A computer is an automated mathematician. That's always been the idea, literally since the 17th century (Liebniz). That computer science curriculum has been so dumbed down that programmers who graduate from universities don't understand the basic idea that computer programming is just math
Then we agree.
Dijkstra is pissed off in the article that people write software "tests", which can never show the correctness of a program, when they should be writing proofs that *can* show the correctness of the program.
Quoted for truth. I suspect that a graduate in mathematics would probably make a better software programmer than those who graduate with CS/CE degrees. Perhaps slower, but it would the proof/program could be verified to be bugfree.
I deal with 1s and 0s and their mathematical manipulation.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Maybe you weren't properly trained which is why your post is a confused mess? Stop trying to tie pure math (programs) to the real world. It's not relevant.
What's wrong with raising dropout rates in Computer Programming? When I studied electrical engineering, we started-off with Calculus, Linear Algebra (matrices), and Physics. i.e. Pretty boring for most people.
People fled engineering in droves because they didn't want to do the math. Starting with "hard" or "boring" courses weeds-out who should be engineers and who should do something else. If computer programmers are not willing to do math required to create solid software, maybe they should be weeded-out too, so what's left are the individuals who truly belong in that profession.
>>>What I am arguing about (mainly) is his statement that there is no such thing as software engineering
There isn't. When was the last time you looked-up the tensile strength of steel, or considered the maximum temperature of a resistor, or what happens when a bomb blows-up next to your CPU missile-launching card (shock and vibration)? Probably never because software guys only care about the pure math that makes-up their programs (which are long proofs).
Engineering an airplane wing is more than just a mathematical proof or program. It's physical; it has its own properties which must be obeyed, else the wing will fold in half and the plane will plummet to the ground. These are not considerations a software guy needs to know. All he cares about is the pure math (like any other mathematician) and leaves it to the hardware engineers to worry about failure modes of real materials.
Wikipedia also says, "Other recent Christian commentators[9][10] also agree that the identification of Christ's birthday pre-dates the Sol Invictus festival, noting the earliest record of the celebration of Christ's birthday on December 25 dates to 243 A.D."
Note that this is backed-up with citations 9 and 10. This predates the Sol Invictus which was not decreed by the emperor until 274.
>>>A program is nothing without the computer it runs on.
Disagree. (And this is the fundamental point where I agree with the Austin professor, and you disagree with him.) A program does not need a computer. It could also be executed by a human, albeit at a much slower pace. A program is just a mathematical formula.
With today's 3000 megahertz machines we've lost touch with that basic fact, but on my old Commodore 64 which operated much slower and with only a few instructions, it was much easier to grasp. What my C=64 does, I can do.
It's isn't magic. It's math. Even the movement of airplane control surfaces is a series of equations.
>>>the holidays are from the 23rd to the 31st of December
For most people the holidays end December 26 when they go back to work. Radio stations stop playing Christmas music. The decorations get torn-down from store windows and television news studios. It's over and done. You're celebrating Christmas for a week later makes no logical sense.
How about the Pope's sermons? "Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, argued that a December 25th date was determined simply by calculating nine months beyond March 25th, regarded as the day of Jesus' conception (the Feast of the Annunciation)."
So yes December 25 is supposed to be his birthday, or at least a close approximation as calculated by 100s-era Christians.
False. Saturnalia was on December 17, not 25, and was pretty much a dead holiday by the time Christianity had arrived on the scene.
According to the Bible Jesus was conceived sometime in March (the Annunciation). The pre-Roman church picked March 25 for unknown reasons. Therefore when you add nine months, you get December 25 and that's when his birth was celebrated. The earliest record of the birthdate being celebrated is 240 A.D. (which predates the other Roman holiday Sol Invictus).
Or $75,000 from each of America's 110 million households.
I'm not sure I buy SFgate's figures though. A lot of those programs already existed prior to 2008, and they are not truly "bailout" programs but just run-of-the-mill pork that's existed for years. The real value of the bailouts is around 1500 billion, or $13,000 per home.
There about 110 million of them, and there were multiple bailouts adding up to 1500 billion, so that comes to about $13,000 sucked from each home & given to bailout rich corporations.
(1) His argument is that to discuss "software engineering" is as silly as to discuss "algebra engineering" or "formula engineering" in math courses. A program is simply a formula to be executed - nothing more - says the Computer Science professor.
(2) Programs manipulate numbers. Mathematic formulae manipulate numbers. It's an entirely reasonable conclusion that he has reached that a program is merely a formula.
(3) Putting pretty pictures on screen or manipulating airplane surfaces (my specialty) is still just formula execution.
You said the EU is not like the U.S., and then proceeded to describe the U.S. circa 1780. The U.S. was not just born... it was a gradual process from 13 independent states to a confederation of states, to a union of states, and finally a nation under one supreme government.
The EU is slowly but surely marching down the same path. If the Constitution had passed, the EU would be like the U.S. around the year 1900.
Which is why many come to the U.S. Also we have socialized government schooling in the U.S., and in theory people can go to private schools to earn a better education, but because of the high School tax, there's no money left for the private option.
There are many middle class parents who would love to send their kids to a private school, but after Uncle Sam has collected his school tax, there's nothing less to pay the private tuition.* The same flaw exists with a government healthcare system.
*(IMHO people who go to private school should be exempted from paying the school tax for that year.)
>>>Don't they want people to hear their music? Isn't that why they pay radio stations to play their songs?
Your whole message is founded on an invalid idea. Record companies don't pay. The collect. Every time a song plays on the radio, or on a television, or on a DVD or VHS video, the record companies earn a few pennies. That may not sound like much but it adds-up to millions of dollars each year.
Their goal is to earn fees off the internet too, either through streaming music fees, or through direct ~$1 Itunes sales. If you're hearing their music for free, then the record companies consider that "lost fees" and that's why they are suing internet users to recoup their lost fees.
Now that you better understand how record companies think, you'll be better armed to fight them.
The irony is that most people prefer NON-cute cars: "Study participants liked best the cars scoring high in the so-called power traits -- mature, masculine, arrogant, and angry-looking"
Nice.
Just what we need to create more road rage on our highways. I wonder how many of these participants were men? Might the results have changed if the participants were all women, or do women also prefer "power cars" (like power suits)? Well whatever. This male has always preferred cars that were feminine in appearance - with lots of curves and no angles.
That's as impractical as telling people to "change the channel" is they don't like the sex or swearing on tv. Clearly we need some overarching organization, some kinda federal communication commission, to oversee and "approve" or "disapprove" what we can see, so that nobody should ever have to watch the LOTR excrement again, or any other offensive material like a naked breast./end sarcasm
Yes you are correct. Stop whining and changing the fraking channel. Nobody's forcing you to watch stuff you don't enjoy; stop trying to censor my own personal choices.
I'll give Tolkien credit for creating a great cure for insomnia.
Reading the first book put me to sleep... much like what my old English prof used to do... droning on and on and on. After I reached the halfway point I gave up and sold the damn book. It's almost as boring as reading the Bible.
No a 16 year old acts much as yourself (a supreme belief that only HIS view matters, and anyone else is an idiot).
I don't mind that you disagree with me, because not everybody has the same perspective, but I do mind being insulted as a person half my age. If you truly are an adult, then you should leave the insults in the playground.
>>>the hook in Asimov's stories was always how this could happen without breaking the 3 Laws.
If you believe there are only "3" Laws then you are not a true Asimov Fan. There are 4 Laws. The first three laws, plus a Zeroth Law developed by Asimov in his later novels. The movie stayed true to Asimov's conception of 4 Laws.
>>>I could have sworn that there were robots deliberately killing people
Actually they tried their best to NOT kill any human beings, and if any beings were killed by accident, it was justified by Asimov's Zeroth Law which trumps all the rest ("A robot may not allow huamnity to come to herm..."). The central robotic brain used the Zeroth Law to justify a few deaths because it served the greater whole of humanity.
We saw a similar theme in Asimov's "Foundation and Earth".
Actually claiming "Olympics encourage a more active life" is disingenous. All it really does is encourage more television watching and stuffing potato chips into your mouth. Olympics produce a sedentary populace not an active one.
In my opinion eliminating Olympics (or at least the tv broadcasting) would be more-effective because people would be bored, and go outside in search of something to do.
Slashdot Mirror
A computer is an automated mathematician. That's always been the idea, literally since the 17th century (Liebniz). That computer science curriculum has been so dumbed down that programmers who graduate from universities don't understand the basic idea that computer programming is just math
Then we agree.
