Why single out computer geeks? Why not study football jocks? I think we'd find they all have a mild form of psychotic behavior...dont you? For some reason we single out the geeks, like there is somehting that must be "cured". The football jock, however, is "totally healthy", he just lacks compassion and respect for humanity and cheats on his wife later in life BUT THATS ALL OK.
Studying genes and linking DNA patterns to predispositions of personality traits is one thing. Lets find the DNA patterns that are linked to "nerd" personalities, fine. Maybe these DNA patterns will have much resemblence to those of autism and aspergers syndrome. Then lets find the DNA patterns that are linked to football jocks, politicians, psychopaths, artists, musicians, great, lets find them all.
Lets label *NONE* of these genetic sets as "syndromes". Lets especially not label *just one* of them as a mild form of a disease, while the rest remain as "predispositions". Lets take into account all the variations, grey areas and exceptions, without branding an oversimplificaiton on it. We dont want predictions of someone's performance to arise from observations of various traits that fall into a genetic generalization; this hurts us. Science can continue as long as unnecessary and harmful stigmas are not propigated.
It must be very comforting to have complete understanding of all those questions you have had all your life about why you were different. Scientologists and Moonies get the same thing through their absolutist doctrines- an end to uncertainty, all is now understood by a simple label. No more uncomfortable doubt or messy grey areas, everything is black and white. I wonder what price is to be paid by so broadly labeling entire sets of personality types.
The moon is responsible for tides on earth and many other things that would severly hamper our ability to survive if it were tampered with too much (I would guess that all nine planets ultimately have an effect on each other, though perhaps miniscule). While landfills on the moon would not affect this, if there is no policy in place of trying to protect the moon from abuse, whats to stop some private company from testing a new missle and blowing it up? Also, we only have one moon and it would be a shame to destroy its surface with garbage, only to later find some other purpose for it (like, fleeing from the earth due to nuclear war).
Respect for the environment should always come first no matter what object in the universe we are dealing with...assuming everything is just "ours" indicates shallow instant-gratification-oriented thinking.
you dont know what the hell youre talking about and everyone here is looking for an explaination where there is not one. I have possessed all the downfalls of a "nerd" including lack of social grace, hypersensitivity, sucking at sports (*really sucking*), no clue how to dress (*really no clue*), no girlfriends for a very long time indeed, super-concentration skills, and I now earn my living as a software artchitect, YET I MAJORED IN MUSIC. I have played drums all over new york city and I also am a huge fan of dance clubs nowadays. In fact there are tons of nerds that excel at music as well. So ive either found a cure for lack of a cerebellum and I should be handsomely rewarded, or this is just another pile of grabbing-for-straws throw-nerds-in-the-pile-of-rejects attempt.
How do you know the piece isnt being funded by the Guggenheim or something? It may or may not be something huge - sorta insulting (to the poster as well as artists in general) to assume that just because something is "art" it will be unpopular. Id love to do tech work for an artist and make a contribution towards creativity someday.....instead of working for corporate america where I just make a contribution to the paychecks of clueless marketers and managers....
I read the article, and its not this big accusation of (how dare he not answer the phone!) guilt, its a lighthearted and useless little commentary on how Linus (and Linux) has become a much bigger deal with the media, such that contacting him these days is more on par with contacting a celebrity than it used to be. The way everyone here is breathing defensive fire and brimstone about it comes off like a bunch of Scientologists defending L. Ron Hubbard.
Also, women have been found to "double task" between brain hemispheres almost twice as efficently as males.
That you cited this point indicates that you agree that there is a fundamental difference between the inner workings of male and female brains. The brain is barely understood today and it is very likely that fundamental differences in thinking schemes could create improved efficiency in some kinds of problem solving while decreasing the efficiency in others. Therefore, to admit that there is *any* difference in the way men and women process information and complete tasks (as you did) also suggests a possible difference across the genders as to which forms of thinking/problem solving are more optimized and which ones are less optimized.
Because of the way my job has turned out (insane web startup-turned-public), I have on two or three occasions had to write fairly large applications (Java with 100-200+ classes) mostly by myself, which later have other programming resources added to them. I have observed that my own design process is like the bunch of engineers getting together in a room to hash it out on the board, except there arent any other engineers around, so the same design process occurs in my head. If there is pressure to get something accomplished in the next 4-6 weeks, I will get very deep about it, think about it all the time, drift off into space at social engagements, etc. Typically I will prototype the difficult/critical/hard-to-visualize sections, which brings hundreds of more issues to light (im not sure how large design processes work without bunches of little prototype/pseudo code to keep the ideas grounded in reality).
