"Brian Reay" wrote:

: "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 £)

said m3osn who never was a "lowly programmer"

:
: Tends to leave a lot of the old hacker types on the scrap heap- often as not
: claiming everyone else is the hacker.
u mean the ones who actually know how to program properly ?