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• Concurrent Programming:Should I write a sequential program first, then add thread safety?

  - by evthim

  I'm working on a project where we have to create a number of threads(actual number will be inputted in by testers (TA's)). I'm having trouble not only with the programming but also with the design, I can't wrap my head around all of the threads that will be invoked and where I might cause errors. The project is due soon so I don't want to waste time on this if it'll actually set me back, but I was wondering if I should write the program like only one thread will be running and everything should be sequential and then later go back and try to add the thread safety parts of the code? Would that take twice the original amount of time? Project Description: Note:I'm going to be as vague as possible so I don't violate any honor codes, sorry :( your program should accept n number of objectA threads, m number of objectB threads, and r number of objectC objectB threads interact with code in objectA. objectA threads interact with code in objectB and objectC objectB and objectC don't directly interact, but do so indirectly through objectA -ex: objectB needs something from objectA. objectA gets the result for that something by calling objectC my confusion stems mostly from the fact that all of this interactions will be done by m+n threads and there are various restrictions throughout the descriptions, like objectB can request something from objectA, and objectA has to wait for objectC to finish that something before returning it to objectB. Also each objectA thread can only work on one instruction from objectB at a time, etc. etc. I just want to know if I write the code so that there is only 1 objectA, 1 objectB and 1 object C, can I go back and easily modify it so that those 1's can be changed to m, n and r? Sorry again, if my description is a little bit confusing.

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• Should I learn two (or more) programming languages in parallel?

  - by c_maker

  I found entries on this site about learning a new programming language, however, I have not come across anything that talks about the advantages and disadvantages of learning two languages at the same time. Let's say my goal is to learn two new languages in a year. I understand that the definition of learning a new language is different for everyone and you can probably never know everything about a language. I believe in most cases the following things are enough to include the language in your resume and say that you are proficient in it (list is not in any particular order): Know its syntax so you can write a simple program in it Compare its underlying concepts with concepts of other languages Know best practices Know what libraries are available Know in what situations to use it Understand the flow of a more complex program At least know most of what you do not know I would probably look for a good book and pick an open source project for both of these languages to start with. My questions: Is it best to spend 5 months learning language#1 then 5 months learning language#2, or should you mix the two. Mixing them I mean you work on them in parallel. Should you pick two languages that are similar or different? Are there any advantages/disadvantages of let's say learning Lisp in tandem with Ruby? Is it a good idea to pick two languages with similar syntax or would it be too confusing? Please tell me what your experiences are regarding this. Does it make a difference if you are a beginner or a senior programmer?

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• Can anyone give me a sample java socket programming for doing a peer to peer for 3 systems?

  - by Sadesh Kumar N

  I am doing an university project. I need some sample programs on peer to peer programs in java socket programming. Every where people are telling to add a server socket in the client program. I am in a confusion. Can a single program having server socket and client socket will do or i have to create two programs of one initiating a system and another peer program running thrice to solve the problem. or i need to create three programs for three peer systems. I am not clear on the architecture of building peer to peer programs using java sockets. Can some one help me giving a simple program on how to create a peer to peer connection between three systems. I know how to do a socket program for client server model and clear on the concept. But creating a peer to peer architecture sounds complex for me to understand. I also referred this thread. developing peer to peer in java The person commented second says" To make peer2peer app each client opens server socket too. When client A wishes to connect to client B it just connects to its socket. " Need some more sample and an explanation on how peer to peer java socket program works I dont want any external api like jxta to do this task. I need a clear picture on how it works alone with an example.

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• How are events in games handled?

  - by Alex

  In may games that I have played, I have seen events being triggered, such as when you walk into a certain land area while holding a specific object, it will trigger a special creature to spawn. I was wondering, how do games deal with events such as this? Not in a specific game, but in general among games. The first thought I had was that each place has a hard-coded set of events that it will call when something happens there. However, that would be too inefficient to maintain, as when something new is added, that would require modification of every part of the game that would potentially cause the event to be called. Next up, I had the idea of maybe how GUI programming works. In all of the GUI programming I've done, you create a component and a callback function, or a listener. Then, when the user interacts when the button, the callback function is called, allowing you to do something with it. So, I was thinking that in terms of a game, when a land area gets loaded the game loops over a list of all events, creating instances of them and calling public methods to bind them to the current scene. The events themselves then handle what scene it is, and if it is a scene that pertains to the event, will call the public method of the scene to bind the event to an action. Then, when the action takes place, the scene would call all events that are bound to that action. However, I'm sure that's not how games would operate either, as that would require a lot of creating of events all the time. So how to video games handle events, are either of those methods correct, or is it something completely different?

