"Calling oneself a C Programmer is like saying you're a Hammer Carpenter"

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=147321#p147321

by fogus • 16 years ago

180 200 16 years ago

bbs.archlinux.org

xentronium3• 16 years ago

"Non-transferable API knowledge" sometimes saves a lot of time you'd otherwise spend debugging your newly invented low-level hexagon-shaped wheel.

jgrahamc2• 16 years ago

Agreed. But the big problem with RoR that I've encountered is that the whole has_and_belongs_to_many mess feels like an idea that got out of hand. You can imagine that with a very simple schema writing the associations would be easy enough, but you end up with two problems:

1. You have to keep the schema and the associations in sync. I simply do not understand why in RoR the associations are not derived from the schema using foreign key relationships.

2. You end up knowing how to do something simply in SQL and then having to translate that on to the Rails way. This Rails way seems like a useless translation of a perfectly workable underlying system.

Put 1 and 2 together and I end up with the frustration of "Oh, I have to keep the schema in sync. with all this association stuff so that I can use Rails method to access the schema". It feels circular and I'd be much happier with reverse engineered methods.

Also, I find the Rails magic functions where you can just make up a function name find_by_nozzle_color() to be infuriating. I'd be really happy if the reverse engineering component spat out something like a header file containing sensible methods I can call.

Perhaps I lack imagination. Or experience. Or both.

Also, while I'm moaning. I wish Rails had proper support for database views. It's as if no one has any real experience with databases. Doing that would eliminate a lot of my troubles because I could keep a view (even an updateable view) in the schema and have a handy object accessor for it.

gaius• 16 years ago

In all these frameworks, there's probably one guy who learnt a bit of SQL and thought "this is too complicated for anyone but a programming god like me" and built a Rube Goldberg abstraction layer on top of it. There's just no need for an "ORM layer" if you understand that a table is NOT a class and a row is NOT an object, and you can't fake it except by jumping through a lot of entirely unnecessary hoops and what do you get for that? A app that is 1% more "object oriented" than it would have been if you'd just done it.

gfunk9112• 16 years ago

I hate those auto-generated find methods as well. So i don't use them. I don't understand why this negatively impacts your experience.

+1 on the lack of support for views. You can kludge things together, but its not pleasant.

You're making the associations sound much more complex than they are. Once an association relationship becomes too complex, you always have the option of just declaring simpler association and stitching together the complexity manually. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but in most places i do feel that Rails degrades reasonably, so that you always have the option of doing something the more verbose/manual way. In something like asp.net, I find that it either just works, or you're up st creek.

swombat2• 16 years ago

1) I don't think I've actually used has_and_belongs_to_many since 2008. Generally, most people seem to use has_many :through, which is somewhat clearer and allows more complex join models.

2) All that has_many :through does is simplify the syntax of accessing objects through many-to-many join tables. If you know how to use many-to-many joins, has_many :through is just a simpler syntax that enables you to explicitly mention the join table only once, and have it used implicitly thereafter. Nothing all that complicated about that, and there's nothing that needs to be "kept in sync" any more than it would if you were doing pure SQL.

3) find_by_* methods are hardly complicated. Have a read through the source of ActiveRecord::Base's method_missing and you should get the idea of how they work pretty quickly. Give yourself half an hour, because it is pretty tight code that does a lot and does it efficiently, but it's not difficult to follow if you know ruby:

          if match = DynamicFinderMatch.match(method_id)
            attribute_names = match.attribute_names
            super unless all_attributes_exists?(attribute_names)
            if match.finder?
              options = arguments.extract_options!
              relation = options.any? ? construct_finder_arel(options, current_scoped_methods) : scoped
              relation.send :find_by_attributes, match, attribute_names, *arguments
            elsif match.instantiator?
              scoped.send :find_or_instantiator_by_attributes, match, attribute_names, *arguments, &block
            end

From: http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activerecord/lib/a...

davidw3• 16 years ago

> 1. You have to keep the schema and the associations in sync. I simply do not understand why in RoR the associations are not derived from the schema using foreign key relationships.

...

> I wish Rails had proper support for database views. It's as if no one has any real experience with databases.

Recall that Rails was created, originally, for use with Mysql, which is the sort of environment where concepts like foreign keys were, perhaps, a bit foreign to some users.

I think your complaints are valid ones, but on the whole, I think Rails has been very good for web applications, because you can do more with less code, and yet keep it fairly clean. Once you've got things set up, it becomes pleasantly simple to interact with the database in straight up Ruby, while still being possible to do more complex things should the need arise.

matt_yoho2• 16 years ago

All of this "Rails makes you do X; or, well, you can do Y" is conflating Rails as a framework with Rails' ActiveRecord library, which is the default ORM. Since Rails 3, you can easily, and effectively transparently, use DataMapper instead, which is a general ORM that supports whatever pattern you wish, not simply the ActiveRecord pattern.

Mind you, prior to Rails 3 this was a heinous world of pain, so it's understandable to overlook it.

llimllib2• 16 years ago

Carpentry metaphors for programming continue to suck: news at 11.

netcan• 16 years ago

Not doing C is like a carpenter not using a hammer?

Programming languages are like hammers in that they often end up in metaphors.

Hammers are like C in that they are bad metaphors for women.

llimllib2• 16 years ago

Bravo.

kleiba• 16 years ago

I think what the author of the forum posts means is just that it sounds like saying "hammer carpenter" when you say C-progammer, i.e., he argues that it sounds strange to put the name of the tool you use in your job title. I don't think that he's trying to make the analogy "C is to a programmer like a hammer is to a carpenter", because that analogy is obviously flawed (as shown by other comments in this thread).

AndyKelley3• 16 years ago

People have said that it is flawed, but they haven't shown that it is flawed. Can you?

philwelch• 16 years ago

"CNC machinist", "forklift operator", "machine gunner", "truck driver", "helicopter pilot"--it seems like a lot of job titles say more about the tool used than the task accomplished, and in fact it would be less informative to replace these job titles with vaguer terms like "metalworker", "pallet mover", "soldier", "long-distance cargo transport specialist", or "long-distance aerial cargo transport specialist". And frankly, C is just as tricky to learn to use properly as at least half the tools mentioned here.

konad• 16 years ago

I, for one, welcome our new Arch Overlord.

