Is mediocrity the norm in computer science ?
Stefan Birbacher
>make themselves felt in immediate results, such as CS. That's not to say that
>their worth much in CS, but there worth nothing at all in history.
In fact, here entry requirements are far lower for computer science
degree courses than for law or medicine.
The drones who just want a job seem to be entering comp sci in
increasing numbers. They used to do accounting before.
Computer science average UAI needed is 80 to 90 ( out of a possible
maximum of 100 ).
There is one software engineering course at UTS that requires 93.
Law : 99.5
Medicine is also over 99.
Thien-Thi Nguyen
> The drones who just want a job seem to be entering comp sci in
> increasing numbers. They used to do accounting before.
computer science is a supserset of accounting, so i suppose it's good to
encourage accountants to get some formal training and step inside the
calculator. perhaps they will drone more deliberately w/ such thinking.
it seems to me a lot of the (bletcherous) gui "connect this signal to that
widget" code is ripe for accountants to go meta on. when accountants apply
computer science to accounting, we move from feed to seed (a la stephenson).
computational models of reality need accountability (to ever grow "real").
some societies exhibit circular trust models.
always difficult to compile, these things.
the substituting operational heuristic falls to despair.
i hope for a principled accountant to rule the world.
capricious hackers, when will you figure out life?
silence corrupts.
thi
Erik Naggum
| In fact, here entry requirements are far lower for computer science
| degree courses than for law or medicine.
|
| The drones who just want a job seem to be entering comp sci in
| increasing numbers. They used to do accounting before.
Computer Science has never been a science, and it is becoming more and more a
engineering or technical school subject, not a university subject. It is
somewhat like mechanics, which is a hard subject in physics, and auto
mechanics, which is not.
--
Guide to non-spammers: If you want to send me a business proposal, please be
specific and do not put "business proposal" in the Subject header. If it is
urgent, do not use the word "urgent". If you need an immediate answer, give
me a reason, do not shout "for your immediate attention". Thank you.
Andrzej Lewandowski
Average so-called-software-engineer has no college degree. He is
usually after a week of "software-engineering-boot-camp" and
certification course run by a company according to the rule "you pay
- you pass the exam".
A.L.
Vlastimil Adamovsky
"Erik Naggum" <er...@naggum.net> wrote in message
news:32338321...@naggum.net...
> Computer Science has never been a science, .....
I agree....it is an art. Either you are a good artist or not.
An education will help, but the experience and " a right way of thinking" is
the key..
One can have 10 diplomas, certifications and all that kind of garbage and
he/she will
never become an artist.
Vlastik
MSCHAEF.COM
Stefan Birbacher < birbach...@yahoo.com > wrote:
>>Are you sure? I find that mediocre thinkers do better in fields where
>>mistakes make themselves felt in immediate results, such as CS. That's
>>not to say that their worth much in CS, but there worth nothing at all
>>in history.
I'm curious. What's your criteria for historical worth?
>The drones who just want a job seem to be entering comp sci in
>increasing numbers. They used to do accounting before.
I believe it's the effect of the money. A 'career in computers' has become
a pretty obvious way to make a better than average amount of money. That
draws a different kind of people in than the folks that were drawn in
purely because of a love (or inate talent) for the field.
-Mike
--
http://www.mschaef.com
Dvd Avins
msc...@io.com (MSCHAEF.COM) writes:
>In article <sgqahu868ae1akhaa...@4ax.com>,
>Stefan Birbacher < birbach...@yahoo.com > wrote:
>>>Are you sure? I find that mediocre thinkers do better in fields where
>>>mistakes make themselves felt in immediate results, such as CS. That's
>>>not to say that their worth much in CS, but there worth nothing at all
>>>in history.
>
>I'm curious. What's your criteria for historical worth?
I'm the one who was in the double (now triple) quote.
I see the main value of history as helping us understand the 1) present and 2)
possible futures. (Hardly orginial, but it's the base from which I can answer
your question.) One can further those goals either of two ways.
One way is to become familiar with details that have been disvcovered about
particular times and places so that one can deduce and communicate how specific
conditions led to particular consequences. That allows others, including
non-historians such as myself, to educatedly ponder how conditions at other
times and places, including the hear and now, are similar, and to what degree
the same historical processes may repeat themselves. I believe historians who
choose this route must have large measures of deductive and inductive reasoning
abilites to expect much success.
The other way, which does not require nearly as much reasoning ability and
therefore would be more suitable to mediocre thinkers, is to immerse oneself in
primary sources and to record data from which others may reason. I guess almost
every field needs its Brahes, as well as its Kepplers.
-- Attaining and helping others attain "Aha!" experiences, as satisfying as
attaining and helping others attain orgasms.
Erik Naggum
> Computer Science has never been a science, .....
* Vlastimil Adamovsky
| I agree....it is an art.
I consider it an engineering discipline. Real Computer Science is now named
Theoretical Computer Science and is unintelligible for your regular run-of-
the-mill practitioner. I think what is now called Computer Science should be
calld Applied Computer Science, but that is not going to happen.
Erik Naggum
| I believe it's the effect of the money. A 'career in computers' has become a
| pretty obvious way to make a better than average amount of money. That draws
| a different kind of people in than the folks that were drawn in purely
| because of a love (or inate talent) for the field.
But now that this money is largely history, plumbers and carpenters who left
their field for the money in web duhsign should be returning to plumbing and
carpentry soon, leaving those of us who now nothing of plumbing or carpentry
alone to pursue real computer science, only set back about 15 years by the
popularity of computers and the massive wastes of money. In the "IT winter"
that is as certain to follow this overhyped boom as the AI winter followed
its boom, I expect to see lots of fascinating and real progress. But first,
Microsoft has to be destroyed.
Thaddeus L Olczyk
>
>* msc...@io.com (MSCHAEF.COM)
>| I believe it's the effect of the money. A 'career in computers' has become a
>| pretty obvious way to make a better than average amount of money. That draws
>| a different kind of people in than the folks that were drawn in purely
>| because of a love (or inate talent) for the field.
>
> But now that this money is largely history, plumbers and carpenters who left
> their field for the money in web duhsign should be returning to plumbing and
> carpentry soon, leaving those of us who now nothing of plumbing or carpentry
> alone to pursue real computer science, only set back about 15 years by the
> popularity of computers and the massive wastes of money. In the "IT winter"
> that is as certain to follow this overhyped boom as the AI winter followed
> its boom, I expect to see lots of fascinating and real progress. But first,
> Microsoft has to be destroyed.
The AI winter was created by the AI community. The AI community
worried more about AI theory than producing practical applications
and the users simply said "This is not going to pay off". I believe
the "IT winter" is already here, and it has many different phases
compared to "AI winter".
The depression came because the industrial revolution sputtered out.
People bought all the cars, refrigerators, stoves, washing machines
that they were going to. Leaving those who made them with no jobs.
What had to happen was need had to come back again and stabilise.
I believe that the "IT winter" will in the same way happen when people
have all the programs they want ( sound familiar "Why should we buy
a new computer to run the latest software, when the old software does
what I want and does it faster?"), then it will actually be the second
great depression.
ozan s yigit
> Average so-called-software-engineer has no college degree.
i don't know about national averages; my own employment-selection-biased
sampling in the industry so far includes noone below undergraduate degree,
several masters degree holders and a couple of PhDs. [one of the physics
PhDs was the lead tester at one place, and the other a sysadmin.]
oz
MSCHAEF.COM
ozan s yigit <o...@blue.cs.yorku.ca> wrote:
>Andrzej Lewandowski:
>
>> Average so-called-software-engineer has no college degree.
>
>i don't know about national averages; my own employment-selection-biased
>sampling in the industry so far includes noone below undergraduate degree,
>several masters degree holders and a couple of PhDs.
In the U.S., I did some consulting for a Fortune 500 company, and there
were a number of un-degreed folks in the IT department. I remember at
least one of them that was impressed I knew how to calculate a
histogram in Excel without having taken a special class.
-Mike
Vlastimil Adamovsky
they were
supposed to be software experts.....
They could not understand that
A or B <==> not ( not A and not B)
as well as
A and ( B or not A) <=> A and B
etc...etc....
When I was using Boolean algebra to simplify conditions, they were accusing
me that I am trying
to "show off" :)))
Then you can understand that their "if" statement spaned several screens :))
Vlastik
"MSCHAEF.COM" <msc...@eris.io.com> wrote in message
news:zwER8.419089$Oa1.29...@bin8.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com...
Paul F. Dietz
..
> They could not understand that
>
> A or B <==> not ( not A and not B)
Ah! They must have been constructivists. :)
Paul
Andrzej Lewandowski
wrote:
>Andrzej Lewandowski:
My experience shows that Canada is not better.
A.L.
Andrzej Lewandowski
<olc...@interaccess.com> wrote:
>The AI winter was created by the AI community. The AI community
>worried more about AI theory than producing practical applications
>and the users simply said "This is not going to pay off". I believe
>the "IT winter" is already here, and it has many different phases
>compared to "AI winter".