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• Why do programmers seem to be such bad spellers?

  - by Joel Etherton

  Programming languages are very precise tools based on explicit grammars. They're very picky, and when being used they require an exacting amount of detail. C#, for instance, is case sensitive so even getting the case of an argument wrong will cause an error. Questions asked all over the StackExchange are replete with misspellings, grammatical errors, and other problems that seem to indicate a lack of attention to detail when it comes to the language itself. Now, I understand there are a lot of programmers out there whose native language is not English, and I am not directing this question (rant one might say) at them. I'm referring to the individuals who are clearly from an English speaking background who refuse to pay attention to these simple details. I am not perfect by any means, but I try to use the language correctly so that my meaning will be understood correctly. I find programmers misspelling variable names, classes, and all manner of words in any kind of technical documentation they might write. I have had to withstand code where I am repeatedly referring to the subit[sic] button or HttpWebResponse reponse. The general complaint about bad spelling is one thing, and it will always be there. I accept that. But my question/comment is about the proclivity of bad spelling within the programming community. I would think that people who deal with such exacting tools to be more naturally predisposed towards proper spelling. Yet this doesn't seem to be the case.

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• Learning to be a good developer: what parts can you skip over?

  - by Andrew M

  I have set myself the goal of becoming a decent developer by this time next year. By this I mean full experience of the development 'lifecycle,' a few good apps/sites/webapps under my belt, and most importantly being able to work at a steady pace without getting sidelined for hours by some should-know-this-already technique. I'm not starting from scratch. I've written a lot of html/css, SQL, javascript, python and VB.net, and studied other languages like C and Java. I know about things like OOP, design patterns, TDD, complexity, computational linguistics, pointers/references, functional programming, and other academic/theoretical matters. It's just I can't say I've really done these things yet. So I want to get up to speed, and I want to know what things I can leave till a later date. For instance, studying algorithms and the maths behind them is interesting and all, but so far I've hardly needed to write anything but the most basic nested loops. Investigating Assembly to have a clearer picture of low-level operations would be cool... but I imagine rarely infringes on daily work. On the other hand, looking at a functional programming language might help me write programs that are more comprehensible and less prone to hidden failures (at the moment I'm finding the biggest difficulty is when the complexity of the app exceeds my capacity to understand it - for instance passing data around was fine... until I had to start doing it with AJAX, which was a painful step up). I could spend time working through case studies of design patterns, but I'm not sure how many of them get used in 'real life.' I'm a programmer with basic abilities - what skills should I focus on developing? (also my Unix skills are very weak, and also knowledge of Windows configuration... not sure how much time I should spend on that)

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• Are programmers getting lazier and less competent

  - by Skeith

  I started programming in C++ at uni and loved it. In the next term we changed to VB6 and I hated it. I could not tell what was going on, you drag a button to a form and the ide writes the code for you. While I hated the way VB functioned I cannot argue that it was faster and easier than doing the same thing in C++ so i can see why it is a popular language. Now I am not calling VB developers lazy in just saying it easier than C++ and I have noticed that a lot of newer languages are following this trend such a C#. This leads me to think that as more business want quick results more people will program like this and sooner or later there will be no such thing as what we call programming now. Future programmers will tell the computer what they want and the compiler will write the program for them like in star trek. Is this just an under informed opinion of a junior programmer or are programmers getting lazier and less competent in general? EDIT: A lot of answers say why re invent the wheel and I agree with this but when there are wheels available people are not bothering to learn how to make the wheel. I can google how to do pretty much anything in any language and half the languages do so much for you when it come to debugging they have no idea what there code does of how to fix the error. That's how I cam up with the theory that programmers are becoming lazier and less competent as no one cares how stuff works just that it does until it does not.

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• Is the separation of program logic and presentation layer going too far?

