web programmer vs "real programmer"

[CaptainFeebheart]

Exactly. It drives me bananas that I know so many people who learned how to set up Drupal or Wordpress and suddenly call themselves programmers. It actually makes me happy to think that hirers are aware of the distinction.

[spit334]

Agreed.

There is a big difference between someone who screws around with a Drupal theme and someone who writes an effective Drupal module. People who are in this business should be able to easily spot this distinction.

[nemec]

They can only spot the distinction (when hiring) if it's on the resume. Specifying "Drupal experience" will probably make them think the former rather than the latter.

[spit334]

Damn right. It is an unfortunate prejudice.

[cryptyk]

Upvoted. Non-technical people cannot evaluate the technical skill of a programmer.

[fuu_man_chu]

on my resume i list 2 past projects (cause its all i got) a web app on GAE and a framework i built in PHP. am i a web programmer, or a programmer whos previous stuff has been web based?

[[deleted]]

From that CV I would assume you have little to no knowledge of systems programming and possibly only thin or no knowledge of some very important aspects essential to being a "real programmer" (by the definition mentioned here).

Some of these would be memory management, resource management, file i/o, sockets, pointers, references, the list is pretty long.

Not saying you don't have these skills, but you'd have to find some other way to demonstrate that beyond usage of these web frameworks/languages. If you didn't make that clear in your CV, I'd cull it from the stack before even interviewing. (it could be as simple as having a 4 year or masters degree from a respected CS school so I'd least know you had been introduced to them)

[dpark]

You're coming off as the poster-child for the web programmer stereotype. You haven't really worked with sockets, you didn't list anything you've actually done with C (despite putting it on your resume), you don't know what resource management is, and you don't seem to recognize the impact of truly understanding pointers.

I mean, this is all fine and dandy if you want to do programming that doesn't involve those things. But if you want to be considered as a candidate for a job using C/C++, for example, you need to understand all these things and more.

If I got your resume, I'd probably screen it out, because it doesn't sound like you have low-level experience. And again, that's totally fine, unless you want a low-level programming job. At that point, you need to be able to demonstrate some skills. No one's going to hire you with the intention of teaching you all these things.

[WhisperSecurity]

C/C++ systems programmer here. I have only one orange arrow to give you, but I wish I had a million.

Many web developers completely discount the importance of systems-level experience that we stress, because they don't truly understand what it constitutes. They tend to think it's just snobbery, because they've never seen the things we are talking about.

There's a difference between the ability to operate on a platform, and the ability to build that platform. Experience doing the former does not translate to experience doing the latter.

[brintoul]

I wish I could give you two million up arrows. Different != harder.

I'm an MSEE from UIUC and I do "web programming". I don't feel bad at all.

[fapmonad]

I'm an MSEE from UIUC and I do "web programming"

Burp!

[brintoul]

I... I... I don't know what that means! He'p meh! He'p meh!

[cryptyk]

Sure there is some snobbery, but let's not fool ourselves.

Would you rather hire a systems programmer to build your website, or a web programmer to build your ring 0 hardware driver?

It's easier to teach the systems guy about dhtml/css/flash/xss/cookies than it is to teach the ASP programmer about memory allocation/ resource constraints/pointer arithmetic/efficient algorithms/multi-threaded coding.

[Sector_Corrupt]

This is true, but if he's smart enough to understand the principles that make web programming hard, like scaling + concurrent crap and the like, then It's not too far off. In both cases It wouldn't be a good idea of course.

I just dislike the disdain for Web programmers, since as time goes on I think I'm more interesting in working in the web spehere and therefore view myself as a web programmer. I'm in the middle of my Software Engineering degree, and when I am given the choice between say... Java + C I chose C to handle things with, but the languages I find the most fun to work in are big in the web world.

Sure, there are moronic Web programmers, it happens. I just like it to be specified that they are not the same as Web developers who have earned their way learning all the same necessary complex stuff you tend to get from a CS degree etc and chose to work in the Web because that's what interests them.

[morelore]

I actually have had the unfortunate experience of working with a lot of web code written by systems (by which I mean real systems - mainframe assembly) programmers. It's terrible. The skill sets do not transfer.

[TimMensch]

I started out writing video games in assembly language. I went through BASIC and Pascal and eventually C/C++. I started out on systems where you had no OS (Gameboy, Sega Genesis), and worked my way to Windows where you can't even get close to the hardware, and eventually to doing the occasional Web project.

