Monday, June 29, 2015

Programming Languages and System Development

It's almost 40 years since my first programming courses.  I never got paid for programming, but I did find ways, by stretching my job responsibilities, to do some programming during work hours, or after.  My first language was, of course, COBOL.  I also did a very little Powerbuilder, some Javascript, and a lot of Wordperfect macros.  But that ended almost 20 years ago, so there's been a lot of changes since.  I read stuff, and see references to Python, and PHP, and Github, and wonder what the hell?

So I really enjoyed this very very very long post. It told me just enough about current times, even though I had to split my reading over 3 days.  A whole lot has changed, no mention of "waterfall development", no mention of James Martin, etc. etc. but some things haven't, as witness this quote.

"Most of your programming life will be spent trying to figure out what broke, and if the computer helps you, maybe you can watch your kids play soccer."


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