The probability of running into anything out there is somewhere between 0 and nil
You are right on that, but this wasn't my point. I was saying that reaching a very high speed in outer space is easy, but what really matters is properly controlling the ship. Breaking, turning or whatever other action which is extremely simple against opposing forces become very difficult when nothing stops you.
The point I was trying to make was that being fast in space is very easy and that it isn't a matter of lack of power availability. A different story is how you are planning to manage all the speed/acceleration aspects. If you want to reach certain speed inside the Earth atmosphere and let you go, even the slightest increase would be associated with a relevant energy consumption. On the other hand, if you want to do it in outer space, the story would be completely different. Your 4.3 km/s, similarly to pretty much any other thing, are meaningless out of context: very difficult against gravity + friction vs. extremely easily against nothing.
At that point, extra thrust means a shorter flight.
As explained to other poster, this is only theoretically true. Realistically speaking, more power isn't a relevant aspect when trying to go faster in space; other issues like braking, coming back and not colliding against anything else are way more worrisome. Reaching a quite high speed out there is quite easy, but doing it safely/reliably is a different story.
Not sure. Unlikely what seems usual among people with a video-, sci-fy-, let's-just-scale-it-up-based understanding, I do need to properly analyse a given situation in order to be completely sure about it being fine or not. As per my knowledge regarding how all this is going, I assume that most of their decisions are based on looking-cool concerns rather than on being actually useful. In fact, I don't even think that anything is really useful here as far as going to Mars is virtually impossible for many reasons. My whole point was that this specific issue of building a bigger rocket seemed particularly meaningless, mainly in the current stage.
you'll save everyone years of frustration!
I don't think that anyone with even a bit of physics/engineer knowledge really thinks that we will reach Mars within the next quite a few years. So, I seriously doubt that anyone at SpaceX would be really frustrated by not accomplishing what they should already know that is virtually impossible. There might be some quite naive and ignorant people who might still believe that such an event is likely to occur. I would be happy if my posts could help them to realise about their baseless expectations; dreaming is nice, but expecting what is impossible (+ likely to provoke unfair gains on others) sounds a bit worse.
Your mind is a gem, sharp and diamond-like.
Thanks. Note that I did get a degree in mechanical engineering, have a relevant physics/engineering expertise and consider myself a quite sensible and practical person. In any case, I think that most of sensible people with even a minor physics/engineering understanding should come to similar conclusions, at least after some analysis/research.
(I see that you tried sarcasm there, but you don't seem too good at that either. LOL)
More thrust (or prolonged thrust, which requires additional fuel / reaction mass to be sent up) gets you to Mars faster.
Although this is theoretically true, its practical applicability is almost none. Bear in mind that one of the most relevant aspects when traveling (fast) is overcoming opposing forces like friction (road or wind) or gravity. In outer space, you don't have anything of this and, consequently, going faster is rarely constrained by the power availability. On the other hand, having more power is directly related to more weight, what is directly related to more problems and higher difficulty to leave Earth, etc.
Bear in mind that the bigger/more powerful, the more problematic it is likely to become. Blindly scaling up things is business talk, not physics/engineering one. In imaginary land, the problems remain constant, and the bigger is usually the better; in the real world, the problems increase exponentially and what works for 5 rarely works for 50. In any case and as said, this is a completely secondary concern at this point anyway. They shouldn't worry about how to send "lots of equipment", but about what that equipment is supposed to be and all the associated problems (exposure to radiation, long periods between resupplies, extremely problematic conditions, etc.).
The only reason for having powerful rockets is to escape Earth's gravitational field. Once you are in the space, the thrust requirements are very low and having more power shouldn't matter much even when dealing with big distances. If you are working on something even remotely suitable to ever attempt to travel to Mars, you should better focus your efforts on other aspects like radiation, logistics, landing/re-launching, living there and, in general, getting the required huge funding (+ finding out ways to recover/justify it) and related issues (e.g., Kamikaze-like volunteers or a legislation allowing you to do such a thing with people). Nice rocket though. Is there any video about it? LOL.
