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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"."
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Penicillin - 1920's technology
Iowa/Yamoto class battleships - 1920's technology
Apollo moonrockets - 1940's with a dash of 50's
Polio vaccine - 1880's with a dash of 1940's
Transistor - 1930's
Bulk transport system, rail - 1860's
Bulk transport system, car/truck - 1920's
Airplane - 1910's
Fast airplane - 1950's
Yup, makin progress fast.
sPh
What could be better capitalism than providing a quality product at no cost? The ultimate competition.
Though at first appealing, it's economically impossible. There is a cost to everything, whether financial, labor or opportunity cost.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
> Nerd culture is counter-productive
.. very creative, with a propensity to desire to push boundries. Their influences may not be approrpiate for the masses, but they lay the frame work for those who compute and program (or write pop and rock) to achieve practical purposes. Practical people see no value in thinking outside the boundries of current methods, but are more than happy to stand on the shoulders of those that do (as well it should be.)
Nerds are the computer equivilent of the Enos, the Yoko Onos, the Peter Gabriels
Whats wrong with different people born for different goals? Even if you don't directly contribute the masses, most changes in fundemental social systems (and technical systems) starts with someone rejecting the norm. As well it should be. Leave them alone and let them nerd!
"Old man yells at systemd"
From the article:
"The best UI people on the planet are those working in the car industry.
We need to make it a criminal law to change certain API's. There are potentially
huge impacts. When we produce a new drug, we can't just release it to millions of
people without some sort of testing."
yeah, but how long should the testing cycle be? For example, we hear all the time about drugs being recalled because of illnesses caused by its use. Beta testing is a great way to do this, however, even then you can't know until your program is running on a lot of machines in different environments, with different variables.
So, what can you do? Well, you release the software after doing as much testing as possible, and wait to see the results...then patch, patch, patch..which is the way it's being done now. That's why early adopters know (or should know)what they are getting into, and why most of the companies I have dealt with, (running win2k) waited for SP2 to come out before upgrading.
Or, you could establish some sort of body, like the FDA does, that tests the heck out of software for a while before shipping. Problem with that though, is that by the time it is approved, its obsolete.
Other than that, this was a most excellent read.
Sent from your iPad.
"The only point that didn't made sense in this summary was the one about "source code being useless"."
Source code *is* useless to about 99% of the people that use the program. My aunt Benita isn't going to track down a Microsoft Word bug and fix it even if she HAD the source. She wouldn't care - she'd just wait for the update. So in that context, the source code is useless.
Where the source code does become useful is in the hands of developers, but for users it's just another disk of stuff they get in the package that they'll never use.
----- rL
"Don't write software because 'it's cool'. That only leads to burnout. Write it for money. At least you get something back and don't ruin the market for the rest of us."
Um, no, doing stuff you don't like to do just "for the money" is what leads to burnouts. Nobody ever says "Boy am I burned out playing around carefree...I gotta take a vacation and do some drudgery!". That said, the concepts of *sound design*, *quality*, *maintainability*, *lifespan*, etc., have to be built into the "programming curriculum". I mean, they don't just hand soldiers a bazooka and say "Ok, if you can pull the trigger, you're ready! Off you go!".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Wow, that only stings if you don't understand the sarcasm/cynicism he is using throughout the lecture.
ARE YOU PEOPLE BLIND OR JUST UNINTELLIGENT (this includes the people who have mod'ed these stupid comments up)...
A good word processer is NOT "all you need" and source code is NOT "useless"
I know Microsoft Excel certainly helped me show the CEO of Megacorp how to accurately predict sales of black dildos
Oh, and the author transcribes 'M$ paperclip' - Did the presenter actually talk about 'Emm-dollar paperclip' No? Then don't write it like he did.
Some (occasional) interesting points, but really nothing that hasn't been mentioned many times before by anyone who's ever used a pc.
I rate this article C- Trite.
Nerd culture is counter productive??
Hello?... 'nerds' are the whole impetus behind the electronics industry. Without nerds wanting to show off with faster processors, cooler video boards or better OS's a few billion dollar industries wouldn't exist today.
Hell, Star Wars would have earned $1.50 at the theater without nerds creating the cult that propells it. Nerds created pong on a friggen mainframe just to goof off and sparked the video game industry, quickly gaining as the most widespread form of mass entertainment on the earth.
I am nerd, hear me calculate!
