Rex said. >> Learn to program in C. If you want to stay in the construction side of
>> development, the aptitude to understand C is what separates the men from >> the boys. Notice that it's an "aptitude"; some people just don't have >> the brain cells that understand memory allocation, let alone pointers >> and recursion. Not everyone who calls themselves a "programmer" has >> this aptitude. Many "productive" Pick programmers fail to develop >> skills outside of Pick because the other languages don't make sense to them. This is a really good point, with a qualification. My first professional job was C and assemble in R&D. Very heavy traffic. Then I went into PICK for several years. I avoided going into web development, because I was afraid it would be a big change. However, when I took the plunge everything looked very familiar. Java, PHP, Perl, JavaScript are all C-derived languages. They are examples of what C is good at. Developing libraries to do specific repetitive tasks (the original C only had 11 reserverd words it was mostly libraries from the start). All the little things like where to put semicolons, where to put braces, the difference between passing by reference and passing by value, when to use breaks in swtiches (or not). PICK assumes you want to break after every CASE. Not C, C assumes you want complete control. There were lots of little gotchas that I just sailed past. C is the basis of pretty much all UNIX based development and the web comes out of UNIX from WAY back. On the other hand, IT has diversified to a tremendous degree. A graphic artist with dreamweaver can be enormously productive with very little understanding of the things I mentioned above. I say, take stock of your interests and talents and try to identify the area you will be happiest in. If it's the low level C stuff. Great. If it's something else, great too. Being happy with what you are doing is the biggest factor to success. Charles Shaffer Senior Analyst NTN-Bower Corporation ------- u2-users mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
