In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
*hard* and
*boring*" I'm okay with "Hard" because it's relative to your skill
level, so I know that he's wrong from the outset. But I've never ever
heard anyone (at least not a programmer) say that programming is
boring! Oh, sure, there are times when I have to slog through some
standard piece of code for the tenth time that I wish was built into
the language, but, actually, I can think of nearly no other domain that
is less boring than programming. Take, for example, the other things
that I do on a regular basis: molecular biology (wet lab), statistics,
mathematical modeling, reading and writing technical papers. You want
boring? The only thing more boring than reading other people's
technical papers is having to write my own, and try piptetting clear
liquids into clear liquids for 8 hours straight every day!
Programming is, at least for me, the most exciting thing that there is!
I get to make the highest tech machines there are do my will; I get to
create new things that no one has ever created before -- even if
they're spread sheets! -- I get to amaze my colleagues and lab mates,
and save them hours, days, years of what would be REALLY boring work
for them, and I get to live inside a real detective story (with bugs,
not killers). The only think that I can think of that's more exciting
than programming is flying gliders upside down. But no one pays me to
do that!
So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
boring?!?!?
>> So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
>> boring?!?!?
Yep, me.
But let me explain a bit.
It was the reason I gave up programming almost completely about 15-20
years ago. I found that there weren't very many really hard or
interesting problems (to me). Of course the world was a lot simpler
then. The internet hadn't been really "born" then or was only
considered a good source of porn and not much else :-) Windows was a
joke. I had never really got into UNIX at all as all my work had been
in DOS otherwise I might have felt otherwise. I had written my own
device drivers, my own Chess program, knew C backwards, understood the
intimate workings of computers extremely well etc etc. In short I
couldn't really see anything I couldn't do and facing a lack of
challenges I moved to other pastures.
To me programming was simply the menial part of the job. I loved the
problem solving and algorithm design but after a few years it got a bit
boring.
Of course things have changed hugely since then and I am getting back
into the game - this time as a hobbyist and not a pro. I am greatly
looking forward to new challenges now.
So maybe more correctly I should have said yes - I used to find
programming boring but I think I will find it very interesting going
forward. :-)
········@gmail.com wrote:
> In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
> *hard* and
> *boring*" I'm okay with "Hard" because it's relative to your skill
> level, so I know that he's wrong from the outset.
ha ha. Well, I'm sure you are much better at it than me. Really.
The point you missed (which I admit was implicit, and it's dangerous to
leave anything implicit when talking to programmers because they
generally are basically marginally autistic) was `for ordinary people'.
--tim
> The point you missed [...] was `for ordinary people'.
But this can't be true as a blanket statement either. Others have
pointed out that one is programming all the time. Whenever you tell a
freind how to get to your house, you're programming. (You might find
this boring, but it's certainly not hard!) Whether programming is hard
is a matter of whether and to what extent you understand the domain and
the programming language, and whether you have the more-or-less general
skills associated with clearly expressing instructions and debugging
them when they go wrong. Now, you're right, I admit that there are
programming concepts which some unusually stupid children of ten might
find a little puzzling. So I guess I have to admit that prgoramming is
not easy for EVERYONE, and not exciting for EVERYONE, but this seems
hardly worth discussion.
········@gmail.com wrote:
> > The point you missed [...] was `for ordinary people'.
>
> But this can't be true as a blanket statement either. Others have
> pointed out that one is programming all the time. Whenever you tell a
> freind how to get to your house, you're programming. (You might find
> this boring, but it's certainly not hard!)
Actually it is hard. You've got people who are good / bad at giving
directions, and people who are good / bad at following them. You've
got people like myself who read maps almost perfectly, and you've got
people who get emotional and flustered about it, like when it becomes a
Mom / Dad argument about who knows how to read a map. I just end that
nonsense by saying, "Give me the map." I'm the 3D spatial math whiz of
the family, I'm the kid who took all his Atari joysticks apart and so
forth. A lot of people can't handle the plugs on a VCR. It's not fair
to call such people stupid, as they may be very intelligent in other
areas such as interpersonal communication, etc. But clearly, they lack
spatial reasoning skills.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
<········@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The point you missed [...] was `for ordinary people'.
>
> But this can't be true as a blanket statement either. Others have
> pointed out that one is programming all the time. Whenever you tell a
> freind how to get to your house, you're programming. (You might find
> this boring, but it's certainly not hard!)
It certainly is, for ordinary people. Most people can't give directions
for shit. Often they are simply wrong, only very rarely are they
actually robust (offering error correction and assertions so that you
know if you are offf track). If I ever get directions that I consider
good, it's almost always from an engineer, programmer or somebody with
that kind of mind who ended up on a different path (my father in law who
was a toolmaker gives excellent directions, for instance).
In general giving directions of any kind, including how to peform jobs,
is very difficult, that's why it's so hard to find good managers and
trainers.
Michael
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
"Tim Bradshaw" <··········@tfeb.org> writes:
> ········@gmail.com wrote:
>> In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
>> *hard* and
>> *boring*" I'm okay with "Hard" because it's relative to your skill
>> level, so I know that he's wrong from the outset.
>
> ha ha. Well, I'm sure you are much better at it than me. Really.
>
> The point you missed (which I admit was implicit, and it's dangerous to
> leave anything implicit when talking to programmers because they
> generally are basically marginally autistic) was `for ordinary people'.
>
If you define 'ordinary people' by 'people thinking programming is
boring', you are right...
(Yes, explicit is better than implicit)
I know a lot of people who like finding solutions to problems, and
sometimes the process they use is really close to 'programming'.
--
Thomas Samson
All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in
fact, barely presentable.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
Thomas Samson wrote:
> "Tim Bradshaw" <··········@tfeb.org> writes:
> If you define 'ordinary people' by 'people thinking programming is
> boring', you are right...
No, I define them as `some statistically significant sample of the
population'. As ought to be obvious.
> (Yes, explicit is better than implicit)
It certainly is for your average cll denizen nowadays.
········@gmail.com wrote:
> So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> boring?!?!?
The part of programming that is figuring out the algorithms and data
structures for accomplishing your goal is great fun.
The part of programming that is figuring out how to translate your
logic into a programming language is fun -- except when your language
makes you jump through stupid hoops. Hoop-jumping is boring. (That's
why we like Lisp, right?)
The part of programming that is hooking up your snazzy logic to
incredibly poorly designed interfaces via utterly asinine (and usually
under-documented) APIs is kinda fun when you're in the right state of
mind, but is often frustrating and boring.
Unfortunately, I think most of the programming that people actually do
is hoop jumping and interfacing.
joh wrote:
> ········@gmail.com wrote:
> > So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> > boring?!?!?
>
> The part of programming that is figuring out the algorithms and data
> structures for accomplishing your goal is great fun.
>
> The part of programming that is figuring out how to translate your
> logic into a programming language is fun -- except when your language
> makes you jump through stupid hoops. Hoop-jumping is boring. (That's
> why we like Lisp, right?)
>
> The part of programming that is hooking up your snazzy logic to
> incredibly poorly designed interfaces via utterly asinine (and usually
> under-documented) APIs is kinda fun when you're in the right state of
> mind, but is often frustrating and boring.
>
> Unfortunately, I think most of the programming that people actually do
> is hoop jumping and interfacing.
Well, with Lisp we literally create the hoops: ()
········@gmail.com wrote:
> In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
> *hard* and
> *boring*" I'm okay with "Hard" because it's relative to your skill
> level, so I know that he's wrong from the outset. But I've never ever
> heard anyone (at least not a programmer) say that programming is
> boring!
Everything depends upon your personal motivation towards a task. If you
are using a technology (language, OS, library, etc) that you like, and
the task interests you, then programming can be fun. If you are doing
something you have no interest in, for someone else, in a language you
don't prefer (ie, 50-80% of most jobs... ) then programming can be
boring.
Like everything in life, this goes in cycles.
-Jason
········@gmail.com wrote:
> In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
> *hard* and
> *boring*" I'm okay with "Hard" because it's relative to your skill
> level, so I know that he's wrong from the outset. But I've never ever
> heard anyone (at least not a programmer) say that programming is
> boring!
The vast majority of industrial programming is boring. "Industrial
prorgramming" is a never ending ritual of looking up stuff in some API
that some bonehead got paid to make you suffer through. It's piles of
stuff that doesn't work because it hasn't been tested. So you get to
do the hard work of making it work and getting it tested. There is
generally no elegance or aesthetic satisfaction in any of this. It's
just reams and reams of "ad hoc" engineering problems.
I get through that crap by focusing on what my strategic goals are,
setting milestones, and attacking the slog problems micro-incrementally
using source control. When I check something in, I have a small
satisfaction that the morass isn't as bad now, that I've made an
improvement. Done persistently over a long period of time, large, very
boring problems can be overcome.
I'd like to start getting paid for my skill at this, however. The
support burdens of open source have gotten old.
Because industrial programming is so boring, I have a strong resistance
to technologies that don't solve any of my problems. That's a lot of
the Microsoft and Java universes, for instance. Actually if someone
wanted to pay me to learn that stuff and bother with it, I'd do it for
a time. I have plenty of value add to offer, I think it's a fair
trade. But what I'm not willing to do, is front an exceedingly
time-consuming learning curve on my own nickel, for industrial
programming paradigms which suck + don't solve my own problems. So if
a job says Java or C# on it, I just have to let it go. I put enough
into C++ over the years and I Won't Get Fooled Again.
There are aspects of programming I actually like. I always liked
assembly language because it's simple and performance oriented. It's
possible to engineer an aesthetically / mathematically pleasing result
in a small loop kernel. Generally when I like programming, it is
because I can design something elegantly. I think my CMake build for
Chicken Scheme is a likeable build, to the extent that anyone is going
to like a build. Builds are really not very likeable compared to other
things people can do with software. But, they are important for
actually getting anyone to use your stuff.
My hope is that I'll eventually create a codebase where I'm no longer
working with external ad hoc dependencies, and where my coding
expressions will have some ongoing elegance. As well as being useful
and powerful.
> Programming is, at least for me, the most exciting thing that there is!
Well, you're probably not doing "real work" then. By that I mean, the
sheer grunt stuff that is required to make the software work for
thousands of people. If you don't have to be responsible for the
results of your engineering, yeah programming is fun. Try this
childhood favorite:
10 PRINT "SHIT"
20 GOTO 10
"Real work" in programming is like your pipettes in chemistry. Deadly
boring.
> I get to make the highest tech machines there are do my will;
Oh really now?? You're definitely not a build engineer.
> I get to create new things that no one has ever created before
Industrial programming is usually creating something that the Nth slob
has already made for the Pth time. Only this time it has to be owned
by Microsoft. And it has to be the new API rather than the old API, so
that Microsoft can force people to fork over for upgrades. "Churn" is
the most boring thing in programming of all. It keeps people stuck at
the ad hoc engineering level indefinitely.
> -- even if
> they're spread sheets! -- I get to amaze my colleagues and lab mates,
> and save them hours, days, years of what would be REALLY boring work
> for them, and I get to live inside a real detective story (with bugs,
> not killers).
