The Tools Don't Get You the Job 255
An anonymous reader writes: It's a trend that seems to permeate education across every discipline, from creative to technical: reliance on a single expensive, proprietary, vendor-driven tool. Whether it's the predominance of Adobe in design programs, of Visual Studio in many computer science programs, or even Microsoft Office components in business schools, too often students come away with education that teaches them how to be rote users of a tool rather than critical thinkers who can apply skills in their discipline across toolsets. Relying on knowledge of a single tool chain can create single point of failure for a student's education when licensing comes back to bite. What can we do to bring more software choice into education to give students more opportunity when they get out into the real world?
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
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And trying to get more people to "like" slashdot on social networking sites by putting the "Share" button where the "Comments" link used to be is just down right underhanded.
As predicted before, we'll get beta in the end... one code update at a a time.
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One could also say that this "move" resulted in people discussing how much we dislike it rather than the topic on hand (not that the topics of late had been worthy of being discussed anyway).
I guess it's time I spend less time here and find another place to hang out, get information and have a meaningful discussion. Neither is really possible here anymore. The topics lately have been either mindless astroturfing or following the similarly mindless groupthink "how-much-we-agree-on-everything-and-how-much-the
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Looks good. I'll give it a whirl.
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"Random updates (downgrades) to the UI don't get you more readers (or clicks)."
Especially when we still don't have that post-edit button that every other comment site in the twenty-first century has.
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Grammar edits are one thing...but deleting your post because other people don't like it? That does nothing to encourage discussion or a diversity of opinions. All it does is leave a bunch of orphaned responses that no longer make sense (unless they quoted the OP...but why should you quote the OP if your comment is nested right below theirs?).
No accountability for your posts either...so
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Sorry, gotta disagree there. The "you typed it, you meant it" structure ADDS to the discussion. On "every comment other site" you see responses to comments that are NO LONGER as they were posted.
We have that here, the moderation system hides what you were replying to so you have to quote it.
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Allow editing unless someone has begun a reply.
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Version control so you can see the diff of the post.
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It would almost be awesome if ACs could edit other AC posts.
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Is there a good reddit area for slashdot refugees to have tech discussions?
The only other alternatives I see are http://arstechnica.com/ [arstechnica.com] (though the discussion engine is pretty limited and somewhat heavily moderated), http://theregister.co.uk/ [theregister.co.uk] (doesn't seem to spawn many useful conversations somehow), and maybe http://fark.com/ [fark.com] (good discussions, but but pretty light on tech coverage in a pretty basic discussion engine)
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Tried soylentnews for a while, and it seemed to be a concentrated form of linux fanboys/windows haters, i.e. some of the worst from /.
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You say that like it's a bad thing.
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Well, if it serves to improve the signal-to-noise ratio here, yes, it is a good thing.
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I've been dual homepaging Slashdot and Soylent for the last few months. The stories over at Soylent tend to be more on-topic, and the story selection process is completely transparent.
I encourage you (and everyone else) to continue to give Soylent a chance. As far as I can tell the community is 100% Slashdot refugees. If Slashdotters continue to jump over, which seems to be the trend, we just might get a good portion of our community back together free of our evil corporate overlords. And I, for one, we
like SW? (Score:5, Funny)
Examples??? (Score:3)
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Learned in early jobs that while I like emacs better than vi, I found vi was on more systems by default. So I learned both since it took a few extra steps to compile emacs for every system I was workin
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My school was like this too. By the time we got to third year, they basically let you write your assignments in whatever language you wanted. The only stipulation was that it had to run on the lab. Which means you could write Java, C#/.Net, C, C++, Delphi, and quite a few others. one guy even tried to write everything in Prolog.
No, not so much (Score:5, Insightful)
The Tools Don't Get You the Job
Well except for when the company hiring for the job only uses a certain set of tools and actually wants you to have experience in them, right? Because that is hardly an exceptional case.
Re:No, not so much (Score:5, Insightful)
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My take on that is that people expect the schools to teach them what they need to get a job AND THEN STOP LEARNING ANYTHING ELSE.
But schools should really be teaching you how to LEARN NEW THINGS.
Then you choose what to learn and you learn it.
And starting that way is okay. Ending that way is not
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But schools should really be teaching you how to LEARN NEW THINGS.
How would that be implemented? Should there be separate courses for "learning to learn"? What would the contents of those courses be?
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So you are a wiz at dreamweaver or whatever other crapware people use to make template webpages these days, great for you. What happens when the company that hires you expects you to actually UNDERSTAND HTML and PHP and AJAX and JAVASCRIPT?