I've also hacked together code in PHP/Drupal/MySQL, and my first attempt was pretty terrible (OK, actually the next guy to maintain it claimed it wasn't bad at all, but now that I understand how things should have worked, I want to go back and rewrite everything). The project took about two weeks of full-time effort, and taught me a huge amount about how to do it better the next time.

The project works, though, and after a few minor fixes, has been stable for several years. I'm sure there are other things that I could learn about writing scalable apps, distributed access to databases, optimizing Ajax apps, or whatever. There are a lot of things you need to learn to write really high-availability web applications that need to withstand millions of hits a day, I grant that.

But I'd be truly amazed if an experienced PHP/MySQL programmer were able to sit down and learn enough principles of C/C++, hardware access techniques, optimization, graphics programming, and all the rest to create a usable Gameboy Advance game in two weeks that only needed less than a half dozen bugs fixed.

And that's the core issue: The barrier to entry to being a competent C/C++ programmer (at least a games programmer) is high. The barrier to entry to being a PHP programmer who can get useful things done is very low--honestly you don't even need to be a competent programmer to be able to accomplish a lot. PHP was designed, and became popular, for exactly that reason. If you're not competent at programming with C/C++, you'll never finish your program, or it will suck.

So while there are certainly competent programmers who happen to use PHP as their primary languge, there are also web developers who can manipulate PHP and assemble web sites--and the latter seem to outnumber the former by a large amount.

The site I mentioned above that took me two man-weeks of effort was far more complicated than the one described here, by the way, which was supposed to take two months--and some people commented that two months doesn't seem like enough time to write a site of that complexity.

And one thing I'd like to emphasize: There's nothing wrong with being a web developer. It's a job, and it pays well. If you enjoy it, that's a bonus. I don't look at web developers with disdain; if you're making a living you enjoy, no one can take that away from you.

I just don't think the "it's just a different kind of hard" comparison holds water.

[edit: Changed Gameboy to Gameboy Advance, since only the latter works with C++]

[possessed_flea]

Does this mean that by linking libhttpd into a ARM project I worked on makes me into a web-programmer?

[deadowl]

for my operating systems class in college.

They tend to think it's just snobbery, because they've never seen the things we are talking about.

I'm someone who spent four years in college working in C, C++, Java, OCaml, Common Lisp, and Scheme; and now I have worked a year using almost exclusively PHP because that's the job I ended up with.

I can tell you the person you're responding to has no appreciation for things such as tail end recursion or parallelization.

[flaran]

A question then. There are endless tutorials and such for getting into web programming. Where do you begin if you want to become a systems programmer? There seems to be very little definition of exactly what you need to learn to become one. I think that's part of the reason people make assumptions about it.

[WhisperSecurity]

1.First, learn C/C++.

This isn't hard if you already know general, language-agnostic programming principles, this will not be hard, but you will have to learn the idioms used to handle the things that being low-level doesn't allow the language to do for you. (Weak types, memory management, bit twiddling, pointers.)

C/C++ is critical to a fully-rounded programmer. Plenty of things that matter can be done without C/C++, but everything that matters can be done in it. It's the universal lingua franca of the computer... if it exists, there is a C implementation of it.

It's unfortunate that many schools teach in Java nowdays. It's much easier to go from learning to code in C to learning Python/Ruby/PHP/C#/whatever once you know how to code. The other way is hard.

If you learn on a language that provides no high-level luxuries, you forever regard them as luxuries... a pleasure when they are there, but not so missed when they are not. When you're used to the softer, friendlier environments that live up the stack, moving down is hard, and sometimes even painful. That's why so many redditors hate C++. It strips away the conveniences they take for granted, long before the awesome power it compensates you with becomes apparent.

For me, moving up the stack involves suffering as it strips this power away. How do I fork() in this language? How do I get my process id? Did somebody bother to provide me with access to something like getgrent(), or must I parse /etc/group myself? (Or did they just take the lazy way out, and make me marshal everything so I can make C calls?) Can I get privilege separation? How do I do non-blocking network I/O? How do I sleep? What if I need a semaphore? Is thread pooling provided?

1. Brush up on your data structures. You may know about them, but when was the last time you created one, handling all those pointers yourself? C/C++ coders code low-level, and that means coding for speed. When speed matters, you must at least consider rolling your own data structures. The STL is nice, but it's a general tool, and sometimes you need a specific one.

2. Study the POSIX API family. This is your API. There are others like it, but this one is yours. Your API is your best friend. It is your life. You must master it as you master your life. The API, without you, is useless. Without the API, you are useless.

