IDEs sweet but beguiling

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IDEs sweet but beguiling

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GeorgeCopeland SSCertifiable Points: 6997 More actions · Answer 1

Some of the posters here appear to have never seen a system that was put together by people who didn't know what they were doing. Windows tools are easy to use and pervasive in business. I have seen systems like this, it happens all the time.

TheFault Ten Centuries Points: 1004 More actions · Answer 2

GeorgeCopeland (2/29/2016)
Some of the posters here appear to have never seen a system that was put together by people who didn't know what they were doing. Windows tools are easy to use and pervasive in business. I have seen systems like this, it happens all the time.

Some posters appear to forget that they were once fresh faced rookies starting the first job in their careers. Newbie bashing is sometimes rife here...

Ed Wagner SSC Guru Points: 287026 More actions · Answer 3

TheFault (2/29/2016)
GeorgeCopeland (2/29/2016)
Some of the posters here appear to have never seen a system that was put together by people who didn't know what they were doing. Windows tools are easy to use and pervasive in business. I have seen systems like this, it happens all the time.
Some posters appear to forget that they were once fresh faced rookies starting the first job in their careers. Newbie bashing is sometimes rife here...

I'll never forget my introduction to real database programming. I was given a text editor, a command prompt and a mentor.

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GeorgeCopeland SSCertifiable Points: 6997 More actions · Answer 4

Earlier I said that professionalism can help with the easy-IDE problem. Newbie bashing is probably unprofessional.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004339 More actions · Answer 5

patrickmcginnis59 10839 (2/29/2016)
Jeff Moden (2/27/2016)
This is a really good article, Phil. It actually echoes what Bill Gates predicted back in the '80s when he said that, soon, there would be no programmers, just users. To a large extent, he's correct and it's all due to the "ease of programming offered by IDEs and GUIs". Even with all I do with T-SQL in SSMS, it's still not really programming. And, things like SSIS have made it so that people don't even need to understand the data to do something with it.
Whats "real programming" then?

Virtually all of the tools we currently use are a collection of algorithms that we use to get the machines to do something we want. The people that wrote those algorithms at the machine language level (even "Assembler" was a tool) are the "real" programmers. I don't know for sure but I suspect that even the various flavors of things like "C" compilers are actually updated using some flavor of "C" and not the original tool (Assembler) never mind hand-coded machine language.

Technically, none of us are programmers any longer. We write some code that that tells some compiler or interpreter how to write the code for the machine. We're users that are poking the equivalent of macros in a certain order.

And, no, that's not meant as a slight on anyone because there are a whole lot of people that really know how to use these wonderful "power tools".

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

GeorgeCopeland SSCertifiable Points: 6997 More actions · Answer 6

SQL Server is itself just an abstraction layer over the machine. In the stack, the application layer is much closer to the user. Easy-IDEs really help with developing this part, abstracting the pretty icons and pictures from the machine.

ZZartin SSC-Dedicated Points: 30920 More actions · Answer 7

I love my IDE's they're just like any other tool used properly they can be very useful. That said they're not meant to turn anyone into a developer automatically and I can see how some people get into trouble when they use an IDE without understanding what it's actually doing. The last company I worked for was using a CRM that had some components of the development environment that were pitched by the sales people as so easy anyone can use them and when they tried that out it ended up a disaster because A) to really get functionality out of it you needed to do backend coding and B) there were a lot of weird quirks that were hidden behind a deceptively simple interface that a non developer wouldn't really think about.

x SSC-Insane Points: 23660 More actions · Answer 8

Jeff Moden (2/29/2016)
patrickmcginnis59 10839 (2/29/2016)
Jeff Moden (2/27/2016)
This is a really good article, Phil. It actually echoes what Bill Gates predicted back in the '80s when he said that, soon, there would be no programmers, just users. To a large extent, he's correct and it's all due to the "ease of programming offered by IDEs and GUIs". Even with all I do with T-SQL in SSMS, it's still not really programming. And, things like SSIS have made it so that people don't even need to understand the data to do something with it.
Whats "real programming" then?
Virtually all of the tools we currently use are a collection of algorithms that we use to get the machines to do something we want. The people that wrote those algorithms at the machine language level (even "Assembler" was a tool) are the "real" programmers. I don't know for sure but I suspect that even the various flavors of things like "C" compilers are actually updated using some flavor of "C" and not the original tool (Assembler) never mind hand-coded machine language.
Technically, none of us are programmers any longer. We write some code that that tells some compiler or interpreter how to write the code for the machine. We're users that are poking the equivalent of macros in a certain order.
And, no, that's not meant as a slight on anyone because there are a whole lot of people that really know how to use these wonderful "power tools".

pretty much disagree across the board but its not a big deal. Much of today's application programming is less involved in algorithms and more involved in plumbing and interconnecting parts. Even with that, pretty much everywhere I look, that (and T-SQL) is still considered programming but its not some deep sort of philosophical thing, its just what folks seem to name the endeavor.