I kind of agree with him. But I bet he wrapped his "select count(*) from ..." in some sort of function like get_row_count(table). Add a few more and before you know it, you're half way to a new framework that concatentates HTML fragments built from SQL queries.

gfunk9112• 16 years ago

Yes, because that's all Rails (and the other frameworks) do. They obsfucate HTML and put a thin wrapper around SQL

You always have the option of dropping down into straight HTML. This is one of the things I love about Rails. Also, he forgot all the other things these frameworks handle, which constitute 95% of what they do.

Yes, there are people out there who couldn't write straight HTML if they had to, and have never heard of an inner join. We call them bad programmers. Guess what: they're everywhere.

EDIT: Obviously this only applies to people who work in web development, or other domains where SQL and HTML are important parts of their domain. If you do low level systems development, write device drivers, do kernel development, etc, you're not a bad programmer cause you don't know HTML.

RiderOfGiraffes8• 16 years ago

You'd call someone a bad programmer just because they can't write straight HTML? You'd call someone a bad programmer just because they've never dealt with databases?

Interesting.

rue2• 16 years ago

With those actual examples, it would be highly unlikely for them to be good programmers.

donaq7• 16 years ago

Well, not HTML, but I would maintain that any programmer who hasn't dealt with databases is either a newbie or a bad programmer. Any web programmer who can't write straight HTML is most definitely a bad one.

markkanof2• 16 years ago

In the realm of web development (which the OP is), most developers have probably done at least some HTML and SQL. Sure there are folks who work at larger organizations where the SQL may be done by a different group than the web stuff, so maybe bad programmer is making too many assumptions. Maybe programmer with very limited scope.

JoachimSchipper2• 16 years ago

It's certainly possible to be a good programmer but to not have picked up HTML, but come on - making a simple web page is easy. A competent programmer should be able to pick it up quickly. (Note the "simple", though.)

tel2• 16 years ago

C'mon HN! This is DH3 at best. Don't let your egos get the better of your words.

The obvious domain generalization is a much harder (but hardly impossible) statement to argue:

Yes, there are people out there who couldn't <use basic building block of their field> if they had to, and have never heard of <some atomic concept they implicitly use every day>. We call them bad programmers. Guess what: they're everywhere.

So the question becomes "if you only know how to function within some high level of abstraction are you effective at what you do?" I'd suggest that this holds pretty well if the level of abstraction you're using is too leaky. I don't have the slightest idea how to time an HD seek operation, but I can write to a file with a great deal of robustness. I think the op has a point though that if you operate mostly with RoR you might be ignorant to a non-trivial amount of detail which will relegate your work to being lower quality.

My personal belief is that "web frameworks" aren't a sufficiently compartmentalized level of abstraction. RoR holds the opposite philosophy (evidenced by marketing and the opaqueness of Active Record, for instance) which causes a great deal of impedance when you have to dive into lower level concepts which were supposed to have vanished via RoR. So I agree with the op in that if you can only create things using RoR abstractions, you'll probably be in trouble before too long.

mfukar3• 16 years ago

I can't write HTML off the top of my head.

Go ahead, judge my work.

jerf• 16 years ago

Actually, at work I am currently engaged in a bit of a war to convince people that outputting HTML is not easy and in fact is quite challenging to get correct manually. Because people who think outputting HTML is as simple as printing out the tags write cross-site scripting attacks by the dozens. Arbitrary command injections and SQL injections follow just behind.

Outputting something that looks like HTML enough to please a browser is easy. Outputting correct HTML that isn't a CERT entry waiting to happen is actually very hard.

Though this still boils down to an argument that you ought to know what you're doing at the base level of what's going on, when I see people just slamming out HTML in string concatenations and variable insertions I generally consider that evidence that they only think they know what's going on, not that they actually do. If you aren't using some sort of safe+sane HTML generation wrapper you're suicidally betting on having superhuman levels of discipline if you expect to not write security holes.

enduser• 16 years ago

While one can't count on superhuman levels of discipline, correctness (i.e. discipline) is still a trait to look for. Rapid development goes faster if programmers are not rapidly iterating over their logical/structural mistakes.

runjake2• 16 years ago

You might more correctly say that Rails "abstracts" HTML, JavaScript (on multiple levels) and SQL (via an ORM).

runjake2• 16 years ago

What's with the downvotes? That's the purpose, it's to provide an abstraction layer, not obfuscate.

jarin2• 16 years ago

Boy, C programmers really get riled up when you suggest that anything with a higher level of abstraction is good (heaven forbid you mention an interpreted language). I wonder if assembly programmers do the same thing when you bring up C.

StavrosK• 16 years ago

That entire comment is very biased. Sure, the "pure" way might be amazing and fantastic, but if I used raw SQL queries for my projects, I'd be in a lot of trouble when I needed to do something extra when saving an object.

Sure, I could use stored procedures, but then it's database-specific. What happens when I need to move from MySQL to postgres, or from AppEngine to my own server?

The poster just ignores a million things frameworks are good for. Sure, if your project is large enough you'll eventually grow out of them and need to do more complicated stuff than what they make simple, but for 90% of projects they are a godsend.

billswift• 16 years ago

I think "machinist" is a better analogy than carpenter for programming. A C programmer is like being a lathe operator, a ruby programmer like a milling machine operator, and so on. And the various frameworks and APIs are like jigs and fixtures, they let you turn out some work more quickly and accurately, at the cost of overall flexibility.

rmjb• 16 years ago

You're implying that C akin to a lathe and ruby is akin to a milling machine. AFAIK, lathes do come with an optional milling attachment, while milling machines don't have a lathe attachment. Thus C > Ruby ? ;) After a certain point all analogies are flawed.

vineet7kumar• 16 years ago

Sure it's easy to get hurt if you do not use a hammer with care but you just can't be a good carpenter without knowing how to use a hammer properly . NOM

davidw3• 16 years ago

My inclination is to believe that knowing the basics of writing code with C is slightly more difficult than figuring out the basics of hammer usage.

