4 ms·

>Quite a few programmers at my work have never used anything but Windows and barely touch any servers. So they don't really use the command line at all, ever.

>Quite a few programmers at my work have never used anything but Windows and barely touch any servers. So they don't really use the command line at all, ever. >They also insist on using graphical clients for Git. This is of course horribly inefficient and leads to plenty of problems (mostly due to their choice of the Eclipse Git Client, which seems to have a lot of bugs). But they think the command line is scary and too difficult to understand. I still find it hard to believe that there are people like this out there. You're a programmer! You write in programming languages all day, but you think at a new language, a relatively simple one used by thousands of people who aren't professional programmers, will be hard to learn. I guess Steve Yegge was right. Programmers really do hate learning new languages.

wott 10y ago
There are many people who are completely lost without an IDE, or even without their IDE. Some of them have no idea of what is going on underneath. It is not rare to read such people around here.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  That's... terrifying. I mean, I am often in awe of my own staggering ignorance, but at least I'm doing something about it. I hazily know how CPUs work (more or less), I understand why cache misses matter (now: thanks HN). I understand the basics of Big O, what kinds of functions are computable, and why O(n^2) or O(n!) is really bad. I know some common algorithms for simple problems, and I know how to recognize the Travelling Salesman when I see it. That's not all that I know, not by a long shot, but I know that what I know is a tiny drop in the ocean of what I don't. It's just baffling that there are people out there, likely older than me, who aren't actively trying to learn more. I mean, if you don't like computing enough to be motivated to learn more about it, why are you in the industry?
oblio 10y ago
Those people are the majority (or at least a large plurality). Quit your job as a game dev/web dev at a large software vendor/startup and join the enterprise Java/.NET devs working on middleware and be amazed at how scared they are of anything outside of the IDE.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  The thing is, I actually can't imagine what it's like to be those people. I mean, I'm trying, but I literally can't: I log into my computer every day over SSH, I write and use CLI tooling constantly. I'm an emacs user, and if your tooling doesn't have a CLI mode, I'm usually not interested. I can't stand IDEs and frameworks because I hate having things done magically for me, partly because "magic" tends to break, and partly because I have a compulsive need to know how things work, if not deeply than at least superficially. I can't stand Java and languages like it because the absurd amount of boilerplate they generate seems to require such things, it's generally considered a fool's errand to write Java outside of an irritatingly complex IDE, and it seems to attract complex frameworks like a pile of crap attracts flies. An IDE dependance (not preference, dependance: you're terrified of going outside of an IDE) doesn't just imply a distaste for CLIs, it often implies a desire to have things done for you, for "magic." Do these sorts of people rewrite software, even if there's a convenient framework, just because? Do they think about cache misses (even if they don't do anything about them)? Do they learn new languages and concepts on a whim, because, "I thought it seemed cool?" Thinking like these people doesn't just mean ignoring years of knowledge, but also actually pretending that a deeply ingrained part of who I am, something I though near intrinsic to programmers (because what other sort of person would do this sort of thing voluntarily?). I actually can't, and that kind of amazes me.
  - kjs3 10y ago
    tl;dr: I don't do it that way. Therefore, that way is wrong.

wott 10y ago

There are many people who are completely lost without an IDE, or even without their IDE. Some of them have no idea of what is going on underneath. It is not rare to read such people around here.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
That's... terrifying. I mean, I am often in awe of my own staggering ignorance, but at least I'm doing something about it. I hazily know how CPUs work (more or less), I understand why cache misses matter (now: thanks HN). I understand the basics of Big O, what kinds of functions are computable, and why O(n^2) or O(n!) is really bad. I know some common algorithms for simple problems, and I know how to recognize the Travelling Salesman when I see it. That's not all that I know, not by a long shot, but I know that what I know is a tiny drop in the ocean of what I don't. It's just baffling that there are people out there, likely older than me, who aren't actively trying to learn more. I mean, if you don't like computing enough to be motivated to learn more about it, why are you in the industry?

oblio 10y ago

Those people are the majority (or at least a large plurality). Quit your job as a game dev/web dev at a large software vendor/startup and join the enterprise Java/.NET devs working on middleware and be amazed at how scared they are of anything outside of the IDE.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
The thing is, I actually can't imagine what it's like to be those people. I mean, I'm trying, but I literally can't: I log into my computer every day over SSH, I write and use CLI tooling constantly. I'm an emacs user, and if your tooling doesn't have a CLI mode, I'm usually not interested. I can't stand IDEs and frameworks because I hate having things done magically for me, partly because "magic" tends to break, and partly because I have a compulsive need to know how things work, if not deeply than at least superficially. I can't stand Java and languages like it because the absurd amount of boilerplate they generate seems to require such things, it's generally considered a fool's errand to write Java outside of an irritatingly complex IDE, and it seems to attract complex frameworks like a pile of crap attracts flies. An IDE dependance (not preference, dependance: you're terrified of going outside of an IDE) doesn't just imply a distaste for CLIs, it often implies a desire to have things done for you, for "magic." Do these sorts of people rewrite software, even if there's a convenient framework, just because? Do they think about cache misses (even if they don't do anything about them)? Do they learn new languages and concepts on a whim, because, "I thought it seemed cool?" Thinking like these people doesn't just mean ignoring years of knowledge, but also actually pretending that a deeply ingrained part of who I am, something I though near intrinsic to programmers (because what other sort of person would do this sort of thing voluntarily?). I actually can't, and that kind of amazes me.
- kjs3 10y ago
  tl;dr: I don't do it that way. Therefore, that way is wrong.