  - by Timwi

  In a Drupal programming guide, I noticed this sentence: The theme hook receives the total number of votes and the number of votes for just that item, but the template wants to display a percentage. That kind of work shouldn't be done in a template; instead, the math is performed here. The math necessary to calculate a percentage from a total and a number is (number/total)*100. Is this application of two basic arithmetic operators within a presentation layer already too much? Is the maintenance of the entire system severely compromised by this amount of mathematics? The WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) and its UI mark-up language, XAML, seem to go to similar extremes. If you try to so much as add two numbers in the View (the presentation layer), you have committed a cardinal sin. Consequently, XAML has no operators for any arithmetic whatsoever. Is this ultra-strict separation really the holy grail of programming? What are the significant gains to be had from taking the separation to such extremes?

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• Software development process for a part time University project for 1 developer?

  - by Pricey

  I will be doing a part time University project soon and the time frame for it is around 8 months with approximately 10-15 hours a week spent working on it, with a review by a tutor each quarter. My question is what software development process would you recommend using when the course requires you to work on your own in order to manage yourself as well as the project? I wanted to use a weekly or bi-weekly iterative approach to my work but a lot of the processes seem tailored to teams of people. I am looking at XP (Extreme Programming) OR Scrum as something that is less than the norm for University work but again Scrum I don't know a lot about yet, and a question I have is; can you say you are doing XP without pair-programming? because my tutor seems to think that I have to stick to all the practices otherwise I can't do it (nevermind if I am working alone). We can have external user input as well but due to the small timescales with part time work it may be more beneficial for myself to be the user as well, which is not what I prefer considering how I can get lost in the design.

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• Is there a language more general than Lisp?

  - by Jon Purdy

  I've been programming for a long time, and writing in Lisp (well, mostly Scheme) for a little less. My experience in these languages (and other functional languages) has informed my ability to write clean code even with less powerful tools. Lisp-family languages have lovely facilities for implementing every abstraction in common use: S-expressions generalise structure. Macros generalise syntax. Continuations generalise flow control. But I'm dissatisfied. Somehow, I want more. Is there a language that's more general? More powerful? As great as Lisp is, I find it hard to believe no one has come up with anything (dare I say) better. I'm well aware that ordinarily a question like this ought to be closed for its argumentative nature. But there seems to be a broad consensus that Lisp represents the theoretical pinnacle of programming language design. I simply refuse to accept that without some kind of proof. Which I guess amounts to questioning whether the lambda calculus is in fact the ideal abstraction of computation.

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• Generalist Languages: Dying or Alive and Well?

  - by dsimcha

  Around here, it seems like there's somewhat of a consensus that generalist programming languages (that try to be good at everything, support multiple paradigms, support both very high- and very low-level programming), etc. are a bad idea, and that it's better to pick the right tool for the job and use lots of different languages. I see three major areas where this is flawed: Interfacing multiple languages is always at least a source of friction and is sometimes practically impossible. How severe a problem this is depends on how fine-grained the interfacing is. Near the boundary between the two languages, though, you're basically limited to the intersection of their features, and you have to care about things like binary interfaces that you usually wouldn't. Passing complex data structures (i.e. not just primitives and arrays of primitives) between languages is almost always a hassle. Furthermore, shifting between different syntaxes, different conventions, etc. can be confusing and annoying, though this is a fairly minor complaint. Requirements are never set in stone. I hate picking a language thinking it's the right tool for the job, then realizing that, when some new requirement surfaces, it's actually a terrible choice for that requirement. This has happened to me several times before, usually when working with languages that are very slow, very domain specific and/or has very poor concurrency/parallelism support. When you program in a language for a while, you start to build up a personal toolbox of small utility functions/classes/programs. The value of these goes drastically down if you're forced to use a different language than the one you've accumulated all this code in. What am I missing here? Why shouldn't more focus be placed on generalist languages? Are generalist languages as a category dying or alive and well?