There's a lot to be said for problems that are at the difficulty of a
mere scripting language. One gets a lot of new functionality for not
much work. This has been part of what has enabled me to cough out a
CMake build over the past 10 months. It's scripting; if it had been
some kind of arcanely painful C++ interface, I wouldn't have done it.
> So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> boring?!?!?
Yep. You have a very skewed perspective on programming. Judging from
your examples, I would say that you have done no real systems
engineering.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
> You have a very skewed perspective on programming. Judging from
> your examples, I would say that you have done no real systems engineering.
Hmmmm. I'm not sure what that means since it's a scale-free assertion,
but as we have determined elsewhere I was one of the two lead systems
engineers -- or whatever you want to call it -- for our startup. There
I engineered (designed and implemented top to bottom) the interface
between our Lisp software and Oracle, and between with various random
equipment, and did the whole object model for the system, as well as
being the lead user support engineer, which means that real live users
called us on the real live phone and we provided real live patches for
them which real live worked. And these were no dumbs--t users that you
can hang up on; these were serious Big Phrama companies who are NOT
happy when you waste their time and when your very expensive software
doesn't work right!
This was all quite hard, and at times quite frustrating, and pretty
much all quite fun! (And, no, I wasn't getting paid a huge amount, and
no there was little likelihood at the time of making much money from
it.)
So, does that count as "real systems engineering", or are you going to
change the definition until you manage to find something that I admit
to being bored by? :-) Such thing DO exist, but it's wasn't the "real
systems engineering" that I've done. The most boring thing that I do is
random one-off script odd jobs for scientist who should be able to
learn to do it themselves. I wouldn't call this systems engineering,
but maybe you would?
"Mallor" <···········@gmail.com> writes:
> because I can design something elegantly. I think my CMake build for
> Chicken Scheme is a likeable build, to the extent that anyone is going
Enough. About. Chicken. Scheme.
Why do nearly all of your posts steer the discussion toward this?
Cool it down a little, guy.
Bill Atkins wrote:
> "Mallor" <···········@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > because I can design something elegantly. I think my CMake build for
> > Chicken Scheme is a likeable build, to the extent that anyone is going
>
> Enough. About. Chicken. Scheme.
>
> Why do nearly all of your posts steer the discussion toward this?
> Cool it down a little, guy.
No! You pay attention to context instead of fixating on whatever irks
you! Absolutely reasonable for me to name my work on Chicken Scheme as
an example of a somewhat palatable scripting level task.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
Mallor wrote:
> Bill Atkins wrote:
> > "Mallor" <···········@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > > because I can design something elegantly. I think my CMake build for
> > > Chicken Scheme is a likeable build, to the extent that anyone is going
> >
> > Enough. About. Chicken. Scheme.
> >
> > Why do nearly all of your posts steer the discussion toward this?
> > Cool it down a little, guy.
>
> No! You pay attention to context instead of fixating on whatever irks
> you! Absolutely reasonable for me to name my work on Chicken Scheme as
> an example of a somewhat palatable scripting level task.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Brandon Van Every
Sure. When were we talking about "scripting level tasks"?
There's certainly nothing wrong with mentioning this once, but that's
not the situation here. I don't know much about the details of the
work others do here, and yet I know (from having heard it over and over
and over) that it took you 10 months to get Chicken Scheme working on
Windows. Try as I might, I can't be impressed by that (it's just a
build scipt, for crissake).
It's very nice that you're contributing to Chicken Scheme. But do try
to realize that not everyone enjoys reading the same phrase over and
over and over again ("10 months to get Chicken Scheme to work on
Windows"), surrounded by different filler text that exists merely so
that you can repeat this tidbit of information.
Maybe if you'd spent less time posting to USENET about your work, you
could have got that done in under 10 months.
Bill Atkins <······@rpi.edu> wrote:
+---------------
| "Mallor" <···········@gmail.com> writes:
| > because I can design something elegantly. I think my CMake build for
| > Chicken Scheme is a likeable build, to the extent that anyone is going
|
| Enough. About. Chicken. Scheme.
|
| Why do nearly all of your posts steer the discussion toward this?
| Cool it down a little, guy.
+---------------
Ah... "Deja vu all over again." Kenny. Cells. 'Nuff said.
Hey, we all get excited when we finally find something
that works for us. Chicken Scheme works for him. Great!
CMUCL works for me. Cells work for Kenny. So it goes...
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
Rob Warnock wrote:
> Bill Atkins <······@rpi.edu> wrote:
> +---------------
> | "Mallor" <···········@gmail.com> writes:
> | > because I can design something elegantly. I think my CMake build for
> | > Chicken Scheme is a likeable build, to the extent that anyone is going
> |
> | Enough. About. Chicken. Scheme.
> |
> | Why do nearly all of your posts steer the discussion toward this?
> | Cool it down a little, guy.
> +---------------
>
> Ah... "Deja vu all over again." Kenny. Cells. 'Nuff said.
>
> Hey, we all get excited when we finally find something
> that works for us. Chicken Scheme works for him. Great!
> CMUCL works for me. Cells work for Kenny. So it goes...
No, I have to take it all back. Cells just don't scale. Starting to be
more trouble than they are worth. Classic breakdown in the face of real
world complexity. Kludge on top of kludge just to get through the day.
I spend all my time writing debugging tools and diagnostics just to find
out what is going wrong. Nothing to see here, move on.
kenny
--
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
Bill Atkins wrote:
> "Mallor" <···········@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > because I can design something elegantly. I think my CMake build for
> > Chicken Scheme is a likeable build, to the extent that anyone is going
>
> Enough. About. Chicken. Scheme.
>
> Why do nearly all of your posts steer the discussion toward this?
> Cool it down a little, guy.
Hehe.
Mallor wrote:
>
> Yep. You have a very skewed perspective on programming. Judging from
> your examples, I would say that you have done no real systems
> engineering.
I'd tend to agree with that, but I suspect that almost no programmers
are very good systems engineers in fact, and (apocryphally, based on
other threads on cll and personal experience) Lisp people are worse
than most. That kind of engineering is pretty boring unless you're the
kind of person that enjoys it (I do, in fact). I've spent an
inordinate amount of time trying to get systems-level bugs in
(locally-written) applications fixed and never really been convinced
that most of the programmers even understood what the bug *was*. A lot
of features in Java are attempts to make it work even in the face of
programmers who have no systems skills at all.
But all this misses the point. Asking the question `is programming
boring?' in a Lisp newsgroup is a bit like asking the question `is sex
before marriage a sin?' in the Vatican: what answer did you *expect* to
get, and how well do you think it correlates with reality? Actually,
it's worse than that because programmers are much worse than average at
seeing things from perspectives other than their own: it's partly my
fault, I guess, because in the thread that gave rise to this one I
forgot that critical fact.
Oh well, never mind.
> So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> boring?!?!?
>
When I once met John maddog Hall a few years ago (when I was even more
naive than what I am today) I asked him why he began studying Electrical
Engineering and why he liked programming.
His answer were only two words: "Instant gratification".
I think that's pretty much what programming can give you .. instant
gratification. Don't know if there's something more instant which is not
x-rated.
On 2006-09-06, ········@gmail.com <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
> *hard* and *boring*"
[snip]
> So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> boring?!?!?
I dislike the phrasing of this question. Most statements of the form
'X is Y' ignore various kinds of X's or various kinds of Y's, or
ignore the dimension of time. My chair at time t0 differs from my
chair at time t1. "Is" it the "same" chair?
When you say, "is programming boring", you imply that all activities
bore people equally and that the question has a single, yes-or-no
answer, thus provoking instant argument in those that disagree.
Ask, instead, "does programming bore YOU? why or why not? When? Do
you know people that find programming boring? Can you describe why?"
Or make some other statement: "I believe that programming bores some
people, in some situations," and describe the set of people and
situations.
Anyway, sometimes, some of the programming I have to do bores me, yes.
Sometimes I can change my point of view so that I approach a problem
that used to bore me in such a way that it doesn't any more.
Sometimes it seems like something bores me, but only because I've hit
a problem that I just don't know how to solve yet, and really it
frustrates me, so I avoid it.
When I had it posted, my resume on monster.com began "Problem solver
seeks interesting problems". Diddling the umpteenth Excel spreadsheet
at work, arguably "programming", rarely interests me. I automate what
I can, and that usually interests me, at least insofar as it allows me
to indulge my natural laziness, even if the problem itself doesn't
innately light my fire.
"Programming is hard" == "some programming requires great effort".
Surprise. "Programming is boring" == "some programming bores some
people in some situations". Surprise. If you ask people "do you want
to learn to program?" they yawn at you. If you ask them "do you want
to learn how to never diddle that spreadsheet the same way ever
again?" then their answers might change (but only if they diddle a lot
of spreadsheets :).
-- Larry
p.s For more on the problems of "is", see
http://www.esgs.org/uk/art/epr1.htm .
Larry Clapp wrote:
>
> "Programming is hard" == "some programming requires great effort".
> Surprise. "Programming is boring" == "some programming bores some
> people in some situations". Surprise.
Another dimension not previously mentioned in this thread, is whether
the *programmer* is boring. A boring person might derive satisfaction
from rote, repetitive tasks that they can do over and over again,
especially if they get paid for it. Actually the pay factor can
*really* skew this. I've kept a roof over my head gathering signatures
after all. It is boring work. But it's tolerable, and if I start to
make big bucks, I can actually enjoy it for awhile.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
On 2006-09-06, Mallor <···········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Larry Clapp wrote:
>> "Programming is hard" == "some programming requires great effort".
>> Surprise. "Programming is boring" == "some programming bores some
>> people in some situations". Surprise.
>
> Another dimension not previously mentioned in this thread, is
> whether the *programmer* is boring. A boring person might derive
> satisfaction from rote, repetitive tasks that they can do over and
> over again,
[snip]
http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/
-- L
Larry Clapp <·····@theclapp.org> wrote:
+---------------
| Mallor <···········@gmail.com> wrote:
| > Larry Clapp wrote:
| >> "Programming is hard" == "some programming requires great effort".
| >> Surprise. "Programming is boring" == "some programming bores some
| >> people in some situations". Surprise.
| >
| > Another dimension not previously mentioned in this thread, is
| > whether the *programmer* is boring. A boring person might derive
| > satisfaction from rote, repetitive tasks that they can do over and
| > over again,
| [snip]
|
| http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/
+---------------
For those who haven't wandered through that particular maze before,
a better [well, more directly to the point] place to start is:
http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/r0/Day1.html
particularly the section "The Ways of Mappers and Packers".
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
On 2006-09-07, Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org> wrote:
> Larry Clapp <·····@theclapp.org> wrote:
> +---------------
>| Mallor <···········@gmail.com> wrote:
>| > Larry Clapp wrote:
>| >> "Programming is hard" == "some programming requires great
>| >> effort". Surprise. "Programming is boring" == "some
>| >> programming bores some people in some situations". Surprise.
>| >
>| > Another dimension not previously mentioned in this thread, is
>| > whether the *programmer* is boring. A boring person might derive
>| > satisfaction from rote, repetitive tasks that they can do over
>| > and over again,
>| [snip]
>|
>| http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/
> +---------------
>
> For those who haven't wandered through that particular maze before,
> a better [well, more directly to the point] place to start is:
>
> http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/r0/Day1.html
>
> particularly the section "The Ways of Mappers and Packers".