AI winter was created by the lack of profitable business model. As
with "dot.com winter"...
A.L.
Andrzej Lewandowski
wrote:
>Andrzej Lewandowski:
My experience shows that Canada is not better.
A.L.
ozan s yigit
[earlier]
> Average so-called-software-engineer has no college degree.
[later]
> My experience shows that Canada is not better.
sure, you are welcome to generalize based on your own limited experience;
in the absence of a useful statistic, i'll prefer my own sampling which is
obviously not as dreadful, perhaps for a good reason. :) [note also that
software developers are not called "engineers" in canada.]
oz
---
bang go the blobs. -- ponder stibbons
Will Deakin
> Average so-called-software-engineer has no college degree.
:)w
Erik Naggum
| There are some very clever people who do not have degrees, however.
The truly educated never graduate.
Sverker Wiberg
>
> I have worked with folks having diplomas from well-know universities and
> they were
> supposed to be software experts.....
> They could not understand that
>
> A or B <==> not ( not A and not B)
>
> as well as
>
> A and ( B or not A) <=> A and B
>
> etc...etc....
Maybe their exam exits were guarded by someone with a men-in-black-style
flashy-thingie...
/Sverker
Thomas Stegen
> * Will Deakin
> | There are some very clever people who do not have degrees, however.
>
> The truly educated never graduate.
>
Do you mean that the truly educated already did educate some time
ago? I can see several different interpretations of the above statement
so it would be nice if you would elaborate (of course, it is possible
that you wanted the ambiguity there :).
--
Thomas Stegen
http://www.geocities.com/thinkoidz
Erik Naggum
> The truly educated never graduate.
* Thomas Stegen
| Do you mean that the truly educated already did educate some time ago? I can
| see several different interpretations of the above statement so it would be
| nice if you would elaborate (of course, it is possible that you wanted the
| ambiguity there :).
It is from a bumper sticker I bought in Berkeley. :)
Marc Spitzer
> In article <3D18C93D...@cis.strath.ac.uk>, Thomas Stegen wrote:
>> Erik Naggum wrote:
>>> * Will Deakin
>>> | There are some very clever people who do not have degrees, however.
>>>
>>> The truly educated never graduate.
>>>
>>
>> Do you mean that the truly educated already did educate some time
>> ago? I can see several different interpretations of the above statement
>> so it would be nice if you would elaborate (of course, it is possible
>> that you wanted the ambiguity there :).
>
> on. So the truly educated are never done with learning. This has
> nothing to do with a diploma. I do not see any other reasonable
> explanation of Erik's comments, given the context they were in.
>
> And I do not understand your first sentence, could you rephrase it.
>
> marc
Well after rereading my post I have come to the conclusion that I
missed the joke. My apologies to Thomas Stegen for what was a very
stupid remark. Ah well a literal mind can be somewhat inconvienent at
times.
marc
Andrzej Lewandowski
Agree. Minority.
A.L.
Vlastimil Adamovsky
needed.
I have degree and it DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING...
Everything is changing so fast, that you have to study the whole live...
If you need something, it is on Internet or you can find it in a public
library ...
A degree is not a certification of being smart... Look at Bill Gates :))
Vlastik
"Andrzej Lewandowski" <lewand...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:qeejhugu559vkrk85...@4ax.com...
Thaddeus L Olczyk
<am...@ambrasoft.com> wrote:
>
>A degree is not a certification of being smart... Look at Bill Gates :))
Bill Gates doesn't have a degree.
Vlastimil Adamovsky
Vlastik
"Thaddeus L Olczyk" <olc...@interaccess.com> wrote in message
news:5lgmhuspo5c3jre32...@4ax.com...
Andrzej Lewandowski
<am...@ambrasoft.com> wrote:
>I think a degree is not needed... It is a knowledge and experience that is
>needed.
>I have degree and it DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING...
>
>Everything is changing so fast, that you have to study the whole live...
>If you need something, it is on Internet or you can find it in a public
>library ...
>
NONSENSE.
A.L.
Patrick W
Which of these points is nonsense? The idea that a degree is not necessary,
or the idea that a degree means nothing? Either way, it makes zero sense to
generalise without considering the attitude and the ability of the learner.
It's frighteningly easy to graduate from university without having learned
much. The evidence is all around you. It takes minimal intelligence and
discipline to sail through courses, acquiring just enough knowledge and
technique to satisfy requirements. (Can anyone look around him and doubt
this?) For people who approach their studies this way, a degree does indeed
have value, but its primary value is as an occupational passport.
A different class of learner (e.g. those who are reasonably intelligent and
have a sincere interest in their field) benefit from a degree by being
exposed to the distilled knowledge (and sometimes wisdom) of their
community. For many (probably most) people, a degree *is* valuable. In one
way it's a time-saving strategy. Students intensively learn concepts that
they could eventually have picked up by looking beyond their own experiments
and mistakes, or by reading the literature piecemeal. The concepts may not
"sink in" at the time, but when they encounter problems in the real world
and find themselves out of their depth, they'll often remember something
they learned about at university and make a connection that would be *very*
difficult to make by good fortune (or even by extremely high native
intelligence).
There would also be a small minority of students who are so far ahead of the
collective wisdom that the pace of a university course that must cater for
less talented students would be too slow for them. I'd guess that only a
*very* small minority of gifted students could not benefit from university
study. (But probably a great many more *believe* they would not benefit for
this reason ;-)).
Given the right attitude, I don't see any good reason why an intelligent,
motivated and disciplined person cannot acquire the level of expertise that
a university degree is designed to facilitate, and indeed go far beyond the
level of the average university graduate. It is ludicrous to suggest that a
university degree is *necessary* to develop expertise. (Again, look around
you and doubt it if you can).
Vlastimil Adamovsky
learn a lot ...
But those teachers/professors ar in minority.... Mostly they are "detached"
from
the "industry"...
Vlastimil Adamovsky
"Patrick W" <xne...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:aLZS8.767$yY2....@ozemail.com.au...
Patrick W
"Vlastimil Adamovsky" <am...@ambrasoft.com> wrote in message
news:3d1c7129$1...@nntp2.nac.net...
> But those teachers/professors ar in minority.... Mostly they are
"detached"
> from the "industry"...
But "industry" is fickle and has a short memory. Following industry trends
will tangle you up in a disorderly mass of particulars and force you to hack
your way through them, but it won't (formally) teach you the generalities
that underly the specifics of your problems. The very basis of (western
style) education is learn how to separate the general from the particular,
and to create abstract systems of thought that can survive and adapt to
changing specifics. You don't *need* university to learn these things, but
if you follow industry (alone) as your guide, you'll fare a lot worse IMO.
I suppose there *is* a place for those who slavishly follow the latest
trends and master specific languages/tools/techniques without giving much
thought to underlying structures, but I think their role in the "industry"
is mostly clerical. They are, in effect, programmers' clerks and
secretaries.
Kaz Kylheku
> I think a degree is not needed... It is a knowledge and experience that is
> needed.
> I have degree and it DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING...
>
> Everything is changing so fast, that you have to study the whole live...
> If you need something, it is on Internet or you can find it in a public
> library ...
About the only thing that is changing fast is the churning bullshit. If you
know anything about computer science and its history, it will be obvious to you
that old crap is being reinvented under new data representations and syntax.
(I suspect you are not talking about learning the bleeding advantages in
computing research, am I right?)
Irresponsible goons are polluting the sphere of computing with irrelevant
garbage for the purpose of creating barriers among groups of clueless idiots.
This counterproductive garbage costs the economy countless dollars.
I have no particular reason to single out any particular piece of bullshit, but
let's put some numbers on Java. It's basically a Simula 67 style
single-dispatch object system (i.e. 1967 OO technology) with C syntax, which is
again late 60's. Implicit reference semantics, garbage collection, late 1950's.
Virtual machines are old hat. Networking over sockets is at least 1980's.
Graphical window systems and abstract libraries for driving them are 1970's.
You have nothing new to *learn*, just a new notation to grok.
Grokking new notations does nothing for me, it's just a pseudo-intellectual
aggravation.
Vlastimil Adamovsky
That's what I wanted to hear ....
I agree with you.....
Vlastimil Adamovsky
"Patrick W" <xne...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:kF_S8.795$yY2....@ozemail.com.au...
Vlastimil Adamovsky
news:afimqp$31u$1...@luna.vcn.bc.ca...
> In article <3d19f5f2$1...@nntp2.nac.net>, Vlastimil Adamovsky wrote:
> > I think a degree is not needed... It is a knowledge and experience that
is
> > needed.
> > I have degree and it DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING...
> >
> > Everything is changing so fast, that you have to study the whole live...
> > If you need something, it is on Internet or you can find it in a public
> > library ...
>
> About the only thing that is changing fast is the churning bullshit. If
you
> know anything about computer science
Yes, I do.... I know how to switch the computer on.. I never switch it
off... :))
> Irresponsible goons are polluting the sphere of computing with irrelevant
> garbage for the purpose of creating barriers among groups of clueless
idiots.