Also, the range of things you can do with C likely exceeds what you generally utilize a given hammer for.

Programming languages are not like hand tools.

kd0amg• 16 years ago

Programming languages are not like hand tools.

Particularly when you consider how much different languages' capabilities overlap.

Untitled3• 16 years ago

I'm going to go off at a tangent here and rant a bit.

Firstly, "C" is not a difficult language. When you compare it to the difficulty of say elementary calculus, you will notice that the concepts are simple.

Any person who studied computer science and do not know how a pointer works (or how to represent an access an array with a pointer) is grossly incompetent. C does not hide the basic programming concepts behind a nice IDE which you double click to type your portion of code.

I recently had another problem (with one person who was busy with a Masters degree at a fairly prestigious technology university). The project involved having video updates. I wrote a demonstration that performed the computation in a “while(1)” loop (i.e. fetch frame, do processing, display frame). The person was involved in writing a simple GUI program.

I tried to explain to him that he cannot use a “while (1)” loop in the event handler of the button that should start the event. Even drew nice graphs on a board explaining all about the thread of execution and how event handling usually works (e.g. a loop that handles events and call functions).

After 30 minutes of explanation the person came up with a very bright idea. He said that “Maybe we should set a sleep(1000) command in the loop to give the program time to react”. WTF?

davidw3• 16 years ago

> Firstly, "C" is not a difficult language.

Compared to other programming languages - most of which are significantly more complex than hammers. My 2 and a half year old daughter knows what a hammer is and has an idea of how to use it. I'm proud that she can point and say "C for cat!", but that's about the extent of her knowledge of the C programming language.

Also, yes, C is a fairly simple language, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily easy to use compared to other languages, that do nice things like GC.

mattmcknight• 16 years ago

It's not so much the c language that is difficult, it's just that it tends to be more difficult to construct large programs with it, because it is a lower level abstraction than other languages. This gives more flexibility in memory management, etc., but also requires you to actually do it. (c is to higher level languages, as ASM is to c).

I, for one, enjoy languages (and even frameworks) with sensible defaults, so the normal case is handled for you, but that let you override that default behavior or even drop down into a lower level language when needed.

tjr• 16 years ago

Any person who studied computer science and do not know how a pointer works (or how to represent an access an array with a pointer) is grossly incompetent.

Maybe so, but such folks exist in droves. C isn't hard, but it looks simpler than it is, and this clever disguise catches a lot of people off guard. And even so, there seems to be a practical difference between understanding C and having the discipline to use it correctly in the midst of a real project.

kenjackson2• 16 years ago

I don't understand... don't you get a "ButtonClickedEvent" when the button is clicked? Why would he think he needs a while(1) loop in the button? Am I missing something?

UPDATE: After rereading it... you guys are actually implmenting the button. Although surely you're not implementing the whole mouse stack... so I'm still confused :-)

injekt• 16 years ago

I don't get it. Using these frameworks has nothing to do with the user either not being able to write markup, or just generally sucking at doing so. The abstraction isn't 'useless'. It gives you a choice, though. If someone is feeling more comfortable writing raw SQL then do so, ActiveRecord isn't stopping you. That's the great thing about Rails. If you want to write raw markup, sure, go ahead; just don't use any of the helpers provided.

Regardless of the means of transport, we're achieving the same goal. How we achieve this is usually personal preference. And for that reason rants like this will always come and go, just as responses like mine.

patio112• 16 years ago

The real danger isn't calling yourself a C programmer, it is calling yourself a programmer. That has far more dangerous career consequences, particularly for freelancers.

AndyKelley3• 16 years ago

You need to explain that for it to make any sense.

patio112• 16 years ago

If you call yourself a programmer, sell yourself to management as a programmer, and go about getting jobs by applying for the ones that say programmer in the title, you are boxing yourself in to a career role as a lumpen resource (literally, they will call you a "resource") and cost center, which the MBAs are going to do their level best to either eliminate or replace with a substitutable resource at a quarter of the price. That resource might be a younger resource, or it might be a resource with an accent, but either way they'll check your department's resource box.

Instead, you want -- particularly as a consultant -- to be the guy giving measurable, predictable, huge impacts either to costs or, ideally, to driving revenue. If you cannot quantify your worth to the company, it will be quantified for you, and the default guess is going to be -1.5 * $YOUR_SALARY. If you can quantify the value of your work for the company -- by being the guy who makes them money using his bag of magic tricks that management frankly does not understand and does not give a shit about -- your market value will be far, far higher, whether you choose to take it in terms of dollars, flexibility, working conditions, or what have you.

thibaut_barrere• 16 years ago

Wait, it's not dangerous!

You just have to add that: you are a programmer that is able to handle a project from requirements gathering to deployment in an agile fashion, provide help with SEO, copy-writing and scalability issues :)

dmoney• 16 years ago

What do you call yourself?

apl• 16 years ago

I like Django as much as the next guy, but the framework-obsession that has developed over the past few years does indeed tick me off.

There are certain instances (i.e., full-blown web applications) that benefit a lot from employing abstraction tools such as RoR or Django. Equally, whenever there's a lot of variation in the underlying technology, give me a framework! jQuery is a wonderful example for this.

However, there's a time and place for such frameworks, and that is not "always, everywhere". Really simple CRUD stuff doesn't require Rails. CSS grid frameworks are a ridiculously inefficient mess. (Aye; even in prototyping.) Most template languages are silly and unnecessary. Et cetera.

Sure, it's a rant. But the man has a point. Web frameworks are enabling a whole generation who can't even use a scripting language without relying on plenty of magic. A modicum of abstraction, when sensible? Bring it on. Relentless black box programming? That has its limits.

lulin• 16 years ago

"Web frameworks are enabling a whole generation who can't even use a scripting language without relying on plenty of magic."

I don't really think people program like this. When I tried using rails 2 years ago, all the magic it was doing behind the scenes actually made it impossible for me to use it, as I had no idea what magic was there and how it related to the underlying system. After some time of writing web apps "by hand", then trying out sinatra and padrino, I just recently looked at Rails again and suddenly understood how to use it.

