Better at 90's programming than modern programming?

Post Reply New Topic

Back in the good old days of DOS, programming was simple: you write a set of instructions, it goes through them one by one, and if there is a problem during the run it will take you right to the line where the error occurred, and you could figure out what led to it. Granted I didn't really know how to use functions and classes to organize code then, but they did exist.

But now, more and more complicated development environments make debugging nearly impossible. Granted that putting code into functions and classes improves organization and readability, but I've worked with several environments that don't even (by default) tell you what line in your program (or the last line you wrote before some pre-made code deeper down) it was on when a run-time error occurs! This leaves me either running it again and again with debugging hacks to find the problem, or else trying to find out how the heck to use the special-purpose "debugger" for this.

I've aced programming assignments in school, but school is not likely to teach me anywhere near 100% of what I'll need for the real world. My professors might be giving me TOO many functions, classes, etc. to start with!

Although if I can get a job I'm unlikely to be programming anything completely from scratch, at least.

I'm confused. I haven't seen the issue you describe.

Basically, I feel like I'm way better at programming circa 1990 than programming circa 2012.

IDE's are a pain. I prefer text editors and compiling/interpreting and executing at the command line.

Sounds like your problem is with high-level programming languages, though.

Software development advances by introducing greater levels of abstraction. The low-level libraries in C were built upon by higher-level abstractions in (say) Java, where string-handling functions were augmented with threading and networking libraries. From here, even higher levels of abstraction like J2EE were introduced. On top of these high-level abstractions came higher-level abstractions like Spring and Hibernate. On top of these are even higher levels like MVC flow of control. In some ways, operating at a higher level of abstraction makes typical jobs easier to do. Hibernate is easier than hand-coding database storage and retrieval code for every object. On the other hand, the whole exercise becomes a house of cards. Java has like three or four I/O libraries now. J2EE is a breathtaking mess, with JSP, JSTL, EL, and so on. JSP pages which have to use JSTL/EL and also emit JavaScript, jQuery, and CSS are almost incomprehensible. (Is that a JSTL tag, or an emitted markup tag? Is that an anonymous JavaScript array, or a CSS list?) But there's no going back. Remember, there was a time when high-level abstractions like C's string library were considered too slow.

I retired from software work about ten yeas ago. How has programming changed in the last 20 years?

ruveyn