Impositions are mostly meant to provoke failure, rejection even hate and, ultimately, losses. If you want to create some kind of monopoly to impose your rules, you should rely on a different approach; something on the lines of: coming up with a comprehensive but incompatible with anything else format, allowing everyone to freely rely on said format and, once most of people have accepted that format as the new standard, enjoying your monopoly-like benefits. A real-life example? What Microsoft could have done with Windows 10.
Imposition can only be delivered by those being relevant under the given conditions; a nobody in that context trying to impose whatever on others is a sad joke. Even in case of actually being in a position to impose something, having this behaviour is rarely a good idea because of its negative effects on your dominant position and rarely delivering the best possible outcomes. Nobody accepts impositions unless getting what they want; some people might even not mind lose something valuable to them on exchange of not tolerating random impositions. If you have nothing of value to offer to the given audience, trying to impose whatever isn't just non-optimal but plainly ridiculous.
", everyone, " + remove exclamation mark is Recursion's best friend. Another good friend of Recursion is Peter and, in case of being referred in that joke, "Look, everyone, recursion is here!" would be converted into "Look Peter! Recursion is here!". LOL.
Anyone that truly knows and understands their field can explain it in layman's terms to the average person.
Sure. Programming is just using certain program (the compiler/interpreter of the given programming language) to write a set of instructions which determine the way in which the generated application behaves. For example, when clicking on button A, the action B has to happen. Now, you can choose a programming language, think about what you want to develop, start typing instructions and enjoy the results! LOL.
What is the point of a person not knowing about something having any influence on how that something has to be accomplished? The mere concept is preposterous. Technical aspects should be exclusively managed by technical people, what means having actual knowledge/interest rather than just formal education; the higher the complexity/experience-level, the more relevant becomes this issue and also the minimum requirements to be considered knowledgeable enough. If everyone focused on what they are good at, everything would work fine and there would be almost no problems.
I have a quite relevant experience dealing with extremely ridiculous concerns of people with virtually no programming knowledge (not even common sense), but seriously thinking that their "ideas" need to be heard. The typical final prize is you bearing the blame for anything going wrong (what is usually provoked by doing what these people told you to do). Other typical outputs of insecure, in-denial, non-knowledgeable people like this are systematic doubts, misinterpretations, lies, unreasonable expectations, pushy/imposing attitudes, misappraised generosity, etc. To not mention having to tolerate horrible assessing methodologies systematically misused by people with no knowledge and blindly believing in their really-saying-nothing outcomes. Even though I am quite happy with all what I have got from all this (the tougher the conditions, the better the learning), I am not willing to go back to that crazy nonsense again. My current policy is to eminently deal with confident and knowledgeable enough individuals perfectly understanding their position within the system.
In summary, my answer to the original question is: if you don't know about something, accept that reality, don't make a fool of yourself/provoke problems/force others to lie to you and act accordingly. If you are a non-technical manager/recruiter/client, you should make an extra effort to have in place a good enough system helping you to compensate your lacks. But don't lie to yourself by thinking that a few generic references or a methodology delivering absolute truths is a replacement for actual knowledge: it is not and it will never be. The best way to assess expert knowledge, mainly when dealing with an as complex field of expertise as programming, is to rely on other expert (either directly or via having created a comprehensive, reliable, adaptable enough methodology). The best way to know the performance of people under certain conditions is to replicate said conditions (e.g., real-work problems/projects under sensible conditions, allowing a wide variety of different outcomes and properly assessing them). The best way to understand any programming work is to have the required knowledge yourself, mainly because of having done it many times before.
If you have anything on LinkedIn, it's quite possible the Chinese government has been collecting information about you,
If that makes them happy, they can waste as much time and resources in accomplishing pretty much nothing of value as they wish. My public online activity is an open book for the Chinese government and for any other person/government. In fact, I do welcome everyone expecting to have any kind of interaction with me to know as much about me as possible. I have no relationship with Chinese anything, have never visited that country and am not planning to do it in the future either; so, collecting information about me seems quite pointless, but completely up to them.