What I want to say is that I don't think that the magic Rails does leads to stupid programmers. It will only help those that actually know what they want to do and make the repetitive parts easier. Honestly, I don't want to write a login system with hashing etc. ever again. I don't want to think about how to save old versions of the entries in the database. I don't want to write my own form helpers. I am happy that Rails does this for me and I can spend time thinking about the interesting parts of my program.

mnutt• 16 years ago

I would argue the opposite -- that really simple CRUD stuff really does need a framework. Why waste your time doing mind-numbing work when you can let the framework do it for you?

On the other hand, with full-blown web applications that do something out of the ordinary (long-running requests, etc) it might be better to drop down a level of abstraction.

codefisher• 16 years ago

He forgets what the main purpose of frameworks are for, doing all the boring repetitive bits, so I can get down to writing the new and interesting parts of my web app. For example doing form validation, and displaying the errors back again is really common, and annoying. Any good framework makes it painless.

And what about running on multiple databases. What happens if I need to be able to support MySql and Postgres? Really hard without a framework.

sz• 16 years ago

Exactly. Pain in the ass does not imply hard to understand.

AndyKelley3• 16 years ago

I used to make all my websites in pure Perl, and got along ok. When I discovered web frameworks (specifically Django), I just about pissed myself. I hate needless abstractions as much as the next guy (more, probably), but I strongly believe that web frameworks will make a programmer orders of magnitude more productive.

vrode2• 16 years ago

needless?

promethean2• 16 years ago

That analogy only holds if you can build any object of a carpenter's skill with just a hammer, or just a screw driver, etc. C is a general purpose tool, compared to the task-oriented tools of carpentry.

There is a very strong difference in signal from someone telling me "I am an expert C programmer" compared to "I am an expert PHP programmer."

Leaving out the name of the programming language all together removes salient content without adding anything else of value. If I want to make your of your programming skills, I'll still need to ask "Okay, what languages?"

So, saying that "Calling oneself a C Programmer is like saying you're a Hammer Carpenter" is like saying when there is a choice between tool sets, the choice doesn't matter.

demallien• 16 years ago

Yup, programming languages are (generally) Turing-complete. Hammers are not the equivalent in the woodworking space, good luck cutting that plank of wood into two equal pieces, lengthwise, with a hammer.

Saying you're a C programmer is more like saying you're a carpenter specialising in furniture, as opposed to say a carpenter that specialises in houses.

pavel_lishin3• 16 years ago

> cutting that plank of wood into two equal pieces, lengthwise, with a hammer.

Sounds like one of those "round manhole" interview questions.

markkanof2• 16 years ago

Saying your a C programmer is more like saying you are a carpenter that only uses non-powered hand tools. You can accomplish any task and you take pride in being a master of you simple tools, but getting a job done might take you multiple times longer than the carpenter who shows up with a table saw and cordless drill.

l_dopa• 16 years ago

This is an even worse analogy for so many reasons, not sure why it hasn't been voted down into oblivion. Must be all those people using that great new OS written in PHP.

alttab• 16 years ago

The author may not have as much experience on a large web project as using something like RoR would help with, but even so I generally agree with him.

Specifically speaking, what made me a better programmer was making my own game engines from scratch using DirectX, SDL, and OpenGL. Yup, I wrote 3 different engines on three different technologies (even though SDL uses DirectDraw underneath). What made me a better web developer was writing my own MVC framework for PHP, and then I moved to Rails to be productive.

Hiding those details helps certainly, but only if you know them. You still need to know them, which is where a lot of Rails programmers get it wrong, but hiding it will still help you be productive.

promethean2• 16 years ago

Reducing this analogy, you obtain the simplest form of "C is like a Hammer". I really want that hammer. With it I could as easily manipulate the molecules in the wood I'm hammering as I could secure the roof to the frame of a house.

Buffer overflows would be a problem of course, at least for large buildings with lots of traffic-- after the 4,294,967,296th person the whole thing would just collapse.

grovulent2• 16 years ago

So I'm a newbie python/django person that has been using them both for about 6 months now. I've had multiple rants directed my way by web developers telling me that I was making a big mistake by using a framework - for all the sorts of reasons listed in this rant.

So apparently I'm ruining the universe by employing tools I don't fully understand. I must admit this particular complaint I find a bit perplexing. I'll drop down a level of abstraction if I find the universe demands it of me. Otherwise - I really don't care about what's going on in bowels beneath me. Maybe Gandalf is getting it on with a Balrog for all I know... but for my needs, it just doesn't matter.

I mean - I'll learn assembler if I come up against a use case that demands it of me. But that's just not likely to happen for the silly little things I'm working on.

I also happen to believe that it's a waste of time to teach kids the algorithm that you work through on paper for long division. Give the tykes a calculator and let society progress at the faster pace that technology allows. I mean - claiming that you need to use an abacas to do basic sums because that's how we old folk did it, is just ridiculous. All algorithms are just effective procedures which depend on a certain level of technological sophistication to be employed. The introduction of arabic numerals meant that we didn't have to use abacuses any more. Hooray!

Besides that - I actually know people whose applications I have aped for learning purposes - and I notice that I wrote them in about the tenth of the time, with less than a tenth of the experience, and they also seem to the run at ten times the speed with similar functionality. I hear yarns about how they were doing dumb things like not setting primary keys, or making loads of unnecessary calls on the database etc... and I think about how Django really helps me to steer clear of many of the basic mistakes. I learn about these as I go because I continue to read the awesome documentation as well as digging into the guts of how Django works. Through this I get a lesson on how at least one group of professionals think web development should be done.

I personally feel much better placed going forward than all the folks who've had to roll their own over the past 10 years. When I feel more comfortable with Django, probably the next thing I'll do is learn another framework - so as to get another perspective from the professionals.

I think it's a great way to learn - personally... and folks who think otherwise I'm going to keep ignoring.

TheSOB88• 16 years ago

You don't think it's important for people to learn long division? Other than being one step away from total technological reliance, these kinds of exercises are way of teaching the relationships between numbers, which is INCREDIBLY important.

ewjordan• 16 years ago

Bah. Long division is a rather unenlightening algorithm that doesn't teach most people anything at all about how numbers interact.