Good point, Rob, thanks!
-- L
········@gmail.com wrote:
> But I've never ever
> heard anyone (at least not a programmer) say that programming is
> boring! Oh, sure, there are times when I have to slog through some
> standard piece of code for the tenth time that I wish was built into
> the language, but, actually, I can think of nearly no other domain that
> is less boring than programming. Take, for example, the other things
> that I do on a regular basis: molecular biology (wet lab), statistics,
> mathematical modeling, reading and writing technical papers. You want
> boring? The only thing more boring than reading other people's
> technical papers is having to write my own, and try piptetting clear
> liquids into clear liquids for 8 hours straight every day!
It really depends. A scientist doing his programming (even if boring at
some times) is likely much more contented with his life because he can
always argue that his programming is for the better things in life.
But a programmer in company (even if paid 10 times more than a
scientist) who gets his direction from management is less likely happy.
I often meet people in bars who are programmers for a living and they
complain that girls are not acknowledging their way of earning money.
I give them the advice: fogret your BMW car and your high incomme and
tell girls you are a physicist and quarks are your friends even if it
is only meant for the "one-night-stand".
Schneewittchen
Förster vom Silberwald schrieb:
> I often meet people in bars who are programmers for a living and they
> complain that girls are not acknowledging their way of earning money.
> I give them the advice: fogret your BMW car and your high incomme and
> tell girls you are a physicist and quarks are your friends even if it
> is only meant for the "one-night-stand".
Hey dude, you want to ruin this guy's love life????
If there is something worse than saying "I am a programmer" to get
laid, it is to say "I am a quantum physicist". And I know because I am
one :-)
Juanjo
On Thu, 07 Sep 2006 12:17:13 +0200, Juanjo
<·····················@googlemail.com> wrote:
> F�rster vom Silberwald schrieb:
>> I often meet people in bars who are programmers for a living and they
>> complain that girls are not acknowledging their way of earning money.
>> I give them the advice: fogret your BMW car and your high incomme and
>> tell girls you are a physicist and quarks are your friends even if it
>> is only meant for the "one-night-stand".
>
> Hey dude, you want to ruin this guy's love life????
> If there is something worse than saying "I am a programmer" to get
> laid, it is to say "I am a quantum physicist". And I know because I am
> one :-)
>
> Juanjo
>
worked for me :)
(quantum physicist and programmer)
It's more how you say it...
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
John Thingstad schrieb:
> > Hey dude, you want to ruin this guy's love life????
> > If there is something worse than saying "I am a programmer" to get
> > laid, it is to say "I am a quantum physicist". And I know because I am
> > one :-)
>
> worked for me :)
> (quantum physicist and programmer)
> It's more how you say it...
Oh, yeah, something like "And what do you do?" "I am a physicist..."
"Oh, a freak!" :-)
Well, maybe it also depends on the country. In mine, Physics is what
tortures you during school, together with mathematics. Programming has
some kind of cool aura around it.
Regards
Juanjo
Juanjo wrote:
> Well, maybe it also depends on the country. In mine, Physics is what
> tortures you during school, together with mathematics. Programming has
> some kind of cool aura around it.
The problem with programmers: they cannot say to a girl: hey let beam
us up into your bed. But a physicist has all that particular knowledge
of beaming.
Schneewittchen
On behalf of Brad, let me say:
You guys [broadly construed] are [all] being ridiculous. Stop
hammering the groups with this childish back and forth.
[Seriously...well, ... actually the word seriously doesn't really apply
here, but you know what I mean... Seriously, maybe you're just not
spinning (so to speak) yourself correctly. I have to spin molecular
biology appropriately for the audience, where it becomes orgnismic
biology, marine biology, bioclimatology, or whatever spin is necessary
to get the desired effect. Maybe you need to spin yourself as studying
the origins of the universe, or, if absolutely necessary, creation, or
anyway something other than just 'quantum physics'.]
Förster vom Silberwald wrote:
> Juanjo wrote:
>
> > Well, maybe it also depends on the country. In mine, Physics is what
> > tortures you during school, together with mathematics. Programming has
> > some kind of cool aura around it.
>
> The problem with programmers: they cannot say to a girl: hey let beam
> us up into your bed. But a physicist has all that particular knowledge
> of beaming.
>
> Schneewittchen
········@gmail.com wrote:
> On behalf of Brad, let me say:
>
> You guys [broadly construed] are [all] being ridiculous. Stop
> hammering the groups with this childish back and forth.
Hi: Sorry but you brought in all that useless discussion with your
original post. Why is it important for you whether programming is
boring or not? It is as asking in a bicycle related newsgroup: hey guys
road biking is boring, isn't?
Schneewittchen
Förster vom Silberwald wrote:
> ········@gmail.com wrote:
> > On behalf of Brad, let me say:
> >
> > You guys [broadly construed] are [all] being ridiculous. Stop
> > hammering the groups with this childish back and forth.
>
> Hi: Sorry but you brought in all that useless discussion with your
> original post.
I apologize; I was joking about asking you to stop hammering the
newsgroup. Please do keep contributing with whatever content you like.
I'm sorry that it wasn't obvious that I was joking. Maybe we should
figure out some sort of symbol for joke posts, like a code or
something.
Just signifying that a message is a joke is certainly not sufficient.
One can develop a taxonomy of bboard message types along several
different dimensions. Also, where a continuum is preferable to a
taxonomy (such as where humor value is at issue) one can similarly use
a scale to indicate where along that scale this message lies. Suppose
that all dimensions are refered to by a ten point scale (we'll use all
integers here although one can certainly imagine reals in the case of
fine grain continuous scales). Some dimensions will be bitwise encoded
as well.
Here is a sample of a coding scheme:
COMMUNITY: (this is a binary scale with a bit position for
each department totalling about 32 bits)
TOPIC: (two digits 00-99)
(00) Political, (01) Scientific, (02) Computer, (03) Meta, etc
FLAME VALUE: (continuous 0.0-10.0)
HUMOR VALUE: (0.0-10.0)
BORDOM VALUE: (0.0-10.0)
INFORMATIONAL CONTENT: (-10.0 (for queries) to 10.0 (for their
answers))
Note that some of these scales are purely according to the opinion of
the author. Thus, we provide, also, a confidence scale: to go along
with each continuous scale (to be enclosed in parens after the value).
········@gmail.com wrote:
> Förster vom Silberwald wrote:
> > ········@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On behalf of Brad, let me say:
> > >
> > > You guys [broadly construed] are [all] being ridiculous. Stop
> > > hammering the groups with this childish back and forth.
> >
> > Hi: Sorry but you brought in all that useless discussion with your
> > original post.
>
> I apologize; I was joking about asking you to stop hammering the
> newsgroup. Please do keep contributing with whatever content you like.
>
> I'm sorry that it wasn't obvious that I was joking. Maybe we should
> figure out some sort of symbol for joke posts, like a code or
> something.
##################################
# JOKE #
##################################
# The joke interface is bugged. This is a workaround.
For those with a serious interest in improving their ability to get
laid, there's
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/seduction_dating/
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
········@gmail.com writes:
> Here is a sample of a coding scheme:
[snip]
Crap. What do you think this is, 1972? Modern machines have massive
storage capacity, even just in their CPUs. No need for all of this
compaction and trying to get maximal value out of every bit. This
should all be fully spelled out (with maximal redundancy, as with XML)
to match the contemporary fashion among programmers.
Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> ········@gmail.com writes:
> > Here is a sample of a coding scheme:
> Crap. What do you think this is, 1972? [...]
Actually, to be precise, I think it's 1982:
http://research.microsoft.com/~mbj/Smiley/Joke_Thread.html
;-)
"F�rster vom Silberwald" <··········@hotmail.com> writes:
> ········@gmail.com wrote:
>> On behalf of Brad, let me say:
>>
>> You guys [broadly construed] are [all] being ridiculous. Stop
>> hammering the groups with this childish back and forth.
>
> Hi: Sorry but you brought in all that useless discussion with your
> original post. Why is it important for you whether programming is
> boring or not? It is as asking in a bicycle related newsgroup: hey guys
> road biking is boring, isn't?
And I won't even tell you how boring track cycling is...
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
John Thingstad wrote:
> worked for me :)
>
> (quantum physicist and programmer)
>
> It's more how you say it...
I must confess: I always lie in this respect since I am an atmospheric
physicist (PhD) but with a astrophysicist record (Master): it sounds
simply better to say: Hi girl I am a quantum physicist.
Schneewittchen
On Thu, 07 Sep 2006 12:30:01 +0200, John Thingstad
<··············@chello.no> wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Sep 2006 12:17:13 +0200, Juanjo
> <·····················@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> F�rster vom Silberwald schrieb:
>>> I often meet people in bars who are programmers for a living and they
>>> complain that girls are not acknowledging their way of earning money.
>>> I give them the advice: fogret your BMW car and your high incomme and
>>> tell girls you are a physicist and quarks are your friends even if it
>>> is only meant for the "one-night-stand".
>>
>> Hey dude, you want to ruin this guy's love life????
>> If there is something worse than saying "I am a programmer" to get
>> laid, it is to say "I am a quantum physicist". And I know because I am
>> one :-)
>>
>> Juanjo
>>
>
> worked for me :)
>
> (quantum physicist and programmer)
>
> It's more how you say it...
>
Of cource metioning that you want to be laid helps.
Noone wants someone doing accounting during sex.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
<········@gmail.com> wrote in message
····························@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
> *hard* and
> *boring*"
...
> So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> boring?!?!?
Programmers are the ditch diggers of the technological age.
Mike Thomas wrote:
> <········@gmail.com> wrote in message
> ····························@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
> > *hard* and
> > *boring*"
> ...
> > So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> > boring?!?!?
>
> Programmers are the ditch diggers of the technological age.
You really think this, or are you being cute?
··········@gmail.com wrote:
> Mike Thomas wrote:
> > <········@gmail.com> wrote in message
> > ····························@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > > In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
> > > *hard* and
> > > *boring*"
> > ...
> > > So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> > > boring?!?!?
> >
> > Programmers are the ditch diggers of the technological age.
>
> You really think this, or are you being cute?
I absolutely agree with his statement. The vast majority of paid
programmers *DO NOT* do anything interesting. They are industrial
cogs.
Now, it is possible to rise to the top of the heap and be the designer,
not the grunt. Make other people swallow your code. Be the Alpha
Programmer, have the dominance. Get all the resource benefits, and all
the chicks. But just being somewhere along the long chain of needed
industrial processes, sucks. You get people's shitwork.
The reason I can justify the shitwork for Chicken Scheme, is I do have
ownership of the product. It's BSD licensed. If I want to run off on
my own and do something commercial with it someday, there's nothing
stopping me. I can design compilers at some point in my career if I
want to, nothing will stop me.
I can justify plenty of shitwork in a paying job, if they're paying me
enough. I'm pretty good at aesthetically encapsulating all the shit,
which offers some satisfaction / alleviation from what it all is.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
Mallor <···········@gmail.com> writes:
> Now, it is possible to rise to the top of the heap and be the
> designer, not the grunt. Make other people swallow your code.