One thing is using face recognition under well-delimited conditions like what is being described at the top of the linked article (you look at a camera very closely to enter the building); but a completely different story is recognising random people in random situations with random training information (or have the Chinese authorities hundreds of pictures of every person from different angles?). Perhaps they aren't completely lying, but the real performance of this system is likely to be different than what the article and these numbers seem to indicate. It might be somehow helpful, but lots of mis-recognitions and relevant human intervention are likely to happen.
DISCLAIMER: I am not specially concerned about (face-recognition) tracking and privacy, although I see all this as potential threads to citizens and expect legislations to gradually restrict all the actions on these lines.
DISCLAIMER 2: I am not Chinese, don't live in China, the Chinese government shouldn't have any information about me and I look quite different than most of Chinese people. In fact, that system shouldn't have too many troubles to identify me for these and other reasons.
A good example to illustrate my point right there. My "much less when not them or their context/applicability aren't properly understood." (rather than "much less when they or their context/applicability aren't properly understood") is a punctual, irrelevant error which doesn't tell too much about me (not even about my English skills or about how is my day today as opposed to any other day) and any sensible person should understand it as such.
As far as my post above got a quite unfair downvote and I know the kind of "knowledge"/"understanding" that some potential readers have, I will better clarify that I don't agree with either some statements said by that other AC or his/her approach to criticising/trying to impose certain position rather than properly understanding what I was saying. Also the other comments down this sub-thread (not sure if written by the same AC) do reflect a quite good knowledge about the.NET Framework, what is certainly nice but not strictly required to use these programming languages properly. This aspect seems to indicate that that person's work is probably mostly focused on properly understanding/developing/promoting these languages (as highlighted via my previous famous-or-Microsoft-worker remark) rather than using them to develop whatever piece of software (= what I + most of people concerned about programming languages do).
Another issue which might be a bit confusing for some individuals is that I am 100% honest, objective, perfectly aware about (the limitations of) my knowledge and always ready to openly appraise/criticise what is appraisal/critic worthy. Or, in other words, I don't say "this is wrong/right" because of hating/loving whatever/whomever, but simply because of considering that this is the case under the given conditions. Additionally, bear in mind that a complete moron can eventually deliver a brilliant statement and a very sensible person can behave stupidly; isolated events rarely mean anything, much less when not them or their context/applicability aren't properly understood.
I know that, for some people, all what I am writing here might be a bit too dense, long, boring, unnecessary, etc., but this is precisely the reason why I am doing it: you, now-everything-is-perfect-tomorrow-is-horrible magic seekers, please try to avoid dealing with me:) (-> this smiley is to let you know that I am not angry/hate you and that I only want everyone to be happy).
You have clearly a very good knowledge about all this; too good actually. I am starting to think that even the way in which you write is vaguely familiar to me. You have to be either a true expert (programming-level famous, perhaps?) and/or a Microsoft employee closely related to the whole.NET development. Anyway, very interesting, thanks.
The problem isn't so much the language (by assuming that Microsoft implements it properly), but what this whole format implies. For example, an Excel spreadsheet with enabled macros can do pretty much anything on the target computer just by being opened. People should treat these files as executables and only open them/enable macros when being completely sure that they are safe, but apparently this isn't the case. Supporting Python or any other language will not change that reality, other than perhaps by attracting more (malware) developers.
I never said otherwise. Anecdotally, when writing VB.NET code, I always rely on pure.NET rather than on VB functionalities. My whole point was that, regardless of the evident differences between both of them, VB.NET is the evolution of VB (or VB the old version of VB.NET). You might even consider the whole.NET (and consequently also C#) an evolution of VB; exactly the same than VB was an evolution of Basic. This was my whole point.
I have been wanting to be able to write C# to automate functions in an excel sheet.
You can easily do that since long time ago. There are even different alternatives (e.g., relying on a template or creating everything on-the-fly). If I have to communicate with MS Office and I can choose how to do it, I would develop a C# or VB.NET application rather than relying on VBA.
Slashdot Mirror
Logically, I meant "braking" rather than "breaking".
The probability of running into anything out there is somewhere between 0 and nil
You are right on that, but this wasn't my point. I was saying that reaching a very high speed in outer space is easy, but what really matters is properly controlling the ship. Breaking, turning or whatever other action which is extremely simple against opposing forces become very difficult when nothing stops you.