That's assuming they even remember how the algorithm works. Which they don't, as a rule.

ROI-wise, there are far better places to spend time learning the relationships between numbers than long division.

adbge• 16 years ago

> Other than being one step away from total technological reliance

I rely on technology to cook my food for me. Personally, I think that should be a little more alarming than relying on a calculator. My point being: embrace technology, don't fear it.

> these kinds of exercises are way of teaching the relationships between numbers, which is INCREDIBLY important.

One could learn about relationships between numbers without knowing long division.

Honestly, the only time I do non-trivial division by hand is when I'm doing napkin math to entertain myself. If I didn't know how, I'd just rely on my phone. It's fairly unlikely that I'm going to be in a situation where I need to do long division and don't have access to a computer/phone/calculator.

Now, I'm not sure that I agree with not teaching long division but, at the same time, I'm not convinced that it's terrifically important.

joevandyk• 16 years ago

How does long division help at explaining the relationships between numbers? All it was for me was a mechanical set of steps to arrive at the answer.

grovulent2• 16 years ago

I think it's relative to the use to which you intend to put that knowledge.

There are zillion of different algorithms that could be applied to do long division. I could for instance, apply an algorithm that works for first order classical logic extended with the set of peano axiom and a successor function. Certainly someone who knows THAT algorithm understands something more about division than folk who just use paper and pen with arabic numerals. But do most people need to see the relationships between the two algorithms to do all the stuff in life that they need to? Clearly not.

So to be convinced of your position I'd need to see why the particular knowledge of the particular algorithm you think is so important is really necessary to the work that most people go on to do with long division.

I'm not saying the issue is completely cut and dried - but I personally can't see what your argument might be.

- edit - I might just add... that it's ALL technological reliance to some degree. I mean - what if they don't have pencil and paper? What if they don't have arabic numerals? These both were important technological advances that made long division as we know it possible. It simply couldn't be done with an abacus in any way that wasn't horribly time consuming. Technological reliance doesn't hold as an argument against employing new and faster algorithms except where it may still be difficult for many to get access to that tech. In the case of calculators in the western world - that's clearly not an issue.

jcromartie• 16 years ago

All of these fancy web frameworks like Sinatra Web.py and Compojure are making us soft. The abstractions that they hide are simpler than these frameworks. HTTP is easy.

parfe• 16 years ago

Meh, I hate analogies with a passion, but here's my useless rewrite:

Calling yourself an Emacs Programmer is like saying you're a Hammer Carpenter.

Calling yourself a C programmer is like saying you're a framer. Calling yourself a Ruby developer is like saying you're a brick layer.

Both can be used to build a house and it's usually better to work with what you know.

generalk• 16 years ago

I don't know many folks that call themselves "PHP programmers" or "Python devs". I know a lot of "web developers" that know a bunch of technologies, though. The few people I do know that are "$LANGUAGE developers" usually aren't that good.

As far as frameworks go: I use frameworks because I don't want to re-write the same shit over and over again. Yes, I can write an <a> tag, and I can do complex JOINs. Now I use Haml and ActiveRecord so I don't have to spend time hand-crafting every SQL statement I need.

I've never understood the whole "frameworks bad" ideology. Just because some folks don't learn anything outside of their framework doesn't mean all frameworks are bad. (See: US Supreme Court, Baby v. Bathwater)

joelmichael• 16 years ago

I identify as a Rails developer out of expedience. It is what I've worked in for the last five years or so, and where most of my marketable proficiency lies. You could call it my specialization. I know PHP, C, Java, Perl, and others, but why mention them? I haven't used them for work in years.

9ec4c12949a4f3• 16 years ago

Calling oneself a C programmer is like saying you work with wood but not metal.

Fify?

cmelbye• 16 years ago

I can drop down to plain HTML without using any Rails helpers, and I can also use standard SQL for queries in ActiveRecord. This is probably the case for most other frameworks as well.

greendot• 16 years ago

If you were a carpenter and all you used was a hammer then it would make sense to call yourself a "Hammer Carpenter" to distinguish yourself from other well-rounded carpenters.

meric• 16 years ago

I like my template language, it lets me write less repeating HTML. I like my SQL wrapper and migration tool, it lets me change the database without worrying about doing the wrong ALTER TABLE. And I like my automatic form validation, its just much less annoying with it than without. If you know all the tools I'm talking, then they are merely abstractions you'd build anyway if you were using no frameworks!

The details beneath the abstractions are indeed simple, and likely more simple than the abstractions themselves.

Why do we use abstractions if they are so goddamn complicated?

You know the answer.

zafka• 16 years ago

I am an Information manipulator. I happen to be very fond of using C. I sometimes just use my fingers.

bhiggins• 16 years ago

a web programmer should perhaps not speak of things he does not understand

Kurtz792• 16 years ago

It should be something obvious: a language is just a tool, and a good programmer should be able to adapt and learn to use a similar tool in little time.

A pity that for many in HR it´s not that obvious.

rimantas• 16 years ago

Alas, in most cases learning the language is nothing compared to learning and mastering the libraries. And then there is domain knowledge. HTML and CSS can be very easy if you ignore browsers, their rendering modes, accessibility requirements, etc.

ethyreal• 16 years ago

I love that a four year old programming rant is still poignant.

xutopia• 16 years ago

The analogy fails. Have you ever seen a carpenter never ever use a hammer? They have to use it as some point but I've seen many successful programmers never use C in their life.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Reading forums where PHP Programmers hang out and ask about other langauges is like hitting yourself on the head with a Carpenter's Hammer.

SeanDav• 16 years ago

The Arch Overlord has a point but he has chosen to make a stand on an issue that is shades of Grey and not Black or White. At the end of the day abstraction can be very useful, even if you don't understand the underlying technology, depending on what problem is trying to be solved.

Today it might be useful to do SQL queries and Form handling via OO and tomorrow it might be more useful to go hack some raw HTML. The answer is, almost as always, "it depends".