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• Benefits of classic OOP over Go-like language

  - by tylerl

  I've been thinking a lot about language design and what elements would be necessary for an "ideal" programming language, and studying Google's Go has led me to question a lot of otherwise common knowledge. Specifically, Go seems to have all of the interesting benefits from object oriented programming without actually having any of the structure of an object oriented language. There are no classes, only structures; there is no class/structure inheritance -- only structure embedding. There aren't any hierarchies, no parent classes, no explicit interface implementations. Instead, type casting rules are based on a loose system similar to duck-typing, such that if a struct implements the necessary elements of a "Reader" or a "Request" or an "Encoding", then you can cast it and use it as one. Does such a system obsolete the concept of OOP? Or is there something about OOP as implemented in C++ and Java and C# that is inherently more capable, more maintainable, somehow more powerful that you have to give up when moving to a language like Go? What benefit do you have to give up to gain the simplicity that this new paradigm represents?

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• What can be done against language inertia?

  - by gerrit

  Often, projects use programming language X, but would use programming language Y if they were started from scratch. For example, big numerical models may be written entirely in Fortran. Whereas this might be a reasonable choice for the components that need to run fast (alternative would be C or C++), it might be a poor choice for components that either do not need to run fast (such as things dealing with human input or simple visualisations), or where runtime is not the limiting factor (such as I/O, particularly when from the network). Another example may be when a project is built using a propriety language (such as Matlab; no, FOSS clones are not good enough) and was started at a time when FOSS alternatives were not viable, but ten years later, they are; and it would be beneficial to migrate. However, due to language inertia, a migration does not happen. Code that works should not be touched, porting code is a time-consuming, expensive process, and programmers are familiar in language X but not necessarily in language Y. Still, in the long term, a migration would likely be beneficial. Can anything be done to mitigate the problems associated with language inertia? Are there any notable examples of big projects that have successfully overcome this problem? Or is a project bound to stick forever with the initial choices?

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• What's the proper term for a function inverse to a constructor? Deconstructor, destructor, or something else?

  - by Petr Pudlák

  Edit: I'm rephrasing the question a bit. Apparently I caused some confusion because I didn't realize that the term destructor is used in OOP for something quite different - it's a function invoked when an object is being destroyed. In functional programming we (try to) avoid mutable state so there is no such equivalent to it. (I added the proper tag to the question.) Instead, I've seen that the record field for unwrapping a value (especially for single-valued data types such as newtypes) is sometimes called destructor or perhaps deconstructor. For example, let's have (in Haskell): newtype Wrap = Wrap { unwrap :: Int } Here Wrap is the constructor and unwrap is what? I've seen both, for example: ... Most often, one supplies smart constructors and destructors for these to ease working with them. ... at Haskell wiki, or ... The general theme here is to fuse constructor - deconstructor pairs like ... at Haskell wikibook (here it's probably meant in a bit more general sense). The questions are: How do we call unwrap in functional programming? Deconstructor? Destructor? Or by some other term? And to clarify, is this terminology applicable to other functional languages, or is it used just in the Has

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• Where to Start?

  - by freemann098

  my name is Chase. I've been programming for over 3 years now and I've made very little progress towards game development. I blame myself for it due to reasons. I have experience in many languages such as C++, C#, and Java. I have a little bit of knowledge in JavaScript/HTML and Python. My question is where to start on actually understanding jumping into game development. Whenever I watch game development tutorials it mostly makes sense until points of things like OpenGL or advanced topics that make no sense at all. An example is something like glOrhho Matrix or whatever. Videos either don't explain things like this or they're not explained very well. Do I not know enough basics? I find myself always copying code from a video but understanding very little of it. It's like i'm memorizing things I don't understand which makes it hard to program at all. If I were to want to get to the point where I could write my own game engine or just a game by myself in general in C++ using at the most documentation how would I start at mastering to that level. Should I learn C first, or get really good at basics in general with C++. I know there is a similar posted question on this site but it's not the same due to the fact the person asking the question has a well knowledge level in programming. I'm stuck in a loop of learning the same things but if I go farther I don't understand. I'm stuck in the same spot and need to make progress.