If this hypothetical company wanted a person who understood HTML, PHP, AJAX, etc, then why would they hire a Dreamweaver guy? Why would the Dreamweaver guy be applying for a non-Dreamweaver position?
You are correct that pinning your career to a particular technology isn't a good idea. However, you don't seem to understand that big corporations don't hire computer scientists (programmers) and then have them learn the products that are being used. They typically want to hire someone who already has expe
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But if you are merely becoming a pro at using that 1 tool you are likely not thinking past how to use that tool.
True, but the problem is employers define jobs in terms of tool use. You can be good at JavaScript and happy manipulating the DOM to your heart's content, but if you don't have node.js or some other library/API on your resume' they won't look at you.
To give an idea of how bizarre it has gotten, I'm seeing a ridiculous number of job ads for senior software positions that list "git and GitHub" as either requirements or nice-to-haves. To me that's like asking for the ability to use a pencil and paper in an eng
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You missed the point. It's not about the tool specifically, of course you need to skill yourself in whatever applications your field is going to use. But if you are merely becoming a pro at using that 1 tool you are likely not thinking past how to use that tool. Want an example? Web hosting. So you are a wiz at dreamweaver or whatever other crapware people use to make template webpages these days, great for you. What happens when the company that hires you expects you to actually UNDERSTAND HTML and PHP and AJAX and JAVASCRIPT? You fail miserably as you don't actually have web hosting skills, you have point and click dreamweaver skills.
To the GP's point, I have seen many employers who would ask if you know Dreamweaver. If you respond "I know HTML and PHP and AJAX and JAVASCRIPT, and have not had the need for that particular tool", then you are dismissed as someone who doesn't know anything.
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You can always train skills. Instinct and mindset are usually what we hire.
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And there's a very good reason for it: vendor lock-in. Once you've gone with Microsoft and its products, there's a very long, expensive learning curve before your employees are proficient and productive. It takes an exceptionally brave manager to admit that they were wrong and that all of that money the company spent on retraining was wasted, especially when it's easier (and possibly cheaper) to stick with wha
straw man alert (Score:2)
It's the process, not the tool.
Why did I click on this dumb article?
Re:straw man alert (Score:5, Funny)
To get away from the Slashdot front page.
Critical thinking is like common sense (Score:2)
Kids coming out of college now have huge student debts which means they fail the first big test of life.
Most can't get jobs that pay enough to cover their student debts let alone proceed to raising a family and doing better than their parents did.
The next generation will end up renting their entire lives and retire on whatever is left of social security and still be paying on those student loans when they die.
Not smart to major in english
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Critical thinking is like common sense, not so common anymore.
When was it then? Seriously, when was the magic era when common sense and critical thinking was common? Name a time/generation/era you think was the peak of human development and I will take pleasure in ripping it to shreds.
Common sense is a term used by old people with nostalgia goggles who conveniently forget all the stupid shit they did when they were younger.
Allow various tools. (Score:2)
Granted most of my Education was during the 1990's where Microsoft was King, and using anything other than Microsoft was considered antiquated.
However the fix, is to teach the ideas and not the tools. How to use a Word Processor not Microsoft Word, How to program in C++ not Visual C++.
Most schools do happen to have multiple platforms available the teacher should try to have the students mix it up a bit. A Linux or Mac Guy should do some work on the PC, vice versa. Not to try to convert them to love the
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However the fix, is to teach the ideas and not the tools. How to use a Word Processor not Microsoft Word, How to program in C++ not Visual C++.
Depends on what you're at school to learn doesn't it? Most people don't go to school for an education, they go there to get a job. In that use case, you are better simply learning the tools to get in the door and figure the rest out for yourself when you get there.
The tool DOES get you the job (Score:5, Insightful)
Because HR Drones don't understand software, I am finding that quite often the tool DOES get you the job, and consequently, it's incredibly hard to break out of either the LAMP or Microsoft Silos when designing software. Sure, for a particular industrial robot, FORTH may be a better language, or for certain expert systems, LISP machines work well, but when doing such a project in the real world, there are only a few real choices- C#, C++, Java, or Python is all anybody cares about.
So make sure your students are exposed to a wide variety- but make sure they're EXPERTS in learning new frameworks and learning new syntax.
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Because HR Drones don't understand software
And most IT drones don't understand the purpose of HR. HR are not there to help you, they exist solely as a hedge for the business owners against liability from employees.
Learn to.... (Score:3)
1980's: Learn to use a computer
1990's: Learn to use a word processor
2000's: Learn to use Microsoft Word
2010's: ?????
2020's: PROFIT!