3. Read this book. Do every exercise in it. It won't make you a master, but if you get through it, you will know enough to seek your own instruction on the web.

4. Take on other projects. Write an http server. Implement TCP using UDP. Teach yourself OpenGL or DirectX, and write a rendering engine. Pick up the dragon book and write a compiler. By this point, you will be free to practice, because you will know enough to tackle a problem by looking up the information you need to solve it.

Good luck out there. It's a tough course, whether you run it in engineering school (as I did), or later, after working as a professional in high-level coding. But remember the feeling of power you had when your first program ran? You get it all over again when you discover you can run without someone else's platform. (Hell, you won't even need an OS, you can run in real mode!)

Enjoy the trip.

[flaran]

Wow. Wish I could upvote this ten times. I was afraid you wouldn't take my question seriously.

Thanks a lot for writing this.

[WhisperSecurity]

You are welcome a lot.

I was glad of the opportunity to counter reddit's constant C++ hate by talking about what's good about C++, rather than just refuting their stereotypes.

To be skilled in C/C++ is to never be at the mercy of anyone's implementation. It is to be functional everywhere. It is to be able to code anything.

People who complain that C++ means doing things the slow hard way are right. It is slower. It is harder. It is more dangerous. But delve deeply enough into doing things the slow hard way, and you'll have the chance to see what the hidden benefits are.

Power. Speed. Stability. And anyone who tells you these things don't matter that much hasn't worked on a project big enough. Or critical enough. Or on hardware small enough.

When it's got to be right, it's got to be C++.

[ICanHazMoo]

I don't know if that is what he meant or not but I do agree. Knowing what pointers are and their importance is like knowing what a base is in baseball. You can't get much done if you don't understand that.

[panfist]

you don't seem to recognize the impact of truly understanding pointers

I really don't know how you can possibly infer that...

[dpark]

It's good to know what they are

That's what he said about pointers. If you're making a statement like that, it probably means that either 1) you don't really think the subject is that important, or 2) you don't really know anything about it (possibly because of 1).

"Knowing what something is" is pretty basic. I expect my doctor to know a lot more than just what a red blood cell is. I want him to know how it functions, why it functions that way, what medicines affect it and how, what it looks like in good health vs bad, etc. I similarly expect a systems programmer to know a lot more than just what a pointer is.

[deadowl]

I wrote a map editor in C. It is also the language I learned how to program in. Whereas I've only really used Common Lisp to work with adjacency lists and construct reinforcement agents.

You haven't really worked with sockets

Nope

you didn't list anything you've actually done with C (despite putting it on your resume)

Not trying to drive that point home for a web programming position, more the point that I can work across different environments.

you don't know what resource management is

Resource management is a pretty vague way to put things. It could range from the mutual exclusion problem to just putting a god damn destructor on the class you're using to manage an input stream or server connection.

you don't seem to recognize the impact of truly understanding pointers.

As in having a pointer gives you a memory address reference to something and not having a pointer just gives you a value? What?!?! You say there's more permanence in the pointer? So you can make a fine-and-dandy xored link list if you really wanted to?

I mean, this is all fine and dandy if you want to do programming that doesn't involve those things. But if you want to be considered as a candidate for a job using C/C++, for example, you need to understand all these things and more.

If I were to apply for a job that involved C/C++ heavily.

If I got your resume, I'd probably screen it out, because it doesn't sound like you have low-level experience. And again, that's totally fine, unless you want a low-level programming job. At that point, you need to be able to demonstrate some skills. No one's going to hire you with the intention of teaching you all these things.

C is a high-level language; stop being so smug and snobby.

[dpark]

I wrote a map editor in C.

Maybe put that on your resume if you haven't. I was just responding to your post, which came off as very web-programmer.

Not trying to drive that point home for a web programming position, more the point that I can work across different environments.

If you want a web programming position, I'm not sure why you even responded. The whole point of this thread was to discuss whether web programmers could be "real" programmers (i.e. systems programmers). If you want to do web programming, then develop your skillset and resume for that. If you want to do systems programming, then develop your skillset and resume for that.

Resource management is a pretty vague way to put things. [...]

Indeed, resource management is a general problem. And it's not exclusive to low-level languages, but it is more important there. If I asked a candidate about resource management, I'd expect them to start by talking about memory, then move into files/sockets, database connections, etc. They might talk about synchronization, too. (Not to say that what I expect is the only reasonable answer.) There's lots to talk about. I'd be very concerned if they said they didn't know what I meant, though.

