I have been thinking about the difference between knowing a programming language and knowing a program lately. What I mean by this is knowing the a language and how to write good OO code versus memorizing a namespace or data structure in Visual Studio. I think what is starting to happen is that developers are getting these RAD tools like Visual Studio and letting wizards and intellisense do all the work for them. Then when it is time for them to write code, it is truly embarassing. I have been through Microsoft’s partner training on VS 2005 and we used wizards the entire time - AND - the new Visual Studio uses partial classes so you can’t even change the code that is auto-gen’d for you! Geez - talk about mindless programming. I came across an article that goes into more detail on this and I think this guy hit the nail right on the head with this problem. I’ve posted the article on my site incase it goes away on the original site, so first try here: Charles Petzold: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?

Then here if that link is broken: Charles Petzold: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?