Marco Alka

Software Engineer, Technical Consultant & Mentor

Apr 24, 2018

During my dual studies (which means, I was backed by a company!), in the C course, when we had to create a solar system with OpenGL, we were using GL 1.0 (1992) with GLUT and GLEW at the time, while 4.2 or 4.3 was the latest (2012), I asked the prof, why we were using such an old version and outdated libraries, and if we would also take a look at later versions and Direct3D, too. The answer was, that "the version of OpenGL we use is enough and we should just start learning from the start. Also, Direct3D is not really useful for most situations, so we will not take a look at that." Wow.

For those of you who don't know, GL 1.0 was released in 1992. Just try to remember what kind of graphics hardware was available at the time and how it has changed up till now. Do you think any company out there would want someone who knows a bit of the tech of 1992? NO!!! Such old software is not able to reflect the current world. It's not even good as a source of learning, because things changed so much. We do not go and draw lines on the screen anymore. We define data and tell the GPU to render that.

Since most of you guys are web devs, let me compare the advice above to someone telling you to start learning JS 1.0 (instead of JS2015) and not taking a look at TypeScript, because who would want to use that at all? That way you can learn about all the changes and the history of the language.

Ain't no one got time for that. The world wants to be competitive. Every enterprise and startup wants to create the next innovation using the latest and the greatest tech. The history might be interesting to understand some things, but it will never land you a job, if you are a student starting out your career.

My advice for everyone would be, contrary to what my prof said: if you learn something, go for the latest version. The world won't wait for you to catch up.

The JS comparison is a bit of a wonk, since in a LOT of circumstances -- like front end -- you really shouldn't be using ES5/later in its entirety for compatibility reasons.

... and typescript is a bit of a pointless redundancy. I like strict typecasting, but wasting time on an extra pre-processing layer that seems to intentionally output more convoluted code? Yeah, not a fan.

But I get what you're saying, it's a bit like telling people to write pages in HTML 4 transitional any time after around 2003 when we stopped having to support Nyetscape 4... though at the same time given what bloated shit much of HTML 5 is, there IS a lot of logic and reason behind "Code for 4, deploy for 5".

Particularly when some parts are steps BACKWARDS to the worst of 1990's practices.

More often than not though, such "don't use the latest" does often come from misunderstandings. See the BS that happened with HTML in terms of tables, EM, and STRONG.

People started saying "never use tables" when what 4 strict was telling us is "Don't use tables for LAYOUT". HUGE difference as if it's tabular data you SHOULD be using a huffing table, that's what the tags MEAN. Tabular data.

Same with EM and STRONG where you repeatedly heard "stop using B and I" or "B and I are deprecated" and NEITHER is true, or even based in reality. The CORRECT thinking is "don't use B or I when STRONG and EM's semantic meaning of emphasis is more correct". When you say "I read Moby Dick last night" you're not EMPHASIZING the book title. (nor are you citing it, which is CITE's job).

B and I are for when the text WOULD BE bold or italic for grammatical and structural reasons. Legal entities, proper names in declaration, book, article, and paper titles... There's an example a friend of mine came up with that shows how all four have different meanings and purposes separate from their default appearance.

"<i>GURPS</i>, <b>Steve Jackson Games'</b> flagship
role-playing game, was first released in 1985. 
Several licensed adaptations of other companies'
games exist for the system, such as <i>GURPS Bunnies
and Burrows.</i><However <b>SJ Games</b> has no
connection with <b>Wizards of the Coast</b>,
producers of the <i>Dungeons and Dragons</i> RPG.
<em>No <i>GURPS</i>, content is open-source.</em>
<strong>Do not plagiarize <b>SJ Games</b> work!</strong>"

... and we see the same thing with JavaScript/ECMAScript. Just because you shouldn't use it on the front end on websites doesn't mean you can't use it on the back-end in node.js or full stack applications in things like nw.js or Electron, BUT you will hear some purists say exactly that because they simply didn't understand what they were told or are blindly parroting something someone else who didn't understand it told them.

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