3 ms·

Would be great for the hoards of "self taught" programmers out there, who bluntly refuse to understand patterns (design or programming).

mumblemumble 7y ago
I'd say it's great for anyone. I'm classically trained, but a decades-old university education doesn't enable me to just magically know the idiomatic way to do X in a language that was created after I graduated. My real question would be, what does this do that Google's Stack Overflow hits don't do. One would hope that the answer is, "Give me advice on how to do it in Python 3.6 that didn't get downvoted to death because there's already a SO question on how to do it in Python 2.7." But the cynic in me knows that, in software, particularly software's social environment, the only effective way to clear out the old, obsolete, broken wheels so they're not always in the way is by re-inventing them.
pacaro 7y ago
Hey! I'm a self taught programmer and I resemble that remark. I think that you're painting with a little too broad a brush, the inverse is true too, I've seen way too much blind application of GoF patterns by professional engineers. I think the key word is understanding. what each idiom needs is a good rubric explaining why this is the/a correct approach, but that is much harder to provide
- lewilewilewi 7y ago
  Resemble? Or resent?
  - pacaro 7y ago
    If you haven't encountered the phrase before, "I resemble that remark" is absolutely a play on the similarity between resemble and resent, suggesting in a light hearted fashion that the speaker has (perhaps) mild resentment, but recognises the truth because it is personally applicable. It also has an overtone (at least to me) of downplaying the seriousness of the "remark" by answering it with humor For myself I'm a 25 year industry veteran, with 35 years of self-taught programming experience. My experience with stereotypes and generalizations is that the problem is not so much that they might be wrong, but rather that they are always incomplete

mumblemumble 7y ago

I'd say it's great for anyone. I'm classically trained, but a decades-old university education doesn't enable me to just magically know the idiomatic way to do X in a language that was created after I graduated. My real question would be, what does this do that Google's Stack Overflow hits don't do. One would hope that the answer is, "Give me advice on how to do it in Python 3.6 that didn't get downvoted to death because there's already a SO question on how to do it in Python 2.7." But the cynic in me knows that, in software, particularly software's social environment, the only effective way to clear out the old, obsolete, broken wheels so they're not always in the way is by re-inventing them.

pacaro 7y ago

Hey! I'm a self taught programmer and I resemble that remark. I think that you're painting with a little too broad a brush, the inverse is true too, I've seen way too much blind application of GoF patterns by professional engineers. I think the key word is understanding. what each idiom needs is a good rubric explaining why this is the/a correct approach, but that is much harder to provide

lewilewilewi 7y ago
Resemble? Or resent?
- pacaro 7y ago
  If you haven't encountered the phrase before, "I resemble that remark" is absolutely a play on the similarity between resemble and resent, suggesting in a light hearted fashion that the speaker has (perhaps) mild resentment, but recognises the truth because it is personally applicable. It also has an overtone (at least to me) of downplaying the seriousness of the "remark" by answering it with humor For myself I'm a 25 year industry veteran, with 35 years of self-taught programming experience. My experience with stereotypes and generalizations is that the problem is not so much that they might be wrong, but rather that they are always incomplete