order to learn to program in order to get a job?
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Re:Moronic (Score:4, Insightful)
Due to the magic of capitalism, most people don't work for themselves (hence the term 'employment' at the root of this discussion), and therefore have a limited set of tasks in their jobs. For instance, a programmer doesn't need cooking skills, despite cooking being of enormous daily importance compared to churning out code. Likewise, most cafeteria personnel does not need to be able to code, as any coding job is done by someone else, preferably someone more skilled at the task. Everyone doing everything is inefficient, as is everyone doing one thing, whether that thing is cooking or coding or laundry or being a doctor or whatever.
Everyone coding in every job is simply not economically sensible. The idea is pure idiocy.
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If I were to cook at work, lunch would take an extra 30 minutes.
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Sure she did!
1. Take package out of freezer.
2. Open package.
3. Put frozen food in microwave.
4. Nuke for five minutes.
5. Remove boiling hot food from microwave.
6. Eat hot food from microwave.
7. Go to the toilet.
8. Vomit
9. Pick up phone
10. Order pizza
11. Profits!
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A company who tries to save money by making people go beyond their specialty will end up being outclassed by a c
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You're missing the point a bit. You don't need to be a programmer for every job, but having a basic knowledge of coding and maybe being able to churn out a perl script can be extremely useful in almost every job. It's also shit thats really easy to pick up.
The same as Word Processing and Spreadsheet skills are pretty well ubiquitous requirements for any job that can use them, I think some small amount of coding will start seeping in as well.
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This is happening all over the place, big time. No one wants to do physical labor anymore, they're all growing up fucking soft.
I am actually a trained programmer(and actually a pretty good one, top of class, etc). I currently build houses. More money in it.
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Research agrees with you. Some studies have shown that the majority of jobs could be done more efficiently if people knew a bit of basic scripting. Not much, just a little, to be used to write bits of personal code to make repetitive tasks easier.
When I was in elementary school most people couldn't type well. Now it's pretty much taken for granted that everyone can type. Basic coding skills will be like that in ten years.
This sounds like a terrible idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been a programmer for 15 years now, and the absolute worst people to work with are the ones who know just enough about programming that they vastly overestimate their knowledge. I don't want to work with a bunch of people who are on top of Mt. Stupid [imgur.com], least of all some exec who thinks a tiny bit of coding knowledge will help you make estimates about how long a bit project will take.
Let programmers program. Be serious about it, or don't do it.
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This.
FTS: "Teach yourself just enough of the grammar and the logic of computer languages to be able to see the big picture." Yeahhhh, I'm gonna have to go ahead & disagree with you there, yeahhhhh. I think we can all remember when we first had a taste of a programming languauge or 2, and there is no way one can "see the big picture" after simply dabbling with a language -- it takes a lot of hours of sustained effort & dealing with many failures along the way before gaining an understanding. T
As programmers, yes, as co-workers, no. (Score:3)
the absolute worst people to work with are the ones who know just enough about programming that they vastly overestimate their knowledge.
That's very true, but the BEST non-coding co-workers are those with similar levels of knowledge who then have a better understanding of what is possible, why some things may be hard and a tolerance for mysterious delay.
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the ones who know just enough about programming that they vastly overestimate their knowledge.
. . . those are the ones who always say something like:
"I have done some programming, so it can't be that difficult to . . ."
. . . insert your intractable problem here . . .
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FTFY. And those people invariably think they are omni-gods. I used to work at a place where the marketing director's secret office nickname was "King Dumbshit" (KDS for short), and it was painfully apropos.
Re:This sounds like a terrible idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe if you rephrase it something like -
maybe you should consider picking up a programming language. it will broaden your
horizons - in the same way that learning a little bit of a french, or the clarinet, or how to
graft fruit trees would.
if i paint on the weekends, maybe i can better appreciate the work of the masters. that
doesn't mean i'm a good painter.
i agree that it has little or no bearing on how good you are at your real work (unless you're
a machinist, a spammer, a scientist, or some discipline that uses computers intimately)
Let me rephrase it: "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
While I think that a basic understanding can be valuable in knowing generally what can and cannot be expected from people in other professions, I can tell horror stories. Like the business analyst who found out that core memory does an erase-read cycle and demanded that the COBOL programmers immediately re-initialize all their variables everytime they read them. Or the tech company executive who insisted that customers buy caching disk controllers long after caching had become something built into the drive, not the controller.
