4 ms·

I can't help but wonder who these "younger programmers" that don't know memory management are. To graduate from my school, you must know it very well. In fact

I can't help but wonder who these "younger programmers" that don't know memory management are. To graduate from my school, you must know it very well. In fact, a CS major can't graduate without passing a class that requires you to write a malloc implementation yourself. A good amount of CS majors go on to take Operating Systems, whose core project (writing a kernel from scratch) requires that you interface with the virtual memory capabilities of the x86 processor (involving frame allocations, setting up the page table, etc.) Maybe the ageism thing is more of a lack of understanding on both sides than a directed bias against only the older people? I'm not trying to say that young people won't end up being better programmers in 10 to 20 years; if that weren't the case, there'd be no point in pursuing it as a career. However, to assume that comparative ignorance at 20 is the same thing as global ignorance is unfair.

thomaspaine 17y ago
Not every programmer majored in CS. In fact, these days unless you majored in CS or EE, you probably won't get any exposure to lower level programming unless you learn it on your own. For people who get into programming via other domains (math, stats, design, etc) there's generally just not a very compelling reason to learn these things because you're going to be doing 99% of your programming in a higher level language like Matlab, SPSS, Python, etc, where memory management is largely abstracted away.
- alexgartrell 17y ago
  My argument isn't for the relevance of memory management or that everyone is aware of it, just that a lot of junior people are aware of it, so it's unfair to characterize them all as "bitching" about the hard stuff.
pashields 17y ago
I don't know what makes you think that all CS programs are like this. My operating systems course did not require me to write a kernel. In fact, there was only one class that required you to work in a language that required manual memory management (using c++). Granted, my department, at least at the time, had a relatively strong functional bent: before you graduated, you would have worked in scheme and haskell. Most people ended up taking other classes that forced them to use C or more c++, but wasn't required. I'm a vassar college alum, for the record.

thomaspaine 17y ago

Not every programmer majored in CS. In fact, these days unless you majored in CS or EE, you probably won't get any exposure to lower level programming unless you learn it on your own. For people who get into programming via other domains (math, stats, design, etc) there's generally just not a very compelling reason to learn these things because you're going to be doing 99% of your programming in a higher level language like Matlab, SPSS, Python, etc, where memory management is largely abstracted away.

alexgartrell 17y ago
My argument isn't for the relevance of memory management or that everyone is aware of it, just that a lot of junior people are aware of it, so it's unfair to characterize them all as "bitching" about the hard stuff.

pashields 17y ago

I don't know what makes you think that all CS programs are like this. My operating systems course did not require me to write a kernel. In fact, there was only one class that required you to work in a language that required manual memory management (using c++). Granted, my department, at least at the time, had a relatively strong functional bent: before you graduated, you would have worked in scheme and haskell. Most people ended up taking other classes that forced them to use C or more c++, but wasn't required. I'm a vassar college alum, for the record.