Alan Gauld wrote:
"Walter Prins" <wpr...@gmail.com> wrote
Java just isn't a hard enough language to separate great programmers
from plodders (neither is Python, for that matter) because pointers
and memory allocation are taken care of automagically.
I fundamentally disagree with his stand on this.
Not sure what you're saying here Alan -- are you saying you consider Java
"hard enough language to seperate great programmers from plodders"
Yes, I'm saying the language just isn't that significant.
Sorry Alan, you confuse me. Do you mean Java isn't that *insignificant*?
When you're hiring programmers, (Joel says) you want people
who understand what the computer is actually doing under
all the chrome,
Thats where I disagree, you might occasionally need a few
of those, but not often and not many.
I think that depends on what you mean by "understand".
If you mean, should all programmers be like Mel:
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
then Hell No!!!
But I do believe that all programmers should understand the limitations
of the machines they're running on (in Python's case, there's a virtual
machine plus the real one), or at least understand that those
limitations exist, so they can avoid making silly mistakes or at least
recognise it when they do so.
I'm not talking about them knowing how to write assembly code, but
little things like knowing why the recursive versions of factorial
function and the Fibonacci sequence are so damn slow.
This is often harder than it sounds in Python, because the C built-in
functions are so fast compared to those written in pure Python that for
any reasonable amount of data it often is faster to use a O(n**2)
function using built-ins than O(n) code in pure Python.
--
Steven
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