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• Uses of persistent data structures in non-functional languages

  - by Ray Toal

  Languages that are purely functional or near-purely functional benefit from persistent data structures because they are immutable and fit well with the stateless style of functional programming. But from time to time we see libraries of persistent data structures for (state-based, OOP) languages like Java. A claim often heard in favor of persistent data structures is that because they are immutable, they are thread-safe. However, the reason that persistent data structures are thread-safe is that if one thread were to "add" an element to a persistent collection, the operation returns a new collection like the original but with the element added. Other threads therefore see the original collection. The two collections share a lot of internal state, of course -- that's why these persistent structures are efficient. But since different threads see different states of data, it would seem that persistent data structures are not in themselves sufficient to handle scenarios where one thread makes a change that is visible to other threads. For this, it seems we must use devices such as atoms, references, software transactional memory, or even classic locks and synchronization mechanisms. Why then, is the immutability of PDSs touted as something beneficial for "thread safety"? Are there any real examples where PDSs help in synchronization, or solving concurrency problems? Or are PDSs simply a way to provide a stateless interface to an object in support of a functional programming style?

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• What's the proper term for a function inverse to a constructor - to unwrap a value from a data type?

  - by Petr Pudlák

  Edit: I'm rephrasing the question a bit. Apparently I caused some confusion because I didn't realize that the term destructor is used in OOP for something quite different - it's a function invoked when an object is being destroyed. In functional programming we (try to) avoid mutable state so there is no such equivalent to it. (I added the proper tag to the question.) Instead, I've seen that the record field for unwrapping a value (especially for single-valued data types such as newtypes) is sometimes called destructor or perhaps deconstructor. For example, let's have (in Haskell): newtype Wrap = Wrap { unwrap :: Int } Here Wrap is the constructor and unwrap is what? The questions are: How do we call unwrap in functional programming? Deconstructor? Destructor? Or by some other term? And to clarify, is this/other terminology applicable to other functional languages, or is it used just in the Haskell? Perhaps also, is there any terminology for this in general, in non-functional languages? I've seen both terms, for example: ... Most often, one supplies smart constructors and destructors for these to ease working with them. ... at Haskell wiki, or ... The general theme here is to fuse constructor - deconstructor pairs like ... at Haskell wikibook (here it's probably meant in a bit more general sense), or newtype DList a = DL { unDL :: [a] -> [a] } The unDL function is our deconstructor, which removes the DL constructor. ... in The Real World Haskell.

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• When can you call yourself good at language X?

  - by SoulBeaver

  This goes back to a conversation I've had with my girlfriend. I tried to tell her that I simply don't feel adequate enough in my programming language (C++) to call myself good. She then asked me, "Well, when do you consider yourself good enough?" That's an interesting question. I didn't know what to tell her. So I'm asking you. For any programming language, framework or the like, when do you reach a point were you sit back, look at what you've done and say, "Hey, I'm actually pretty good at this."? How do you define "good" so that you can tell others, honestly, "Yeah, I'm good at X". Additionally, do you reach these conclusions by comparing what others can do? Additional Info I have read the canonical paper on how it takes ten-thousand hours before you are an expert on the field. (Props to anybody that knows what this paper is called again) I have also read various articles from Coding Horror about interviewing people. Some people, it was said, "Cannot function outside of a framework." So they may be "good" for that framework, but not otherwise in the language. Is this true?

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• What are some techniques I can use to refactor Object Oriented code into Functional code?

  - by tieTYT

  I've spent about 20-40 hours developing part of a game using JavaScript and HTML5 canvas. When I started I had no idea what I was doing. So it started as a proof of concept and is coming along nicely now, but it has no automated tests. The game is starting to become complex enough that it could benefit from some automated testing, but it seems tough to do because the code depends on mutating global state. I'd like to refactor the whole thing using Underscore.js, a functional programming library for JavaScript. Part of me thinks I should just start from scratch using a Functional Programming style and testing. But, I think refactoring the imperative code into declarative code might be a better learning experience and a safer way to get to my current state of functionality. Problem is, I know what I want my code to look like in the end, but I don't know how to turn my current code into it. I'm hoping some people here could give me some tips a la the Refactoring book and Working Effectively With Legacy Code. For example, as a first step I'm thinking about "banning" global state. Take every function that uses a global variable and pass it in as a parameter instead. Next step may be to "ban" mutation, and to always return a new object. Any advice would be appreciated. I've never taken OO code and refactored it into Functional code before.

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• What are some ways to separate game logic from animations and the draw loop?