On the occasions that I have tried to write complete design documents ahead of time, pure abstract interfaces with tons of comments, etc., I find that for me many important logistical issues fail to come to prominence at that stage, so when the implementation begins the interface has to change massively anyway. I have yet to see how *the* design can really be worked out by 10 people and a whiteboard with no prototype/pseudo code whatsoever...at least something that could be working in 8-12 weeks. Most designs seem to have some degree of iteration in my experience.
My own (obviously flawed) process, i.e. "iterative brainstorming", causes the most headaches when other resources are brought in to contribute and the documentation for the code is incomplete, and whatever documentation exists is very out of date since it has been snowed over by 1 or 2 iterations. I have done it with groups of 4-5 people, with one person maintaining class diagrams, a DBA handling table schemas, and lots of verbal explaining in conference rooms. In these situations its good if the programmer can bite the bullet and write some comprehensive docs, or at least an overview of key data structures and methodologies. The act of actually writing it forces the "thinker" to verbalize his or her thoughts much more clearly than just speaking them to a small group. I'd love to someday have most or all of those docs written ahead of the code, but it seems like you need a team of extremely smart people (all experienced coders) and a few months of lead time for this to be feasable.
My current design process involves many "mini whiteboard" sessions with 2 or more people to build sections of an app or perform partial reworkings of sections to allow for a new feature, while trying to keep internal and external docs current for what is currently working. Internal code documentation is always done as simultaneously as possible to actual code, although higher level "per-class" documentation lags behind more than "per-method" or "per-line" code, which I focus on the most while coding since it is the most difficult to revisit later. I fortunately have usually had a resource to help build external design documents.
Programmers can certainly write their own design docs, but the constant friction with this issue is caused by our habit of thinking ahead of the design far too quickly...the natural instinct to race against time and bring forth yet the next iteration of fantastic new ideas that obsoletes all the docs you've been plodding away at is huge, particularly when your company's business model is based on superfast turnaround of code.
so perhaps then, there should never have been any shuttle launches, if what he says is true, that there are valid technical reasons against each and every launch which are overridden by managerial pressure. It would be interesting to see the content of other technical objections to shuttle launches and see if they have similar merit to the Boisjoly presentations.
I always think that psychology is heading for obsolecenes - after all, many problems caused by an ego and id conflict can be neatly solved by Prozac (or plain old ethanol). The more progress we make in neurobiology, the less we need to rely on a tradition rooted in the last century.
you try taking prozac and see how "neat" a solution it is. You obviously have not had any experience with medications. Chemistry as the sole solution to emotional issues is a concept from the 60's, where everything was instant, in-a-can, in-a-pill, spray-on, etc. The same mentality would ultimately have all cognitive functionality manipuated through physical/chemical means....brings a whole new meaning to getting a college degree (just take a pill, it will assemble all the appropriate neural pathways for you overnight!)
I think talking and thinking will remain as the primary means of overcoming one's emotional difficulties, with medications used as supplemental support for severe illness.
there is value to be gained from ideas and concepts that cannot be scientifically proven, ideas that only exist as philosophies, pure faith religions, even models of looking at the self that merely serve as one possible way of thinking about things that are too abstract or intangible to ever put under a microscope. Ideas like the "inner child" are clearly just ways of looking and thinking about ones feelings and motivations, and are more meant as tools rather than measurable things that exist in reality. I think on a board like Slashdot theres going to be lots of people that are uncomfortable or unable to think this way, or even just plain hostile to the whole notion of talking about things like this, which is the vibe I got from Jon Katz's post. Certainly dismissing it as "psychobabble" reveals a hostility towards the entire notion of philosophizing about the self.
your dba is "overworked" not because oracle databases are inherently difficult to modify; there are plenty of 3rd party applications for graphically manipulating tables and other objects for Oracle and every other major database out there. The reason the changes go through him/her is because on a highly loaded system, MS Access-style datatypes like "Text" and "Number" just don't cut it; data structures have to be highly tuned to fit the typcial usage as closely as possible without adding any unnecessary overhead to storage volumes or lookup times. You might hand him a table to store name and address info, and his job would be to add a primary key to it, some indexes, possibly normalizing it with more than one table and some foreign key constraints, stuff like that. If these things are not done, with any substantial load your database will grind to a snail's pace if not deadlock or completely crash, no matter *what* database vendor you are using...Oracle in fact will show the symptoms of these problems much more slowly than MS-SQL in my experience. There is no tool out there that can do these things without a capable database programmer - just like every other "wizard" tool MS gives you that allows unqualified people to throw up unstable code, the Access tools are helpful for design-time "fooling around" but have no place in a production environment.
Slashdot Mirror
sorry, couldnt resist...
whats left? More realistic fake orgasms?
