macOS Professional programmers, how did you learn?

[MorphingDragon]

I specialized in logic when I earned my philosophy degree. So I may have learned more about than many computer scientists have learned about it. Sometimes I can hardly believe how many subfields it includes. During his seminar about Godel's Incompleteness Thorems, a computer scientist kept saying, "You probably don't know this, but . . ." or something like that. Which explains why the Philosophy Department's logician, who earned his doctorate from Stanford University, must have surprised the presenter he talked privately with him. That logician, Dr. Anthony M. Ungar wrote a book called [Normalization, Cut Elimination, and the Theory of Proofs/U], just the sort of book you'll love to curl up with if you're like me.

We're forced to take this paper in Computing.

http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/genquer..._Number&lwhere=unique_record_id=284&children=

We are recommended to take Philosiphy logic papers but I chose not to.

 

[Bill McEnaney]

Wow! Everything on the Computing paper sounds familiar. So maybe I'm not a dinosaur after all?

You're not alone, Morph. I know many computer experts ignore philosophy. I know a mathematician who believes that much of it is nonsense. I'm inclined to agree if he's talking about relativism, postmodernism, or both.

We're forced to take this paper in Computing.

http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/genquer..._Number&lwhere=unique_record_id=284&children=

We are recommended to take Philosiphy logic papers but I chose not to.

 

[jpyc7]

Wow! Everything on the Computing paper sounds familiar. So maybe I'm not a dinosaur after all?

You're not alone, Morph. I'm many computer experts ignore philosophy. I know a mathematician who believes that much of it is nonsense. I'm inclined to agree if he's talking about relativism, postmodernism, or both.

You know how there are "religious wars" with technical people involving Macs/PCs or vi/emacs or linux/freebsd? I think taking a Philosophy of Religion class is a good thing for those people. It'll give them some perspective.

I did a minor in philosophy, but just took a symbolic logic class. The other classes dealt with religion, epistemology, and a few others I can't remember.

 

[Bill McEnaney]

I know what ya mean, jpyc. For years, I've been carrying the Solaris torch, burning anyone who hates Sun workstations. I'm using my Sunblade 100 now because I still need to order my first Mac, an iMac.

I took Philosophy of Religion from the University of Wisconsin Extension. But the course wouldn't have started any religious wars, since it was largely about arguments for God's existence. Nothing about Islam, pagan religions, or anything like that. I needed to take two courses about eastern religions to meet a politically correct requirement, courses I would have otherwise ignored. I'm just too, too western to think the way, say, Hindus, think. So, eastern philosophy confuses me even more than postmodernism does.

Strangely, some mathematician friends of mine enjoy existentialism when they're not doing mathematics. They probably haven't read Sartre's book called Nausea. Then again, neither have I.

Sorry about the typo in the note you've just answered. I promised myself that I wouldn't let any typos slip into my posts. Unfortunately, I've already found about five mistakes I've made. Maybe I should buy voice recognition software for my iMac.

You know how there are "religious wars" with technical people involving Macs/PCs or vi/emacs or linux/freebsd? I think taking a Philosophy of Religion class is a good thing for those people. It'll give them some perspective.

I did a minor in philosophy, but just took a symbolic logic class. The other classes dealt with religion, epistemology, and a few others I can't remember.

 

[rdcsw]

Here is my contribution.

My background,

I'm in my late 50's…

My undergrad is in electrical engineering, but the last 20 years I've been coding for a living.

My son is in college as a CS major.

As long as you "really enjoy programming" my advice is to continue.

Your in a field where you will need to learn for the rest of your life, so "learn to learn".

I read the books, but you must combine the books with working programs. I keep a basic subscription to Safari Books Online.

I'm a big fan of Test Driven Development. There are frameworks for TDD but you can always write some simple tests for homework assignments without a framework. The tests will define what you need to accomplish and keep you focused on the task at hand. They also demonstrate to your instructor, coworker or customer how your code is intended to be used. You may already realize that there are a lot a cool and fun stuff you can do with code. The tests keep you focused on what you need to do.

I think you are going to have to spend a lot of time on your CS classes. It's a lot of work. But once you learn how to turn a business problem into a solution you will be very valuable. There really aren't a lot a good programmers.

As for the discussions on to use an IDE or not: Specific IDEs are often mentioned in job postings. You might as well start learning to use them so you will be able to discuss them with an experienced lead programmer in an interview.