Programming ain't what it used to be......neither is music.

A bit o' background:

You might say I'm young old-school. I was first bitten by the technology bug in the 70's, in my teens.The first personal computers came out, and I was fascinated by them. I was never able to actually AFFORD one, but I followed the trends and read articles about everythign computer-related that I could find. I even did a paper on what a system-analyst did!

I took a couple of programming courses in college at UTC (Tennessee-Chattanooga) - PL/1 and Fortran. The Fortran class was done using punched cards - the jobs were sent up to Knoxville and we waited hours for the results of our little programs.

(There was something satisfyingly organic about punching cards. I still remember the feel of the CLUNK when the card was punched as I hit a key on the keyboard.)

Back then, programming was on a much lower level language-wise. Great programmers could do assembler so their stuff would run faster or have additional features not easilyimplemented in the upper-level language they were using. I knew people did that, but I never got into spending hours twiddling bits so a routine would run faster. I had music to make!

Nowadays, things are different. I read a piece a few years back about how programming was becoming just connecting pieces of pre-existing code together, and lamenting the loss of "real" programming". Modular coding is a great thing overall, because it allows many more people (and talent types) to create code. It also allows a developer to easily add features to a project. For example, I don't really care to learn Javascript in-depth - but because of the modularity of the language when used in a webpage, it is easy to grab a script off some website and pop into my html. A few tweaks here and there and poof - added functionality!

There is also a parallel in music production. It used to be normal for composers to write their pieces line by line - making sure one line fit with the previous line, or one part with the other. Now, so much music is created by loops - let's use this loop, mess with it a bit, then add this other loop to it, etc etc.

This has the benefit of allowing mroe people to create music. The downside, just as with programming, is that the music created is often not very good - or at best is merely derivative. This is ok if that's what you WANT, but it isn't a long-term viable thing - people get bored listening to the same mediocre stuff after a while.

Any conclusions to this? Hmmmmmm.........I'm willing to bet this is just a phase we're going through. The techniques - both programming and in music production - being used today will spark yet another way of working - and the creative people (no, the REALLY creative people - the ones willing to work at it) will take what we do now and make up something new.

Some of them might actually do it away from the computer!

What will IT look like in 2010?

From eWeek, July 11 2005 edition, page 42, in an article looking at what IT will be like in 2010:

"Are these people a reinvention of the systems analysts of the 60s and 70s? Or is there something more sophisticated there?

Rosen: I think one of the key things you'll need is people who know how to learn - not so much people who know language X, Y, and Z, but people capable of learning a lot of different kinds of things."

So this member of the eWeek Roundtable thins IT will by 2010 find it more important to have people onboard who know how to learn than to have people who already possess a certain pool of knowledge.

It makes a lot of sense - and always has. Knowledge is relatively easy to gain with some effort (it's called training, people). The ability to learn (and even the desire....) can take years to develop.

Where does this type of person exist?

Liberal Arts programs.

------------------------------------------------ The MaconMacGuy Putting the Pieces Together Mac etc. Tech Support Macon, GA

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Quit wasting time searching the web

Ever been looking for something specific on the web, and just had a frustrating time finding that one fact? Here is a process you can follow to quit wasting time searching the web - developed out of a compuiter training class I taught for several years at mount de Sales Academy and Mercer University:

Step 1. Know EXACTLY what you are looking for.

You can't vaguely look for "something about cars" and expect to get anywhere - unless you are in "just browsing" mode, the on-line version of mall windowshopping. You need to be looking for something - MPG rating of a Toyota Camry, or used car lot in Atlanta, for example.

Step 2. Phrase your search in the form of a question - either on paper or in your head.

I suggest on paper the first dozen times you do this. For eaxmple, "what is a current value of a 1967 Volkswagen squareback?".

Step 3. Underline the important words in that question.

current value 1967 volkswagen squareback

This gives you the keywords you'll use in the search engine entry box.

Step 4: Decide on the search engine and search type you need to use.
Most people, of course, like Google and Yahoo. I prefer Metacrawler, because it searches several engines for you, and returns the top results.

There are 3+1 search types: AND (require the presence of all the keywords on the webpage for it to be counted as a hit), OR (any of 'em will do), and PHRASE (has to have the words in that exact order to be counted). The "plus 1" refers to NOT (don't count a page as a hit if it contains this word).

Example: ford wagon "Oregon Trail" NOT car NOT engine NOT michigan

Step 5: Do the search!