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Subject:RE: Picking a new software skill From:david -dot- locke -at- amd -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 20 Sep 2001 13:35:58 -0500
Bryan said:
>One thing I've seen in this thread is a recurring refrain of "learn a
>programming language instead." All things are not equal here. You could
>probably become proficient in PhotoShop a lot quicker than you could learn
>Java (I know that's been the case for me).
You don't have to know all of a programming language. Just like you don't
need to know everything about Photoshop.
The thing you don't want to learn is a perspective that is unique and
restricted. It helps if you learn enough, so that you come up with two or
more ways to do something, and then can pick up a reference manual and code
what you want. I know enough languages that specifics are not really a
problem.
I did read a book on programming by Maeda, a graphics artist from the MIT
Media Labs. The book was great, but he made some fundamental mistakes that
would actually hurt his reader's long-term aspirations in the way he
described objects. Tufte made similar mistakes in his third book. Verbs
cannot be objects.
It's helpful to have an overview of approaches by various authors before you
pick one as the gospel. Back when OO design started out, there were more
than three main schools of thinking and more than nine niche schools. It was
hard to know which one to learn first. The UML cut down the number of
schools and set a standard for approaching OO design.
A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
+++ Miramo -- Database/XML publishing automation. See us at +++
+++ Seybold SFO, Sept. 25-27, in the Adobe Partners Pavilion +++
+++ More info: http://www.axialinfo.comhttp://www.miramo.com +++
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