October 31, 2018 at 1:20 pm
If I encounter that, my first response is to work with them to use Google to find their answer. I am personally quite surprised to find that even some programmers seem to have no appreciation for Google. If I'm confident that they are able to search online but just don't want to, I direct them there anyway and go back to my work. But for someone who truly wants to learn something I am only too happy to teach.
An odd attitude I have found among some junior developers however is an inability to get out of their own way. A young programmer once asked me to help her debug a program she was working on (the code ran on proprietary hardware which was in short supply so much debugging was done by reading source code rather than debugging running code). I went to help and she was using this ancient editor -- it can only open one file at a time, primitive search functions, no windowing, etc. I watched as she tediously opened one source file after another, walked through the code until a subroutine call, unloaded the file, opened another, etc. I told her that she should really learn a better editor since, if I was doing this I'd have likely found the bug and fixed it a half hour before and we were still barely into her code. Her response was, "I don't have time to learn a new editor." I told her to make the time because if she were using better tools she would have nothing but time -- all the time she is currently wasting.
November 1, 2018 at 4:47 am
I think the apprenticeship is a good idea for DBAs or any developer who is involved with a database.
I can remember how I learned about SQL Server as a newly minted developer 20 years ago. Basically I was thrown into the pool with absolutely no training on SQL Server and a DBA who didn't believe it was her job or in her best interest to assist me in the set up SSMS, create/modify stored procedures (when I didn't even know what they were yet) or the creation of user defined functions. I eventually found a really good book on what I needed to know and I still use it today even though it's a bit dated.
With the emphasis on LINQ, I don't know that all that I had to learn as a developer back then is now required if you work exclusively on current code.
Since I support a lot of legacy (pre-LINQ) code, the skills I had to acquire years ago have been very relevant.
As I'm preparing to retire soon, there is no one with any of these skills where I work so I've pro-actively taken on a master/apprentice program with several team members who support other applications but are not true developers.
We meet once a week to go over subjects like creating databases, normalization, functions, etc. The apprentices appreciate the knowledge coming their way and I also get an opportunity to point them to resources that I did not have back when I was starting out and when I became an "Accidental DBA" twice and had to scramble for resources on supporting SQL Server.
I personally believe an apprenticeship is a good way for someone new to the field to learn the "right" way of doing things rather than struggling and more than likely making poor choices due to a lack of knowledge.
November 1, 2018 at 1:39 pm
If your first few years in the IT industry resembled an apprenticeship with a mentor and formal training, then you were fortunate. My own personal experience was more like: "Here is your desk - sink or swim." I learned on my own and kept swimming to better opportunities.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
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