[geeks] something funny emerges from all the BS on comp.os.vm s

[Ken Hansen]

When my father worked for a large engineering comany in the late 60's, they tried to teach him FORTRAN, and he simply walked out of class on the second day and never returned (as a Cost Engineer it would do him no good, and weren't there peoiple to do that kind of thing?). I suspect he was never able to really see how learning the intricacies of the FORMAT statement was going to make *his* job easier...

Flash forward 25 years, and his son (me!) was sitting in a classroom trying to learn C++ (having already learned BASIC, Pascal, FORTRAN, COBOL, 370 Assembler and C), and after a few sessions, I got up, walked out and never returned. I knew if that what programming was going to become, I didn't want any part of it!

My "problem" was that I had never learned how to apporach a programming problem in such a way that it was clear how object-oriented programming would make a significant difference in the effort involved. I look at a problem and think FOR...NEXT, WHILE, and IF...THEN, not overloaded operators, classes and whatever else was involved.

At the 10,000 foot level, I guess it could be beneficial, but the bulk of my programming (trivial "hacks" these days, basic business "stuff" back then) is/was satisfied by the tools I already had.

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Hechinger [mailto:wonko at arkham.ws]
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 2:56 PM
To: geeks at sunhelp.org
Subject: [geeks] something funny emerges from all the BS on comp.os.vms


this gave me a chuckle.  thought it may do the same for you.

-brian

----- Forwarded message from Toon Moene <toon at moene.indiv.nluug.nl> -----

Russell Crook wrote:

> "If you think C++ is not overly complicated, just what is a
> protected abstract virtual base pure virtual private destructor,
> and when was the last time you needed one?" -- Tom Cargill, C++ Journal

I wouldn't know (honest !) but our GNATS bug database is full of reports
like the above followed by the three words: "is not working".