duffbeer703 writes "As a UNIX guy dragged kicking and screaming into the Windows world, I've never really been able to enjoy Windows programming. Charles Petzold, who is a long-time developer for DOS & Windows really laid out the reasons for me at the NYC .NET Dev group. Visual Studio and Microsoft tools force you to adopt programming techniques designed around implementation speed, not understanding or quality."Ads_xl=0;Ads_yl=0;Ads_xp='';Ads_yp='';Ads_xp1='';Ads_yp1='';Ads_par='';Ads_cnturl='';Ads_prf='page=article';Ads_channels='RON_P6_IMU';Ads_wrd='programming,editorial,developers';Ads_kid=0;Ads_bid=0;Ads_sec=0; Does Visual Studio Rot the Brain? Log in/Create an Account | Top | 521 comments (Spill at 50!) | Index Only | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 521 comments 0: 515 comments 1: 412 comments 2: 259 comments 3: 67 comments 4: 41 comments 5: 27 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. (1) | 2 yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits. (Score:5, Insightful) by yagu (721525) * <yayagu AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday October 26, @06:10PM (#13884656) (Last Journal: Sunday October 16, @06:38PM) I have a good friend whose son is brilliant. He looks at anything, andinstantly is taking it apart and putting it back together. In our technical dayand age, he has tinkered with computers a LOT and has shown great acumen introubleshooting and configuring not only Windows, but putting together a network.I tried to turn him on to coding, but he went out and got Visual Studio, andwent off on his own. He came back and proudly demonstrated his various creations.While I liked his creativity, it was evident his depth of grasp of the workings ofprogramming were as deep as VS allowed him. Cute screens with cute input buttons andcute input boxes. But nothing in the sense of real code.He is now taking some programming classes, and while he is doing well, they havebegun java, and it has totally thrown him. He's getting back on his feet, buthis initial foray into VS gave him some bad (and some wrong) insights intoprogramming and languages.His reaction so far to having to actually write and understand code is that itis stupid. I think that's a dangerous culture to cultivate in an IT universe. Heis doing well in his class but he constantly wants to go back and do the drag anddrop thing. [ Reply to This who's fault is that? (Score:5, Interesting) by conJunk (779958) on Wednesday October 26, @06:17PM (#13884716) I tried to turn him on to coding, but he went out and got Visual Studio, and went off on his own. He came back and proudly demonstrated his various creations. Well come on. When I was a kid my down sat my down in front of Apple BASIC on our IIgs. When I was little older we got THINK C. Whoever started this kid off in Visual Studio has some 'splainin to do.There's a reason we start with printf("Hello World."); and not with dragging a text box into a big white rectangle. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:who's fault is that? by pdbogen (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:12PM Re:who's fault is that? (Score:5, Funny) by scorpioX (96322) on Wednesday October 26, @07:25PM (#13885222) TRS-80 and a TV? Lucky you! In my day, we had to write the equivalent of Hello World, by entering the binary code via the Altair's switches. 6 hours later (because you would inevitably screw up and have to start from the beginning) the panel lights would flash "Hello World" in Morse Code. And we had to walk through 10 miles of snow to get to the computer - barefoot! [ Reply to This | Parent Re:who's fault is that? (Score:5, Funny) by morcego (260031) * on Wednesday October 26, @07:32PM (#13885281) (http://slashdot.org/) You had binary code ? Lucky you.When I was a kid, I had to write the Hello World program using only 0's. [ Reply to This | Parent Re:who's fault is that? (Score:4, Funny) by rocjoe71 (545053) on Wednesday October 26, @09:56PM (#13886125) (http://blog.rocjoe.com/) You had alphabet to spell "Hello World"? Lucky you!I banged two rocks together and cousin Ugg just "got it". [ Reply to This | ParentRe:who's fault is that? by Arandir (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:21PMRe:who's fault is that? by dumbskull (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:36PMRe:who's fault is that? by morcego (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:48PMRe:who's fault is that? by Lord Kano (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:38PMRe:who's fault is that? by TWX (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @07:35PM Re:who's fault is that? (Score:5, Funny) by Matthaeus (156071) on Wednesday October 26, @07:41PM (#13885359) (http://raven.catharsis.org) You had mercury and pipes?In my day, we had to create a religion that induced the masses to spend millions of man-hours moving stones just to get a working calendar! [ Reply to This | ParentRe:who's fault is that? by Enrico Pulatzo (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @10:51PMRe:who's fault is that? by dumbskull (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:54PMRe:who's fault is that? by DoctorLard (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:59PMCreation of the loop structure... by Ursus Maximus (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:06PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:who's fault is that? by ToasterofDOOM (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:30PMRe:who's fault is that? by DJCater (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:54PMRe:who's fault is that? by Precambrian-C (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @10:09PMRe:who's fault is that? by NixieBunny (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:24AM2 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:who's fault is that? by 2short (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:16PM Re:who's fault is that? (Score:5, Informative) by TWX (665546) on Wednesday October 26, @07:44PM (#13885379) (http://www.blacksatin.net/) "Frankly, 'drag some buttons onto a gui and get an app that looks cool and does nothing' is EXACTLY where I would start a child today."Then start them out with "The Incredible Machine" or some other mousetrap-alike where the objective is to build the most complex functioning thing possible with weird widgets provided to the operator. You give them a taste for making something without giving them any kind of tool that will force bad habits upon them. If they go off and end up using Visual Studio for GUI programming, well, that will happen to some, but others may never see the GUI programming stuff and go straight into building complex machines using letters and syntax instead of using drag and drop.I had other vast, varied tools at my disposal. I had a LOGO program. I had ROM Basic, GW Basic, Quick Basic, and Power Basic. I had Borland C/C++ for DOS. I had a Texas Instruments calculator and a graphlink cable. I had gcc. I don't doubt that my Basic programming experience caused