What do you think about how easy theyre making programming?

[pickle]

I also have kind of mixed feelings on this. I do feel it takes some of the challenge out, what fun is it if you haven't ripped out all your hair and beaten your now bald head against the wall for extended periods of time.... But it makes sense. If you want to be technical, FIRST gave us alot of code last year, we didn't have to make the processors interface or anything, they gave us default code, and they let us use C, which is a higher level language than ASM. We could have to code it all from scratch using purely ASM.... All that they've done, is given us a higher level interface to a lower level system, which is all a programming language or scripting language is.

For the argument that it may make people "not realize their passion", I would argue the opposite. Learning C is a daunting task, its huge, and there are tons of quirks and tricks to it. It might actually scare newer programmers away. I discovered my love for programming when my cousin's girlfriend taught me some HTML 6 years ago, and I've been hooked on all kinds of programming ever since. I found it through something simple, and moved up to more complicated stuff, once you catch the bug, you want to be able to do more and more and more. Its probable that the more experience programmers will feel limited by the tools given, and will work to expand them, whereas the newer programmers will be satisfied with what is given to them, and won't worry about it. You can't give a first grader a calculus book and expect them to learn, or like math, you have to start them off simple. For many people, its fine to work with the tools given and not worry about the underlying workings. I bet many of you code in C, or Java, or something like that, and don't think about the assembly version of what you're writing.

Most of the time in the real world, you'll be given something to work with. You have argued "What if you're the person making that tool?" Well, then you must be very very very good at what you do. Why did you write your own scripting stuff in years past? JUst for your health? It was to provide an easier interface to something much more complex. And what do you do by sharing that code? You have given less experience people a way to easily write complex code. It doesn't hurt to know whats going on behind the scenes, as a matter of fact, its a great thing to know, but its not something thats required. Look at people who use HTML, they aren't writing every paint command for the browser window, somebody else did that for you, and you use their frontend.

But I see the other side, I have a tendancy to like reinventing the wheel, I don't like to use other people's code, I like to do it myself, and thats all fine and dandy if you're not working against a deadline, but if I'm pressed for time on a project, then I will certainly use somebody else's code if I can.Theres doing for the sake of accomplishing something, and then for personal enrichment. Usually for personal enrichment you aren't fighting a deadline, and if you want to spend months researching the inner workings of something, you by all means can, but FIRST doesn't give that luxury. If you worked for a game making firm, and you were supposed to have a game released in 6 months, lets say you spend 4 researching how the graphics hardware works, and 1.5 months writing a library to interface with it. Thats great, but now you have half a month to make a game, when you could have used something that was already out there and had 6 months to focus on the game. Using tools doesn't make you any less of a programmer, it makes you a more efficent worker. My English teacher in 9th grade drilled this into our heads, "Work smarter, not harder." Thats a real life lesson for ya.