Visual Studio is free (Score:5, Informative)
reliance on a single expensive, proprietary, vendor-driven tool. Whether it's the predominance of Adobe in design programs, of Visual Studio in many computer science programs, ...
Visual Studio is free [visualstudio.com] for students, OSS contributors, and small teams. It's only larger enterprises that have to pay for it.
Visual Studio Code is free and cross-platform [visualstudio.com], runs great on Linux (and mac), and is a pretty handy tool for working in node.js and other languages.
(disclaimer: I work in the Visual Studio team)
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Visual Studio itself only runs on Windows, so it's absolutely useless if you use a Mac or Linux. Lots of students use Macs, and lots in the CS and engineering departments use Linux.
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Yes, because not knowing how to use Windows is a great bet for getting a job in a business environment.
Also, VMs are hard.
On one hand I have 20 years of linux experience. On the other hand it was 15 years before that experience actually paid off in my professional life.
Loving linux is great and all, but you're useless to me if you only know one platform.
Tools are not the problem (Score:2)
and switching to some other tool whether is proprietary or open source, is not the solution. You need to learn how the tool contributes to the end goal, and not just how to use its features. For example, if you learn the tenants of good design you are to limited to a single tool. You may use that tool and be most comfortable because it is and industry standard, but you could go back to pencil and paper and still turn out great designs. Similarly in business, you need to understand how to do financial analys
In the real world... (Score:3)
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Mine doesn't. It is dumping MS as fast as it can as MS burned them too many times. Java, Python, Maven, Eclipse or IntelliJ, Linux VMs, Tomcat, Jetty, and Postgres. PCs are essentially dumb terminals to the VMs and used for document prep, that is all. Hint: it is a Fortune 50 company.
Meh... (Score:2)
I don't know. This is kind of true. Being an expert in Adobe products won't "get you the job" by itself... unless you happen to walk into a job where they're looking for an Adobe expert, in which case, it might.
But also, in all honesty, if you want a job doing design work and you only know how to use Adobe tools, that's probably totally fine. Can't use GIMP? That's fine. Nobody uses GIMP. I mean, yes, some people use it, but go around to professional design firms and ad agencies, and they all are usi
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If I was interviewing someone for a job, and they were able to show me examples of their work that were superior to any of the other interviewees, but executed in a different toolset, e.g. we use Adobe, but the applicant used Final Cut Pro, Vegas, or even ffmpeg, I would offer that person both the job and training.
It's not about the tools, it's about the result.
Reminds me of.... (Score:2)
Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse; but talking is not always to converse, not more distinct from harmony divine, the constant creaking of a country sign.
VS predominance in CS? (Score:3)
Whether it's the predominance of Visual Studio in many computer science programs
I must have missed that.
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Whether it's the predominance of Visual Studio in many computer science programs
I must have missed that.
You know, I don't believe I used an IDE at all in any of my University classes.
We have not learned that yet (Score:2)
"You cannot use that technique, we have no learned that in class yet!" THIS is the reason why there is a lack of critical thinking, not the tool chains themselves. Far too often students are punished for self-learning and creativity. While no, this isn't a problem in all classrooms, it is far too common to NOT be an issue.
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That has less to do with knowledge than how broken the screening system is. You've got to SEO your resume for the machines then add keywords for the HR people who pick up the ones that made it through.
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If you are looking for MS office on a resume for DBA's you need to fire that HR staff. They should be looking for the part of the resume that says "I know how to use that damn database you bought"
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Unless by DBA you mean 'microsoft access'.......
Microsoft SQL Server (Score:2)
Or Microsoft SQL Server, whose T-SQL query language appears to have a fairly active question and answer community on Stack Overflow [stackoverflow.com].
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Why would you need MS Office to communicate with others. That's what we have e-mail and phones and a number of other tools for. Using a Word document to communicate something generally gets ignored. Also, most people have evolved to be able to use more than just MSOffice, they can use LibreOffice, Google Docs etc. If your HR drones fail to recognize the technological process since 2000, their performance needs reviewing.
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Also, most people have evolved to be able to use more than just MSOffice, they can use LibreOffice, Google Docs etc.
Yeah screw application compatibility. Who needs all those 3rd party vendor plugins that seamlessly connect to Excel when you can wave the FOSS flag that doesn't work with anything...
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Why would you need MS Office to communicate with others. That's what we have e-mail and phones and a number of other tools for.
You open up excel, enter fields, take a screenshot, include that screenshot in a word docx, then attach that docx to an outllook email, asking the recipient to edit the excel cells. That's why many in the business world need MS Office.
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The premise is correct, but why would that need to be on your $deitydamned resume? Anyone with a pulse can do the basics of any office suite (or work it out in half a day).