> This counterproductive garbage costs the economy countless dollars.
It is creating jobs, right? :))
>
> I have no particular reason to single out any particular piece of
bullshit, but
> let's put some numbers on Java. It's basically a Simula 67 style
> single-dispatch object system (i.e. 1967 OO technology) with C syntax,
which is
> again late 60's. Implicit reference semantics, garbage collection, late
1950's.
> Virtual machines are old hat. Networking over sockets is at least 1980's.
> Graphical window systems and abstract libraries for driving them are
1970's.
> You have nothing new to *learn*, just a new notation to grok.
I never learned Java.... You are actually right. The software industry is
full of clueless
idiots that do it "only" for money (who can blame them?) ...
In my opinion, there is "overpopulation" of programmers out there, because
decisions "makers"
are jumping from one band wagon to another and trying to outsmart "the
stupid" competition,
that's why they need to employ an army of "programmers"....Well. they can be
disposed later,
after when they will acquire the necessary experience .... :)
The bosses are reasoning like that: " Use Visual Basic, our clients don't
care, what software
we are using, and do it fast. We don't care how fast the system work.
Clients have nothing
to compare to anyway.... By the way, I want to get my bonus ......" :))
I really think that software industry is in a deepest crisis..... A crisis,
that is being run by
"educated" people holding degrees from best universities...
(Hackers and computer "geeks" are the only people moving the software
progress ahead....
but they are mostly starving and being almost never recognized....
Though their ideas are being recognized, but wrong people get awarded :)
Vlastimil Adamovsky
P.C.
"Vlastimil Adamovsky" <am...@ambrasoft.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:3d1d17c8$1...@nntp2.nac.net...
Now I did write OT in the subject , but as this tread deal with programming
,technology and esp. how old technologies seem to "win" in contest with new but
by nature fragile technology I think you all could get a clue about some of the
same issues , then hopefully you will find the subject on-topic.
You se I deal with develobing building methods, and thank's to Lisp I guess ,
It's been a pleasure to se facts that I found a lot of profesionals simply can't
grasp. My final exchouse , as I guess a few of you know that I agrea that this
is "my pony" , but with Vlastimil's comment I can se that a few of the troubles
I seen , are common with what is discussed ; so sorry if you think Im'e just
promoting , Il'l do my best making the issue a common one.
I recently promotet a new building method where I used arguments like " you can
produce any building structure four times the strength , halve the cost and
halve the trouble assembling . Also I pointet to that instead of a long
manufactoring line, this new method need only one mashine , the simplest CNC
cutting one.
Also a compleat new architectual "language" and beside this , documentation in
CAD drawings ,that make people hold their breath.
Now This is not what get the prices, but that would be ok, ( except that I must
agrea that art history seem to reinvent poor artists in bad social situasions )
, but anong all the other visions , are the fact ,that working with these
methods for 10-12 years , I also develobed the theories that explain why we are
bound in old technology that will not allow us to se ,that with two planes you
can generate frameworks that work much more efficient than those constructet
from the tradisional 3 plane technology develobed 200 years ago.
Why is it that that mych "new technology" are acturly the 200 year old methods
just put into a computer program, and why is i that even people can "se" this is
possible and even easyer and cheaper , that you can't even win a price to be
able to develob this method . Is it becaurse art is a social skill, as then I
agrea I don't have a chance. Or is it becaurse those who don't need to fight for
their visions ,don't have any anyway ?
P.C.
http://d1o111.dk.telia.net/~u139600113/a
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/skuespilhus/
Thomas Stegen
> Of course, if one is lucky and has really good teachers, then he/she can
> learn a lot ...
> But those teachers/professors ar in minority.... Mostly they are "detached"
> from
> the "industry"...
This is the wrong way of thinking. You do not go to school to be
thaught, you go there to learn. Having a good lecturer will help, but is
not at all necessary if you can think for yourself.
Thien-Thi Nguyen
> Is it becaurse art is a social skill, as then I agrea I don't
> have a chance. Or is it becaurse those who don't need to fight
> for their visions ,don't have any anyway ?
art is a social comment. art appreciation is a social skill (any
appreciation expressed is such -- things you keep locked in your
brain are another matter).
probably it's not the visions that are hard-won (favorite method:
sleep deprivation ;-), it's the sharing of those visions and the
effort required to realize them that is more difficult. to help
your audience appreciate your art sometimes requires educating
them, which is most difficult since that's not something you can
control directly.
certainly in this day and age your art has a chance to simmer on a
disk drive somewhere, its quality latent for people to appreciate
when they are ready. this might not occur until you're dead and
gone so make sure to sign your works and dedicate them to whatever
muse you follow.
thi
Vlastimil Adamovsky
university), because
if I don't go there to be taught, then I can go to learn somewhereelse...
(in US people have to pay for being taught)
Vlastimil Adamovsky
"Thomas Stegen" <tst...@cis.strath.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3D1DE885...@cis.strath.ac.uk...
Donald Fisk
>
> In article <3d19f5f2$1...@nntp2.nac.net>, Vlastimil Adamovsky wrote:
> > I think a degree is not needed... It is a knowledge and experience that is
> > needed.
> > I have degree and it DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING...
> >
> > Everything is changing so fast, that you have to study the whole live...
> > If you need something, it is on Internet or you can find it in a public
> > library ...
>
> About the only thing that is changing fast is the churning bullshit. If you
> know anything about computer science and its history, it will be obvious to you
> that old crap is being reinvented under new data representations and syntax.
> (I suspect you are not talking about learning the bleeding advantages in
> computing research, am I right?)
>
> Irresponsible goons are polluting the sphere of computing with irrelevant
> garbage for the purpose of creating barriers among groups of clueless idiots.
> This counterproductive garbage costs the economy countless dollars.
There's been a drastic reduction in Research and Development spending.
I
don't have any figures, because the figures are suspect -- companies in
the
UK are defrauding the taxpayer by claiming tax breaks for R&D, and then
spending the money on straight development. Maybe it's different
elsewhere,
but for some reason I doubt it.
Universities, with a few notable exceptions, aren't taking up the slack.
Mostly, students do computer science for the money they expect to get
after
they graduate. That means that universities are under pressure to
teach
languages which industry likes -- so out goes Scheme, and in comes Java.
(Whatever you think of Scheme, from a Common Lisp viewpoint it's hard to
see that as an improvement.)
There's a culture of short-termism, partly caused by investors wanting
a quick return, but I think it goes deeper that that, and it affects
society across the board, not just computing. See Short-termism and
the Death of the Future by Gareth in Vegas
(http://www.invisibilia.co.uk/posts/gareth/gareth001.htm) and
Has IT Gone to Pot? (http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/itpot.htm).
It's as if most people have forgotten that there is a future. Jack
Schofield wrote in The Hutchison Dictionary of Science, 2nd Edition
(1998), "The future of computing is likely to resemble the recent past",
and so far he's been correct.
> I have no particular reason to single out any particular piece of bullshit, but
> let's put some numbers on Java. It's basically a Simula 67 style
> single-dispatch object system (i.e. 1967 OO technology) with C syntax, which is
> again late 60's. Implicit reference semantics, garbage collection, late 1950's.
> Virtual machines are old hat. Networking over sockets is at least 1980's.
> Graphical window systems and abstract libraries for driving them are 1970's.
> You have nothing new to *learn*, just a new notation to grok.
It's been called Smalltalk--.
> Grokking new notations does nothing for me, it's just a pseudo-intellectual
> aggravation.
From a Lisp or Smalltalk viewpoint, Java was well past its sell-by date
when first released. But most people out there don't have a Lisp or
Smalltalk viewpoint. They've been struggling with C++, and now see a
language where they don't need to worry about memory management,
pointers
or the semantics of multiple inheritance. Or they've been writing
COBOL
on IBM mainframes. Java is simple enough for these people to use, and
has a syntax that doesn't frighten them too much. And their boss wants
them to write in it.
And you might want to cons the WWW onto your list of non-inventions.
First thought of by Vannevar Bush in 1945. And preceded by INFO, a
working distributed hypertext system working by the mid-late 1970s
on ITS.
Le Hibou
--
Dalinian: Lisp. Java. Which one sounds sexier?
RevAaron: Definitely Lisp. Lisp conjures up images of hippy coders,
drugs,
sex, and rock & roll. Late nights at Berkeley, coding in Lisp fueled by
LSD.
Java evokes a vision of a stereotypical nerd, with no life or social
skills.
Vlastimil Adamovsky
A "short-terminism" is killing the future... I know, we live a capitalist
society, we all want to drive
nice cars and have a nice looking chick (or more) in our care (whuups....I
wanted to say "car")...
But it should not happen at cost of the future...
Software industry is killing itself. Software "managers" are firing skilled
people, that are brave enough to
fight for the future and they are employing Visual Basic apes "to get the
job done".....