I am somewhat indignant at this remark. I write software because it is useful to me, and because I feel it might be useful to others. I release it as Free Software because I feel the this is the way people will get the most use out of it, and possibly improve it for everyone else, as well.
As for Fallacy 10.2 and 10.4, it's easily shown to be invalid via counterexample. Linux, gcc, XFree86, etc., are all case in point here.
Fallacy 10.3 is my own personal business. Who are you to tell me my motivation is inappropriate? I think the sole desire to make money is an inappropriate motivation. Should I tell you to stop writing software for money? Of course not.
As for F10.1, I consider this highly irrelevant. I don't give two hoots about Open Source or Free Software as an economic model. (In fact, if my Free Software ruins your market, I'd be more than apathetic, I'd be somewhat gleeful. ;-))
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Don't write software because 'it's cool'. That only leads to burnout. Write it for money.
Sounds ok, but s/cool/fun and I disagree completely.
Don't do anything just because it's "cool". What kind of person does that? Some mindless MTV wannabee?
OTOH, if it's fun, well, why not do it?
Fun doesn't lead to burnout, it leads to well, children. erm, no, that's something else...
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
Apparently you and I are very different people. I get burned out writing software for money. Writing software that is 'cool', on the other hand, is fun.
At least you get something back and don't ruin the market for the rest of us.
I get something back from my 'cool' software -- reputation and job opportunities. When I want a job with XYZ-Corp, I don't have to make do with just a (mostly unverifiable) resume; I can point them to places on the internet where my code is in use every day, let them download source code of my work and look at it for themselves, and send them the email addresses of my code's happy users. That way they know just what sort of programmer they will get for their money, and I get the job I want.
As for "ruining it for the rest of you", tough shit. I bet you complained about the people in your college classes who set the curve on exams, too.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I agree with those points for the most part (they may be overstated a bit much for my taste).
l ) noted that most Open Source programmers are employed by closed source companies. If they damage their employer's ability to deploy software, what good does that do anybody?
The economic model is so far proven to work for only a few companies and not for the industry as a whole. I suspect that basing the industry entirely on service and support is going to drive the prices for those functions much higher and frustrate most users. By offering the program for free, most users are going to expect free support.
Another relevant thought is that without closed-source companies to support the programmers who are donating software, how are these programmers going to survive? A recent article in the Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23935.htm
Source code IS useless if you don't have time to look over it or modify it. It only benefits the 5% or so that are actively involved in maintaining or modifying the code. The remaining consumers get absolutely zero benefit from it.
I'm not sure I can argue either for or against the third point, except to say that once the money is removed from the equation, how do you force change without innovation? Ie., fixes instead of new features?
The nerd culture IS counterproductive, since it emphasizes an antagonism toward those who run businesses (suits) and those who sell products (marketroids). In order for Open Source to succeed, there is going to have to be a meeting of the minds on a massive level, not just a few companies here and there.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
He claims:
99% of all documents are written to be printed on paper.
Hell, no! 99% of documents (besides programs) I write are emails.
I'm not nitpicking, this is a major flaw in the argument.
It amazes me how quickly people that have anything to do with computers like to declare them obsolete.
It reminds me of the guy who had an old 68k Macintosh running Word 5.1. He knew how to use it and it did everything he wanted it to do.
One day the IT people at his company took his mac away and gave him a new PC because the mac was "too slow" Well, what happened?
First of all, he was not familiar with the PC or with the new features availible in Word. Second of all, many of these new features were more annoying than useful, especially when the newer version of Word autocorrected something that didn't need correction. Also. considering that this new, more complex software is both more demanding of hardware and more prone to bugs, He found that his new system was slower than his old one and more prone to crashing.
So, why again was that Mac obsolete?
As a developer, I inherently know what NOT to do. A computer moron doesn't know these things, and will use it like the end user will. An experienced programmer will use my programs like I will, and will usually get the tough errors back to me. A computer moron will get the obscure ones back, and it tends to be those errors which make it through to the end user.
Kris Felscher
We've got enough youth, how about a fountain of "smart"?
"Computers Allow People to Do things They Could Not Do Otherwise"
How is this a fallacy??...He cites perhaps the handful of examples in which it may NOT be true, but leaves out the seemingly unending numbers of examples in which it is in fact very true.
- Telephone switching
- All the sophisticated computers running those F16s we see in Afganistan
- Power grid / sewage / water / gas control (in most areas)
- The entire Internet
- The level of visual effects in movies
- Computer and video games
- Thousands of different manufacturing processes that need to be computer controlled to get the level of accuracy needed
- Protein folding research
- and so on...