problems for when I tried to move on to C, but at least I wasn't thinking that making fancy dialogue boxes was programming compared to writing the back end of something.I started with MS-DOS, but Microsoft's real hard push for their GUI hit in 1993, when I was thirteen. I found that after years of GUI, when I started playing with programming, being able to control things that I had done myself through the command line was insanely cool. It was like opening the hood of a car or taking the case off of a complex electronic device. I felt like I was gaining more mastery over the computer itself, rather than just using it. I'd suspect that many kids that are the 'take it apart and find out why' type would feel similarly. [ Reply to This | ParentRubbish! by Tony (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:00PMRe:Rubbish! by PCeye (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:22AMRe:who's fault is that? by 2short (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:58PMRe:who's fault is that? by d34thm0nk3y (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @07:36PMRe:who's fault is that? by admdrew (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @07:54PMRe:who's fault is that? by mikael (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:06PMRe:who's fault is that? by Kingrames (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:13PMC complications by Z34107 (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:28PMRe:C++ complications you mean? by xeoron (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:42PMRe:C++ complications you mean? by Z34107 (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:54PMRe:C complications by I Like Pudding (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:44PMRe:C complications by ameline (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:54AMRe:C complications by glavenoid (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:11AMRe:who's fault is that? by stevey (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:33PMZ80 assembly ftw! by Z34107 (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:10PMRe:who's fault is that? by glavenoid (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:26AMRe:who's fault is that? by AmberBlackCat (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:02PMRe:who's fault is that? by Taladar (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:03AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:who's fault is that? by TapeCutter (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:58PMRe: who's fault is that? by Z34107 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:50PMRe: who's fault is that? by Dwonis (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:11AM2 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by js3 (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @06:20PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by bfizzle (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @07:16PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by glavenoid (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:51AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by I Like Pudding (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:37AMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Seumas (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @06:20PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by 2short (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:31PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by jZnat (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:20PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Zork the Almighty (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @08:35PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by AuMatar (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:38PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Timothy Brownawell (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:12AMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by tom8658 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:03PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by jZnat (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:25PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by TapeCutter (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:15AMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by CastrTroy (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:43PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Hiro Antagonist (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @07:14PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Z34107 (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:48PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by rackhamh (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:24PM Apples and Oranges (Score:4, Insightful) by mustafap (452510) on Wednesday October 26, @06:26PM (#13884788) (http://www.drivesentinel.co.uk/) You seem to be comparing 'Playing with Visual Studio' against 'Taking programming classes'.Visual Studio is not a teaching aid. It's (just about) a programming toolkit with some bolted on frameworks. You will create rubbish if you do not know what you are doing. Try thowing eclipse at him, he would have the same problem.Having said that, I hate having to program with Visual Studio. It's like a great big book of usefull spells, but they are written in invisble ink :o) [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Apples and Oranges by jigjigga (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:43PMRe:Apples and Oranges by Eideewt (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @08:44PMRe:Apples and Oranges by Eideewt (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @08:54PMRe:Apples and Oranges by ToasterofDOOM (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:27PMRe:Apples and Oranges by JudicatorX (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @08:56PMRe:Apples and Oranges by ToasterofDOOM (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:22PMRe:Apples and Oranges by Duhavid (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:57PMRe:Apples and Oranges by Superfarstucker (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:19PMRe:Apples and Oranges by BitwizeGHC (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:21PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Pulse_Instance (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @06:27PM Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits (Score:4, Insightful) by x0n (120596) <{ei.loi} {ta} {gnisio}> on Wednesday October 26, @06:28PM (#13884804) (Last Journal: Monday March 15, @11:18PM) "Visual Studio and Microsoft tools force you to adopt programming techniques designed around implementation speed, not understanding or quality"Force? noone's forcing me to use the RAD tools; I use VS primarily as an editor with intellisense and solution/project file management; no more, nor less. FUD.