June 14, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Not to take this in a different direction, but that is a misquote of Lincoln. The correct quote (which still carries the same message: Plan a whole lot more than you act) is: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
June 14, 2012 at 2:30 pm
ACinKC (6/14/2012)
Not to take this in a different direction, but that is a misquote of Lincoln. The correct quote (which still carries the same message: Plan a whole lot more than you act) is: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
I was thinking 'Gee, 6 out of 8 hours is an awful lot of time sharpening an axe'. If I have 8 hours to do something, and I don't start the doing until hour 7, I call that procrastination!
Leonard
Madison, WI
June 14, 2012 at 3:38 pm
ACinKC (6/14/2012)
Not to take this in a different direction, but that is a misquote of Lincoln. The correct quote (which still carries the same message: Plan a whole lot more than you act) is: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
I've seen it both ways. Hard to know what's correct, but the sentiment carries in either case.
June 14, 2012 at 3:39 pm
phonetictalk (6/14/2012)
ACinKC (6/14/2012)
Not to take this in a different direction, but that is a misquote of Lincoln. The correct quote (which still carries the same message: Plan a whole lot more than you act) is: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”I was thinking 'Gee, 6 out of 8 hours is an awful lot of time sharpening an axe'. If I have 8 hours to do something, and I don't start the doing until hour 7, I call that procrastination!
It's an exaggeration, but it's only procrastination if you aren't doing something productive in those 6 hours of sharpening. If you are making the tool ready to use, I'd say it's time well spent.
June 14, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Hi Steve,
I like others know that both the older and the younger have much to offer. After over 40 years now of working in IT mostly writing code and developing new systems, I still find writing code to be the most creative and exciting thing I could do. Over the decades I have written on more platforms then I want to admit to and in more languages then I ever though possible. I remember writing user exits out of RPG into Assembler, and unspecifications in PL/1 the made others shutter, but they do not hold a candle to what can be done today. Some I have known have given up, some burnt out, and many just got tired and gave in. I guess that I enjoy it too much to put it down and move on. It is still too much fun and there is still much to do.
M.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
June 15, 2012 at 12:24 am
SAinCA (6/14/2012)
IceDread (6/14/2012)
However, about older programmers. It's not that uncommon that people stop to learn stop keeping up with the progress. Science has actually proven that it is slightly painful for our brains to learn so that might be a reason for it. I have however no statistics to back up my hypothesis.It would also seem like most people gets out of pure programming around their 40-50s. This too is only my own observation and has no statistical claim. However, since we humans after all are pack animals and when a few are doing something most does not it looks strange to us even if we dont want to admit it.
What do you think?
Well, as a programmer of 38 years I read 2 SQL newsletters per workday, plus I have 18 RSS feeds from SQL and LightSwitch blogs/sites. There's so much to keep learning and improving my craft, plus increasing value to my employer and keeping their costs down by what I learn. I hope I never stop learning - Excedrin in my pocket!
I've bumped into the arcane notion that "we" must advance only via management several times. The first enabled me to propose becoming a contractor at the same desk after 3.5 years, which was gladly taken up for another 1.5 before I emigrated to the US from the UK. However, my first employer in the UK saw they were losing technical staff, so they invented a two-branch path, one into man/project management, the other into internal technical consultancy; the latter dealing with strategic technology issues as well as architecture and when needed some actual coding, plus they were an incredible fount of knowledge for questions about the why and wherefore of a system function. This actually worked well and retention/progress eventuated from this wisdom (early 1980's).
One thing about "oldies" really encouraged me recently. At the Orange County, CA, SQL Saturday I spotted not a few grey-haired gentlemen, but the oldest must have well into his sixties and was there, attentively learning with the young-uns. Great to see. Kudos to him!
Great post by Dave. Hope it gets the kind of visibility that brings down the walls ageing presents in the programming world.
Thanks for your reply.
You certainly keep up to date with your tech it seems!
You mention advancement and that's an interesting point. In Sweden it's starting to become possible for people to be titled chief even without a employee responsibility, all thou it's not common yet, which helps the salary. However, I do not think people leaves programming jobs because of the salary but perhaps it's one part. I think it's softer to be project leader or chief and perhaps people gets tired and wants to do something different and perhaps that adds up.
Thinking about it, I think it's more common with older people working as consultants compared to a normal job, but still not very common with people over 40-50.
June 16, 2012 at 7:07 am
June 16, 2012 at 1:46 pm
I'm not so concerned with people that use sharp spoons to chop down the tree. It's the ones that think it's really cool to use six headed axes with two handles and a video screen just because it's something "new, improved, and 'cool'" and that don't plan where the tree will fall that really have me worried.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
June 18, 2012 at 8:35 am
and that don't plan where the tree will fall that really have me worried.
