On Tue, 30 Aug 1994, Dr. Richard Botting wrote:
> (The software here has just stopped posting things for me:-( hence
> direct reply.
I am posting Dr. Botting's message here along with my reply, with his
approval.
> In article <··········@pulitzer.eng.sematech.org> you wrote:
>
> : In article <·····················@camax.com>, ······@camax.com (Jeff Kotula) writes:
> : |> ....
> : |> Preference indicates some big, amorphous blob of reasons that make you like
> : |> something better than something else. This is not engineering. If you
> : |> cannot logically justify a decision you either don't understand the decision,
> : |> the problem, or engineering.
>
> : You seem to be saying that there is no place for intuition in
> : engineering. I cannot agree. Logic is great, but it has been
> : proven to be limited. Intuition (that "amorphous blob") can
> : pick up where logic hits its limits. I have great respect for
> : someone who is brave enough, in software circles, to say "That
> : doesn't seem right to me. I don't know why, but I don't feel
> : good about it." I myself have quite a bit of difficulty doing
> : this, but I like having someone around who has good intuition
> : and trusts it enough to run with it.
> Intuition makes leaps. Logic follows steps. You need both.
> Intuition is a marvelous way to find problems and propose solutions.
> You don't want to know the ammount of time, effort, and lives have
> been wasted when an intutively obvious (to the proposer) solution
> has not been scrutinized by logic. For a start - the death of long
> distance phone service in New York some years ago came from what must
> have been badly written and unchecked code. Similarly those people
> fried in an X ray machine...
I agree that, where possible, intuition should be tested using logic.
> You can also improve intuition
> there are several texts... for example "Synectics" ...
>
> : As an aside, you have also apparently decided as a premise that
> : programming is strictly engineering.
> I think any body, of any age and any skill can be a programmer.
> The question is whether we can and will do software better than this
> minimal level of skill... to the point of rivaling the reliabillity
> of any other engineering discipline.
>
> : Part of the debate here
> : is whether programming is also, or completely, art.
> See Knuth's Turing Lecture...
> My problem is that so much software is rather bad art by people
> with no artistic (or engineering) training.
Agreed.
> : I think
> : it is some of both, and where you do which depends on what
> : aspects of your problem you are dealing with (user interface
> : tends to be largely art, based on some unprovable principles),
> : and to some extent on the nature of the problem itself.
> I've had my work praised and been exhibitted in art galleries.
> It was not engineered. It was (like most good art) useless.
> People liked it(like some good art). Based on Paul Klee's work
> by some association or other.....
> Where is your art exhibitted?
In the source code and the user interfaces of some obscure application
software. Submitted a video for a conference once - it was rejected as
being "too marketing-oriented."
> Engineering also has a fair dose of rules of thumb. But it does
> prefer usefulness to aesthetics....
>
> --
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