Why single out computer geeks? Why not study football jocks? I think we'd find they all have a mild form of psychotic behavior...dont you? For some reason we single out the geeks, like there is somehting that must be "cured". The football jock, however, is "totally healthy", he just lacks compassion and respect for humanity and cheats on his wife later in life BUT THATS ALL OK.
Studying genes and linking DNA patterns to predispositions of personality traits is one thing. Lets find the DNA patterns that are linked to "nerd" personalities, fine. Maybe these DNA patterns will have much resemblence to those of autism and aspergers syndrome. Then lets find the DNA patterns that are linked to football jocks, politicians, psychopaths, artists, musicians, great, lets find them all.
Lets label *NONE* of these genetic sets as "syndromes". Lets especially not label *just one* of them as a mild form of a disease, while the rest remain as "predispositions". Lets take into account all the variations, grey areas and exceptions, without branding an oversimplificaiton on it. We dont want predictions of someone's performance to arise from observations of various traits that fall into a genetic generalization; this hurts us. Science can continue as long as unnecessary and harmful stigmas are not propigated.
It must be very comforting to have complete understanding of all those questions you have had all your life about why you were different. Scientologists and Moonies get the same thing through their absolutist doctrines- an end to uncertainty, all is now understood by a simple label. No more uncomfortable doubt or messy grey areas, everything is black and white. I wonder what price is to be paid by so broadly labeling entire sets of personality types.
(s)he mirrors Dvorak's commentary.....so Dvorak's entire article is "flamebait" too then, right? why the hell are we bothering to talk about it then?
The moon is responsible for tides on earth and many other things that would severly hamper our ability to survive if it were tampered with too much (I would guess that all nine planets ultimately have an effect on each other, though perhaps miniscule). While landfills on the moon would not affect this, if there is no policy in place of trying to protect the moon from abuse, whats to stop some private company from testing a new missle and blowing it up? Also, we only have one moon and it would be a shame to destroy its surface with garbage, only to later find some other purpose for it (like, fleeing from the earth due to nuclear war).
Respect for the environment should always come first no matter what object in the universe we are dealing with...assuming everything is just "ours" indicates shallow instant-gratification-oriented thinking.
you dont know what the hell youre talking about and everyone here is looking for an explaination where there is not one. I have possessed all the downfalls of a "nerd" including lack of social grace, hypersensitivity, sucking at sports (*really sucking*), no clue how to dress (*really no clue*), no girlfriends for a very long time indeed, super-concentration skills, and I now earn my living as a software artchitect, YET I MAJORED IN MUSIC. I have played drums all over new york city and I also am a huge fan of dance clubs nowadays. In fact there are tons of nerds that excel at music as well. So ive either found a cure for lack of a cerebellum and I should be handsomely rewarded, or this is just another pile of grabbing-for-straws throw-nerds-in-the-pile-of-rejects attempt.
How do you know the piece isnt being funded by the Guggenheim or something? It may or may not be something huge - sorta insulting (to the poster as well as artists in general) to assume that just because something is "art" it will be unpopular. Id love to do tech work for an artist and make a contribution towards creativity someday.....instead of working for corporate america where I just make a contribution to the paychecks of clueless marketers and managers....
I read the article, and its not this big accusation of (how dare he not answer the phone!) guilt, its a lighthearted and useless little commentary on how Linus (and Linux) has become a much bigger deal with the media, such that contacting him these days is more on par with contacting a celebrity than it used to be. The way everyone here is breathing defensive fire and brimstone about it comes off like a bunch of Scientologists defending L. Ron Hubbard.
Also, women have been found to "double task" between brain hemispheres almost twice as efficently as males.
That you cited this point indicates that you agree that there is a fundamental difference between the inner workings of male and female brains. The brain is barely understood today and it is very likely that fundamental differences in thinking schemes could create improved efficiency in some kinds of problem solving while decreasing the efficiency in others. Therefore, to admit that there is *any* difference in the way men and women process information and complete tasks (as you did) also suggests a possible difference across the genders as to which forms of thinking/problem solving are more optimized and which ones are less optimized.
Because of the way my job has turned out (insane web startup-turned-public), I have on two or three occasions had to write fairly large applications (Java with 100-200+ classes) mostly by myself, which later have other programming resources added to them. I have observed that my own design process is like the bunch of engineers getting together in a room to hash it out on the board, except there arent any other engineers around, so the same design process occurs in my head. If there is pressure to get something accomplished in the next 4-6 weeks, I will get very deep about it, think about it all the time, drift off into space at social engagements, etc. Typically I will prototype the difficult/critical/hard-to-visualize sections, which brings hundreds of more issues to light (im not sure how large design processes work without bunches of little prototype/pseudo code to keep the ideas grounded in reality).