  - by TMV

  I have only previously made flash games, using MovieClips and such to separate out my animations from my game logic. Now I am getting into trying my hand at making a game for Android, but the game programming theory around separating these things still confuses me. I come from a background of developing non game web applications so I am versed in more MVC like patterns and am stuck in that mindset as I approach game programming. I want to do things like abstract my game by having, for example, a game board class that contains the data for a grid of tiles with instances of a tile class that each contain properties. I can give my draw loop access to this and have it draw the game board based on the properties of each tile on the game board, but I don't understand where exactly animation should go. As far as I can tell, animation sort of sits between the abstracted game logic (model) and the draw loop (view). With my MVC mindset, it's frustrating trying to decide where animation is actually supposed to go. It would have quite a bit of data associated with it like a model, but seemingly needs to be very closely coupled with the draw loop in order to have things like frame independent animation. How can I break out of this mindset and start thinking about patterns that make more sense for games?

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• Are specific types still necessary?

  - by MKO

  One thing that occurred to me the other day, are specific types still necessary or a legacy that is holding us back. What I mean is: do we really need short, int, long, bigint etc etc. I understand the reasoning, variables/objects are kept in memory, memory needs to be allocated and therefore we need to know how big a variable can be. But really, shouldn't a modern programming language be able to handle "adaptive types", ie, if something is only ever allocated in the shortint range it uses fewer bytes, and if something is suddenly allocated a very big number the memory is allocated accordinly for that particular instance. Float, real and double's are a bit trickier since the type depends on what precision you need. Strings should however be able to take upp less memory in many instances (in .Net) where mostly ascii is used buth strings always take up double the memory because of unicode encoding. One argument for specific types might be that it's part of the specification, ie for example a variable should not be able to be bigger than a certain value so we set it to shortint. But why not have type constraints instead? It would be much more flexible and powerful to be able to set permissible ranges and values on variables (and properties). I realize the immense problem in revamping the type architecture since it's so tightly integrated with underlying hardware and things like serialization might become tricky indeed. But from a programming perspective it should be great no?

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• Spending a good fortune on a certificate holding Scrum Master or a Veteran XP coach?

  - by ashy_32bit

  There is a very prestigious company that delivers a well-sold software about financial systems. It has more that 20 years of history, and is staffed with about 20 programmers and much larger number of managerial staff. Dissatisfied customers have reported strange bugs and no one has a clue what is wrong, hard to read code, and customization is prohibitively expensive. In a word, the software is rotten. The company decided to spend a fortune and found the Agile thing as the remedy but they are stuck about what it is they need most urgently. Is it about the process or the developers or both? The challenge breaks down to the following options: They can hire a certificate holding Scrum Master to teach them Scrum. When asked about the value of doing it, the SM responded: "I will prepare them to embrace Agile and only then they can go Agile and save the product". They can as well hire a veteran XP coach. When posed with the same question he responded : "The most urgent problem is with the programmers and not the management, XP will save the product from rot and only then Scrum will make sense" Developers are far from capable of doing agile programming practices at the moment. No unit tests, no pair programmings, no CI (huh? what is it?) ... you get the idea. Some say they would be far better trying to improve their programming first (hire option 2) and then go with the process. Many say quite the opposite. Any insights ?

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• Laser range finder, what language to use? Beginner advice

  - by DrOnline

  I hope this is the right place. I am a programming beginner, and I want to make a laser range finder, and I need advice about how to proceed etc. In a few weeks I will get a lot of dirt cheap 3-5V lasers and some cheap usb webcams. I will point the laser and webcam in parallel, and somehow use trigonometry and programming to determined distance. I have seen online that others made done it this way, I have purposefully not looked at the details too much because I want to develop it on my own, and learn, but I know the general outline. I have a general idea of how to proceed. The program loads in a picture from the webcam, and I dunno how images work really, but I imagine there is a format that is basically an array of RGB values.. is this right? I will load in the red values, and find the most red one. I know the height difference between the laser and the cam. I know the center dot in the image, I know the redmost dot. I'm sure there's some way to figure out some range there. TO THE POINT: 1) Is my reasoning sound thus far, especially in terms of image analysis? I don't need complete solutions, just general points 2) What I need to figure out, is what platform to use. I have an arduino... apparently, I've read it's too weak to process images. Read that online. I know some C I know some Python I have Matlab. Which is the best option? I do not need high sampling rates, I have not decided on whether it should be automated or whether I should make a GUI with a button to press for samples. I will keep it simple and expand I think. I also do not need it to be super accurate, I'm just having fun here. Advice!

