dsimcha wrote:
On 3/28/2011 9:54 PM, jasonw wrote:
Listen kid, you're some biology student, right? You're just coding for
fun. And more importantly, you haven't participated in any long term
real world systems programming projects. This kind of work experience
doesn't give you the competence to evaluate the knowledge and work of
people with tens of years of programming experience under their belt.
You might be terribly smart, but you're missing the point. Can you see
what we are building here? A whole language ecosystem. Andrei has done
great work by attracting competent CS persons in to the community.
While I think some good points were raised here, I find the implication
that biologists and generally non-CS people can't do first rate
programming mildly offensive. Formal education in CS helps especially
when doing CS research, but it's not a requirement for being a "real"
programmer. I'm a biomedical engineering student and primarily write
research and hobby code, not industrial code. Walter's degree is in
mechanical engineering and he's one of the best programmers I can think
of. Heck, even Andrei didn't have a formal degree in CS until recently.
(His undergrad, IIRC, is in electrical engineering.)
I have a physics degree, and have worked in solar photovoltaics for
fifteen years.
