But I think all that does is point to the fact that the average programmer's knowledge about computers and programming becomes poorer and poorer as time goes by. We are continuously pessimising for knowledge and skills.
Over that time I grew as a programmer as the work became more difficult. I couldn't keep up with the technology. In spite of my attempts to keep up, it seemed that every few years I had to further limit the scope of my work in order to cope. Judging by my experience, today competent programmers will fall further and further behind with what they know becoming more obsolete while they restrict their scope so they can learn the new work on the job. Young programmers won't need to know much of what today's competent programmers know. At the same time the increasing complexity of their assignments will require them to go deeper into new matters, and they in turn will become overwhelmed. And so on it will go.
On the other hand, perhaps I don't know what I'm talking about. : )
I don’t fault a C developer for not knowing and appreciating the intricacies of a superscalar pipelined processor using out of order execution.
But when a C developer writes a multithreaded program they need to really understand why multiple threads are necessary, proper use of locking, and how it will impact the overall application. They need to look beyond their tiny bit of code and the assigned task.
Unfortunately a number of developers fully expect to drive on a busy street blindfolded and successfully reach their destination.
Not really, just add the "volatile" keyword to global variables at random until the bugs go away!
Interesting point. I for one started out with punched cards, and your point is valid: you had to think deeply when preparing your next program submission, because turnaround was slo-o-ow and often kept you in the computing center waiting, waiting, waiting.
So one might argue that when we got terminals that submitted "virtual punch cards" and got back "virtual printouts" (this is late 70s), it debased the practice of programming. /s
OTOH in this day and age, the quick compile times of Go are - to put it bluntly - absolutely wonderful.