One could take his argument to ridiculous levels and say if you don't fully understand Machine Code and every layer of Abstraction above it, you are doing something wrong. Clearly a ridiculous argument although I have no doubt that if you did understand all these layers you probably could safetly call yourself a good programmer :)

techiferous• 16 years ago

"make a stand on an issue that is shades of Grey and not Black or White"

There is much more of this type of discourse in the programming community than I can bear. I think it happens when a young programmer gets just enough experience to gain confidence but not enough experience to gain perspective.

igrekel• 16 years ago

The title was promising but I found the point of the post moot. The title made me think about the fact that a large segment of the market tends to categorize developers on the tools they use rather than the things they build.

jdietrich• 16 years ago

The "programming language as tool" metaphor is terrible.

I don't have a clue how pointer arithmetic works. I'm vaguely aware of it, but it just never comes up in my professional life. I'm absolutely fine with that, just as I'm fine with the idea that a cardiac surgeon may be vaguely aware of how to perform a kidney transplant but doesn't know the details.

Let's be realistic. The days of wizard programmers single-handedly designing an operating system are gone. We're all specialists now. An embedded systems programmer has absolutely no need to understand the intricacies of XML schema or the finer points of CSS parser bugs. Beyond a broad sketch, I have no real need to know the fine details of memory management.

I'm happy to call myself an ECMAScript programmer because that's what I do, that's what I have done for some time and that is what I expect to do in the future. I know other languages, though none well enough to produce work I would be happy to put my name to (apart from Scheme, but who's going to hire me to do that?). Like it or not, I'm not a computer scientist. I'm a working programmer and my view of the world is inevitably coloured by the raw material I work with every day. The way I think about code, the way I design problems is an imprint of the capabilities and limitations of my usual languages. I imagine a sufficiently literate computer scientist could smell it on my breath, or at least infer it from the way I might sketch out a diagram or pseudocode solution.

mrj• 16 years ago

I think the point is, you'd have no problem learning pointer arithmetic if you needed it. It's not hard.

rick_20473• 16 years ago

No the point is, he doesn't need it right now and as he has projected his future interest, in the future.

Kurtz792• 16 years ago

Every average programmer with a passing knowledge of computer architecture should be able to pick up pointer "arithmetic" in a couple of hours.

It's not rocket science, really, it has more to do with the "I don't know what it is and I'm absolutely fine with that" kind of attitude.

As an electronic-engineer-turned-embedded-C-programmer I never had anything to do (and likely will in the immediate future) with things like closures, prototypal inheritance or web frameworks, but at least I should be able to know what they are and the concepts they are based upon.

By willingly limit your toolbox to one tool you limit your possibilities and usefulness. Maybe you'll come up with a problem that an other tool solves better than the one you are used to, and you'll never know.

rick_20473• 16 years ago

Correct me if I am wrong, but any one of these "toolbox"es will take enormous effort to master fully. Some person may really want to do web development for his/her whole life, nothing wrong with that. But to do that they will have to master many many skills to even say "I know everything about web development".

vu3rdd• 16 years ago

Speaking about pointers, it is just an abstraction about addresses which itself is an abstraction of the bit pattern generated to access a memory location, which is an abstraction of the analog electrical voltages on those physical wires, which is an abstraction of ......

Dav3xor2• 16 years ago

I'm an embedded programmer, and I had to write an XML parser for work. I've also written operating system code, 3d graphics, whatever. And ECMAScript too. Having such a narrow view limits were you can go, and what you can do. I specialize in a few things, but there's no programming task I'm truly afraid of, with at least being given a little time to read some documentation. "Specialization is for Insects."

I know so many people who've just done basic CRUD business programming. Smart people, really smart people, but they limit themselves; don't try to do anything deep and interesting, and it's sad.

rick_20473• 16 years ago

I know so many people who've just done basic CRUD business programming. Smart people, really smart people, but they limit themselves; don't try to do anything deep and interesting, and it's sad.

I don't know much about CRUD business programming, but I do know in every field there are many levels of difficulties. Maybe these smart people are trying to solve those problems? If a system has simple atomic parts, it does not mean that every problem will be easy.

Edit: "Specialization is for Insects.", wow if you believe that, why do you live in an society. If you know every general thing, then you must be able to make your meal right? It will include farming, harvesting, cleaning of wheat, making your own bread (with equipments that you make on your own) and then slicing it and serving it. And that is just bread ;)

miloshasan2• 16 years ago

Well, describing oneself as a working programmer (as opposed to a computer scientist) is a valid position, but why does it invalidate the "programming language as tool" metaphor?

A basic message of CS is that most general-purpose programming languages are to a large extent isomorphic in their expressive power, and that many computing problems can be solved efficiently in the mathematical language of sets, matrices, or abstract nodes sending each other abstract messages. The translation to a real language is then the easier step (though it still can be time-consuming and error-prone, for sure).

If only we all worked this way - there would be fewer language wars, and less terrible code resulting from "thinking in the language" rather than "thinking about the problem".

mturmon3• 16 years ago

The reason is that the programming language, in this usage, is not analogous to a single tool (like a hammer).

People build all kinds of complete things with just "C" -- where by this term, I mean the compiler, standard library, build and debug system (make/gdb, say).

There are few things of interest you can build with just a hammer. The evidence for this is that no craftsman builds with just a hammer.

The better analogy to the concept of "C" above is "wood shop" (as opposed to, say, "metal shop", "polymer shop", "electronics shop"). You still get the point, which is that everything out of the wood shop to some degree "looks the same" but it's not so clearly leading the reader to the hoped-for conclusion ("the statement is stupid").

loup-vaillant4• 16 years ago

Limiting yourself to a domain is one thing. It's like having narrow goals, which is fine. Limiting yourself to a set of programming languages is different. It's like using nothing but a given set of means, which is silly. So, you're a front-end web developer? Fine. You're a JavaScript programmer? Stupid.

Programming languages are tools, in the sense that they are mostly means to ends. But they are not ordinary tools, because they have a tremendous influence over the way you think. I reckon The sentence "PLs are tools" is improperly used most of the time, but not here.

As a side note, if you actually don't have a clue how pointer arithmetic works, check if you really understand plain ordinary variables. Pointers are just a second level of indirection away.

sprout2• 16 years ago

I'd say saying "I'm a C programmer" is more analogous to saying "I'm a helicopter pilot." You can probably fly a commercial jet or fighter, but they are very different aircraft, with very different use cases and operation.