"The only point that didn't made sense in this summary was the one about "source code being useless"
It would have been better, perhaps, to say "for most users, source code is useless."
I remember when I was first getting started, and I head about Open Source. "Hey, cool, I can teach myself to write a word processor!" The truth, though, was that I couldn't. The code to any non-trivial program is going to be very hard to follow if you don't have someone walking you through it, or loads of time to work it through. And that's if you're a programmer. If you aren't, all the source code is good for is taking up space on your hard drive.
Thomas Galvin
While I think many of his fallacies have some truth to them (and I find them amusing), I think that his arguments only apply to business, or more specifically, they DON'T apply to a lot of areas where computers have revolutionized the way people do things, for example, in music composition, graphic design, scientific research, etc. - not to mention communication.
Let's consider Fallacy 2: Computers Allow People to Do things They Could Not Do Otherwise. This is not a fallacy, it's true. As an amateur composer, I can compose and print a piece of music in a tenth of the time it would take me to do by hand. I am not taking advantage of any automatic composition or any silly A.I. technology. I'm just taking about using Finale 2000 to enter in the notes using my MIDI keyboard, edit them quickly with the mouse, and listen to the result through my speakers to make sure I didn't make any musical "typos".
How about scientific research? Scientists now have amazingly powerful tools at their disposal. I know plenty of people who do need to perform a Fourier analysis on a daily basis (see Fallacy 7) and for people like this who are leading experts in Physics but know little about computers, a book like "Learn Matlab in 21 days" is all they need. I agree that you can't become a good DB programmer or QA person by reading a quick book or studing at DeVry, but most people who use computers aren't programmers and don't need to be.
While we were taking about scientific researchers, clearly "Computers are Getting Faster" is NOT a fallacy for them!
Finally, what about the Internet? Yes, the dot-com bubble bursted, but note that all major companies still have websites. It's silly to even consider a company not having one. E-mail definitely allows you to do things that weren't possible (or at least weren't realistic) before, like collaborate on a book or article with someone who lives halfway around the world.
Also, statements like "Programmers are Getting Better" are hard to really analyze. One problem is that there are hundreds of times more programmers now than there were twenty years ago. As a natural consequence, the average level of expertise has gone down a lot. But the best programmers today are a lot better than the best programmers twenty years ago - because they're building off of the best ideas of the last twenty years. And there's no question that even below-average programmers are far more productive today than below-average programmers twenty years ago, simply because there are more high level tools available to them. People who write Visual Basic scripts for internal company programs may be very poor programmers, but if they can get the job done, who cares?
< / RANT >
Sorry. Computers have definitely made my life better, and have enabled me to do many things I never could have done without them, so I get upset when people try to argue that computers suck and that things are basically the same as they were before computers.
It's not counterproductive to have people pushing the envelope, it's counterproductive to have people outside of the mainstream dictating to those in it what their needs are.
Despite advances in UIs, computers are still designed as general-purpose hobby devices, rather than for the specific functions for which the majority of their sales are used. When users complain that it doesn't make sense to have to log in to a system or to "start" a word processor, or to "double-click" to "open" a file through a graphical icon, they're simply told that they don't understand the technology. Same when they have to figure out [to avoid being scammed] what kind of RAM they need with their new P4 processors.
The point is that for products to be useful and effective, they need to be designed with more consideration for the needs of the user; and much of the time, that which is "neat" to enthusiasts has held sway over design at the expense of what would be useful [see featurebloat].
BTW: impractical thinking is not necessarily visionary. It might just be impractical.
Larsal
There are good points but I've got a problem with what looks like the unwritten assumptions that programs are all the same and are targetted at the same people. Let's see who uses:
-Word
-Matlab
-Apache
-Linux/Embedded
-AutoCAD
...
While you (should) want to make Word as simple as possible, you want to let Apache users configure everything, you want to let people modify the source to Linux(Embedded) to exactly fit their needs. AutoCAD needs lots of features, but not necessarly source code ('cuz there are less programmers in mec. eng. than ee)
So I'd add fallacy #11: Programs are all the same
-Software management should be done the same way, regardless of the software being produced
-All programs should focus on simplicity, not features
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Money is not the only motivator for people to do work -- even skilled labor. Doctors who work in well-paid jobs in cooshy suburban hospitals routinely donate their efforts to free clinics and programs like Doctors Without Borders. Lawyers take on pro-bono cases for causes they believe in. Programmers write Free software. They all do this not for money, but for personal satisfaction, out of a sense of duty, or to gain experience they wouldn't get in their day jobs. Why do you feel it's appropriate to praise the doctors and lawyers who donate their hard-won professional knowledge to the world, but to deride and ridicule the programmers who do so.
