sage is post-modern?

[William Stein]

"The essence of it (at least for me) is that software development has
long had a modernist viewpoint that admirable software systems are
composed of uniform components, composed in a uniform and simple way.
(Smalltalk and Lisp are good examples of this kind of thinking.) A
post-modern view is that software is all sorts of different very
different stuff glued together in all sorts of different ways (think
Perl and Unix), and this style of software (big bucket of glue) isn’t
a bad thing."

-- quote at the top of
http://www.ianbicking.org/blog/2013/10/togetherjs-a-postmodern-tool.html


--
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

[rjf]

It doesn't have to be a bad thing, but it could be a bad thing.

For example, crappy glue, crappy components, conflicting "stuff" like
data formats or underlying assumptions, poor (or no) user model. 
Unreliability,
maintenance nightmares...   These immediately
come to mind.

I don't know why this person thinks that Lisp (programs written in Lisp,
presumably) are composed of uniform components.

see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_ball_of_mud

which seems to date the term  Ball of Mud to 1997.  But it certainly
is much earlier.  I think Joel Moses used this term before 1971.

Anyway, I think "post modern" as a description adds nothing much to our
understanding.

RJF

 

[William Stein]

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 10:17 AM, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Thursday, October 31, 2013 9:15:44 AM UTC-7, William Stein wrote:
>>
>> "The essence of it (at least for me) is that software development has
>> long had a modernist viewpoint that admirable software systems are
>> composed of uniform components, composed in a uniform and simple way.
>> (Smalltalk and Lisp are good examples of this kind of thinking.) A
>> post-modern view is that software is all sorts of different very
>> different stuff glued together in all sorts of different ways (think
>> Perl and Unix), and this style of software (big bucket of glue) isn’t
>> a bad thing."
>>
>> -- quote at the top of
>> http://www.ianbicking.org/blog/2013/10/togetherjs-a-postmodern-tool.html
>>
>>
>> --
>> William Stein
>> Professor of Mathematics
>> University of Washington
>> http://wstein.org
>
>
> It doesn't have to be a bad thing, but it could be a bad thing.
>
> For example, crappy glue, crappy components, conflicting "stuff" like
> data formats or underlying assumptions, poor (or no) user model.
> Unreliability,
> maintenance nightmares... These immediately
> come to mind.

healthcare.gov ?

>
> I don't know why this person thinks that Lisp (programs written in Lisp,
> presumably) are composed of uniform components.
>
> see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_ball_of_mud
>
> which seems to date the term Ball of Mud to 1997. But it certainly
> is much earlier. I think Joel Moses used this term before 1971.
>
> Anyway, I think "post modern" as a description adds nothing much to our
> understanding.
>
> RJF
>
>
>
>
>

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[rjf]

On Thursday, October 31, 2013 10:18:37 AM UTC-7, William Stein wrote:

healthcare.gov ?

I don't have a clear idea of what has gone wrong there.  Some states seems
to have good web sites, and maybe they somehow have an easier task. Or not.

Years ago we used to teach students about algorithms and programming and
data structures by having them write (say)  sorting programs.   Now people
think they are programming when they point and click and draw connecting lines
in a graph.  Or write out a cascading style sheet.
Or write something in SQL.
And then other people claim that the only way to program what THEY need is
to define an FPGA that responds to a message for high speed financial trades
in a fraction of a microsecond.

It seems to me more important for a student or practitioner to understand the
range of issues than to come up with different labels.  Extreme programming,  just in time
programming, iterative / top down/ bottom up/ functional/ etc etc.

Joel Moses enjoyed calling Macsyma "catholic"  (small c) meaning inclusive. partly because
he was not Catholic (large c).

similar to but not as extreme as post-modern.  I advocated a stronger inclusiveness by
implementing a Lisp system on the VAX computers that could call C, Fortran, etc.
from Macsyma.  Sort of like Sage in some respects, but the glue was Lisp, not python.
So we called stuff like MINPACK  and the first version of MATLAB from Macsyma.

Can something from 1978 be called post modern?

[Tom Boothby]

Given the amount of time and effort put into maintaining and improving
the glue, and the resistance to absorption of 3rd-party code, I view
Sage as more like a decorator crab than a mudball or gluebucket.

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 10:17 AM, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>

[Nathann Cohen]

Failing at producing an elegant software while forgiving ourselves by calling it "post-modernist" is an opportunity we can't afford to let pass by.

Nathann