[wellylug]The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills

[Gerald Roehrbein]

Hello Mian,

"C programming" isn't dead. "C++" is "C" with object oriented features.

There are a lot of programmers actual working on "C" projects and there
are a lot of "C++" projects which uses some "C++" features but aren't
really object oriented.

Object oriented is not only using classes and some features of C++.

I've started in January a project written in "C" language (Watchdog, a
HA and performance forecast tool for LINUX) just4fun. As I started I
thought that there won't be resources and people using "C" language but
this was wrong. 

In UNIX and LINUX environments "C/C++" programming know how is
required. 

Some people said in this discussion that "C" is a beginners language.
Well: The LINUX Kernel is written in "C" most device drives are written
in "C" and most of the popular products like Apache and MySQL  are
written in "C" and offer "C API's".

I've found some jobs in Australia for Oracle OCI (Oracle Call Interface.
That's really "C" programming behind ESQL and PRO*C) programmers last
year.

Having "C" know how is in my opinion a good point to start with. But I
mean real "C" know how and not listening 2 month at University.

My job is Performance Specialist in SAP and Oracle environments. And one
benefit of an experienced C programmer in such situations is that I do
not have problems to deal with bits and bytes and dig into the deep,
running "truss" (Solaris) or strace (LINUX) or adb/gbd and being able to
understand what these programs show.

Most of my tuning success is based upon the "C" programming know how.
For example tasks and thread behavior and parallelization of processing
on multi processor systems. A "4GL" programmers or most of the JAVA and
ABAP programmers uses resources and do not worry about resources.

Parallelization must be a good thing. 

In ABAP there are some language features which allows to join an
internal table with a database table. This results in so called "FOR ALL
ENTRIES" constructs. If I try to explain an ABAP programmer what
happened and why he or she should not use such code (it's simpel. It
takes a few seconds to write it down but it's expensive for the Company)
than he would not be able to understand. And they wonder that it is
possible to decrease the runtime of such programs from 20 hours to 10
minutes.

"C" programming skill is in my opinion a good thing. 

Maybe this means not plain "C" programming. This means "C" programming
and operating system dependent programming know how, know how of the
different C API's and a lot of know how behind "Kernighan & Ritchie" "C"
know how.

I know there are some fellows outside which says "That's C and that's
API know how and that's operating system dependent like POSIX and other
know how".


For me (my definition is not very sharp) "C" programming know how means
a lot more as being able to write a "hello world" programming using K&R
"C".

For a LINUX admin good "C" know how is also a must. If you want to build
a new kernel than you should understand the different options and maybe
you should understand why Linus Thorvalds write "use only special
Versions of gcc to build a kernel".

C is not dead. There are a lot of other arguments for having "C" know
how.



kind regards
Gerald




 
Am Dienstag, den 10.07.2007, 13:21 +1200 schrieb Mian Lin:
> Hi , I just read the article from computerworld website,it listed "The
> top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills". I am surprised at "C
> programming" is on the list.
> I dont agree that below:
>  "As the web takes over, C languages are also becoming less relevant,
> according to Stewart Padveen, internet entrepreneur and currently
> founder of online advertising start-up AdPickles. "C++ and C Sharp are
> still alive and kicking, but try to find a basic C-only programmer
> today, and you'll likely find a guy that's unemployed and/or training
> for a new skill," he says."
> 
> what do you think, the people who are working in the industry ?
> 
> Regards,
> Mian
> 
>