Consider this - a volunteer doctor or lawyer can only help one person at a time, whereas an infinite number of people can benefit from the efforts of a volunteer programmer.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Why do certain members of the programming community think their industry is different or more special than others? Every industry has some equivalent of open source work and closed source work that both thrive.
:-)
In my particular branch of financial services (business appraisal), the equivalent to open source would be all of the articles, books and speeches about newly discovered techniques, insight into court cases and mathematical formulas...in short, industrial infrastructure. Everyone in the industry utilizes and benefits from the sharing of information. And, the people that share this information, such as Shannon Pratt, gain tons of respect and are held in the highest regard.
The equivalent to closed-source work in my industry would be actual valuation assignments. They have to be "closed" and not open for anyone to see due to the sensitive nature of the information we're working with.
The funny thing is, we use all of our openly discussed ideas and techniques to create confidential work. Sort of like a BSD licensing system
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I wonder just how far we've come in automotive technology since the 1950s?
/help documentation.
I mean, the cars don't actually go any faster. The speed limits aren't much higher, and if anything, the increased traffic makes us drive slower. Environmental improvements from catalytic converters and the like are nullified by the increased number of cars producing pollution. We add rear-window wipers and CD players, and instead of buying (or building) a more efficient vehicle we demand (and get) SUVs from every last manufacturer on the planet.
So, are cars actually any better, when any technological improvements are effectively nullified by the people driving them?
Well, yes, they are. Cars are more popular every decade because they're easier to use, cheaper to own, and more comfortable for everyone inside. They may not be "better" from a numerical perspective, but anyone driving a 2002 model right after driving a 1962 model will immediately notice the difference.
Computers are the same way. The faster they get, the more we expect them to do. The more people that use them, the fewer things they are used for. Developers get sloppier about optimization and APIs get changed with every iteration of the OS. It takes longer to start up this year's computer as it did 1979's, and people still do the same basic things with them.
But look at how much they've changed: graphical UIs make it easier for anyone to use a computer, instead of having to know what to type in at a text prompt. WYSIWYG doesn't happen 100% of the time, but 98% is a fair sight better than 0%. I may not get anything more interesting using a cable modem than I could using a 14.4 and a BBS, but at least all the commands are on screen instead of hidden behind a hundred scrolling screens of
So people are using all this computing power for nothing more than playing video poker and typing papers. So what? 90% of the population never needed it to do anything more; at least in 2002, they can do it for a lot less money and with a lot less reading. Companies and users may throw away countless man-hours developing skins and pretty interfaces, but at least they're successful in making computers familiar, comfortable, and desirable to the common man.
And besides, look at all the things we can do with a PC today that we couldn't ten years ago: access millions of pages of esoteric information online. Take photos digitally and organize them on CD-R discs, taking up 1/100th of the space for about the same cost. Listen to a thousand songs from a single digital jukebox, no vinyl or tape required. IM your mom across the continent without spending a penny on long-distance. Order anything from the Sears catalog without having to own the catalog. Find a new job. Locate a special interest group. Print a map. Comparison shop.
Or, just write and print out your resume. But at least nowadays, as with Henry Ford's first cars, you're not stuck with "any color you want, as long as it's black."
Or if you ask me. This guy has a few interesting points and a bunch of useless or fundimentally flawed points.
The one "decent" point is that people spend too much time dicking around with fonts and colors. But that's a problem that doesn't sit on a hard drive - it sits in the chair in front of the computer.
Fallacy 1: Computing is Easy, he shows by pointing out that there are "Teach Yourself" and "for Dummies" books. These are merely titles. He then points out things like "Air Traffic Control for Morons" is silly. Yes, it is, if you're going to be a professional ATC. But then, if you're seeing if you're interested in the field, or possibly getting caught up on a new system, it makes sense. These are industry specific publications - grabbing a copy of New Riders "Essiental Python" won't teach you Python if you've never programmed, but it will get you going quickly if you've done C++, Perl, etc before.
