It's no secret: your brain is a 'muscle'; either you use it, or it atrophies - pure and simple.
Take simple arithmetic: if you start relying upon a calculator to do your math for you, before long you can't add 37 + 28 without taking a second. Rely upon a calculator long enough and you'll start to almost get 'deer-in-the-headlights-on-the-brain' when you need to do some simple arithmetic ("uhhhhhhh... crud... um.... " as you start to try to envision "carry the one" in your head, etc.)
I think the same could almost be said for what .NET has done to me over the past few years. There's simply so much to learn, so many angles, and so much new stuff coming out every time I blink that I don't know that I SOLVE problems anymore. I think I just Google them, find some docs, see how someone else solved it, and then move on - excited that the problem is now solved. But I've effectively relied upon a 'calculator' to get me where I need to be. And I think that's making me stoopid.
I mean, I've got a GREAT memory and all... but I think my brain sometimes starves for real problems to solve. I guess that's one reason I love SQL Server so much - once you've mastered the techniques, you still have to routinely THINK in order to solve problems. If it weren't for that, I think my brain would turn into jelly and run out my ears, down my arms, and on to my keyboard - and we all know how hard it is to get gunk out of our keyboards...
Though I'm sure I'd be able to Google a solution... ;)
I also feel that Visual Studio has made me stupid (or, at least, I'd like to blame VS). Back in the day, when I had to program in php, I had to learn things. That is, I had to remember functions and what parameters they took. Otherwise, I'd spend all my time in a reference book.
With Visual Studio, I don't have to. With a simple , Intellisense sits there and tries to figure out what I want, and then tells me if I was thinking along the right lines or not. Have you ever tried to do .net with Notepad? I honestly can't do it. I don't know how to program anything but the most basic stuff in .net. I blame Visual Studio.
Posted by: Jon Sharp | July 07, 2006 at 12:39 PM
I understand completely Michael. There's just so much to keep up with that it's just quicker and easier to Google a solution. I could spend 30 plus hours a week, just trying to keep up with the learning curve...
But I have to say, John, responding to your comment, it's not VS that is making you stupid. It's not VS's fault that you only know how to program the basic stuff.
VS is just a tool. If you want to be hard-core and program in notepad then go right ahead. But why would you want to?
VS doesn't write your code for you does it? It doesn't decide how you're going to create your objects, tell you the performance gains in using a certain objects over others, work out your business logic for you or make sure your code is reliable and robust.
VS is just a tool. Sure it'll help you to do things quicker, that's what it's designed for. If you want to write in Notepad, and have to remember all the functions' paramaters, like I said, go ahead. VS is designed to do that for you so that you can concentrate on the things that make you a good, no a GREAT developer.
Being a great or even a good developer is about knowing not what to create, but what to create in the best way. It's about following Best Practices and knowing the proper Design Models. It's about understanding how to write short succinct code that is robust and reliable. It's about understanding how Object-Orientated Programming can produce better quality, error-free reusable code. It's about the technical ability to fit the bits of the jigsaw together so that you can't see the joins and get a picture that looks like a photo...
If you want to blame VS, go ahead. If you want to be GREAT developer, then raise the bar.
I have a copy of Adobe Phototshop installed on my computer. I'm not a graphic designer. Having a copy of VS installed on your machine, doesn't make you a programmer.
Posted by: Paul M A Sorauer | July 19, 2006 at 08:40 PM