The problem in software industry is, that mediocre people decide what those
really gifted people should do and
how it should be done.... Yes, the problem is, that the gifted people are
being told by mediocre managers "how to
do that" and what software they should use...... I have been in software
industry 22 years, but now I am not taking the shit anymore..... I am a
co-investor in an internet company, and basically, I am interested in a
short term profit.....
But during nights and a spare time, I am sitting at my computer and playing
with Smalltalk and Lisp to see the future...
Vlastik
Joel Ray Holveck
>> he/she can learn a lot ... But those teachers/professors ar in
>> minority.... Mostly they are "detached" from the "industry"...
> This is the wrong way of thinking. You do not go to school to be
> thaught, you go there to learn. Having a good lecturer will help, but is
> not at all necessary if you can think for yourself.
In "To Sin Against Systems" (Gary R. Osgood, Winter 1977), one
character suggests the term "teacher" is a misnomer, and suggests that
something like "learning assistant" may be better.
joelh
Erik Naggum
| If I can think for myself, then I will not to go to scholl (college,
| university), because if I don't go there to be taught, then I can go to learn
| somewhereelse... (in US people have to pay for being taught)
If you can think for yourself, you realize that you may save time by learning
from those who have spent their lives figuring things out. If you are any
smart at all, you will also recognize that smarter people than yourself exist
in your field and that you would do well to listen to them. If you are dumb
as a brick and cannot think for yourself, you think you will be able to learn
all you need to learn for your own life on your own, without any assistance.
However, you should leave when a school demonstrably impedes your progress.
This may happen for a variety of reasons. Many universities are primarily
political institutions despite their attempt to do research and science, and
mostly produce reasons for itself to continue to exist rather than any actual
research. (The highly controversial Nobel laureate Kary Mullins argues that
much of recent "science" has been based in such greedy research, directed
mostly by what might secure good funding than by good research.) A large
fraction of computer science is a load of crap to appease political lobbying
groups (e.g., Microsoft, which infests many universities with its peculiar
kind of marketing, _much_ more aggressively than any other sponsor or
equipment supplier) and a waste of time, unlike any other university-level
discipline with which I have had first-hand contact. The problem of teaching
computer programming is still unsolved.
People well above average intelligence will be impeded in their learning if
they waste their time only on the computer science they are taught, but that
does not mean that they will not have the opportunity to do more interesting
research in a CS department than outside and to learn many other things on
their own -- it is, after all, the staff that defines the department, not
vice versa. What a university teaches and what you learn while there are
quite unrelated, and if you stay, you can affect it. Outside the university,
a degree only certifies that you can follow orders of a certain complexity,
which may be important enough, but hardly proof of your ability to think and
act without similarly specific orders. Considering the massive intelligence,
not to mention the _time_, required to formulate the orders that a degree
certifies your ability to follow, in may indeed be quite the opposite of what
others believe it is and no guarantee of any ability to acquire new knowledge
expeditiously or indeed accurately and productively use what you know. Yet,
the ability to follow complex orders has been valued very highly in modern
society, and may also be considered the practical foundation of the rule of
law -- if people were unwilling or unable to follow very complex orders, a
set of rules they would not follow would just be massively annoying and would
only work to piss people off and create a society that disrespects it rules.
(Come to think of it, that is how most tax laws work.)
Given the challenging balancing act of both independent learning and
following orders that the university offers a student, it rewards those who
do better than expected. If you _only_ the follow orders, you become an
average graduate. This should be quite sufficient for many jobs, but if you
are an above average or excellent graduate, perhaps the only need for the
degree is to show that you have acquired discipline and are not too clever
for your own good.
The only huge problem I see with degree requirements for an increasing number
of jobs is that it carries a cost that is not repaid reasonably fast, so
people who could do an excellent job may not be able to get it because they
cannot pay the admission ticket. This has serious and negative effects on an
economy in recession and turns the economy into something like a pyramid game
or multi-level marketing scam that makes recessions much worse and which
makes it more likely that recessions will occur, since the mobility of the
work force is dramatically reduced by requiring specialized degrees in every
line of work, which will be unavailable to people who are still paying for
their previous degree, or who simply cannot afford not to work during the
time it takes to acquire a new degree.
Erik Naggum
| There's a culture of short-termism, partly caused by investors wanting a
| quick return, but I think it goes deeper that that, and it affects society
| across the board, not just computing.
I have yet to follow your links, but the short-termism is not created by
business leaders, but by tax laws. The greed of "capitalists" is nothing
compared to the greed of politicians. This is particularly pronounced in
Norway, but from what I follow of UK and US news, politicians require a much
better return on their investment than they allow their businesses and
people. E.g., if your investor get 30% annual return on their investment,
that is pretty damn good, but many countries have 30% corporate tax and then
tax income at up to 50%. If a company managed to get twice the value out of
the cost of its workers, it would probably be considered exploitative.
| It's as if most people have forgotten that there is a future.
Well, the Y2K scare was definitely our fin-de-sičcle and other end-of-the-
world attitudes, and many people have yet to reacquire their sense of time,
two and half years after the world failed to implode. For several years,
however, there literally _was_ no future and people were actually planning
for the end of the world. (What would you do if you had only three months,
and not just you, but the entire world? There would be nobody to remember
what you had done. Would your sense of responsibility survive this?)
| And you might want to cons the WWW onto your list of non-inventions. First
| thought of by Vannevar Bush in 1945. And preceded by INFO, a working
| distributed hypertext system working by the mid-late 1970s on ITS.
Indeed, the WWW may be the most tragic non-invention of the past 100 years.
Vlastimil Adamovsky
"Erik Naggum" <er...@naggum.net> wrote in message
news:32343828...@naggum.net...
> * Vlastimil Adamovsky
> | If I can think for myself, then I will not to go to scholl (college,
> | university), because if I don't go there to be taught, then I can go to
learn
> | somewhereelse... (in US people have to pay for being taught)
>
> If you can think for yourself, you realize that you may save time by
learning
> from those who have spent their lives figuring things out. If you are
any
> smart at all, you will also recognize that smarter people than yourself
exist
> in your field and that you would do well to listen to them.
Yes, I think I would learn more by doing a research together with
experts....
Current educational system is outdated, it is a brainwashing factory...
BTW, I graduated 23 years ago and I FORGOT everything I learned.....
What I learned is not valid anymore....
Vlastik
Robert Strandh
> Universities, with a few notable exceptions, aren't taking up the slack.
> Mostly, students do computer science for the money they expect to get
> after
> they graduate. That means that universities are under pressure to
> teach
> languages which industry likes -- so out goes Scheme, and in comes Java.
> (Whatever you think of Scheme, from a Common Lisp viewpoint it's hard to
> see that as an improvement.)
Perhaps the situation is very different here in France compared to in
the UK, but I really can't say I have felt any sort of pressure to
teach anything whatsoever.
In fact, I have been here in Bordeaux for nearly 15 years. Every
year, I go visit a bunch of software development companies in order to
check up on our interns. Over time, I have probably seen around 50 or
so, not just in Bordeaux, but all over France (Lyon, Grenoble,
Toulouse, Paris, Marseilles, etc). Every time I ask a question
similar to "what do you think of our teaching program, and do you have
any changes to suggest?". With one single exception in 15 years, the
answer has been that they had not looked at the program, that they
trust us to teach what should be taught, and that they are very
pleased with the level of knowledge of our graduates. The single
exceptional case had actually read the program and thought it was
pretty good as it was. As I recall, he had one minor suggestion.
I interpret this situation as having a mandate to teach whatever I
find appropriate (I am not alone, of course. I do this in
collaboration with my colleagues). One "rule" we have is that no
course title mentions the name of a programming language. Although it
is often necessary to introduce a language as part of a course, we do
not want to give the impression that the main purpose of the course is
to teach a language. Another "rule" we have is that when someone has
taught a course for three years, anyone else wanting it takes
priority. This forces people to renew their courses fairly often, but
we also have an implicit rule that it is the person in charge of a
course that chooses the programming language. That rule has worked
out pretty well, and whenever a colleague discovers another language,
he can usually find a course in which to use it.
No, the greatest pressure comes not from industry, but from the
students. At the university, it is not such a big deal, other than a
little in the MS program. But at the engineering school, it can be
quite bad. The students are what I call "ad driven". They read the
ads for jobs, see that this or that language is in demand and wonder
why we do not teach it. They criticize our choices of languages with
the motivation that they have never seen it in any job ad. The only
way I have found to justify our choices is to tell them about my
experience in visiting interns. It helps a bit, but unfortunately it
comes way too late. They have already planned their careers based on
certain programming languages and they get upset when told that their
choices are of no importance to industry, and may be suboptimal as far
as software development is concerned.
--
Robert Strandh
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C
or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden
slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick W
> The only huge problem I see with degree requirements for an increasing
number
> of jobs is that it carries a cost that is not repaid reasonably fast, so
> people who could do an excellent job may not be able to get it because
they
> cannot pay the admission ticket. This has serious and negative effects
on an
> economy in recession and turns the economy into something like a pyramid
game
> or multi-level marketing scam that makes recessions much worse and which
> makes it more likely that recessions will occur, since the mobility of
the
> work force is dramatically reduced by requiring specialized degrees in
every
> line of work, which will be unavailable to people who are still paying
for
> their previous degree, or who simply cannot afford not to work during
the
> time it takes to acquire a new degree.
