Joe Stump, the lead architect for Digg, makes a comment that really bugs me, while another is positive, in a recent "my life as a programmer post" (that's the Google cached version... ironically Digg has overwhelmed his own server):
More
practical advice is that you should learn to know and love design
patterns and avoid GUI’s. I have a real problem with people who say
they know SQL because they’re well versed with an ORM or a DB’s GUI. Go
back and read up on relational algebra and SQL92 before you say you
know SQL okay?I’ll probably get flamed for this, but I think people
should learn a single environment in and out and stick with it. This
might mean you learn Microsoft’s technologies in and out or Cocoa or
LAMP. You simply can’t be an expert in an area of computers without
picking a single environment and sticking with it.
On
one hand, I give him credit for his comment that you should get to know
a particular platform inside and out. Extra +1 for not flaming
Microsoft's platform.
I do not, on the other hand, agree with the
notion that GUI tools are bad. I thought this stigma went away with VB6
(which I suppose is largely responsible for it), but come on man...
there are some tight tools out there and they make it a lot more fun
and efficient to write code. Using them does not equate to not
understanding what's going on under the covers.