While I'm musing about programming and programmers, there's another thing I've been wondering over the past few years, which is how the next generation of programmers are going to learn.

( This gets pretty verbose. Again. )

xraycb points out that my personal web page, just after giving the link to my article on how to report bugs effectively, used to contain a comment along the lines of ‘Yes, I know that writing pontificating essays is the first step on the free software author's road to pomposity. I'm going to try not to make a habit of it’, but that this comment seemed to have been removed since he last looked.

In my defence, I will point out that the two lengthy wafflings I've posted in this diary in the past 48 hours have both had the form of questions and were largely aimed at furthering my own understanding, rather than attempting to shout my own set-in-stone opinions to the world. But fair enough, Charlie, point taken. I probably need to watch myself :-)

(And no, I didn't remove the comment because I intended to, or had resigned myself to, become more pompous. I removed it because the page on which I talked chattily about myself was no longer the same page as the one containing that link. Hmph.)