The point I was trying to make was that being fast in space is very easy and that it isn't a matter of lack of power availability. A different story is how you are planning to manage all the speed/acceleration aspects. If you want to reach certain speed inside the Earth atmosphere and let you go, even the slightest increase would be associated with a relevant energy consumption. On the other hand, if you want to do it in outer space, the story would be completely different. Your 4.3 km/s, similarly to pretty much any other thing, are meaningless out of context: very difficult against gravity + friction vs. extremely easily against nothing.
At that point, extra thrust means a shorter flight.
As explained to other poster, this is only theoretically true. Realistically speaking, more power isn't a relevant aspect when trying to go faster in space; other issues like braking, coming back and not colliding against anything else are way more worrisome. Reaching a quite high speed out there is quite easy, but doing it safely/reliably is a different story.
Oh, so they are doing it wrong?
Not sure. Unlikely what seems usual among people with a video-, sci-fy-, let's-just-scale-it-up-based understanding, I do need to properly analyse a given situation in order to be completely sure about it being fine or not. As per my knowledge regarding how all this is going, I assume that most of their decisions are based on looking-cool concerns rather than on being actually useful. In fact, I don't even think that anything is really useful here as far as going to Mars is virtually impossible for many reasons. My whole point was that this specific issue of building a bigger rocket seemed particularly meaningless, mainly in the current stage.
you'll save everyone years of frustration!
I don't think that anyone with even a bit of physics/engineer knowledge really thinks that we will reach Mars within the next quite a few years. So, I seriously doubt that anyone at SpaceX would be really frustrated by not accomplishing what they should already know that is virtually impossible. There might be some quite naive and ignorant people who might still believe that such an event is likely to occur. I would be happy if my posts could help them to realise about their baseless expectations; dreaming is nice, but expecting what is impossible (+ likely to provoke unfair gains on others) sounds a bit worse.
Your mind is a gem, sharp and diamond-like.
Thanks. Note that I did get a degree in mechanical engineering, have a relevant physics/engineering expertise and consider myself a quite sensible and practical person. In any case, I think that most of sensible people with even a minor physics/engineering understanding should come to similar conclusions, at least after some analysis/research.
(I see that you tried sarcasm there, but you don't seem too good at that either. LOL)
More thrust (or prolonged thrust, which requires additional fuel / reaction mass to be sent up) gets you to Mars faster.
Although this is theoretically true, its practical applicability is almost none. Bear in mind that one of the most relevant aspects when traveling (fast) is overcoming opposing forces like friction (road or wind) or gravity. In outer space, you don't have anything of this and, consequently, going faster is rarely constrained by the power availability. On the other hand, having more power is directly related to more weight, what is directly related to more problems and higher difficulty to leave Earth, etc.
Bear in mind that the bigger/more powerful, the more problematic it is likely to become. Blindly scaling up things is business talk, not physics/engineering one. In imaginary land, the problems remain constant, and the bigger is usually the better; in the real world, the problems increase exponentially and what works for 5 rarely works for 50. In any case and as said, this is a completely secondary concern at this point anyway. They shouldn't worry about how to send "lots of equipment", but about what that equipment is supposed to be and all the associated problems (exposure to radiation, long periods between resupplies, extremely problematic conditions, etc.).
The only reason for having powerful rockets is to escape Earth's gravitational field. Once you are in the space, the thrust requirements are very low and having more power shouldn't matter much even when dealing with big distances. If you are working on something even remotely suitable to ever attempt to travel to Mars, you should better focus your efforts on other aspects like radiation, logistics, landing/re-launching, living there and, in general, getting the required huge funding (+ finding out ways to recover/justify it) and related issues (e.g., Kamikaze-like volunteers or a legislation allowing you to do such a thing with people). Nice rocket though. Is there any video about it? LOL.
Their barmaids must be incredibly realistic! LOL.
Impositions are mostly meant to provoke failure, rejection even hate and, ultimately, losses. If you want to create some kind of monopoly to impose your rules, you should rely on a different approach; something on the lines of: coming up with a comprehensive but incompatible with anything else format, allowing everyone to freely rely on said format and, once most of people have accepted that format as the new standard, enjoying your monopoly-like benefits. A real-life example? What Microsoft could have done with Windows 10.