Fallacy 2: Computers Allow People to Do things They Could Not Do Otherwise This is not a fallacy. I don't have a typewriter, lightboard, razors, specialized photography equipment and a printing press. But I've used a multitude of layout programs and a printer, which is far cheaper and quicker to use. The fallacy he *is* showing is the concept of "Software automatically makes me an expert", which is not a common credo at all. In fact, most office workers will activly try to avoid learning new software because they don't understand that that field.
Fallacy 3: Computers Increase Productivity
Walk into an engineering firm or archetect firm and ask them if they want to go back to sketching blueprints. See if most small businesses have a CPA on hire anymore. He says: "It only took five hours to format this memo". If that's the case, the problem sits in the chair, not in the software. Your HR department should take care of that, not IT.
Fallacy 4: Programs Help Their Users Which he then says is a false because they are only focused on upgrades, money and crushing the competition. And yet, later he'll say why open source is useless. Um.
Fallacy 5: If It's Graphical, It's Easy CLI might be more "powerful" in the hands of a skilled user (I won't give mine up), but well done GUIs can be self explanatory (assuming you know the conventions of that UI). Again, he's phrasing this so it is self-fufilling. Of *course* there are lousy graphical interfaces out there. There are also quite a few easy ones. And I think the metaphor of windows is a very very good one in a computing environment when you are moving from task to task constantly (Letter, Email, Check the intranet for some numbers, back to the Email, task list, look up an phone number, make a call, pull up client records and make note, check email, write a letter). For very deticated tasks, it's less useful, but many real world users need to jump around in tasks. Even if it's a spreadsheet and solitare, as a receptionist listed as her "necessary applications".
Fallacy 6: Computers are Getting Faster Computers are getting faster, the experience is not. On my Apple ][, I could turn it on and in a matter of several seconds, be typing in a word processor. But then, it didn't have spell checking, fonts, and I couldn't make a spreadsheet larger than something like 32x64. Humans can only work so quickly, so as long as the computer can keep up, the coders will add new features. There is the issue of "snappiness", but that's a feel issue less than a task speed issue.
"We have come along and destroyed all the gains we have made in hardware" - no, we have leveraged them into more flexability.
Fallacy 7: Programs are Getting Better
He asks how often I make pie charts. Me? Very seldom. But for the guy down the hall who does financial pitches to clients, he really really needs that ability. How often do I embedd live info into a document? Not often - but the guy who manages the intranet does it all the time. How often do I perform a Fourier analysis? Pretty damn often - when I was in college. Had I gone into a different field, I would be stone dead if I couldn't.
His wife was trying to save a 2.2MB for a 2 page Word document on a floppy disk. Plain text, default font, left aligned. There was one email address, underlined. After 17 minutes of searching, he found a way to turn off this email address highlight off. The document was then saved at 800KB.
My comment: Then it wasn't plain text! We all *know* that Word's doc format sucks... so use something else (and yet open source has no advantages in creating sane standards).
Fallacy 9: Programming is About Date Structures and Algorithms
No... Program = Data Structure + Algorithms. Knowing how they work makes you a better programmer. Period. And Michi? I wrote a program using linked lists last week. Some of us do low level code for specific reasons.
Fallacy 10: Open Source is the Answer I agree with this one - again, because he phrased it carefully. Open Source is an answer, not "the" answer.
Fallacy 11: Standards all the Solution Right then, what is Corba?
Fallacy 12: We are Making Progress If you bought the shite at the beginning, I assume this makes sense.
Fallacy 13: The Industry Knows Where it is Goling Name an industry that does know what is in the future. Hell, name a *person* who is certain of the future and is not delusional.
This guy is a twonk, and almost dangerous: The best UI people on the planet are those working in the car industry. And yet people die all the time because the controls for AC and radio are off to the side and different in each car. I get into a new car, and I have to play for a minute to figure out the lights, shifting, etc... and I just forget about things like cruise control unless I'm on a road trip - and then I ask.
And finally, the biggest thing that shows what an idiot this guys is: We have to stop doing things just because they are fun. If you don't enjoy your activities and you aren't pursuing alternate activites, that's a pathalogical condition. You are mentally ill.
Me? I enjoy my profession, *and* do the best damn job I can do to make powerful, easy to use and useful solutions for my users.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
That's only a "fine point of design" to a 15-year-old. No, scratch that; it's not design at all. Any decent or even semi-decent compiler or interpreter should be able to make that particular optimization all by itself. A real fine point of design is whether to use events or threads, update or invalidate, distance vector or shortest path, this class hierarchy or that class hierarchy, this module layering or that module layering...stuff that can't be automated or even delegated to an inexperienced programmer.