Have some respect. Software development is no more an "All You Have To Do Is..." profession than neurosurgery is. A Boy Scout can bandage your finger or write basic HTML, but do you want him manhandling your liver? Too many people stand at the edge of the pond and think it's the same thing as the ocean.
This guy is a fucking idiot (Score:2)
Re:This guy is a fucking idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much every programmer I've met knows more than one language.
I have used atleast several dozen, "know" about 5 or 6 and have forgotten a couple as well (and am an expert in none).
Learning a programming language is easy. Knowing how to solve a problem is hard.
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and have forgotten a couple as well
. . . I have used some languages that I wish I could forget . . .
Actual coding, no. Knowing the basics, yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone should know at least the basics of what is part of our daily lives.
Everyone should know how to read and write, even if they're not professional authors (and, like me, are pretty bad at it in general)
Everyone should know basic math, even if they never use it, at least to be able to calculate tip at the restaurant and be able to read their tax report.
Everyone should know enough biology to be able to make a basic informed decision when discussing a problem with their doctor or dentist.
Everyone should know at least basic economics and finance, so that they can at least understand the graphs on their 401k.
And.....everyone should know at least the very very very elementary basics of programming, as it is now part of our everyday lives. No need to know python and APIs or how to compile a linux kernel. Know just enough to understand what a conditional and a loop statement is, why software can crash, and why a single programmer cannot write an entire ERP suite in 2 weeks by themselves.
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The basics of computer programming is mathematics (formal logic and algorithms in particular).
This should be taught at schools already.
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No it's not. Formal logic and algorithms are are things that the majority of programmers have probably heard of, but don't really know and don't use very often. That's like saying the basics of general contracting and construction is physics and chemistry.
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What if no pattern exists for the problem you're trying to solve?
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The basics of programming are logical thinking. That's an approach to problem solving that primarily adds value through introducing objectivity and supplemental purely emotional decision making.
Even artists benefit from multiple modes of thinking.
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Know just enough to understand what a conditional and a loop statement is, why software can crash, and why a single programmer cannot write an entire ERP suite in 2 weeks by themselves.
What you say may be helpful, but I've never had any hand in building a building before, and I can tell you that I understand very well why it may not be a good idea to rush the job.
As for the opposite, I don't think I'd want a slightly trained person to tell me that I should be able to do it *faster* than I am. Bullshit detection is one thing, but that's why you hire *technical management*, who are presumably people who used to do something at least tangentially related to programming.
I get what this guy i
Look at what they're hiring. (Score:5, Informative)
This guy is head of PubMatic, which is one of those companies on the fringes of on-line advertising. Here are their job listings [pubmatic.com]. The programming jobs are in Puma, India. The US jobs are for things like "Mobile Account Executive" [jobscore.com] (i.e. ad sales rep.) Requires "proven track record of meeting or exceeding sales targets." No mention of any tech skills.
The PubMatic site is so full of business buzzwords that it's difficult to tell what they actually do. "From brand awareness initiatives looking to reach broad demographic segments through to lower funnel campaigns focused on reaching those expressing purchase intent, PubMatic has a targeting solution to fit advertisers' needs." What they seem to do is match up low-end advertisers with unsold ad space on web sites.
If this company dropped off the face of the earth (or AdBlock became popular enough to delete all their ads) nothing of value would be lost.
A programming language versus a framework (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd consider myself an experienced web developer (PHP, CSS, HTML. JS, DOM API). I wanted to learn more languages, but I found it very inaccessible to learn different "languages" since it seems these are merged nowadays in frameworks with deep learning curves. It tried Visual studio 2010, Titanium frameworks and some others. Either giving me dependencies-error during installation or a complexity level that feels disastrous to cope with as a newbie.