Imposition can only be delivered by those being relevant under the given conditions; a nobody in that context trying to impose whatever on others is a sad joke. Even in case of actually being in a position to impose something, having this behaviour is rarely a good idea because of its negative effects on your dominant position and rarely delivering the best possible outcomes. Nobody accepts impositions unless getting what they want; some people might even not mind lose something valuable to them on exchange of not tolerating random impositions. If you have nothing of value to offer to the given audience, trying to impose whatever isn't just non-optimal but plainly ridiculous.
", everyone, " + remove exclamation mark is Recursion's best friend. Another good friend of Recursion is Peter and, in case of being referred in that joke, "Look, everyone, recursion is here!" would be converted into "Look Peter! Recursion is here!". LOL.
Recursion walks into a bar
- Look, everyone, recursion is here! Tell us one of your stories!
- I remember that time when I walked into a bar...
Recursion walks into a bar
One part playing charades or pictionary with the worlds most inept clue giver. (gathering requirements from clients)
LOL. Both funny and accurate.
Anyone that truly knows and understands their field can explain it in layman's terms to the average person.
Sure. Programming is just using certain program (the compiler/interpreter of the given programming language) to write a set of instructions which determine the way in which the generated application behaves. For example, when clicking on button A, the action B has to happen. Now, you can choose a programming language, think about what you want to develop, start typing instructions and enjoy the results! LOL.
What is the point of a person not knowing about something having any influence on how that something has to be accomplished? The mere concept is preposterous. Technical aspects should be exclusively managed by technical people, what means having actual knowledge/interest rather than just formal education; the higher the complexity/experience-level, the more relevant becomes this issue and also the minimum requirements to be considered knowledgeable enough. If everyone focused on what they are good at, everything would work fine and there would be almost no problems.
I have a quite relevant experience dealing with extremely ridiculous concerns of people with virtually no programming knowledge (not even common sense), but seriously thinking that their "ideas" need to be heard. The typical final prize is you bearing the blame for anything going wrong (what is usually provoked by doing what these people told you to do). Other typical outputs of insecure, in-denial, non-knowledgeable people like this are systematic doubts, misinterpretations, lies, unreasonable expectations, pushy/imposing attitudes, misappraised generosity, etc. To not mention having to tolerate horrible assessing methodologies systematically misused by people with no knowledge and blindly believing in their really-saying-nothing outcomes. Even though I am quite happy with all what I have got from all this (the tougher the conditions, the better the learning), I am not willing to go back to that crazy nonsense again. My current policy is to eminently deal with confident and knowledgeable enough individuals perfectly understanding their position within the system.
In summary, my answer to the original question is: if you don't know about something, accept that reality, don't make a fool of yourself/provoke problems/force others to lie to you and act accordingly. If you are a non-technical manager/recruiter/client, you should make an extra effort to have in place a good enough system helping you to compensate your lacks. But don't lie to yourself by thinking that a few generic references or a methodology delivering absolute truths is a replacement for actual knowledge: it is not and it will never be. The best way to assess expert knowledge, mainly when dealing with an as complex field of expertise as programming, is to rely on other expert (either directly or via having created a comprehensive, reliable, adaptable enough methodology). The best way to know the performance of people under certain conditions is to replicate said conditions (e.g., real-work problems/projects under sensible conditions, allowing a wide variety of different outcomes and properly assessing them). The best way to understand any programming work is to have the required knowledge yourself, mainly because of having done it many times before.
You can deter a lot of crime by just making criminals believe you can easily catch them.
Very good point. This is probably the main motivation behind this system and all the associated publicity.
If you have anything on LinkedIn, it's quite possible the Chinese government has been collecting information about you,
If that makes them happy, they can waste as much time and resources in accomplishing pretty much nothing of value as they wish. My public online activity is an open book for the Chinese government and for any other person/government. In fact, I do welcome everyone expecting to have any kind of interaction with me to know as much about me as possible. I have no relationship with Chinese anything, have never visited that country and am not planning to do it in the future either; so, collecting information about me seems quite pointless, but completely up to them.