- Oisin [ Reply to This | ParentRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Frobnicator (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:29PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by CastrTroy (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:49PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Nasarius (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @10:31PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by 87C751 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:42PM Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits (Score:5, Insightful) by nmb3000 (741169) <nmb3000@that-google-mail-site.com> on Wednesday October 26, @06:33PM (#13884845) (http://www.khaaan.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday May 14, @05:14AM) If used correctly Visual Studio does not "rot your brain" or cause bad habits.The places where Visual Studio excels is in some of the following:Code/syntax highlightingStructure/layoutDesigning graphical aspects (forms, window layouts, etc.)And othersOne of my favorite features is the form of auto-completion and showing function prototypes. You don't have to have memorized the entire Win32 API to be a "good" programmer. Documentation comes in many forms and by having the IDE tell you when you open a parenthesis what the function expects as inputs is just another way of looking at the docs.The one place where I think that an IDE can cause some harm for new programmers is the "shake-and-bake" method of designing an app where it asks 10 questions and writes the code for you. Past that, IDEs are a great tool for managing larger programming projects. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by rolfwind (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:04PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by NutscrapeSucks (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @10:13PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by tom8658 (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:19PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by owlstead (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:15PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by CastrTroy (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:57PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by ucblockhead (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:32PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by mauriatm (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @08:35PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Ok, back in 1995 by orasio (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:44PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Arandir (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:28PMWhat we have here, ladies and gentlemen... by OwP_Fabricated (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @07:42PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by colinrichardday (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @08:29PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.4 replies beneath your current threshold.You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by LibertineR (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @06:36PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by Moofie (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:20PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by nitehorse (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:31PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by Maserati (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:14AMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by bogado (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:22PMOkay, thats fair. by LibertineR (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:42PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by Pneuma ROCKS (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:32PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by CastrTroy (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:05PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by Pneuma ROCKS (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:36PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by sd_diamond (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:34PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by salesgeek (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:42PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by GlassHeart (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:11PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by killjoe (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:52PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by R3d M3rcury (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:10PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by Bnonn (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:39PMRe:You win the 'dumbest post of the week' award by gnuLNX (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:56PM4 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by slashdotnickname (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:37PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by b4k3d b34nz (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @06:40PM Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits (Score:5, Interesting) by ankarbass (882629) on Wednesday October 26, @06:40PM (#13884903) (Last Journal: Wednesday October 26, @07:12PM) No offense,But, taking stuff apart doesn't make you brilliant. Most of us geeks took things apart when we were kids. People around us said the same things you're saying about so and so's kid. The kid is stumped with java because he's having to go beyond instant gratification and actually learn something. There is a fundamental difference between just discovering random facts and learning ideas that have depth. Just because he can play video games or memorize oodles of random computer facts, or fankly, even put a network together, doesn't mean much. I'm not saying the kid isn't smart, most geeks are "smart", few are brilliant.It's good for him to struggle. He'll find out if he's really brilliant. His response that the ideas are stupid is just his ego combined with youth. Does he think math is stupid too?My point is that visual studio isn't the problem. The problem is thinking that mucking about with computers is equivalent to learning difficult things. Whipping up some crappy kid-app in Visual Basic is about as difficult as Whipping up some crappy speakers in woodshop. It no more makes you a programmer, or dare I say, a computer scientist, than building the crappy speaker makes you an acoustic engineer.The kids problem isn't visual studio, the kids problem is that the stuff he's done requires tinkering and doing but no hard thinking. Now he's being forced to think and it sounds like he's finding out that it's not quite as easy as just doing. That's good!ymmv. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by jacksonj04 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:06PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Dogtanian (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:50PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Raumkraut (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @08:02PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Belial6 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:31PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by xTantrum (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:55PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by noisymime (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:20AMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Mr. Underbridge (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @10:11PM Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits (Score:4, Insightful) by afaik_ianal (918433) on Wednesday October 26, @06:47PM (#13884942) While I liked his creativity, it was evident his depth of grasp of the workings of programming were as deep as VS allowed him. Cute screens with cute input buttons and cute input boxes. But nothing in the sense of real code.This only demonstrates that Visual Studio is a bad environment for "teaching yourself", not that using Visual Studio is a bad thing in our professional lives. VS has fully fledged languages behind it (nothing stopping you from compiling/linking from the command-line...). There is nothing about VS that intrinsically limits the depth of one's understanding.For Professionals: I think this point from the professional's perspective is really well covered by Andy Hunt and David Thomas in Section 35 of "The Pragmatic Programmer": "Evil Wizards".In summary: If you use code generated by wizards and other similar tools without understanding what that code does, you are going to run into problems. Wizards and generators are tools that can increase your productivity (why bother writing code a computer can write for you?), but if you don't understand what they're doing, then you are going to run into troubles. Finally, their tip: "Don't use wizard code you don't understand".For students: Regardless of the language/environment that kids start on, they need someone to guide them. They need to be taught the underlying concepts behind functions and classes. They need to be taught a few fundamental design concepts. They need to be taught some of the common idioms. If they aren't then how can they get it right? For the VS learners, it will be the flashy wizard generated dialogs that do very little, and ungracefully. For the console/C learners, it will be the almost-as-flashy text based menus (generated with reams of printfs), that do very little, and ungracefully.Yeah - I originally learnt to program (in Turbo Pascal and C) in a self-directed manner, and I had the same problem as the kid you talk about. It wasn't until many years later at Uni, that I finally learnt to program. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Nasarius (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @10:41PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits (Score:5, Funny) by robertjw (728654) on Wednesday October 26, @06:48PM (#13884945) (http://www.alltheinfo.org/) I tried to turn him on to coding, but he went out and got Visual Studio, and went off on his own. He came back and proudly demonstrated his various creations.Shoulda started with Perl. Everyone knows Perl is the best language for learning quality programming skills. [ Reply to This | ParentI did start with perl and I tuned out fine by myBotPiko (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:33PMRe:I did start with perl and I tuned out fine by KrispyKringle (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:42PMRe:I did start with perl and I tuned out fine by bburton (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:41PMRe:I did start with perl and I tuned out fine by D3m3rz3l (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:59PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by yourexhalekiss (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:08PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Jeff Hornby (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @10:25PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by ToasterofDOOM (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:33PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits (Score:4, Interesting) by 2short (466733) on Wednesday October 26, @06:59PM (#13885012) "While I liked his creativity, it was evident his depth of grasp of the workings of programming were as deep as VS allowed him. Cute screens with cute input buttons and cute input boxes. But nothing in the sense of real code."As deep as VS "allowed" him? WTF are you talking about? I've used VS every workday for 7 years. I gather it has some sort of functions for making cute screens with buttons on them? I wouldn't know, I've never written a gui app.He's a kid. He wanted to make something he thought was cool; and he did, good for him. It makes sense he went for the drag-together an EZ-GUI stuff; He made something that looked cool and didn't do much. I'm guessing "looks cool" was his design target.Heck, I first got into programing (time to date myself) writing BASIC programs to draw maps of D&D dungeons. 99% of what I learned in my first months of coding was the details of the particular extended ascii set my computer suported. I learned useless trivia and wrote lousy code in pusuit of eye-candy. But eventually, I wanted to move a marker around the dungeon, then I wanted to keep track of what was in different rooms. Today I make a fairly nice living writing complex C++ without a bit of eye-candy anywhere near it.In short, leave the kid alone. Soon enough he'll want those cute buttons to do real stuff. If adults can be kept from eliminating his fun by insisting that "real" programs can't look good, he'll be a crackerjack coder in no time. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by TheZalm (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @08:22PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by 2short (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:30PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by BlueCollarCamel (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @08:34PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by CyricZ (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:05PM Re:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits (Score:5, Insightful) by Sebastopol (189276) on Wednesday October 26, @07:07PM (#13885079) (http://slashdot.org/) I think that's a dangerous culture to cultivate in an IT universe.Oh Jeez, get over yourself.You've completely ignored the subtleties of a choice made by an intelligent mind when presented with different ways to do things. I find it fascinating he went right to the GUI and started developing code that way. Instead, you're peeved he didn't start figuring out what include files to use to do a printf() to a console.Maybe the path he blazes will be the next paradigm. History is full of people making huge leaps in technology by finding easier ways to do things that interested them, but were against the norm.Viewed from this perspective, I think you should step off and let him learn what he wants how he wants, and not in a way that pleases you. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by drinkypoo (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:19PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Odocoileus (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:23PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by jaunito (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:41PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Have Blue (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:51PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by jbplou (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:38PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Jeff Hornby (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @10:11PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by NipsMG (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:17PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by Bedouin X (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:42PMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by PickyH3D (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:02AMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by prell (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:09AMRe:yes, it does rot your brain, or at least habits by zbend (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:16AMAbsolue Rubbish by Explodo (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:49AM Re:Shut up DINOSAUR (Score:5, Insightful) by georgewilliamherbert (211790) on Wednesday October 26, @06:31PM (#13884821) Geez...If the first tool you introduce someone too teaches people, particularly bright kids, not to think about...What tools are best for the job...Why different tools are best for the job...What the nuts and bolts behind pretty drag and drop interfaces are...Why you want nuts and bolts behind the pretty interfaces... ...then that tool is a horrible teaching tool. Period. Programming is not about pretty interfaces, as the original comment notes. That's part of producing functional modern programs, but if you mistake doing that for actually programming, and your tools teach you to make that mistake, you're in trouble. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Shut up DINOSAUR by rackhamh (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:45PMRe:Shut up DINOSAUR by HawkingMattress (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @08:53PMRe:Shut up DINOSAUR by prof_tc (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:15PMRe:Shut up DINOSAUR by kahanamoku (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @06:33PMRe:Shut up DINOSAUR by Ithika (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:33PMRe:Shut up DINOSAUR by kahanamoku (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @06:36PMRe:Shut up DINOSAUR by TheGavster (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:40PMRe:Shut up DINOSAUR by docgnome (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @07:34PMRe:Shut up DINOSAUR by ToasterofDOOM (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:39PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Shut up DINOSAUR by achacha (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:02PM11 replies beneath your current threshold. Help! (Score:5, Funny) by ArchieBunker (132337) on Wednesday October 26, @06:10PM (#13884663) (http://www.naawp.org/) Help I did type Y work for years and now I'm doing type X. Things are different and I don't understand, why! [ Reply to ThisRe:Help! by Gilmoure (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:14PMRe:Help! by LostCluster (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:36PM Breakpoint and resume coding (Score:5, Interesting) by pv2b (231846) on Wednesday October 26, @07:00PM (#13885024) ... you mean where you modify code at runtime while running it inside a debugger?Get on Mac OS X, and start coding using Xcode. You may drool once you find the Fix & Continue (ZeroLink) feature. :-) [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Breakpoint and resume coding by Alien Being (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @08:13PMRe:Breakpoint and resume coding by Mr2001 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:35PMRe:Breakpoint and resume coding by dancpsu (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:09PM Re:Breakpoint and resume coding (Score:5, Informative) by TrancePhreak (576593) on Wednesday October 26, @09:25PM (#13885964) Visual Studio 6 had that for C/C++, Apple was playing catch up too! [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Breakpoint and resume coding by DavidHumus (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:12AM2 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:Breakpoint and resume coding by jcr (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:38PMRe:Breakpoint and resume coding by sjelkjd (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @11:10PMRe:Breakpoint and resume coding by cthrall (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:34PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Help! by Azi Dahaka (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:38PMRe:Help! by ad0gg (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:55PMRe:Help! by Azi Dahaka (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:17PMRe:Help! by ad0gg (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:53PMRe:Help! by Azi Dahaka (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:34PMRe:Help! by killjoe (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:48PMRe:Help! by ghinckley68 (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:39PMRe:Help! by killjoe (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:15PMRe:Help! by digidave (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:40PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Great quotes (Score:4, Interesting) by tcopeland (32225) * <{moc.rehteofni} {ta} {mot}> on Wednesday October 26, @06:10PM (#13884665) (http://tomcopeland.home.mindspring.com/) This is in the section where he's talking about filling in event handlers for a VB form:> This bothered me because Visual Basic was treating a> program not as a complete coherent document,> but as little snippets of code attached to visual objects.So true. You can't "read" the program, instead, you can only leap about from handler to handler. And another good point when talking about a XAML demo:> It was very, very cool, except that the 12 tick marks> of the clock were implemented in 12 virtually identical chunks of XAML.I'm not sure about this one - seems that one of the few times that duplicated code is OK is when it's in generated code; i.e., in a JavaCC-generated parser. For everything else, there's CPD, the Copy/Paste Detector [sourceforge.net].