Maybe if it was whether the work was some sort of engineering, then it would be an interesting question, but I'm going to go with the routine definition of programming everybody seems to associate with the term.

xsevensinzx One Orange Chip Points: 25560 More actions · Answer 9

GeorgeCopeland (2/29/2016)
Some of the posters here appear to have never seen a system that was put together by people who didn't know what they were doing. Windows tools are easy to use and pervasive in business. I have seen systems like this, it happens all the time.

And that's the tools fault or something else?

Surely, not the tools fault because someone thought they could build a house with a box of tools and Google access?

I feel like we are having that gun argument.

:hehe:

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004339 More actions · Answer 10

GeorgeCopeland (2/29/2016)
Earlier I said that professionalism can help with the easy-IDE problem. Newbie bashing is probably unprofessional.

I don't consider it to be "newbie bashing" and I'll go to the wall for a newbie that wants to learn.

What I'm talking about is...

I've been interviewing a whole lot of people for Senior DBA positions in the last decade and most of them claim such things as 10 Years Experience with performance tuning and what have you. I've lost track of the exact numbers but more than 90% of them haven't been able to answer the question of "How do you get the current date and time in T-SQL"? I even had one fellow who was certain that he was a performance tuning expert on his resume and in person. When I asked him to tell me about Clustered Indexes, his reply was that he never worked on clustered servers and so had no need to ever look into Clustered Indexes. When I asked another self proclaimed performance expert with supposedly 10 years of experience about why one might want to setup more than 1 file for TempDB, he told me that using TempDB was a worst practice and so he never setup TempDB.

Each of these people were "newbies" at one time but never moved much past that even with 10 years of experience. Either that, or they really were "newbies" that were lying through their teeth.

How did they get that way?

By pointing and clicking and not being required to have any intellectual curiosity. Because the people they were working for also didn't have a clue, they were somehow able to survive and the GUI/IDE made all of that possible.

Is the GUI/IDE a bad thing? No, but the posers, fakers, and "newbies with 10 years of experience" that I'm talking about wouldn't have stood a chance without it. 😉

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004339 More actions · Answer 11

patrickmcginnis59 10839 (2/29/2016)
Jeff Moden (2/29/2016)
patrickmcginnis59 10839 (2/29/2016)
Jeff Moden (2/27/2016)
This is a really good article, Phil. It actually echoes what Bill Gates predicted back in the '80s when he said that, soon, there would be no programmers, just users. To a large extent, he's correct and it's all due to the "ease of programming offered by IDEs and GUIs". Even with all I do with T-SQL in SSMS, it's still not really programming. And, things like SSIS have made it so that people don't even need to understand the data to do something with it.
Whats "real programming" then?
Virtually all of the tools we currently use are a collection of algorithms that we use to get the machines to do something we want. The people that wrote those algorithms at the machine language level (even "Assembler" was a tool) are the "real" programmers. I don't know for sure but I suspect that even the various flavors of things like "C" compilers are actually updated using some flavor of "C" and not the original tool (Assembler) never mind hand-coded machine language.
Technically, none of us are programmers any longer. We write some code that that tells some compiler or interpreter how to write the code for the machine. We're users that are poking the equivalent of macros in a certain order.
And, no, that's not meant as a slight on anyone because there are a whole lot of people that really know how to use these wonderful "power tools".
pretty much disagree across the board but its not a big deal. Much of today's application programming is less involved in algorithms and more involved in plumbing and interconnecting parts. Even with that, pretty much everywhere I look, that (and T-SQL) is still considered programming but its not some deep sort of philosophical thing, its just what folks seem to name the endeavor.
Maybe if it was whether the work was some sort of engineering, then it would be an interesting question, but I'm going to go with the routine definition of programming everybody seems to associate with the term.