Dream much? Ever hear of specialization? You're right that QA tends to get the short end of the stick in a lot of ways. QA engineers should have some programming experience, should attend (some) development meetings, should have more authority wrt the disposition of bugs...but they should not be checking in production code. Good QA is hard work, requiring its own specialized set of knowledge and skills. Any QA engineer who's making (and, one would hope, unit testing) their own changes to the production code is not going QA, and QA needs to get done. Hire another developer or extend the schedule, but don't take good QA engineers away from the necessary task that they do best to have them do someone else's job.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
I run two FreeBSD systems, one at home and one at work. Everything from the kernel to this browser was built from source code. Even the documentation was built from the original DocBook sources. The only things installed as binaries are Acroread and Realplayer.
The source code is VERY useful to me, even though I haven't seen 90% of it. That's because I built my system optimized for the Pentium IV (Athlon at home). You just can't do that with a binary. In addition, I get to build certain packages the way *I* want them built. I love Dia but I don't use Gnome so I get to build Dia without Gnome instead of using the binary package which requires Gnome.
I wouldn't even be running an X server on my workstation if it weren't for the source code, since XFree86 doesn't fully support my video card. But with a simple patch it works great. Yes, this patch could have been posted binary only, but how the hell would the poster know how I compiled my server? How the hell does he even know which OS I am using. Is he going to have a binary patch available for every possible combination of CPU and OS?
I may never look at the source code for gcc, konqueror or XFree86, but I damn well want it available.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Penicillin - People still take drugs, but those drugs are magnitudes more powerful and complicated than penicillin
Iowa/Yamato class battleships - The battleship as a ship-of-the-line was rendered obsolete in the 1940's. Those that serve today carry helos and guided missiles.
Apollo moonrockets - They have not been utilized since 1974, with the Apollo-Soyuz test project. I will grant that NASA has lagged behind in space delivery systems.
Polio vaccine - If it isn't broke don't fix it. However, new vaccines are coming along all the time.
Transistor - Has been superceded by better technologies.
Bulk transport system, rail - The main difference here is that the engines of today are vastly more powerful than those in the 1860's. There is no comparison between a 4-4-0 American-C and a Dash D9. None at all.
Bulk transport system, car/truck - Same with above, plus the interstate system, created between the 1950's and the 1990's (yes, it was based on 1930's German tech, but it is better than the Autobahn).
Airplane - Once again, the concept is there, but a whole host of innovations have been ignored. The airplane of 1910 bears little resemblance to the airplane of 2002.
Fast airplane - Once again, vastly more advanced today. Try telling me that an F-86 Sabre has anything on an F-22 Raptor. Better avionics, superior engines, stealth....
Personally, I would say we're making plenty of progress on these fronts.
~chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
The public benefit of open source and free software has nothing to do with economics. It has everything to do with learning and progress, and free access to source code is the key to advancing past the current stagnant backwater that computer science has become.
Let me explain.
Imagine that you're a young student who wants to become a writer. You ask your teacher, "What do I need to do in order to become a great writer."
Your teacher, if she has a bit of sense about her, will tell you to read all the works that you can, by the best writers, and learn from them. By recreationally reading and studying the works of great writers, as a young person, you will learn to recognize and understand, from experience, what differentiates good writing from bad writing. This is the educational process that, if you are both diligent and lucky, will turn you into a talented writer.
Contrast this advice with the world of computer programming. In the world of software, programs are distributed as object code -- meaning that you can't learn from them by reading them. Plus, they contain "licenses" that proport to deny you the right to study them to learn from them. Any programmer who obtains surreptitious access to some major program's source code is running a serious risk of being unemployable -- as a legal liability.
It is as if our original hypothetical budding author were told:
"If you want to be come a author, you must be sure to never, ever read anyone else's books, especially popular books by great authors. The way to become an author is to wait until you are of college age, then enroll in a two year "writing school", where you will learn grammar and spelling, sentence structure, and then write a series of short essays. For your final project, you will write a single chapter of a book co-authored by the entire class. Once you are completed with this two year course, you will have your degree, and, having only studied textbooks, will be fully qualified and ready to join the workforce as a writer, uncontaminated by exposure to real-world writing experience.
If this were the way we taught writing, then our novels would show the same lack of quality -- and lack of progress as our software does right now!
So how do we fix this problem?
