• excral@feddit.org
    0·
    29 days ago

    My experience is that the programmers from the first row very much still exist. My theory is that the number of programmers from the first row stayed the about same or even increased slightly. There are so many more so called “programmers” overall now, however, that in relation the first row programmers are much rarer now. And to be fair, you don’t need a programmer capable of programming entire games in assembly to center a div.

    • zerofk@lemm.ee
      0·
      29 days ago

      And vice versa, you don’t need to know how to centre a div to create a game in assembler. I’m comfortable using pointers and managing memory, but don’t ask me to do anything with web UI.

      • Omgpwnies@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        29 days ago

        This can be generalized to say that programming has become such a diverse profession that you will find experts in one area that know very little about others. There’s simply too many things that are programmed in too many ways for anyone to know it all anymore. Hell, that was the case in the 70’s and 80’s too.

      • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
        0·
        29 days ago

        I’m guessing that someone who figured out how to keep a high score box centered on screen using assembly will figure it out to do it with CSS.

        The reverse, not so much…

        • groet@feddit.org
          0·
          29 days ago

          But you dont what the code of the assembly-style centered div in your codebase. Because nobody will be able to read it and understand what it even does. There are abstraction specific ways to solve problems and the right way to do something in assembly is not the right way to do it in CSS.

          • Estradiol Enjoyer @lemmy.blahaj.zone
            0·
            29 days ago

            Agreed, in my limited experience with both CSS is like the conceptual opposite of assembly. When I do web design I tell it what I want to look like but can’t see how it’s getting there because that’s done for me. Assembly is the lowest level of abstraction we’ve got and it took me ages to write a little program for class that returns an argument in it (Jasmin VM) and then get GCC to compile it.

            I would say that CSS is like doing an incantation that magically makes the site look good if you do it right, and assembly is like building something by hand.

    • exu@feditown.comEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      Unix does so many stupid things and we’re still stuck with some of them. Especially the terminal section still applies today.

      • Prime_Minister_Keyes@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        29 days ago

        Thanks. I didn’t know there was a real band called “The Pipi Pickers” and I might have lived on happily without that knowledge.

    • frezik@midwest.social
      0·
      28 days ago

      A lot of it was fair criticism at the time. Linux fixed some of what was wrong. Having a good sudo config mostly resolves the problem of having one superuser account, and big, multiuser systems are a lot less common now, anyway. X’s network transparency features aren’t that useful in modern computing contexts, either, though I have found a few over the years.

      But mostly, it’s because the landscape changed from a hundred Unix vendors vs a bunch of other OSen, to now where it’s Windows vs Linux vs OSX. By that comparison, the two with Unix-derived history look well thought out.

      (This also implies that NextStep was the one old Unix vendor that has survived in a meaningful way. I don’t think anyone would have guessed that 30 years ago.)

    • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      I first tried vi in the early 90s, before I had easy access to online resources. I had to open a new shell and kill the vi process to exit it. Next time I dialed into my usual BBS I asked how to exit that thing. But since then I’ve liked it, because vi has been on every system I ever ssh’ed into.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
        0·
        29 days ago

        You quit it just like you quit ed or ex, just that you have to enter the prompt (:) yourself as vi is not by default in prompt mode. And you should know ed, ed is the standard editor.

        I use Helix btw.

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
      0·
      29 days ago

      I can exit Vim, it just feels like trying to rip out the dashboard and the interiors from a family car because race cars also lack them. Kate is a good speedy alternative to VSCode, not to mention it also does not have Microsoft’s greedy hands on it.

        • toddestan@lemm.ee
          0·
          29 days ago

          Out of the box, Vim’s default configuration is very basic as it’s trying to emulate vi as close as possible. It like if you want things like headlights or a heater or a tachometer in your family car, you got to create a vimrc and turn those features on. That was my experience when I first started using Vim - I spent a lot of time messing around creating a vimrc until I got things the way I wanted.

