But that's simply not true. Writing software of anything that is non-trivial is not the same as straightforward engineering. For a start there is the rate of progress, how many people have 30 years + experience of building 50 story + buildings. How many people have 30 years + experience of dealing with terabyte + sized datasets?
And, in fact, architectural failures of large physical structures seem to happen in 20-year cycles. The theory is that every new generation of architects needs to learn mistakes. So not only does the physical world have cost overruns, delays, and cancellations, it also has spectacular failures.
I used FORTRAN in high school on an IBM-1130 (a machine with real ferrite cores under the console) back when nerds were, um, just nerds. (Although now that I think of it, my girlfriend was suitably impressed by the blinking lights in the dark, door-locked, computer room, so perhaps even then nerds did ok...)
Anyway, my (possibly apocryphal) recollection is that the riginal FORTRAN compiler was such an amazing effort because it incorporated the notion that the language should be parseable *without respect to whitespace*. The rationale was that scientist types should not have to worry about separating tokens with spaces...
(BTW, "Software Tools" by Kernighan and Plauger develops RatFor translation).
Ahem, ahem. I don't want to rekindle the debate
between prescriptive and descriptive lexicography,
but, suffice to say, you shouldn't stop resisting
a solecism just because it has achieved sufficient
market penetration to be noticed by a soi-disant
authority. Parallels to a certain software ven-
dor are left as an exercise for the reader...
Hard to trust a review of a review that has "the public's disinterest in science" adorning the third sentence.
All together now: "uninterested" == a lack of fascination; "disinterested" == a lack of personal motive.
For example: "The public's uninterest in science is caused, not by disinterest -- since science affects it deeply -- but by a lack of understanding..."
Well, my associates who are actually passionate about RKBA cite Handgun Control Inc. (HCI), as an example of radical "gun-grabbers". To my recollection, HCI is headed by 2 ex-CIA men, is home to Sarah Brady, and runs ads on the Op. Ed. page of the New York Times with pictures of tykes and copy that says "so-and-so many children killed by gunfire". Apparently the great majority of these "children" are 18-year-old drug dealers, but that, needless to say, is not mentioned. So, HCI scores low on the intellectual honesty front, irrespective of the merits of gun control.
Slashdot Mirror
But that's simply not true. Writing software of anything that is non-trivial is not the same as straightforward engineering. For a start there is the rate of progress, how many people have 30 years + experience of building 50 story + buildings. How many people have 30 years + experience of dealing with terabyte + sized datasets?
And, in fact, architectural failures of large physical structures seem to happen in 20-year cycles. The theory is that every new generation of architects needs to learn mistakes. So not only does the physical world have cost overruns, delays, and cancellations, it also has spectacular failures.
I used FORTRAN in high school on an IBM-1130 (a machine with real ferrite cores under the console) back when nerds were, um, just nerds. (Although now that I think of it, my girlfriend was suitably impressed by the blinking lights in the dark, door-locked, computer room, so perhaps even then nerds did ok...)
Anyway, my (possibly apocryphal) recollection is that the riginal FORTRAN compiler was such an amazing effort because it incorporated the notion that the language should be parseable *without respect to whitespace*. The rationale was that scientist types should not have to worry about separating tokens with spaces...
(BTW, "Software Tools" by Kernighan and Plauger develops RatFor translation).
--
Ahem, ahem. I don't want to rekindle the debate
between prescriptive and descriptive lexicography,
but, suffice to say, you shouldn't stop resisting
a solecism just because it has achieved sufficient
market penetration to be noticed by a soi-disant
authority. Parallels to a certain software ven-
dor are left as an exercise for the reader...
Hard to trust a review of a review that has "the public's disinterest in science" adorning the third sentence.
All together now: "uninterested" == a lack of fascination; "disinterested" == a lack of personal motive.
For example: "The public's uninterest in science is caused, not by disinterest -- since science affects it deeply -- but by a lack of understanding..."
Well, my associates who are actually passionate about RKBA cite Handgun Control Inc. (HCI), as an example of radical "gun-grabbers". To my recollection, HCI is headed by 2 ex-CIA men, is home to Sarah Brady, and runs ads on the Op. Ed. page of the New York Times with pictures of tykes and copy that says "so-and-so many children killed by gunfire". Apparently the great majority of these "children" are 18-year-old drug dealers, but that, needless to say, is not mentioned. So, HCI scores low on the intellectual honesty front, irrespective of the merits of gun control.
For that matter there are no flu shots without a preexisting infection in the real world, either.