Thank you, for this! I could not say it better/nicer.
I was getting upset with the overwhelming negativity here. Monday morning syndrome?
For the record, I enjoy posts like this. This is how you learn and hone new skills. Everyone does this kind of thing (well, lots of people do), but for whatever reason those that write it up get attacked sometimes.
I strongly suspect a lot of posters of negative comments really aren't any more capable, but are just showing off by picking holes in other people's work. No advanced project like this gets done perfectly first time. Anyone who's worked on a complex project, especially on their own, would know and appreciate that.
I mean kudos to the guy for trying something new but honestly I'd expect anyone working as a developer in IT to have learned this much before calling themselves a professional. And that includes Javascript devs since so much of frontend development is event-driven anyway.
Personally I get a little fed up by just how _bad_ many frontend developers seem to be these days. I'm not tarring everyone with the same brush as I'm known some really amazing frontend devs too (though they ususally consider themselves full stack). But I've lost count of the number of Javascript developers who I've had to explain HTTP status codes and the difference between GET and POST. It feels like frontend development is a place where people go if they like the idea of coding but can't be bothered to learn how to actually programme nor any of the principles they're building their code on top of. Thankfully the topic author bucks that trend a little but even in his case the lessons he is learning are painfully basic.
By the way it's a bank holiday (long weekend) in the UK so no Mondays blues from me. :D
As I said elsewhere, I think this is clearly an article for a junior audience. But I think he did an good enough job at explaining his main concepts to his peers/readers. In fact, the whole "I coded an editor in C" is at best a irrelevant eye-catcher, as you can copy-paste about a gazillion implementations from anywhere. So because of that, any seasoned dev should probably not fall for such a "catchy" header in the first place... :-)
http://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/ http://www.cprogramming.com/texteditors.html http://jwu.50webs.com/Archive/src/simted3/simted3.pdf ... [ad nauseam]
According to author's webpage[1], he's a "student at the University of Waterloo, class of 2021".
So probably age 17 or 18. He's not passing himself off as a "professional".
If majority of HN readers feel this article was beneath their skill level and a waste of time, that's more on the submitter (mxstbr) for misjudging its value to the HN audience rather than the article's author.
(Although at this time, the article does have 110 upvotes while simultaneously, the top-voted comment (poster mmjaa) is critical about its simplistic banality. So maybe the submitter got the pulse correct for half of the HN split-personality?)
[1] http://lpan.io/
> So probably age 17 or 18. He's not passing himself off as a "professional".
Fair enough, though I am still surprised he hadn't learned that in formal education already. I was taught about event driven programming before I got to university. The schools I went to weren't particularly good either so it's not like I had a "better" education or come from privilege.
Maybe they just don't teach event-driven programming any more? :(
We were taught both Visual Basic and Pascal and taught the difference between event driven (VB) and procedural (Pascal). Though weirdly we were never taught about OOP, but it was a fairly average UK college and a pretty general computing course so there was a lot to cover in 2 years.
That was my observations at the time anyway. Things may have changed and/or I might have introduced selection bias by hanging around with the nerdier kids. Who knows - too late to find out now.
At the level of professional-standard software architecture for UIs?
There have been some positive efforts in the UK over the past few years to introduce programming as a more serious subject at secondary school level (roughly, ages 11-18). I think it's great if kids get to write a simple mobile app to chat with their friends or make a simple game, instead of only learning things like how to use a word processor or graphics program. I think it's great if there are teachers in schools who themselves have the skills and knowledge to help the kids do that, too.
However, there are plenty of new starters entering the industry who have just graduated with degrees in CS or related subjects from good universities and still won't have been exposed to these kinds of ideas at more than a trivial level. I'd be surprised and impressed if I had a school-leaver turn up for an interview for a programming position with more than a passing knowledge of these subjects.
For what it's worth, I don't think the original author does themselves any favours by inflating their experience as they do. The way they describe themselves in the introduction on their web site seems rather out of proportion to their actual experience, and their CV screams "I read a guide to how to write impressive-sounding CVs and I'm trying way too hard". But as a card-carrying member of the "I thought I knew everything at the start of my career and tried way too hard" club, I think you just have to see that as a combination of genuine enthusiasm and understandable immaturity, and give them credit for having a go and sharing their experience. I'm happy to see someone at that stage in their development taking an interest and spending the time to experiment and discuss and learn, and surely we should all be encouraging the next generation of programmers along that path?
Give him a break.
https://uwaterloo.ca/software-engineering/current-undergradu...
(click on course sequence)
The first year of SE is almost purely mathematics and electromagnetism. The first year programming courses are simple and are designed to simply get people up to speed who may have never programmed before (most already have).
The course which focuses on even-driven programming for user interfaces is 'CS 349 User Interfaces' which isn't until the 3A term. This is the course where students are exposed to MVC, observer pattern, avoiding polling etc. Second year term is also where you would get a lot of exposure to state machines.
As a note to the author of this post: Don't take any criticism that appears elsewhere in these comments too harshly. People who comment here often don't take much time to pay attention to the person who actually made their contributions, and as a result their level of expectations are usually the same regardless of whether a piece of work is created by someone who is a tenured professor, or a first year university student. If you continue to write and work on projects like this, you'll turn out great in the long run. You'll also grow thick skin.
Maybe they go into it because of the incredible demand.
"viw helped me understand what UI development is really about."
Nobody writes something like that if he is 'soap boxing his experiences as if the topic isn't entry level stuff'.