Jeff Croft rants about tools overshadowing the real skills. He talks about design, but I think it applies equally well for programmers. Nowadays the requirements for tools have become too specific, enough to overshadow the real talent. The tools are important, but they are useful to enhance productivity, they can never replace your inherent programming skills. That is one of the reasons I ask any new programmer to avoid using IDEs, but use text editors. In fact, a programmer should be tools-agnostic and have quick learning ability to adapt to any tool at hand. Unfortunately, I see too many job requirements where they talk more about the IDEs and frameworks than programming and design concepts.
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October 1st, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Absolutely agree that tools are not ALL important but they are very important I believe. The productivity enhancement that well chosen tools can bring is humongous.
October 1st, 2007 at 11:26 pm
It definitely aplies equally to programmers! In fact, it probably applies equally to just about every job out there. I actually had some bits about how it applies to programming in my piece, but deleted them before publishing — I figured it’s be better to focus my point around design, since that is what I’m most familiar with. I’m glad you chimed in to fill in the holes.
@Nitin: I agree with you about the productivity benefits of choosing the right tools. So, I would say, that what is REALLY valuable is not that you know every tool in the world, but that you understand basic concepts and paradigms such that you can evaluate which products and tools are most appropriate for a particular project, and choose well. In other words, it’s not the TOOL skills that are valueable — its an individual’s judegement, experience, education, and insight. Right?
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
Great comments there. One of the ways to improve myself as a programmer is to be portable across various languages, so that my ability does not become a constraint on the project.
Well said Jeff, this applies to just about every job there. I found myself nodding many times while reading your piece, and even later when I replaced design with programming
Most of the newcomers focus on knowing the tool without understanding the underlying concepts, and mostly because the market demands it. But it hurts a lot in the long run.
October 28th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
[...] something I did not expect, it tested my understanding of underlying concepts of Linux. Tools are not very important, what is important is your knowledge about them and your core [...]