I'll agree to disagree, then. 😀

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

xsevensinzx One Orange Chip Points: 25560 More actions · Answer 12

Jeff Moden (2/29/2016)
GeorgeCopeland (2/29/2016)
Earlier I said that professionalism can help with the easy-IDE problem. Newbie bashing is probably unprofessional.
Is the GUI/IDE a bad thing? No, but the posers, fakers, and "newbies with 10 years of experience" that I'm talking about wouldn't have stood a chance without it. 😉

Yeah, but the IDE is not going to solve the 10-year fraud problem. They will exist with or without the IDE/Tools.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004339 More actions · Answer 13

xsevensinzx (2/29/2016)
Jeff Moden (2/29/2016)
GeorgeCopeland (2/29/2016)
Earlier I said that professionalism can help with the easy-IDE problem. Newbie bashing is probably unprofessional.
Is the GUI/IDE a bad thing? No, but the posers, fakers, and "newbies with 10 years of experience" that I'm talking about wouldn't have stood a chance without it. 😉
Yeah, but the IDE is not going to solve the 10-year fraud problem. They will exist with or without the IDE/Tools.

I'm thinking that the usefulness of SSMS has strongly contributed to the fraud problem because it's made it so easy for fakers and posers to fake and pose. A good example is what Oracle used to be... mostly a type of command line driven interface and only those with the right stuff would even go near it.

Look at what SSIS has done for the likes of ETL. It has allowed people that know how to click and drag their way through it all without knowing much about databases at all. Heh... and then there's BI.

All of these tools a great but they have allowed the more shady element to make claims that just aren't true and they can fake their way through a whole lot because of the GUIs. It wouldn't be so easy for them to fake things without them. They're both the boon and the bane of the industry.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Gary Varga SSC Guru Points: 82166 More actions · Answer 14

Steve Jones - SSC Editor (2/29/2016)
...In terms of the power tool analogy, it's not bad, but not great. Power tools certainly allow you to do work quicker, and make mistakes quicker. You can ruin material quicker. However poor skills in putting materials together would still be poor skills with hand tools.

That was supposed to be my point. I guess that I was as clear as ever.

Gaz

-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

xsevensinzx One Orange Chip Points: 25560 More actions · Answer 15

Jeff Moden (2/29/2016)
xsevensinzx (2/29/2016)
Jeff Moden (2/29/2016)
GeorgeCopeland (2/29/2016)
Earlier I said that professionalism can help with the easy-IDE problem. Newbie bashing is probably unprofessional.
Is the GUI/IDE a bad thing? No, but the posers, fakers, and "newbies with 10 years of experience" that I'm talking about wouldn't have stood a chance without it. 😉
Yeah, but the IDE is not going to solve the 10-year fraud problem. They will exist with or without the IDE/Tools.
I'm thinking that the usefulness of SSMS has strongly contributed to the fraud problem because it's made it so easy for fakers and posers to fake and pose. A good example is what Oracle used to be... mostly a type of command line driven interface and only those with the right stuff would even go near it.
Look at what SSIS has done for the likes of ETL. It has allowed people that know how to click and drag their way through it all without knowing much about databases at all. Heh... and then there's BI.
All of these tools a great but they have allowed the more shady element to make claims that just aren't true and they can fake their way through a whole lot because of the GUIs. It wouldn't be so easy for them to fake things without them. They're both the boon and the bane of the industry.

But, you're just talking about the fundamental problem all industries and careers have. People who can use the tools, but use them wrong or poorly. It's not really fake versus being real. It's being good at what you do and being bad at what you do. This has nothing to do with the tools.

These tools are going to mostly give you the how. How do I add a clustered index? How do I create an ETL system? How do I update the statistics on a table? But, they are less likely to show you why and most commonly when.

That's why when you interview a candidate, you don't simply ask them if they know how to sort in SSIS. You ask them what are the pros and cons of using sort with SSIS. You ask them to give you real-life examples of when they used it.

And for the times when the tools give you that when like when your execution plans recommend an index, you ask them the thought process of how they consider the recommendation from the tool and to explain a scenario where they didn't agree with the recommendation and how they verified their decision.

If your organization hires based on knowing syntax and knowing how to use the tools versus the when and the why, then it's not the tools fault. It's your fault for hiring candidates who cannot solve complex data challenges and who is not fake, but not good at what they do. You chose someone who knows a tool or has good memory capacity for the book versus someone who can solve problems and someone who has solve similar problems you faced.

There's an old saying, "We are not looking to hire master programmers. We are looking for people who can solve complex problems. If you can do that, eventually you will figure it out."