It's precisely this separation that turns the actual programming into
grunt work. Consider that the furniture craftsman doesn't resent
having to make what he's conceived, while the architect does look down
on the contractors realizing his design. Once the creation process is
artificially separated, the end result suffers -- both the product and
the experience for those making it.
--
Steven E. Harris
Steven E. Harris wrote:
> Mallor <···········@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Now, it is possible to rise to the top of the heap and be the
> > designer, not the grunt. Make other people swallow your code.
>
> It's precisely this separation that turns the actual programming into
> grunt work. Consider that the furniture craftsman doesn't resent
> having to make what he's conceived, while the architect does look down
> on the contractors realizing his design. Once the creation process is
> artificially separated, the end result suffers -- both the product and
> the experience for those making it.
Well I think I can agree with that premise, in principle. After all,
what I'm trying to do is make game development controllable by a single
craftsman. But over the years, code complexity has gotten so
ridiculous that it is not currently possible. So there are
separations, and companies trying to get us to chase the next big 3D
wonder gizmo and so forth.
I haven't quite decided how I'm going to deal with the latter issue. I
still think in terms of fixed function 3D pipelines, because on my 2001
era HW, the programmable shader pipelines were not at all standardized.
Now finally they may be, but there's still a lot of installed base out
there, and cheapass ICs with no programmable shaders. Plus shaders is
very much a two-edged sword. You can accomplish interesting technical
things with them, but they pull you away from higher level issues like
game design.
If you try to offload these problems to a 3D engine, you get new
problems. Does your language talk to C++ well? Chicken Scheme has
some C++ support, but I'm dubious whether it's ready for prime time.
For Common Lisp I'm not aware of anything particularly nice out there.
Lotsa people tell me that SWIG is not nice. In addition to the
nastiness of bindings, there's the question of who's gonna be in charge
of what part of the programming model. It makes sense to do a scene
graph in Lisp. But a 3D engine typically already has a scene graph, so
you spend more time binding and chasing the C++ isms. I'm very much
leaning towards the idea that none of it is good, and that it's better
to write almost all of the 3D engine from scratch.
I might get away with a very simple programming model if I can think of
the right geometric abstractions. Perhaps a micro-triangles approach -
blow off texture mapping entirely. Once upon a time this is how Pixar
did things, don't know about now.
A 3D engine that embraces a specific game design may be possible,
rather than trying to make the 3D engine general purpose and importing
all those gazillions of external 3D files and whatnot. But it would
require a very specific kind of workmanship. I'm still mulling over
these issues. If I want to be a game designer, not a low level 3D
grunt, then what kind of geometric operations do I need to be working
with? How is that going to produce Art, instead of expecting that I'll
let a team of 100 Chinese art monkeys do it?
The consumer expectations are unfortunately high, so these problems do
have to be addressed somehow. I don't think one has to provide the
exact kind of bells and whistles that most game software currently
provides. I think the audience has a far greater range of visual
tolerance, especially if the game presents a honed aesthetic, whether
that aesthetic is polygonal abstractions or photorealistic rendering.
But it does have to look "good" somehow; that problem cannot be
escaped. If the game designer is not producing good looking Art, then
the notion of him being a craftsman falls apart. If he can't get it
all done, then he's only a specialist.
Put another way, buildings are a lot more complicated than tables.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
Mallor <···········@gmail.com> writes:
> If he can't get it all done, then he's only a specialist.
True. The point I was after is the difference between saying, "I can't
do this all myself. Would you be willing to help make this possible?"
and "I don't feel like doing any of this stuff. I'm too good to bother
touching any of that. You do it."
> Put another way, buildings are a lot more complicated than tables.
That's painfully true. But compare the attitude today toward
contractors as opposed to the supposed role of craftsman building the
great cathedrals in Europe.
--
Steven E. Harris
"Mallor" <···········@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
>I can design compilers at some point in my career if I
> want to, nothing will stop me.
>
I did that and had 15 fun years doing compilers and software development
tools.
________________
George E Eberhardt
732 224 8988
··········@gmail.com wrote:
> Mike Thomas wrote:
>
>><········@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>····························@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>>In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
>>>*hard* and
>>>*boring*"
>>
>> ...
>>
>>>So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
>>>boring?!?!?
>>
>>Programmers are the ditch diggers of the technological age.
>
>
> You really think this, or are you being cute?
>
Maybe he is referring to the pace at which we proceed.
Lessee, Kenny as a ditch digger: The foreman points at two stakes in the
ground a hundred meters apart and says "dig". I grab a shovel and take a
few pokes at the peat. Kinda spongy, not conducive to a spade. A rake of
some sort would be better. Not finding a rake, I take an hour to make
one. Much better. The foreman comes along and sees a couple of scratches
in the ground and starts filling out my pink slip. When he turns around
to hand it to me I have cleared a ten yard ditch through the peat.
Foreman grunts, tears up the pink slip, and leaves. Just as I hit
granite. I rake the peat back into the ditch, call the foreman over, and
ask him what he wanted the ditch for. When he starts filling out another
pink slip, I tell him about the granite. He panics. I suggest a plan. We
sell all the desk chairs and use the proceeds to buy some dynamite and a
rent a back-hoe for a day. The ditch gets dug. Kenny is not qualified on
dynamite or back-hoes and gets riffed. That's OK, Kenny /likes/
ditch-digging!
hth, kt
--
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
<··········@gmail.com> wrote in message
·····························@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> Mike Thomas wrote:
>> <········@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> ····························@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> > In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
>> > *hard* and
>> > *boring*"
>> ...
>> > So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
>> > boring?!?!?
>>
>> Programmers are the ditch diggers of the technological age.
>
> You really think this, or are you being cute?
Is that a lump in your pocket, or are you just here to shoot me...
But yes, I do really think this.
"Mike Thomas" <······@paradigmgeo.com> writes:
> <··········@gmail.com> wrote in message
> ·····························@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> Mike Thomas wrote:
>>> <········@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>> ····························@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>> > In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
>>> > *hard* and
>>> > *boring*"
>>> ...
>>> > So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
>>> > boring?!?!?
>>>
>>> Programmers are the ditch diggers of the technological age.
>>
>> You really think this, or are you being cute?
>
> Is that a lump in your pocket, or are you just here to shoot me...
>
> But yes, I do really think this.
Although I find it unfortunate, I think, for the vast majority of
programmers, it is technological ditch digging. This may be more a
perception than the reality, but there does seem to be an industry
trend towards de-valuing programming. Generally, its the lowest paid
area in the industry, there is a pervasive attitude that its what you
do after graduation until you can climb the career ladder to a better
paid position that doesn't actually involve programming. There is
little recognition of experience or even aptitude.
Few programmers I know get to work on really interesting projects.
Most work for large companies and spend most of their day doing system
integration code "snippets" or writing new reusable reports in some
horrible 4GL reporting tool or maintain some old piece of legacy code
in a system which over the years has grown to such an extent there is
not a single person on the planet that really understands how it
works.. I know only a few who actually get paid to develop potentially
interesting new applications.
I think this also explains some of the open source movement. People
who really like programming often get involved in an open source
progject because this is the only way they can be part of something
large and interesting where they have the freedom to folow their
inspiration or find something challenging.
I agree with other posters that a possible reason programming has
become ditch digging is because of the type of division of labor which
has evolved. Often, as a programmer, you have little input into the
design, feature selection or prioritising etc. You are given the
design, interface specifications etc and told to fill in the blanks.
Your scope for creativity is limited to small blocks of code, or if
your lucky, a specific algorithm for a well defined task. Often you
don't even get to choose the data abstraction model or the algorithm.
Essentially, you are just another bot on the assembly line.
Some people are happy to do this. They were generally the students in
comp sci who got passes and that was about it. they don't want to
think too hard about anything, want to just do their job and go home.
Thats fine. However, for those who really enjoyed their learning,
often tried to solve difficult problems and to some extent attempted
to push the boundries, the ditch digging job is a living hell.
To some extent, I find this relates to lisp quite well. Although its
hard to get a job in which you can program in lisp, when/if you do,
the job is more likely to involve interesting programming solving
difficult or interesting problems. Compare this with Java, where your
much more likely to get a job, but it will more than likely be in a
large open plan office with a bunch of other java monkeys,
porgramming, for possibly the nth time, some boring re-make of a web
application with some sql backend, web interface and some bloody
shopping cart functionality somewhere in the middle!
Paul Graham put forward an interesting model for division of labor
amongst programmers. He argues that the *real* programmers, those who
really enjoy programming and like to tackle harder challenges and
attempt to push the boundraries of knowledge (sometimes called
hackers), should be tasked with writing tools for those programmers
who really only became programmers because they thought it would
guarantee them a job and who are just doing their time until they can
move into sales, management etc. His argument is that good, interested
programmers generally like writing good 'tools' and that if the tools
are better, the work done by the less inspired programmers will also
be improved.
Tim
--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
On Thu, 07 Sep 2006 09:45:40 +0200, Tim X <····@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
> Paul Graham put forward an interesting model for division of labor
> amongst programmers. He argues that the *real* programmers, those who
> really enjoy programming and like to tackle harder challenges and
> attempt to push the boundraries of knowledge (sometimes called
> hackers), should be tasked with writing tools for those programmers
> who really only became programmers because they thought it would
> guarantee them a job and who are just doing their time until they can
> move into sales, management etc. His argument is that good, interested
> programmers generally like writing good 'tools' and that if the tools
> are better, the work done by the less inspired programmers will also
> be improved.
Ugh.
Fred Brooks "Surgical team" is a better way to organize work, IMHO.
P.
--
Anything below this line is being added by the newsserver
"Pierpaolo BERNARDI" <·········@secondbox.net> writes:
> On Thu, 07 Sep 2006 09:45:40 +0200, Tim X <····@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
>
> > Paul Graham put forward an interesting model for division of labor
> > amongst programmers. He argues that the *real* programmers, those who
> > really enjoy programming and like to tackle harder challenges and
> > attempt to push the boundraries of knowledge (sometimes called
> > hackers), should be tasked with writing tools for those programmers
> > who really only became programmers because they thought it would
> > guarantee them a job and who are just doing their time until they can
> > move into sales, management etc.
> Fred Brooks "Surgical team" is a better way to organize work, IMHO.
Only if you have a true surgical team, and not a mix of people
including surgeons, nurses, people who thought they'd try their hand
at surgery because they know how to use Word, the old department
secretary who got made a surgeon because management thought she should
be promoted but didn't know what job to promote her into, and three
people who have no clue what they're doing but took that six-week
correspondence course on TV about medical records management.
If everyone on the team is capable of pulling his or her own weight,
then the surgical team works; but when you have great disparities in
ability or (more importantly) motivation and interest, you need a good
way of isolating the competent (or potentially competent) from the
less competent (and willing to stay that way). Graham's approach does
this better than Brooks does.
Charlton
Okay, so I think that we've pretty clearly determined that, (a) Tim's
bordem with programming not withstanding, the blanket statement:
"Programming is *boring*" is false, (b) it is likely that if you could
program your iPod in Lisp, SOME people would do it [and probably not be
bored by it, at least until it becomes a full time industrial level job
for them == never], (c) if you need a ditch dug, Kenny's your guy, and
(d) if you want to pick up people of the relevant sex, don't become a
quantum physicist! Thank you all for attending today's session of
completely flamage.
On Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:12:24 +0200, <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
> *hard* and
> *boring*" I'm okay with "Hard" because it's relative to your skill
> level, so I know that he's wrong from the outset. But I've never ever
> heard anyone (at least not a programmer) say that programming is
> boring! Oh, sure, there are times when I have to slog through some
> standard piece of code for the tenth time that I wish was built into
> the language, but, actually, I can think of nearly no other domain that
> is less boring than programming. Take, for example, the other things
> that I do on a regular basis: molecular biology (wet lab), statistics,
> mathematical modeling, reading and writing technical papers. You want
> boring? The only thing more boring than reading other people's
> technical papers is having to write my own, and try piptetting clear
> liquids into clear liquids for 8 hours straight every day!
>
> Programming is, at least for me, the most exciting thing that there is!
> I get to make the highest tech machines there are do my will; I get to
> create new things that no one has ever created before -- even if
> they're spread sheets! -- I get to amaze my colleagues and lab mates,
> and save them hours, days, years of what would be REALLY boring work
> for them, and I get to live inside a real detective story (with bugs,
> not killers). The only think that I can think of that's more exciting
> than programming is flying gliders upside down. But no one pays me to
> do that!
>
> So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> boring?!?!?
>
It can be.
Just like if you spend all your life writing busness reports
writing can be boring.
Why do you do the boring stuff?
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
········@gmail.com wrote:
> So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> boring?!?!?
I love it and I always have, from my childhood TRS80 BASIC ( I didn't have a
computer. I adored the manual! ), then ZX81 and Spectrum through IBM PC
Pascal and Modula-2, C, C++, Java, and 8051 assembler.
Last year, just as I thought I'd understood it all, Python and its huge
burst of productivity and power. Now to Lisp and Scheme, which I find
cryptic and difficult but with so much promise and wizardry to gain if only
I can grok it.
At every stage, new structures and ways of thinking, new stuff that you can
do. From making little lights flash on circuit boards to last night's feat
of adding Python-style generators to Scheme (which makes me think that I
might just be about to get call/cc and macros at last).
I'm 36 years old, have been programming since I was ten, have been a
professional industrial programmer since I was 25, and I'm two thirds of
the way through SICP and it's giving me a reason to get up early and keep
at it until after midnight.
I'm wondering if I can scrape up enough cash to go and do a computer science
degree. My actual degree was in maths. But recently I've begun to think
that they're just two aspects of the same thing.
I think I can honestly say that I've never been bored at work! There just
aren't any real-life computer problems that can't be solved by breaking
them down and abstracting and thinking, and every little success on the way
is a pleasure in itself.
Once I completed a project far too quickly, and thought my customer might
feel ripped off, so I offered them an extra month's work to make up. They
unsportingly asked me to finish off a test suite that none of the permanent
staff could bring themselves to do. And you know what? It was fun! It fell
to the same techniques as usual, and was full of little triumphs, and I'm
as proud of it as of any other program I've written. I now realise that the
name for what I was doing is meta-programming, but at the time it just
seemed like 'how do I solve this problem without using copy and paste?'.
I did manage to get bored as a mathematician, and bailed out of my PhD
without writing up, but mathematics is like designing a watch on paper and
never seeing it work, whereas with computers you get to make all the little
bits out of actual steel, and then put them together piece by piece and
make sure all the little sub-assemblies work and then go back and improve
them and there are other watchmakers nearby to talk to and help and share
with!
I'm aware that not everybody feels this way, but if you don't, what on earth
are you doing reading comp.lang.lisp??
While I'm spouting (usually I just lurk, because I'm not good enough to have
anything to say yet), thanks to all of you for your wonderfully
entertaining discussions. Your newsgroup has a way of eating my mornings.
Love John.
--
Contractor in Cambridge UK -- http://www.aspden.com
> While I'm spouting (usually I just lurk, because I'm not good enough to
> have
> anything to say yet), thanks to all of you for your wonderfully
> entertaining discussions. Your newsgroup has a way of eating my mornings.
>
> Love John.
Hehe, I'm so with you on that part
Sacha
John Lawrence Aspden wrote:
>
> I did manage to get bored as a mathematician, and bailed out of my PhD
> without writing up, but mathematics is like designing a watch on paper and
> never seeing it work, whereas with computers you get to make all the little
> bits out of actual steel, and then put them together piece by piece and
> make sure all the little sub-assemblies work and then go back and improve
> them and there are other watchmakers nearby to talk to and help and share
> with!
I feel that programming often lacks tangibility compared to the visual
arts. Sometimes I paint to get relief from this.
> I'm aware that not everybody feels this way, but if you don't, what on earth
> are you doing reading comp.lang.lisp??
Because some of us substitute discipline for enjoyment when they want
to reach higher goals.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
········@gmail.com wrote:
> So, does ANYONE (aside from Tim) actually think that programming is
> boring?!?!?
You know something that's too painfully boring to ever succeed? An
encyclopedia on the internet open for people to edit.
An ENCYCLOPEDIA.
Tayssir
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> You know something that's too painfully boring to ever succeed? An
> encyclopedia on the internet open for people to edit.
> An ENCYCLOPEDIA.
Not boring, just stupid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vaporwares
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Raymond
Oh, and the entry on commonlisp credits the aforelinked wako with
inspiring "many new Lisp programmers" "to pursue a language many
consider antiquated."
Stupid Stupid Stupid.
On 7 Sep 2006 12:07:37 -0700, ········@gmail.com tried to confuse
everyone with this message:
>Not boring, just stupid:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
Care to explain what is stupid with this article?
--
|Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
|It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
|But we can take them on! | @ma |
| (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
Timofei Shatrov wrote:
> On 7 Sep 2006 12:07:37 -0700, ········@gmail.com tried to confuse
> everyone with this message:
>
> >Not boring, just stupid:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
>
> Care to explain what is stupid with this article?
The article isn't stupid -- well, maybe it is; I don't know. But the
game is stupid and having articles about every random stupid game,
.com, and other stupid random crap in an encyclopedia is stupid! For
goodness sake, it even has articles on the stupid CREATUREs in the
stupid games, and every stupid web personality who decided to get a
friend to put his/her/its stupid biography in the stupid wikipedia. The
s/n ratio of the wikipedia is only slightly greater than the s/n ratio
of the web as a whole, which is nearly zero! Okay, yeah, it has a good
article on quantum mechanics, okay, that's really hard to find in 100
other places on the web. The wikipedia is purely and only a marketing
tool.
On 8 Sep 2006 09:07:42 -0700, ········@gmail.com tried to confuse
everyone with this message:
>Timofei Shatrov wrote:
>> On 7 Sep 2006 12:07:37 -0700, ········@gmail.com tried to confuse
>> everyone with this message:
>>
>> >Not boring, just stupid:
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
>>
>> Care to explain what is stupid with this article?
>
>The article isn't stupid -- well, maybe it is; I don't know. But the
>game is stupid and having articles about every random stupid game,
>.com, and other stupid random crap in an encyclopedia is stupid! For
>goodness sake, it even has articles on the stupid CREATUREs in the
>stupid games, and every stupid web personality who decided to get a
>friend to put his/her/its stupid biography in the stupid wikipedia. The
>s/n ratio of the wikipedia is only slightly greater than the s/n ratio
>of the web as a whole, which is nearly zero! Okay, yeah, it has a good
>article on quantum mechanics, okay, that's really hard to find in 100
>other places on the web. The wikipedia is purely and only a marketing
>tool.
>
How is having articles on popular computer games is a bad thing? They
are a notable phenomena, and many games make huge profits, more than
some movies or books. I think that a modern encyclopedia should have a
good coverage of computer games. As for individual creatures - well the
information is there for those who want it, and it doesn't take away
resources from other more important articles - I don't see how more
information can be bad. If you searching for a specific topic, you
wouldn't bump into articles about computer games; and if you're clicking
"Random page" - well, consider yourself lucky that you didn't end up on
Autofellatio" or something like that...
--
|Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
|It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
|But we can take them on! | @ma |
| (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
> How is having articles on popular computer games is a bad thing?
This is off topic (even though I sort of started it -- well, someone
else technically started it, but I fanned the flames!) So let's try to
stick to Lisp-related wikipedia content, shall we? I think that there's
plenty enough to discuss that is on topic regarding the wikipedia.
········@gmail.com wrote:
> > How is having articles on popular computer games is a bad thing?
>
> This is off topic (even though I sort of started it -- well, someone
> else technically started it, but I fanned the flames!) So let's try to
> stick to Lisp-related wikipedia content, shall we? I think that there's
> plenty enough to discuss that is on topic regarding the wikipedia.
Excuse me; I was in a sarcastic mood and my "humor" didn't come off
well. ;) I just meant to say that boringness is in the eye of the
beholder. One can find people legitimately bored/interested in
anything.
Tayssir
········@gmail.com writes:
> Timofei Shatrov wrote:
>> On 7 Sep 2006 12:07:37 -0700, ········@gmail.com tried to confuse
>> everyone with this message:
>>
>> >Not boring, just stupid:
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
>>
>> Care to explain what is stupid with this article?
>
> The article isn't stupid -- well, maybe it is; I don't know. But the
> game is stupid and having articles about every random stupid game,
> .com, and other stupid random crap in an encyclopedia is stupid! For
> goodness sake, it even has articles on the stupid CREATUREs in the
> stupid games, and every stupid web personality who decided to get a
> friend to put his/her/its stupid biography in the stupid wikipedia. The
> s/n ratio of the wikipedia is only slightly greater than the s/n ratio
> of the web as a whole, which is nearly zero! Okay, yeah, it has a good
> article on quantum mechanics, okay, that's really hard to find in 100
> other places on the web. The wikipedia is purely and only a marketing
> tool.
It doesn't really matter, since you don't trip over them if you don't
search for them. It's not a paper bound encyclopedia, you don't have
to have a room dedicated to it in your house.
And finally, the niches may be bigger than you believe. Many more
people than you'll believe collect porcelain beagles.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE: This product contains minute electrically
charged particles moving at velocities in excess of five hundred
million miles per hour.
Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
> ········@gmail.com writes:
>
>> Timofei Shatrov wrote:
>>> On 7 Sep 2006 12:07:37 -0700, ········@gmail.com tried to confuse
>>> everyone with this message:
>>>
>>> >Not boring, just stupid:
>>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
>>>
>>> Care to explain what is stupid with this article?
>>
>> The article isn't stupid -- well, maybe it is; I don't know. But the
>> game is stupid and having articles about every random stupid game,
>> .com, and other stupid random crap in an encyclopedia is stupid! For
>> goodness sake, it even has articles on the stupid CREATUREs in the
>> stupid games, and every stupid web personality who decided to get a
>> friend to put his/her/its stupid biography in the stupid wikipedia. The
>> s/n ratio of the wikipedia is only slightly greater than the s/n ratio
>> of the web as a whole, which is nearly zero! Okay, yeah, it has a good
>> article on quantum mechanics, okay, that's really hard to find in 100
>> other places on the web. The wikipedia is purely and only a marketing
>> tool.
