Why a career in computer programming sucks (2007)

Re:Why a career in computer programming sucks (2007) by metaobject on Sunday February 05, 2012 @12:00AM (#3553334)

I disagree with many of the points here. First, it sounds like this guy is on the Microsoft Treadmill (TM). It's a widely know fact that MS routinely retires technologies and platforms at a breakneck pace (I mean, really? you're going to retire a whole programming language -- VB 6.0?).

Well, I work in C and C++ on linux/unix platforms. The C programming language has been around for decades and will continue to be around for decades to come.

He keeps saying that old knowledge is worthless. This isn't entirely true, as I believe that this knowledge builds up into a kind of intuition. Intuition gained over several years allows seasoned programmers to very quickly pick up on new concepts, programming languages or platforms.

I still can't get over the fact that MS retires programming languages. It's almost as if they want to squeeze more money out of their customers, so they cook up some new technology that is the must have. Oh, that's what they're really doing? Oh, ok.

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Re:Why a career in computer programming sucks (2007) by BadassFractal on Sunday February 05, 2012 @02:13PM (#3554865)

It's a good point. In videogame development, C has been a standard for a very long time. Wolfenstein 3D was written in C, 20 years later, Modern Warfare is still being written in C (albeit a bit modified). Most other game development is done in C++, also not exactly a brand new technology.

Had you invested correctly in the right languages, you'd be doing just fine today.

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