Dijkstra is pissed off in the article that people write software "tests", which can never show the correctness of a program, when they should be writing proofs that *can* show the correctness of the program.
Quoted for truth. I suspect that a graduate in mathematics would probably make a better software programmer than those who graduate with CS/CE degrees. Perhaps slower, but it would the proof/program could be verified to be bugfree.
I deal with 1s and 0s and their mathematical manipulation.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Maybe you weren't properly trained which is why your post is a confused mess? Stop trying to tie pure math (programs) to the real world. It's not relevant.
What's wrong with raising dropout rates in Computer Programming? When I studied electrical engineering, we started-off with Calculus, Linear Algebra (matrices), and Physics. i.e. Pretty boring for most people.
People fled engineering in droves because they didn't want to do the math. Starting with "hard" or "boring" courses weeds-out who should be engineers and who should do something else. If computer programmers are not willing to do math required to create solid software, maybe they should be weeded-out too, so what's left are the individuals who truly belong in that profession.
>>>What I am arguing about (mainly) is his statement that there is no such thing as software engineering
There isn't. When was the last time you looked-up the tensile strength of steel, or considered the maximum temperature of a resistor, or what happens when a bomb blows-up next to your CPU missile-launching card (shock and vibration)? Probably never because software guys only care about the pure math that makes-up their programs (which are long proofs).
Engineering an airplane wing is more than just a mathematical proof or program. It's physical; it has its own properties which must be obeyed, else the wing will fold in half and the plane will plummet to the ground. These are not considerations a software guy needs to know. All he cares about is the pure math (like any other mathematician) and leaves it to the hardware engineers to worry about failure modes of real materials.
Who cares what the weather outside is like if you're inside next to a roasting fire with lots of food (fresh from harvest), wine, and friends.
Wikipedia also says, "Other recent Christian commentators[9][10] also agree that the identification of Christ's birthday pre-dates the Sol Invictus festival, noting the earliest record of the celebration of Christ's birthday on December 25 dates to 243 A.D."
Note that this is backed-up with citations 9 and 10. This predates the Sol Invictus which was not decreed by the emperor until 274.
>>>A program is nothing without the computer it runs on.
Disagree. (And this is the fundamental point where I agree with the Austin professor, and you disagree with him.) A program does not need a computer. It could also be executed by a human, albeit at a much slower pace. A program is just a mathematical formula.
With today's 3000 megahertz machines we've lost touch with that basic fact, but on my old Commodore 64 which operated much slower and with only a few instructions, it was much easier to grasp. What my C=64 does, I can do.
It's isn't magic. It's math. Even the movement of airplane control surfaces is a series of equations.
Christmas predates Sol Invictus by almost a century (circa 200 versus 280 A.D.)
>>>the holidays are from the 23rd to the 31st of December
For most people the holidays end December 26 when they go back to work. Radio stations stop playing Christmas music. The decorations get torn-down from store windows and television news studios. It's over and done. You're celebrating Christmas for a week later makes no logical sense.
How about the Pope's sermons? "Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, argued that a December 25th date was determined simply by calculating nine months beyond March 25th, regarded as the day of Jesus' conception (the Feast of the Annunciation)."
So yes December 25 is supposed to be his birthday, or at least a close approximation as calculated by 100s-era Christians.
False. Saturnalia was on December 17, not 25, and was pretty much a dead holiday by the time Christianity had arrived on the scene.
According to the Bible Jesus was conceived sometime in March (the Annunciation). The pre-Roman church picked March 25 for unknown reasons. Therefore when you add nine months, you get December 25 and that's when his birth was celebrated. The earliest record of the birthdate being celebrated is 240 A.D. (which predates the other Roman holiday Sol Invictus).
Or $75,000 from each of America's 110 million households.
I'm not sure I buy SFgate's figures though. A lot of those programs already existed prior to 2008, and they are not truly "bailout" programs but just run-of-the-mill pork that's existed for years. The real value of the bailouts is around 1500 billion, or $13,000 per home.
I prefer to go by households.
There about 110 million of them, and there were multiple bailouts adding up to 1500 billion, so that comes to about $13,000 sucked from each home & given to bailout rich corporations.
No.
