Let Go, Standard Library From Community

[Chris Nicholson-Sauls]

Dave wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Daniel Keep wrote:
>>> This is one thing I really lament about my uni education thus far.  Two
>>> topics that basically have *never* been covered in even minimal detail
>>> have been optimisation and debugging.
>>
>> Most great programmers didn't learn programming from taking college 
>> courses. They learned it on their own. Programming has the nice 
>> characteristic that it is fairly straightforward to learn on your own.
>>
>> Want to take advantage of what a university can offer? Taking the 
>> basic course in each of following will pay you lifelong dividends:
>>
>> 1) Calculus
>> 2) Accounting
>> 3) Physics
>> 4) Chemistry
>> 5) Statistics
>> 6) Electronics
> 
> I couldn't agree more. Software development is and always has been a 
> craft(*) - part science, part art. Colleges have never been really good 
> at teaching crafts -- no such thing as a "Bachelor of Crafts in Software 
> Development" <g>
> 
> Personally, the best developers I've ever known (again, personally -- 
> please note the next paragraph) have almost w/o exception been formally 
> trained/educated for something else, and most of the CS majors went into 
> management (but then again maybe they're truly the smart ones <g>).
> 
> That said, there are *alot* of super-smart CS students and graduates in 
> this group, I gather. If it's truly what you love doing, a CS or related 
> degree can only help because you get to goof-off for 4 years doing what 
> you like and learning too <G>
> 
> (*) Alan Cooper ("The Father of Visual Basic") for the insight that 
> Software Development is really more of a craft than a science.

I tend to tell people that all forms of art seemingly arise from some form of science. 
Programming just happens to be an artform still closely linked to its base science.  And 
our own Walter -- if I recall right -- is a prime example of a major developer whose 
background is in something else.  I'm pretty sure those airplanes didn't require new 
compilers.

-- Chris Nicholson-Sauls