There is an interesting discussion on /. with the above topic.
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1573922
as someone who started out using Punched Cards & Paper Tape (but I bow
down in age to John Lewis)
and who has programmed in Fortran, Algol, Coral 66, Basic, Ada, Cobol,
Java, C, Pascal, HTML, CSS etc., plus a whole shed load of machine code
& embedded software (e.g. ITV Teletext Service Oracle's Subtitling
Keyboard) many of the comments about the dumbing down, the use of
frameworks and the like really ring a lot of bells.
Let me give you an example.
There was this project that wanted to put a real time battlefield
intelligence data system. It was to be all written
in Coral-66. The underlying machine code generated by the compiler was
really crap. If you think that moden software is bloated then please
thing again.
Not only was the code crap but there was so much of it that all sorts
of tricks had to be employed to even get it to link.
Then we had to produce a version of the code that had to run on a
diskless system. Boy did that give me a headache.
In the end, I re-wrote all the low level functions directly in
assembler. This made the code faster (20X) and smaller (10% of the
original).
This was all in 1977/78. Rewind to today and frankly there is so much
obfuscation and framework usage that the size of apps has just gone out
of the window. I see production code that is 'just cobbled' together. If
it works then use it and god help the poor guys who have to come along
and maintain it.
When I was contracting I was offered a very lucrative support contract.
It ticked all the boxes. Work from home, maintain the system, good money
etc. When I did my due diligence on the actual code, my already grey
hair went white. A 10yr old could have done better. It was just a
complete mis-mash of cobbled together 'stuff'.
When I asked about their regression testing, I was met with blank
stares. This System was at the literal heart of their business. IF it
fell in a heap for more than a day they would be liable to some serious
fines. Needless to say, I politely declined the contract. When the asked
me why, I replied, "Because your core system is frankly unmaintainable".
It had also been written by a team of wrote programmers in Bangalore.
But hey, who am I to complain. I'm just a unemployed 'grumpy old man'.
Modern systems are fast enough to handle all this
crap/bloat/obfuscation/framworks aren't they? Well, Intel is certainly
not complaining are they?
As one /. post states, Programmers are a dime a dozen but good
programmers are worth their weight in gold.
Stephen D