This is a huge problem in several ways. You've mentioned the economic
consequences, which are certainly valid, but I think the cultural
consequences are perhaps even more important. Raising the barrier to entry
(in many fields) by requiring degrees for relatively low-level positions
tends to create a culture of specialists -- not necessarily by design but by
necessity. The ability to cross over and contribute meaningfully to several
diverse fields is *well* within the capabilities of many people, but the
practicalities of doing so are becoming harder to manage.
It's a difficult balancing act. We don't want unqualified people fulfilling
important roles, but formal qualification (as we agree) isn't necessarily a
good indicator of competence, *especially* among the exceptionally talented
people who are best *able* to make contributions in diverse fields.
For this reason it's hard to say whether the increasing trend toward
certification *before* meaningful employment is a good thing or a bad thing.
Personally, I think the cost is too high. I would rather see a society of
broadly educated individuals than a vast workshop of technical specialists.
Erik Naggum
| For this reason it's hard to say whether the increasing trend toward
| certification *before* meaningful employment is a good thing or a bad thing.
| Personally, I think the cost is too high. I would rather see a society of
| broadly educated individuals than a vast workshop of technical specialists.
Both liberal education and general education used to be values in advanced
societies, requirements for the proper operation of democracy, human rights,
and politics in general. We have, however, devolved into a society of people
who do not understand its society: people who are not educated, but trained,
who do not ask questions, but are simply good at following complex orders.
I think computer "science" is much worse off than any other science, however,
and that the peculiar notion that learning to _operate_ a computer or even a
particular program is a skill deserving a university degree. It may have
become a discipline for no better reason than that computers were located at
universities and were used exclusively by scientists and advanced engineers,
but today's computer is barely more advanced than microwave ovens. (And my
first experience with a microwave oven was the cafeteria in the CS building
late at night. I have no microwave oven science credits, however.)
It is evident that computing has been through serious setbacks qua science
and that in order to advance forward, we have to back out of the quagmire
that we got ourselves into. But first, Microsoft has to be destroyed.
P.C.
"Thien-Thi Nguyen" <t...@glug.org> skrev i en meddelelse
news:kk98z4y...@glug.org...
Then my problem is that Im'e not a painter ;))
Sorry I keep being a bit off-topic, but I guess you exchouse when I tell , That
I don't have any problems with recurtion or defining a function as a side
effect. ------- I just use Lisp with my CAD program to shape nice buildings
,then being an artist everyone expect somthing on a piece of canvas ; problem
are that I took it serious when people startet talking about art and technology
,where I se others who think that you can project fantasy worlds powered with
pietzo electric "gaskets" that shuld produce energy when buildings swing in the
wind.
---------- Guess this is hard to follow, but if people without respect for
science start fabulating about cartoon fantasy worlds , and this is said to be
the direction to the new world , I just wonder if art is not _to_ much a social
skill. When I promote I say " build anything for halve the cost, four times as
strong halve the trouble to put up, and based on newest technology , then some
say " man , --- this is a dangouras technike as it simply are to cheap" , while
others se this description about why the idear are so good, and then chose to
let Flash-Gordon fantasies be the future lead instead.
Houses where people get seasick othervise there will be no electricty , as the
pietzo-electric gaskets that produce the energy for the 50 mill tons self
reparing building volumes need that the buildings rock in the wind ; ------- you
don't belive me ,then check this that lead the way and is a good example of the
trends ;
http://www.kollision.dk/nwol/images/forside.jpg
This is what Im'e up against ;))
P.C.
Nils Goesche
How can you be so sure? How do you know you would be the same
person if you hadn't attended a university in your life? For
instance, if you make a degree in mathematics, you are taught
several different and often unrelated mathematical theories,
which you usually forget after a while; but that's not the point
because what you /really/ learn is how to get abstract theories
quickly into your head and mathematical reasoning and thinking.
And /these/ are pretty much impossible to learn without
assistance by university teachers.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID #xC66D6E6F
JB
> together with experts...
If you want to do research, you must have a very solid
working knowledge of the basics and a university is the
best place to get this knowledge.
> Current educational system is outdated, it is a
> brainwashing factory... BTW, I graduated 23 years ago and
> I FORGOT everything I learned..... What I learned is not
> valid anymore....
I started with Fortran IV and UCSD Pascal and everything I
learnt, is still valid. The mathematics I learnt, is still
valid as well. Therefore I wonder what you have learnt.
More then 20 years later it was easy to make a degree in
computer science as the basics, that is the mathematics,
were all right.
I am exaggerating, but you might say that the university is
the only school, where learning is still possible.
--
Janos Blazi
-----------== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Uncensored Usenet News ==----------
http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----= Over 100,000 Newsgroups - Unlimited Fast Downloads - 19 Servers =-----
Vlastimil Adamovsky
'
Vlastik
"Nils Goesche" <n...@cartan.de> wrote in message
news:876600a...@darkstar.cartan...
Vlastimil Adamovsky
"JB" <jbl...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3d1f1...@news.newsgroups.com...
> > Yes, I think I would learn more by doing a research
> > together with experts...
>
> If you want to do research, you must have a very solid
> working knowledge of the basics and a university is the
> best place to get this knowledge.
I have that, but not thanks to university education...
>
> > Current educational system is outdated, it is a
> > brainwashing factory... BTW, I graduated 23 years ago and
> > I FORGOT everything I learned..... What I learned is not
> > valid anymore....
>
> I started with Fortran IV and UCSD Pascal and everything I
> learnt, is still valid. The mathematics I learnt, is still
> valid as well. Therefore I wonder what you have learnt.
Algol...And then some stuff that a computer has one CPU, a memory...now, it
is not true.,..
More then 20 years later it was easy to make a degree in
> computer science as the basics, that is the mathematics,
> were all right.
> I am exaggerating, but you might say that the university is
> the only school, where learning is still possible.
NOOOOOO!!!!!
>
> --
> Janos Blazi
>
Vlastik
Vlastimil Adamovsky
Sure, it is good to have a vertification...
If you are getting certification in order to get smarter, then it is OK...
If you are getting certification in order to make mor emoney, they you are
screwed..
I try to pick my projects by heart, not by pay....
Well, most people don't know what I am talking about..
Vlastik
"Patrick W" <xne...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:lCxT8.1219$yY2....@ozemail.com.au...
Vlastimil Adamovsky
> * "Patrick W"
> | For this reason it's hard to say whether the increasing trend toward
> | certification *before* meaningful employment is a good thing or a bad
thing.
> | Personally, I think the cost is too high. I would rather see a society
of
> | broadly educated individuals than a vast workshop of technical
specialists.
>
> Both liberal education and general education used to be values in
advanced
> societies, requirements for the proper operation of democracy, human
rights,
> and politics in general. We have, however, devolved into a society of
people
> who do not understand its society: people who are not educated, but
trained,
> who do not ask questions, but are simply good at following complex
orders.
>
> I think computer "science" is much worse off than any other science,
however,
THERE IS NO COMPUTER SCIENCE...
It is an ART...
> and that the peculiar notion that learning to _operate_ a computer or
even a
> particular program is a skill deserving a university degree. It may
have
> become a discipline for no better reason than that computers were
located at
> universities and were used exclusively by scientists and advanced
engineers,
> but today's computer is barely more advanced than microwave ovens. (And
my
> first experience with a microwave oven was the cafeteria in the CS
building
> late at night. I have no microwave oven science credits, however.)
>
> It is evident that computing has been through serious setbacks qua
science
> and that in order to advance forward, we have to back out of the
quagmire
> that we got ourselves into. But first, Microsoft has to be destroyed.
Why??? I think Microsoft did lot of good things...
(Bill, please, send me a million dollars to my account...I love you :)
Vlastik
JB
> I have that, but not thanks to university education...
> Algol...And then some stuff that a computer has one CPU, a
> memory...now, it is not true.,..
Why not? Parallel algorithms do not play a decisive rôle
yet, as far as I know, and Algol was probably o.k. in its
day. I has inspired modern languages, up to Scheme. What
you learnt about the algoritms, on the other hand, is still
valid.
Erik Naggum
| THERE IS NO COMPUTER SCIENCE...
| It is an ART...
Your opinion does not constitute fact.
| Why??? I think Microsoft did lot of good things...
Yeah, sure. Such as your newsreader's line breaking algorithm.
Thomas F. Burdick
> Yes, I think I would learn more by doing a research together with
> experts....
> Current educational system is outdated, it is a brainwashing factory...
> BTW, I graduated 23 years ago and I FORGOT everything I learned.....
> What I learned is not valid anymore....
What on earth did you learn? The algorithms you learned are still
perfectly valid, and so are the structured programming techniques.
