who needs social life when you have broadband?

There are some tragic yet very interesting stuff happening to me.

As my undergrad project involves creating a group communication mechanism for mobile devices, I’m trying to become a Java programmer. I’ve never liked Java and you probably already know that. I don’t like it because it is slow and has too many fancy names for simple stuff (I guess this is just to increase the learning curve so Sun partners can sell more courses…). BUT, programming in JavaME is forcing me to practice/remember/learn a lot of techniques and algorithms I’ve never though I would need. So I’m almost saying that it is exciting to program in java (for mobile devices!! the standard edition still sux a lot).

I’m a programmer since I was 15 (7yrs ago), I started with mIRC Scripting (good times..) then I’ve learned PHP, C (in college.. I’ve used it professionally only once, to develop a socket client-server application), Java and Python (which I use just for fun…) in that order. Although I don’t consider myself a good programmer, I can say I’m proficient in PHP (it’s been 5yrs now since I wrote my first mysql_fetch_array() snippet :P). The fact is that, except for C, all these languages give you so much build-in features and facilities that you forget some basic principles of programming.

I would dare to say that it is impossible to become a good programmer if you only know how to program in PHP, for example (and “writing applications that work”, doesn’t make you a good programmer), because it makes programming too easy and too fast. You boss will like it and if you need some simple applications this is good enough, but if you learn PHP as a 1st language you probably won’t know how to optimize your code or will get crazy when you face more complex situations.

Even these JavaEE devs who think they are better than the rest of humanity should try to learn some “low level” algorithms (such as binary trees, linked lists, sockets, threading internals, schedule, etecetera) because learning how to use an API is pretty easy compared to how to implement these APIs

I’m not against PHP or Python and its classes/modules that make our life easier. I’m just concerned about learning how to use this stuff without knowing how they were made…

Here are my conclusions:
- There are languages that make you a faster programmer (or not)
- There are languages that make you a better programmer (or not)
- If I would need to choose between a JavaME and a JavaSE/JavaEE programmer I would definitely choose the JavaME programmer because he *should* write a more efficient code. And it is easier to teach someone how to use an API than teach someone how to implement a serialization mechanism and send objects through the network.
- I’m a terrible english wirter I’m considering start blogging in portuguese…