in reply to (OT?) Usefulness of CS
This is the precise reason there are so many shitty programmers out there. Yeah, I said shitty. Too many people feel that programming is simply stringing syntax together to produce output.
Let me tell you, this is wrong. You arent a good programmer until you feel the code and get a sense for how it is written and how it works. There are quite a few posts around that explain the methods programmers use from being monkeys-on-typewriters-trying-to-come-up-with-shakespear to actual code-slinging-hackers.
There are people who code with the notion that its not a science, and often these people get employed as programmers. They are not. They are the people who think:
is okay to leave in a CGI.open MAIL, "$foo |";
I think you seriously need to evaluate whether you should be programming at all, let alone attempting to describe the profession (caste, religion, whatever). I very much hope youre not planning to write a paper or publish anything with this nonsense.
sizzle,
brother dep.