And there will always be a market for helicopter pilots.

nickelplate2• 16 years ago

Sometimes language specialization is a result of domain specialization. If you're an embedded programmer or a game engine programmer, there is a good chance that you will use very little in your job other than C or C++. People don't necessarily set out to become proficient in a particular technology, it just happens that the technology is the best tool in their domain.

nadam2• 16 years ago

Yeah, it is interesting how chosing methaphors change the outcome. For example change 'carpenter' to 'artist' and 'hammer carpenter' to 'painter', 'musician' or 'sculptor' and you have different outcome. Or change carpenter to scientist. Or even change to mathematician: a set theorist is really dealing with different things than a number theorists. These metaphors really have their limitations.

msbarnett3• 16 years ago

Metaphors are necessarily colored by our perceptions and preferences. For instance, I'd say a set theorist is more equivalent to, say, an area specialist like an embedded systems developer, whereas a "javascript programmer" is like a mathematician who insists he's "only an addition guy".

tel2• 16 years ago

I think the claim in the title still stands, though. Carpenters never call themselves hammerists, but there are cabinetmakers. The point inherent is that there's some truth to saying that a true programmer's skillset is only informed by but not demarcated by the languages he or she is fluent in. It's the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in another form!

omouse• 16 years ago

An embedded systems programmer has absolutely no need to understand the intricacies of XML schema or the finer points of CSS parser bugs

They may not have a need, but they should be able to dig through all that because it's all just functions + data + dealing with some other idiot's code.

brendoncrawford• 16 years ago

I have been witness to many JavaScript programmers who could have greatly benefited from good old fashioned pointer arithmetic.

Take the following code for example:

  /** BEGIN **/
  var f = new Array(3000000);
  console.time(1);
  for (var i = 0; i < f.length; i++) {
    if (f[i] === 'foobar' ||
            f[i] === 'foobaz' ||
            f[i] === 'baz' ||
            f[i] === 'barfoo') {
        // Do something
    }
  }
  console.timeEnd(1);
  /** END **/

On my comp, in Firefox, this executes in 7478 ms.

Now, if there is one thing that pointer arithmetic has taught me to be especially aware of is that array index lookups are expensive, usually regardless of the language. With this knowledge, I am empowered to refactor my code to look like this:

  /** BEGIN **/
  var f = new Array(3000000);
  console.time(1);
  for (var i = 0, _i = f.length; i < _i; i++) {
    x = f[i];
    if (x === 'foobar' ||
            x === 'foobaz' ||
            x === 'baz' ||
            x === 'barfoo') {
        // Do something
    }
  }
  console.timeEnd(1);
  /** END **/

On my comp, in Firefox, this runs in 6235 ms. Now, I have achieved almost a 20% performance increase due to my expanded world view.

This is a very simple example, but the list goes on. One certainly should not limit themself to one language.

Unosolo• 16 years ago

It's a good example of how coming from different language can both help and inhibit programmer's thinking. Knowing C certainly helps to understand that repetitive array size and index access is likely to be more expensive than using local variables. At the same time C programmer is more likely to adopt an imperative programming style, which is in this case more error prone, verbose and doesn't allow for code re-use.

More ideomatic JavaScript would look like this:

    Array.prototype.foreach = function (f) {
       for (var i = 0, _i = this.length; i < _i; i++) f(this[i])
    }


    /** BEGIN **/
    var f = new Array(3000000);
    console.time(1);
    f.foreach( function (el) {
           if (el === 'foobar' ||
               el === 'foobaz' ||
               el === 'baz' ||
               el === 'barfoo')  // Do something

    })
    console.timeEnd(1);
    /** END **/

Luyt• 16 years ago

That article is from 2006. Somewhere the Arch Overlord states: "CherryPy is more restrictive than web.py - web.py uses the RoR Routes technique (I think Django does too)", but nowadays CherryPy has a 'RoutesDispatcher' too, among other types of dispatchers, which can be chained. http://docs.cherrypy.org/dev/refman/dispatch.html#cherrypy._...

coliveira• 16 years ago

I agree that web frameworks make things more complicated than they really are. In other words, they make things simple in the beginning (when you are creating the project), but they get more and more complicated when you try to customize the application.

Despite all the problems with PHP, it still gives you a middle of the road approach. You have all the tools to do the stuff you need to do, but at the same time you have access at how things really are done. For example, you can handle SQL by hand or create your own objects to do what is necessary. I think this is really useful, and would like to have something like this in other languages as well. I realize, however, that the reason PHP allows this operation mode is that it was created as a web language itself, not a set of libraries on top of an existing language.

jayF88• 16 years ago

c is god

Goladus• 16 years ago

Calling yourself a C Programmer isn't anything like saying you're a hammer carpenter. The analogy breaks down so quickly I don't know where to begin. Maybe here:

A programming language is a tool. Each one fits it's own problem-set.

And what would that "problem-set" be, exactly?

The boundaries between the utility of a hammer and utility of a saw are quite clear. The boundaries between the utility of PHP and Ruby are very blurry. Strictly speaking, both languages are turing-complete and are equally capable of solving the same "problem-sets".

jdvolz• 16 years ago

Actually, I would have characterized this more as:

"Calling oneself a C programmer is like saying you're a finish carpenter."

As in, it means you normally work in a particular set of circumstances, which is all we're aiming to say when we denote the language we work in (because language is often closely allied with the type of project). Does it define you as a person, or even state that you don't work in other types of projects, no, it doesn't.

Can we move on from this now?

reynolds• 16 years ago

These types of rants always strike me as being ignorant. It seems like it's just taking this one person's view of software development and trying to apply it to everything. To me, it's on the same level as saying "real programmers use X".

vrode2• 16 years ago

What if I wrote the wrapper myself?

stevenwei• 16 years ago

In my experience, the only people who actually prefer writing web apps in raw SQL/HTML either 1) have never written a real web app or 2) tend to write highly insecure code without even realizing it.

