r****y
发帖数: 26819 | 1 http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-01-2013/130107-developer-
age=1
Here is our guide to some of the more dominant tech generations in computer
history, as embodied by the programmers who gave them life. The list is far
from complete, but if you've been coding for any amount of time, you will pr
obably recognize many of these generational traits in yourself, your coworke
rs, and the programming community at large.
Punch-card programmers
The '60s-era computers received their instructions from a stack of card with
punched holes, a scheme that dates to the earliest programmable looms for w
eaving cloth. Some enterprise programmers talk about old software as "dusty
deck," which is largely a metaphor. There was recently a story about a punch
card programmer for looms in England that still use the old technology to m
ake lace.
Language of choice: Fortran
Special skill: Not dropping the deck of punch cards
Social media strategy: Joining the right country club
Other career choice: Advertising
Clothing: Dark flannel suit
Rhetorical tic: "They say there's a need for five computers, but I think dou
bling or tripling that estimate would be more accurate."
Car: Oldsmobile
Song: Ella Fitzgerald's "Mack the Knife"
Favorite artifact: Wreath made of punch cards
Space Shuttle programmers
This crew just retired with the Space Shuttle. During their years, they work
ed with 8086 chips and kept the shuttles running by searching eBay for repla
cement hardware. The Space Shuttle computers may not have had much memory, b
ut they traveled farther and faster than all of the biggest mainframes or fa
nciest racks.
Language of choice: Assembly code
Special skill: Remembering which register is already swapped to RAM
Social media strategy: Logged into Facebook once last year; has friended spo
use and two neighbors
Other career choice: Disco lighting designer
Clothing: Leisure suits
Rhetorical tic: "If we don't do it, the Russians will win."
Car: Cadillac Eldorado
Song: Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon"
Favorite artifact: 8086 chip
Cray programmers
There was a time when the fastest computers were built by a relatively small
company run by an enigmatic genius who spent his off-hours digging tunnels
in his basement. That's a true fact about Seymour Cray, the genius who built
the first generation of machines designed for big data sets and complicated
mathematical analysis.
Language of choice: Cray's automatically vectorizing Fortran
Special skill: Knowing how to set up loops so that the Fortran compiler coul
d vectorize them
Social media strategy: Going to the boss's July 4 BBQ and the company holida
y party this year
Other career choice: NASA rocket scientist
Clothing: Short-sleeve white shirt with pocket protector
Rhetorical tic: "It's a classified project supported by the DoD."
Car: Nondescript sedan that blends into the NSA parking lot
Song: Wendy Carlos and Benjamin Folkman's "Switched-On Bach"
Favorite artifact: Cray sitting in the National Cryptographic Museum outside
Fort Meade
Cobol programmers
The first big adopters of computers never would have succeeded without a sim
ple mechanism for writing software that supported the core business. Cobol w
as the first great tool for writing what the enterprise programmers call "bu
siness logic."
Other language of choice: Fortran
Special skill: Trying to keep on using self-modifying code like ALTER X TO P
ROCEED TO Y
Social media strategy: Sends out Christmas cards printed on paper
Other career choice: Stereo designer
Clothing: Tracksuit left over from an early morning mall walk
Rhetorical tic: "It's cool."
Car: Honda Civic
Song: Gillian Hills, "Zou Bisou Bisou"
Favorite artifact: Something signed by Grace Hopper
Basic programmers
It was first invented to help Dartmouth students learn how to write endless
loops, but it became the dominant language of the early personal computer ge
neration when Bill Gates released Microsoft Basic. All of the early games an
d software for the PCs were written in Basic. Today it lives on as Visual Ba
sic, a popular language for anyone using the .Net platform.
Other language of choice: Assembly code
Special skill: Using GOTO without creating spaghetti code
Social media strategy: Going to Studio 54
Other career choice: Fast-food restaurant developer
Clothing: Bell bottoms
Rhetorical tic: "It's easy."
Car: Last convertible
Song: Blondie, "Heart of Glass"
Favorite artifact: Cassette version of Microsoft Basic
C programmers
The language began as one step above assembler, but grew hand in hand with a
ll of the variations of Unix. Today it's still used by those who love Unix a
nd its latest dominant variant, Linux. It remains the tool of choice for tho
se who want to program "close to the metal" and not rely on automatic mechan
isms like garbage collectors.
Other language of choice: C++
Special skill: Remembering to free everything malloced
Social media strategy: Posts to Usenet three times a month
Other career choice: Bell telephone switch technician
Clothing: Red Hat T-shirt from the early days
Rhetorical tic: "Wouldn't you rather handle the memory yourself?"
Car: Original Toyota Land Cruiser
Song: Something by the Ramones
Favorite artifact: Bell Labs coffee cup
C++ programmers
When C programmers looked at the idea of object-oriented programming, they c
reated C++, a baroque version that worked best when the programmer was able
to keep track of all the complicated ways code could interact. It took all o
f the garage-grade DIY intensity and added another way for programmers to pr
ove themselves worthy.