I just feel that it seems most programmers/developers and the
Let me guess (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ah, so you're still at the "I know everything" stage of programmer development.
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It depends on how much you consider "knowledge". I can read pretty much any OO language well enough to understand any recent graduate's code for hiring purposes. I also understand enough to be dangerous in all of them; that is enough to open the IDE, change behavior to suit a requirement, and make sure it works. What I don't know in most of them is when I'm re-inventing the wheel, when I'm doing something a backwards-ass way, etc.
He's Right (Score:3, Insightful)
The situation: You've got a thousand applicants. You've got one or two job openings.
If you don't have the slightest idea what makes the internet and the information age run, you probably don't deserve the job. But the converse is also true: programmers should learn something of art, literature, and history. Too many software people don't even know anything about science. A person that can't think broadly in a well-rounded way is useless.
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I'd be grateful if any time a marketing person found a bug in the code,
Right conclusion, wrong arguments (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that everyone should learn to code. Not because it will make them a programmer. Not because it will enable them to estimate how long something will take, not least because experienced programmers are legendarily bad at doing that anyway. Everyone should learn to program because programming makes the modern world go round, and it's good for everyone to have at least an inkling of what that involves.
We teach a lot of kids chemistry, without any expectation that they will invent a new compound that will change the world. We teach a lot of kids physics, without any expectation that they'll make a significant contribution to subatomic particle research. We teach most kids to do creative writing and poetry, without expecting the vast majority of them to produce fiction or poetry of publishable quality. I don't see why we wouldn't teach programming alongside all those other topics that most students never master and never "need".
One argument for teaching a lot of academic subjects widely is that the skills you learn along the way have wider application than the topic itself. And it seems to me that this argument holds at least as well for programming as for, say, pure math. As programmers keep saying, programming is about analysis, structure, models... is there really no application whatsoever for those skills outside of hardcore programming? Does no-one ever wish that their managers had a better grasp of "system"? Yes, of course, you can acquire these skills in other places. But the thing about programming, pretty much from the outset, is that your pious beliefs about system will stop your code from performing correctly unless those beliefs are reasonably accurate. I sometimes tell people that I do executable philisophy - it's all about logic, but, unlike the philosopher, my logic has to work.
No, a bit of Python won't enable people to produce estimates for projects. But it may enable managers to understand why writing code once to do something that needs doing often is often a good plan (and, also, why it sometimes isn't). It may enable managers to understand why "Can we just change this one assumption" at the end of a project may involve restarting the entire project.
Yes, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But the little knowledge is out there already on the TV station of your choice. I don't even like Python that much, but I'd still much rather deal with erroneous assumptions based on a bit of Python experience than deal with erroneous assumptions based on watching Mission Impossible and NCIS.
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pffft. of far higher priority to most humans:
I think every one should learn public speaking, to help effectively communicate ideas.
I think everyone should learn to cook well for more than one person, there is nothing like "breaking bread" with others to build relationships from the most fundamental of human needs.
I think everyone should learn to play a musical instrument or make visual art or poetry, for that stimulates the parts of the brain that mere technical subjects do not.
I think everyone should stud
Careful. Monefield ahead (Score:2)
With everything ever written both protected by copyright and patents, what is this guy proposing? I think it's clear that only companies with big legal budgets can be allowed to have coders on staff. Everyone else is a risk.
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Sounds good to me (Score:2)
Ad Exec: Learn to code or you're dead to me
It might be worth it to forget what languages I know, if it meant the online ad companies would start considering me to be dead.
please no (Score:3)
If you've ever worked in IT, you know that the clueless secretary isn't your worst enemy. At least she knows the knows nothing.
Your worst enemy is the "power-user". The guy who knows just enough to fuck everything up. This is the same thing. Breeding people who know a little bit about 2 programming languages is breeding a catastrophic collection of idiots who don't know that they know nothing.
Teaching someone the basic principles of programming, that's cool. Let them know a little about how algorithms work and stuff, a little bit of basic understanding of what, exactly, programming is. But please don't teach someone a little bit about a programming language or two.