          One of the big changes with Neovim is their default settings are a lot more like what you would expect in a modern text editor.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
      0·
      29 days ago

      Huh? Isn’t it like right there at the bottom of the screen?

      I guess not knowing that ^X means Control+X could be the issue, but still…

      • andioop@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        28 days ago

        TIL!

        Can exit nano on my own, have the common sense to not call in a panic about it before at least looking it up. (Which is how I learned how to exit it: looking it up.) But was never taught about ^ meaning “Control+” until your comment, especially since nowadays people write it out as “Control+” or “CTRL+”.

        I might have put two and two together when dealing with everything else in nano after I learned to exit, but never really internalized the rule “^ means Control+”. So thank you for your comment!

        Disclaimer: I feel like I am too stupid for most of programming.dev but participate here anyways because I learn stuff from the comments.

        • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
          0·
          28 days ago

          Don’t feel stupid. It’s bad enough that all of IT is one giant impostor-syndrome support group. There’s literally too much for any one person to know, and it’s been that way for a very long time. Just give it your all, and memorize how to reliably search and look things up; take notes for the really important stuff. The rest will filter into your memory with practice.

          Also: anyone that holds this kind of thing over your head is attempting to distract from how much they don’t know. Most people in this industry understand and don’t judge.

          As for the ^ thing, I recall seeing that as far back as the 1990’s. I want to say Microsoft actually popularized it, but it could easily be OS2 (IBM) or Apple. In hindsight, it’s kind of wild to have a TUI (terminal user interface) hold your hand like this. Nano (and Pico) are kind of in a special category like that.

    • bufalo1973@lemm.ee
      0·
      29 days ago

      Do you remember the “press any key to exit”? Someone asked where is the “any” key.

    • bisby@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      Nano… Like… The one that has all the keybinds permanently shown at the bottom of the screen?

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
        0·
        29 days ago

        Read as in, with their eyes? Or how to ingest it into some other app/script? Cos I’m vaguely aware that awk can be used in some way for this, but wouldn’t have a clue how.

    • Rose@slrpnk.net
      0·
      29 days ago

      If using plain CSS, usually it’s enough to set width appropriately, and margin-left and margin-right to auto.

      If using a Modern Frontend/CSS Framework, then may God have mercy on your poor soul.

      (Seriously I just started a new project with TailwindCSS and I’m so confused. But not entirely desperate yet.)

      • Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        29 days ago

        I’m doing a small hobby project (a ladder/ranking system for playing beer sports with my community), and I tried out Tailwind.

        I gave up and loaded Bootstrap instead, but I will probably end up just writing all the CSS myself.

        Seems so silly to have 15 CSS classes on a single DOM element…

          • gradual@lemmings.world
            0·
            28 days ago

            Shouldn’t they be designed in an intuitive manner that makes misuse more difficult than regular use?

            Otherwise, why even bother using them? It’s like now you need to know all the ins and outs of CSS and a trendy framework that will lock you into their ecosystem.

            • Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              0·
              28 days ago

              Kidding aside, I think the popular frameworks these days are incredibly well made. Frontend web has always been hell, and if your job is producing functional web GUIs, you can’t do it on a large scale without them.

              • gradual@lemmings.world
                0·
                28 days ago

                Based on my own experience developing GUIs, I’ve reached the conclusion that creating them through code is obsolete.

                We should be focusing on developing GUIs to develop GUIs, like Godot, instead of ‘frameworks’ that make an obsolete method of doing things even more cumbersome and complex.

        • toddestan@lemm.ee
          0·
          29 days ago

          Generally I find many these frameworks will make some complicated things simple, but the cost is some things that were once simple are now complicated. They can be great if you just need the things they simplify - or in other words can stick to what they were intended for, but my favorite way of keeping things simple is to avoid using complicated and heavy frameworks.

        • Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          29 days ago

          If you spend a lot of time on a single framework, you will transcend and become a sort of frontend diety, growing multiple extra limbs allowing you to type in CSS classes faster than any mere mortal

            • gradual@lemmings.world
              0·
              28 days ago

              What’s sad is that web development is only a nightmare so websites can be worse.

              I genuinely believe it’s part of the concerted effort by the cabal to make us accept a ‘new normal.’

              They don’t want an environment where anyone feels like they can make a website. They want us to believe we need to spend years studying before we can do anything, and even then we can only do what our bosses tell us to.

              • Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                0·
                27 days ago

                This is a bit of a stretch I think…

                Web development is complicated because it’s indredibly poorly “designed” from the beginning, and doing a full redo is impossible.

                It is 100x easier today than it was in 2006 when I started.

        • gradual@lemmings.world
          0·
          28 days ago

          I think they exist because of ignorance.

          People who don’t understand how to do a task will usually choose the wrong tools for that task.

          If someone is trying to cover up their lack of knowledge, they will usually make things more complicated than they need to be.

      • loics2@lemm.ee
        0·
        29 days ago

        w-... mx-auto, replace the 3 dots with your desired width value, and that’s it with tailwind

    • impedans@lemmy.world
      0·
      29 days ago

      If you define what you mean by centering I’ll give you a straight answer.

      Vertically? Horizontally? Center the text or the entire box? Compared to the viewport, the parent container or the entire page?

      “Centering” isn’t as straight forward as you’d think, and what you actually want usually depends on the situation.

        • impedans@lemmy.world
          0·
          29 days ago

          Yeah that works if you wanna center a box of content it relative to the parent container, either horizontally or vertically. For other situations we’ve got different tools

      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        0·
        29 days ago

        Fuck it, align=‘center’. That’ll center it horizontally relative to some context and if that’s not good enough then you should have been more precise in your request.

    • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      Depends if you’re centering the div or the things in the div. Which has probably been the main issue since CSS was invented.

    • letsgo@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      Same way you did it in 2024 but it’s easier because the springgirdles have been replaced with rotated manglebrackets.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
    0·
    29 days ago

    Hey buddy, if I fix one bug and cause three more, it’s called job security. Where’s my medal?

  • ButteryNickel@lemmy.wtf
    0·
    29 days ago

    I once had an intern attempt to install sudo using NPM and when that didn’t work he asked ChatGPT “Why can’t I install sudo from NPM?” while I’m trying to explain it to him.

    He was smart, but somehow knew very little about commercial computers despite being on the verge of getting his master’s in computer science.

  • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    29 days ago

    QA: “Yeah, Hi. Can you look at this defect ticket?”

    Reading ticket details…

    Me: “Let me guess. Is [whatshisname] responsible for this?”

    QA: “Yeah.”

    Me: “Get him to fix it.”

    QA: “I tried. Like four times.”

    Me: Sigh “I’ll take care of it.”

    QA: “Thank you!”

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
      0·
      29 days ago

      I swore up & down that I’d learn at least two ways of exiting VIM. I even went through basic training to learn all the shortcuts, but it interfered with my regular workflow, so I dropped it “for a bit”. It’s been a year and I can’t remember a damn thing.

  • boonhet@lemm.ee
    0·
    29 days ago

    The fact that the div center search needs a year on it got me lol

    Loving my nearly frontend free development life. I use Stackoverflow or Google maybe 2-3 times a month these days, not sure if I qualify for the upper row :(

    • wildncrazyguy138@fedia.io
      0·
      29 days ago

      Well yea, when you train the entire 2nd generation of coders on a book that is “For dummies” what did you expect?

  • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
    0·
    29 days ago

    It’s 2025 and I have no idea what the current way to center something is. Then again, my job is that of a backend engineer so it’s rare I’m outputting anything that isn’t a log statement. They can pry tables and center tags from my cold, aging hands.

    • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      IMO tables should be more used for… tabular data. Shocking, I know, but the amount of websites that try to emulate a table with divs and uls out there is crazy.