Michi Henning on Computing Fallacies

Karma Sucks writes "Check out this summary of a keynote at Linux.conf.au by Michi Henning of CORBA fame. It really hits the nail on several points. I especially liked the point about people constantly rewriting letters in these modern times, as opposed to say 1945 where it just wasn't worth the pain of re-typing a letter. The only point that didn't made sense in this summary was the one about "source code being useless"."

Comments

Where's this guy's asbestos suit?

[wrinkledshirt]

Fallacy 10: Open Source is the Answer

- Economic model is doubtful

- Source code is useless

- Motivation for Open Source is inappropriate for most software

- Nerd culture is counter-productive


I'd like to see him come here and say that. ;)

I are an engineer.

[testpoint]

It really hits the nail on several points.
I like my metaphores stirred not mixed.

frm the artical

[Waffle Iron]

Back then it was okay to have 3 or so typos per page without re-typing the entire letter.

but now is ok for ppl 2 put 42 typos in inrnet msg & hit submitt

Windows for dummies.

[www.sorehands.com]

Well, that is redundant. But even so, it make me think of the book, "Sex for dummies" which gave me a whole new perspective on RTFM.

Re:I love Fallacy 10

[Rupert]

Girls - don't have sex because 'it's cool'. That only leads to burnout. Do it for money. At least you get something back and don't ruin the market for us whores.

Only Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

...would consider the incomplete notes someone took at a keynote address to be news.

Source code is useless

[mccalli]

...unless, of course, you either compile or interpret it into executable form and then use the resulting software tool to create lecture notes containing the text 'source code is useless'...

Cheers,
Ian

Re:I love Fallacy 10

[Rupert]

I hate Linux and Open Source in general with a passion

Which makes your 680 /. posts all the more impressive. I mean, you despise Linux, perl, MySQL, and even SlashCode itself. You are surrounded by people who deeply and abidingly disagree with you. And yet you put up with all of this to bring us comments with titles like "erf" and "zerg".

I salute you.

In reponse to your sig:

[Anonymous Coward]

For every complex problem there is a brilliant, simple solution which is just plain wrong.

Re:Of course.

[Bilestoad]

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."

"Given enough monkeys and typewriters, you have the complete works of Shakespeare."

Of course the only problem is that you need the right monkeys. Too often the monkeys you need already have full-time jobs and are happily taking home lots of bananas. It might be that the monkeys with spare time just aren't capable...

Re:A Bit more then that

[3am]

The only thing that it would cause is people demanding that MS make Word more secure. Word is like Herpes or fruit flies, it'll never go away.

Michi, what's the matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I coded in CORBA 18 hours a day I would go crazy too...

String_var s(CORBA::strdup("Please kill me!"));

Re:Sauce for the goose and gander

[mrseth]

> Organized religion

He said advance, not regress :)

Re:A Bit more then that

[Chris Burke]

Heh. I can imagine what that book looks like.

"Teach Yourself C++ in 10 Minutes"

Chapter 1: Minute 1:

First, realize that if you really thought you could learn a programming language in 10 minutes, you're too stupid to be a programmer.

Spend the remaining 9 minutes 40 seconds letting that sink in.

Sucker.