Do you also mention that you're toilet trained and can tie your shoelaces?
they're not playing Buzzword Bingo (Score:3)
put all office suites (Microsoft, Libre, TeX, etc) and all certs in the resume. somewhere in there, also squeeze in your specialized talents. if you don't win Buzzword Bingo, they don't call you.
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If I have to put all unnecessary keywords in my resume just to get through the company's screening process, I would not want to work for the company. The reason is that if that company hires inefficient people and/or uses inefficient hiring process, I can't imagine how bad situation would I be to deal with their HR in the future...
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The reason is that if that company hires inefficient people and/or uses inefficient hiring process, I can't imagine how bad situation would I be to deal with their HR in the future...
You don't get out much do you? All companies have crap hiring processes, and in the dozens of jobs (multiple dozens) I've had, the HR dept had precisely zero bearing on the rest of the company. But if you want to get all precious about it, all the better for people like me who get those jobs.
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"... HR will throw away your resume if it doesn't say Microsoft Office."
I was lucky enough to have started my career in the late Sixties, when new recruits routinely were first introduced to the technical manager who had initiated the 'req'. He (yes, always a he in those days) would then make sure that HR was kept out of the loop until the hire decision had been made, whereupon HR would be invoked to process the paperwork. I would be walked over to HR on the first day to pick up my parking permit and sign a
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In the post couple of companies I've worked at, HR will throw away your resume if it doesn't say Microsoft Office.
Yeah, it is weird how HR types have such a hard on for Office skills. I applied to a job a few weeks back for a security analyst position, they emailed back to set up a phone interview.
Get to the phone call and the person on the other end is asking about my familiarity with everything in Office. Every part of office, by name and asking if I am an expert in it.
Them:"What is your skill level with MS Word?"
Me:"I am familiar with it"
Them: "Would you say you are an expert with it?"
Me:"Yeah sure"
Mean
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Unfortunately not weird, it's what they have themselves so they see it as important. Twenty years programming C but no skills with MS Office - not much of an IT person they will say.
It used to be worse when they demanded WordPerfect as well as MS Word experience for anything related to computers, one place even asked for a list of at least three word processing programs (I added ChiWriter to the list).
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See: Philosophy
Comment Signature [pastie.org]
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Re:Encourage autodidactism (Score:4, Funny)
If the students actually care about what they're learning
They don't.
unless they are blithering idiots
They are.
they'll use their critical thinking
They have none
go learn what extra they may need all by themselves.
They won't.
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As a former teacher, the following is in order:
They don't.
It's up to you to give them a sufficient reason to care. The incapable or the apathetic can find another career field, and the defiant can go spend their careers at McDonald's.
They are.
No, in general they are not: ignorance != idiocy.
They have none
So teach them how to gain the ability to think critically, and then show them how to use it. The sufficiently clueful will put it to use, and the others are no longer your problem.
They won't.
...so long as you give them the impression that they shouldn
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The latter are rare to find.
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"That makes the difference between those who can do a job, and those who are really good at it."
But still, as you say, you need to encourage it.
"The latter are rare to find."
Not only because good professionals at any trade are difficult to find (after all, no matter the average, the top performers are always a tiny minority), but because that's not what people look for.
It's difficult to defend oneself as being a 'jack of all trades, master of no one', when the one making the hirings specifically looks for s
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You have a far too positive opinion of most students. Sure, the smart ones will do as you say, but they are a minority at only around 10-15% or so. The rest does what is needed to pass and not a bit more.
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Why not just require all projects to be turned in as binaries, like the industry does? :-)
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Which, of course, is points off for not providing a proper installer.
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When I grade my student's work I'm more interested in how he solved the problem rather than if the problem was solved.
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That can be a dangerous precedent to set. In the real world, you only get paid for coming up with the right solution.
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Open Source projects have a nasty tendency of requiring X compiler + Y patch + Z reconfiguration
Student projects shouldn't be so specific as to require specific compiler versions and library versions (or any libraries at all besides the standard ones).
However, if you really do have a problem like that, the answer is simple: provide the students with a VM image to use for all their work. Everyone in the class that semester and the professor use the exact same VM image, so everything works the same.
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You should teach general concepts that can be applied to any tools... If you teach the tools that are currently in use then chances are they will have been superseded by the time people leave education and enter the industry anyway. Even if the same tools are around, they will likely be much newer versions and could have significant changes that made your experience of the previous versions largely useless.
We learned wordperfect for dos in school, but i've never worked anywhere which used any version of wor
Re: Well (Score:2)
Have you been to university? There were entire lectures that I would pay to sit through again. You can't magic up that lightbulb moment just by searching Google for a keyword. You're paying world experts for their time.
