I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... ;-) (was Re: age of Python programmers)

[Peter Hansen]

Andrea Griffini wrote:
> I think that *most* professional
> programmers are not regular readers of usenet newsgroups
> about the languages they use... not only that... IMO in
> the bigger part they don't actually know what usenet
> newsgroups are. And most didn't even read any book on the
> languages and tools they use unless that happened when
> they were still at school.
> 
> I've personally lived totally absurd situations where
> experienced programmers were just spending a lot of time
> and energy (and were making a lot of mistakes) because
> they never heard about make tools. I'm NOT kidding.
> 
> I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... ;-)

I think many of us would believe it.  We've been there.

How many could post stories of companies without
any form of revision control, except perhaps those
printouts in Winnifred's bottom drawer from last year?

Or people who resorted to print statements during
a ten-hour debugging session when they had a convenient,
powerful, and easy to use source level debugger sitting
on their machine and a programmer at the next desk who
knew how to use it and could have found the failing
code in about five minutes.

Or ...  well, I posted this mainly to change the
thread subject so that if this turns into another mega
thread it won't pollute the excellent "age of Python"
programmer thread. ;-)

-Peter