Why Learn Basic Programming Skills?

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by DJofSD

Change for changes sake is pointless. Solve the problems, use new and different perspectives to learn to solve old problems in new ways, and, yes, if it means a new language, sure. But a hammer is always going to be a hammer.

I see the "change for the change sake" as the main characteristic of proprietary platforms, who need to come up with new versions and releases, just to keep business going. Obvious example of this kind of a behaviour can of course be found on M$ and all of their products...

The same does not apply to open source projects, where change is organically driven, by real needs and innovations and in my opinion this is the right path to follow and keep up with.

[DJofSD]

Originally Posted by Robert Goren

Can I quote you on that? I can't remember the number of times I have want convey that message, but could not find the right words.

Be my guest.

It's just a corollary to 'when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail' or however it goes.

[DJofSD]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

I see the "change for the change sake" as the main characteristic of proprietary platforms, who need to come up with new versions and releases, just to keep business going. Obvious example of this kind of a behaviour can of course be found on M$ and all of their products...

The same does not apply to open source projects, where change is organically driven, by real needs and innovations and in my opinion this is the right path to follow and keep up with.

Can't disagree but I don't agree completely. I would guess our experiences and perspectives have some overlaps.

Real needs is subjective. I can recount numerous examples where those needs changed as circumstances changed.

[traynor]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

I do think I stated that it will go away, still it will never become a mainstream language used by a specific niche. As I said in my previous posting computing is about moving ahead as quick as possible and not remaining stale and static

Well, that seems to have worked well--and to be working well--for Microsoft.

[DJofSD]

Not so much for DEC.

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by traynor

Well, that seems to have worked well--and to be working well--for Microsoft.

M$ excels in the domain of 'changes for the sake of a change' with Apple been a runner up

[DJofSD]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

M$ excels in the domain of 'changes for the sake of a change' with Apple been a runner up

That could be true but it is difficult for me to differentiate between change brought on by demands from users, changes by technology both S/W and H/W and other factors such as long term plans which take multiple steps to implement.

[traynor]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

I see the "change for the change sake" as the main characteristic of proprietary platforms, who need to come up with new versions and releases, just to keep business going. Obvious example of this kind of a behaviour can of course be found on M$ and all of their products...

The same does not apply to open source projects, where change is organically driven, by real needs and innovations and in my opinion this is the right path to follow and keep up with.

I think if that were even close to true, the "open-source community" would be much more widely accepted by enterprise organizations than it is--and that it shows any indication of being in the future. "Wide acceptance" of free technology used as an indicator is highly misleading. Many computer users (especially in India, China, and The Phillipines) routinely download every tacky little "technology" offered, just to poke around with it. Put a pricetag on it (as in "this has value in the real world") and open-source falls seriously behind.

The "trend toward open-source" may be way more hype based on "anti-Microsoft" sentiment on the fringes than it is on the actual value of the technology.

I have nothing against open-source, as I have mentioned before. I am extremely pragmatic--I think the best tool to use for a specific purpose is the best tool to use for that specific purpose. That precludes layering my subjective biases on the external world and "interpreting" that external world in a manner that confirms my internal, subjective beliefs, despite overwhelming discomfirming evidence to the contrary.

I think open-source is an interesting idea, and that it definitely has a place in the world (Spain and Argentina come to mind immediately, because of governmental policies in those two countries). I don't think that place will be at the top--or anywhere near the top--of the technology food chain. YMMV.

[DJofSD]

http://www.raywenderlich.com/75601/l...ift-tutorial-1

[barn32]

I wish I understood this thread.

[Hoofless_Wonder]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

I see the "change for the change sake" as the main characteristic of proprietary platforms, who need to come up with new versions and releases, just to keep business going. Obvious example of this kind of a behaviour can of course be found on M$ and all of their products...

The same does not apply to open source projects, where change is organically driven, by real needs and innovations and in my opinion this is the right path to follow and keep up with.

The main problem I see with Open Source is the requirement to manage the environment pushed back in the lap of customers. I've watched many application support folks get pushed off of Unix on to Linux because the hardware architects made them get to an Intel box to make their job easier, and to make it appear they were saving money by standardizing.

The reality is that money saved by going to Red Hat versus AIX or Solaris was soon eaten up by the extra care and feed and instability of the operating system. In theory, Open Source sounds like a great idea, but the reality is there's a price to be paid when signing up for an environment where nobody is "driving the bus". This is especially true in shops where labor costs have been shaved, and the lead system admin used to be the night janitor.

Back to SAS. If it's so archaic and only a niche product, then I find that surprising. Can you please provide the name of a language or set of tools that's as user friendly for non-heavy-duty programmers, and will be around in 2024? I'm currently banking on python being around, but it's not even close to SAS in usability.....IMHO.

