"Matthew Haigh" wrote in message
...
In article , Custos Custodum
writes
Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of
one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.

I'd disagree. I know many very good commercial programmers who can't
spell to save their lives. But what really matters is that they can't
spell _consistently_, so mis-spelled variables and function names are
mis-spelled the same way every time (or the compiler catches the error
and they correct it to be consistent with their other mis-spellings).

Plus, of course, programming is not the hard bit- hasn't been for some time.
The skill lies in the system and software design. These days many packages
can autogenerate code and, with the high uP speeds and low memory costs,
that code is efficient enough to do the job- hand crafting to improve speed
etc often isn't required, even in real time apps. The move to the use of
real time operating systems has also reduced the demand for much of the core
software- one company can turn out versions (for example VxWorks, LynxOS)
that can serve many applications. The OEM manufacturer can focus just in his
particular needs, and pay a pitance of a fee to the RTOS supplier (sometimes
s few £)

Tends to leave a lot of the old hacker types on the scrap heap- often as not
claiming everyone else is the hacker.

It can be interesting reading some of the comments in their code!

True.

--
Brian Reay
www.g8osn.org.uk
www.amateurradiotraining.org.uk
FP#898