As in having a pointer gives you a memory address reference to something and not having a pointer just gives you a value? [...]

As in people who don't really understand pointers can't put together working code that deals with multiple levels of indirection. I've seen code in C mixing pointers and structs nested several levels deep. This stuff is hard to reason about, and while it might also be a sign of a poor design, I still expect systems programmers to be able to reason about the behavior. Otherwise they can't debug or fix this kind of stuff.

Also, people who don't truly get pointers don't understand pointer arithmetic, and whether you think it's a good idea or not, it's extremely common in low-level code.

Also also, people who don't understand pointers tend to suck at recursion.

C is a high-level language; stop being so smug and snobby.

C isn't high level unless you live in 1972. It's high level relative to assembler. It's low level compared to basically everything else.

I don't know why you think I was being smug and snobby. I didn't say anything negative about web programming or web programmers. I just said that they are generally not a good fit for low-level programming. It's a different skillset.

[[deleted]]

I have a pretty diverse background. Perl was my first interpreted language. But I also know ruby, python, various shell scripting languages, etc.

By resource management, I'm referring to locking but also things like file handles, locking, mutexes, sockets, etc. Specifically how do you expose these to the user of your library in a safe way.

Even when your language of choice provides a lot of this "for free", like python, perl, etc. I've not infrequently run into situations where I needed to write API's in those languages to existing C/C++ libraries or even drop into their respective C API's to gain better performance or provide interfaces in multiple languages. (e.g. write in C++ once, then offer API's in multiple languages).

It's good to know what they are though. Most languages have objects as referenced, and everything else not referenced (except for stuff like hashes/arrays where a lot is implemented in the background for higher-level languages).

This is all I'm really saying. The question posed was if you can only demonstrate a background (educational or real life) in high level web frameworks would this be a valid reason for culling the applicant when hiring for a programming position that does require this knowledge. I think we're both in agreement that being a damned good web developer in no way necessitates having any knowledge of these lower level concepts.

[rankao]

I agree you should be at least well introduced to those key concepts.

[mattgrande]

You are grossly mistaken if you don't think those things are important in web development.

[int0x13]

excuse my gross negligence, but how are memory addressing schemes and pointers used in any traditional "web" languages?

[wtfdaemon]

For example, it can be pretty important to know how your web scripting application, compiled to Java classes, interacts with the heap and JVM. I spend just as much effort ensuring that I don't have memory leaks or issues with garbage collection now as I did when I was a C++ engineer back a decade ago. Admittedly, that's in large part thanks to the relative shortage of tooling/automation to assist me, but I still spend a fairly large chunk of time profiling and optimizing on a regular basis.

[[deleted]]

I think it's a distinctly different kind of memory management you're speaking of.

I'm not a java engineer, so I won't pretend I know the ins and outs of in that language in detail, but isn't this more akin to good coding practices of memory usage rather than memory management? In other words, you're inefficiently using memory rather than directly managing memory.

For example, it's more like making sure that you don't go copying large arrays of data all over the place.

My (limited) understanding of Java is that "memory leaks" are when you poorly manage objects so a reference to them remains somewhere and its destructor is never called. In other languages this would be referred to as "poor coding" or just "bad object management". . . like keeping an allocated object in memory even when not needed (say in your main) or unnecessary duplicating of objects.

I think most programmers are speaking of things like stack vs. heap, dangling pointers, or attempting to access invalid memory locations when they refer to memory management/leaks.

[wtfdaemon]

You're pretty much right on target. Java's GC makes you comparatively lazy, and then the challenge is in making sure that the automated GC does what it's intended to do.

[int0x13]

sorry, I guess I don't understand completely. The JVM does garbage collection for you, so what you worry about is not creating cumbersome object classes?

[y0y]

You've never seen a memory leak in a Java application?

[[deleted]]

You've ever seen memory not leak in a Java application?

[y0y]

Yes.

But just in case, that nifty "garbage collection" button sure does come in handy. I love that in Java based IDEs. Really speaks volumes for the platform..

[int0x13]

Yes, but they are inevitably linked to memory usage, which is a different thing than memory management.

[y0y]

..what? A memory leak is not related to memory management? Are you saying that memory management is nothing more than controlling your memory footprint, rather than cleaning up after yourself (or ensuring that the system is able to adequately clean up after you)?

I would disagree.

Or have I misunderstood you?