>
> It doesn't really matter, since you don't trip over them if you don't
> search for them. It's not a paper bound encyclopedia, you don't have
> to have a room dedicated to it in your house.
>
> And finally, the niches may be bigger than you believe. Many more
> people than you'll believe collect porcelain beagles.
>
And you also have to remember the meaning of 'encyclopedia' :
"An encyclopedia [...] is a comprehensive written compendium that contains
information on *all* branches of knowledge". (from wikipedia)
So, the idea is to share all knowledge ... even if it looks stupid to
someone. (and in the case of wikipedia, the mere fact that the page
exists mean that it does interest someone...)
And of course, you can easily contribute if you want to add 'non-stupid'
data, like some great lisp related information ;)
--
Thomas Samson
Every program has (at least) two purposes:
the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
Thomas Samson wrote:
> Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> writes:
> > ········@gmail.com writes:
> >> Timofei Shatrov wrote:
> >>> On 7 Sep 2006 12:07:37 -0700, ········@gmail.com tried to confuse
> >>> >Not boring, just stupid:
> >>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
> >>> Care to explain what is stupid with this article?
> >> ...having articles about every random stupid game,
> And you also have to remember the meaning of 'encyclopedia' :
> "An encyclopedia [...] is a comprehensive written compendium that contains
> information on *all* branches of knowledge". (from wikipedia)
> So, the idea is to share all knowledge ... even if it looks stupid to
> someone. (and in the case of wikipedia, the mere fact that the page
> exists mean that it does interest someone...)
Oh? Every page on the internet is of interest to the person who posted
it, so do tell, how is the wikipedia any different than the whole
internet?! (Answer: The wikipedia is a sanctioned marketing scam; it's
usenet with pretend legitmacy!)
········@gmail.com wrote:
> Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>
> > You know something that's too painfully boring to ever succeed? An
> > encyclopedia on the internet open for people to edit.
> > An ENCYCLOPEDIA.
>
> Not boring, just stupid:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vaporwares
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Raymond
Yes, hopefully it will improve. But maybe it won't, it doesn't really
matter in the long run.
What makes wikipedia interesting as a phenomenon is that it's shown
that it's not terrifically hard to get an encyclopedia written that
way. The difficult bit is getting it correct. Even if wikipedia never
figures that out someone else probably will.
> Oh, and the entry on commonlisp credits the aforelinked wako
Nice misspelling ;)
> with
> inspiring "many new Lisp programmers" "to pursue a language many
> consider antiquated."
Well, he influenced me a little when I read one of his articles when I
was at university.
> > with inspiring "many new Lisp programmers" "to pursue a language many
> > consider antiquated."
>
> Well, he influenced me a little when I read one of his articles when I
> was at university.
I'm sure that he has influenced people, but it is (by my RtL count) a
very small population (maybe ~10%), also, AFAIKT he only knows Emac
lisp, which is only barely lisp [this may be irrelevant]. And what
about others that aren't mentioned (Norvig?), and why do you need this
info in an article anyway other than to advertise the aforementioned
wako waco wacko :-) ?
Finally and most importantly, the word "many" is a red flag for a
pseudo-fact! if "many consider [lisp] antiquated" is in an article on
Lisp why isn't "many consider python a poor knockoff of Lisp" in the
article on Python, or "many consider <you know who> to be a wacko" in
the article on you know who (maybe it is, but if it is, I don't think
that that should be either!), or any number of other pseudo-facts like:
"X inspired many Y to Z" or "many consider Y to be X" in any given
article? If you did this in debating you'd be laughed off the podium.
The wikipedia is chock full of this sort of nonsense, and it turns what
I agree could be a truly excellent resource into a wet advertising rag
(in addition to having entries on lot of things that are simply pure
advertisments!)
"Rob Thorpe" <·············@antenova.com> writes:
> ········@gmail.com wrote:
>> Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>>
>> > You know something that's too painfully boring to ever succeed? An
>> > encyclopedia on the internet open for people to edit.
>> > An ENCYCLOPEDIA.
>>
>> Not boring, just stupid:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vaporwares
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Raymond
>
> Yes, hopefully it will improve. But maybe it won't, it doesn't really
> matter in the long run.
>
> What makes wikipedia interesting as a phenomenon is that it's shown
> that it's not terrifically hard to get an encyclopedia written that
> way. The difficult bit is getting it correct. Even if wikipedia never
> figures that out someone else probably will.
>
>> Oh, and the entry on commonlisp credits the aforelinked wako
>
> Nice misspelling ;)
>
>> with
>> inspiring "many new Lisp programmers" "to pursue a language many
>> consider antiquated."
>
> Well, he influenced me a little when I read one of his articles when I
> was at university.
Nothing despises more the despisers than their despise not being universal.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE: This product contains minute electrically
charged particles moving at velocities in excess of five hundred
million miles per hour.
On 2006-09-08 12:37:27 -0400, "Rob Thorpe" <·············@antenova.com> said:
> What makes wikipedia interesting as a phenomenon is that it's shown
> that it's not terrifically hard to get an encyclopedia written that
> way. The difficult bit is getting it correct.
The other difficult bit, as Jeff pointed out, is deciding what should
be included and what shouldn't - i.e., what constitutes real
"knowledge" and what constitutes mere ephemera.
Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
> On 2006-09-08 12:37:27 -0400, "Rob Thorpe" <·············@antenova.com> said:
>
> > What makes wikipedia interesting as a phenomenon is that it's shown
> > that it's not terrifically hard to get an encyclopedia written that
> > way. The difficult bit is getting it correct.
>
> The other difficult bit, as Jeff pointed out, is deciding what should
> be included and what shouldn't - i.e., what constitutes real
> "knowledge" and what constitutes mere ephemera.
I don't think that's a real problem. If you follow links and search
with purpose you hardly hit the ephemera.
If you click the "random page" button however you normally get a
description of an episode of Firefly or Lost.
On 2006-09-11 06:48:10 -0400, "Rob Thorpe" <·············@antenova.com> said:
> I don't think that's a real problem. If you follow links and search
> with purpose you hardly hit the ephemera.
It's a problem because one of the most important features of any
encyclopedia is its status as a catalogue of all knowledge. When
anything can be in the catalogue then there is no way for an uninformed
user to distinguish between knowledge and garbaage.
Many of us here came to wikipedia as adults, with some sense of what's
out there in the world of knowledge - we're able to critique wikipedia
and its articles. There are generations of young people or less
educated people who by comparison haven't got a clue. They are being
led to believe, for example, that MegaMan NT Warrior[1] and Suburban
Vegetable[2] are on the same footing as Transposition (music)[3] or the
Mapuche[4] in the catalogue of all human knowledge - in fact the
MegaMan NT Warrior page is significantly longer than any of the others
which would lead most to believe that MegaMan NT Warrior is of greatest
significance in the total body of human knowldege. Unlimited
information is in many ways just as bad as as a poverty thereof.
[1] the first article that came up when I hit the random article link.
[2] the next article that came up when I hit the random article link.
[3] yup, the third.
[4] you're not still reading these, are you?
Raffael Cavallaro <················@pas-d'espam-s'il-vous-plait-mac.com> writes:
> On 2006-09-11 06:48:10 -0400, "Rob Thorpe" <·············@antenova.com> said:
>
>> I don't think that's a real problem. If you follow links and search
>> with purpose you hardly hit the ephemera.
>
> It's a problem because one of the most important features of any
> encyclopedia is its status as a catalogue of all knowledge. When
> anything can be in the catalogue then there is no way for an
> uninformed user to distinguish between knowledge and garbaage.
>
> Many of us here came to wikipedia as adults, with some sense of what's
> out there in the world of knowledge - we're able to critique wikipedia
> and its articles. There are generations of young people or less
> educated people who by comparison haven't got a clue. They are being
> led to believe, for example, that MegaMan NT Warrior[1] and Suburban
> Vegetable[2] are on the same footing as Transposition (music)[3] or
> the Mapuche[4] in the catalogue of all human knowledge - in fact the
> MegaMan NT Warrior page is significantly longer than any of the others
> which would lead most to believe that MegaMan NT Warrior is of
> greatest significance in the total body of human knowldege. Unlimited
> information is in many ways just as bad as as a poverty thereof.
I've never seen anybody win millions in 15 minutes on the TV answering
questions about quarks or resolving integrals.
On the other hand, answering trivia question about movies or football, yes.
Who are we to say which knowledge is more or less garbage? While
the factual information is exact, and while one doesn't try to
masquerade as the other, I don't see any problem in providing
information both about the physical world and about imagined worlds.
After all, both are produced buy the same species of brains.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
"Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom;
Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love;
Love is not music; Music is the best." -- Frank Zappa
On 2006-09-12 01:29:49 -0400, Pascal Bourguignon <···@informatimago.com> said:
> Who are we to say which knowledge is more or less garbage?
Finite beings who have a distinctly limited lifespan and even more
constrained free time with which to acquire new knowledge. We don't
have forever to slog through every random factoid that has ever rattled
around a human brain.
> While
> the factual information is exact, and while one doesn't try to
> masquerade as the other, I don't see any problem in providing
> information both about the physical world and about imagined worlds.
True enough, but one of the examples I gave, Suburban Vegetable, is not
part of the imagined world - they were a real pop music group. They
just don't belong in an encyclopedia of all human knowledge because the
fact of their existence is mere trivia. Moreover, among those things of
the imagined world, the works of Shakespeare should not be on an equal
footing with MegaMan NT Warrior.
One can see why Wikipedia doesn't do any selection - that - along with
assuring accuracy - is actually the hard part. Accumulating lots of
information turns out to be pretty easy. It's verifying, selecting, and
organizing it that is the difficult bit.
An essential part of an encyclopedia's usefulness is its organization
and selection from among the nearly limitless amount of information
generated by people only that knowledge that is deemed to be of lasting
value. The failure to distinguish between knowledge and the mere
accumulation of trivia makes wikipedia increasingly useless as a
catalogue of human knowledge. Wikipedia's near complete abdication of
judgement along these lines is turning it into a bad pop culture joke.
Raffael Cavallaro <················@pas-d'espam-s'il-vous-plait-mac.com> writes:
> True enough, but one of the examples I gave, Suburban Vegetable, is
> not part of the imagined world - they were a real pop music
> group. They just don't belong in an encyclopedia of all human
> knowledge because the fact of their existence is mere
> trivia. Moreover, among those things of the imagined world, the works
> of Shakespeare should not be on an equal footing with MegaMan NT
> Warrior.
>
> One can see why Wikipedia doesn't do any selection - that - along with
> assuring accuracy - is actually the hard part. Accumulating lots of
> information turns out to be pretty easy. It's verifying, selecting,
> and organizing it that is the difficult bit.
>
> An essential part of an encyclopedia's usefulness is its organization
> and selection from among the nearly limitless amount of information
> generated by people only that knowledge that is deemed to be of
> lasting value. The failure to distinguish between knowledge and the
> mere accumulation of trivia makes wikipedia increasingly useless as a
> catalogue of human knowledge. Wikipedia's near complete abdication of
> judgement along these lines is turning it into a bad pop culture joke.
Well, I'm not sure. The point is that I never felt upon these entries
and would probably never have if they hadn't been mentionned in this
thread.
