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Postmodern Computer Science
gnat writes "Two New Zealand computer scientists have a paper accepted for OOPSLA called Notes on Postmodern Programming, which identifies shortcomings in traditional views of computer science. With a section on the difference between "The Matrix" and the net, a bulleted list of new approaches called "We're All Devo", and a section called "Messy is Good" consisting of nothing but a scan of a hand-drawn diagram, this is not your father's computer science paper. It's thought-provoking stuff, though. And you know they did their homework--they cite Larry Wall's Postmodern Perl talk."
"I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside" -- Calvin
"Messy is Good" consisting of nothing but a scan of a hand-drawn diagram" sounds like someone put off his research until 1am the night before it was due
no chapter on the death of the programmer?
I started reading the first page, then realized I still had to read 2 more pages to get to page 1. Damn funky Postscript.
...the postmodernism generator...
From the pdf:The ultimate goal of all computer science is the program... Let us desire, conceive, and create the program of the future together... it will ... one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.
Whoa. Wrong book.
http://saveie6.com/
Post modernism? Computing?
Is it just me, or does this sound like an Arts Faculty which is tired of seeing all the university funding go to those pesky IT faculties and wants to bring itself forward into the nineteenth century?
I think therefore I... [General Protection Fault reading philosophy]
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
I sense this paper is no different.
I find your lack of faith... disturbing.
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
OK. So I didn't read your comment... Perhaps it's great but more than likely it's another one of those pointless...
...and of course I have some primo skank here that has tken me even beyond the bounds of understanding possible to mere earth-bound mortals...
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
Near the end of this polemic comes the good part:
The task is to instruct a computer to print a table of the first thousand prime numbers.
To write this program, we first connected our computer to the Internet, downloaded some music from Napster, and then read our email. (You have to receive email to perform a workday [11]). We received 25 pieces of email of which 16 were advertisements for Internet pornography, administriva, or invitations to invest in Nigerian currency trades. After dealing with this email, we typed "calculate prime numbers" into Google. This found several web sites re- garding prime numbers, and some more pornography. After a while, we were interrupted, and so moved on to the prime number web sites. In particular, http://www.2357.a-tu.net includes a the "ALGOMATH" C library for calculating prime numbers; another site included an EXCEL macro which was top complex to understand. Although we had not programmed in C for years, after downloading and compiling the library (by typing "make"), we noticed the documentation included the following program:
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int *pointer , c=0;
We cut and pasted this program into a file and compiled it several times, having to add a few extra lines (e.g. main () { ). Eventually we ran it, and indeed it appeared to generate three prime numbers larger than four. We edited the parameters to am_primes_array to (2,1000), and then ran the output through "wc -l" to check that it had printed 1000 numbers.if((pointer = am_primes_array(4, 3)) == NULL)
printf("not enough memory\n");
while( *(pointer+c)){
printf("%d\n",*(pointer+c));
c++;
}
return;
Here we have completed what we announced at the beginning of this section, viz. "to describe in very great detail the composition process of such a [postmodern] program".
Now that's what postmodern programming really is.
> I mean, the idea on its face is absurd. How can something be "post-modern" Wouldn't the newly post-modern become modern, and the old modern simply old?
Postmodernism is already déclassé. (I'm neo-futuristic, myself.)
> (it's a bit more complex then this, as Modernism was an attempt to break from "classicalism" in the middle of the century. To build great new things. Post-modernism basically gives up on the great new things and says "fuck it")
I think Postmodernism was basically a result of the fact that everyone was out of ideas for interpreting Homer and Hemingway, and shortly after running out of new ideas they got tired of writing their (n+1)th essay interpreting them as "man's inhumanity to man" or whatever, so they decided to kick down the whole edifice of bullshit that they had built up over the centuries.
But don't let my cynicism fool you: though I called it an "edifice of bullshit", I don't exactly find Postmodernism more edifying. It's more like a three year old throwing his blocks around the room because he got frustrated with his failed attempts to stack them higher.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
These guys may think they're clever and have published a paper that discredits all coders today. But have they weighed the consequences of their lack of faith? When they die they will go to Coder Heaven and be questioned by St. Carmack at the PERL-y Gates. Do they really think he'll be impressed by their rhetoric? Really, I'd like to be there when they're blinded by a lightmap on the road to Bumpmapicus...
Great, We've /.ed the entire country of
New Zealand, you do realize they have
a very small pipe to the internet.