(1) His argument is that to discuss "software engineering" is as silly as to discuss "algebra engineering" or "formula engineering" in math courses. A program is simply a formula to be executed - nothing more - says the Computer Science professor.
(2) Programs manipulate numbers. Mathematic formulae manipulate numbers. It's an entirely reasonable conclusion that he has reached that a program is merely a formula.
(3) Putting pretty pictures on screen or manipulating airplane surfaces (my specialty) is still just formula execution.
You said the EU is not like the U.S., and then proceeded to describe the U.S. circa 1780. The U.S. was not just born... it was a gradual process from 13 independent states to a confederation of states, to a union of states, and finally a nation under one supreme government.
The EU is slowly but surely marching down the same path. If the Constitution had passed, the EU would be like the U.S. around the year 1900.
Which is why many come to the U.S. Also we have socialized government schooling in the U.S., and in theory people can go to private schools to earn a better education, but because of the high School tax, there's no money left for the private option.
There are many middle class parents who would love to send their kids to a private school, but after Uncle Sam has collected his school tax, there's nothing less to pay the private tuition.* The same flaw exists with a government healthcare system.
*(IMHO people who go to private school should be exempted from paying the school tax for that year.)
>>>Don't they want people to hear their music? Isn't that why they pay radio stations to play their songs?
Your whole message is founded on an invalid idea. Record companies don't pay. The collect. Every time a song plays on the radio, or on a television, or on a DVD or VHS video, the record companies earn a few pennies. That may not sound like much but it adds-up to millions of dollars each year.
Their goal is to earn fees off the internet too, either through streaming music fees, or through direct ~$1 Itunes sales. If you're hearing their music for free, then the record companies consider that "lost fees" and that's why they are suing internet users to recoup their lost fees.
Now that you better understand how record companies think, you'll be better armed to fight them.
The irony is that most people prefer NON-cute cars: "Study participants liked best the cars scoring high in the so-called power traits -- mature, masculine, arrogant, and angry-looking"
Nice.
Just what we need to create more road rage on our highways. I wonder how many of these participants were men? Might the results have changed if the participants were all women, or do women also prefer "power cars" (like power suits)? Well whatever. This male has always preferred cars that were feminine in appearance - with lots of curves and no angles.
>>>Dont watch them, It's not hard.
That's as impractical as telling people to "change the channel" is they don't like the sex or swearing on tv. Clearly we need some overarching organization, some kinda federal communication commission, to oversee and "approve" or "disapprove" what we can see, so that nobody should ever have to watch the LOTR excrement again, or any other offensive material like a naked breast. /end sarcasm
Yes you are correct. Stop whining and changing the fraking channel. Nobody's forcing you to watch stuff you don't enjoy; stop trying to censor my own personal choices.
I'll give Tolkien credit for creating a great cure for insomnia.
Reading the first book put me to sleep... much like what my old English prof used to do... droning on and on and on. After I reached the halfway point I gave up and sold the damn book. It's almost as boring as reading the Bible.
No a 16 year old acts much as yourself (a supreme belief that only HIS view matters, and anyone else is an idiot).
I don't mind that you disagree with me, because not everybody has the same perspective, but I do mind being insulted as a person half my age. If you truly are an adult, then you should leave the insults in the playground.
>>>the hook in Asimov's stories was always how this could happen without breaking the 3 Laws.
If you believe there are only "3" Laws then you are not a true Asimov Fan. There are 4 Laws. The first three laws, plus a Zeroth Law developed by Asimov in his later novels. The movie stayed true to Asimov's conception of 4 Laws.
>>>I could have sworn that there were robots deliberately killing people
Actually they tried their best to NOT kill any human beings, and if any beings were killed by accident, it was justified by Asimov's Zeroth Law which trumps all the rest ("A robot may not allow huamnity to come to herm..."). The central robotic brain used the Zeroth Law to justify a few deaths because it served the greater whole of humanity.
We saw a similar theme in Asimov's "Foundation and Earth".
Actually claiming "Olympics encourage a more active life" is disingenous. All it really does is encourage more television watching and stuffing potato chips into your mouth. Olympics produce a sedentary populace not an active one.
In my opinion eliminating Olympics (or at least the tv broadcasting) would be more-effective because people would be bored, and go outside in search of something to do.