[NickDMax]

Many times in the forums we see people who admit to only a smittering of programming experience asking for source code for very complex problems/programs.

One poster I can recall was looking to simulate a multi-thread management routine but was totally out of his/her league. Since we did not offer any code, this poster went out and got some *somewhere* and asked for help fitting it to their assignment. All in all I would call this cheating...

My questions are:

Is this common thinking for the pool of tomorrows developers?

Is this standard in the job market? (I know one major news organization whose IT department worked this way)

If we preach "don't reinvent the wheel" over and over to our aspiring developers are we perpetuating this thinking?

At my university there was a problem with the CS department's students getting a little too heavy handed with the cut and paste when writing research papers. It seems that this idea that all we have to do is find a working example and tweak it a little to fit the current model seems to be spilling over into research papers as well.

This post has been edited by NickDMax: 07 June 2008 - 12:19 AM

[KYA]

I hope so, then that means I will have no problem finding a job later,as i'll be the only competent applicant.

[mensahero]

well in the programming world.. copy/paste is the root of all evil.. lmao..

Those are students who don't actually like there course.. they only want to pass.. IMO... in every IT/CS Class there are only FEW students who actually took it because they really want it.. while others are just taking it for granted..

[KYA]

Other then boring gen ed. classes, I can't imagine having a major (or class) I couldn't give two shits about.

[NickDMax]

KYA, on 7 Jun, 2008 - 01:16 AM, said:

Other then boring gen ed. classes, I can't imagine having a major (or class) I couldn't give two shits about.

i saw a lot of this in school. Kids doing what their parents want them to. I saw a lot of miserable people trying to sneak in the occasional class they were interested in while struggling to get a degree in something they could care less about.

But if you parents make a good bit of money you can't get much from financial aid so mommy and daddy control the money -- pretty strong driver to have a major your don't care for.

[Sneblot]

I have also met alot of people who are doing courses they dont like because their parents either did it or they want them to do it and wont let them do anything else. My mum was slightly like that (she wanted me to become a refridgeration engineer) but I went into web and animation work insted. HAHAHAHAHA

But sometimes could it be that people who start coding dont know how hard somthing there trying to do actualy is? I know I have tried somethings which would be classed as to advanced for a beginner.

[mensahero]

Sneblot, on 7 Jun, 2008 - 10:01 AM, said:

But sometimes could it be that people who start coding dont know how hard somthing there trying to do actualy is? I know I have tried somethings which would be classed as to advanced for a beginner.

well first.. coding is way far from easy in the eyes of a n00b.. the first time I saw it.. it seems really hard, so I never tried it.. and when it comes down to it .. its kinda pretty easy.. it all depends on the interest of the one learning..

if your not interested enough.. then its really hard.. most likely you'll end up copy/paste codes or anything just to pass the subject..

[Martyr2]

You have an excellent point here Nick and I have mentioned it on a few occasions both on my blog and on the boards. It is a scary trend that is becoming more and more prominent in the industry. Several news outlets and researches have been publishing lists talking about the upcoming IT shortages and how those in the market are going to be paid extremely well. This has only made the situation what it is now where people are taking these classes, or attempting to get into that market, just for the sole reason of capitalizing on this high pay.

Then on the flip side business, is feeling the pressure of lack in IT staff. This causes two situations... they are desperate to find anyone who can write any line of code and hiring them with little experience and especially if they are cheap, and also they put pressure on their current staff to do more. This results in the staff having to go our and get already made code than writing it from scratch and adapting it real quick to meet a deadline.

So now you got a market full of inexperienced people looking to meet ever increasing deadlines on their development... the desire to cheat and copy/paste code is ever greater.

Some of these new developers see nothing wrong with it either as long as in the end it works. No more intellectual property rights I tell you.

This post has been edited by Martyr2: 07 June 2008 - 10:47 AM

[NickDMax]

In a professional capacity I actually don't mind the idea of going out and looking at similar code and using it -- in a way this is a big part of the open source revolution. I have no intention of ever writing another routine to read in a bitmap (I want to write a routine that reads in jpeg but that is just because I never have and I want to).

Borrowing code and using past projects as examples of how to do something is a big part of software development.

But to do this effectively you need to have the knowledge to analyze that code and understand how it fits into your project.

The skill of programming should be more important that knowing how to pirate code.

[BetaWar]

Is this common thinking for the pool of tomorrows developers?

I don't really think this is developer type of thinking it is more the posers out there that want to look like they are cool adn can program.

