Re: Advancing from Unix Sysadmin to Programmer

From: silviu (thelinuxguy1997_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 05/27/04 

Date: 27 May 2004 09:17:04 -0700

Måns Rullgård <mru@kth.se> wrote in message news:<yw1xlljmbxfj.fsf@ford.guide>...
> Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> writes:
>
> > On Thu, 20 May 2004, Otto Wyss wrote:
> >
> >> While there is no substitute for experience, experience can be aquired
> >> through hard work. IMO the best way to aquire experience without being
> >> fired by the boss is to participate in any OpenSource project. I'd
> >> choose a medium size project since it probably is easier to look
> >> through. The advantage of OpenSource project is your code is viewed by
> >> others and if you make errors they will immediately be critisiced. And
> >> the most important reason if you make valuable contributions any other
> >> error will be forgiven.
> >
> > That is some good advice, but beware the flip-side: not all open source
> > code necessarily follows good programming techniques and some have
> > arguably horrible code layout standards.
>
> The same can be said about commercial closed source code. The
> difference is only that nobody knows which programs have terrible
> code.

I cannot agree with you more on this! I am working as a programmer for
a telecomunication company and I've seen one of the worst C/C++ code
imaginable.
I'll give you an example:
string a;
string b;
[....]
if(strcmp(a.c_str(), b.c_str()))
{
//Do something
}

I started working as a programmer at 39; before I used to work as a
mechanical engineer. But that was in 1998. Nowadays, the programming
jobs are being offshored so I don't see much future in IT :-(

My 2 cents,

Sil

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