Tell me about it. I constantly struggle with management level people who criticize based on how much it costs to deliver certain functionality. They say things like "make it simple" which for them really means "build it cheaply". The amount of time they make us waste justifying our designs to prove that we aren't "over engineering" makes everything more expensive. To make matters worse, they never consider the future where additional functionality will be needed and the cost of reworking, as opposed to refactoring, will be prohibitively expensive.
Either they trust us to build it right or they don't. One classic case of management hypocrisy is when we try to build something more cheaply by leveraging functionality provided by, let's say, Microsoft. As soon as we announce we plan on using it, the nay sayers come out of the wood work complaining that "we've never used that before" so therefore we shouldn't. Heck, they wouldn't even let us turn on an optimization recommended by Redmond because of their "anxiety" (this is after we proved we got a considerable performance boost on a system stress test!).
Sigh...but don't worry, I keep standin' up to 'em 😉
But wait...is that another gray hair? LOL
By the time I retire, my hair should all be shockingly white...
June 18, 2012 at 8:47 am
Jeff Moden (6/16/2012)
I'm not so concerned with people that use sharp spoons to chop down the tree. It's the ones that think it's really cool to use six headed axes with two handles and a video screen just because it's something "new, improved, and 'cool'" and that don't plan where the tree will fall that really have me worried.
Who said the spoons were sharp? I'm talking about the people who use completely inappropriate tools that then don't actually get the job done. Not even triangular joins for running totals, or nested cursors in a recursive UDF (yes, I've seen that done), but things like "We don't need constraints or foreign keys. The application manages that." That's what I mean by "chopping down a tree with a spoon or a water baloon".
But, yes, the laser-guided, multi-blade chain-axes, with night-vision and a twitter feed, are a problem too. (Cool to watch, though.)
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
June 18, 2012 at 9:05 am
GSquared (6/18/2012)
Jeff Moden (6/16/2012)
I'm not so concerned with people that use sharp spoons to chop down the tree. It's the ones that think it's really cool to use six headed axes with two handles and a video screen just because it's something "new, improved, and 'cool'" and that don't plan where the tree will fall that really have me worried.Who said the spoons were sharp? I'm talking about the people who use completely inappropriate tools that then don't actually get the job done. Not even triangular joins for running totals, or nested cursors in a recursive UDF (yes, I've seen that done), but things like "We don't need constraints or foreign keys. The application manages that." That's what I mean by "chopping down a tree with a spoon or a water baloon".
But, yes, the laser-guided, multi-blade chain-axes, with night-vision and a twitter feed, are a problem too. (Cool to watch, though.)
I've wondered about the lack of constraints or foreign keys, due to the fact the application manages those things. I've mentioned on SSC before; we've got a third party application we purchased for maintaining scans of very important documents. I've looked through the tables in the SQL Server database that is used by the application, and like I've said before, I'm shocked at what I see. No primary keys at all in any of the tables. No foreign keys to anything. I'm afraid to touch the database, and won't apply any indices as I've no idea what's going on. It's clear that the app that comes along with this, is the only thing that can make any sense out of it. I just hope that the company that wrote the app stays around, at least as long as I'm around.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
June 18, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Does the application really manage those things? Does the application allow for things like PKs/FKs to be turned off? Does the application require that you specify them and someone simply didn't?
I ask all of those questions because I've run into a lot of "developers" that don't even know what PKs/FKs actually are.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
June 20, 2012 at 8:14 am
Jeff Moden (6/18/2012)
Does the application really manage those things? Does the application allow for things like PKs/FKs to be turned off? Does the application require that you specify them and someone simply didn't?I ask all of those questions because I've run into a lot of "developers" that don't even know what PKs/FKs actually are.
I assume that the application does manage those things. I don't have access to the application code, so I can't say with 100% certainty, but it's the only thing that makes sense. If the application doesn't handle PKs/FK/s itself, then this app is just using the 119 tables it has, as nothing more than flat files. As to whether or not the applicaiton allows for adding PKs and FKs, I've got no idea.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
June 20, 2012 at 8:30 pm
I've found that an awful lot of apps where written by folks that don't know how to spell "FK". I wouldn't be at all surprised if the app you're talking about indeed did treat 119 table as flat files.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
June 21, 2012 at 8:44 am
Oh boy, I shutter when I think that may be true. On the other hand, although that app plays a very critical role in our organization, fortunately for me it doesn't have much impact upon what we normally do. That app is in support of our business, but not something that we rely upon for other processing.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
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