I am not a great programmer. I can't write my own btree algorythm or recite the inner workings of J2EE. For that matter, I don't think I would know a btree if it bit me on the face. What I am good at though is solving problems. What I am REALLY good at is using tools that other people have built to solve difficult problems.
When I was growing up in the programming world, I started out doing Perl and then moved on to PHP. While in PHP land I frequented #php on EFNet to ask a couple of questions from time to time. I learned one thing. Be sure you have exhausted all of your resources before asking a question. So, that became SOP for me... read read read read, search google, read some more. If I can't figure it out, time to ask on IRC.
That worked fine and dandy until I graduated to Java. The guys weren't all that helpful. If you didn't know the answers, they didn't really want to help. I think I ran into maybe 2 or 3 guys that were half way cool. But most were complete jerks.
As usual, Charles has nailed it again. The constant bitching that went on in #java drove me away. I won't even TRY WebWork simply because of the association it has with #java. That is probably foolish of me, but I don't really care. Struts has its problems, but at least the people that run the show aren't arogant asses like the maintainers of WebWork. I left with two good tools though. Orion and IDEA.
Posted by carl at June 17, 2003 01:13 AM
Comments