On the occasions that I have tried to write complete design documents ahead of time, pure abstract interfaces with tons of comments, etc., I find that for me many important logistical issues fail to come to prominence at that stage, so when the implementation begins the interface has to change massively anyway. I have yet to see how *the* design can really be worked out by 10 people and a whiteboard with no prototype/pseudo code whatsoever...at least something that could be working in 8-12 weeks. Most designs seem to have some degree of iteration in my experience.
My own (obviously flawed) process, i.e. "iterative brainstorming", causes the most headaches when other resources are brought in to contribute and the documentation for the code is incomplete, and whatever documentation exists is very out of date since it has been snowed over by 1 or 2 iterations. I have done it with groups of 4-5 people, with one person maintaining class diagrams, a DBA handling table schemas, and lots of verbal explaining in conference rooms. In these situations its good if the programmer can bite the bullet and write some comprehensive docs, or at least an overview of key data structures and methodologies. The act of actually writing it forces the "thinker" to verbalize his or her thoughts much more clearly than just speaking them to a small group. I'd love to someday have most or all of those docs written ahead of the code, but it seems like you need a team of extremely smart people (all experienced coders) and a few months of lead time for this to be feasable.
My current design process involves many "mini whiteboard" sessions with 2 or more people to build sections of an app or perform partial reworkings of sections to allow for a new feature, while trying to keep internal and external docs current for what is currently working. Internal code documentation is always done as simultaneously as possible to actual code, although higher level "per-class" documentation lags behind more than "per-method" or "per-line" code, which I focus on the most while coding since it is the most difficult to revisit later. I fortunately have usually had a resource to help build external design documents.
Programmers can certainly write their own design docs, but the constant friction with this issue is caused by our habit of thinking ahead of the design far too quickly...the natural instinct to race against time and bring forth yet the next iteration of fantastic new ideas that obsoletes all the docs you've been plodding away at is huge, particularly when your company's business model is based on superfast turnaround of code.
so perhaps then, there should never have been any shuttle launches, if what he says is true, that there are valid technical reasons against each and every launch which are overridden by managerial pressure. It would be interesting to see the content of other technical objections to shuttle launches and see if they have similar merit to the Boisjoly presentations.
I always think that psychology is heading for obsolecenes - after all, many problems caused by an ego and id conflict can be neatly solved by Prozac (or plain old ethanol). The more progress we make in neurobiology, the less we need to rely on a tradition rooted in the last century.
you try taking prozac and see how "neat" a solution it is. You obviously have not had any experience with medications. Chemistry as the sole solution to emotional issues is a concept from the 60's, where everything was instant, in-a-can, in-a-pill, spray-on, etc. The same mentality would ultimately have all cognitive functionality manipuated through physical/chemical means....brings a whole new meaning to getting a college degree (just take a pill, it will assemble all the appropriate neural pathways for you overnight!)
I think talking and thinking will remain as the primary means of overcoming one's emotional difficulties, with medications used as supplemental support for severe illness.
there is value to be gained from ideas and concepts that cannot be scientifically proven, ideas that only exist as philosophies, pure faith religions, even models of looking at the self that merely serve as one possible way of thinking about things that are too abstract or intangible to ever put under a microscope. Ideas like the "inner child" are clearly just ways of looking and thinking about ones feelings and motivations, and are more meant as tools rather than measurable things that exist in reality. I think on a board like Slashdot theres going to be lots of people that are uncomfortable or unable to think this way, or even just plain hostile to the whole notion of talking about things like this, which is the vibe I got from Jon Katz's post. Certainly dismissing it as "psychobabble" reveals a hostility towards the entire notion of philosophizing about the self.
your dba is "overworked" not because oracle databases are inherently difficult to modify; there are plenty of 3rd party applications for graphically manipulating tables and other objects for Oracle and every other major database out there. The reason the changes go through him/her is because on a highly loaded system, MS Access-style datatypes like "Text" and "Number" just don't cut it; data structures have to be highly tuned to fit the typcial usage as closely as possible without adding any unnecessary overhead to storage volumes or lookup times. You might hand him a table to store name and address info, and his job would be to add a primary key to it, some indexes, possibly normalizing it with more than one table and some foreign key constraints, stuff like that. If these things are not done, with any substantial load your database will grind to a snail's pace if not deadlock or completely crash, no matter *what* database vendor you are using...Oracle in fact will show the symptoms of these problems much more slowly than MS-SQL in my experience. There is no tool out there that can do these things without a capable database programmer - just like every other "wizard" tool MS gives you that allows unqualified people to throw up unstable code, the Access tools are helpful for design-time "fooling around" but have no place in a production environment.