With "as potential threads" I really meant "as potential threats".
One thing is using face recognition under well-delimited conditions like what is being described at the top of the linked article (you look at a camera very closely to enter the building); but a completely different story is recognising random people in random situations with random training information (or have the Chinese authorities hundreds of pictures of every person from different angles?). Perhaps they aren't completely lying, but the real performance of this system is likely to be different than what the article and these numbers seem to indicate. It might be somehow helpful, but lots of mis-recognitions and relevant human intervention are likely to happen.
DISCLAIMER: I am not specially concerned about (face-recognition) tracking and privacy, although I see all this as potential threads to citizens and expect legislations to gradually restrict all the actions on these lines.
DISCLAIMER 2: I am not Chinese, don't live in China, the Chinese government shouldn't have any information about me and I look quite different than most of Chinese people. In fact, that system shouldn't have too many troubles to identify me for these and other reasons.
A good example to illustrate my point right there. My "much less when not them or their context/applicability aren't properly understood." (rather than "much less when they or their context/applicability aren't properly understood") is a punctual, irrelevant error which doesn't tell too much about me (not even about my English skills or about how is my day today as opposed to any other day) and any sensible person should understand it as such.
As far as my post above got a quite unfair downvote and I know the kind of "knowledge"/"understanding" that some potential readers have, I will better clarify that I don't agree with either some statements said by that other AC or his/her approach to criticising/trying to impose certain position rather than properly understanding what I was saying. Also the other comments down this sub-thread (not sure if written by the same AC) do reflect a quite good knowledge about the .NET Framework, what is certainly nice but not strictly required to use these programming languages properly. This aspect seems to indicate that that person's work is probably mostly focused on properly understanding/developing/promoting these languages (as highlighted via my previous famous-or-Microsoft-worker remark) rather than using them to develop whatever piece of software (= what I + most of people concerned about programming languages do).
:) (-> this smiley is to let you know that I am not angry/hate you and that I only want everyone to be happy).
Another issue which might be a bit confusing for some individuals is that I am 100% honest, objective, perfectly aware about (the limitations of) my knowledge and always ready to openly appraise/criticise what is appraisal/critic worthy. Or, in other words, I don't say "this is wrong/right" because of hating/loving whatever/whomever, but simply because of considering that this is the case under the given conditions. Additionally, bear in mind that a complete moron can eventually deliver a brilliant statement and a very sensible person can behave stupidly; isolated events rarely mean anything, much less when not them or their context/applicability aren't properly understood.
I know that, for some people, all what I am writing here might be a bit too dense, long, boring, unnecessary, etc., but this is precisely the reason why I am doing it: you, now-everything-is-perfect-tomorrow-is-horrible magic seekers, please try to avoid dealing with me
You have clearly a very good knowledge about all this; too good actually. I am starting to think that even the way in which you write is vaguely familiar to me. You have to be either a true expert (programming-level famous, perhaps?) and/or a Microsoft employee closely related to the whole .NET development. Anyway, very interesting, thanks.
The problem isn't so much the language (by assuming that Microsoft implements it properly), but what this whole format implies. For example, an Excel spreadsheet with enabled macros can do pretty much anything on the target computer just by being opened. People should treat these files as executables and only open them/enable macros when being completely sure that they are safe, but apparently this isn't the case. Supporting Python or any other language will not change that reality, other than perhaps by attracting more (malware) developers.
VB.Net is .Net first and VB second.
I never said otherwise. Anecdotally, when writing VB.NET code, I always rely on pure .NET rather than on VB functionalities. My whole point was that, regardless of the evident differences between both of them, VB.NET is the evolution of VB (or VB the old version of VB.NET). You might even consider the whole .NET (and consequently also C#) an evolution of VB; exactly the same than VB was an evolution of Basic. This was my whole point.
I have been wanting to be able to write C# to automate functions in an excel sheet.
You can easily do that since long time ago. There are even different alternatives (e.g., relying on a template or creating everything on-the-fly). If I have to communicate with MS Office and I can choose how to do it, I would develop a C# or VB.NET application rather than relying on VBA.