You learned math and logic, right? Those haven't changed. Of course
they didn't teach you the results of research in the last 25 years,
but if you've stayed in the industry, you should be paying attention.
You've probably had less to keep up with than a biology major from the
same period.
--
/|_ .-----------------------.
,' .\ / | No to Imperialist war |
,--' _,' | Wage class war! |
/ / `-----------------------'
( -. |
| ) |
(`-. '--.)
`. )----'
cr88192
something like a "cad room". idea: room with maybe 1 or more dlp projectors
and some ir cameras, with the projector using the wall as a screen, a
camera facing the wall from the rear ceiling, another away from the wall at
the front ceiling, and some in the corners.
the user could use something like a hybrid of a cop flashlight and a remote
for interaction. the ir cameras would figure both the position of the light
and the point it intersects with the wall to figure the position and
direction of the pointer. this would allow a generally 3d interaction as
one can move around and point the light at various stuff to do stuff, and
the light could have a lot of command buttons. in this case rotate and move
buttons would be quite helpful, along with select and drag buttons.
this would be cool I think, and might allow better interaction than a
pc+orthographic interface...
if that is not enough maybe it could also double as a really big tv, or for
games or something... a high quality projector would help also, and it
should also allow good 2d interaction.
comment?...
cr88192
> How can you be so sure? How do you know you would be the same
> person if you hadn't attended a university in your life? For
> instance, if you make a degree in mathematics, you are taught
> several different and often unrelated mathematical theories,
> which you usually forget after a while; but that's not the point
> because what you /really/ learn is how to get abstract theories
> quickly into your head and mathematical reasoning and thinking.
> And /these/ are pretty much impossible to learn without
> assistance by university teachers.
>
have not spent much effort in learning math...
I still consider myself as able to understand abstract theories though, for
which math is known (but in my mind cs comes close).
I didn't really need a teacher for this, nor did anyone need to "teach" me
programming... there are still plenty of things I din't know though, but I
don't need a teacher to tell me that (though one might be helpful in
pointing out what to look into...).
I am posting again after a bit of emotional stress though, which has taken
its toll over the past few days.
Thomas Stegen
> If I can think for myself, then I will not to go to scholl (college,
> university), because
> if I don't go there to be taught, then I can go to learn somewhereelse...
> (in US people have to pay for being taught)
You missed my point. Learning should not be a passive process where you
get fed with information. Learning should be an active process where
you seek out relevant information.
Teachers should not spoonfeed you. They are there so you can ask them
when there is something you do not understand and to advise on what to
learn next. In other words, they help you seek out relevant information.
I hope that you do not need to be spoonfed.
Gordon Joly
"Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied
mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure
mathematicians."
quoted from
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html
University of Virginia, Department of Computer Science
CS655: Programming Languages, Spring 2001
"How do we tell truths that might hurt?"
Edsger W.Dijkstra, 18 June 1975
Rob Warnock
+---------------
| "Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied
| mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure
| mathematicians."
| "How do we tell truths that might hurt?"
| Edsger W. Dijkstra, 18 June 1975
Indeed! Many of the other "truths that might hurt" in that article
are still very applicable today, too. E.g., the one that's my
favorite when I think of Common Lisp versus other languages:
"About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen
a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to
do it with ten blunt axes instead."
and:
"Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally
good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital
asset of a competent programmer."
Note: Dijkstra is *not* a native speaker on English. Yet (at
least in his technical writing, as I have not heard him speak)
his English is a delight to read, unvaryingly precise and pellucid
(albeit with occasional quaintly-archaic grammar).
+---------------
| quoted from
| http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html
| University of Virginia, Department of Computer Science
| CS655: Programming Languages, Spring 2001
+---------------
Hmmm... That seems to have been transcribed from the
original. A more authoritative copy may be found at
<URL:http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/>, where all
of the publicly-available EWD### reports are archived:
<URL:http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd04xx/EWD498.PDF>
[Note: Most of these are PDFs of scanned images of Dijkstra's
orginal hand-typed manuscripts. Not always the best quality,
but historically interesting.]
And he's still cranking out some goodies, e.g.:
<URL:http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1304.PDF>
"The end of computing science?"
in which he argues that we *still* don't have a clue about how
to separate the complexity intrinsic to a given problem from that
"accidentally" added by the implementation of a chosen solution.
[Although one might suggest that the PLT group's "How To Design
Programs" <URL:http://www.htdp.org/> takes a useful step in that
direction...]
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock, 30-3-510 <rp...@sgi.com>
SGI Network Engineering <http://www.rpw3.org/>
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy. Phone: 650-933-1673
Mountain View, CA 94043 PP-ASEL-IA
[Note: aaan...@sgi.com and zedw...@sgi.com aren't for humans ]
Rob Warnock
+---------------
| still mildly ot for this group but related to this thread, I was imagining
| something like a "cad room". idea: room with maybe 1 or more dlp projectors
| and some ir cameras, with the projector using the wall as a screen
| the user could use something like a hybrid of a cop flashlight and a remote
| for interaction. the ir cameras would figure both the position of the light
| and the point it intersects with the wall to figure the position and
| direction of the pointer. this would allow a generally 3d interaction as
| one can move around and point the light at various stuff to do stuff, and
| the light could have a lot of command buttons. in this case rotate and move
| buttons would be quite helpful, along with select and drag buttons.
You mean, something like the "Dept. of Future Crime" command center
in the new Spielberg movie, "Minority Report"? It shows Tom Cruise's
character using data gloves with lights on the finger tips to "grab" and
"drag" windows in a holographic heads-up display. Kinda cute, I suppose,
if you're into that sort of stuff...
ozan s yigit
? Mostly, students do computer science for the money they expect to get
? after they graduate. That means that universities are under pressure to
? teach languages which industry likes -- so out goes Scheme, and in comes
? Java. (Whatever you think of Scheme, from a Common Lisp viewpoint it's
? hard to see that as an improvement.)
it seems to me that scheme never had a chance, except for some experiments
here and there. [it would have been instructive to know what book was used
for teaching - a very important concern for these departments] here is the
shortened "first language" table from a US survey i posted before:
First
Language 1995-96 1996-97 1997-98 1998-1999 1999-2000 2000-2001
C++ 32% 39% 47% 50% 54% 40%
Java - - 9% 22% 22% 49%
Pascal 36% 23% 6% 2% 5% 2%
Scheme 2% 4% 4% 1% - -
this is from "Comprehensive Report on the 2001 survey of deparments,"
Rene'e A. McCauley and Bill Manaris, May 2002. this and past surveys are
online and should be useful to people who are interested in some some
hard data about the CS departments and programming languages etc.
oz
---
a nought, an ought, a knot, a not easily perceived distinction. -- t. duff
Thomas F. Burdick
> First
> Language 1995-96 1996-97 1997-98 1998-1999 1999-2000 2000-2001
>
> C++ 32% 39% 47% 50% 54% 40%
> Java - - 9% 22% 22% 49%
> Pascal 36% 23% 6% 2% 5% 2%
> Scheme 2% 4% 4% 1% - -
Okay, since this is the second time this has been posted, I'm going to
call it. Notice the nothing for Scheme in 99-00 and 00-01, and the 1%
before that. I know for a fact that UC-Berkeley uses Scheme for the
"second" course. The problem is, the majority of CS majors don't take
the "first" course, because most people who go into CS have had a
/little/ experience programming, which is a large part of why they
think they want to be CS majors. So I'd be quite wary of these
numbers
Software Scavenger
> THERE IS NO COMPUTER SCIENCE...
> It is an ART...
What is the difference between computer science, software engineering,
and programming? In my opinion, those are basically just three
different terms for the same thing. The words science and engineering
do not imply a pure science nor a pure engineering discipline. Just
different people originating different terms for the same meaning.
But like all such differences of terms, various connotations gradually
get attached to them differently. So they actually do have slightly
different meanings than each other. But those different meanings have
very little, if anything, to do with the difference between science,
art, and engineering.
The mistake most people make when protesting the term, computer
science, on the grounds that it's not really a science, is the mistake
of parsing it as an adjective and a noun, and taking each of them
literally, then combining their meanings logically. It's better to
think of it as if it were one word, computerscience, with its own
complicated meaning, with lots of connotations, and with very little
relationship to actual science.
Thomas F. Burdick
> "Vlastimil Adamovsky" <am...@ambrasoft.com> wrote in message news:<3d1f34c5$1...@nntp2.nac.net>...
>
> > THERE IS NO COMPUTER SCIENCE...
> > It is an ART...
>
> What is the difference between computer science, software engineering,
> and programming?
If you'll allow me a lit-major moment: I consider these three terms to
have fairly diferent implications, at least potentially. Of course
there are cases when the three all mean the same thing, but those
aren't the interesting cases. Programming is an act; one programs.
Software engineering is the design of software, as an engineering act.