Other language of choice: C
Special skill: Multiple inheritance
Social media strategy: Friendster
Other career choice: Pinball wizard
Clothing: Jeans jacket with safety pins
Rhetorical tic: "Java pretty much broke object-oriented programming."
Car: Ford Explorer
Song: The Clash's "Clash City Rockers"
Favorite artifact: Borland C++ T-shirt
Objective-C programmers (first generation)
There are two groups of people who fell in love with Objective-C: the people
who bought a NeXT machine and those who bought an iPhone. The first generat
ion went on to rescue Apple in its darkest days and pull it back from the br
ink.
Other language of choice: Smalltalk
Special skill: Using InterfaceBuilder
Social media strategy: Subscribes to 42 mailing lists
Other career choice: Wall Street investment banker
Clothing: Hawaiian shirt
Rhetorical tic: "You mean C++ doesn't do that for you?"
Car: Mazda RX-7 or BMW 325
Song: Anything by Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead, Cat Stevens, or anyone else like
d by Steve Jobs
Favorite artifact: NeXT machine
Perl programmers
The simple language for manipulating text files appeared around the same tim
e as the Internet, so when people needed to fix Web servers, they turned fir
st to Perl. If you have text in one format and need to change it -- "massage
it," in Perl parlance -- it may only take 10 to 20 characters. Most of the
Perl scripts may be short, but that never stopped some true believers. Slash
dot, after all, was built with Perl.
Other language of choice: Unix shell scripts
Special skill: Regular expressions
Social media strategy: Arguing on Slashdot
Other career choice: Roboticist building simulated dinosaurs for malls
Clothing: Jacket and T-shirt
Rhetorical tic: "It's the duct tape of the Internet."
Car: Tuned Honda Civic
Song: Pantera's "Cemetery Gates"
Favorite artifact: First edition of O'Reilly's Perl handbook
PHP programmers
Many PHP programmers fell into PHP by accident. They were creating HTML, and
they needed a bit of dynamic logic. One tag led to another, and they found
themselves creating websites and content-management systems with the code.
Other language of choice: JavaScript
Special skill: Juggling the coding layer and the HTML markup
Social media strategy: More than 1,000 friends on Facebook; still logs into
MySpace
Other career choice: Mortgage broker
Clothing: T-shirt depicting logo of pre-bubble startup you've never heard of
Rhetorical tic: "Monetize the eyeballs."
Car: Aging SUV
Song: The Cure's "Just Like Heaven"
Favorite artifact: Orange moped from Kozmo
Java programmers
It was the first great serious language for the Internet, driven by the prom
ise of running everywhere. The desktops never surrendered to the server farm
s, but the introductory programming classes did. Today it lives on in the he
arts of Android programmers.
Other language of choice: Pascal
Special skill: Creating extralong variable names in camel case so that the c
ode is self-documenting
Social media strategy: Attends local Java Users Group meeting each month; ch
ecks Java.net account for new meetings
Other career choice: Y2K programmer
Clothing: Java One polo shirt
Rhetorical tic: "The JVM will just handle it in another thread."
Car: Mazda Miata
Song: Talking Heads' "Wild Wild Life"
Favorite artifact: Something signed by Jim Gosling
C# programmers
They fell in love with Java but remained loyal to Microsoft, perhaps because
the boss insisted on keeping it a Microsoft shop. The code looks similar. T
he idioms work the same way. It's pretty much the same as Java, but with a f
ew nice fixes worked into the mix.
Other language of choice: .Net
Special skill: Navigating the .Net documentation
Social media strategy: Wondering whether Skype counts as social media
Other career choice: Starbucks barista
Clothing: Freebie Windows 98 tennis cap
Rhetorical tic: "It's really more efficient than the JVM."
Car: Toyota Prius
Song: Nirvana's "Come As You Are"
Favorite artifact: A Windows 8 phone
JavaScript programmers (first generation)
The first group of JavaScript programmers weren't really programmers but Web
designers who needed their page to do a bit more. Many just wanted to check
the input to make sure it was legit, but an annoying few ushered in the une
nding era of garish animations.
Other language of choice: HTML
Special skill: Remembering to put the function between script tags
Social media strategy: Going to a friend's GeoCities page
Other career choice: Chain restaurant manager
Rhetorical tic: "It works on IE 5.5 but not 6.0 yet."
Clothing: Parachute pants
Car: Ford Taurus
Song: Beastie Boys' "So What'cha Want"
Favorite artifact: Netscape Share Certificate
Ruby on Rails programmers
It takes all of 10 minutes to wrap a nice website around MySQL, then years t
o fiddle with it. The Ruby language offers a clean, low-punctuation syntax,
while the Rails framework makes it easy to type the smallest files around. I
t's almost as if it were designed by carpal-tunnel sufferers.