The web is not like books, and "browsing" the web is not like browsing
a book. In the case of a paper encyclopedia, I'd admit that if there
were a lot of trivia added, it could drown the interesting bits.
Openning the book at random and turning a few pages wouldn't give you
anything interesting. But going to the index you could still find the
parts that interest you.
The problem might be the "random page" functions. Either in
encyclopedia, or in http://randomwebsite.com/, it seems that the only
things returned are web sites about dumb subjects. It would be better
to have a "random page that might interest me" function.
But using google or wikipedia search, or linking from other references
on pages of interest, you never encounter this trivia (like, I never
dropped on porn on the web, I can't believe the reports about it).
That's why I don't see a problem with it. If somebody mentions Nobita
Nobi and you have no idea what that may be, thankfully, you can find
it on the web (and in wikipedia). By the same token, if you don't
know what Cosette is, you'll find it too in wikipedia.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Wanna go outside.
Oh, no! Help! I got outside!
Let me back inside!
Raffael Cavallaro <················@pas-d'espam-s'il-vous-plait-mac.com>
wrote:
> An essential part of an encyclopedia's usefulness is its organization
> and selection from among the nearly limitless amount of information
> generated by people only that knowledge that is deemed to be of lasting
> value.
Maybe in a print encyclopedia, where browsing randomly is more likely,
and the cost of reproducing extraneous information is very high. On the
web, if enough people think it's worth knowing, it's worth putting in
there. A lot of the "ephemera" will be very useful to people looking
back on our history in 100 years and trying to determine what our
culture was really like.
I've never bothered to look at random pages in wikipedia. Is that
normally how you use an encyclopedia? I go to an encyclopedia when I
want to look up a specific subject. I don't necessarily care whether
what I'm looking up is profound knowledge, I just want to know something
about it.
I find that wikipedia is much more likely to have the information I'm
looking for than most other encyclopedias. I consider the pages on
trvial stuff to be a good thing, since I will generally only run into
them in the rare case that I actually care about exactly that
information. How often I looked in vain for information in encyclopedia
britannica or whatever in the days before the web, because whatever I
wanted to know was not deemed important enough to print by some or other
editor.
> The failure to distinguish between knowledge and the mere
> accumulation of trivia makes wikipedia increasingly useless as a
> catalogue of human knowledge. Wikipedia's near complete abdication of
> judgement along these lines is turning it into a bad pop culture joke.
I fail to understand this idea that an encyclopedia's job is to somehow
rank knowledge and it's general importance for us. Or rather, I
understand it, but when storage is no longer scarce, it seems like
juvenile academic dick-sizing. It reminds me of when I was a teenager,
and I spent endless amounts of time composing top N lists of various
things like songs, bands, movies, sports teams, whatever.
What matters is whether I can get to information that is useful to me,
not whether a bunch of self-important blowhards think that information
ranks sufficiently high in the hierarchy of human knowledge.
Michael
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
On 2006-09-12 13:40:40 -0400, ·······@bcect.com (Michael Sullivan) said:
> A lot of the "ephemera" will be very useful to people looking
> back on our history in 100 years and trying to determine what our
> culture was really like.
If wikipedia's principal purpose were to be a time capsule then this
might be relevant. As it is, wikipedia's purpose is to be a repository
of human knowledge, not mere trivia.
> What matters is whether I can get to information that is useful to me,
> not whether a bunch of self-important blowhards think that information
> ranks sufficiently high in the hierarchy of human knowledge.
This is a short sightedly self centered view. It fails utterly to take
account of the fact that every person born in the last decade and from
now on will grow up and be educated in a world where the de-facto
repository of human knowledge is a database that treats MegaMan NT
Warrior as being of equal value to the works of Joyce or Austen, and
the music of Suburban Vegetable as worthy of recording for posterity as
that of Debussy or Coltrane.
Note that the solution is not to abandon wikipedia - there is an
immense amount of useful information there as everyone agrees. The
solution is to remove articles like MegaMan NT Warrior since they don't
belong in a repository of the most significant things that human beings
know. Move such fluff to wikipopipedia, or wikitvpedia, but pare down
the real encyclopedia to knowledge of lasting value.
This is not about "juvenile academic dick-sizing," as you put it. It is
about bringing the amount of information that people need to deal with
to become reasonably cuturally, historically, scientifically and
mathematically literate to a manageable size. There is no question that
what belongs in a global encyclopedia is a contentious issue; choices
could certainly be made that reflect greater cutural diversity than was
typically the case in the past. But the difficulty of doing so is no
excuse for completely abdicating this essential task. Information
without selection reduces to noise.
Raffael Cavallaro <················@pas-d'espam-s'il-vous-plait-mac.com> writes:
>
> If wikipedia's principal purpose were to be a time capsule then this
> might be relevant. As it is, wikipedia's purpose is to be a repository
> of human knowledge, not mere trivia.
One man's trivia is another man's knowledge. I just called up a dozen
Wikipedia pages randomly. They were:
Ethion--some kind of organic chemical
Christina Leardini--an actress and Playboy model
Olle Kullinger--a Swedish soccer player
Highlight Headroom--a photographic measure
Kandiyohi--either the city of Kandiyohi, Minnesota or Kandiyohi
Township, Minn.
Christofer Rutger Ludvig Manderström--Norwegian Prime Minister for
Swedish-Norwegian affairs from
1858-1868
Frank Grover--a New Zealand politician
purchase ledger--an accounting tool
Khmer numerals--Cambodian numerals
Abebooks--an online bookseller specialising in rare & out-of-print books
Yamini Krishnamurthy--a Hindu dancer
Forscene--a video editing tool
Looking at these, they all seem appropriate for an online repository of
knowledge. I'm no chemist, but someone wanting to look up ethion would
be glad of the ability. Christina Leardini has obvious attractions. I
don't care for sports, but surely it's useful to keep that information
somewhere for those who do--and a repository of all knowledge would seem
the place. I'd never heard of highlight headroom before, but am glad to
have learnt about it. Kandiyohi doesn't matter to me, but to a
Minnesotan it would. Christofer Manderström is of little interest to
me, but if I were writing about mid-19th century Swedish politics he
would be. Frank Grover is no doubt interesting to a Kiwi. And so on
and so forth.
> This is not about "juvenile academic dick-sizing," as you put it. It
> is about bringing the amount of information that people need to deal
> with to become reasonably cuturally, historically, scientifically and
> mathematically literate to a manageable size.
But that is not what wikipedia is for. It's not really what any
comprehensive encyclopaedia is for. An encyclopaedia is a reference;
it's a knowledge hash table. You ask it what it knows about something,
and it tells you. You don't really care what else it knows, so long as
it knows the answer.
> Information without selection reduces to noise.
You make the selection when you search.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
If your franchise is not secured by force of personal arms, you are a
subject, not a citizen. --H. Beam Piper
On 2006-09-12 20:48:12 -0400, Robert Uhl <·········@NOSPAMgmail.com> said:
> Abebooks--an online bookseller specialising in rare & out-of-print books
An advertisement.
Mere advertisements have no place in the global catalogue of all
worthwhile human knowledge.
Information is all about signal to noise. If you let *everything* in
then the signal to noise ration goes to zero.
> You make the selection when you search.
This assumes you already know what you're looking for. One of the
important functions of a real encyclopedia is to inform readers what it
is that's actually worth knowing - to inform readers of the difference
between knowledge and noise.
On Wed, 13 Sep 2006 04:11:34 +0200, Raffael Cavallaro
<················@pas-d'espam-s'il-vous-plait-mac.com> wrote:
>
> This assumes you already know what you're looking for. One of the
> important functions of a real encyclopedia is to inform readers what it
> is that's actually worth knowing - to inform readers of the difference
> between knowledge and noise.
>
Don't know where you got that idea.
The accuracy of the content is importance.
But it is not it's quest in life to weigh information
by importance. Importance to whom anyhow.
So a reference to 'David Potter' is bad because that is not
high culture but 'Ulysses' is fine?
Who should do this censorship?
All knowledge is noise. The adventures of Dionysus is just dirty old tales
that used to entertain Greeks. Video games aren't that different.
Besides some video games are educational. You can learn how
to fly a plane or do war strategy say or just train you recognition
abilities.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
Raffael Cavallaro
<················@pas-d'espam-s'il-vous-plait-mac.com> writes:
> Note that the solution is not to abandon wikipedia - there is an
> immense amount of useful information there as everyone agrees. The
> solution is to remove articles like MegaMan NT Warrior since they
> don't belong in a repository of the most significant things that human
> beings know. Move such fluff to wikipopipedia, or wikitvpedia, but
> pare down the real encyclopedia to knowledge of lasting value.
Ah, here's your misconception. Wikipedia is not a repository of the
most significant things that human beings know; it's a repository of
the things that human beings care enough about to sit down and write
an article about.
> This is not about "juvenile academic dick-sizing," as you put it. It
> is about bringing the amount of information that people need to deal
> with to become reasonably cuturally, historically, scientifically and
> mathematically literate to a manageable size. There is no question
> that what belongs in a global encyclopedia is a contentious issue;
> choices could certainly be made that reflect greater cutural diversity
> than was typically the case in the past. But the difficulty of doing
> so is no excuse for completely abdicating this essential
> task. Information without selection reduces to noise.
But there is selection: if you want to know about Joyce or Austen, you
search for them. In prior encyclopedias, printing space was limited,
as was the amount of money available to pay contributors, and so
decisions had to be made about what was most significant. Wikipedia
has essentially unlimited space (it's mostly text, which compresses
nicely), and the vast majority of the labor (possibly all of it) is
donated, so those constraints are gone.
Your beef with Wikipedia seems to be entirely in the meaning you
ascribe to it: it's not intended to be a definitive statement of
what's necessary knowledge to become "reasonably culturally,
historically, scientifically, and mathematically literate." That
might be true of the Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance, because
those were the criteria that the editors used to compile the
encyclopedia; but Wikipedia *by design* has no such criteria limiting
what goes into it.
And even if it did, and divided all knowledge contained in it into a
taxonomy of eternal verities and ephemera -- in contemporary American
culture, knowledge of the Simpsons and Dangerous Housewives is likely
to be more useful than knowledge of musica reservata and the commedia
dell'arte. And I say this not as a total Philistine, but as someone
who's spent considerable time and sweat in understanding modal music
theory and the culture of the Italian Renaissance -- for every dollar
that's earned me, my knowledge of PHP has earned me a thousand, and
that was just one contract.
Charlton
On 2006-09-13 00:28:01 -0400, Charlton Wilbur
<·······@mithril.chromatico.net> said:
> Wikipedia is not a repository of the
> most significant things that human beings know; it's a repository of
> the things that human beings ca
This is a mistake. Many people care to write an article to advertise
their business, but just because they care to advertise doesn't mean
they should have free global advertising space in what purports to be a
universal encyclopedia, not the global yellow pages.
On Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:40:40 +0200, Michael Sullivan <·······@bcect.com>
wrote:
>
> What matters is whether I can get to information that is useful to me,
> not whether a bunch of self-important blowhards think that information
> ranks sufficiently high in the hierarchy of human knowledge.
