Constructs Jokes / Recent Jokes

Part 9 - (The Future of Real Programmers) - the final part
--------------------------------------------------
What of future? It is a matter of some concern to Real Programmers that the latest generation of
computer programmers are not being brought up with the same outlook on life as their elders. Many of
them have never seen a computer with a front panel. Hardly anyone graduating from school these days
can do hex arithmetic without a calculator. College graduates these days are soft - protected from the
realities of programming by source level debuggers, text editors that count parentheses, and "user friendly"
opearing systems. Worst of all, some of these alleged "computer scientists" manage to get degrees without
ever learning FORTRAN! Are we destined to become an industry of Unix hackers and PASCAL
programmers?
From my experience, I can only report that the furure is bright for Real Programmers everywhere. more...

Part 3 - (Structured Programming)
-------------------------------
The academics in computer science have gotten into the' structured programming' rut over the past several
years. They claim that programs are more easily understood if the programmer uses some special language
constructs and techniques. They don't all agree on exactly which constructs, of course, and the examples
they use to show their particular point of view invariably fit on a single page of some obscure journal or the
other - clearly not enough of an example to convince anyone. When I got out of school, I thought I was the
best programmer in the world. I could write an unbeatable tic-tac-toe program, use five different
programming languages, and create 1000-line programs that WORKED. (Really!) Then I got out into the Real
World. My first assignment in the Real World was to read and understand a 200, 000-line FORTRAN program,
then speed it up by a factor of two. Any more...