I believe that the answer is to reform copyright law. The current system of closed source, proprietary programming technology -- and the lack of any noticable progress in the craft of programming -- reflects the complete failure of copyright law brought on by the extension of copyright protection to proprietary software.
Patent and Copyright law are supposed to promote progress by placing the best examples of science and technology into the public domain, where they can be studied and learned from. If I want to learn about any physical science or engineering discipline -- if I want to catch up to the current state of the art, all I need do is go to the patent databases and -- right there, are thousands of examples of the latest, real-world scientific technology, written by actual scientists working in actual companies on actual products -- all there for me to study and learn from, and, 17-20 years after disclosure, to freely draw upon and use.
This is the public benefit of the patent system -- the dissemenation of practical engineering and scientific knowledge. This is supposed to be the public benefit of the copyright system. Copyright is supposed to be a tradeoff. Copyright is supposed to provide monopoly benefits in exchange for publication -- public disclosure. This works just fine in the case of natural language writings, because the source code is the product, but not for object code, where the product can only, for all practical purposes, be used -- not studied and learned from.
Copyright law could and should be used to leverage a similar public benefit, however, in the case of software, our legislators have completely missed the point of having copyright in the first place. The purpose of copyright is not to protect authors. The purpose of copyright is to create the next generation of authors -- to "promote progress" -- by encouraging the publication of works.
Imagine an alternate universe in which copyright protection were only afforded to software that was distributed in conjunction with full, buildable source code. Companies would have to choose between copyright protection, and DRM protection, instead of the current dysfunctional system, where they are able to effectively obtain copyrights on works that are at the same time, in effect, trade secrets.
In such an alternate universe, young programmers would start out as computer users. However, if they became curious about how their software worked, they would find the source code to their programs waiting for them.
Like the young, would-be writer with a library full of books, they would have the entire world of software to read, study, analyze, and learn from.
One objection to the source code requirement for copyright protection that I have heard is that it would encourage code theft. If companies distributed the source code to their products, I have heard it said, other companies will steal their work and incorporate it into their own code.
The answer to this objection is that, under such a system, they would not be able to do that because it would be trivially easy to detect such theft. If I were to steal a portion of the Windows source code and add it to my program, then went to market my program, in order to obtain copyright protection, I would be forced to distribute my source code -- with the stolen Windows source code imbedded. Microsoft would discover it and shut me down.
In this way, mandatory disclosure of source code would severely limit, or effectively end the practice of code theft. Who's to say who is stealing code today? It's nearly impossible to tell, when only object code is published.
Fortunately, free software, and to a lesser extent open source software is bridging this gap. Yesterday's young budding software writers had little to work from. The new generation of young software writers -- and I am talking about high-school age students -- have the entire GNU/Linux/Gnome/KDE system to study and learn from. Free software is the only software that earns its copyright. It's the only software that "promotes progress", because it's the only software that can be freely studied by the general public. It's a functional replacement for the public domain that has been lost/destroyed by misguided, failed copyright law.
In other words, just as having access to a library of great books is everything to a young, budding writer, having access to quality, real-world source code is everything to a young, budding programmer.
In a certain sense, it's probably the only thing that really matters.
But, the people that design and position the steering wheels, pedals, shifters, turn signals, gauges and door handles in such a way that *anyone* can go from one car to another without *any* difficulty or re-education
The example I give is this: I once drove a friends car in the dark. I drove it on city streets for close to an hour before I realised the turn signal lever wasn't a lever, but a little switch on the dashborad. However that switch was right where my fingers expeced it to be, and worked just the like the turn signal lever of any other car I ever drove so I didn't know that it was a completely different implimentation!
Unfortunatly not all things are like that. When I drive my dad's truck I often trun the headlights off on a rainy day, his headlights switch is where the whindshield whipers on most cars are.
Aside from the fact that I absolutely *loath* InstallShield, a binary no-brainer type installation is only better if it always works. If it doesn't, you're often out of luck.
I just recently had to use Windows for the first time in about three years and I was amazed at how difficult it was to load up with software. Half the software packages I tried to install had problems. I called the vendor of the network card to tell them that their install failed. "Did you try un-installing then re-installing it?" I said that I did. "How many times?" they asked. In the two days it took me to get everything installed I think I spent 3/4 of the time waiting for the system to reboot. My vision of the painless life of a Windows user quickly vanished.
In theory, the notion of a non-programmer 'who is good at finding bugs' is great, but they rarely exist. For pure end-user apps, they might make up a portion of the QA team, but that's all.