Maybe universities are different now but it wasn't that long ago that I was there. You can't self-educate to that level without 8 hours a day of hard work and experts on hand. And that's just a degree. Masters, PhD and beyond are a world apart again.
I can't even get close to understandi
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I can't even get close to understanding my girlfriend
You could have stopped there; that describes the entire population of boyfriends and later husbands once girlfriend becomes wife...
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At the uni I learned about my own psychology (Psychology courses), learned how to write documents, learned about how people operate in groups (Sociology), basic electronics and electrical systems (Physics), basic Chemistry, Statistics, and foreign languages. All of which have helped me over the years and all of which self-taught or a trades course would not have given me.
If you do not learn at least the first 3 in your course work outside of your STEM education you were ripped off. You only got half an edu
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Reality is different (Score:2)
Blacksmiths (Score:5, Insightful)
A blacksmith will typically create an anvil for personal use, rather than buying one. It's a part of the process of becoming a real blacksmith. It's not unique here, many craftsmen make or customize their own tools. I see hardware engineers doing this a lot as well, jurying rigging up some device to help them out.
This used to be true with programming too, there weren't many tools so you had to write your own or modify someone else's (and you shared them with others). If a new type of computer came out you would port the tools are maybe even write some from scratch. Today the kids can't even begin to imagine this: if there's not a button on their IDE's to do what they want then they don't do it, they don't bother learning a scripting or shell languages to do what they need. I mean it's a frigging computer, the whole point of it is to be able to program it to do what you want it to do!
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In addition, making you own tools is invaluable to actually understanding them. Tool users are nice, but tool-makers are vastly superior in skill and insight. And they do actually exist in the younger generation as well, but will all the dross that is now found in IT today, they are a small minority now.
Re:Blacksmiths (Score:5, Informative)
Anvils are typically purchased, because "blacksmith" doesn't equate to "foundry".
Many kids today are just as, if not *more*, motivated to ask questions than the "older generation". This includes asking "how can I do something my IDE doesn't support".
Extra info on the blacksmith bit: most blacksmith shops are designed around the idea of forging metals, not smelting them. This is part of why a blacksmith's anvil was and is one of their most prized possessions...it used to be nearly irreplaceable. Current technology has made cheap anvils fairly available, but you can't just buy a 300 pound anvil at your local Home Depot.
The process of creating an anvil [ernst-refflinghaus.de] is one of the few things that you can't do with traditional blacksmith tools. If you have an anvil and a single hammer, all of your other tools can be made from bits of metal or bar/rod stock. Punches, tongs, other hammers...even the forge itself can be made by hand. But the anvil has to be a solid piece of metal, and the only way to do that is with a shop designed specifically for anvil making, or with modern metal casting equipment.
Moving on from the anvil bit to the "kids these days, gerrof mah lawn" bit...I would hazard that the typical distribution of interests has migrated outward in the bell curve. Technology today makes it easy for an unmotivated child to spend the majority of their day immersed in facebook/instagram/pinterest/twitter/etc. But it also makes it much easier for a motivated child to find knowledge.
An example from my personal experiences: I ran Minecraft servers for about 3 years, and had one of the more successful modded servers online in early to mid 2014. A lot of the players were in the 8-18 years old range. And quite a lot of them were interested in figuring out and using interesting game mechanics to their advantage. We're talking about kids in their early teens learning digital logic so that they can build a piston based elevator with floor selection buttons. I know more teenagers who have a solid grasp of programming decision logic because of ComputerCraft than I do professional programmers who learned via a 4 year computer science school.
Obviously, it's just my own personal experience. But I was one of the kids who started out with an IDE scratching out HTML, and now I'm a linux system administrator with four or so languages under my belt.
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To back up the "kids these days" myth. Progress allows growth in both directions, so just as some 'kids these days' are fatter and lazier and more addicted to junk-food than our generation (whichever generation you are makes no difference to this statement), so some are taller, faster, stronger and smarter. My wife is a teacher and I'm blown away by what some kids can do these days, a lot smarter than anyone I knew as a kid. And there are also the jerks. So yeah, like a tree, the branches s
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I only did that because I was a cheap bastard and a bit of rail worked for the light stuff I was doing. I think the analogy you are looking for is carpenters with jigs, the blacksmith one is broken.
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That post brought tears to my eyes, brining up fond memories of the old /. I know and love. Now, where's tub girl?
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The last two years I have been doing Java. Even though my previous background was in C#. Though knowing Unix, Bash, Perl, and some Python helped me get in the door.
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