> Michael
>
I concur. And I might also add that wikipedia is the only general purpose
encyclopedia I know of that has a comprehensive in-depth knowledge of math.
It is in fact good enough that if you read through all of it and followed
the
references you could probably learn enough to get a degree in mathematics.
Now that's hardly trivia in my book.
Personally I was unaware it contained trivia probably because I never
looked for it..
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
Raffael Cavallaro <················@pas-d'espam-s'il-vous-plait-mac.com> wrote:
> True enough, but one of the examples I gave, Suburban Vegetable, is not
> part of the imagined world - they were a real pop music group. They
> just don't belong in an encyclopedia of all human knowledge because the
> fact of their existence is mere trivia.
One observation about Wikipedia is that "Wikipedia is not a print
encyclopedia." Wikipedia has a lower threshold of importance than a
printed work does, simply because it is free of the burden of the weight
of pages and the expense of printing.
> Moreover, among those things of the imagined world, the works of
> Shakespeare should not be on an equal footing with MegaMan NT Warrior.
The fact that both have articles does not mean that anyone judges them
as being of equal importance. To think so is a similar error as to
think that because the words "good" and "squamous" both have entries in
the dictionary, that both are equally common or important words.
(You might be better served by looking over Wikipedia's "Featured
Articles", which are those which have been deemed particularly
well-written and informative.)
> One can see why Wikipedia doesn't do any selection - that - along with
> assuring accuracy - is actually the hard part. Accumulating lots of
> information turns out to be pretty easy. It's verifying, selecting, and
> organizing it that is the difficult bit.
Your assumption -- that "Wikipedia doesn't do any selection" -- is
simply false. It is an error of similar magnitude to the claim, "Lisp
sucks beause its only data structure is the linked list."
However, your concerns might be better resolved by thinking of Wikipedia
as an _encyclopedia project_ rather than an _encyclopedia_. That is,
the goal of Wikipedia is to produce an encyclopedia; the relatively
completed articles are the "Featured Articles"; the rest is most
definitely a work in progress.
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu> { s/example/whoi/ }
Raffael Cavallaro <················@pas-d'espam-s'il-vous-plait-mac.com> writes:
> Many of us here came to wikipedia as adults, with some sense of what's
> out there in the world of knowledge - we're able to critique wikipedia
> and its articles. There are generations of young people or less
> educated people who by comparison haven't got a clue. They are being
> led to believe, for example, that MegaMan NT Warrior[1] and Suburban
> Vegetable[2] are on the same footing as Transposition (music)[3] or
> the Mapuche[4] in the catalogue of all human knowledge - in fact the
> MegaMan NT Warrior page is significantly longer than any of the others
> which would lead most to believe that MegaMan NT Warrior is of
> greatest significance in the total body of human knowldege. Unlimited
I think this is a little ridiculous. I'd be very surprised to learn
that people are basing their views on the relative importances of
things strictly on the amount of information Wikipedia has about each.
On 2006-09-12 14:13:06 -0400, Bill Atkins <······@rpi.edu> said:
> I'd be very surprised to learn
> that people are basing their views on the relative importances of
> things strictly on the amount of information Wikipedia has about each.
You appear to have little experience of a generation that has grown up
entirely inside a media and internet world.
Raffael Cavallaro <················@pas-d'espam-s'il-vous-plait-mac.com> writes:
> On 2006-09-12 14:13:06 -0400, Bill Atkins <······@rpi.edu> said:
>
>> I'd be very surprised to learn
>> that people are basing their views on the relative importances of
>> things strictly on the amount of information Wikipedia has about each.
>
> You appear to have little experience of a generation that has grown up
> entirely inside a media and internet world.
I don't know; I'm probably young enough to be considered a member of
that generaion. Nevertheless, I think that anyone who thinks the
amount of Wikipedia content on topic X is proportional to its
relevance in the world probably isn't worth worrying about.
On 2006-09-12 19:21:50 -0400, Bill Atkins <······@rpi.edu> said:
> Nevertheless, I think that anyone who thinks the
> amount of Wikipedia content on topic X is proportional to its
> relevance in the world probably isn't worth worrying about.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where we can't afford to write off
ignorant people - there are way too many of them. A significant portion
of the population of the most powerful country on the planet believe in
a literal hell, and that the moon landings were staged. Yes, people
really are that dopey, and having total crap included in an
encyclopedia that purports to be authoritative just legitimizes
dopiness. It says that all knowledge is on an equal footing; all facts,
no matter how trivial or fringe are equally deserving of being
enshrined in the global database of all things worth knowing. It is for
these people who are less well informed that we need to get the signal
to noise ratio up. Neither you nor I are in any danger of thinking that
MegaMan NT Warrior is of the same cultural or historical importance as
the plays of Ibsen, but an ignorant 16 year old very well might.
Again, judging what to include and what to exclude is not easy, but
just because it is difficult is no excuse for not doing it if wikipedia
proposes to be taken seriously.
Raffael Cavallaro
<················@pas-d'espam-s'il-vous-plait-mac.com> writes:
>
> Unfortunately, we live in a world where we can't afford to write off
> ignorant people - there are way too many of them. A significant
> portion of the population of the most powerful country on the planet
> believe in a literal hell, and that the moon landings were
> staged. Yes, people really are that dopey, and having total crap
> included in an encyclopedia that purports to be authoritative just
> legitimizes dopiness.
What if there is a literal Hell? How do you know there isn't?
How do you know the moon landings weren't staged?
(For the record, I don't think there is a literal Hell, and I think
the moon landings were real, but I don't have your absolute certainty
on the matter. If a thing is true, then it can withstand skepticism,
and testing it will not make it any less true; and if a thing is
false, it really ought to be tested to show that.)
> It says that all knowledge is on an equal footing; all facts, no
> matter how trivial or fringe are equally deserving of being
> enshrined in the global database of all things worth knowing.
All knowledge *is* on an equal footing: there's nothing inherent in
_Ulysses_ that makes it more important than _The Da Vinci Code_. To
be sure, many very educated people think that _Ulysses_ is great, but
hey, I'm a very educated person, and I've tried four times to get into
it, and, well, life's too short.
Any information that someone decides is worth writing down and
contributing *is* worth knowing. The difference is, now anyone can
put in the effort to write something down and contribute it -- you
don't need a PhD and 10 years of research credentials to get someone
to listen to you.
If you spend any length of time looking at reception history, you see
that this sort of thing happens all the time: "great" works are
remembered not because they have any inherent worth [though some works
are better than others] but because an influential critic championed
them. Bach's music was all but forgotten -- and indeed, he was
considered an academic old pedant -- until Mendelssohn and company
revived it in the 1820s; Mahler languished in similar obscurity until
the 1960s; and Arvo Paert really owes his popularity to the advocacy
of Paul Hillier. Not that any of these composers aren't worth
listening to or remembering -- but they're listened to and remembered
because influential people put in a lot of time and effort advocating
for them. Wikipedia's genius is that it lets anyone advocate for
anything, and is thus likely to result in a much truer picture of
what's culturally important.
> It is for these people who are less well informed that we need to
> get the signal to noise ratio up. Neither you nor I are in any
> danger of thinking that MegaMan NT Warrior is of the same cultural
> or historical importance as the plays of Ibsen, but an ignorant 16
> year old very well might.
Why do you think that Ibsen is so self-evidently less important than
MegaMan NT Warrior?
Why do you think it's so important that the "ignorant 16 year old" be
taught to think that?
(Answering my own questions, sort of: I think that video games in
general have a *lot* more influence on current culture than Ibsen did.
I'd bet more people alive have played MegaMan NT Warrior than have
seen _Hedda Gabler_ or _A Doll's House_. And I think that "ignorant
16 year old" can make his own decisions about what he thinks is
important -- if not at 16, then later on; if he decides Ibsen is
important, it should be because he finds something of value in Ibsen,
not because anything that might threaten the sanctity of high culture
has been mercilessly redacted away.)
> Again, judging what to include and what to exclude is not easy, but
> just because it is difficult is no excuse for not doing it if
> wikipedia proposes to be taken seriously.
Why should Wikipedia care about being taken seriously by anyone except
those who contribute to it?
And momentarily granting that Wikipedia should care what you think --
why should it hew to your conception of what an encyclopedia is,
rather than its conception of what an encyclopedia could be?
Charlton
On 2006-09-13 08:08:18 -0400, Charlton Wilbur
<·······@mithril.chromatico.net> said:
> What if there is a literal Hell? How do you know there isn't?
Literal, as in "there really is an actual physical location under the
surface of the earth where a humanoid with horns and hooves tortures
dead people for all time in a lake of fire."
Now that we've clarified what "literal" means, do you really want to
ask me how I know there isn't a literal hell? Hint: it has something to
do with geology and biology.
> All knowledge *is* on an equal footing: there's nothing inherent in
> _Ulysses_ that makes it more important than _The Da Vinci Code_.
No, really it isn't. Different pieces of knowledge differ greatly in
their impact on world history and culture. Those that have a seminal
influence on the course of world literature really are more significant
than the latest pop novel. The fact that this isn't crystal clear to
you and others posting here is just a display of:
1. your ignorance of which of these bits of knowledge are significant
and which aren't, and/or
2. your resentment of being told which bits are significant even though
these bits really are more significant.
Only the significant pieces of knowledge belong in an encycolpedia. Ads
belong in the yellow pages or Google. TV shows, for the most part,
belong on a TV trivia web site, pop novels at Borders.
Your mistake here is thinking that "more significant" means "better" or
"you should prefer this because it's more important." Many people
prefer The Da Vinci Code to Ulysses and there's nothing wrong with
that. "More significant" means "has had a greater impact on world
culture and history." Some random business's ad has not had any
significat impact on world culure or history. Ulysses has (on culture)
and only time will tell whether The Da Vinci Code has a significant
impact on world culture or history (will it lead to women being allowed
to be Roman Catholic Priests? - I doubt it, but it's remotely
possible), but up to now, it is simply a pop novel. As such it does not
belong in an encyclopedia of all human knowledge.
In any event, this will have to end for me leastways as I'll be away
for a week.
········@gmail.com wrote:
> In another thread Tim Bradshaw repeatedly claims: "programming is
> *hard* and
> *boring*" I'm okay with "Hard" because it's relative to your skill
> level, so I know that he's wrong from the outset. But I've never ever
> heard anyone (at least not a programmer) say that programming is
> boring! Oh, sure, there are times when I have to slog through some
> standard piece of code for the tenth time that I wish was built into
> the language, but, actually, I can think of nearly no other domain that
> is less boring than programming. Take, for example, the other things
> that I do on a regular basis: molecular biology (wet lab), statistics,
> mathematical modeling, reading and writing technical papers. You want
> boring?
I would totally understand that pipette work is boring and even
unnerving, but statistics? I beg to disagree. I think statistics is the
coolest subject ever. To understand the essence of statistics inside
out is pure enlightenment.
> I think statistics is the
> coolest subject ever. To understand the essence of statistics inside
> out is pure enlightenment.
Yes, I agree; Statistics can be rather interesting when done for
oneself, or theoretically. But having to re-explain <The Same Simple
Stat Concepts> over and over to so-called "scientists" who really
should understand that one noisy observation does not make a
publishable result, gets old quite fast.