There are two major problems in practice. First is that the type of insight and analytic skills you need to do good QA work are pretty much the same as those needed to be a good designer/developer. You need to understand the 'task' at multiple levels, know how it relates to other aspects of the program, and understand the underlying technology etc. Generally, I can break the code 'finished' by junior programmers almost instantly - why? Because the combination of technical knowledge of how they probably attacked the solution along with domain knowledge of relationships/edge conditions etc is a powerful combination.
Second is that respect for non-programmers by programmers is terrible. How many dev projects have you been involved in where the programmers ignore the stupid/wrong/annoying etc QA guys? Happens all the time. Moreover, when you do get a really good QA guy, what happens? - He gets lured into development because it's 'more important' and/or pays better. Thus, I really believe that Development and QA are really phases of a project that need the same basic skills, and should be addressed accordingly. In a perfect world where everybody did formal analysis, pre/post condition testing, automated edge condition unit testing etc some of this might change, but that'll never happen in my lifetime.
Another point is that
function bob( varlist ) { $var = $joe + 12345; return $var; }
and
function bob( varlist ) { return $joe + 12345; }
might actually be the same number of operations. Not because of the compiler, but just because of the way that the machine works.
Regardless, as said before, this kind of micro-optimizing is pointless and dumb. It is not programming it is coding. Coding is a mechanical process. Programming is an art. You can optimize your code, but it is almost imposiable to optimize an API. Designing APIs is where I think all modern languages have totatly failed us. It is way too easy to write a bad api with todays languages. I've had to implement too many crazy interfaces written by people who didn't think them through. I've also created interfaces that later I went back and scrapped because they were dumb. This is the way programming is and it doesn't make any sence.
Why bother to recompile all of x86 when you could have a simple binary patch that works for your vid card?
Well, I would need a patch for FreeBSD optimized for the PIV. You got one? Yeah? Cool, now I'm running both Slackware and FreeBSD at home on a K7. Got patches for those as well? How many patches do you have? Really! Got any for XFree86-4.2.0 ready yet?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Fallacy 10: Open Source is the Answer
- Economic model is doubtful
Getting tired of hearing this. a bunch of people start companies using "open sourse" products, have no real business plan, then surprise surprise, they fail and some how open source is the fault. There are companies making money in the open sourse arena. Most companies fail, in any arena.
- Source code is useless
I'd like to see him say that after a vendor goes out of business and he has software that must be fixed, or he goes out of business.
Or the vendor changeed its focus, and since you are tied to them, your company must change the way it does business.
Say a lot of companies get surprised when MS finally discovered the internet, and they change there focus.
- Motivation for Open Source is inappropriate for most software
not sure what he means here. My motivation is 2 fold, improve my programming knowledge, make better code. I fail to see how that inappropriate.
- Nerd culture is counter-productive
yes, we nerds never ever produce anything, or start big companies *coughapplecough*.
Pretty much every large computer company was started because by a nerd.
As a matter of fact a can't think of any.
Xerox was founded by a nerd, Apple, Microsft, IBM, Sun, etc. etc.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The problem with this is that you really do want two different loci of responsibility for development and QA. You don't even want the two teams to have the same manager (or generally, the same chain of command) because that creates a conflict of interest for the manager. While wearing the DevMgr hat, he wants to get stuff out the door quickly, so he's rewarded for cutting corners when he puts on the QAMgr hat.
It might work to do what you suggest, as long as the chains of command were kept distinct so only the people at the bottom of the hierarchy ever wore both hats. But do you really want to work for two bosses at the same time, and be answerable to both?
Another possible model would be a "clean room" approach, where you're given read-only access to the source database, and you can tinker on your own machine. You can propose a specific change to the developer working on your bug, but he checks it in. Things are still sped up that way, and you avoid blurring the responsibilities.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Hmmm... I think a big problem here is that my comments were taken somewhat out of context. This wasn't about blasting Open Source at all, but to simply illustrate that Open Source can't satisfy all of the world's software needs. A lot of code we need, such as aircon controllers, engine management systems, etc. is too specialized and not sexy enough to attract Open Source developers. So, such source will continue to be written for monetary compensation. Open Source is great -- without it, I wouldn't be able to run my business. But I thought it would be worthwhile pointing out that (like any other model), the Open Source model isn't without problems and that its proponents (just like its opponents) sometimes use arguments that don't stand up under closer examination.
Cheers,
Michi.