Unix editors

[Wilson Heydt]

In article <814 at lakesys.UUCP>, mark at lakesys.UUCP (Mark Storin) writes:
> 	Editors are tools.  Some tools are better for some things than others.
> You wouldn't expect much fun from trying a standard screwdriver on a philips
> head screw.  In the spirit of the original question, students should learn as
> many editors as they are capable of learning.  School is where you should be
> learning these things.  You develop your capability to learn new instruction
> sets.  Adds flexibility to your thinking.  Improves concentration, etc.
> 
> 	Preferences?  Everybody has preferences.

You bet.  Possibly we also need a better grade of student.  I'm been
slowly coming to the conclusion that there is so much that REALLY NEEDS
to be understood to have complete education (see the the debate about
requirements out of Stanford a few months ago) that College undergraduate
curricula should be considered to be 5 years rather than 4.

You want flexibility?  When I was a student, the beginning CS course
taught Algol in 9 weeks.  The corresponding EECS course did FORTRAN
and Algol in the same time.

I suspect the real reason for hiring marginal programmers is because
the demand for anyone who can code exceeds the supply of those whose
talents run in that direction.  Companies are reaching farther and 
farther down the talent pool and coming up with some piss-poor examples.

All this is complicated by the "title inflation" that took place
during Nixon's wage-price freeze.  At that time, people got title
promotions for doing the same work in order to be paid more.
coders became programmers and programmers became programmer-analysts
or systems analysts.  Now, "coder" is never used.  Pity, one sees
so many analysts (who used to be 'programmers') that can't write
competent code or debug without elaborate help.

[Help! Stop me before I tell more 'good old days' stories!]

        --Hal

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  Hal Heydt                             |    "Hafnium plus Holmium is
  Analyst, Pacific*Bell                 |     one-point-five, I think."
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