education – Equivalence

There comes a time in every programmers life when they have to learn new things and step out the box. Yeah it’s difficult, for sure. It’s all too easy to create the latest application in your software empire, using a language you’ve been developing in for the last 10 years. However, the real problem is thinking this is the only choice. When is it time to abandon this certitude?

First, we cover the forced abandonment. This is when you are pushed kicking and screaming into pastures new, whether you like it or not, i.e. the new job. Here, not only is the new language curve ball thrown (viciously), but you also get whole new set of business rules into the bargain. So what do you do? You program the new language like the old one, only translating the syntax in your head. This is not the best way to learn a language though. Why? Well consider those C programmers trying to program imperatively in Java, Java programmers in JavaScript, C++ programmers in Ruby, and so on. When there is a change in paradigm this mapping strategy just doesn’t work – a similar situation exists with languages that contain a more powerful expression set. It also encourages the behaviour where people learning enough to get the job done, without understanding what is really happening, or that there may have been a better way using “unmappable” language’s features. A better approach would be to write something small, and new, that allows you to explore the language’s features. I’m sure most people can think of something they could write. Furthermore, if you can make it useful to other people, or even your new employer, then everyone’s a winner! This is something I touched on before.

For many people though, this is the only time they will ever consider abandoning. This is sad, and a poor characteristic in a programmer. And to be honest, I just don’t understand it. That’s not to say that I don’t accept that people just do programming as a job, then go home and don’t think about it. However, it’s like most things in life, it’s nice to progress?

As a programmer there will also be other signs that the tide is turning, and you don’t have to be too alert to spot these. Previously I wrote “Perl is Dead, Long Live…Perl?” and being a big Perl fan it was sad to see the language apparently dying, so I know what it’s like. Some signs to look out for may be:

the language features are not moving on (Java watch your back) – the people who created it no longer care,
the community surrounding the language is dwindling – the people who use it no longer care,
there is little in the way of choice when selecting libraries/frameworks – the experts have fled,
other programmers have never heard of it – there is no buzz,
jobs using it are few and far between – businesses have given up on it, the death kneel.

However, this is all not to say that you give up on your language just because it’s no longer cool – popularity is by no means a great indicator that something will suit your needs. It need not be the case that you give up on your language of choice, instead it could be that you contribute and drag the language forward. But be careful with this one.

Finally, any decent employer will want to see that you are continually developing your skill set – their business needs are continually evolving, so why aren’t you? You are much more likely to land a better job if you contribute to your own education in some way. It looks good and it’s also something to talk about.

So go out and learn something new today, and stop sticking with what you know.

I have recently been reading a series of posts ([1][2][3]) from authors about the pros and cons of having or not having a degree in CS. I’m sure the argument goes both ways, but my thoughts are focused on how does someone who has not spent 4 years obtaining a degree, accrue the knowledge they may need.

For the purpose of this post I will use the concept of NP-completeness (or in fact algorithmics in general) as an example. I think from experience I have learned that NP-completeness is a topic that quite a few developers are not familiar with despite its importance in the field. Many may be aware of it through Jeff Atwood‘s post over at codinghorror, where he suffered at the hands of the topic’s rigour.

So how does someone who has never obtained a CS degree find out about such a topic? My feeling is that they don’t. OK some people will go out their way to find such topics but I haven’t met too many that do. Some may even point out that NP-completeness did (does) not appear on their course curriculum, in which case it probably boils down to Dan Dyer‘s point about the virtues of choosing a good university course. What I’m trying to say is that someone who goes to a decent university and obtains a good degree has spent (possibly) 4 years learning about the foundations of computing, giving them a good base to make important technical decisions.

For example. You are hit with a problem at work, let’s say some sort of job scheduling problem or even allocation of people to resources. The problem seems easy when described and the agile developer takes over you and you start churning out code. However, if this person had only taken a simple algorithms course at university, he might have thought twice about jumping into such a problem – as many variants of such problems are known to be NP-hard.

This brings me back round to my question, where do such developers learn about these things? They may read articles on sites like dZone or reddit, but c’mon, let’s face it, these sites are pretty good at giving you the latest articles about Java, .NET, jQuery, but it’s rare that you see an article about algorithmic issues rise to the top of the popularity list. I mean who wants to read the details of what a B+ Tree, Trie, Boyer-Moore string matching algorithm, etc are, because it’s hard going, instead most will take the easy option of reading guff like 7 ways to write beautiful code. However, if you attend university you are forced to know many of the finer details of CS, as you are examined on them. OK, you may not need them for a simple web app, but an employer is certainly going to be happier that you have the details in your head should you need them. The point is that you never know when you are going to need such things, and knowing when you do is maybe what you spend 4 years gaining.