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YOU SAID..."Got my first programming job 20 years ago. Day I walked in they said "we will be programming this one in C". I had never heard of C - this was the mid 80s and I was still in college. In a week I was writing code in C. In three weeks I was improving the code of all the other junior programmers in the office."

So you got a programming job in the mid 80's, having no real working programming experience, and never even heard of C, which is pretty amazing considering that the first edition of the Kernighan and Ritchie C 'bible' book came out in 1978. That in itself is pretty amazing. Do you think thats the norm today for hiring practices?

How many resumes posted on monster for programming jobs these days have no programming experience?

But what I think is even more amazing is the fact that you went from no knowledge of C (did you know any other programming language???) to what i guess would be crackerjack C programmer in what...three weeks.

You must be a genius.

[JasonC:] Got my first programming job 20 years ago. Day I walked in they said "we will be programming this one in C".
[...]
[Dat Mon:] which is pretty amazing considering that the first edition of the Kernighan and Ritchie C 'bible' book came out in 1978. That in itself is pretty amazing. Do you think thats the norm today for hiring practices?

Now it is a norm - there is unlimited number of engineers with more than 20 years experience with C in India and China.

Americans need to learn how to compete.

[Dat Mon]So you got a programming job in the mid 80's, having no real working programming experience, and never even heard of C, which is pretty amazing considering that the first edition of the Kernighan and Ritchie C 'bible' book came out in 1978. That in itself is pretty amazing. Do you think thats the norm today for hiring practices?
How many resumes posted on monster for programming jobs these days have no programming experience?
But what I think is even more amazing is the fact that you went from no knowledge of C (did you know any other programming language???) to what i guess would be crackerjack C programmer in what...three weeks.

You must be a genius.

No, this JasonC dude is merely a mediocre liar. His postings clearly show he has no idea of what the job market for programmers was like in the past and what it is like now. I got a good laugh from this fairy tale:

[JasonC]Our most recent hire in my office was an older woman coming back to work after five years off raising a child. She was a C programmer and is learning a new language, successfully.

But what I think is even more amazing is the fact that you went from no knowledge of C (did you know any other programming language???) to what i guess would be crackerjack C programmer in what...three weeks.

My first C programming assignment was in the 80's as well. I had no prior C experience. But I had several years experience in PL/1 and assembler, with some COBOL, FORTRAN, and Pascal as well. Once you know a few high-level languages, picking up one more is no big deal -- just different syntax to do the same thing.

In the 70's and early 80's college programming instruction was mostly Pascal or PL/1