Other language of choice: SQL
Special skill: Getting your stack to run on JRuby
Social media strategy: Writing a personal version of Facebook in 20 lines of
code
Other career choice: Molecular gastronomist
Clothing: Plaid shirt and jeans
Rhetorical tic: "You just need a few tables and you're done."
Car: Minivan
Song: "The Rails Song"
Favorite artifact: 37 Signals T-shirt
Objective-C programmers (second generation)
The second generation of Objective-C lovers appeared during the app gold rus
h after Apple opened up the iPhone to apps written by outsiders. Suddenly a
language slowly dying was reborn.
Other language of choice: JavaScript
Special skill: Figuring out how to make the layout manager work
Social media strategy: Posts pictures to Instagram and Hipstamatic but never
uses words
Other career choice: Mortgage foreclosure processor
Clothing: Hoodie
Rhetorical tic: "This will sell millions."
Car: BMW
Song: Feist's "1234" or anything else chosen for an Apple commercial
Favorite artifact: iPod with a wheel
JavaScript programmers (second generation)
Somewhere along the way, JavaScript programming turned into a professional p
ath with snooty ideas and endless debates about what constitutes clean code.
Today, many Web pages are powered by sophisticated stacks of code that can
only be maintained by skilled coders. The field is now dominated by efficien
t libraries that abstract away much of the browser incongruities and offer a
sophisticated plug-in structure.
Other language of choice: jQuery
Special skill: Closures
Social media strategy: Waiting for App.net
Other career choice: Working as a barista
Clothing: Hoodie
Rhetorical tic: "There's an open source jQuery plug-in that does it."
Car: Fixed-gear bicycle
Song: M83, "Midnight City"
Favorite artifact: DM from Brendan Eich
Haskell programmers
The language of the future offers a functional, statically typed mechanism t
hat can reduce some of the complexity for writing modern, event-driven code.
While the first implementations are easily more than 20 years old, the main
users are still found in universities, but that's changing as cool open sou
rce projects gain traction. Haskell lovers insist this proves it will be the
hot language in the 2020s.
Other language of choice: ML
Special skill: Getting around the prohibitions on keeping state around
Social media strategy: Alumni Notes, Reddit
Other career choice: Professor of mathematics
Clothing: Turtleneck sweater with elbow patches
Rhetorical tic: "I like my laziness effortless and ubiquitous."
Car: Yugo
Song: Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Klavierstücke IX"
Favorite artifact: Mbius strip
Hadoop programmers
The tool for building map/reduce jobs is technically not a language, but a c
ollection of libraries written in Java. Not that it matters -- writing the c
ode requires a talent for spotting the best way to spread out the workload o
ver a cluster of machines. As long as "big data" remains a buzzword that cap
tivates the corporate leadership, we'll see more exploring the best way to w
rite Hadoop jobs.
Other language of choice: Java
Special skill: Making sure the data is always local
Social media strategy: Yahoo coding conferences
Other career choice: Actuary
Clothing: Flannel shirt with beard, where possible
Rhetorical tic: "Big data."
Car: Retro Schwinn 10-speed bike
Song: Dan Deacon's electronica
Favorite artifact: Stuffed elephant
Node.js programmers
They learned JavaScript when they were adding an interactive Easter egg to t
heir band's Web page. Now they're working for the enterprise shop and using
that same JavaScript to handle $10 billion in foreign-exchange transactions
a day.
Other language of choice: jQuery
Special skill: Trying to remember not to block the server with code that tak
es too long to execute
Social media strategy: Post-Facebook, post-Path, still bummed that Diaspora
hasn't gone very far
Other career choice: Going to college
Clothing: Ironic T-shirt from Old Navy
Rhetorical tic: "Threads can be concurrent? Are you sure?"
Car: Skateboard
Song: "Video Games" by Lana del Rey
Favorite artifact: Rooted Android cellphone running Node | l*********s
发帖数: 5409 | 2 to conclusion: javascript is gaining the most ground and object-C
programmer has the brightest future. | t****a
发帖数: 1212 | 3 Interesting. Thanks for sharing. | P****i
发帖数: 12972 | 4 看appl的落地速度，obj-c的future还真不好说是不是Bright
【在 l*********s 的大作中提到】
: to conclusion: javascript is gaining the most ground and object-C
: programmer has the brightest future.
| l*********s
发帖数: 5409 | 5 mystatement is based on their alternative career. :-)
【在 P****i 的大作中提到】
: 看appl的落地速度，obj-c的future还真不好说是不是Bright
| r****y
发帖数: 26819 | 6 haha
【在 l*********s 的大作中提到】
: mystatement is based on their alternative career. :-)
|
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