Software Engineering discussion

Although technically a language, I was surprised that AWK warranted a chapter, let alone one of the longest ones in the book. This is not to say that AWK is unimportant, but I always thought of it as more of a UNIX utility, usually consisting of one-line of pattern matching specification, rather than a language for larger programs. I was surprised to find out that some people have indeed attempted (probably foolishly) to write large programs in AWK!

The value of this chapter, however, is in the broad Q&A with the three authors, Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan... three legends in software. Topics range from thoughts on how to teach programming and debug, to the value of OO, to creeping complexity in languages, to the value of lex and yacc.

Surprisingly, this (so far) is my favorite chapter.

I liked the mention of "little languages" like SQL and Regular expressions. I use SQL and Regular Expressions all the time in C/C++/C#, but they exist embedded inside many other languages too. I wasn't aware of this "little language" perspective.

There's mention that Microsoft is killing VB. I don't think this is entirely true. Most .Net tutorial videos are in both VB and C#. I would watch C# rather than VB if the C# video existed, but I've watched more in VB than C#.

It's great to see these people stay on the bleeding edge of technology for 30+ years. I have worked with a lot of programmers whose skills get obsolete as they get older. I'm not sure any of the people in the book have advocated for continuing education, but it sure seems implied.

Your continuing education observation is so important. As a manager in a past life, I saw people who were eager to learn, and those who had no interest in learning anything beyond their current job. Guess which group was more likely to loose their jobs when times got tough?

As other priorities fill up a life, this becomes harder to do. But, would you go to a doctor or dentist who never continued their education?

And, this continually evolving field is what keeps it so interesting, at least for me.