It is most certainly not up to the rigors of modern engineering
disciplines, but that doesn't change its engineering nature. Software
engineering considers the implementability of things, the actual
behavior of alogrithms, not just their asymptotes. It's the most
extreme form of application. Computer science is the study of the
field. It can range from simply math, to applied concepts. It's
entirely possible for one person to engage in both CS and SE at the
same time.
ozan s yigit
> So I'd be quite wary of these
> numbers
there is another table in the study that shows the languages used
in the later years. results are not that much better. as far as CS
teaching is concerned, lisp-family languages are in the same boat
as apl and algol60.
oz
cr88192
> You mean, something like the "Dept. of Future Crime" command center
> in the new Spielberg movie, "Minority Report"? It shows Tom Cruise's
> character using data gloves with lights on the finger tips to "grab" and
> "drag" windows in a holographic heads-up display. Kinda cute, I suppose,
> if you're into that sort of stuff...
>
>
would be pretty cool albeit without the transparent surface thingy.
I appologize for such a blatant rip, only afterwards do I really notice as
I had seen that movie last weekend.
it would be cool to use for cad though...
Patrick W
"Thomas F. Burdick" <t...@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote in message
news:xcvfzz4...@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU...
> cubic...@mailandnews.com (Software Scavenger) writes:
> >
> > What is the difference between computer science, software engineering,
> > and programming?
>
> If you'll allow me a lit-major moment: I consider these three terms to
> have fairly diferent implications, at least potentially. Of course
> there are cases when the three all mean the same thing, but those
> aren't the interesting cases. Programming is an act; one programs.
> Software engineering is the design of software, as an engineering act.
> It is most certainly not up to the rigors of modern engineering
> disciplines, but that doesn't change its engineering nature. Software
> engineering considers the implementability of things, the actual
> behavior of alogrithms, not just their asymptotes. It's the most
> extreme form of application. Computer science is the study of the
> field. It can range from simply math, to applied concepts.
Good points here, but I think you're giving computer science too narrow a
scope. IMO, computer science as "the study of the field" should be as much
concerned with the programmer as with the program or the machine. To my
mind, "computer science" is fundamentally about mapping methods of thinking
to methods of instructing machines, and vice versa. We have only scratched
the surface so far. Finding the best ways to harness human intelligence for
the task of instructing machines (and ultimately finding the best ways for
machines to augment human intelligence) is the real goal of computer
science.
I think our current best practices are nowhere near good enough in this
respect. I hope that a more advanced "computer science" will help us to
invent/discover changes at the roots, not just at the branches. For this to
happen, we will probably have to delve _deeply_ into psychology (and perhaps
art).
[Sorry if this message's formatting is fucked up again. I'll be reinstalling
my preferred Unix system in the next day or two].
Joseph Dale
> ozan s yigit <o...@blue.cs.yorku.ca> writes:
>
>
>>First
>>Language 1995-96 1996-97 1997-98 1998-1999 1999-2000 2000-2001
>>
>>C++ 32% 39% 47% 50% 54% 40%
>>Java - - 9% 22% 22% 49%
>>Pascal 36% 23% 6% 2% 5% 2%
>>Scheme 2% 4% 4% 1% - -
>
>
> Okay, since this is the second time this has been posted, I'm going to
> call it. Notice the nothing for Scheme in 99-00 and 00-01, and the 1%
> before that. I know for a fact that UC-Berkeley uses Scheme for the
> "second" course. The problem is, the majority of CS majors don't take
> the "first" course, because most people who go into CS have had a
> /little/ experience programming, which is a large part of why they
> think they want to be CS majors. So I'd be quite wary of these
> numbers
>
To go even a bit further, not only is the "second" course in Scheme (it
uses SICP), but the "first" course is also in Scheme (it uses the
"Simply Scheme" text, by Brian Harvey and Matt Wright). So whichever
course you call "first", Scheme is in it.
One interesting thing I have noticed (I am an undergraduate in CS at UC
Berkeley) is that people who have programmed before they take the SICP
course -- usually in some language of the C or Pascal ilk -- tend to
thoroughly dislike the course, whereas people who haven't programmed
before seeing Scheme tend to take to it readily. The former are the kind
of people who go through the course whining: "Why can't we do this in
C?" "Where are the pointers?" The latter people just /get it/.
Beyond the first and second courses, Common Lisp shows up as an
implementation language in the Artificial Intelligence course and
occasionally in the Programming Languages and Compilers course (usually
when Richard Fateman is teaching it). Most other software-engineering
type courses (e.g., operating systems, databases) use either C++ or
Java, with a recent trend toward Java. There are quite a few other
courses where you can usually get away with using Scheme or Lisp if you
want to. I know people who have done projects for the numerical analysis
course in Scheme, and I have written code for two computational biology
courses (one in the math department, one in the molecular biology
department) in Common Lisp.
Then again -- and I'm not intending to brag, just being realistic -- I
can also see how Berkeley might be considered somewhat more
"enlightened" in this respect than most schools.
Joe
![Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]'s profile photo](http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a-/ALV-UjW1Ug-7D5rvPAe0Dy8QWlBwdoMp8sHWFACGdNTzwJ9mF7CkTQ=s40-c)
Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]
ozan> Donald Fisk:
ozan> ? Mostly, students do computer science for the money they expect to get
ozan> ? after they graduate. That means that universities are under pressure to
ozan> ? teach languages which industry likes -- so out goes Scheme, and in comes
ozan> ? Java. (Whatever you think of Scheme, from a Common Lisp viewpoint it's
ozan> ? hard to see that as an improvement.)
ozan> it seems to me that scheme never had a chance, except for some experiments
ozan> here and there. [it would have been instructive to know what book was used
ozan> for teaching - a very important concern for these departments] here is the
ozan> shortened "first language" table from a US survey i posted before:
ozan> First
ozan> Language 1995-96 1996-97 1997-98 1998-1999 1999-2000 2000-2001
ozan> C++ 32% 39% 47% 50% 54% 40%
ozan> Java - - 9% 22% 22% 49%
ozan> Pascal 36% 23% 6% 2% 5% 2%
ozan> Scheme 2% 4% 4% 1% - -
This doesn't seem right, as a number of prominent CS departments are
using HtDP or something related, such as Brown, Utah, Rice, and
Northeastern. Possibly this is less than 1%, but these sure aren't
experiments.
--
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla
Thien-Thi Nguyen
> I just wonder if art is not _to_ much a social skill. [...] and then
> chose to let Flash-Gordon fantasies be the future lead instead.
the artist reserves the right to not comment on the created art, but
that's depriving people of much needed hints. choosing commentary is
somewhat of a social skill depending on the society.
> This is what Im'e up against ;))
well physics is physics, you have that on your side.
thi
ozan s yigit
... It's
? entirely possible for one person to engage in both CS and SE at the
? same time.
one would hope that is a *requirement*, and not a happy accident, where
CS would supply part of the rigor needed for SE.
oz
---
ozan s yigit
> This doesn't seem right, as a number of prominent CS departments are
> using HtDP or something related, such as Brown, Utah, Rice, and
> Northeastern. Possibly this is less than 1%, but these sure aren't
> experiments.
fair enough, perhaps to call them experiments is a bit of an exaggeration.
NE et al. have strong schemer faculty who seem to be dedicated. the numbers
themselves look quite solid (and certainly reflect what went on in one dept
i'm quite closely associated with for a very long time).
oz
--
practically no other tree in the forest looked so tree-like as this tree.
-- terry pratchett
ozan s yigit
> One interesting thing I have noticed (I am an undergraduate in CS at UC
> Berkeley) is that people who have programmed before they take the SICP
> course -- usually in some language of the C or Pascal ilk -- tend to
> thoroughly dislike the course, whereas people who haven't programmed
> before seeing Scheme tend to take to it readily.
are there actually CS undergrads in berkeley who have not programmed
before? very very strange. why don't you do an informal poll amongst the
first year CS students? [walk into the 101-equivalent class and ask for
a show of hands. :)]
oz
Dvd Avins
>* "Patrick W"
>| For this reason it's hard to say whether the increasing trend toward
>| certification *before* meaningful employment is a good thing or a bad
>| thing.
>| Personally, I think the cost is too high. I would rather see a society of
>| broadly educated individuals than a vast workshop of technical specialists.
>
> Both liberal education and general education used to be values in advanced
> societies, requirements for the proper operation of democracy, human
> rights,
> and politics in general. We have, however, devolved into a society of
> people
> who do not understand its society: people who are not educated, but
> trained,
> who do not ask questions, but are simply good at following complex orders.
The bright people I see coming out of universities here in The States are
capable of doing more than following complex orders, unless you consider "Go
forth and make money!" to be just another complex order. And they have fun
tackling problems that they recognize. Unfortunately, they've never been
exposed to the notion that societal issues are also interesting problems to be
tackled.
I believe that in the 1930s in the U.S. the ruling class learned that it
doesn't pay to be too greedy. Hence the rules changed allowing greater class
mobility. However those entering the ruling class lack the perspective that
tempers greed and so our social contract of 1933-1980 is deteriorating.
-- Attaining and helping others attain "Aha!" experiences, as satisfying as
attaining and helping others attain orgasms.