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by Hoofless_Wonder

The main problem I see with Open Source is the requirement to manage the environment pushed back in the lap of customers. I've watched many application support folks get pushed off of Unix on to Linux because the hardware architects made them get to an Intel box to make their job easier, and to make it appear they were saving money by standardizing.

The reality is that money saved by going to Red Hat versus AIX or Solaris was soon eaten up by the extra care and feed and instability of the operating system. In theory, Open Source sounds like a great idea, but the reality is there's a price to be paid when signing up for an environment where nobody is "driving the bus". This is especially true in shops where labor costs have been shaved, and the lead system admin used to be the night janitor.

Back to SAS. If it's so archaic and only a niche product, then I find that surprising. Can you please provide the name of a language or set of tools that's as user friendly for non-heavy-duty programmers, and will be around in 2024? I'm currently banking on python being around, but it's not even close to SAS in usability.....IMHO.

Whether Python will retain it current momentum in 2024 or 2034 is not one of the requirements in my language selection list; my criteria when it comes to my language(s) of choice are more pragmatic than trying to predict the future..


What makes attractive a language to me, has to do with its expressibility, community base, open source libraries and user base.


A language like python, which excels in pretty much any conceivable domain, starting from scientific programming, passing from financial applications and thriving in Web Development, is certainly a good choice in our days and one that I am happy to work with...




Since you talk about SAS usability, I have to ask the following questions: - How good SAS supports OOP? How polymorphism and run time inheritance is handled onit? Is operator overloading possible?

- What are the reflective capabilities of SAS? Is IoC even possible in it?

- Does SAS supports decorators and functions as first class citizens? How about closures? Are lambdas supported?

- Can you suggest an ORM for SAS?

- How easy it is to talk to NoSQL (like mongo or casandra for example) from SAS?

- Is unit testing part of the SAS culture and how well do they fit under a continuous integration system like jenkins, hudson etc..

- What is SAS answer to generic polymorphism (similar to C++ templates or C# generics)?

[DJofSD]

SAS -- this is mostly what I have used and supported in the past: http://support.sas.com/software/prod...ase/index.html . It is a procedural environment used to process, analyze and generate reports about data. Is it a programming language? No, not in the sense you mean.

What you are likely more concerned with is this: http://support.sas.com/rnd/appdev/index.html . This part of what SAS Institute offers is unfamiliar to me -- I've never supported it or used it. But I do see references to JSON, Hadoop, Eclipse and more, so, it might be more germane for the discussion about modern/current programming languages.

[Hoofless_Wonder]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

Whether Python will retain it current momentum in 2024 or 2034 is not one of the requirements in my language selection list; my criteria when it comes to my language(s) of choice are more pragmatic than trying to predict the future..


What makes attractive a language to me, has to do with its expressibility, community base, open source libraries and user base.

What I find more attractive in a programming language is its stability, backwards compatibility and ease of maintenance. Nothing frustrates customers and end users more than applying a patch to an obscure library, and breaking the whole application. Although python makes the cut from your point of view, it's well beyond the capability of many if not most sys admins today.

I'm looking at this from a pragmatic point of view, and not as concerned about style points.

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

Since you talk about SAS usability, I have to ask the following questions: - How good SAS supports OOP? How polymorphism and run time inheritance is handled onit? Is operator overloading possible?

- What are the reflective capabilities of SAS? Is IoC even possible in it?

- Does SAS supports decorators and functions as first class citizens? How about closures? Are lambdas supported?

- Can you suggest an ORM for SAS?

- How easy it is to talk to NoSQL (like mongo or casandra for example) from SAS?

- Is unit testing part of the SAS culture and how well do they fit under a continuous integration system like jenkins, hudson etc..

- What is SAS answer to generic polymorphism (similar to C++ templates or C# generics)?

I'm not sure if you're trying to impress us with your theoretical knowledge of programming or if you're trying to make some other point, but how are any of these questions relevant to the thread topic of "Why Learn Basic Programming Skills?"

We're not trying to land a man on the moon here, the goal is to just pick a few winners at the track....

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by Hoofless_Wonder

What I find more attractive in a programming language is its stability, backwards compatibility and ease of maintenance. Nothing frustrates customers and end users more than applying a patch to an obscure library, and breaking the whole application. Although python makes the cut from your point of view, it's well beyond the capability of many if not most sys admins today.

I'm looking at this from a pragmatic point of view, and not as concerned about style points.



I'm not sure if you're trying to impress us with your theoretical knowledge of programming or if you're trying to make some other point, but how are any of these questions relevant to the thread topic of "Why Learn Basic Programming Skills?"

We're not trying to land a man on the moon here, the goal is to just pick a few winners at the track....

Impress? I don't know about that. These are features I use daily and have nothing exotic or theoretical assosiated with them. I would feel miserable if I had to function without them, that's all.