A few things that web frameworks/libraries help with:

Forms:

  - Validation & displaying errors & input sanitization.
  - CSRF checks.
  - Safe file upload handling.
  - HTML generation is useful for removing a bunch of boilerplate.

ORMs:

  - Default SQL injection protection.
  - Query objects help you construct complex queries without having to do a bunch of 
  string manipulation.
  - Database abstraction (e.g. moving from MySQL to PostgreSQL is a lot easier).
  - Database migration tools to help you upgrade your schema.

Templates:

  - Inheritance & replaceable blocks reduce a lot of boilerplate code.
  - Tools to help you safely escape user generated content & transform it for web 
  presentation.

Misc:

  - User authentication. Rolling a secure implementation on your own is no small task.
  - Secure cookie and session management.
  - Providing an organized architecture with sensible separation of concerns.

Now, to be a solid web developer I agree that at some point you're really going to need to understand the fundamentals of how each of these things works under the hood, but you're crazy if you'd rather write all that code by hand instead of using solid, well-tested, existing libraries for it.

Note: That's not to say that using a web framework will automatically make your code secure (the recent Diaspora debacle clearly demonstrates otherwise). However, you've already got so much code to worry about securing in your own application, why would you want to have to hand roll everything else too?

michaelchisari• 16 years ago

I couldn't agree with this rant more. I use frameworks because they streamline my code, and provide basic abstractions for simple tasks. One of my biggest issues with Rails (to be fair, it's more about people new to rails), is the way it sees abstraction as a form of magic. Simple tasks should be abstracted, but abstracting complex tasks is a recipe for disaster down the line, when you need to operate outside of the confines of the abstraction. This can be mind-numbinglyannoying for experienced programmers, and frustrating for new programmers.

I do want to address specifically the idea of abstracting out things like HTML or SQL. These are my two pet peeves. I look at something like HAML, and I can't understand why anyone would consider that to be a good idea, even putting aside the fact that your designer will have to learn a whole new syntax, but the idea that markup should look like programming language defeats the point of a markup language.

Here's how I did it with Appleseed, using the simple_html_dom library. Views are dumb, very dumb. You create a view which is only markup, for instance:

http://github.com/appleseedproj/appleseed/blob/master/compon...

So you properly class and id your markup, and in the controller, you populate the data, repeating elements for lists or tables, by targetting the dom.

If I want to set the title on this view, I do:

$View = $this->GetView ( 'friends');

$View->Find ( '.profile-friends-title', 0 )->innertext = "New Title";

That's it. No template pseudo-code, designers only have to care about the markup itself. On the front-end, I do the same with Javascript. Think of it as unobtrusive PHP.

I also stay away from ORM's. I understand all the arguments in favor, but in the end, I'd much prefer writing complex joins than using an ORM.

Separation of concerns is so important, and yet, sometimes I think frameworks, which are supposed to facilitate that, actually can make it worse, by trying to reinvent the wheel in abstract ways.

ubernostrum• 16 years ago

You only get to write this rant if you built your computer yourself, smelting the metal and crafting the circuits by hand, without recourse to off-the-shelf parts, and then wrote every bit of code for it on your own, from the lowest-level drivers to the highest-level interfaces.

And for bonus points, you have to use it by toggling ones and zeroes manually, since all those wrappers hide things and get in your way.

endergen• 16 years ago

I agree with this point for sure. Frameworks are great if you are going to leverage a lot of the libraries/modules. But often in practice you never do. So then you end up taking on the issues with using a large codebase. Which is that when you find a bug, it's very hard to trace through code to figure out what's going on.

You are investing in learning a specific library/framework rather than the low level details that are on average what you'll need more because in practice you don't get to use the same framework all the time if you switch companies or projects as they tend to have entirely different frameworks or even languages on the backend.

I like how Marcin Wichiary though in this ajaxian.com article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/web-ninja-interview-marcin-wicha...

He basically builds all his libraries from scratch for each project which he can do quickly because he knows what he's doing and can of course leverage his other code for reference. Each iteration simplifies what turns out to be bloated and creates a new code base more matched to the problem he's trying to solve.

uxp• 16 years ago

I view ORM and MVC frameworks like a stepping stone. I first started programming using these wrappers/layers because it was simple to use. I was able to get the same data I could have if I statically programmed SQL queries onto my code, and I didn't care if I executed 1 or 50 queries for each page that loaded. Who cares if SomeGuyJoe's site does this. If what his site does works, who cares how it is done.

When I decided I wanted to learn more, I started to learn what the abstractions did, and hacked and changed it to be better for my particular use. Then I moved on to lower level languages, and now I have a decent understanding of how to write my own abstractions, yet I still use abstractions because they let me focus more on what I am wanting to do, instead of how to do the things that let me do it.

This post could be changed to say that anyone that learns a higher level language is harming themselves. The skills and syntax you learn from Python cannot be used in C# or Java, so you should just learn assembly. It is all machine code in the end and these languages are just facades. Only real men program by moving bits to registers.

binaryfinery• 16 years ago

Perhaps people call themselves a C programmer because they are advertising their skills for a job. Calling themselves "a programmer" might find them getting less jobs.

But to assume the argument has merit, lets follow it to its natural conclusions: since when was SQL a low level language?! SQL servers are vastly more complicated than Rails.

Another assumption the author makes is that, for any programmer, SQL is the constant, and time spent learning Rails is wasted if one has to switch to Django. This just shows the limited world view of the author. For many, Rails is the constant, and SQL, Couch, or Mongo are the choices.

To stick with the tool analogy, C is the giant processing equipment that skilled operators used to print my photos in an hour (http://bit.ly/aCoA0K), while Rails is the little Canon Selphy sitting on my desk. Both produce identical results. One of them does it a lot faster, for a lot less money, and a lot less failures and maintenance.

gills• 16 years ago

I think it's more like wearing hammer pants.

abalashov• 16 years ago

I got news for you.... these "details" that are hidden, they're less complicated than these frameworks.

Amen. Insight of the century with regard to Rails, J2EE, BPEL, and a number of other boondoggles.

"Calling oneself a C Programmer is like saying you're a Hammer Carpenter"

Related Stories