Or “As useful as an MMM manager.” …. um, wait, forget that! some greater idiot will put him in management. Although in his present state, he would do less harm than Rita…
I coded on an AS/400. When we got C in an OS upgrade I wrote a simple recursion routine and made a mistake. The tiny program went into infinite recursion and crashed the machine. The OS was supposed to prevent any process from taking over like that. IBM sent out a patch very quickly. At the time we didn’t have a backup system and the business was stalled for an hour or so. It’s not the sort of fame I wanted but I’m one of the few people to crash an AS/400 with software.
Programming is hard. Good programming is a lot harder.
And I didn’t know that for the better part of a decade. I went into the Air Force in the mid 70’s as a flight simulator maintainer and a part of the job was understanding code, both high level and very low level. My first programs were assembly language input in binary using switches and reading the lights (again in binary) for the output.
In the mid 80’s the Air Force was changing over to contract maintenance for flight simulators and I had to find something else to do, so I cross trained into the programming career field. That’s when I discovered programming is hard.
It probably helped me that I was moderately comfortable with math and had been a musician thru out my teen years (5th thru 12th grades). I frequently heard that musicians did well as programmers and that certainly seemed true in my case. Also, I’ve never claimed to be normal and it seems my brand of abnormal fit right it with being a programmer.
There was another fellow and myself in the class that had prior experience. We both slept thru the coursework and were both honor grads at the end. BUT, for everyone else in our class it was really hard to learn programming and most still expressed confusion even as they graduated. It was definitely a learning experience to see how hard they worked just to sorta understand what was going on.
I ran into some of those classmates about six months later and they were all perfectly comfortable with programming at that point and expressed wonder that it seemed so difficult only six months earlier.
There’s a way of thinking that lends itself to programming and most “normal” folk just don’t think that way. For them it has to be learned thru training and experience and still some folks won’t ever be comfortable with it. Some folks should never be programmers (like Melvin) and far too much of the code floating around out there just makes that point.
rekam Premium Member about 1 year ago
Love her comment.
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member about 1 year ago
Or “As useful as an MMM manager.” …. um, wait, forget that! some greater idiot will put him in management. Although in his present state, he would do less harm than Rita…
Lee26 Premium Member about 1 year ago
I disagree. Wax frying pans are VERY useful if your doctor told you to stay away from fried foods.
Totalloser Premium Member about 1 year ago
I guess he was trying to program in Pascal
Bruce1253 about 1 year ago
To the 9/11 First Responders. . . . . Thank You.
poppacapsmokeblower about 1 year ago
Be careful, some entrepreneur might try to make a buck touting its nonstick properties.
willie_mctell about 1 year ago
I coded on an AS/400. When we got C in an OS upgrade I wrote a simple recursion routine and made a mistake. The tiny program went into infinite recursion and crashed the machine. The OS was supposed to prevent any process from taking over like that. IBM sent out a patch very quickly. At the time we didn’t have a backup system and the business was stalled for an hour or so. It’s not the sort of fame I wanted but I’m one of the few people to crash an AS/400 with software.
grunk1 about 1 year ago
Old-time programmers would say: “As useful as caffeine-free diet Jolt”.
David Rickard Premium Member about 1 year ago
Melvin seems to be suffering a halting problem.
sml7291 Premium Member about 1 year ago
Programming is hard. Good programming is a lot harder.
And I didn’t know that for the better part of a decade. I went into the Air Force in the mid 70’s as a flight simulator maintainer and a part of the job was understanding code, both high level and very low level. My first programs were assembly language input in binary using switches and reading the lights (again in binary) for the output.
In the mid 80’s the Air Force was changing over to contract maintenance for flight simulators and I had to find something else to do, so I cross trained into the programming career field. That’s when I discovered programming is hard.
It probably helped me that I was moderately comfortable with math and had been a musician thru out my teen years (5th thru 12th grades). I frequently heard that musicians did well as programmers and that certainly seemed true in my case. Also, I’ve never claimed to be normal and it seems my brand of abnormal fit right it with being a programmer.
There was another fellow and myself in the class that had prior experience. We both slept thru the coursework and were both honor grads at the end. BUT, for everyone else in our class it was really hard to learn programming and most still expressed confusion even as they graduated. It was definitely a learning experience to see how hard they worked just to sorta understand what was going on.
I ran into some of those classmates about six months later and they were all perfectly comfortable with programming at that point and expressed wonder that it seemed so difficult only six months earlier.
There’s a way of thinking that lends itself to programming and most “normal” folk just don’t think that way. For them it has to be learned thru training and experience and still some folks won’t ever be comfortable with it. Some folks should never be programmers (like Melvin) and far too much of the code floating around out there just makes that point.
Dragoncat about 1 year ago
Although, on the bright side, he’s not bothering the ladies… or anyone else, for that matter.
Maybe that was Rita’s plan all along…?