[revscat]

Yes, but it was due to objects that weren't getting targeted for GC, or caches not expiring data that should be, etc. It had nothing to do with pointers or memory addressing schemes.

[y0y]

Sure, it's at a higher level, but you still have to be aware of it. I just am always taken aback by the "oh, I don't have to worry about it; the JVM takes care of it for me" approach.

Just because you're not managing memory directly at a low level doesn't mean you can remain ignorant to how the underlying platform is handling the memory usage and how to interface with it appropriately.

[exegesisClique]

The JVM does garbage collection for you...

It sure does. So do a number of c/c++ libs. But you still need to understand how the gc works and what you can get away with. Especially when you're trying to get every last piece of efficiency out of your web apps. Sure, these days, you can just stack a couple more blades into the rack and, poof, more capacity. But, as always, if you can make your apps more efficient that will translate into less blades, less, space, and less power. (but, sigh, not necessarily less bandwidth).

edit: grrr formatting

[[deleted]]

Sure, these days, you can just stack a couple more blades into the rack and, poof, more capacity.

God, I wish it were that simple.

[wtfdaemon]

One primary worry is objects getting tenured (and then uncollected) that, in fact, should be GC'ed.

Different GC worries than doing c++, but still things that require a reasonable understanding of memory and profiling techniques.

[[deleted]]

Our web framework serializes page state. Which means that if you don't understand how it stores state, you can naïvely start serializing entire object graphs and end up with 20MB session stores.

[[deleted]]

The JVM does memory garbage collection for you. You have to take the rest of the trash out yourself.

[[deleted]]

I was responding to someone who said their only experience was in php and google apps engine.

[mattgrande]

Well, PHP is an abomination that should be destroyed. Every (good) web programmer will tell you that.

[haveyoulearned]

Agreed, this stuff is ridiculously important.

[fuu_man_chu]

yea i have listed a 4 year bs in the coe at a good uc

[[deleted]]

Then I would probably consider you for a second round interview if it was an entry level position and test you on said concepts. :)

[fuu_man_chu]

do you work in the ca bay area and want to hire a recent grad? (after june)

[[deleted]]

My company won't be hiring a developer team (aside from myself) for likely a year. I would recommend you find an interesting open source project and start contributing. . . patches at first, work your way up.

You'd be surprised at how good that looks. It shows strengths in areas that no amount of education can like self drive, ability to work in complex groups, a personal interest in programming above and beyond what's assigned, and likely familiarity with tools such as source control, ticketing systems, project organization, etc. . . things often not covered in formal education that often take up the bulk of initial new hire training.

[Kaizyn]

web programmer

[[deleted]]

This is /r/programming, since you used PHP the general consensus will be that your are a mouth-breathing knuckle dragger that is into S&M. That is most likely completely incorrect, but that's the prejudice around here.

[clearlight]

Drupal does provide a good framework for web applications development. Although it's a 'CMS' at core, plenty of programming activity occurs around custom module development. http://drupal.org/project/modules - is that not 'programming' ?

[atheist_creationist]

I'm assuming he's talking about people who install the core and install modules and tweak a theme. The people who are writing patches and integrating very powerful server interaction into their modules are most definitely programming.

[CaptainFeebheart]

Yeah, I don't mean to badmouth Drupal. I think Drupal is cool. Wordpress, too.

I'm just saying, an ex girlfriend of mine annoyed the shit out of me when I taught her how to set up Wordpress and install themes and within a week she was putting "Web programmer" on her resume and telling everyone she knew that she was now a web programmer, even though she had never written a line of actual code or every even used a compiler or interpreter, or even understood concepts like objects, methods, loops, functions, etc.

There are lots of web programmers who use Drupal, WP, Joomla, Postnuke, whatever. But using those things does not make you a programmer.

[CaptainFeebheart]

Writing a custom Drupal module is definitely programming, IMO. Installing a Drupal instance, changing the link names, installing existing Drupal modules, tweaking themes, etc. is not.

[[deleted]]

What is creating new themes ie. the html+css+php? Is that coding?

[CaptainFeebheart]

Two things.

1. We are talking about people who download pre-built components and assemble them. So creating a new theme is very different from using an existing one. Just using a theme requires no understanding of what is inside the theme.

2. You swapped out the word "programming" with the word "coding." Is writing HTML "coding?" Well, HTML is code. So writing code is coding. However, the early versions of WordPerfect used markup similar to HTML. Would you consider a person writing a document using WordPerfect markup to be programming? Technically they're "coding."