Thien-Thi Nguyen
> they've never been exposed to the notion that societal issues are also
> interesting problems to be tackled.
more precisely, the societies they are shown, subsequently perceive, and
ultimately choose for their personal embedding, are limited in scope.
(surviving dilbertesque cubicle culture and moving into corporate-dung-heap
cheese-(in)grat(iat)ing does require some skill, it seems.)
like, why aren't generally acceptable accounting principles generally
practiced?
thi
ozan s yigit
a related ref: Jacques Barzun's "Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of
Teaching and Learning," University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Brian Palmer
> Beyond the first and second courses, Common Lisp shows up as an
> implementation language in the Artificial Intelligence course and
> occasionally in the Programming Languages and Compilers course
> (usually when Richard Fateman is teaching it). Most other
> software-engineering type courses (e.g., operating systems, databases)
> use either C++ or Java, with a recent trend toward Java. There are
> quite a few other courses where you can usually get away with using
> Scheme or Lisp if you want to. I know people who have done projects
> for the numerical analysis course in Scheme, and I have written code
> for two computational biology courses (one in the math department, one
> in the molecular biology department) in Common Lisp.
Aye. Not sure why, but the only class I took at Stanford where the
instructor explicitly mentioned Common Lisp as a language option was
in Computational Biology (although python was what he actually
recommended).
Of course, a lot of the upper-level classes were, in theory, language
independent; but many of them provided "helper" libraries written in
C++ or C, so using another language meant a bit more work.
--
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess [only] as long as he
keeps it to himself.... -- Thomas Jefferson
Brad Miller
"Andrzej Lewandowski" <lewand...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:p4ffhuspinujl6uef...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 23 Jun 2002 22:45:16 GMT, Thaddeus L Olczyk
> <olc...@interaccess.com> wrote:
>
> >The AI winter was created by the AI community. The AI community
> >worried more about AI theory than producing practical applications
> >and the users simply said "This is not going to pay off". I believe
> >the "IT winter" is already here, and it has many different phases
> >compared to "AI winter".
>
> AI winter was created by the lack of profitable business model. As
> with "dot.com winter"...
>
> A.L.
This is close. AI Winter was the result of two factors: 1) over-promising
and under-delivering (the problems were harder than most people thought at
the time, the most famous example was MIT's "summer vision project"). 2) the
shortening of time horizons for investment by research funding agencies -
DARPA in particular changed from funding basic research to instead wanting
specific deliverables that could be tested and deployed.
AI winter was bad for a lot of players that were not really part of
traditional AI, but AI was clearly the hardest hit, because the payoff was
(and is given the original goals) the farthest out. Two lessons: don't hype;
it's OK to aim for the big long-term wins (out 20+ years), but concentrate
on stepping stones that have useful demonstrations and capabilities within
the next 3-5 years. And always deliver something, even if it means cutting
features; expectation management is easier with a track record of honesty
and realism than with BS and failures.
By setting our sights on shorter term wins, AI is starting to get corporate
funding again. We have to be quick to say what's needing, where it can be
applied given what we know, and what is nearly within our grasp vs. stuff we
have no clue about (it could be easy, but it could be very hard).
Interestingly enough, there are some signals from DARPA that they may be
returning to a model of funding basic research...
ozan s yigit
> ... garbage collection, late 1950's.
some of the better GC work in recent memory is due to java. see
for example http://research.sun.com/jtech/pubs for some papers.
Christopher Browne
> * Vlastimil Adamovsky
> | THERE IS NO COMPUTER SCIENCE...
> | It is an ART...
>
I'd be more game to point at Knuth's chair being the chair of "The Art
of Computer Programming," as opposed to the science thereof. :-)
> | Why??? I think Microsoft did lot of good things...
>
> Yeah, sure. Such as your newsreader's line breaking algorithm.
Seems pretty broken to me...
--
(concatenate 'string "chris" "@cbbrowne.com")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/x.html
"I'd say the probability of Windows containing a backdoor is about the
same as a spreadsheet containing a flight simulator."
-- Phil Hunt <ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk>
Software Scavenger
> > Yeah, sure. Such as your newsreader's line breaking algorithm.
>
> Seems pretty broken to me...
Is the punch line broken?
Xah Lee
you mentioned the title of Donald Knuth's magnum opus _Art of
computing_ in the context of discusion that fringes on whether
programing is science or art. I'm quite pissed off at work at the
moment, so let me take the time to give some guide on this matter to
the daily programers.
At the bottom rung of programers, there's no question about whether
programing is science or art. Because monkey coders could not care
less. These folks ain't be reading this post, for they hardly will
have heard of lisp.
This leaves us with elite programers who have a smattering of
interests on cogitation and philosophical conundrums. So, is
programing a science or art?
For the programing morons, this question is associated with erudition.
It certainly is a hip subject among hackers such as those hardcore
Perl advocates and unix proponents, who would casually hint on such
realization, impressing a sophistication among peers.
Such a question is not uncommen among those curious. For example, "Is
mathematics science or art?", is the same type of question that has
been broached by dabblers now and then. We can also detect such
dilemma in the titles conferred to blathering computer jockeys: which
one are thee? baccalaureate of science or baccalaureate of arts? It
really makes no fucking difference.
Ultimately, fantastically stupid questions like these are not
discussed by mathematicians nor philosophers. These are natural
language effectations, trapping dummies to fuzz about nothing; not
unlike quotations.
For these computing jockeys, there remains the question of why Knuth
named his books the "Art" of Computer Programing, or why some
computing luminaries litter the caution that programing is as much an
art as science. What elite dimwits need to realize is that these
authors are not defining or correcting, but breaking precepts among
industrial programing automata.
To the readers of hip literatures, words like science and art are
spellbinding, and the need to pigeonhole is imminent. Of these
ruminating class of people, the problem lies in their wanting of
originality. What fills their banal brain are the stale food of
thought that has been chewed and spewed. These above-average eggheads
mop up the scholastic tidbits of its day to mull and muse with fellow
eggheads. They could not see new perspectives. Could not understand
gists. Could not detect non-questions. They are the holder and passer
of knowledge, a bucket of pre-digested purees. Their train of thought
forever loop around established tracks -- going nowhere, anytime!
So, is programing an art or science? is it art or science? I really
need to know.
Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html
> From: Christopher Browne (cbbr...@acm.org)
> Subject: Re: Is mediocrity the norm in computer science ?
> Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
> Date: 2002-07-07 11:10:43 PST
Andreas Eder
> "Vlastimil Adamovsky" <am...@ambrasoft.com> wrote in message news:<3d1f34c5$1...@nntp2.nac.net>...
>
> > THERE IS NO COMPUTER SCIENCE...
> > It is an ART...
>
> What is the difference between computer science, software engineering,
> and programming?
What is the difference between doing mathematics, calculating an
integral and counting?
Andreas
--
Wherever I lay my .emacs, there愀 my $HOME.
Software Scavenger
> What is the difference between doing mathematics, calculating an
> integral and counting?
Those three are very different from each other. On the other hand,
computer science, software engineering, and programming, are much
closer to each other, with a lot more ambiguities in their
differences.
We could say CS is development of theory, SE is development of
practices, and programming is applying those. Applying them could be
mostly done by rote, and thus be like manual labor. But, in the real
world, most of that manual labor is automated. The actual work of the
programmer is more in the CS/SE aspects than in the labor aspect.
Each software project has its own computer science and software
engineering, because if they all shared them then their differences
would just be differences in configuration of the same software.
Vlastimil Adamovsky
"Software Scavenger" <cubic...@mailandnews.com> wrote in message
news:a6789134.02071...@posting.google.com...
> Andreas Eder <Andrea...@t-online.de> wrote in message
news:<m3n0sq6...@elgin.eder.de>...
>
> > What is the difference between doing mathematics, calculating an
> > integral and counting?
>
> Those three are very different from each other. On the other hand,
> computer science, software engineering, and programming, are much
> closer to each other, with a lot more ambiguities in their
> differences.
>
> We could say CS is development of theory, SE is development of
> practices, and programming is applying those. Applying them could be
> mostly done by rote, and thus be like manual labor. But, in the real
> world, most of that manual labor is automated.
Programming is no way automated... We still need coding monkeys doing the
job...
Vlastik
Software Scavenger
> Programming is no way automated... We still need coding monkeys doing the
For example, a compiler does the compiling work, rather than having to
do it manually. And you can use grep to automatically search through
your source code for a pattern, rather than searching line by line
manually. The amount of work involved in programming if it were all
done manually would be many orders of magnitude more than it is now.
The non-automated part of the work is very high level, CS/SE work.
This is why programming is really equivalent to a combination of CS
and SE.
High quality software is not usually developed by coding monkeys.
Programming is like a fine art, requiring extreme amounts of talent
and motivation to do a good job. It's easy to see that software
developed by groups stratified into higher level analysts/designers
and lower level coding monkeys tends to be of very low quality. Such
organizations tend to waste huge amounts of money trying to make such
software projects succeed, never accepting the fact that fine arts
don't fit well in a corporate culture.