COBOL (Score:2)
Remember COBOL? Remember what it was intended for?
Those who forget history are doomed to... um... something, right?
Re:COBOL.....or j2ee (Score:2)
and java is the COBOL of the 90s that still lingers like a really rancid fart in a church long after the congregation left.
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C'mon, that's unfair. COBOL was in all seriousness meant to let "Managers do Programming", and so it had syntax like "ADD 1 TO X".
Java really was like an easy C/C++. The the object system wasn't bolted on like with C++ and memory management was GC done for free. I program in C for a living but I don't see the hate for Java. It seems like some trendy bullshit to me.
j2ee on the other hand, holy crap what a stinking turd..
"Most employers?" "More than enough?" WTF! (Score:2)
Sorry charlie, if you want to work at any companies *I* ever worked for (current included), you had to have a proper technical degree. Period.
Re:"Most employers?" "More than enough?" WTF! (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting. If you want to work for the successful companies I've worked for, you need to be intelligent.
People with non-technical degrees still qualify. I can teach someone intelligent to program a hell of a lot more easily than I can teach some muppet with a technical degree.
Hello! (Score:2)
Yeah... (Score:2)
...I couldn't care less about anything a fucking ad exec says.
"Ad exec"? (Score:3)
This is pretty funny. An advertising executive telling college students what they have to know to not be "dead to him".
A guy who makes his living by getting people to buy stuff.
He doesn't realize how little it takes to make his entire existence meaningless. Plus, don't you hate guys who go speak to college students and tries to do this kind of tough talk? Too many people got boners when they saw Gordon Gecko give his speech in Wall Street. They thought, "I wanna be that guy who makes young people quake in their boots". I bet his family hates him.
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You say that like it was easy to remove online ads.
Oh, wait.
English Major, Online Ad Agency Owner (Score:2)
'nuff said.
Bite me.
Re:Fucking English Majors (Score:5, Funny)
And that's all there is to say about that.
Well, duh. Which of us can't think of an English major we'd like to fuck? But that's not what we're discussing...
Re:Basic html and css (Score:5, Funny)
<head></head>
<body>
I am an HTML coder.
There are many like me.
I can has job?
</body>
</html>
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Your head has no title, no text encoding and your body has no structure whatsoever.
And that's just for starters.
Re:Basic html and css (Score:5, Funny)
Gah!!! It's all wrong! Here, lemme help you:
There, now you're ready for today's web.
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Wrong. Ad code is required to use the evil document.write() wherever possible.
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missing br tags : /
Re:Basic html and css (Score:4, Informative)
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"You fail" is not in German.
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Re:Jorgenson is full of shit (Score:5, Insightful)
if they just sit down with a book and type examples
Actually, he's right. You can't just sit down with a book and type examples - you also have to extract patterns from the examples and form a mental model that allows you to generalize over those examples.
Re:Jorgenson is full of shit (Score:5, Interesting)
His point could have been made better.
I'm not cut out to be a doctor. I'm probably smart enough to do the job, but I don't have the mindset for it, nor really the interest. So, I'd probably make a shitty doctor.
While it is easier to become a professional programmer, becoming someone that can legitimately base a career on it, or write something that a company can rely on is not just a matter of picking up a book. Yes, you could sit down with BASIC and your Commodore 64 and make a little balloon made of sprites fly across your screen, and I could probably sit down with an anatomy book or a first aid book and learn some stuff, even very useful stuff, from that too. However, if I was a hospital accountant, I might decide that I'd do more good for the hospital by actually spending my time being a good accountant, instead of trying to splint bones.
If they want me to learn something completely outside my interests and skillset to do a job that has nothing to do with being able to do my job well, I suppose I would consider such a directive to be idiotic. If anything, sometimes you want people who *don't understand* what you do for a living to do the jobs that are supporting you because they will not gloss over things that you take for granted.
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Programmers. After a couple decades being social outcasts, they're new elitists. And the pigs were walking around on two feet.