Is this standard in the job market? (I know one major news organization whose IT department worked this way)

God, I hope not. If it is I will have to go around and lose my morals...

If we preach "don't reinvent the wheel" over and over to our aspiring developers are we perpetuating this thinking?

I think it does help people get by with this type of thinking. They go off and find someone else's work because people told them that the applciation had already been made enough times it would be pointless to code it again, and then edit it to fit their needs.

I, for one believe in reinventing the wheel. At this point all the code (or at least most) that I have written has been my own. It is just the way I like to do things.

I have had issues like you stated, where people don't have any code, adn obviously are not experienced in the language they want the application to be for, yet still try to get things going. In fact I have been asked a number of times to make people web applications, but I declined. If they want to have things created they can put the time into learning how to make them themselves. Or at least learn enough that someone else gdoesn't have to hold their hand through the whole thing giving them every bit of code that goes into the program and in turn writing the whole thing for them.

Well, that is my 2 cents.

[Tom9729]

I know one person who has told me several times that he could never program without "copy and paste".

I've helped him out on programs before, and I've found that large parts of them are code copy and pasted from examples and retitled with his name.

I don't write everything that I use, but if I'm going to rely on somebody else's code I first make sure that I legally can (I make sure it's either public domain, or an open source license compatbile with my project), and then I make it into a library.

Before I wrote a mesh loader for Dagger, I was using a public domain md2 loader I found on Google. I compiled and linked the loader separate from the rest of my program. Anyone looking at the code would clearly be able to tell that the md2 loader was not part of my code, and that's how it should be.

If you aren't going to write everything, that's cool, but at least give credit where credit is due.

-------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know about you guys, but I spend more time thinking, sketching diagrams, and jotting down code on paper than I do entering it into the computer. I've read quite a few posts on this board from people saying that they could never write code without sitting in front of an IDE/compiler, and to be honest I think that's just sad.

I was there once. Guess-and-check alright for small programs. Once you get to larger (several thousand LOC) programs however, it takes longer to compile. It is then that and guess-and-check becomes annoyingly slow and impractical.

[RodgerB]

Quote

from people saying that they could never write code without sitting in front of an IDE/compiler, and to be honest I think that's just sad.

I sometimes need an IDE to get me into the thought process required to program an application. If you're in unfamiliar territory, you can easily reference the method you need to use with the various explorer's etc. And showing your prospective employers that you can research something to get a job done shouldn't be shunned in my opinion.

Some people don't even know how to Google properly.

Quote

I don't really think this is developer type of thinking it is more the posers out there that want to look like they are cool adn can program.

When did programming ever become 'cool'?

[Tom9729]

RodgerB, on 7 Jun, 2008 - 07:39 PM, said:

When did programming ever become 'cool'?

Social groups are kind of like fractals I think. If I looked at a picture of my entire high school class, I could easily point out the jocks, the nerds, the preps, etc. If I looked at a picture of just one of those groups, I could pick out subgroups, and subgroups within those subgroups.

I think that within every group of people one can pick out the "cool" kids relative to the "not-cool" kids. If one divided a group of people into "cool" and "not-cool", one could take the group of "not-cool" kids and divide them into "cool" and "not-cool"... repeat until the last person.

[KYA]

I am quite possibly the most uncool person I know.

[rjolitz]

NickDMax, on 7 Jun, 2008 - 12:19 AM, said:

Many times in the forums we see people who admit to only a smittering of programming experience asking for source code for very complex problems/programs.

I have been having a similar discussion with one my supervisors at my present job. Different field, but the conclusion we came to as to why a bunch of 20 somethings "can't do overnights" probably applies here.

Work Ethic.

Speaking only for myself, I'm diving into doing some coding work and going back to school [possibly] for this field at my 'advanced age'. While I'm not one to hesitate to ask questions, ask folks here to eyeball stuff when I can't puzzle it out, and lift code from elsewhere.... I try to do it from scratch myself, with reference material, and if I hit a wall - ask for input.

I get the feeling that the immediate gratification environment that we have here in the States is invading the workplace in very unsavory ways. Why try to figure how to do something if you can just cut in some code and VOILA! Instant result. Hard work doesn't seem to be as much as a positive to the upcoming generation as it did for mine. Perhaps a bit cynical on my part, but that is what I'm seeing.

What I don't get is how you can really feel any sense of accomplisment by just pasting in code from one, or many, sources, adding your own name, and throwing it out there.