It'll be written right after they write the chapter about the death of their web server!
It's midnight on the east coast US, so I suppose that's mid-day in New Zealand. And right now, spring is dawning and the sun is shining down on the beaches. Yet thanks to us, some poor NZ slob is stuck in the mic.vuw.ac data center trying to get his poor underpowered web server back online. You can bet your life he's cursing the day CmdrTaco was born.
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"The key reason these languages [Java, C#, Smalltalk, etc.] are postmodern is that they cannot be considered against technical criteria."
Teehee, just look at p. 15! These guys must be laughing harder than Don Woods and James Lyons after Intercal (ohh, they even mentioned it - "Intercal must be considered as a post-modern language (mostly for non-technical reasons)."
Thanks for the laugh, you crazy Kiwis =].
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
| is not a pipe.
Programming is a bit like chess; you can't point to anything specific that a bad chess player does wrong.
Sure I can.
Move 1: P-KR4
Unfortunately I'm only half joking. I can't tell you how many times I'v seen that. Then there's the nearly as common, nearly as bad P-QR4.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Incidentally, I've seen a draft of this, the original working title was "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Postmodern Programming".
Existential programming. The existential operators are already available.
NULLism. (may mean nothing to some readers)
Fundamentalism. Its about time we got back to fundamentals.
Ismism. Recursion is good.
Just a few pointers from a C-programmer...
A flexible language? Without rigid structural or developmental style?
It's a shame we don't have any languages like that right now.
Someone, quick, go invent LISP...
Justin Dubs
Postmodernism is a nonliberal arts field like Computer Science?
Post-modern math: The derivative of x^3=3x is too narrow of a definition. We need to somehow break free of such rigid rules that prevent expression. Lets try dx/dy x^3=18x on Mondays and dx/dy x^3=5x on Tuesdays.
Post-modern engineering: The concept of the modern suspension bridge is patriarchal in design and form. Instead of being tied down by cables in a seemingly unending pattern, lets have the cables lifted to the air by giant balloons! I have the math right here to prove it will work (see post-modern math)
Post-modern Biology: Sure the lungs are commonly thought to simply process Oxygen and CO2. However, that was simplistic modernistic thinking. Today we will demonstrate neo-objectivism by removing the lungs from this patient and observing their meaninglessness.
Come on, Computer Science is a Science! It has rigid and unavoidable laws, a concept which postmodernism rejects. Fundamentially, when you get down to the heart Computer Science is math and is governed by a ton of mathematical rules.
We have Shannon's laws on Information Theory, Turing-Church Thesis and the Turning Machine describing the limits of computers (see Halting Problem), NP-Completeness, the wide variety of research on various algorithms, etc.
Guess what, fundamentially there is no difference between Perl, C, C++, Ada, LISP, or whatever other language you come up with because at the end of the day they are all Turning Complete.
At the end of the day the Turning Machine *IS* the "Grand Narrative". It is the fundamental basis by which all computers and all languages must obey. To use the author's words, it is the "12-note row", the thing that couples everything else together in the sea of chaos.
Of course, a writer may use a Word Processor to write a post-modern play or a animator may use a graphics tool to draw a post-modern animation. But these aren't examples of Computer Science.
Brian Ellenberger
"P"rogramming is obviosuly much more than just the means. The actual running "P"rogram of just about any design can have so many facets of care and life put into things - the ease with which the "P"rogram might be built. The configurability of the "P"rogram. The API which one might access the "P"rogram through other "P"rograms. The interface that leans the user to interact with the "P"rogram are all entireley different than the abstract thoughts that gave birth to the "P"rogram, and breathe soul, if you will, into what once was abstract and souless, and are all aspects of how successful we consider the program regardless of how strict it adheres to original design, or even intent.
I can't "P"ut my finger on it, but something about your "P"ersistent "P"enchant for "P"utting the letter "P" in quotes "P"ractically "P"uts my "P"oor eyeballs into a state of "P"ermanent "P"erplexment.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
That is so yesterday.
don't send an artist to do an engineer's job
Seen written above the toilet roll in my old exams building - 'Art Degrees'.
Oz is more like a post-Apocalyptic language. No more than 20 survivors use it.
Yep - I read the paper as well. As far as I can
n
tell, they took The Postmodernism Generator
from:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/postmoder
and fed in a load of data tailored for industry academics. Voila!
Scanning the napkin was an artistic touch, however...
Should've used "P"eepers instead of eyeballs...
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson