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Ian Stallings: web log

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Good Enough?, New SDK, and Some Papers

Good Enough?
Wally adds another coffin to the nail of programmers like myself ever being "Good Programmers" in the development community. Regardless of my merit or the work that speaks for itself I will always be looked on as just not quite good enough because I lack a degree. This is exactly why I am going back to college this summer and finishing my degree (I only have about 15 credits to date). I pray that one day I can have that piece of paper on the wall and finally be received by my colleagues as an equal. Until that day all I can do is try and improve my work and ignore the ill comments.

.Net SDK 1.1 and Nant
On a different note this week I hope to finally get the .Net 1.1 sdk installed on my home machine and all of my latest builds using it. The latest version of Nant has been released and I hope to use this to build the latest version of Opensmtp.

Async Programming:
Also, in my last post I spoke about asynchronous programming and I found a great paper (PDF) from Don Box  on the subject of asynchronous programming and how it relates to the .Net framework / CLR. (This paper is mirrored at my personal site).

Refactoring to Patterns
I haven't had a chance to read all of Joshua Kerievsky's Refactoring to Patterns paper by but from what I've read so far this is a good tutorial on how to refactor your applications using common design patterns. I have always been a less is more programmer and embraced the philosophy of only build what you need now and the fine balance between flexibility and simplicity. In this paper he explains not only how to refactor to common design patterns but more importantly when to refactor "being careful not to produce overly flexible or unnecessarilly sophosticated solutions". Again, good stuff ;-)

Published Apr 14 2003, 10:55 AM by shedao

Comments

 

Wally said:

Hey man. I wasn't trying to trash you. I just feel that education is important. Does education make someone a great programmer? No. Does only having experience make someone a great programmer? No. It usually takes a blending of the two to make someone a good programmer.

I let code speak for itself. I just find that there is a lot of code thrown together by people from tech / trade schools that is worthless in the real world. That's all I am speaking to.
April 14, 2003 8:48 AM
 

Ian Stallings said:

I didn't take it personally as you were directly targeting those from tech/trade schools, which I've never been too, but your comment served to address a point I've been meaning to write about. I never went to school to learn programming and I have been one of the few fortunate who was allowed entrance into this field. But those days are over and entering this field without a degrees is very rare. I want to pursue my degree in my spare time and this is exactly why. That bias is real regardless of what I think is right and wrong.
April 14, 2003 10:31 AM
 

Phil Weber said:

"Regardless of my merit or the work that speaks for itself I will always be looked on as just not quite good enough because I lack a degree."

Ian: If you are, in fact, "good enough," and others fail to recognize it, whose problem is that? Certainly not yours.

If you *want* to obtain a university degree, then by all means do so! But don't do it merely because you feel pressured to do so by the biases of others.

In my experience, a degree (or lack thereof) only affects one's employability for his first or second job. Once you have several years' experience and a portfolio of code to demonstrate that you know your stuff, nobody cares whether or not you have that piece of paper.

I agree with Wally that education is important, but I disagree with his implication that obtaining a degree is the only (or the best) way to receive an education, or that possessing a degree indicates that one is "educated."

If you have an active and curious mind, you can educate yourself by reading, experimenting, and associating with other intelligent people.
---
Phil "No Degree" Weber
April 14, 2003 1:07 PM
 

Ian Stallings said:

Thanks for the comments Phil. It's good to know that others like myself are out here and doing well within the industry. My motivation for going back to college is to not only get the degree in the end but also to learn, especially topics outside of Computer Science.
April 15, 2003 7:07 AM

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