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• what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs?

  - by Amumu

  In University, we learn and reinvent the wheel a lot to truly learn the programming concepts. For example, we may learn assembly language to understand, what happens inside the box, and how the system operates, when we execute our code. This helps understanding higher level concepts deeper. For example, memory management like in C is just an abstraction of manually managed memory contents and addresses. The problem is, when we're going to work, usually productivity is required more. I could program my own containers, or string class, or date/time (using POSIX with C system call) to do the job, but then, it would take much longer time to use existing STL or Boost library, which abstract all of those thing and very easy to use. This leads to an issue, that a regular person doesn't need to get through all the low level/under the hood stuffs, who learns only one programming language and using language-related APIs. These people may eventually compete with the mainstream graduates from computer science or software engineer and call themselves programmers. At first, I don't think it's valid to call them programmers. I used to think, a real programmer needs to understand the computer deeply (but not at the electronic level). But then I changed my mind. After all, they get the job done and satisfy all the test criteria (logic, performance, security...), and in business environment, who cares if you're an expert and understand how computer works or not. You may get behind the "amateurs" if you spend to much time learning about how things work inside. It is totally valid for those people to call themselves programmers. This makes me confuse. So, after all, programming should be considered an universal skill? Does programming language and concepts matter or the problems we solve matter? For example, many C/C++ vs Java and other high level language, one of the main reason is because C/C++ features performance, as well as accessing low level facility. One of the main reason (in my opinion), is coding in C/C++ seems complex, so people feel good about it (not trolling anyone, just my observation, and my experience as well. Try to google "C hacker syndrome"). While Java on the other hand, made for simplifying programming tasks to help developers concentrate on solving their problems. Based on Java rationale, if the programing language keeps evolve, one day everyone can map their logic directly with natural language. Everyone can program. On that day, maybe real programmers are mathematicians, who could perform most complex logic (including business logic and academic logic) without worrying about installing/configuring compiler, IDEs? What's our job as a computer scientist/software engineer? To solve computer specific problems or to solve problems in general? For example, take a look at this exame: http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/attach/Problem%20Resources/2010WorldFinalProblemSet.pdf . The example requires only basic knowledge about the programming language, but focus more on problem solving with the language. In sum, what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs? A mathematician can be considered a programmer, if he is good enough to use programming language to implement his formula. Can we programmer do this? Probably not for most of us, since we specialize about computer, not math. An electronic engineer, who learns how to use C to program for his devices, can be considered a programmer. If the programming languages keep being simplified, may one day the software engineers, who implements business logic and create softwares, be obsolete? (Not for computer scientist though, since many of the CS topics are scientific, and science won't change, but technology will).

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• What should I do from here?

  - by Sunscreen

  Hi all, First of all, the site rocks. You can ask and get specific answers, mainly, for programming issues. This question is more generic. I studied Physics for my bachelors and Digital Image Processing for my masters, ended on September 2001. From then on I started working as a developer and software analyst. I worked, and working, witn C, C++, AIX OS, XP OS, MFC 4.21. I also did some data translations from EDIFACT to XML and viceversa. I trained users for the applications that I was running, I created documents (detailed design docs mainly), though most of the time I wrote, and I still write, code. Recently I applied for the best greek, graduate university for my MBA and they accepted me, starting on Jan 2011. I am a developer with no specific insight with the languages I work. I can be very productive with some subsets of the languages that the companies I worked for use, though this is a limited thing for a developer. If I get my MBA I can be a semi-businees analyst ot consultant, as I am now a semi-developer. The problem is that I can do some but not all in a designated working area. What should I do from here? Should I get my MBA and look forswitching industries? Should I read and excersise myself with new languages and frameworks? Should I be more focussed to the deligations from my current job (currently I work with MFC)? Just for the note, I am 32 and I feel I am wasting my time. I am not getting the best that I can get from is current position (and I work here for 3+ years). Thanks all, Sun

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